A long moment passed when the only sounds in the room were the blood pounding in his ears and his own harsh breathing. He waited for the door to slam. And waited until her voice finally broke the tension.
"Did you get that all out of your system?"
He groaned, swore. "I told you to leave."
"Um... OK, well, no. Your turn."
He rolled to his back, propped himself up on his elbows, and prepared to glare at her. But all he could do was stare, his mouth dust dry as she lifted his T-shirt over her head and let it drop to the floor by the bed.
He swallowed hard, his heartbeat rocketing as she crawled across the sheets on her hands and knees and straddled him ... all golden limbs, berry pink nipples, and sweet naked ass.
Gezus God, she was beautiful... everything he remembered ... everything he'd dreamed. Everything he wanted.
"I'm a big girl, Nolan," she whispered, her mouth a mere breath away from his. "I don't need you protecting me from myself. I just need you."
He was only so strong. And she was so much of everything essentially missing from his life.
"Damn you," he murmured, reaching for her. "Damn you."
His hands were hard, his mouth on hers rough and greedy, as he kissed her, gripped her hips, and flipped her to her back.
She wasn't smiling anymore. Her eyes were big with anticipation and maybe with a little fear. But mostly what he saw when he searched her beautiful face was trust.
Trust.
It stunned him.
She trusted him. Despite his warning, despite his big bad speech, despite the way he'd handled her.
Trust.
He'd lost all trust in himself when he'd lost Will... and with one look, one soft caress of her eyes, she was giving it back.
The feelings welling up inside of him were too much to catalog, too complex to name. But the result was pig simple.
He surrendered. Gave up the fight.
So much for his threat. So much for sex, just sex. There was only one thing he could do now. Only one thing he wanted to do. He gentled his hold, eased the pressure of his mouth over hers, and gave in to the need to make love to her.
It had been so long, so, so long, since he'd had anything this soft in his life. So long since he'd been responsible for anything this fragile. And she was fragile, no matter how tough she pretended to be.
She was cool, smooth silk stretched out beneath him. Her skin. Her sighs. Her hands where she touched him. Nothing had ever aroused him more than the gentle exploration of her fingers as they sifted through his hair. Nothing had ever made him feel this needed, as the flats of her palms drifted down his back, then lower to cup his buttocks and squeeze while she pressed her heels into the mattress and lifted her hips into him.
No woman had ever had this effect on him. Made him feel this indescribable rush of tenderness and lust. This tug-of-war between wanting to take her hard and fast and a gnawing craving to slow it down and take the time to explore what made her tremble, what made her yearn. What made her come apart in his arms.
She was so small. So incredibly giving. And he was so fricking hard he hurt. Yet he gentled his kiss, catering to the burgeoning need to simply lose himself for a while in the taste of her.
Her mouth.
My God.
Her mouth was lush and wet, mobile and giving. She opened wide, let a velvet moan ride on her breath as he delved deep with his tongue and matched the rhythm of his hips as they rocked against hers. He lifted up on his elbows, caged her head in his hands, and changed the angle of his mouth over hers. He could have kissed her like that forever, just played with her lips, swallowed her lusty sighs, and experimented with methods of extracting more, if she hadn't reminded him with her restlessness that there was more, so much more, she could make him feel. And so much more he could give her in the process.
He wanted skin on skin, but the sheet had gotten tangled between them. He made himself pull away, rolled to his side, and ripped it free.. As hard as he was, as bad as he hurt, as much as he wanted to bury himself inside her, he stayed where he was beside her. Fed the need to look at her. Just look at this soft, strong woman who had managed to drag him out of a pit of nothingness and make him glad he was alive.
He was a hard man. He'd never in a million years seen himself as a poet, but at that moment he wished he could be one. Moonlight and Jillian. It was a potent combination. He wished he had the ability to tell her what the sight of her body did to him. How her touch inflamed him.
But he was a man of action, so he showed her with his hands instead. He splayed his fingers wide over the flatness of her belly, mesmerized by the contrasts: his dark skin to her light, his scars and calluses to her silky perfection.
Each touch sparked some new sensation. Tenderness, impatience, lust, as he trailed his fingers up her rib cage, then cupped one supple breast in his hand.
Her breath caught, her nipple pearled. Desire dived deep, then surfaced as hunger. He lowered his head, tugged on her nipple when she arched toward him, cupped his head in her hand, and pressed his mouth to her flesh. He opened wide over her, sucking her in, sipping at the sweetest feast, the most incredible softness.
One sensation fed the need for another. With his mouth still playing at her breast, he skimmed the back of his knuckles down the centerline of her body. A delicious tremor of anticipation eddied through her when he cupped her and he did a little groaning of his own when she parted her thighs in a wanton invitation for him to touch her there.
She was so wet and so hot and so sweetly swollen when he slipped a finger inside. She was incredibly responsive when he stroked her, bucking against his hand, moaning her impatience and her pleasure. And when he lifted his head and saw the honesty of her response on her face, he slid down her body and let himself finally taste that part of her he'd been wanting to taste since the first night he'd seen her step naked out of her shower.
He loved that she wasn't so sure about what he was doing. Loved that she tensed, rose up on one elbow, and knotted her fingers in his hair.
'Too much," she gasped. 'Too.. .fast."
He kissed her stomach, lifted his head, and looked up the length of her body. Unbelievable. The desperate longing in her eyes actually settled him. He, however, had no intention of settling her. He wanted her wild. He wanted her writhing. And by the time he trailed kisses and nips across her abdomen, tracked a warm, wet path across her hip point with a lingering glide of his tongue, she was equal measures of both.
The curls covering her sex were silky soft. The fold of her lips lush and pink, slick and swollen. He nestled deep, made a long pass along her clitoris with his tongue... and felt her sudden intake of air.
Then he set about stealing her breath altogether.
She screamed when she came. Sobbed when he drew out her pleasure. And when he brought her down from her high with slow licks and gentle suction, his name was on her lips, just as her taste would be forever embedded in his.
Light-headed, saturated in the most consummate pleasure she'd ever imagined, Jillian drifted on the aftermath of sensations too devastating and intense to sort or name. She drew a shallow breath, let it out on a ragged sigh. Boneless. She felt boneless and spent and deliriously happy, content to float forever on the backside of the most incredible sexual experience of her life.
Nothing had ever felt this good Nothing could ever feel this good again. There wasn't even a point in trying. Yet thinking about it, remembering the unbelievable rush, she had high hopes of duplicating it. But not anytime soon. The mind was willing, but the body... oh, the body was exhausted and spent and still tingling in the afterglow.
When Nolan crawled back up her body, taking his time to linger and nuzzle and nip, it took every ounce of strength to wrap her arms around his neck and pull his mouth to hers for a long, lazy kiss. A kiss that tasted of sex and of him and of her. A kiss that rekindled by languid degrees the low pulsing ache deep in her belly.
When he parted her legs with his knee and in one long, slow thrust entered her, the upward spiral into sensation began anew ... and he took her even higher than before.
All she could think of was him. Inside her. A part of her. Filling her so full she could barely absorb the pressure. She felt like she was flying; she felt like she was falling as he drove into her over and over again. Deep. Hard. So absolutely male. So dangerously needy. She wanted it to go on forever... yet if something didn't happen soon, she knew she was going to die in her attempt to reach it.
"Please... please... please..."
It could have been her begging. It could have been him. She no longer knew where her breath ended and his began. No longer knew if she was earthbound or soaring. And when he thrust one final time, lifting her with him, taking her along, she no longer cared. All that mattered was sensation. All that mattered was the moment.
And the man.
Oh, the man.
When he collapsed on top of her, she welcomed his weight. When he tried to roll away to ease the stress, she wrapped herself around him like a monkey and held on so tight he couldn't have left if he wanted to.
He didn't want to. That knowledge brought a sleepy, content smile.
No matter that he'd snarled and growled and pulled every threat out of his bag of tricks to scare her away, he hadn't really wanted her to go. He didn't want her going anywhere now.
She could feel it in the whipcord strength of his arms locked around her. Sense it in the way he buried his face in her hair and breathed her in like she was life and without her he didn't want to live it.
She held him tightly against her in the hours while he slept, loving the heat and the weight of him, satisfied with the steady, exhausted cadence of his breathing, not caring that her arm had gone to sleep, that her neck had grown stiff. She knew he didn't always sleep well. Was happy beyond reason that she was able to give him this respite.
It was a small but necessary act for her to protect him from the demons that haunted him in the dark. Small but necessary given the fact that he protected her with his life.
Nolan lay on his back in the bed, arms crossed behind his head, staring at the water's reflection flashing on the paneled ceiling. Beside him, curled up like a kitten, her head on his shoulder, her arm draped across his chest, Jillian slept, a wonder of woman softness and giving heat.
She was lush and warm and everything a woman should be. He allowed himself the moment to relish the feel of her nestled against him. To remember the way she'd shattered in his arms, that sweet place between her thighs. The taste he would never forget.
When he'd made love to her, he felt things he hadn't felt since he was a boy—like the experience of that first exhilarating ride on a roller coaster. The first dive off the high board. The first time solo behind the wheel. The first time he'd thought he was in love.
The first time he'd
known
he was in love. Which, by his best estimation, was the first time he'd set eyes on her.
He swiped a hand over his face. He was so fucked.
For a man who'd given up on living, he'd picked a helluva time to find a spark of life. For a man who was paid to protect, he'd committed the cardinal sin. He'd let things become personal. He'd let their relationship transition from adversarial to allied. He'd let her get too close. Told her things. Personal things. God... he'd spilled his guts last night.
Because of it, she'd decided
she
needed to save
him.
How was that for, flicking irony?
"You're thinking too hard, Garrett."
He looked down to see her green eyes smiling up at him. The sun was just breaking over the
EDEN'S
bow, slanting gentle morning light through the starboard window of the stateroom.
"If I was thinking—"
"No." She rose up on an elbow, pressed two fingers to his lips. "Don't say it. Don't say that if you were thinking, this wouldn't have happened. And for God's sake, don't apologize. Don't tell me how wrong this was or what a bad, bad man you are or how stupid I was to let it happen."
He clenched his jaw, averted his gaze to the ceiling again to avoid looking at her pretty breasts pressed against his chest, her incredible mouth, swollen and pink from his kisses.
"You're the boss," he said with just enough meanness to regret it.
She slid a knee over his stomach, brushing his penis in the process. True to form, he involuntarily rose to the occasion.
Oh no. He wasn't going to compound things by making love to her again, no matter how badly he wanted to.
He started to sit up. "We'd better get dressed and check in with your father."
She pushed him back down. At least he convinced himself she did.
Her fingers traced the tattoo on the inside of his bicep. "What's this?"
He didn't have to look down to see what had drawn her attention. "My Social Security number and blood type."
"Do I want to know why they're there?"
He watched her brows draw together into a frown. "Probably not."