Edge of Danger (36 page)

 
The last two days had taken her ordinary world and spun it on its axis.

 
Nothing was explainable. Nothing was normal.

 
Least of all could she explain her
own
feelings and behavior.

 
And everything about Gabriel Edge was a deep, dark
freaking
mystery.

 
Other than the occasional tap of her heels, the silence was thick and impenetrable, dark and ripe with sexual heat whether he wanted to admit it or not.

 
“You have interesting co-workers.” Eden gripped the banister at the bottom of the stairs.

 
“Yeah. I do.”

 
She had a hundred questions about what had been said in the meeting she’d just witnessed, but one look at Gabriel’s face and she decided to keep them to herself. The carpeted staircase was at least fifteen feet wide. She walked on the far left, he walked on the far right, slightly behind her. Eden took the stairs two at a time, getting more and more irritated as she climbed.

 
“Do you have any idea,” she snarled, realizing that she’d been thinking about this subconsciously for
hours,
“how insulting it is to the woman you’ve slept with when you won’t come near her afterward? Exactly what is your problem?”

 
“My
problem
is that I get hard just looking at you. And I’m already hard enough to pole vault to Scotland!
That’s
my fucking problem.”

 
Well, ask a direct question and get a direct answer. Normally she would have been impressed, but not this time. Not when it hurt to hear the self-loathing in his tone. Heart doing its usual hop, skip, and jump when she was around him, Eden stopped walking, turned to look at him, and tightly gripped the ornate banister.

 
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

 
Three steps below her, he stopped too. He seemed to be gathering himself before turning his head to make eye contact. “If I came any closer,” he said thickly, “I’d have your jeans off and your ankles around my shoulders in about thirty seconds flat. Haven’t you got it yet that when we touch each other all hell breaks loose?”

 
She searched his harsh expression even though his admission inspired a surge of white heat inside her. His skin was tightly drawn over his flushed cheekbones. She couldn’t miss the turmoil she read in the inky depths of his dark glittering eyes.

 
Turmoil, but also raw hunger.

 
That look made her wonder what sex on the stairs would be like. She didn’t take the time to talk herself out of it, didn’t bother evaluating the pros and cons. She wanted, and so she acted. Holding his gaze, Eden kicked off her sandals. They tumbled down the steps—thump, thump, thump—ignored. She didn’t know what she’d do if he turned away from her now. Reaching down, she undid the button on her jeans with fingers that shook.

 
He closed his eyes. “Don’t.” His voice was guttural, and he flinched as if struck when she eased the zipper down, the sound loud in the throbbing silence. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears as it started its manic race through her veins, pausing to throb and pulse strategically.

 
His eyes opened. Navy black. Hot. Searing. His gaze touched the V of bare skin she’d exposed. “You want me to take you here on the stairs?”

 
Eden licked her dry lips. “I don’t care if you take me here, or I take you. As long as you’re inside me in ten seconds or less.” She was unprepared for Gabriel’s blurring speed as he moved from there to her in a blink.

 
He gripped her upper arms and brought her body colliding with his. Their faces were level as his mouth came down, hot and ravaging. Blindly Eden freed herself, and reached for him, wrapping her arms about his neck, kissing him back with everything that was in her.

 
He drew back. “Bedroom,” he said thickly.

 
“Here.”
She raked her teeth against his lip and thrilled to his shudder. He kissed her again with bruising force, his mouth a furnace. Her heart swelled and expanded. He was out of control. The knowledge that she was capable of making that happen filled her with awe and just a hint of arrogance. She’d unleashed a panther and there was no going back. Not that she wanted to.

 
He supported her in his arms as he lowered her to the carpeted stairs, still kissing her, and brought his hips into the juncture of her thighs. Heat and longing twisted inside her in a molten river as he ran his fingers across the hollow of her throat, then across her collarbone while he kissed her.

 
Her hungry mouth clung to his as he bunched her T-shirt and started yanking it up. The feel of his hand on her bare skin made Eden twist for better contact.

 
“Faster. Faster. Faster.
Do
something! Use magic, damn it. I have. To. Feel. Skin.”

 
“There’s more than one kind of magic, Eden. But damn it—I
want
to rip your clothes off you. I want to hear you gasp and see you shudder.”

 
“I’ll gasp and shudder—later. After…ward.” All her internal muscles were tightening unbearably. If she didn’t find release soon she’d explode. “Oh, God, Gabriel. Please. Hurry.”

 
He levered his body off hers. Kneeling on a lower step, he shifted so he could draw down her jeans and panties. Eden shuddered. She lifted her hips to help him. He yanked the fabric down her legs and tossed the garments aside. Her breath strangled in her lungs seeing his expression.

 
She never in her life had a man look at her as Gabriel did now. As if he’d die if he didn’t have her.

 
“This what you want?” His face was taut, primitive, as he positioned himself between her spread knees. With a whimper, she reached for him.

 
“Y-yes. Now.”

 
But Gabriel had other ideas.

 
With a low, growling noise in the back of his throat, one of sheer animal arousal, tightly leashed, he bent his head, and pressed his open mouth against her stomach. Her muscles jumped at the contact. She speared her fingers through his hair. The strands felt cool and silky, his scalp hot. She cupped the back of his head, wanting him to return to kissing her mouth. Instead he lifted his head, his breath hot and moist on her skin.

 
“Take off your shirt,” he instructed thickly.

 
Obediently, willingly, she yanked her T-shirt over her head, then reached for the front closure on her bra. He lifted his head, eyes burning.

 
“I’ll do it.” He brushed her hands aside, unfastened the closure of her bra, then dropped his head and drew her nipple deep into the hot wet cavern of his mouth.

 
Eden’s back arched off the step as the suction of his mouth on her breast seemed to have a direct correlation to the pull in her womb. The coiling ache deep inside her was unbearable. She sank her short nails into his broad shoulders as he transferred his mouth to the other nipple and grasped her damp breast, running his thumb back and forth across the ultrahard point.

 
“Satin,” he murmured raggedly before lowering his mouth again. His lips moved south, and he tongued her navel, making Eden’s hips arch and twist.

 
“Please.” She begged for relief. For mercy. For less. For more. For everything.

 
His hand moved down, spreading her legs farther apart. He stroked a finger in her damp curls making her moan in torment. She was swollen and ultrasensitive already, and gasped when he pushed two fingers inside her. Her head tossed restlessly on the step as he worked them deep inside her, pressing upward. God. The man knew his way around her body, Eden thought frantically, as he kept her just this side of mindless release.

 
He rasped his thumb over her clitoris until she bucked and screamed his name. Liquid heat poured through her and her hips lifted off the stair beneath her. “For God’s sake. Gabriel! Do. S-something!”

 
Slipping his slick fingers out of her, he caught her hips in both large hands, sliding his palms around to grasp each cheek. She gripped his shoulders for purchase. His head lowered, the width of his shoulders spread her knees achingly wide. Exposed. Vulnerable. She squeezed her eyes shut, whimpering as he brought her to his mouth.

 
The slick heat of his agile tongue opened her, and he hummed his pleasure as he found the hard bud of her clitoris against his tongue, this time closing gentle teeth over it. The throaty vibration made her wetter. More desperate. Her hips arched out of his hands, she needed to be closer to the heat. His heat.

 
She tried to say his name, but found she had no breath left, it was all dammed in her tight chest as he nuzzled and licked until she shuddered. Biting her lip, she was oblivious to the steps digging into her back. Nothing,
nothing,
existed but Gabriel’s clever mouth loving her and his hands digging into the taut muscles of her bottom. He hummed against her again.

 
The sensation was so sharply, so unbearably erotic that she wanted him to stop so she could drag in a lungful of air and center herself. But the tangled desire dragged her down to drown in the dark liquid smoke of mindless desire.

 
She screamed as the first paroxysm ripped through her. She tried to drag in a breath. Half a breath. But there was no air. No light. Convulsions slammed through her body, making her arch and shudder against Gabriel’s avid mouth.

 
He showed her no mercy while she trembled and her body bowed, nor did she want him to. Eden wanted this man in any way she could get him.

 
By the time he rolled aside, she was exhausted, drained, and barely conscious. Her cheek brushed against his chest as he gathered her into his arms, pulling her body like a blanket over his.

 
She couldn’t move. She didn’t much want to, either. There was a peace, a serenity, and a rightness to being in Gabriel’s arms. It was like finding…home.

 
Jesus,
Gabriel thought, his own breathing ragged as he buried his face in her damp hair.
I am way too freaking old to be rolling around on the stairs like a teenager in heat.

 
Unfortunately, while they’d been rolling around
that
thought hadn’t occurred to him. Too horny, too wired to relocate, he trailed his hand down the smooth skin of her back, lightly misted with perspiration, and listened to her uneven breathing.

 
Aftershocks of completion continued to ripple through her body, ratcheting up his need to a painful degree.

 
“Now I know why Scarlett O’Hara was smiling,” Eden murmured raggedly, eyes closed, lips curved. “It wasn’t that bed she got off on. It really
was
the stairs.”

 
He felt the rapid flutter of her lashes tickle his chest as he breathed in the floral scent from her hair. This was too comfortable. Not in the physical sense—he was still painfully unsatisfied—but in the emotional danger zone he knew full well he should be doing everything in his power to avoid. He was too aware, too intrigued, too interested in this woman. No good could come of it.

 
Knowing that and acting on it were apparently two unrelated things. His fingers laced in her curls as he gently massaged her scalp.

 
Grave fucking tactical error touching her again,
he knew, staring broodingly up at the fan-vaulted ceiling soaring forty feet above their heads. But now that he had, he didn’t want to let her go. He tightened his arms, and Eden made a small sound of contentment, snuggling closer.

 
With a lurch in his gut, Gabriel knew that no matter how many times he took her, he’d still want her. There was no end to his desire for this woman. He had always needed her. And he always would.