A Place Called Home (28 page)

Mitch straightened. He wondered if he looked as dazed as he felt, and for a long moment he stared at the darkly reflective centers of Thea’s eyes looking for the answer. She watched him, intent and still wary, and he found himself intrigued by that guardedness. It seemed an emotion turned inward, as if she were not so uncertain of him, but of herself, and Mitch wondered at it.

“Good morning,” he said softly. He bowed his head and pressed his brow lightly to hers. “Did I wish you a good morning?” If he hadn’t been touching her he wouldn’t have seen the nearly imperceptible shake of her head. He felt it, though. That small, slight movement sent a shiver all the way down his spine. “You’re some kisser, Thea Wyndham.”

His lips nudged hers. His breath was warm, sweet. Thea felt her eyelids grow heavy as Mitch’s hands slid from the underside of her tender and aching breasts to her waist, then curved lightly at her hips. His thumbs made a pass across her skin. Back and forth. Back. Forth. Again. On her next breath she sucked in her lower lip, bit it to keep from crying out.

“Easy,” he said. He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Where are we going with this?”

“You don’t have GPS?”

“Smart ass.” He was smiling against her cheek. “I know what I want.” His teeth caught her earlobe and worried it. His tongue flicked the diamond stud. “I’m not entirely sure about you.”

The truth was that Thea wasn’t entirely certain either. “Can we kiss some more?”

“Yep. Vertical or horizontal?”

Thea felt his lips hovering just above hers again. “Vertical is good,” she whispered.

Mitch bypassed her gently puckered, succulent mouth, and cocked his head sideways, placing a firm vertical kiss on the damp skin of her neck. “Good choice,” he said. He sucked, applying gentle pressure until he felt her fingers curl into his T-shirt and stretch it taut. “You want to help me out of it?”

She nodded and her fingers caught more of the material until she had a fistful. Mitch ducked as she pulled and then he was out of it and Thea was left holding it in front of her. It lay slanted across her breasts and belly like a wet plaster and left the copse of dark red hair on her mons uncovered.

Mitch’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he made a study of all that dewy alabaster skin exposed and the turgid nipples and taut belly perfectly outlined by his shirt. “All right,” he said at last. “You can wear that.”

She threw it at him.

Laughing, Mitch grabbed two slippery handfuls of Thea’s bottom and jerked her upward against his groin. Her thighs parted and clamped around his hips for purchase. His cock pressed hard against her cleft. He backed her up to the tiled wall again; her arms circled him. Thea’s head fell forward and was buried against the curve of his neck. Mitch heard her catch her breath. She nuzzled him with an openmouthed kiss. The tip of her tongue flicked the pulsing cord in his neck.

He turned his head and caught her cheek. She raised herself slightly and he kissed her jaw. Her face lifted completely then; her slender throat arched. She made herself available to his deliciously greedy lips, closing her eyes under this second rush on her senses. Her fingertips marked him with tiny white crescents where she pressed the back of his shoulders. His skin was taut over the defined bunching of muscles. Thea ran her palms up his back. A thin sheet of water covered him and droplets wedged themselves between her palms and his skin. The water was warm. His skin was hot.

She weighed next to nothing in his arms. Her long legs were locked behind him at the ankles. She rode up on him slightly as he continued to kiss her throat. Her breasts rubbed his chest. He fit himself snugly into the cradle of her thighs.

“Someone wants out of the tent,” he whispered against her skin.

Thea groaned softly. “Why do men talk about their penis as if it’s a third person in the room?”

Mitch lifted his head. “Hey, you live with the hand puppet all your life and it takes on certain anthropomorphic characteristics.”

Something between a laugh and a sputter caught in Thea’s throat. She plowed her fingers deeply into Mitch’s thatch of wet hair and held his head still, simply staring at him, at once amused and disbelieving. Then she struck. Her mouth slanted across his. Hot. Hungry. She pushed her tongue past his, working it over and around his, sucking it into her own mouth.

She pulsed against him, clasping him tightly. His lean muscles shifted so that she felt the tension in the contraction. There was no mistaking the strength of his upper body or the fact that she was securely held in his arms. If his breathing was short, if there was a vibration running lightly under his skin, it was in response to passion, not fatigue. But in the event she was wrong ...

Thea drew back slightly, tugging on his lips as she lifted her head. Her sigh was inaudible against the steady rush of water from the shower. “They say the bathroom is the site of the majority of household accidents,” she said.

He grinned. “Don’t trust me, huh?”

She searched his face. “Ummm. Maybe ...” Her eyes darted in the direction of the door.

“Bedroom?”

Thea nodded. His grip on her relaxed and she was unfolded flush to his hard frame. “Leave your shorts here.” She slipped around him and slid open the shower door. Thea felt him make a grab for her butt but his fingers only caught the curve of her left cheek. She was on the other side of the tub, dripping onto the carpet, before he had a chance to realize he had a handful of air and water.

Smiling to herself, she grabbed a dry towel from the back of the door and rubbed it furiously through her hair. She heard the shower stop, and in the immediate silence that followed she was aware of her thudding heart and lightly tingling skin in a way she hadn’t been moments earlier. These sensations weren’t courtesy of the sharp, pulsing water spray, if indeed, they ever had been. What she felt had its sweet nascence in the hot suck of Mitch’s mouth and his hands cupped hard over her bottom.

And she was bearing it. More than that, she was embracing it.

The shower door slid open and, half-hidden in the towel draped over her head, Thea caught sight of five neon pink toes and a lean, muscular calf just before Mitch put his foot down. She tossed the towel at him and made a dash for the bedroom.

He caught her on the run, snapping the twisted towel at her thigh and catching her squarely on her taut buttocks.

“Ouch!” She stopped short, turning to get a look at the offended portion of her anatomy, and found herself lifted off the carpet and borne toward the bed in a dazzling offensive move that was a little carry and a lot of tackle. Thea felt some of the breath leave her body as they rolled onto the bed together. Mitch protected her from taking the brunt of the fall or bearing his weight and still managed to emerge holding the high ground.

He looked down on her, his expression a mixture of ornery satisfaction and wickedness. “You want to turn the other cheek?”

Thea got her fists between their bodies and pushed upward. He didn’t budge. Her knuckles made small dimples in his skin, but the taut abdomen remained just where it was. Thea’s hands unfolded and her fingers splayed across his midsection. She lifted one eyebrow. “Pretty impressive abs for a cartoonist.”

Mitch gave her an aw, shucks smile at the same time he settled his hips heavily against her thighs. “You haven’t said anything about my pen.”

“Your pen is ...” Thea rolled her eyes at her own gullibility. “You set me up.”

“You say pen-is. I say pe-nis.” He bent his head and kissed her softly, nudging her lips apart. His nose bumped hers. The shape of their mouths changed as they shared a smile. He kissed her again, sweetly this time, and tasted her sigh. Raising himself up on his elbows, he studied her face. His expression was watchful now, solemn and intent. “Thea?”

She knew what he was asking. It was there in the inflection in his voice as he said her name. Did she want this? Was she ready? Regrets? A mistake? “How do you know to ask?” she whispered. A heaviness settled inside her as her stomach clenched. “What am I doing wrong?”

Mitch exhaled softly, shaking his head. “No. Oh, no, baby.” His hand came up to touch her face. The backs of his fingers brushed her cheek. Her skin was still faintly damp, glowing. Her short dark hair was freshly mussed and spiky from the hard rubbing she’d given it. He smoothed it back at her temple, then ruffled it again. “Don’t even think it. It’s not about what you’re doing wrong.”

“Then what—”

“It’s about what I’m not doing enough of,” he told her. He kissed the corner of her mouth. “I can still feel you tense when I touch you. I don’t—”

Thea almost laughed. He thought it was
him.
She stopped Mitch by letting her hands run up his naked flanks and across his back. His breath hitched and she smiled faintly. Thea raised her hips, pushing herself against him, grinding, lifting. He was so hard and hot on her belly. Her abdomen contracted as he moved.

“Open for me,” he said. “Wider.”

Thea put her hands on his shoulders. Her heels sought purchase in the mattress. She wanted to do anything he wanted. Everything he wanted. He’d called her “baby” and she hadn’t even blinked an eye. Maybe later her feminist sensibilities would find that endearment outrageous, but when he’d said it just now, it seemed tender and sweet, and she wanted to love him so much right then and there that there was ache inside her that was different from anything she’d ever known. She felt his palm curve lightly over her thigh. He was stroking her skin from hip to knee, slowly, carefully, watching her face, gauging her reaction, and doing nothing except this exquisite caress.

He moved suddenly but didn’t surge over her or into her. Mitch slipped out from between her legs and flipped on his side. His hand never left her thigh, but now it had the inside track. His fingertips brushed the dark red hair of her mons. Once. Twice. He felt her inner thigh muscles start to close. He leaned his head close to her ear. “No. Don’t. Stay open for me.” His hand cupped her mons. The damp, springy curls collapsed under the weight of his palm. He pressed with the heel of his hand as his fingers slipped between the lightly moist folds of her labia. He drew the moisture upward to her clitoris, rubbing the sensitive hood with his fingertip.

Thea’s hips jerked. An inarticulate sound was trapped at the back of her throat and a tide of pale pink color flushed her breasts and washed upward to her face. Beside her, her hands sought something to cover herself. Coming up empty, they curled into fists. The next time he touched her she sucked in her lower lip and clamped her teeth over it.

“Okay?” he asked her huskily.

She nodded. “It embarrasses me a little.”

One of Mitch’s dark brows lifted. Watching her darkening eyes, he continued to caress her. “This? This embarrasses you?”

What he was doing flooded her with sensation. Embarrassment was just one of the ones she endured. “A little,” she repeated. “Ah!” Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Ummmm.” She pressed her lips together, holding back the sound, swallowing it. If he had any sense of what she was feeling, or perhaps because he had
every
sense of it, there was no pause in Mitch’s intimate caress. He wrested another cry from her and was smart enough not to smile when he did it. He kissed her instead, claiming that sound of her pleasure as his own, then eased a finger inside her.

Thea squeezed her eyes closed. She felt him close, his breath warm on her face. He nudged her mouth and his lips hummed against hers.

“Thea?” She was tense and tight and not nearly ready for him. If he tried to take her now, he’d hurt her.

“I think you’d better kiss me some more,” she whispered.

Mitch obligingly touched the corner of her mouth with his own and didn’t make the mistake of telling her to relax. “Kissing helps?”

“The way you do it.”

“Remember that. I may want to use you as a reference.”

Thea’s lips quivered. The man had his middle finger buried inside her and she was responding to his humor. Where was the dignity in that?

“It’s okay to laugh, Thea. Really.” Before she could answer he kissed her again, warmly, deeply. The inside of her mouth was damp and silky and sweet and he kissed her for a long time, working her lips and tongue with his own, opening her, making her accommodate his entry, changing the shape of her mouth with subtle pressure and cautious insistence. “That’s it,” he murmured on a thread of sound. “Wet. Make it wet for me.”

Mindless. Senseless. Weightless. Thea heard Mitch’s voice come to her as if from very far away. He had two fingers inside her now, easing them back and forth and she only felt a delicate ache where he pressed his entry and stretched her for his pleasure. She was wet for him and he had made it happen with his drugging kisses and sublime assault on her mouth.

It was not coherent thought that had her lifting her hips and pushing against him, making him go deeply enough to touch the tip of her womb. Thea’s inarticulate cry was somewhere between a sob and a laugh but it came from her heart.

“God, you’re so beautiful.” Mitch removed his fingers slowly, allowing them to brush the silky nether lips with the same delicacy his tongue had had for her mouth. He watched the uneven rise and fall of her breasts as the cadence of her breathing changed in anticipation of what he would do next. He slipped between her thighs and pushed back her knees. “Put your legs around me,” he urged her. “Just like you did in the shower.” Cupping her buttocks, he lifted her. “Yes. Yes, Thea.” Then he lowered himself, teasing her with the tip of his cock, torturing them both. “Hold on.”

Hold on? Hold on to what? Her fingers curled so tightly her nails made tiny crescents in her palms. The muscles in her thighs contracted, her own hips surged upward, and then her arms were around his shoulders and he was full inside her, not moving now, just letting her feel the exquisite ache of finally being joined to him.

Thea’s eyes fluttered open and she stared at him. The care he had shown her and the restraint he had demanded of himself had not been without cost. There was a tautness to his throat, a thin sheen of perspiration on his brow. Strands of dark blond hair had fallen forward. Thea’s fist uncurled and without a thought she lifted her hand to his face and brushed them back. His skin was pulled taut and the line of his mouth had thinned. Disciplined, even ascetic features did not change the fact that he was an astonishingly beautiful man. Thea’s fingers trailed lightly from his forehead, past his temple, then along the line of his jaw. Her thumb made a pass across his lips and she felt his entire body thrum with tension. His hips jerked and Thea heard her own small gasp as he seated himself even more deeply.