Uncommon Pleasure (4 page)

His hands tightened on her hips, holding her still. “Longer than four days.”

This was another man entirely than the one she’d seen on the rig, and in the parking lot. She hadn’t expected him to be careful with her. Heat seared her skin, and her heart threatened to pound
its way up her throat. Rather than answering she reached for his broad, heavy shoulders to support her weight, leaving her body exposed to his hands and eyes. He laid one big hand on her neck, idly caressing her pulse, pounding just under her jaw, while his melting chocolate gaze slid over her skin, striking sparks the trailing hands stroked into flames. He looked for a good, long time, making her wait, then he said, “Ride me. Slow. Just the tip. Don’t rush it.”

Low, quiet, even-voiced commands, the tone of a man accustomed to authority. She set a slow, shallow pace while he slid his palms along her waist and up to cup her breasts. The rough scrape of his palms over her skin made her undulate, as there was nothing tentative or gentle about his grip. He squeezed the firm flesh, avoiding her nipples until she arched into his hands. A slow, firm pinch had her gasping, sinking a little lower on his cock.

“Not so fast,” he growled.

His words were faint against the blood roaring in her ears, lost in the rhythmic surge and drag as he stretched her, nerves popping and firing into an all-consuming ache each time she sank a little lower on his cock. As if from a distance she heard desperate, pleading little gasps, but when the walls parted, she arched her back and took him as far inside her as he could go and cried out in sheer pleasure.

Ty’s hands tightened on her hips. “Fuck,” he growled. “Do that again. Right fucking now.”

She dragged her eyes open to meet his. A muscle leaped in his jaw as she rose until the tip caressed the very edge of her sex, slid down again, made the same limpid, helpless noise as her sheath clung to him, quivering, slick.

“Okay?” he ground out.

“Fine. Better than okay,” she whispered, lost in the glimmering sensation. Again. Again. Again, the angle perfect, gliding over the sensitive bundle of nerves. Heat and pressure sparked under the edges of her skin, and his hands tightened on her hips.

“You sure?”

He was different. Protective. Under the mask of arousal the lines of his face changed, the rakish twist of his mouth softening. He almost looked like someone else. “God, yes.”

Then the world spun as he tumbled her to her back and drove deep into her. She cried out even as she flattened one hand at the small of his back and gripped his shoulder with the other as he adjusted the tilt of her hips in a possessive, preemptory move, then surged into her. Every stroke slid over the hot ache building inside her, the hard ride she’d wanted coming harder and faster as he pinned her down, and—

Ohgodohgodohgod

—were those noises coming from her? The tension fisted deep, almost unbearably. The bed was squeaking, thunking against the wall in counterpoint to his soft grunts, her erratic gasps and wordless pleas. Her legs drew up until her heels were digging into his ass, the impact of flesh on flesh sharp in the dark, quiet air. He cupped the back of her head and tipped her face into his shoulder, trying to stifle her cries as she reached the peak—

A fist thudded against the door. Ice flashed through her veins, and he froze above her, sweat trickling down his jaw. He looked as utterly staggered as she felt, like they were a combustible chemical experiment halted, explosions arrested just before some new compound was created.

“Hey, buddy!” came a male voice from the hallway. “Jesus fucking Christ! I can hear her down the goddamn hallway!”

Indeed, her moans still hung in the thick air, trapped in the plastic curtains and the thin, maroon and green quilted polyester bedspread that lay half on the bed, half on the floor. Torn between humiliation and laughter she stared up at Ty.

Another pounding underscored a muttered
goddammit
. The security chain rattled in its mooring. “Lady! You okay?”

Humiliation won.

Ty looked over his shoulder, his long hair tumbling forward, then withdrew and slid back inside, slow and hot and relentless. “Better answer him,” he said, and just like that the emotionless bad boy was back.

“I’m…” The word
fine
died in her throat as Ty stroked in, slow, arrogant, silent as the grave. The bed frame gave a soft squeak, or maybe that was her when he bottomed out. “Stop that,” she begged in a stage whisper. “I can’t think when you do that. I’m fine,” she said, hoping her raised voice was steady enough to make her knight in shining armor move on to the next damsel. “Just…just got carried away.”

“You sure?” Suspicious this time. In her mind’s eye she could see the guy, hands on his hips, glowering protectively. Probably middle-aged, balding, heavyset, a lifetime of smoking in his voice. Probably he had a wife and daughters. Probably he had a conscience.

Unlike Ty. Another slow, deep stroke and the heavy weight of his shaft slid over nerve endings that didn’t give a damn about noise and propriety and protective strangers. Her pussy spasmed, and Ty laughed, soundless except for the movement of his chest against her.

“Go on, Lauren. Tell him how you are. Want some help? You’re slick and hot and primed.”

She turned her head and sank her teeth into the biceps nearest her mouth. Ty’s eyes widened in mock outrage. A wicked gleam in his eye, he shook his head
no-no-no
, and Lauren couldn’t remember what the guy outside the door said ten seconds earlier. “I’m fine,” she called firmly, then licked Ty’s sweat from her lips.

A cough outside. “All right, then. Sorry to bother you folks.” Finally, finally, footsteps thudded down the stairway.

“He’s sorry
he
bothered
us
?” Lauren said. “Oh my God.”

“You’re loud,” Ty said. “It’s hot as hell.”

The searing emotional connection must have been her imagination,
a product of endorphins and oxytocin. She shifted awkwardly, as far from an orgasm as she’d ever been. “Just…oh God. Just finish,” she whispered.

He bent his head and bit down on her earlobe before asking, “That’s what you want? You want me to just finish?” His voice was low but completely audible in her ear. Compelling. “Can I use you like that, Lauren?”

He’d rewired her nervous system, because his breath against her ear and his voice shot a wicked current straight to her nipples and clit. “It’s fine…just…finish.”

Challenge gleamed in his heavy-lidded brown eyes as he started to move again, still slow, still measured, and Lauren was out of the mood enough to keep her eyes open and watch his face as he focused on satisfying his own need. She’d thought he’d let go and get it over with, but he was watching her, adjusting. When a stroke sent heat cracking through the pit of her belly, he gripped her thigh with his free hand and repeated the move. Despite the slower, measured thrusts that didn’t set the mattress singing, oh so slowly the tension built again. His gaze swept her torso, lingering on her peaked nipples, the quivering in her abdomen, and suddenly need snarled, grew teeth and claws. Her nails dug into his biceps.

“Still want me to just finish?”

“Don’t you dare!” she gasped, biting her lip in an effort to stifle the damned noises in her throat.

Her body clenched around the release threatening to make her implode, strained with the effort of holding in her response, but a hitching, breathy gasp still filtered into the room, blending with the low whir of the air-conditioning unit. Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs and her body was trapped, pinned under Ty as he plunged in and out of her. Sweat gleamed on his skin, and the heavy muscles of his shoulders and torso bunched with the effort. She wriggled and squirmed under him, made him hold her down, made
him keep her in place, felt his growled curse rumble through his torso as he well and truly pinned her to the bed with hands, hips, and chest, and took her.

She closed her eyes as the tight fist at her core flung open, sending her whirling into the abyss. Sound forced itself from her throat, and without warning Ty’s hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her breathless moan. Shudders wracked her, slowly subsided. When they ebbed, she opened her eyes just enough to see him grit his teeth, let his head drop back. Agony washed over his face as his cock throbbed inside her once, twice, the pulsations coming in time to the grind of his hips against her. His features softened from brutal to harsh as he bent forward and took his weight on his elbows, the hand covering her mouth slipping in what could have been a caress of her ear, then her hair, but probably wasn’t. His chest heaved, and sweat plunked against her collarbone.

She pushed at his ribs and he slid out, backed off the bed, and walked to the bathroom. Wrung out, she rolled to her side and curled up. The muscles of her inner thighs trembled sporadically, and her shoulders eased as she tucked her arm under her head and sank into the ebbing pleasure.

The toilet flushed in the bathroom. Water ran in the sink, then the door opened. He’d zipped his pants. As she watched he shrugged out of the shirt and tossed it toward his duffel, then braced a shoulder against the frame and folded his arms while he looked at her. He stayed in the doorway, and it occurred to her that he wasn’t likely to get within five feet of the bed until she’d left it. She got to her feet, sent a mental threat to her knees to steady up, then walked past him into the bathroom. “Excuse me,” she said.

In the bathroom she wet a washcloth and cleaned up, taking her time as she swiped the cloth behind her neck, down her throat, along her belly. Between her legs. She splashed water on her face, combed the worst of the tangles from her hair with her fingers.
When she emerged he was sitting in one of the room’s two chairs, her dress pooled in his lap as he deftly reattached the shoulder strap to the bodice with a needle and thread.

The night was one surprise after another. Astonished, she perched on the edge of the rumpled bed and watched him. His big, rough hands took neat stitches in an ecru thread that almost matched the lace, no less. It took less than a minute, then he snapped the thread with a quick jerk of work-roughened fists, stuck the needle back in the travel sewing kit, and held out the dress.

Ty Hendricks was a six-foot-tall, hard-muscled, prowling contradiction.

She took her dress from his outstretched hand, pulled it over her head, and twisted her hair into a loose knot at her nape. She was decent to get home. “Thank you,” she said.

He tore the plastic bag from around a paper cup next to the brown plastic ice bucket and poured a good two inches of whiskey into it. His throat worked as he swallowed, then he sat back, arms dangling from the arms of the chair. All sign of the connection arcing between them during sex had disappeared from his angular, expressionless face. “Want a drink?” he asked carelessly, without meeting her eyes.

A women’s magazine she’d flipped through in her doctor’s office contained the theory that a man’s walls crumbled when he was having sex, an idea her scientifically trained brain considered and discarded in the time it took to close the magazine. But living, breathing proof of the hypothesis was sitting in front of her, walled off like a compound, proving her wrong. She smoothed her palm absently over the silk dress and considered him, but, drink offer aside, he couldn’t possibly be less inviting. “Thank you, but no,” she said. She picked up her purse from the spot where it had landed by the door and rummaged through it. Cell phone, keys, credit card, driver’s license. She was good to go.

She’d gotten exactly what she wanted. Going back to his room with him should have satisfied her curiosity as well as her body, but as the room’s shadows sidled toward him, making a home in his dark eyes, neither was satiated. Every cell in her body remained on high alert, attuned to the chemistry still crackling between them, to the odd emotional resonance swirling in and out of the shadows. But she had no idea how to go about illuminating what haunted him, and twenty minutes of conversation over dinner taught her how unwelcome her efforts would be.

“Good night, Ty,” she said quietly, stepped out into the hall, and let the door close behind her.

The briefing started at eight. Ty pulled into the parking lot of
Langley Security at 7:58 a.m. He downed a fast-food sausage and egg biscuit in three bites, finishing just as John Langley’s black Ford Explorer parked beside him. Ty got out of his car while John and his girlfriend, Lucy Monroe, emerged from the SUV. John wore slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie, which meant he was due at a sales presentation at some point during the day. Lucy was dressed for her day as a partner with a local accounting firm in a slim, fitted black jacket and a skirt that ended just above her knee, killer spike heels, and the amber necklace she wore almost daily. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, her makeup demure, her manner consummate young urban professional.

Ty knew better. At John’s request, six months earlier Ty had picked Lucy up in a bar for a night of sex she thought would drive John away, but had instead changed their relationship entirely.

John handed Lucy his keys as he nodded a greeting to Ty. “Top desk drawer,” he said to Lucy. Flipping through the keys, she
hurried past Ty up the sidewalk leading between cedar chips and low bushes to the door of the redbrick building. “Hello, Ty,” she said over the sharp snap of her heels against the cement.

Ty and John shook hands in front of Ty’s truck. “Her car wouldn’t start this morning.”

“She still driving the Prelude?”

“Yeah. She bought it when she graduated, and she won’t give it up. This time it’s the water pump.”

They followed Lucy into the building, through the reception area, and into John’s office/war room. He and John had served in the same rifle platoon for the duration of their time in the Corps, and for a while they’d been closer than brothers. Ty headed for the makeshift commissary at the back of the room and made coffee while John and Lucy rummaged through John’s mess of a desk.

“You always leave this until the last minute,” Lucy chided, but there was more amusement than irritation in her voice.