Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) (25 page)

Her jaw dropped. “You did? I thought you looked at me like I was your little sister or something.”

“No,” he said. “Definitely
not
like a little sister. Believe me. If I held you at arm’s length, it was just because I was—
scared
.”

A strange floating feeling took hold of her. The sunlight seemed to be passing straight through her bare skin and dancing inside her body. “You were?”

“Very. Absolutely. You know what my history with women has been. I knew how to be friends with you. And I knew how to sleep with someone, then never see her again. But the idea of trying to sleep with someone I actually
cared
about, someone I couldn’t risk losing—that just didn’t compute.”

“Yeah, I know, Nick. I understand.”

“I figured if I kept it all inside my own head, never letting it go beyond fantasies of being with you, and never letting you know what I was thinking, that we’d stay safe. That we’d be okay.”

“And then when we went to the meadow, I kind of—”

“Blew all that right out of the water, yeah.” Nick drew in a deep, ragged breath, like he was bracing himself for a fight.

“I’m sorry, Nicky. I should have—we should have talked first. I shouldn’t just have—”

“Don’t be sorry.” Nick gave her a rueful smile. “If we’d talked first, I’d have said
no
, I’d have run like hell.”

“You basically did run like hell—afterwards, anyway.”

“I know. But—but now I want to try,” he said. “If you’re willing. I want to try to make this work.”

“Really?” Now the sunlight under her skin was blazing and streaming and warming her in lush, spiraling waves.

“
Really
. But—you have to understand—I don’t know how this is going to go, sweetheart. I don’t have any experience with this.”

She smiled at him. “Yes, you
do
. Nick, don’t you realize? You’ve been doing it for
years
, being with me, being the most important person in my life. You’re brilliant at it. Sex—sex is just the icing on the cake.”

His gaze lingered on hers, wary, serious, considering. Fear was still there, but so was a new gleam of hope, and the deep, true strength she’d always known in him. “I want to believe that,” he said, “I think I
do
believe it. But I can’t make promises, sweetheart. I don’t have a road map for this. I don’t know how it goes.”

She wanted to reach out to him, to put her arms around him. “We can figure it out together.”

“Can we?”

“Considering all the stuff we’ve figured out making movies on a shoestring, I’m pretty sure we can handle this.” Her heart was throbbing. Her hands really, really wanted to be touching him now. Her body wanted to press itself to his.

He was being noble, though, holding himself still there, trying to hold to the stated terms. “Okay,” he said, and his voice was deeper and hoarser than before, roughened by desire. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me something. Something I don’t know that I should hear.”

She kept her gaze steady on his, put the whole force of her heart behind it. “I love you, Nick.”

The words seemed to hit him physically. He flinched, contracting inward for a split second at the abdomen, his muscles tightening visibly. “
Shit
,” he said. “Really?”

“Yes,
really
,” she said. “And that’s not what you’re supposed to say.”

His voice went quiet, almost hushed. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Nothing, until you’re ready.” And she smiled. “Just not
‘shit really,’
okay?”

He nodded slowly, his eyes locked on her, and he held out his hands. “Then how about
come here
?”

And now it was her belly muscles that contracted, and her legs went weak. Heat whirled through her breasts and her thighs and the palms of her hands. “That works.”

And despite what he’d said, it was Nick who stalked towards her. He took her in his arms and kissed her so thoroughly her head spun.

Before she quite realized they were moving, he’d backed her against the sun-warmed boulder, his forearms against her back shielding her from its roughness. His mouth was hot and desperate over hers, the stubble around it chafing her in a way she found thrilling, primitive and primal, out here in the wild. His cock thrust demandingly against her belly, and she found her hands straying to the hard muscles of his buttocks, drawing him more firmly against her.

Neither one of them seemed to want to take their time. Their clothing was off already, they were both aroused, and there was a need in them that was far more than physical, a need to seal themselves together, to mark the reality of the things they’d said to one another with the joining of flesh.

One of Nick’s hands slipped down between her thighs, sliding through her nest of curls, making its way to her cleft and parting it, finding the moisture there. When he felt how wet she was, how blazing hot, he groaned against her mouth.

Dipping his fingertips inside her, he slicked them and slid them back to her nub, using her own velvety wetness to drive her ever higher. She parted her thighs wider for him, and one of her hands went to his shaft, returning the favor stroke for stroke, as she slid her palm over the bead of moisture there, making circles and long, sliding twists, over and back, up and down. He grew harder and hotter with every caress.

“Now, Nick,” she gasped. “I don’t want to wait.”

He went very still for a moment, a pained expression on his face. “I didn’t bring a condom with me,” he gasped. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

She pressed the palm of her free hand gently to the side of his face, stroking along the cheekbone with her thumb. “You always use them, don’t you? Always safe?”

“Yes. Of course. Every time.”

“And you think of yourself as so selfish and irresponsible. You’re not those things, don’t you realize that?”

He looked at her doubtfully.

Her hand on his shaft squeezed and stroked, making him groan again. “Let’s do it anyway, Nick,” she said. “I want you. No barriers. Come what may.” It felt right. It felt like what they needed to do, right now, right here, like a sworn bond between them.

Another stroke of her hand, and Nick didn’t seem to need more convincing. He got his hands under the curve of her bottom and lifted her, resting her shoulder blades against the rock. His thighs pushed hers wider apart, and the hard, blunt head of his cock nudged against her entrance. And then he was inside her. Hot and firm and deep.

He arms went around his shoulders, helping Nick lift her as she rose up and sank down again and again, and her legs wrapped around his hips, anchoring her.

His thrusts were fierce, urgent, demanding, and everything she needed. She felt his hard flesh sliding against her, his cock inside her, her chest outside, his powerful arms locked around her. Soon they were both moaning, and their fingertips digging into yielding skin, trying to press each other closer.

“Sweetheart,” he was saying as he kissed her mouth, her jaw, her throat. “Sweetheart, only you, only you. Forever, only you.”

She was beyond speech as he drove himself into her, stretching her to the limit inside, grinding up against her throbbing clit. She felt herself rise, float, swell outwards as though she were going to take flight into the sky. And then she came apart in a wild blaze of light, screaming so loud she could swear it echoed back to her from the trees and hills. The waves swept her and swept her, and she curled in tight against Nick, convulsing, gripping him with every part of her. And he exploded, too, groaning, shouting, throwing back his head. His warm seed poured up inside her, the base of his cock pulsing against her tender flesh.

And they seemed joined, fused, utterly connected, flesh to flesh, soul to soul—at long last, at long, long last, just as they always should have been. Just as they would be, from here on out.

As the sun rose higher, they just held each other, letting the sun beat down, drying the sweat from their skin. Nick held her up for longer than she could have imagined possible, his arms still bracing her, his cock still inside. She finally had to ask him to let her put her feet back on the ground.

And still he kissed her, and caressed her, and murmured sweet things into her ears. He seemed happier than she ever remembered seeing him—as if a weight had lifted off his broad shoulders.

“You know what?” he said, when they’d both fully caught their breath. “It’s really too bad those paparazzi didn’t stick around.”

She was in the middle of planting a kiss on his chest, and she chuckled against his skin. “They’d get one hell of a picture right now.”

“Hmm,” he said, his ribcage vibrating in a very pleasing way against her breasts. “But I’d give them something much bigger—a much more shocking and scandalous story—one their readers would hardly believe.”

“What story is that?”

“Something they’ve always said was impossible.” He took her face between his palms now, and stared deep into her eyes. “The best story I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

“Which is?”

He smiled at her, and the warmth of it brightened the core of her, straight down to her toes. “Nick Turner’s in love, kiddo. Nick Turner’s in love.”

Author Note

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About the Author

Lara Archer is a multi-award-winning author of historical and contemporary erotic romance.

Whether you love handsome dukes in lavish ballrooms, or hunky forest rangers on redwood-covered mountains, you’ll find stories that warm your heart, and fire your desires!

Other Works by Lara Archer

Available Now:

Bared to the Viscount
(The Rites of May Book 1)

Wild at Heart
(Walk on the Wild Side Book 1)

Coming Soon:

Bared to the Heiress (The Rites of May Book 2)