Gifts of Honor: Starting from Scratch\Hero's Homecoming (10 page)

“No.” Then she shook her head, torn between the instinct to protect herself and the need to get the hell out of the frozen cocoon that was slowly suffocating her. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. I get that.” The arms around her began to rock her, as if she were a terrified child. “Maybe I can help you with that. Do you like the cold, sweetheart?”

What a question. “I hate it. I hate it so much.”

“Again, totally understandable.” He gave her a squeeze, as if rewarding her for the correct answer. “When a person feels cold, they often feel alone. No one likes that.”

She swallowed hard and didn’t respond. How could she, when she was wrestling with a knot lodged in her throat that was the size of a grapefruit?

“When I hold you like this, does it help with the cold?”

She focused on loosening up her vocal chords. “Yes.”

“Excellent. That’s understandable too. There’s only one thing I don’t understand.”

Lucky him. She hadn’t been clear on a damn thing for a while now. “What?”

“Just now you said I’m Sully to my friends, and that matches what I remember.” His tone was light, companionable, even as he drew her to lean back against him in such a calm and unhurried way she almost didn’t notice it. “Even to my dad I’ve always been Sully. But from the beginning you’ve called me Sullivan. Why is that, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know.” Without her bidding, her mind went back to a time long ago at Pauline’s, when she’d almost choked on a maraschino cherry and their first kiss. “You asked me to call you Sullivan on our first date, though I’ve never known why it seemed so important to you. If—if you’d prefer that I call you Sully—”

“No, don’t. I like it.” His face dropped to the curve of her neck and she felt more than heard him breathe deeply. “You know what else I like? The way you smell. Sweetness and spice. So warm and irresistible. I don’t want to breathe unless I’m breathing you in. Every time I get near you, I’m overwhelmed by the craving to devour you.”

A shiver moved through her before she could gather the strength to stifle it, and it didn’t help that she knew he felt it. It also didn’t help that the unmistakable thrust of his erection prodded the small of her back, and that it turned both her will and her knees to jelly. There was nothing wrong with wanting him, she thought as sanity once again took a backseat to the desire his seductive touch sparked. If they were a normal couple starting from square one, there was nothing wrong with exploring the fierce attraction between them. This was healthy. This was normal. This was...

Thawing her out.

Finally
.

“I’m not quite sure if your interest has to do with me or with how I smell.” A thrill of feminine triumph shot like an arrow through her as he rubbed his hardened length against her, and no force on earth could have stopped her pressing the curve of her butt firmly into him until he groaned. “Are you sure you’re not confusing what you might be feeling for me with a craving for my cookies?”

“As good as your cookies are, I guarantee I don’t get this excited over them. You’re the one who makes me so hard I can barely stand.” His breathing was gratifyingly labored as he nuzzled her hair away to capture her unadorned lobe with his mouth. His lips closed over it, his teeth tenderly holding it in place while his tongue played with it, and it was such a sensual sensation her head fell back against his shoulder before she was aware of the action.

“Oh. Wow.” Her eyes fluttered closed to better focus on the pleasure of his mouth, the last of the resistant ice melting away under the mindless bliss of his touch. “Either you’re remembering what I like, or you just happened to hit a lucky bull’s-eye in finding what turns me on.”

His chuckle was low and filled with enough sensual promise to melt the polar ice caps. “Unless you have an objection, I’m curious to see what else I can hit.” With a smile lingering in his velvety lover’s voice, he tugged at the robe’s sash.

Chapter Nine

Sully could hardly hear anything except the thunder of his heart. As much as he wanted to think it was pure desire for the woman now leaning into his chest and rubbing against him like a cat, he couldn’t fool himself into believing that was the only reason behind his disturbed pulse. Not when he was still recovering from a mouth-drying, mind-numbing
fear
.

This terror had struck several times since he’d been back. When Lucy left him after he’d returned her scarf, and again when she’d ditched him outside The Dirty Duck. There’d even been hints of it when she’d mentioned untying knots. Each time he’d tried to label that fear response as part of the damage he’d received, a mental crossed wire of not wanting to be alone and getting that all screwed up with being helpless and lost. But now...there was no wiggle room for interpretation here.

The alarm that kept slamming into him had everything to do with Lucy. There was just something about her leaving him that hit his internal panic button.

In a way that was understandable. He’d never known a greater perfection than when he was buried deep inside her. It wasn’t just
sex
. It was like poetry and a welcoming and an absolute joy that could only be equated to finally coming home. It was as though he’d at long last found the place where he belonged. When he was plunging inside her while watching her moan and writhe with feverish delight—that was his definition of what it was to be complete. To be
happy
. He had no clue if he’d ever known that feeling before. All he knew was that it was rare enough that it shouldn’t be dismissed.

She kept trying to do just that when she fought for distance, and while he resented it, he hadn’t lied when he said he understood. Despite what she might have expected, it was clear this was no one-night stand between two strangers who could easily part ways once the sun came up. With every pulse-tripping moment that passed, they tangled the already-complicated situation between them with a passion so hot it might not ever be extinguished. But since he didn’t have the power to simplify things by changing past events, this was how it had to be for the time being. Somehow, they’d just have to be strong enough to get through it together, and move on from this point.

The key word being
together
. He couldn’t do it alone, and he wasn’t about to leave her to fend for herself. That precious fire he kept getting glimpses of in her eyes would snuff out forever, buried by the coldness she hated but didn’t seem to know how to avoid.

He knew how to avoid it. And if he just kept reaching for her, he’d find a way to save her from that icy aloneness.

“It’s nice to know your pretty earlobes are one of your erogenous zones.” He enjoyed sucking on the pearly smooth bit of flesh before kissing the delicate hollow behind her ear. “But I’d be willing to bet I once had all your magic spots memorized. Am I right?”

“Hmm.” A humming sigh eased from her as she arched her neck give him better access. “I never had any complaints.”

“That’s nice to hear.” Sully lifted the weight of her hair off her nape, briefly tickling the pale skin he found there with the silky-soft ends of her tresses. A thrill of victory shot through him when her head lolled forward in an obvious sign of pleasure. “I have an idea I think you’re going to like.”

“An idea?” He had to smile at the thread of wariness that crept into her otherwise-softened tone. She knew him far too well to ever be taken completely by surprise, but that was all right. It wouldn’t stop him from trying. “Let’s hear it.”

“I have a plan on how I should go about reeducating myself on what does and doesn’t please you. I want to learn what makes you sigh, and what makes you gasp. What makes you moan, and what makes you scream.”

“Ah.” He had a feeling she wanted to say more, but at that moment he decided to see how well she liked having first his lips, then his tongue along the tender skin of her nape. Her helpless shiver spoke volumes. “That’s...ooh. Quite an idea. If it had a like button, I’d definitely click on it.”

Even to his ears, his hum of laughter sounded like sin. “Good, because my idea is very much like that. I might not be able to provide any like buttons for you, but I can offer up something similar. When you were a kid, did you ever play the game of hot-and-cold?”

When she dragged her heavy-lidded eyes open to lock on him, his heart skipped a beat. “Yes. What does a kid’s game have to do with what’s poking me in my back?”

Oh, what a naughty handful she was. “We’re going to play the adult version of it.”

“You don’t say. What are the rules?”

“Pretty much the same as the kiddie version. I start looking for one of your erogenous zones. You tell me whether I’m hot or cold.”

Her smile was so hot it nearly threatened to melt his knees. “You’re a big boy now. I think you know where the important hot spots are.”

“But I don’t know
all
of them.” With the sash undone, he pulled the robe’s front panels aside. The comforter he had draped over himself dropped to the floor as he drifted slow hands through the opening to splay over her stomach. “What about here? Am I hot or cold?”

For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to play along. Then she skimmed caressing fingertips over one of his hands. A sweet invitation for more if there ever was one. “Not
cold
. Warmish.”

“I see.” It was amazing how her touch ignited a flare of invisible fire along his skin. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the tracks of her stroking fingers glowed neon red along his skin. “I have so many directions from which to choose. Which way should I go—up, down or sideways?”

“Indecision is so not sexy.”

“Good point. Let’s try...this.” The glide of his hands over her ribs brushed the undersides of her breasts, reveling in the crushed silk feel of the skin her found there. “Is this still just...warmish?”

“You’re getting hotter.” She arched into his hands, trying to fit herself into his palms. “Definitely hotter.”

“Excellent.” Since it was a trend he wanted to continue, he palmed the pert, rounded flesh of her breasts and lifted them to test their delicate weight. His thumbs caressed the lush outer swells, fascinated by the living silk gliding beneath his touch. “Getting warmer?”

“So much warmer.” The fingers that trailed, feather light, over his hands tightened to guide him to the hard-tipped peaks. “
Hot
.”

“You’re breaking the rules if you guide me.” But the last thing he’d do was complain about her open sensuality, and he rewarded her boldness with tracing the puckered aureole before gently pinching the pebbled flesh. Her hands remained on his, beseeching him without words to give her more.

He’d always considered himself a giver.

Her robe was an unnecessary veil he could no longer tolerate. He threw it without looking toward an island stool, not caring if it made it or not. All that mattered was how she shivered when he again exposed her nape and trailed his tongue down the indentation of her spine. She curled forward, bracing her weight on the island to better expose her back to his ministrations, her position one of absolute surrender. Her submission punched into his system like a drug, thundering a primitive, chest-beating triumph through his veins. Sully never would have considered himself to be an addictive personality. But just by giving herself to him, Lucy made him a hardcore junkie, forever hooked on the rush of taking her as
his
.

He buried his mouth against the curve of her neck while once again claiming the roundness of her breasts. Damn his brain for forgetting their feminine perfection. He’d be willing to bet he’d spent many happy hours simply fondling her and if he hadn’t, he damn well was going to make up for lost time. But even as he did so, he nudged a knee in between her legs to widen her stance, and the new position flattened her torso on the island counter, the graceful rise of her ass backing up into his hips.

In that moment she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“Let’s see how hot you can get.” With the game now more serious than his next breath, Sully dragged one hand from the bounty of her breasts to slide to the juncture of her thighs, dipping into the cleft to test her readiness. Her body jolted beneath him at the touch, as if brushed with a live wire. Her damp heat scorched him and her hips rotated with greedy urgency against his hand when he made contact with the nub of her desire.

“Sullivan.” His mind spun drunkenly when she whimpered his name, sounding near tears. Never before had he been more inspired to make a woman cry. “
Harder
.”

“I asked for the word
hot
, not
harder
.” But he couldn’t blame her for not sticking to the rules, not when she was pumping against him as if she wanted to burn the first layer of skin off his fingers with the friction. He sucked in a ragged breath, a useless bid for control while his dick throbbed so hard he felt like an overblown balloon about to pop. But he had to control the rampaging need to plunge into her like a beast. When she’d still been determined to cut him off after the explosive sex they’d had earlier, he knew he had to find a way to convince her to leave the door open for him. To get her hooked was the only way he could think of, even if that meant deepening his own craving for her, the woman who was—

Sully’s thought processes hit a brick wall, a jagged sound of torment ripping from him when a hot hand wrapped around his stiffened flesh.

“Lucy... God...!”

“You mean
hot
, right?” Her hips arched up another inch as she guided him to her entrance, her fingers squeezing him near the darkened crown until it was a magnificent agony to bear. “I want to see if you can find my most important erogenous zone.”

The shallow panting of his breath never reached his ears as he put all his concentration into not coming right there in her hand. With a feverish delight he surged into her, the tension coiling in his lower region so intense he trembled on a pleasured-pained edge he never knew existed. The muscles sheathing him were so hot, so slick, he half feared he’d lose consciousness it felt so damn good. He rolled his hips in the same relentless rhythm she used in riding his hand, and with each stroke her hips lifted higher, taking more of him in. When he impaled her up to his hilt she cried out, an incoherent sound of euphoria, and it destroyed what little restraint he had left. Furiously he rammed himself into her, the island’s foundation squeaking under the relentless assault, speeding faster and faster until he thought he’d die from the burgeoning pressure...

A frenzied spasm of ecstasy bloomed inside him—his body, his senses, his mind. Everything he knew swamped with a lush pleasure so profound that he knew nothing else, even as her cries of completion joined his. Molten heat milked his staff, her contractions of rapture gripping him so fiercely the strength to stand almost left him. Shattered, he collapsed on her back while his release emptied into the deepest part of her, and for the briefest moment, regret that she was on birth control zipped across the blank canvas of his mind.

Her breathing was little more than helpless sobs, and he kissed her wet cheek even as he reluctantly slipped from her depths. He ignored the fleeting sense of loss by dragging the comforter off the floor, wrapping her up and carrying her to the platform bed. She didn’t protest, not even when he got them both snuggled under the covers and arranged her so that she lay like a limp rag doll over his chest.

“So?” Delighted at having her so near, Sully buried his mouth in her hair and breathed in her scent. “Did I win our game, Luce? Did I find that one last zone?” Nothing wrong with fishing for a compliment or two.

“I’d give you a cookie as a reward if I could move.” Her lips barely shifted against his skin, sounding more asleep than awake. “See you in the morning.”

That was when it hit him that not only was she not throwing him out, but that his constant craving for cookies was nowhere to be found.

* * *

“Here. Merry freaking Christmas.”

Coe glanced up, startled, as Lucy plunked a large gift bag on the counter next to him. The Dirty Duck was more packed than usual, something Lucy hadn’t counted on. But despite it being Christmas Eve and the parade still a few hours away, apparently people seemed happy to while away the hours by hanging out and enjoying the festive spirit of the season.

Everyone except her. If anyone so much as smiled at her, she didn’t trust herself not to snarl.

“A little early, aren’t you?” Taking a peek into the bag, he moved it down between his feet and out of the way of a nearby diner seated at the counter. “I thought we were supposed to exchange gifts tomorrow.”

“Traditions were made to be broken. After today I’m taking a break from the outside world until the New Year. And by the way, while the ukulele and sidewalk chalk were a breeze to find, that lightsaber pen you wanted was a real pisser, so it’s on back order. I got you a Boba Fett pen as a temporary replacement, and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my butt.”

“Sweet, Boba Fett rules.” He handed her a menu when it looked as if she was just going to sit there and do her best impersonation of a thundercloud. “I take it your morning at the mayor’s house wasn’t the dream everyone imagines it to be?”

“I swear to God, that prissy woman gives me a headache.” Lucy scowled at the menu without reading a word. “She’s the one who wanted the gingerbread house to be
fresh
, despite the fact that these things are usually done the week before. Why does she want it fresh? Because she wants it to be eaten at the end of the Christmas Ball and she doesn’t want it to taste stale. But she wants it to be decorated—with the royal icing all set and dried—by tonight. Apparently she believes I learned my baking skills at Hogwarts.”

“Honeydukes would be more appropriate.” Then he ducked when she swatted the menu at his head. “Easy, slugger. What’s got you in such a snit?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“Sad to say, my telepathic abilities haven’t been the same since the last solar flare.”