His head hung down, his focus on the floor rather than the street below. Having his hands in his pockets seemed to add more width to his already impressive shoulders. He stood with his feet apart as if he were on point, ready to pounce.
The bronze of his skin, the black of his T-shirt and jeans, his crop of dark brown hair combined in a sort of camouflage. She could so easily see him in the tropics, in the jungle, fighting to stay alive. He had the look of a freedom fighter, a guerilla, and he stirred her emotions as well as her blood.
She drew in a full breath to steady her shaky nerves, and approached slowly. She wanted him to hear her steps; she’d learned from their first night together not to surprise him. It was best for both their sakes.
He stiffened. She saw the slight shift in the set of his shoulders, saw him tighten further the closer she drew. It wasn’t until she slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the center of his back that he relaxed at all. The breath he exhaled seemed to deflate his entire body until she thought he might fall should she let go.
Breathing deeply, she inhaled his scent, looking to calm herself with his familiarity, but remembering too many other times when she’d held him this close without the burden of clothing between them. Separating the sensual from the sexual had become an impossible task.
She embraced the aesthetic feel of his body, the muscles that bulged, that rippled, that stretched into elongated contours beneath his skin. Yet another part of her knew this body simply as the one that brought her such pleasure.
Her own now reacted, her breasts tightening, her thighs clenching hard in response to the rush of inner heat and dampness waiting to spill. Patrick finally moved
his hands from his pockets to cover hers, which were resting over his midsection. The simple gesture brought enormous relief.
“Guess the haircut didn’t do much for my civility.”
A little bird told her that this was not the time for that conversation. Instead, she tightened her hold. “No, but it’s done plenty for your sex appeal.”
“Yeah?” he asked, and she felt his cocky grin.
She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t have to. His entire body relaxed, as if accepting her forgiveness of his transgression.
“So,” he began in that rich voice that rumbled through her, holding him as she was. “If I’m so sexy, why aren’t you busy jumping my bones?”
This time she was the one who grinned. “You really do have a one-track mind.”
“Yeah, but at least that’s one thing about me you don’t hate.”
If only things were that simple. “There are more than a few things about you that I don’t…hate.” Didn’t he know? The breath he obviously held said he needed to hear the words. “I do not hate your kitchen skills.”
He huffed.
“Or your passion. I certainly do not hate your wit, your intelligence or your ability to take yourself lightly, though you need to work on doing that more often. And I do appreciate that you don’t hold a grudge against those who aren’t sure what to make of you.”
He huffed again and growled. “I’m more interested in what you make of me.”
She sighed, doing no more than enjoying this moment of holding him close. An enjoyment that took on a heightened sense of pleasure when he grasped her hands
and moved them from his midsection to the fly of his jeans. Very impressive.
“Okay,” she admitted. “You’re very hard to resist.”
“
Too
hard to resist, I hope.”
“Hmm. I don’t know.” She pressed her palm to the length of his growing erection and squeezed. “Ah, now it’s getting harder.”
“You like flirting with danger, don’t you? I can feel your smile on my back.”
“You could feel it much better if you’d pull off your shirt.”
He wasn’t two seconds in taking her up on the suggestion. He unbuttoned his jeans while he was at it, then braced both hands on the window frame and leaned his weight into his arms, silently inviting her to have her way.
Ah, the responsibility of his surrender. She thrilled to the fact that he trusted her as far as he did, and wished that he trusted her fully. Or perhaps it was himself he still wasn’t ready to trust.
She supposed that should have frightened her a bit. Had she not lived the life she had, that might well have been her reaction. But she was beyond being intimidated by a man who denied his own suffering.
She pulled her hands away from their tactile enjoyment of the bulge behind denim and soft cotton and pressed her palms to his sides, to his rib cage, just above the slack waistband of his jeans.
The smoothness of his skin never failed to amaze her. With all that he’d lived through, she always expected to find him as hard and coarse as his outlook. But he was a beautiful male specimen, and she slid her hands from his ribs to his armpits, enjoying the shudder that rattled through him.
When she moved her fingertips to his chest, circling his flat nipples embedded in the hard muscles of his pecs, and tugging on the one silver ring, his shudder grew stronger. This time she shuddered, too, and released him just long enough to skim off her silk sweater and bra.
Oh, yes. So much better, feeling his skin with her own, on her own. He stiffened and then slowly relaxed, as if easing into the contact and knowing she was in no hurry to complete what they’d begun.
That was one thing she enjoyed most about this man. She was seven years older, and she saw the age difference in his cocky playfulness, yet never in bed. He was mature as a lover, patient, taking care of her pleasure, savoring their time and allowing nothing to intrude.
With her breasts pressed to the center of his back, she turned her head and placed her lips on his spine, kissing him softly, tasting his skin while making circles with the tip of her tongue. She moved her hands ever so slowly down his abdomen, teasing him by never reaching beneath his clothing, though he lifted his hips and urged her to do so.
She couldn’t wait to take his penis into her hands, to stroke the thick shaft, to marvel over the softness of the mushroomed head, to absorb the warmth that always seemed on the verge of burning her hands. But there was so much more of his body to be cherished first.
“Take off your boots,” she ordered, and he bent to unlace and remove them. She kicked off her own pumps, losing two inches to him.
“Now your pants,” she added, once he’d straightened. She swore she heard a dangerous chuckle as he stripped. The sound served to tighten her tautly strung nerves even further, to heighten the room’s tension until the air became hard to breathe.
He stood, braced his hands on the window frame again as if needing the solid hold to keep from falling. Or to keep from letting go all the truths and emotions he kept bound tightly inside.
Determined to break through before letting him go, she shimmied out of her pants and kicked the black linen across the floor along with her black lace panties, tickled at her ability to mistreat her expensive clothes.
Patrick Coffey was a very bad influence, and she wouldn’t have him any other way.
Starting at his shoulders, she drew her fingertips down his back to his buttocks, and then down farther, skimming her palms over the backs of his thighs as far as her reach allowed. Her own skin prickled with gooseflesh; the room was cool, but the reaction was strictly due to Patrick’s heat. The temperature contrast added an extreme dimension to the sensory stimulation that consumed her.
Slipping her hands around to the front of his thighs, she tickled and teased her way back up his body, brushing her fingers only briefly through the thicket of hair at his crotch. He growled, thrusting his hips forward and keeping his hands where they were on the windowsill, accepting her challenge to wait.
This was what she enjoyed most about sex with Patrick. His patience outlasted even hers, as did his endurance, making for a wicked combination in bed. She played across the ripples of his abdomen, tugging at the hair that grew beneath his navel, drawing ever-expanding circles out toward his hipbones.
And then she dropped to her knees. While her hands ran down his thighs, she bit at the firm flesh of his backside, healing the light nips with tender kisses and wet
swirls of her tongue. He clenched his buttocks, relaxed again once he realized she’d stopped.
“I hate it when you do that,” he whispered gruffly, even as he spread his legs wider to give her better access.
She slipped a hand between his legs and cupped his tight balls from behind. “You’re lying to both of us, Patrick.”
“Yeah,” he admitted with a shudder. “I know. It’s just a guy thing. You’re getting too close to the goods.”
“And you love it.” She pulled her hand from his balls and ran it along the ridge of hard flesh behind, skimming over the “goods,” as he put it, until his shiver reached his knees.
Nothing gave her greater satisfaction than knowing she affected him so. A heady thing, this power, and she was wet with it, wet with wanting him, wet with the thrill of the wait.
Nipping again at the curve of his ass, she wrapped one arm around his thigh, slipped the other back between his spread legs and closed both hands around his engorged shaft. She held him tight and he stood still, his muscles rigid, his skin so hot it grew damp.
She held him until she thought his body might snap, until a bead of sweat dropped from his forehead to her wrist. Only then did she begin to stroke, using the release of moisture from the slit in the tip of his cock to ease the slide of her hands. He thrust into her grip, and she pushed her forearm up between his legs, spreading him open the way he so often spread her.
The motion of his body, the low panting growl that rumbled up from his throat, the slickness he continued to release all served to heighten her desire. When she couldn’t take it anymore and the scent of her own arousal
grew strong, she released him, crawling around him on hands and knees to open her mouth over his cock.
He groaned as she took him to the back of her throat, groaned again as she pulled away, leaving her lips wrapped around his swollen head and casting her gaze up to his. His eyes appeared to burn with a blue flame. His skin glistened with sweat. She took his erection in her hand and swirled her tongue around the tip, never breaking eye contact as she sucked him back into her mouth.
This time she watched as his eyes rolled and his jaw clenched so firmly she imagined the pop of the bone. Her enjoyment of his taste and his texture was interrupted when he pulled free from her mouth, grabbed her upper arms and lifted her to her feet.
He shoved his erection between her legs, his tongue into her mouth. The bruising crush of his fingers held her still, and she simply placed her palms over his heart. The beat of his blood thudded through her. His kiss consumed her until dizziness swept her into a place between cognizance and unconscious thought. His mouth was hard and demanding, his tongue a rough source of amazing pleasure.
But it was the driving thrust of his cock between her thighs making her crazy with want.
“I hate tasting myself in your mouth,” he growled, having torn his lips free and moved to nuzzle her neck.
“Well, I can’t get enough,” she admitted with a whisper, knowing she was speaking of much more than he was. She couldn’t get enough of his ability to take her to a place where thought ceased to exist and pleasure became the center of her world.
He took her there now, making his way to her breasts, sucking on one nipple, then the other, while his hands
kneaded and squeezed. She braced her hands on the window ledge; her head fell back and her legs opened. Patrick took the hint and continued down her body, his tongue circling and dipping into her navel before he licked a straight line down her belly to her clit.
When he sucked her into his mouth, she gasped, biting down on the begging cry that he take her now, take her roughly, take her until her legs lacked the strength to hold her upright. She bit down because she refused to reveal to him any of her weaknesses, knowing that made her a hypocrite for deriding him when he did the same.
Right now, she hardly cared what her actions said about her character. All she cared about was Patrick’s exceptional mouth. She curled her fingers around the sill, boosted her butt onto the edge and moved the soles of her feet to his thighs.
He took hold of her ankles, imprisoning her with his hands while his tongue swept down her slit and entered her. He thrust in, pulled out, using his skillful tongue as he would his cock, before returning his attention to the hard knot of nerves ready to burst.
A whimper escaped her mouth before she could stop it, and Patrick hummed his appreciation of her reaction into the center of her sex. She loved what he did to her, even while she hated him knowing the power he wielded. She didn’t want him to think she would ever give up so much of herself outside of the bedroom.
When his hands began a slow slide from her ankles to her calves to the tender skin of her inner thighs, she trembled with a needy anticipation. And then his thumbs were there—
yes, oh, yes, there, right there
—opening the lips of her sex to expose her slick inner flesh.
He slid two fingers through her folds and into her core as deeply as she could take him, pushing in, pulling out,
just as he’d done with his tongue. He knew exactly what to do every time, all the time, to bring her to the edge without letting her plunge over. He always made her wait. Just as he waited. Sex between them was a battle of wills as much as physical bliss.
He fingered her so deftly, finding her G-spot and caressing the swollen pillow even as he sucked on her clitoris, lightly tonguing his way around the hard bud. He stroked and licked and suckled, and she dug her heels into his thighs, pressed her palms to the window ledge until she thought her arms would break.
But she knew he wouldn’t stop. Not when he had her so close, when she was the one shuddering and he was the one in charge.
She clenched her inner muscles and pulled her hips farther back on the window ledge. Patrick glanced up, frowning, giving her a long moment to catch her breath and to slip the toes of one foot down beneath his balls.