“This is really nice.” He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “You’re a magician.”
He could feel her sigh more than hear it, a light lifting of shoulders under his arm. “No. I just like making the best of things.”
From his angle, Cooper could see long lashes, a delicate cheekbone, creamy skin. She took his breath away. She wasn’t a magician, she was a witch and she’d cast a powerful spell on him.
Suddenly, the past week spent alone, far from Sally, seemed like the worst hardship he’d ever undergone. Worse than Hell Week. He couldn’t stand it one second more.
“We need to get to bed.” His voice was thick. “Now.”
She smiled up at him. “Now?”
He nodded.
“I guess it’s going to be one of those times,” she said softly.
One of those times in which he was going to strip her and enter her as quickly as was humanly possible. “Yeah.”
She smiled and stretched up towards him. He bent and took her mouth. It was as softly warm as he remembered. She turned fully into him, lacing her arms around his neck. He didn’t want to change anything about their position, so he simply wrapped his arms around her, lifted her, and walked them into her bedroom. He put her down on her feet next to the bed and, without leaving her mouth, slipped his parka off her. It fell with a heavy thud. He didn’t want to stop kissing her but he had to if he wanted her naked.
His hands moved fast as he bent. Flannel shirt, bra, jeans, panties, shoes, socks, ah…here she was. Naked. A pale glimmering angel. Watching her face carefully, Cooper stood back up, turned his hand and cupped her. She wasn’t very wet yet. He slipped a finger in and caressed the smooth heat of her. Moisture rose up out of her very core, like a little miracle. It wasn’t enough yet. He was as swollen as one of his stallions and she had to be very wet to take him, but they were getting there.
He bent again to her, kissing her deeply while his finger stroked inside her. Sally’s fingers were digging into his shoulders, her breath coming out in a little shudder as he probed her softness. “Cooper,” she breathed, then—“Oh!” when his thumb circled her clitoris. She shook and he shook, too.
He’d never known a woman he could take from zero to a thousand miles an hour so quickly.
He gritted his teeth, because though she was getting softer and wetter by the second, it wasn’t enough. He was going to fuck her hard once he got into her and she needed to be ready.
“On the bed,” he whispered against her mouth.
“Okay.” Her lips curved in a smile against his. She recognized that tone, he could tell. The one where he was inches from losing control.
Cooper eased her down onto the bed with his free arm, then eased himself down next to her hip. His finger was still inside her, moving gently. He shifted his palm and she obediently opened her legs. She had lovely legs, long and sleek. His hand brushed the inside of her thighs and it felt like warm velvet.
Cooper watched her for a moment. It was dark in her bedroom but her body glowed palely in the light of the streetlamp outside like a woman-shaped pearl. Though he was itching to be inside her, he took a moment to savor every detail of her. The delicate collarbones, the small, upright breasts with their pale pink nipples, the smooth soft belly, the soft thatch of fiery hair between her thighs. Everything about her was elegant and perfect.
Her legs moved restlessly on the blanket while he let his finger imitate his cock. Only his cock had never been this gentle, he’d always pumped hard and fast in her. Maybe he always would. Maybe the only slow fucking she’d ever get from him would be from his hand.
There was complete silence except for his breathing and the wet sounds as his finger moved in and out of her.
He watched his hand moving between her legs. His finger was slick now with her juices. When his thumb caressed her clitoris again, her little cunt pulled at him. Her belly muscles rippled and her thighs trembled.
“Do you like this?” he asked quietly, finally raising his eyes to her face. She’d been watching him watching her.
Sally’s hand caressed his arm. “I like everything you do to me, Cooper,” she said simply.
His eyes closed, as if in pain. Impossibly, his cock surged, lengthening and hardening even more, rapping against the stiff denim of his jeans as if against a door.
He started unbuttoning his shirt, then stopped, astonished.
His hand was trembling.
His hand never trembled. He was an excellent shot and—as he’d told her—was even better with a knife. You don’t shoot true and hit your mark a hundred times out of a hundred with a knife if you were the kind of man whose hand shook under pressure.
The only other time in his life in which his hand trembled had been the first time with her.
Sally Anderson was slowly undoing him. Then putting him back together. A better man.
He finished unbuttoning his shirt one-handedly. To take it all the way off, his right hand had to leave the warmth and softness of Sally’s body and for a moment, he was tempted to just leave his shirt on.
But he loved the feel of her skin against his. When they made love, she rubbed herself against him like a little cat and he savored every inch of skin contact.
Reluctantly, Cooper pulled his hand out of her to slip off his shirt and tee shirt. He unlaced his work boots, toed them off and took his socks off. All he had on was his jeans and briefs.
He lay down next to her, running his hand down her torso. He leaned down and kissed her jawline, her neck, then nipped her earlobe. She shuddered and clung to him. “Missed you,” he growled in her ear.
“Oh, Cooper, I missed you, too.” One hand ran through his hair and she turned her head to kiss his neck. “So much. You have no idea.”
Fuck
yes
, he had an idea.
“Thought about you every night.” He licked her neck and kissed his way down to her breast. His hand settled over her mound. She lifted a leg and curled it around his thigh, opening herself to him.
“Aren’t you going to take those jeans off?”
“Not just yet,” he growled. “The second I do, I’ll be in you.”
He could feel her smile against his neck. “Sort of like a denim chastity belt, huh?”
“Yeah.” Two fingers were fitting into her now. Good thing, because he was starting to lose control. Two fingers weren’t as big as his cock, but she was softening up. He worked his fingers in and out of her, gradually spreading them, while he licked her nipples. Her fingernails were digging into his back and she was making those throaty little sounds he loved. The ones she made just before coming.
He bit a nipple lightly while thrusting deeply and she stiffened, breath held. He shook as her cunt tightened around his fingers and she surged into climax.
Nownownow!
Cooper kissed her deeply, shaking as he unzipped his jeans and pushed them and his briefs down. He wanted complete freedom of movement, so he didn’t just pull them down his thighs enough to free himself. He wanted them all the way off. In a second, he was naked and rolling on top of her.
Sally was still coming, panting lightly. He pulled her legs further apart and thrust inside, feeling the sharp little tugs as he entered her. It was mind-blowing. Sally came with her whole body. Arms and legs clutching him, hips grinding upwards to take as much of him as she could, mouth open against his. Every cell of her body welcomed him.
His cock was super-sensitized, as if a layer of skin had been removed. He’d been in a state of arousal eight nights in a row and jerking off in his hotel room hadn’t helped at all. He was primed and when his cock parted those soft tissues tightly milking him, he lost it.
Cooper groaned against her mouth, held her hips hard and pumped in short, hard strokes, moving upwards into her. He was beginning to know her so well. The fast upward strokes moved him against her clitoris and kept her climax going. He made a humming sound of contentment deep in his chest as he felt her move seamlessly into another climax, the pulses harder and stronger this time.
The warm, hard contractions finished him off. He groaned and came in hot spurts of seed, shaking and sweating and pumping. His senses—usually so keen—disappeared, wiped out by the intensity of his climax. He didn’t hear the bed creaking, or Sally’s cries of pleasure, couldn’t see anything but the square inch of Sally’s skin right in front of his slitted eyes. Everything in him spiraled inward, ferociously concentrated on his cock bursting with joy inside her.
With an enormous shudder, Cooper settled his full weight on Sally, face turned towards hers on the pillow, panting and trembling with aftershocks.
He was still hard. He’d barely taken the roughest edge of desire off. As soon as he caught his breath, he’d start again and it would be even better. She’d be softer and wetter, now that they’d come. Some nights he came four or five times inside her and, towards the end, she was so slick with her juices and his, he moved inside her like a dream.
But right now that orgasm had been more intense than usual. He had no desire to start up right away. They had all night. Right now all he wanted to do was savor the pulsing pleasure as sensation returned to his body. It had been so intense his head rang.
As he slowly came back to himself, Cooper realized it wasn’t his head ringing, it was the phone.
Fuck it. Whoever was calling could go take a flying jump.
“Don’t answer that,” Cooper murmured. His nose was right up against the soft rose-scented skin under her ear. He kissed it.
“Answer what?” Sally said dreamily.
“The phone.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I thought it was my head ringing.”
He smiled in the darkness and nuzzled the skin of her neck. The damned thing kept ringing, but Cooper tuned it out.
Sally suddenly stiffened. “The phone. The phone. Oh, God, the
phone
.” Her voice was sharp now, as if she’d suddenly woken up. She pushed his shoulder. “I have to answer it.”
Cooper lifted his head in surprise.
“Please, Cooper, let me up. I really have to answer that.”
Cooper frowned as he looked down at her. She was shaking. Her usually pale skin now looked bloodless.
“Cooper, please.” She pushed at his shoulder again. He was about ninety or a hundred pounds heavier than her. No way could she get him off her if he didn’t want to. And he didn’t want to. He was fine, right where he was, with his cock deeply buried inside her, her body under his, thighs hugging his hips. “Cooper, please. Please,” she whispered. The phone continued ringing.
Her voice trembled.
Scowling, Cooper pulled out of her and rolled off. She scrambled out from under him, a pale shadow in the dark room as she hurried into the living room.
Cooper was overheated and sweating from the lovemaking and climax, but he felt a deep chill run through his system as he thought about the expression on her face.
It was one he’d seen all too many times on his men under fire.
Fear.
Something had frightened her badly. Fuck this. Nothing and no one was going to frighten his woman. Grim-faced, Cooper got to his feet and followed her.
* * * * *
Julia was shaking as she slid out from under Cooper. She checked her watch and winced. 10 p.m. It couldn’t be anyone from Simpson calling. Everyone went to bed at 9 p.m. It could only be one person.
Herbert Davis. And if he was calling at this late hour, it wasn’t good news.
She stood for just a second by the bed until she was certain her legs would hold. She’d just finished climaxing and her system was still in overdrive. When she stood, she could feel wetness trickling down her thighs. She dried herself with a quick swipe from the sheet and grabbed a dressing gown from the chair as she went into the living room, the cotton whipping through the air as she struggled into it while lunging for the phone.
“Hello?” Her voice was still husky from sex and she cleared her throat. “Hello?”
“Julia? Julia Devaux?” Julia’s heart gave a great thump as she heard her real name spoken for the first time in six weeks.
“Mr. Davis,” she breathed. Clearly, the old rules were out. He was using her real name and he didn’t complain that she was using his. Something was very, very wrong.
“Yeah, that’s right. Herbert Davis. Now, I want you to listen carefully, Julia. We think your identity has been compromised. We’re not absolutely certain, but we’re going to play it safe. From this moment on, I don’t want you to leave your house. I don’t want you to talk to anyone; I don’t want you to contact anyone. No one at all, do you understand me? You can’t trust anyone. You might be in danger and we’re coming to get you. Now this is what I want you to do—”
The phone clattered heavily on the table, falling from Julia’s nerveless fingers. She could hear Herbert Davis’ voice squawking from the receiver, a tinny remote sound. “Julia? Julia! Answer me! What the hell is going on? Julia?”
“Who was that?” a deep, raspy voice asked.
Julia gasped and swiveled. Cooper stood in the doorway, one powerful arm braced against the frame.
I don’t want you to talk to anyone. I don’t want you to trust anyone
, Davis had said.
Well, though Cooper didn’t talk much, having sex with him was probably included in Herbert Davis’ list of things not to do.