Under His Cover-nook (12 page)

“Take it off,” she whispered.

In one fluid motion he removed her bra and the discarded piece of silk hit the car floor.

“Glorious…simply glorious,” he murmured and applied kisses over each mound as they skimmed tantalizingly against his hard chest.

Jade was so aroused she could barely hold air in her lungs. “When are you going to be naked?”

She heard the familiar wisp of a zipper coming undone. “Just as soon as I do this.”

Rhys took her skirt, lifted it up and over her head. Left in nothing but her panties and shoes, Jade scooted across to the other seat and removed her remaining clothes and he did the same.

Small amounts of filtered light came through the tinted windows each time they passed a street lamp. Every once in a while the car would dip as it rolled over a bump in the road. The only sound emanating in the small space was their heavy breathing and soft music from the radio. God he was beautiful. Broad shoulders, wide and rounded with muscle, tapered down to the solid wall of muscle that was his chest. The corrugated leanness of his flat abdomen was as hard as any professional athletes. And his penis was blatant and aggressively aroused. Magnificent.

He moved to shorten the distance between them, but she stopped him, putting her bare foot on his chest and pushing him back. She shook her head. “No.”

The look on his face was incredulous until she said, “Let me.” When Jade straddled him, a slow, sensuous smile crossed his handsome face. She captured his mouth again with hungry urgency. Her tongue darted repeatedly between his lips, taking everything he offered while he readied himself with a condom. Finally, she eased herself down onto him where he filled her completely. He was thick and hot, and sweet pleasure washed over her as she arched her back in unspeakable ecstasy. Encircling her hips with his hands, he rocked against her, slowly, insistent. Each measured thrust provocative and primal.

He captured a nipple between his teeth and pulled, and she gasped. Jade pressed down to meet each and every upward thrust. He rocked her to his rhythm, and willingly she twisted and obeyed an instinct she hadn’t known she possessed. His hardness. Her softness. She matched him. When he thrust upward, she thrust down. When he delved deeper, she bucked and collided with him in a perfect cadence.

“Damn…damn. What have you done to me?” he whispered against her lips.

“Mine. All…mine,” she answered in short, sharp gasps.

“Yes. I am.” Rhys took her face between his hands and caught her gaze. A look so full of need, longing…
love
…passed over his features, making her shiver.

“I am yours,” he said, a solemn promise.

He shifted their positions and turned her around until she lay on the seat, her back flat against the cool leather and he was over her. He lifted her hips, embedding himself deeply within her. He linked their fingers, palm to palm, over her head. So caught up in the rapture of it all, Jade couldn’t tell where his body began or hers ended. It shook her.

What she read in his eyes wasn’t possible. But here they were. It didn’t matter that they were in a car, rolling past homes where families shared dinner. The only thing that mattered right now, in this very instance, was Rhys.

A pulsing desire moved through her, beginning with the soles of her feet, inching upward until it slammed through her center, bowing her back. Rhys released her hands and took her hips in his firm grip, sucking a nipple into his mouth as she rode out the wave of her orgasm. “Oh, yes.”

He lifted one of her legs over his shoulder and tucked the other up under his arm against his side. Then he rode her. Pumping and pumping until a bead of sweat trickled over his nose and landed on her chest. It was exquisite. His gaze never left hers as he withdrew and entered her again and again.

When her legs began to shake and the onset of another orgasm erupted, he pulled back, leaving only the tip inside her.

“Oh please, don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

He entered and slid out again as she bucked against him.

Rhys bent and kissed her, grazing her lips with his tongue. “What do you want, Jade?”

She jerked against him, trying to suck him back inside her, but he wouldn’t allow it.

Rhys slid all the way back in and out again. “What do you want from me, Jade? Say it.”

Her head swung back and forth against the leather.

He repeated the slow torture. In. Out. In. Out. “Say it, baby. Say it.”

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

“I didn’t hear you.”

The small cabin was consumed with their ragged breaths. It was permeated with the smell of her flowery perfume, his cologne and sex. ”I want you to fuck me.
Hard
.”

He obliged and arched into her with the fierceness of a beast. She lifted her hips to accept him and grind her body into his. To her satisfaction, he pounded in and out of her in a pace that matched the rapid thump of her pulse. Only peripherally, she hoped the sounds they made could not be heard by the driver on the other side of the partition. But she hardly doubted it.

Rhys leaned down and captured her mouth again, kissing her as if he was a man starved. She groaned and used every ounce of muscle inside her to meet him stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust.

She shifted her mouth away, needing to see him, to look into his eyes, to determine if one ounce of the same emotions welling inside her ripped through him as well. Pure pleasure poured through her at the passionate look on his face that told her that indeed, he did. And even if that didn’t, each drive of his hips, each moan from his lips confirmed it. It was deep and primal and reached all the way to her G-spot like a bullet. And he pushed deeper, pounded harder until at last, it began. Just as his muscular arms began to quiver, he let out a deep groan that matched hers in intensity and it triggered her explosion, and he clamped his mouth over hers to quell her screams.

Their tongues tangled and mated until at last they were both sated and panting, wrapped in each other’s arms.

Rhys shoved his feet into his shoes as he glanced over at Jade. She was buttoning her shirt over her luscious breasts. The woman was something to behold, and even now, while aftershocks of his orgasm still coursed through his system, his body wanted more. But more than what his libido wanted, his heart wanted more. But he knew he needed to prove that to her.

The scent of sex mingled with the rich perfume of her body. He liked it. When he reached toward her and ran his fingers through her curls to bring some semblance of order back to her hair, he thought she never looked more beautiful.

He shook his head. He’d just made love to her in the back of his limo. Would they ever make it to a bed again? They were only minutes from her house. His plan had been to take her home, kiss her goodnight and thank her for a wonderful dinner, but instead, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of her.

“I have to go to Chattanooga this weekend. I need you to come with me,” he said with an ease that was totally fake.

Her startled gaze swung up to meet his. “For what? I mean, like a…”

“It’s business.” Rhys watched a myriad of expressions cross her face before he continued. “I have to speak at a fundraiser.” He knew he was pushing it and it was probably stupid to force her into going with him, but he didn’t think he could last the weekend without seeing her. And he wanted Jade to see who he really was beneath the playboy. Today had been a success, and he needed to keep that forward momentum. He wanted her thought processes centered on him in a positive light, not negative, and the only way to do that was to keep her by his side as much as possible. Spending the weekend together, he hoped, would be what he needed to convince her he wanted more than sex.

His driver pulled up at her house and as he stopped the car and moved to open the door, Jade stared out the window. Mind reading would be a nifty trick right now. Worried she’d think he only wanted her there to keep his bed warm, he said, “I’ll get you your own room if you want me to.”

For a moment, disappointment flickered across her face. Fisting her keys, she replied, “I should really spend the weekend here in Memphis, trying to find out who’s sending you the letters. There’s a couple more people I need to speak with, and I need to get an analysis of the letter you got today.”

“It’s just for the weekend.” He heard the desperation in his own voice, but inside him lingered a willingness to do almost anything to get her join him.

The driver opened the door, and Jade stepped out. Rhys followed her to the front of her house but when she made a move to put her key in the lock, she dropped her keys.

“Let me,” Rhys said, bending to pick them up. As he found the key to open the door, her heated gaze seared him. If they hadn’t just made love in the limo, he’d attempt to go in with her. But he suspected she needed a little space, which he was willing to give her, but not for an entire weekend. “Is it going to be a problem for you to come with me to Chattanooga?”

Jade leveled her gaze somewhere over his left shoulder. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not after…” Her statement trailed off as she looked toward the limo.

“We still have to work together, Jade. No matter what happens between us personally. I hired you to find out who’s sending the letters, and part of finding out who’s doing it is being by my side. Well, my side is going to be in Chattanooga this weekend. You need to be there.” Before she could protest, he dropped her keys in her hand and strolled off.

When the limo pulled away, she was still standing inside her front door staring toward the road.

Friday morning, Jade tossed the rest of her toiletries into a case and placed it in the zippered side of her suitcase. She didn’t know why she’d agreed to this. Rhys had hounded her all week about it, and it didn’t help that Karyn called to check in and agreed with Rhys.

Plus, she’d spent the last couple of days interviewing the other women Rhys had dated and just as she thought, they had nothing but good things to say about him despite their break up. How did he do it? How did he have relationships with these women and they still liked him in the end? It was crazy. For some reason, he had a knack for picking non-confrontational women who didn’t mind that he was a love-them-and-leave-them type of guy. Well, she did. She wasn’t going to be one of
them
. Maybe they walked into the relationship knowing it wasn’t going to be anything more than a few dates or a few months and it was over. How in the hell had she fallen into the same trap? Normally, she wouldn’t have agreed to something so asinine. But here she was, involved with him in some type of relationship that confused the hell out of her.

Despite it all, she’d cleared up any doubt an ex-girlfriend might be behind the letters and that only left something related to work, to being the lieutenant governor. What disappointed her was the fact that she didn’t get a chance to chat up the senate pro-tem’s secretary, Cecily, because she’d taken a couple of days off and was enjoying a long weekend somewhere with her husband. Therefore, she didn’t have any objections left to give Rhys for not going with him to Chattanooga.

She lugged her bag downstairs and left it by the front door. Moving around the house, she made sure all the lights were off and the trash was taken out. The last thing she wanted to come back to after a weekend away was a stinky home.

Jade glanced at the clock. He was supposed to pick her up at ten, and it was almost that time now. Their flight was scheduled to leave at one so they had plenty of time to get to the airport, check in and wait for take-off. Thank goodness they weren’t driving. It was almost a six hour drive to Chattanooga from Memphis, and she didn’t know if she could sit in a car with him that long. How in the world was she going to spend the next seventy-two hours with him?

She was dangerously close to falling in…something…with the man. She liked him. Really liked him. Not to mention the awesome sex, even though he hadn’t attempted to seduce her again since their limo ride the other night. She was almost disappointed. Dumb, she knew, but damn it all to hell, she couldn’t help it. The man twisted her inside and out and got under her skin.

When her doorbell rang, she turned to answer it even as a sense of heated expectation wrapped around her heart. Before she turned the knob, she inhaled deeply and swung the door open, her smile freezing on her face the minute she saw him.

A bright blade of sunlight pierced the room even though it was cool outside. Heat began to sizzle through every part of her body as she took stock of the man standing on her doorstep. She moved back when he crossed the threshold. When he flashed a sexy smile she immediately became weak in the knees. It was going to be a long weekend. Would she be able to keep her hands off of him? Did she want to? He had just that kind of effect on women. On her. Standing in a pair of khakis that tapered down muscular thighs, a red polo-shirt and leather jacket covering his broad shoulders, he looked every bit of sexy, and it didn’t help her libido one little bit. For a split second, all she could do was stand there and slide her tongue over her lips as if he were a bite of chocolate she’d love to slide her mouth around.

“Good morning, Jade.”

It took her a moment to find her voice and respond, but watching him had made her vividly remember all the things his body was capable of. “Good morning, Rhys.”

“Are you ready?”

A memory of being ready for him the first time they were together flickered through her mind, but she forced it away. “Yes, I just need to grab my purse and coat.”

“All right. I’ll take your suitcase out to the car.”

Jade quickly headed back into her kitchen to collect the items she’d tossed over a chair earlier that morning. She glanced around one more time, turned on her alarm, then shut and locked the front door. The air between them began to thicken the minute she slid into the limo across from him. She explicitly remembered what happened between them the last time.

Every nerve in her body did a little dance when his gaze slid over her in an appreciative glance, as if he could see through her clothes. Of course, he’d seen her naked several times, had tasted every inch of her body, and he knew each hot spot that would make her moan.