The Virgin's Night Out (3 page)

She turned her head into his neck and pressed a kiss there.

He swore and tangled a fist in her hair, dragging her head back as he kissed her, hard and fast, shoving one knee between her thighs. It forced her already short skirt up into indecent territory and she didn’t care. Sensation blistered through her at the feel of his denim-clad thigh rubbing against her bare ones and then, the hand on her hip dragged her closer, closer—her silky panties dragged against her.

Every muscle inside her tightened and she clutched at him, near desperation fueling her.

“
Fuck
.” It was a harsh growl against her lips and then she was standing on wobbling legs and he was two feet away from her.

He held out a hand. “This is insane. I’m at the hotel across the street. Do you want to leave?”

The words were delivered in a calm, level voice, as though he was asking her the time of day, or if she knew if it would rain tomorrow. And his eyes were glittering, harsh flags of color riding on his cheekbones.

Calm, rational Sloane was shouting up at her.
Say no! Say no! Go inside. Right now!

She put her hand in his and told calm, rational Sloane to go to hell.

Instinct told him to hurry her out of the bar, into his room, and out of her clothes.

Instead, he kept to a slow, easy pace, his hand on the small of her back. She walked with him, her shoulders back, head up. And every once in a while, she shuddered. As he kept dragging his thumb over his naked skin, he wanted to think those shudders were because of him but as they were crossing the street, he said softly, “Are you cold?”

“No.”

He nodded.

And that was all they said.

Even once he closed the door behind him, that silence lingered—right up until he went to turn the light on.

“Can you—” Her voice tripped.

He lowered his hand from the switch on the wall, the nerves in her voice as clear as if they’d been written on her face.

“The lights can stay off,” he said. He pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Wait here a minute.”

He stripped off his flannel and dealt with the holster and the Glock M17 he used as his personal weapon, tucking them under the bag he’d dropped near the head of the bed. He could still get to it if he needed it.

Not that it was likely. If that was likely, he wouldn’t be here. He took a few more seconds to deal with the secondary weapon he wore at his ankle and the two knives before he returned to her.

It had taken a few moments more than the promised minute and when he returned to her, it was to catch her face in his hands, press his mouth to hers. He hovered there, though, just a breath away, a question lingering just there, on the tip of his tongue—it was a need almost as strong as the need he had to kiss her.

He didn’t let himself ask, though, and instead, he rubbed his mouth over hers, licked his tongue along the seam and waited for her to open for him.

By some unspoken mutual agreement, neither of them seemed willing to ask the other’s name. Boone wanted to know hers, even wanted to her to know his, simply because he wanted to hear her moaning it as he drove himself inside her.

But in the morning, when he slid out of the bed and left, he wanted to just walk away—wanted this to be nothing more than what it already was.

A night they both seemed to need.

No names, in the end, was probably better.

And he didn’t need to hear his name on her lips to make her moan for him.

The brief walk from the bar to here had taken only a few minutes. Those few minutes hadn’t done a damn thing to ease the ache in his cock, or cool the fire in blood.

But he kept his movements slow. As he pinned her in up against the door, hands over her head, he studied her face. It was dark, but he’d spent years working in situations with less light than this. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes, but he could see the sweep of her lashes, the way she caught her lip between her teeth, the erratic rise and fall of her chest.

“Change your mind?” he murmured, pressing his mouth to her ear. If she had, he might just have to dump some ice over his head, in addition to the cold shower.

“No.” She cleared her throat and then, with a bluntness that surprised him, she added, “I have condoms in my purse.”

He straightened, staring down at her.

Hell.
She
was thinking more clearly than he was. His brain hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Reaching out, he traced his finger along the low neckline of her dress. It was hot, vivid red and it had lured him in at the bar, drawing him in like a moth to a flame. The entire dress looked to be a series of criss-crossing strips of fabric, fitting her like a glove, drawing attention to the narrow waist and the generous swell of her hip. He traced one of the mock strips of fabric to the midline of her body, then down to the hem where he toyed with it.

“How many?”

She blinked at him. “How many what?”

Leaning back in, Boone braced his free arm over her head and murmured against her ear, “How many condoms? I can already tell you right now that one isn’t going to be enough?”

“Oh.” It came out in a shaky sigh. “Um…a couple?”

“That’s a start.” He spread his palm flat on her thigh, dragging the hem of her snug skirt up as he went. When his fingers touched the lacy edge of her panties, a sharp exhalation escaped her.

He traced a lazy pattern, still watching her in the low light. Her eyes were closed, her breathing sharply erratic and when he slid his hand between her thighs, a choked noise escaped her and she bit her lip to hold the sound inside.

She was already wet. He could feel it through her panties and when he rubbed the damp silk over her, her entire body trembled. Another sound left her and again, she swallowed it down.

He pressed his mouth to her ear.

“Stop doing that.”

“Stop what?”

He circled the hard nub he could feel through the scrap of material that hid her from him and when she muffled the sound again, he said, “
That
—I want to hear every noise you make and I want to hear what I make you feel. Sometime very soon, you’re going to be under me and I plan on hearing you moaning when you come for me.”

He slid his hand lower as he spoke and pressed against her, the tip of his finger just barely entering her, the wet silk of her underwear no barrier at all.

Her thighs tightened around his hand and a harsh noise rose in her throat.

But this time, as she struggled to muffle it, Boone didn’t even notice. He was too busy swearing and crooning against her ear when she climaxed.

Sloane had had orgasms before.

Not with Rodney.

She’d figured out soon enough that he’d done her a favor when their marriage hadn’t happened—despite the humiliation. But she’d only mildly enjoyed kissing him.

Sex with him?

Not even worth thinking about.

But once she got over the embarrassment of it, she’d figured out how to make herself climax. No matter what Rodney had said to her the one time she’d tried to confront him,
she
didn’t have a problem.

She wasn’t cold.

She could orgasm and she was almost certain if she could just find the right guy, sex would even be something…pleasant.

She’d been wrong.

This
wasn’t pleasant.

And they hadn’t even had sex—yet.

She was trembling against the door with him standing over her, one arm braced on the door beside her head and his mouth against her ear. And he had his other hand between her thighs.

The silk of her underwear rubbed over her clitoris and she shivered.

He hadn’t even put his hand
in
her panties and he’d made her climax.

“Where’s your purse?”

His voice, the low, rough timbre of it, made her shiver and her mouth went dry thinking about what he’d said.
I plan on hearing you moaning when you come for me.

His teeth nipped her ear—just hard enough that she gasped. “What?”

“Your purse.”

“My purse?”

He lifted his head and although all she could make out was the shadow of him, she had the weirdest idea he could see her—too much of her. “Why do you need my purse?”

He ground his hand lightly against her and the sensation sent another ripple through her. She thought she might climax again. Right there.

“Because I want to fuck you—I’m barely going to make it over to that damn bed and I need a condom.” His voice was still that low, rough rasp, but the words were delivered in a calm, measured tone.

She blushed furiously and then shifted her shoulder, half surprised the skinny strap from the palm-sized purse was still there. It was barely big enough to even be
called
a purse. It had a built-in pocket for her phone, slots for her credit cards and license and just barely enough room for her car keys—
if
she took off the ones she used for work, the card she used at the gym, her library card and all those other stupid cards every place used. Room for her keys…and condoms.

She fumbled for them, her keys falling out. The foil packets escaped her trembling fingers, too. “Son of a bitch.”

He laughed, bending down to scoop everything off the floor and then he whispered, “Put your purse down before I make you drop that, too.”

She eased around him and went to set the purse down on the small table just inside the door. Faint light filtered in from the street, enough to let her know the room was a mirror to the one she had on the floor above.

She didn’t need to be staying here.

She had a room at the ranch whenever she came home.

But if she’d stayed there, she never would have had the nerve to do what she’d done. Not with Taylor looking on.

Warm hands came up to grip her waist and she went still as he pulled her back against him. Abruptly, she wanted to ask his name. Wanted to know who he was, why he was in Nowhere, how long he’d be here—

But she shoved the questions down.

She didn’t need to know anything except the fact that he made her feel…wanted.

One hand slid over her belly, down…down.

She froze and wrenched away, one small, niggling detail surfacing in the back of her lust-dazed mind.

“Are you married?” she demanded.

There wasn’t even a hesitation. “No.”

“Good.” She nodded, nerves battering at her now. The questions she’d shoved down surged back to the fore and she found herself babbling. “I’m not, either. Married, I mean. I was engaged once, but that didn’t work out. We were—oh…”

He caught her around the waist, pulled her flush against him.

“I know you’re not married,” he whispered against her mouth.

“How do you know that?”

“You’re just not the kind of woman who’d be here with me if you were.”

“And you figured all of this out just by dancing with me?”

His mouth trailed along her cheek, up to her ear, down her neck. “I knew it practically within moments of seeing you.” Brushing aside one strap of her dress, he pressed his mouth to her shoulder. “If you’ve changed your mind, now’s the time to tell me.”

“I’m not—I haven’t changed my mind.”

When he lifted his head, Sloane could make out the glitter of his eyes in the darkness of the room. She couldn’t see him clearly, but her memory filled in the details. Pale green eyes, a face that was hard and harsh, almost too harsh. He’d be handsome in a craggy way, she thought, if he smiled.

But there was something forbidding about him.

If she was smart, she would
change
her mind.

Sloane had spent her entire life being smart. And she’d spent too much of her life lonely. Safe, sure. But lonely.

She reached up and touched his cheek, her fingers seeking out a scar she’d seen earlier, a thin one that started near his left eyebrow and travelled at an angle down toward his ear. “I’m not changing my mind,” she said again.

“Then I want you naked.”

He caught the straps of her dress and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, she stood in front of him, wear nothing more than a pair of panties. And she already knew how poor a barrier those panties were when it came to him.

Maybe he’d thought it would give her one last chance to think it through. The nerves and the hesitancy he kept seeing in her eyes managed to be both tempting and terrifying. He knew how to handle women who knew the game. Quick anonymous sex was the only way he knew. Okay, maybe not
quick
.

But this woman flooded him with conflicting needs—he wanted to push her up against the wall and drive inside her, hard and fast. At the same time, he wanted to spread her out in the sunlight and learn every curve, every line. Wanted to learn what made her sigh and make her gasp.

And he wanted her fucking name.

Because he wanted that so bad, he thought it would just be best if he
could
make her leave. That rough gesture, grabbing her dress and stripping it away with the abruptness teenage boy would have shown his first time, had been done to shock. He’d been prepared to see the nerves—then do something else to spike those nerves into something else, maybe even a little fear as she stood there all but naked in front of him.

She wore nothing under the dress save for her panties. Her hair fell free from the dress he’d just dropped, falling down to shield her breasts, the ends of brushing her hips.

His so-called plan to save her from himself fell in ashes around him as he went to his knees.

“You’re beautiful.”

He half-listened for the normal comments he was used to hearing—
no, I’m not. I’m too fat, my boobs aren’t big enough, my hips are too big
…

But she was silent. He reached out and caught her hips, tugged her in close so he could press his mouth to the soft curve of her belly. Her hair brushed his hands and he looked up to see her head slumped.

She braced her hands on his shoulders as a shaky sigh escaped her. “If you keep that up, I might fall down,” she said, her voice soft.