Bound and Determined (21 page)

“I’m going to make you feel so good,” he breathed against her wet flesh. “All you have to do is lie back and say please.”

“No.”

Her refusal sounded more like a weak cry. Rafe lowered her foot to the outside of his thigh, leaving her legs slightly spread. God, what he wouldn’t do to get closer, be deep inside her in the next ten seconds. Instead, he beat back his impatience and brushed soft fingertips over her damp mound, back and forth, back and forth. Kerry drew in another rough breath. Her knees began to buckle. Perfect.

Kneeling at her feet, Rafe reached up her body and grasped
both of her nipples, rolling them between a firm thumb and forefinger. He swiped her clit with his tongue.

Kerry let loose a sharp cry. Her knees gave out beneath her, and she fell back on the bed.

“You look beautiful on your back,” he murmured against her inner thigh as he climbed his way up her body. “Spread your legs.”

“No.” Her refusal barely climbed above a whisper.

“Tsk, tsk. Not very obedient today, huh?”

“Or any day,” she shot back.

Rafe smiled, imagining her statement was entirely true. But he knew her body now, knew how to make her hot and compliant.

He slid his knuckles across the top of her folds, just above the hood of her clit. “You drive me wild when your legs are open to me. C’mon . . .”

She hesitated, then shook her head.

“You want to,” he whispered. “You want to show me every slick, pouting curve.”

“Rafe . . .”

Ah, not a yes or a no. Making progress. Still, he took the decision out of her hands.

Taking one of her knees in each hand, Rafe spread her quickly and wide. She fought briefly, but not convincingly. With no leverage—or real desire to keep him away—the battle didn’t last long. He leaned in between her thighs, his torso keeping her open to him.

“Perfect,” he murmured.

He caressed her inner thighs with the back of his hand while breathing so close to her mound she no doubt felt every warm exhalation. He swiped a thumb over her slick lips, gratified to note she was extremely wet.

Fisting the sheet in her hand, Kerry tensed, as if expecting him to devour her as voraciously as a wild animal would its prey. He chuckled.

A swipe of his tongue over her hard clit had her gasping, writhing. He drew away. She tensed and whimpered.

“If you want something, all you have to do is ask.”

Eyes tightly closed, Kerry answered, “No.”

He laved her clit with this tongue again, then drew it into
his mouth and sucked. Meanwhile, his fingers continued to work her nipples, which swelled and hardened more with each touch. She let loose a sharp gasp.

“You want something. Tell me what.” He punctuated his demand with a light, butterfly touch to the sensitive tissues on either side of her clit.

Kerry was so pink and swollen now. She wanted, no question. But so did he. In a bad way. Perspiration beaded on his forehead, his back. His cock was so hard, he felt sure it could double as a battering ram. Damn, he wanted to rip these constricting pants off. He needed to get inside her, feel her explode around him.

Why could he never seem to get enough of her?

Rafe nibbled the tender flesh of her inner thigh. “I gotta know what you want. Do you want to come?”

She hesitated.

“Say it.”

“Rafe . . .”

“I’ll only toy with you until you say it.” To prove his point, he trailed a pair of fingers down her belly, right back to her clit, circling. She hardened under his touch, and when he slid those same digits inside her, he could feel the tensing, the fluttering of her flesh.

A whimper. A pause. “I want to come.”

The coil of desire tightened in his gut, put a stranglehold on his cock. He loved hearing her say those words to him.

“How do you want it?”

“You know.” Voice breathy, she struggled to get the words out.

“I don’t have ESP, babe. Tell me.”

Rafe waited. Nothing. In the silence, he wriggled his fingers inside her and found her G-spot. With an incessant, slow pace, he rubbed. Kerry gasped, arched. The pale skin of her neck and breasts flushed with fresh excitement. Her nipples were now ripe berries, red, succulent. She swelled around his fingers even more, squeezing. Slow pulses rippled with more power. Orgasm was so, so close.

He stopped. But he was sweating.

“Rafe! Oh . . .”

Oh was right
. At this rate, he was going to lose his fucking
mind. Impatience seized him, and he tamped it down with every ounce of self-control. Damn, he’d set out to conquer her. Instead, she tested him to the limit of his endurance.

“Touch me,” she cried, despite her heavy breathing and trembling thighs.

Got her talking. Almost there
. “I got my fingers on your nipples. I’m touching you.”

But he couldn’t resist squeezing the hard peaks of her breasts and raking his tongue through her slit once more, dragging slowly over the hard bud of her clit.

She gasped. “That. More of that.”

“This?” He rolled her nipples between his fingers again.

“No,” she wailed.

He stopped.

“Yes, that. But your tongue, too . . .”

“What about it?” he breathed against her sensitive mound.

If he wasn’t mistaken, she swelled again, pink flesh turning a definite rosy red. She had to be on the razor’s edge.

She panted once, twice. “Lick me.”

Her voice was quieter than her exhalations, but Rafe realized she’d just taken a major step. Why it was important that she verbalize her desires to him, he wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe he wanted her comfortable enough with him to say anything. He wanted her to trust him with what she needed and believe he would give it to her.

“Lick you here?” He gave her a lazy swipe of his tongue near her knee.

“No!”

“You’re going to have to tell me where, babe.” He nipped her thigh with his teeth.

“Lick me here . . .” With trembling fingers, she reached down and parted the delicate folds of her flesh for him. Rafe’s heart stopped. He’d wanted words, but the temptation she presented . . . Dewy, swollen flesh crying out that he satisfy her ache. Kerry offering herself to him with her own hands. No way he could resist. This was better than his hottest teenage wet dream.

Arousal tight in his belly, Rafe slid two fingers inside her once more, rubbing that sensitive bundle of nerves as he
leaned in and tongued her tender clit from side to side in an insistent but unhurried taste.

She tightened around his fingers again, more. Her thighs trembled, and one hand found its way to his hair and fisted, keeping him close. Not that he had any desire to be anywhere else. He loved the power of giving her an orgasm, but he also loved her enthusiastic appreciation.

“Oh, Rafe. Ohmigod!” she panted. “It’s big. I can’t—”

But she could. And as his fingers kept working inside her, he sucked in the hard nub of her clit and gently raked it with his teeth to prove she could take it.

Powerful contractions gripped his fingers. Her clit seemed to explode on his tongue as she let loose a high-pitched, keening cry and shouted out her climax.

Rafe helped her ride it all the way to the end. For interminable seconds, the pleasure seemed to roll on. If his mouth hadn’t been so busy, he would have smiled.

When Kerry quieted and fell limp, he kissed his way up her belly, absently flicking his tongue over a nipple before whispering in her ear, “Damn, I forgot to make you say please.”

Kerry gave a tired laugh and planted a kiss on his neck. “I’ll try to remember my manners next time.”

Teasing aside, Rafe edged the hard ridge of his cock against her wet mound. “I need to be inside you, Kerry.”

“Well, it’s your birthday, and I’m pretty sure I got the gift with that last round. So it’s time for you to tell me what you want. Oh, maybe I should make you beg.”

He tried to appreciate her humor. Difficult when sweat poured off him and he felt tied up in more knots than ropes on a sailboat. “Babe, I’m begging now.”

Reaching into the bedside table, Rafe extracted a condom and handed it to her. He looked right in her eyes, deep. “Touch me. But go easy on me. I’m dying here.”

Teasing aside, Kerry caressed his length, rubbing her thumb across the sensitive tip where he was already slick with seeping moisture. He hissed in a breath. A happy little smile brought her dimples out to play. Yeah, she liked knowing she affected him. Minx.

All thought disappeared as she secured the condom over
the head of his penis, rolling it down the granite length bulging with veins. Her gaze hardly left his. Rafe drowned in a sea of tempestuous green. Her warm gaze reassured and teased at once. He stared back, unable to look away. Did his own stare display all the crazy feelings he couldn’t put a name to? He didn’t care. What she saw was irrelevant as long as she took him inside her now.

Once she had the condom in place, she stroked his inner thigh and placed a little kiss on his mouth.

Rafe gave her no more time for gentle play before he lay down beside her and lifted her over him, until she straddled his hips. They met chest to chest, belly to belly. He devoured her mouth, sinking deep into the sweet recesses, even as he bent his knees, lifted his hips, and slammed home.

Into his mouth, Kerry gasped. And from underneath, he rode her. Hard. One long, pounding stroke blurred into the next. She met him thrust for thrust, her sweet body welcoming him, closing around him in such perfect wet heat, the sensation had him gritting his teeth against the rush of a pending orgasm.

Despite feeling on the edge, scraped raw, he wanted more. He wanted to hear her scream again and know she was as out of control as he.

Gripping her hips, Rafe adjusted beneath her enough to hit her G-spot with his next stroke. She gasped in his ear. With a grim smile, he repeated the process. Yeah, he might be going over the edge and losing his mind shortly, but he damn well wouldn’t go alone. He wasn’t going to be the only one to give up all control.

One thrust bled into the next, all bound by a white-hot haze of pleasure. Kerry’s nails dug into his shoulders. She met him thrust for thrust as he pumped inside her. There, he felt her tighten, tighten. She began to ripple around him.

“Come!” he growled.

Kerry screamed in his ear even as her body began to milk his. His gut tightened into a knot of ecstasy that burst through his body, exploding down his legs, up his chest, to the base of his spine.

“Yes. Fuck, yes!”

The orgasm seemed to last forever. Long after he ceased
coming, he could feel the ripple of Kerry’s aftershocks. They triggered the pulse of new pleasure within. He sighed, too tired and too content to move.

“It’s always so intense.” Her shaky voice sounded in his ear. “Another day of this is going to do me in.”

Him, too. Kerry was making him lose his mind. Or worse . . . was she showing him his heart, then stealing it, all at once?

B
y four that afternoon, they were both famished. Kerry heated up frozen burritos and tossed together several cans of fruit to make a dinner no one on Food TV would ever feature. Rafe ate without complaint, then, oddly quiet, settled in with his laptop on the red leather chair in the adjoining den.

Kerry cleaned up after the meal. Feeling on edge, she watched as Rafe raced through some e-mails. Her gaze caressed his profile, the broad splendor of his golden shirtless torso. Like his lovemaking, he was intense, focused. But he could be gentle. They’d been here at the Love Shack only a few days, but it felt much longer. With every hour, her sense of connection to Rafe grew until it felt bigger than Godzilla. Wondering again how she would cope after he was gone disturbed her. She was as clueless about that as Tiffany was about something like quantum physics. But Rafe was not hers to keep.

All she could do was enjoy him while she he was here.

She didn’t dare wonder what, if anything, he felt. Likely not much besides gladness that they had great sex together.

As Rafe let himself into Standard National’s system through a back door—one he’d created himself—Kerry watched, her relief and warm joy that he was indeed helping Mark somehow bittersweet in the face of the reality of the ticking clock. In a little more than twenty-four hours, Rafe would no longer be in her life.

Kerry swallowed a pang of anguish that nearly brought her to her knees.

For now, she had to focus on the fact that she’d kept her end of the bargain; now Rafe was going to keep his.

This arrangement between them wasn’t about her Disney
Princess wishes for the future. She’d always hoped her prince would come someday. Kerry wondered if she’d actually found him, but she pushed the thought aside. This was about Mark. Had to be about Mark.

Impatiently, she flipped through magazines and outdated Christmas catalogs, tapping her foot against the hardwood floor. She tried to look busy as he scanned the screen, wrote frantic notes, clicked all over the place, read the police report, and cursed a blue streak.

After the fifth “What the hell?” in as many minutes, Kerry couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s wrong? You’re trying to find something to help Mark, right? Is it that bad?”

“Hang on.” He fended her off with a murmur and the wave of his hand.

Click. Frown. Click. Frown. Click. Frown.

“Holy shit!”

Her feigned nonchalance disappeared faster than the liver and onions special on Senior Day at the diner. “What? Something that will help Mark?”

“Is Mark’s terminal number 4389?” he asked suddenly.

Kerry paused. “I don’t know.”

“Did he ever mention a terminal ID number?”

“No, but I don’t work there, so even if he told me . . .” She shrugged. “He could have told me how to take apart a manifold and it would have the same effect.”

With a nod, he conceded that point. “Who might know his terminal ID?”

“Tiffany, for sure.”

“Call her. Ask her. I think I see something . . .”

Excitement bubbling in her belly, Kerry dialed. “Okay.”

Tiffany didn’t answer. Instead the machine picked up. “This is Mark and Tiffany. We’re gone or busy doing what newlyweds do. Leave a message and we’ll call later. Might be much later.”
Beep
.