Hide and Seek (6 page)

Wet need surged between her legs as he clutched and fondled and stroked her. Her sex ached for something to hold on to, the fine muscles pulsing, clenching with every deep thrust of his tongue in her mouth.

Good as this was already, it was probably a bad idea. She wasn’t looking forward to another awkward morning after, once they both came to their senses. But she was too far gone to worry about that now.

Not when she was practically naked and they both had their tongues down each other’s throats.

She wanted him naked, too.

Reaching up, she found the first button on his soft flannel shirt and struggled to work it loose. Her fingers were shaky from the power of her need for him. When she moved to the next button, John stopped her, his large hands engulfing hers, stilling her. He broke away from kissing her, his expression grim and serious.

Oh, God. If he had suddenly found the will enough to put the brakes on now, she was going to die from embarrassment. Either that, or from imploded lust.

But he didn’t seem ready to kill the moment at all. Instead, he lifted her hands up to his mouth, dropping a tender kiss on one then the other, his dark eyes smoldering, hooded and heavy on hers.

“On the bed,” he told her, his voice dark and rough.

She scrambled onto the disheveled sheets as he made quick work of his shirt, casting it away.

Lisa feasted her eyes on the sight of him. Broad, powerful shoulders and strong, muscled arms. His chest was amazing, harder than before, even more defined with roped sinew and pecs that looked like shields of velvet-covered steel. His trim waist was leaner now, iron-hard ridges and smooth slabs of lethal strength.

She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly gone bone dry while other parts of her body pooled with liquid heat.

Her gaze drifted lower, down the trail of crisp dark hair that disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. The outline of his erection was massive, and she knew from past experience that it was even more impressive unclothed.

When he stepped forward without taking his pants off, she couldn’t bite back her small groan of disappointment. Sliding his warm palms under the backs of her knees, he drew her legs to him, pivoting her onto the edge of the bed. Then he leaned down and kissed her, driving her wild for more.

He caressed her naked breasts, rolling her taut nipples between his fingers in sweet torment. His body pressed her backward onto the soft mattress and he followed her there, moving over her as he laid her out beneath him.

He kissed her lips and chin and throat before beginning a sensual descent down her body. She could hardly take it, his unrushed exploration of her bare skin. His tongue trailed lower, his wet, warm lips dragging onto her breasts while need for more of him boiled deep and molten inside of her.

Then he descended farther, taking his time as he kissed his way to her hip bones. She cried out when his hot mouth latched onto her mound over her panties. The heat of his lips and rough breath, the startling graze of his teeth as he closed them over her clothed sex, nearly made her come on the spot.

She caught her lip on a gasp as he slipped his fingers beneath the thin cotton on either side of her pelvis and drew her panties down. Freed of them, she didn’t resist as he put his palms on her inner thighs and spread her for his gaze.

He stroked her wet slit and the swollen bud at its crown. “Just as pretty as I remember. Damn, you kill me, girl. You know that?”

She couldn’t answer. She could only stare in mesmerized fascination as he lowered his head between her legs and took his first taste of her. She sucked in a shallow breath when his tongue cleaved her folds. Wet. Hot. Mind-numbingly good.

As he suckled her, he slipped a finger into her body. Her walls clenched around him, tremors already starting to build as he teased her with his touch. For each thrust, he sucked her clit deeper into his mouth, tonguing her into a state of pleasured frenzy.

Before long, she was arching and writhing beneath him, panting for more. She reached for him, caught her fingers in the soft, thick waves of his hair. “Please,” she gasped. “I need to have you inside me when I come the first time tonight.”

He glanced up, his mouth glistening with her juices as he cocked a wicked smile. “The first time?”

“Just come up here, dammit,” she commanded him, clutching at his shoulders.

He didn’t argue. Shucking his jeans and boxers, he moved up on the bed. Lisa sat up, her gaze riveted to him. She couldn’t resist taking hold of his erection. She stroked his length and cupped his balls, reveling in the powerful feel of him in her hands.

His breath shuddered as she explored him. When she dipped her head to cover the engorged head of his cock with her lips, he exhaled a ragged curse and set his hand on the back of her head while she sucked him.

She loved the taste of him on her tongue. Salty and hot, silky and strong.

The scent of his sex and his skin was instantly familiar, felt instantly right. As if he’d been branded into her senses.

He was so hard, so big. She could barely wrap her fingers all the way around his girth as she held him.

He dropped his head back on a groan as she sucked him deeper into her mouth and stared up at him, his reaction giving her encouragement, making her burn hotter for even more of him. Tendons strained in the sides of his neck with each pull of her mouth. His big body twitched and tensed with every slow suction and teasing flick of her tongue against the underside of his thick shaft.

On an abrupt curse, he bent toward the nightstand beside the bed and fumbled the top drawer open. He dumped a small box of condoms and took one out.

Now it was his hands that shook.

He nearly dropped the thin packet, but recovered on a harsh chuckle. He grinned down at her and shrugged. “I’ve clocked thousands of hours with my finger on the trigger of a hundred different weapons in the heat of battle, yet look at me. All thumbs around you.”

Lisa drew back with a smile. “Let me help—”

“Oh, hell no.” His sandpaper growl cut her short. “You touch me right now after what your sweet mouth just did to me, and I’m done for.”

His confession warmed her. The idea that she could make the stoic, steady John Duarte tremble a little was a wild turn-on. She watched as he rolled the condom onto his length, then scooted back to make room for him on the bed with her.

He moved between her legs, nudging her thighs open with his knee as he came down on top of her. He resumed kissing her, his warm hands on her face and tangling in her loose hair.

She moaned at the pleasure of his weight and the need to have him inside her. “I can’t take much more, Johnny.”

“That makes two of us,” he uttered thickly, guiding himself to her slick cleft.

The blunt head of his cock slid between her folds, demanding entrance. Seated at her opening, he began to push inside, inch by glorious inch.

Lisa gasped at the fullness invading her. “So good,” she murmured as he stretched her, filled her. Made her yearn for more of him. “You feel so good.”

“Ah, fuck, sugar... so do you.” His molasses-rich voice and sexy Southern drawl made her heart flutter even more behind her ribs. “You feel too damn good. Just like that first night. Too fucking good.”

He took her in a hungered kiss as he rocked deeper into her, leaving her quivering and electrified with pleasure. He rolled his hips forward and back in long, powerful strokes, his eyes blazing as he watched her arch and rock with him.

Then there were no more words. Just skin rasping against skin, breaths mingling. And need burning hotter as their rhythm picked up, turning urgent and fevered.

John’s low curse was a snarl against her ear as he drove deeper, faster, harder.

Nothing about him was gentle now, and that lack of control sent her own sanity reeling. She couldn’t hold on any longer. Her climax built toward a dizzying crest, swelling like a tidal wave.

He was right, it did feel too good.

They
felt too good.

While the rest of her life had careened out of control a few hours ago with her brother’s disturbing message and apparent involvement in things she still struggled to understand, this moment with John—in his arms again, in his bed—felt so good and right it terrified the hell out of her.

Yet as her orgasm washed over her, she could only hold on to him for dear life and let the pleasure take her blissfully down.

~ ~ ~

He’d never known anything as sexy as Lisa moaning his name as she orgasmed in his arms. His own climax roared up on him in response, a wild thing he could barely control.

She’d had him so ready when she’d sucked on him. The satiny glove of her mouth on his naked cock had almost made him spill before they’d even gotten started.

Now this, the sanity-robbing feel of her channel walls rippling against his shaft as she came. Her tiny muscles milked him toward a massive release, and he chased it with greedy abandon.

He knew it was selfish, acting on his need for her tonight. But right now, with Lisa writhing and arching with the onslaught of another orgasm, he couldn’t regret it.

His senses filled with her. The feel of her warm, soft skin against his body. The wet, erotic sounds of their sex combined with her little moans and gasps as he filled her, stretched her, gave her every inch of him. The pleasured look on her face was heaven, making him want nothing more than to cage her beneath him all night and watch her break on him over and over again.

Christ, this woman could become a swift and merciless addiction. He’d recognized that five years ago. He’d walked away to save himself—to save them both—for all the good it had done now.

Desire consumed him. His own climax coiled tight and pulsing as he lost himself to a more urgent tempo. He thrust harder, knowing he was taking something he didn’t deserve, at the worst possible time in both their lives. Yet he was unable to deny himself the want of it. Of her.

All that mattered was Lisa beneath him and the pleasure exploding between them.

He drove deep as a violent shudder racked him, and his orgasm ripped out of him on a raw shout. The release seemed endless, mind-blowing.

So fucking good he could hardly bear it.

“Jesus,” he muttered hoarsely, his face buried in the curve of her neck as the aftershocks finally began to subside. He smiled against her sweat-dampened, vanilla-scented skin. “Can’t move. Crushing you?”

“M-mm.” Her voice vibrated through him, as warm as her skin. “I don’t want you to move.”

“Have to,” he groaned, hating the need to pull out and dispose of the condom.

All he wanted to do was rock into her some more, stay inside her all night if she let him.

Bad idea, but his dick was already rising in agreement.

Before he could lose the argument with himself, he withdrew and moved to toss the used protection in the trash bin next to the bed.

Lisa’s hands were soothing on him as soon as he returned to her side. She smiled, sultry and spent. “That was...”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Incredible.”

She nodded, looking satisfied and too damn sexy lying naked on the rumpled sheets. He couldn’t resist another kiss, then another. Stretching out alongside her, he stroked her hair, traced an idle pattern on the gentle curve of her shoulder. She curled up next to him, one bare thigh slung across his.

For a long while, they simply lay there together in a quiet peace.

And although his thoughts were churning over a hundred troubling issues—not the least of which being the reason for her arrival at his cabin tonight—he stepped away from all of that and let himself relax into the rare feeling of contentment that enveloped him as he held Lisa in his arms.

7

To his complete astonishment, Duarte slept five-plus solid hours, clear through to daybreak. So much for his chronic insomnia. Apparently, all he needed was a good fuck and the warmth of a good woman in bed beside him—the latter more than he cared to admit.

Lisa was still sound asleep, curled up like a kitten in the tangled sheets, her loose honey hair fanned across his pillow.

The warrior in him wasn’t accustomed to soft nights and slow mornings, but he was in no rush to leave her side. For a brief moment, he imagined waking up every morning to that vision. Unbelievable that she’d been married to a man who’d been stupid enough to let her go. Then again, Duarte himself had once been that stupid, too.

Ancient history. Except last night had brought their past back to life in living, breathing color. And this morning, reality slapped him awake with the reminder that it was time to start thinking with his head again.

He twitched with the need for movement, for exertion, for action. Before his body decided to work out those impulses indoors with Lisa again, Duarte eased out of bed and got dressed.

The rain had passed overnight. He thought about her disabled car she’d told him she’d left down on the mountain road. He didn’t like the idea of leaving a vehicle out to be discovered in the daylight. Three years living off-grid had worked for him because he’d been cautious, inconspicuous, unfailingly private. Deliberately closed off from the rest of the world as much as he could be.

Now he had a Phoenix operative’s sister lying naked in his bed and her car abandoned practically in his front yard. He should have made a point of going down to retrieve it or hide it last night.

Yeah, he should have done a lot of things differently last night.

Scowling at himself as he left the cabin with the key fob to Lisa’s Toyota in his pocket, Duarte tucked his pistol into the back waistband of his jeans as was his habit any time he stepped outside. A shortcut took him through the acres of woods he knew like the back of his hand, and down to the dirt road near the base of the mountain.

Her silver Camry had made it a few hundred yards up the muddied tract before getting stuck. Duarte ran a hand over his beard-grizzled jaw as he eyed the deeply entrenched rear tires. They were spun down to the rims of their hubcaps in the thick mud. And with the rain stopped hours ago, the drying mud had turned to concrete.