Deadly Sins (4 page)

He waited.

He made himself wait.

He waited at least a nanosecond before he followed her, catching her at the big oak tree that sat between the two houses and pulling her quickly into his arms.

CHAPTER THREE

It was the kiss that destroyed him. That brought home the realization that ignoring the attraction simply wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t ignore her. Not when she tempted him with a siren’s gaze and lips so lush he hungered to taste them.

Not when she drew him, challenged him, and with every look assured him that teasing him, touching him, was her ultimate goal.

Not when he held her like this and felt the perfect fit of her body.

He’d fought it for six months. Now, too damned late at night for common sense, the darkness wrapped around them and the sultry summer heat sizzled outside the doors and inside them at the same time.

He gave in to hunger and knew that moment when the loner inside him realized just how lonely he’d been.

Logan stared into her dark eyes, realized his fingers were wrapped, tangled in long, dark, silky tresses, and he couldn’t let go. His cock tried to push past his jeans, her shorts, and straight into the heart of her feminine core. His entire body throbbed with the need to possess her until nothing else mattered, until no other hunger dared to intrude.

He hadn’t even known he was going to kiss her. Hell, he didn’t even remember what she was saying as she laughed up at him, chiding him the way she did over whatever she was chiding him over. He couldn’t even remember what he’d done this time. All he remembered was that destructive thought that he knew the perfect way to shut her up.

By kissing her.

And now he had no idea how to stop.

He wanted to pull back.

He told himself he was going to pull back.

He told himself he wasn’t going to let this go any further. She was his neighbor. She was off-limits. He didn’t mess with any women within a hundred miles of Sweetrock because they ended up dead.

“What are you waiting on?” Her voice trembled along with her lips as sensually drowsy lashes brushed against her cheeks, then lifted as though weighted.

That siren’s gaze, sensual and seductive, and filled with an innocent hunger that, frankly, amazed him.

Amazed him that she could feel such hunger for him. That any woman who knew his history, knew the deaths that followed him, could possibly want him.

His fingers tightened in her hair, slowly pulling her head back, tugging at the strands and her obviously sensitive scalp as a moan whispered past her lips.

Oh yeah, she liked that.

“I think I’m waiting for my common sense to return.”

Sensual, sexual hunger tore at him, raced through his veins, tightened his gut, and left him all but shaking in the face of the knowledge that he couldn’t let her go.

Surviving meant holding on to her just a little longer.

“Should we be showing common sense at this moment?” The question almost brought a smile to his lips.

He hadn’t had reason to smile in a very long time.

Why wasn’t he surprised that the smile was tempted with this woman? A woman he couldn’t seem to take his hands off?

Hell, he’d never had a problem letting a woman go before. He’d never had a problem stepping back or walking away. Sex didn’t control him; he controlled it.

Until this woman. Now he had a very bad feeling she might end up controlling him.

“I’m sure we should be.” But his lips were still lowering to hers, settling against them, rubbing over the softest silk in the world as he parted them.

Sensation sliced through him again. The instant his lips touched hers a sizzle of heated electricity seemed to sweep through him, bringing his senses to heightened alert.

Damn.
It was like sinking into pure sensation.

Her lips parted beneath his as his tongue swept over them, licking at the soft flesh, tasting the inner sweetness, and becoming drunk on the ambrosia.

Each cell of his flesh was drinking her in and becoming intoxicated with her.

He’d never felt this with a kiss in his life. He’d never felt his entire body come alive in quite this way. And it was definitely coming alive. Every nerve ending was suddenly tingling with heat. His flesh was drinking in her touch at every point of contact.

Pressing her tighter against the trunk of the tree he’d braced her against, he suddenly wanted more than he’d ever believed he would want from a woman.

He wanted her against him. Naked. Just this willing. Just this hot, with nothing between them. No clothes. No gowns. No second thoughts. No regrets.

No knowledge of where it could end.

In her bed or in his.

He wanted her lush, naked body spread beneath him, her thighs parted for him, her cries filling his ears as he sank inside her.

His lips lifted from hers just enough to move to the side and place a delicate kiss at the corner of hers. “Skye, you’re killing me here.”

Her head turned, following him, brushing against his lips.

And all thought evaporated.

It could have been the first time he’d kissed a woman for all the finesse he could grasp. There was no finesse. There was no sense of time or place as he kissed her like a man dying for touch, for sensual pleasure.

And he couldn’t understand how such pleasure could exist in such a simple touch as two lips melded together.

His tongue swept over hers, then tangled with it in an exotic dance. His hands slid down her back, gripped her hips, then slid to her thighs and lifted them.

Ah hell yes.
He wasn’t about to break the kiss again to groan in pure undiluted fervor.

He wouldnt do it.

He wouldn’t remember the past, the present, or the nightmares he often walked the night to forget.

Tugged at the strands of hair he held, his entire body tightened at the throttled little moan that fell from her lips. He ground his hips against hers. He swore he could feel the heat and dampness of her sweet little pussy through their clothes.

Against his chest her breasts pressed like firm, hot weights, her nipples hard enough he could feel them through his shirt.

He wanted to do more than to feel them through cloth. He wanted his hands on them, his fingers playing with them. He wanted to take them into his mouth and taste the sweetness of them.

Pushing his hand beneath the hem of her shirt, he stroked up her stomach until he was cupping one of the full globes with desperate fingers as she arched against him.

He’d never believed pleasure like this could exist in just a kiss. Hell, not for a man. A woman maybe; they were softer, sweeter. They thrived on the romance and the soft words and gentle touches. A man was just fucking hungry.

And he was damned hungry, but he was also experiencing the pleasure. The pleasure of touching her, the pleasure of her touch.

But even in that hunger he felt something more. A something that had his self-preservation instincts screaming out in alarm. A something he knew could very well end up destroying them both.

*   *   *

Skye wasn’t expecting the sensations that assailed her.

She hadn’t expected it when she had realized there was a confrontation going on between him and someone else.

She’d had no idea it was his grandfather.

She’d had no idea it would end here.

Skye tightened her hold on the man leading her through an abyss of sensation and didn’t know whether to cry out in fear or scream in pleasure.

She was crying in pleasure.

Shards of pure, unadulterated excitement sang through her body as his hand cupped her breast, his thumb and forefinger gripping her nipple and applying just the right amount of pressure. As she gasped, arching to him, a shudder raced through her body and seemed to explode between her thighs. The detonation was an explosion of hunger. Her senses were flooded with a need that didn’t make sense, as her sex grew impossibly wetter, preparing, begging for possession.

A startled moan of protest escaped her throat as his lips suddenly pulled back for her. A tingling rush of heated sensation attacked her scalp as he pulled her head back and blazed a path of erotic pleasure down her neck.

Highly sensitive, soaking in his touch and begging for more, her skin heated, and another moan escaped her throat as his teeth rasped against her flesh.

“Logan.” She needed more. More of the pleasure and the heat that came from each touch, each stroke of his lips against her flesh, each exciting touch.

She felt like a virgin again, experiencing her first sexual touch. No, she couldn’t say that. Because even then it hadn’t been this exciting or this sexually dark.

She could feel him holding back, holding on to his control, and the knowledge of it sent a rush of bravado racing through her.

She didn’t want his control.

She wanted him out of control. She wanted all that dark, intent hunger she could feel threatening to escape.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he growled, his voice rasping, as dangerously sexual as the knowledge of the hunger he was holding back.

“Bet me.” Oh, she knew what she was doing, and she knew now exactly what she wanted.

This was why she couldn’t stay away from him. Why she had taken one look at him and all she could think about was his touch, his kiss.

Not just the reason she was here, or the sister she needed vengeance for. God no, she needed him for her as well.

A stinging little nip of his teeth against her neck was her reward for her challenge.

But if that was her reward, what was the slow lowering of the straps of her grown until they cleared her breasts?

Skye held her breath, waiting, watching, as his gaze dropped to her breasts, despite the fact that it had to be too dark for him to actually see much.

His thumb raked over a nipple again, drawing a quick, muted moan from her lips.

“How pretty.” He cupped the mound, lifting it further. “I’ve been dying to taste those hard little nipples. Every time I’ve seen you I’ve watched your nipples harden, press against your clothing as though begging for my lips.”

Oh yeah, that was exactly what they were doing.

She could beg him verbally if that was what he wanted.

She would probably end up doing it anyway.

His head lowered.

The warmth of his breath was the first warning of what was to come. When his tongue raked over the excited little tip, though, nothing could have prepared her for the sharp burst of radiant heat that exploded against it.

His tongue licked, rubbed against her nipple as though to soothe it, but it only grew tighter, harder.

Needier.

“You taste like candy, Skye.” His voice was a dark rasp of hunger. “I have a helluva sweet tooth.”

The almost-playful quality in the sexually roughened male tone had a flood of weakness racing through her. A lassitude edged with hunger and need.

His hard, corded body tightened beneath her touch as her hand slid from his shoulders to his neck, then buried itself in the overly long strands of dark blond hair.

The thick strands were just slightly coarse against her fingers, caressing her palms as she filled her hands with them and tried to bring him closer. She just wanted to bring him closer. To make him assuage the need his playful tongue was building as he bent his head to the hard peak of first one nipple, then the other.

His tongue was a velvet rasp of exquisite pleasure as it rubbed over the sensitive tip. His tongue hardening to probe at the bundle of nerve endings as she arched to get closer, to feel more.

It wasn’t enough.
Oh God. Just a little more pressure. Just a little more sensation.

His teeth suddenly gripped the taut point, tugging at it, sending a furious rush of nearing rapture to tighten through her womb, to clench at her clitoris and spill a rush of dampness between her thighs.

It was like being thrown into a wild vortex of increasing sensual eroticism. A pleasure she had no idea how to counter and absolutely no desire to fight.

“Yes.” She couldn’t hold back the little moan as he sucked the tip into his mouth, the suction of his mouth sending pulse after pulse of heat surging from her nipple to the tight, furiously throbbing bud of her clit.

Each draw of his mouth pulled at the tip with demanding pressure, increasing each sensation until she felt a swirl of overriding, overwhelming ecstasy building in her womb.

She wanted him. Every touch. Every fierce stroke she could get.

Rolling her hips and stroking the hardened bud of her clitoris against his jeans-covered thigh only increased the pleasure. It hurled her down a brilliant white-hot path to the complete sensual destruction that was only a touch away.

Just the right touch.

Just the right pressure and the climactic explosion would destroy any peace she thought she had in her life.

It was the most pleasure she had known in her life. But she knew there was more. She could sense it; she could almost feel it.

“I’m going to end up taking you here against this tree if we don’t stop this.” His voice was ragged, a gravelly sound of hunger that clenched her womb and amped the power of each sensation charging through her.

“Okay.” Yeah, like she was going to object.

A serrated chuckle inflamed her already overly aroused senses.

“It might not be a good idea.” His lips stroked over the curve of her breast as she arched again, trying to get closer, to push her nipple back into his mouth.

“Stop thinking,” she demanded. “I don’t want to think.”

But they had to think.

Logan laid his head against the curve of her breast as he fought to draw in a breath that wasn’t filled with her scent.

This close to her, it was impossible. There was no way to breathe without pulling in the sweet scent of her, or tasting the silk of her flesh.

And he had to think. He had to protect her, protect this. This pleasure he had never imagined could actually exist for him. In his wildest imaginings he had never believed there was a woman he would actually want more than he wanted his own sanity.

Or that there was a woman he would place above his own or his family’s protection.