Bared

16

TOGETHER THEY TURNED toward Rafe’s house, just as a motorcycle came down the street. Emma could barely breathe with all the thoughts of what Rafe was about to do to her whirling in her head. But then he stopped, swore roughly, and took her hand and tugged her back toward her car.

“What’s the matter?” He’d changed his mind. He didn’t want her. He was going to send her home, where she’d spend yet another night tossing and turning, unfulfilled, aching…

“See that bike over there? That’s Stone.” He opened the passenger door. “Do you want to drive or should I?”

“Where?”

“Anywhere, quick. Unless you want to stay here and forget about-”

“No,” she said. She wasn’t forgetting about anything, thank you very much. She’d come for some sort of end to this terrible yearning and anticipation and she wasn’t letting him out of her sight until she got it. “You can drive.”

She watched as he came around and got in swearing when his knees bumped the steering wheel. Sliding the seat back, he started the car and drove off.

On the bike, Stone craned his neck to watch them go, waving when they passed.

Rafe didn’t wave back. Jaw tight, working the temperamental gear shift as if he’d been driving this vehicle all his life, he sped away.

Emma stared at his hand on the gear stick. It was big, tanned and, she had good reason to know, calloused on his fingertips and palm. Just thinking about how that warm hand felt gliding over her breast, catching a little on her nipple, made her shiver.

“Which way?” he asked.

Feeling suddenly dry-mouthed, she just pointed.

While his long legs worked the clutch and the gas, his face was taut with concentration…and something else, something making his big, hard body tight with tension.

He glanced over at her with so much hunger and heat in his eyes, it took her breath.

Excitement flooded through her, making her nipples even harder, and between her legs she was already wet. He hadn’t even touched her yet, but oh, he was going to, and all because she’d asked him. She’d come on to him and he’d not only accepted, he couldn’t wait to get to it.

The power of that was mind-blowing. “Here,” she said, pointing. “You turn here.”

He did so fast and furiously, as if on a car chase. She couldn’t help it-a little laugh escaped her, though she wasn’t sure if it was from amusement or nerves.

“What?” he asked in a low voice, glancing over at her. “What’s so funny?”

“Your hurry.”

He spared her another glance. “You didn’t think I’m dying here? That I’ve been dying for a very long time?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You can spend the next few hours making it all up to me.”

How was it he made her want to laugh and melt at the same time? “So just to put it all out there…we’re tied in the wanting department. Right?” This was her last doubt, right here. Because she knew how much she wanted him, more than her next breath, actually, and she didn’t see how he could want her that much in return.

Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached over and took her hand. He brought it up to his mouth, took a quick bite out of her palm, then kissed the spot.

She felt the tug all the way to her belly.

“We are tied,” he said softly, then slid her hand down his body to the juncture of his jeans, cupping his hand over hers so that she could feel the unmistakable outline of an erection so impressive it took her breath.

She stared at him, her fingers molding to the shape of him through the denim.

“I’m not going to be able to take much of that,” he said, eyes still on the road.

She did it again.

“Feeling playful?” He squeezed her bare thigh before running the tips of his fingers beneath the hem of her denim shorts.

“T-turn right,” she said on a shaky laugh. “Second house on the left. It’s the last house on the street-”

He parked in her driveway so fast that her head spun.

“Inside,” he said. As if to make sure she was following, he pulled her out across his seat.

At her front door, he waited with barely masked impatience while she fumbled with the lock. Fumbled, because there was something unsettling about having a six-foot-two-inch, gorgeously rumpled, frustrated man standing over her, breathing down her neck, needing her so badly he couldn’t even talk.

She barely got the door unlocked before he took her arm and led her inside, pressing her back against the door as he shut it with their momentum. And then she was pinned there by his harder body.

“Now,” he said.

“Now,” she agreed.

He pulled off her shirt in one economical movement, then lifted his arms for her when she tugged at his. Both hit the floor. He went to work on her bra next, swearing when he couldn’t find the hook. Laughing a little, gasping for breath, too, she showed him the hidden latch. Then it was gone and he bent, taking a breast in his mouth.

“Wait,” she said.

And with his mouth on her breast and his fingers on the fastener of her shorts, he went still.

“I just thought a bed…”

With a groan, he rested his forehead against hers. “Yeah, a bed, face to face, with my body buried so deeply inside yours that I don’t know where I end and you start.”

Just his words made her quiver.

“But if we go now, it’ll be over far too fast.” He dropped to his knees and slid off her shoes and shorts, leaving her in nothing but a pair of sunshine-yellow cotton bikini panties. He ran his finger over the elastic at her hip, slid both hands around the back of her and cupped her cheeks in his hand.

“You have the best ass ever. Turn around, Emma.”

Her stomach fluttered but she did as he asked-turned so that her front was now pressed up against the door. Still on his knees, he traced his fingers along the leg openings of her panties, until they met at the back juncture of her legs, lingering to explore. She pressed her palms flat to the door, and her cheek, too, looking for balance in a tilted world. Her nipples pressed against the wood, as well, and her thigh muscles were so tight they were shaking.

“Rafe-” She broke off when he touched the inside of her thigh, urging her legs open for more discovery on his part, and she had to lock her knees to remain upright.

“Mmm.” One finger slid beneath the material and lightly, so lightly, traced over her every curve. “So wet.”

And then he slid her panties down. She gasped and, then when she felt his mouth low on one cheek, the gasp turned into a moan. He kissed a line down to the back of one thigh and then up the other, while his fingers delved between, leaving her panting, arching, writhing.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper. “Oh, please.”

“Anything.” Surging to his feet, he pressed his chest to her back, slipping his arms around her ribs so that he could cup her breasts, teasing her nipples into two tight, aching peaks with a rasping glide of his fingers and thumbs. “Anything, Emma.”

“Inside me,” she managed to say, pushing her butt into his crotch, knowing she was making the front of his jeans wet but beyond caring.

She heard the pop, pop, pop of his buttons. Felt him rub the length of his erection down her backside. Arching her back, thrusting herself upward to help, pressing her face to the wood, she whispered his name again-a whisper that turned into a cry of pleasure when he eased just his very tip inside her.

Then he pulled back. Thinking he was going to thrust again, she widened her stance and waited with baited breath. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, whispering her name, and when she realized he was asking her a question, she lifted her head.

“I still don’t have a condom.” He kissed the other side of her neck. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think when I ran out of the house after you like I did that I’d-”

“I have one,” she admitted, and turned to face him. “I write city girls for a living, remember? I…thought I should know how to use one.” Embarrassed, she started to look the other way, but he tilted her chin up and kissed her long and deep.

“Let’s go,” he said, and kicked off the rest of his clothes.

She looked down at the clothes on the floor, feeling more than a little naked, but he took her hand and tugged her toward the hall, not giving her a chance to feel anything but him.

It worked. His kiss always would. He just had a way of putting everything he had into it, and getting her to do the same. Before him, she’d have said kissing with her tongue was…well, something she tolerated.

Now? She thrived on those kisses. At least for tonight. Just for tonight.

She took him into her bathroom, opened the drawer and showed him the box missing one condom. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“What did you experiment on?”

“A carrot,” she admitted, blushing when he laughed good and hard.

“A carrot.” Shaking his head, he pulled a condom out of the box, ripped open the packet with his teeth and then handed it to her. “Show me.”

“You’re bigger than a carrot,” she murmured as she rolled the condom down the length of him.

“Yes, thankfully.”

She led him to her bedroom. She hadn’t opened the shutters because the light interfered with the screen of her laptop. She hadn’t picked up her clothes, and her bed wasn’t made.

One of the pitfalls of working twenty-four-seven-she never got to the “home” stuff and it was never more evident than right this minute.

“Sorry,” she muttered. She kicked a pile under her bed, then tossed a towel off her sheets to the floor.

“No, it’s good,” he said, following her down, down, down to the mattress, covering her body with his, thrusting a leg between hers so that she was wide open to him. “Emma.” He took her mouth with his until she was once again clinging to him.

Then, holding her hips in his hands, he lifted up enough to snag her gaze with his.

And that just might have been her biggest mistake yet. Because as he thrust inside her with one delicious flex of his hips, as he let out a low moan that was a twin to hers, as he gathered her close, she knew the undeniable truth.

This was about far more than tonight.

This was about her heart.

About her soul.

But quite possibly, about falling in love.

But since she couldn’t go there, not now, maybe not ever, she closed her eyes and let the wave of passion take them both.