After Midnight (25 page)

“Why not?” With his hand above her head, he leaned in, effectively trapping her between his body and the door. His musky scent enveloped her. His warm chest pressed against the back of her arms.

“This is where your mother put my bag? We’re not…You can’t let her think…”

“That I want you in my bed? I do want you in my bed.”

Oh, God. The raw hunger in his voice had her eyes drifting shut. For a moment, everything else faded away as she imagined his weight pressing down on her, those long fingered hands gripping her hips as his hard-as-a-rock body slid over her. Into her.

Heat spread through her belly.

Her nipples.

Between her legs.

He stepped closer. One hand held the door closed as the other skimmed over her shoulder and down her arm. He tipped his head and put his mouth to her ear, breathing heavy. “I’ve been looking at you all day. Watching you smile and laugh with my family. I can’t help but think that if things had been different, I wouldn’t have to wonder what you look like without that dress.” His tongue flicked across her earlobe. “What you taste like.”

She let out a helpless moan. Then his thumb shifted from the inside of her arm to deliberately brush across the outside of her breast, and her knees went weak. “You…” She couldn’t breathe. She had to drag in oxygen to speak. “You already know what I taste like.”

“Not all of you.”

“All of me?”

“All of you. Every. Last. Delicious. Inch.”

She breathed his name on a ragged sigh. Inside her bra, her taut nipples strained, crying out for his touch. It was a completely new experience for her, to be seduced by nothing but words and the brush of his hand on her arm. She didn’t like to be touched.

At least she never used to.

“Turn around, Isa.” His voice was gruff, but the hand he placed on her waist only exerted enough pressure to encourage her cooperation.

She turned slowly and came face-to-face with his desire. His skin was flushed. His eyes darkened with need. Against her stomach, he was hard. Very hard.

“Too bad what I have planned for you isn’t something I’m willing to do under my parent’s roof or I’d lay you on that bed right there and satisfy my curiosity.” Without her permission, her eyes darted to the bed. “When I finally get you alone, with no one to interrupt us, and nowhere we need to be…It isn’t going to be fast.”

“N-no?”

His thigh slid in between hers, pressed at the pulse between her legs. “What I have in mind for you is going to take hours.” He had her pinned to the door, their bodies flush. His mouth skimmed the muscle where her neck and shoulder connected. Bit down lightly.

With a gasp, she streaked her hands up, fisted her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth to hers. A sound of distinct male satisfaction rumbled from his chest when she sucked his tongue into her mouth and rocked against his thigh. Once. Twice.

Caught up in the flood of desire, the whirl of passion, Isabeau didn’t think, she felt—the roar of fire through her blood, the clutch of passion deep in her center. Releasing her tight hold on his hair, she reached between them and cupped her hand over his solid length.

He went utterly still. Grabbing her wrist, he lifted her hand and pressed it to the door next to her head.

“Noah?”

Noah buried his face in her neck and swore softly. What the hell was he thinking? He never should have touched her. Never should have given in to the lure of her dark skin against that pale dress. But he’d been watching her for hours. Wondering. Wanting. No way in hell was he going to be able to get any sleep now.

“What are we doing?” he asked softly, then sucked in a sharp breath when she used her other hand to cup him again.

“Do you really want a blow by blow?” she asked, stroking him through his jeans.

Her hair brushed across his chin and her scent wafted up his nose. She tugged to free the wrist he still held. “Isabeau, we can’t.”

She tipped her head back, her pale eyes filled with emotion as they probed his face. “We won’t,” she replied, and immediately began working his zipper open. “You will.”

“I don’t think—”

“Don’t think, Noah, feel.” Somehow he wound up with his back against the closed door, unable, or perhaps unwilling to stop her as she shoved his jeans down his hips. “You need sleep, and you’ll never get it in this condition.”

She was right about that. He’d never been so achingly hard in all his life. Her breath came in quick, shallow gasps as her gaze moved appreciatively over his body. Heat followed the same path as her eyes.

“Take them off,” she ordered huskily.

He toed off his shoes, stepped out of his jeans.

“Look at you,” she whispered as she reached out and settled her hand on his chest. Her gaze following as her fingertips slowly outlined every muscle. Everywhere she touched, she left a trail of white hot sensation. Her hand dipped lower, smoothing over his abdomen, then lower still. He didn’t even try to hold back the growl of pleasure when she wrapped her fingers around him and slowly stroked her hand up and down his length.

“Christ, Isabeau.”

“Relax,” she purred. There was no other word for the sound.

As if he could. He reached out and sank his fingers into the ebony silk of her hair. But when he would have pulled her mouth closer for a kiss, she shifted and pressed her lips to the center of his chest. Her mouth opened, her tongue trailed along the same torturous path her fingers had just taken as she slowly sank to her knees in front of him.

He gathered up her hair, holding it out of the way so he could watch her mouth come closer. The wait was both excruciating and thrilling. Then finally it was over, as she leaned forward and kissed him, pressing her lips against the base of his shaft. He groaned softly as she worked her way up the length of him, felt his knees go weak as she opened her mouth and took him inside.

Wet heat. Torturous. Exhilarating.

His heart pumped harder. His muscles began to tremble.

He closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the door, only to force them back open as the need to watch her pleasure him swelled. She took him deep, sucking, then swirling her tongue across the very tip of him, sending currents of excitement up his torso, down his legs. He swallowed a sharp exhalation as he watched her, the sight of her lips surrounding him damn near as stimulating as her increasing tempo.

She sucked him rhythmically, softly and tortuously. He’d imagined her sexy mouth pleasuring him this way too many times to count, but fantasy didn’t hold a candle to the reality. Sensation rocketed through him. His hand flexed and fisted in her hair. His hips jerked.

He was close. So damn close. Her hands circled his hips to close over his ass. As her fingers kneaded his flesh, she took him a little farther into her mouth.

His testicles pulled up. Blood roared in his ears. His orgasm hit him with the force of a freight train, sending a deep shudder throughout his body. He swallowed a shout and pressed his free hand against the door to try to hold himself upright as he exploded in pulsation after hot pulsation. As she lapped at him, taking all of him until he had nothing left to give.

With one final kiss, she smoothed her way back up his body, shifting into his arms. She settled her hand against his chest as she pressed her face into the hollow between his shoulder and neck. His heart hammered violently against his ribs. Easing the hold he still had on her hair, Noah skimmed his lips over her temple.

“Hmm,” she murmured, tipping her head to place a kiss on the underside of his jaw. “Do you think you can sleep now?”

“I don’t think I’ll have any problem,” he replied, breathless and spent.

“Good, then let’s get you to bed.”

That might be a problem.

Somehow he managed to cross the room and set her suitcase aside, to slide under the covers without falling flat on his face. He snagged her wrist when she pulled the cover over him then turned away. “Where are you going?”

“I need to change.”

His gaze drifted from her face to her feet and back again. “You’re not trying to sneak out and sleep on the couch are you?”

She smiled, then bent down and kissed him softly, slowly. “I’m not sneaking away. I’ll be right back.”

“Hurry,” he replied. Then, with her taste still on his lips, he slept for the first time in days.

****

“How did your hand get scarred?” ten-year-old Robert Clark asked Isabeau the next day as they sat at a table in the large, walled garden.

With the funeral behind them, and most of those who’d stayed to offer proper condolences fed and gone, Isabeau was sitting for the first time that day. She might not be family or have ever met Noah’s grandfather, but she knew how to work a crowd and had done her best to assist in every way possible.

She smiled at Robert, who appeared so bored with all the adult conversations that she felt a little sorry for him. “I was in a car accident years ago.”

“How many years ago?”

“I was twelve.”

His head tipped and he looked up at her through eyes as blue as the sky above them. “Megan’s twelve.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Your uncle told me.”

“Oh.” He reached out slowly, and traced his fingers over the scars on the back of her hand. Because he was a child and the move stemmed from innocent curiosity, she let him. “You have a lot of scars.”

“I have more on my palm,” she replied and turned her hand over so he could see.

“It was bad, then?”

“Yes. My mother died as a result of it.”

He frowned. “The way my great-grandfather died?”

The urge to reach out and comfort the boy was strong. Not certain how he would take it, she left her hands where they were. “Yes. Like your great-grandfather.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Every day.”

The hand still tracing her scars flexed. “I miss Grandpa, too.”

Suspecting this was the real reason he started the conversation and that he had something more to say, she waited silently. She didn’t have to wait for long.

“So does my dad. He was crying at the funeral.”

“A lot of people were. Funerals are for those last good-byes, and people get sad when they have to say good-bye.”

“Boys aren’t supposed to cry.” With his face aimed down at the table and his voice pitched low, she had to strain to hear his words. Her heart bled for him, so young, so unprepared to deal with his loss.

“Everyone feels pain, Robert,” she assured him, as a tear streaked down his cheek. “Even boys. Crying is a natural result of that pain.”

He swiped the back of his hand under his nose. “Uncle Noah didn’t cry.”

Her gaze drifted to Noah, at the far side of the garden, deep in conversation with his brother Paul. He’d sat beside her, dry-eyed and stoic throughout his grandfather’s service, while those around him wept. She had hoped he would come home, find a quiet place where he could be alone and finally grieve. The rigid set to his shoulders, combined with the smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes told her he hadn’t.

She sighed. “I know he didn’t, but that doesn’t make him more of a man, it only makes him stubborn.”

She gave Robert a moment to compose himself before turning back to find him studying her intently. “Are you going to marry Uncle Noah?”