Princes of the Outback Bundle (40 page)

Yet tonight all he could think about was whether or not, in five weeks’ time, he’d still be holding Zara Lovett’s hand. If she would be at his side in the stands cheering Irish home. If she would celebrate with him, or console him afterward with her silky sweet-tasting kisses.

Reflexively his grip on her hand tightened. Her fingers curled hard against his thigh and that touch arrowed straight to his groin. Heat washed through his skin, so intense he felt perspiration break out down his spine.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said softly, squeezing his hand. Subtly reminding him to ease off the pressure. He did, stroking his thumb across her knuckles, rolling the tension from his shoulders, breathing a silent sigh of relief when the taxi pulled in to the hotel driveway.

Finally—and only because he had to—he released her hand so he could pay the fare.

And when he closed the door and straightened, he realized they were standing in the exact spot where he’d first tasted the lush temptation of her mouth on Sunday. Their gazes met and everything he’d felt in that moment, everything that clamored through him now, was reflected in her whiskey eyes. All he could think about was kissing her again, same place, same way, except this time they would walk away together. All the way to his bed.

Circumspection be damned, he closed the car’s-width space between them, cupped her face in one hand and gave in to his fierce need.

One kiss, tempered with a world of restraint, while the stroke of his thumb along her jaw and the burn of passion in his eyes told her that this was only the start. Never dropping his gaze, she stretched closer so her body brushed his in a dozen fleeting places and the subtle flick of her tongue drove a groan from his lust-tight throat.

“Inside,” he growled at her ear. “Before we draw a crowd.”

She laughed, low and husky and erotic.

Oh, yeah. He would definitely have to find a way to make her laugh once they got naked. Her laughter, her hands, her legs, the silky shimmer of her shirt as she turned into the glare of the lobby light—she blew him away on so many levels, had done so too many times to count these past hours.

This woman,
his gut told him as he took her hand and led her through the lobby,
is the one you’ve been waiting for.

The clarity of that knowledge didn’t shake him. Last weekend he’d known, at the same instinctive level, that more than physical attraction forged this connection. But he’d walked away because of the will and what he took as his duty.

“Hey.” Tugging on his hand, she drew him out of his reverie. “Whatever you’re thinking about—stop!”

“What if I’m thinking about you?”

“I hope you weren’t, actually.”

Alex pulled up short and turned her toward him. “You don’t want me thinking about you?”

“Not if it makes you look so…intense.”

“Ah, but you do make me feel intense,” he said, tightening his grip on her fingers. “Whenever I think you might change your mind about stepping into this elevator.”

Their gazes tangled and the moment hung with renewed tension, with the hint of wariness that stole across her face.

Alex’s heart kicked with sudden fear but he kept his gaze direct. Unflinching. A part of him warned against pushing too hard and scaring her off, but at this moment he simply could not do light and easy. Until he had her upstairs, a smile was impossible. “Make up your mind, Zara. Here and now.”

“My mind is made up,” she said after the briefest pause. “If I don’t do this, I will only spend another week wondering.”

“Wondering?”

One corner of her mouth lifted in the smallest hint of a smile. “About whether this will be as good as I’ve imagined.”

Relief poured through Alex as he pulled her closer, relief and a parallel stream of desire because she’d been imagining this—imagining him in her bed—all week. He threaded her hair behind her ear, stroked his fingers down its silken length and saw the spark of response in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” He pressed a brief, hard kiss to her lips, then turned them both back toward the elevator. “It’ll be better.”

A
lone in the elevator, Alex gave in and kissed her like he’d wanted to in the lobby, under the portico, in the taxi. In the street outside the restaurant. In the gym earlier that afternoon. He wound his fingers in her hair and pulled her hard against his body and simply immersed himself in the mind-numbing sweetness of her mouth.

That taste, he knew, was already under his skin, in his blood, hot-wired into his hormones. One sip and they raged into life, screaming for more. He kissed her until the doors opened on the hotel’s top floor, and once he had her inside his suite he backed her against the door and kept on kissing her until they were both breathing harder than after their run through the sleet.

Winded, knocked off center by the power of his need, by the fevered roar of blood in his ears, Alex leaned his forehead against hers, flattened his hands against the door
and struggled for control. He had, at least, to get her into his bedroom before he tore her clothes off and gave himself up to this raging need.

The hell of it was he didn’t want to tear her clothes off. He wanted to undress her slowly so he could savor her amazing body, inch by silky inch. He wanted to seduce her, for Pete’s sake, into giving him much more than her body.

“I had hoped to offer you a drink.” His voice was a deep mixture of arousal and wryness. “To put on some music. To show you my smooth side.”

After a second her hands slid from his neck, down his chest to his sides. “Which
is
your smooth side, Alex? Left or right?”

That surprised a laugh from him, a laugh that snagged in the middle when she stroked a hand up and down one side and then the other. A simple touch made intricate by the extravagance of his body’s response. Or perhaps by the way she tipped her head back against the door and studied him through half-lidded eyes, her hair mussed by his hands and her lips full and sultry from his kisses.

“Maybe you need to work that out for yourself,” he said, levering himself slowly off the door. Spreading his arms wide, he dared her with both body language and his steady gaze to find her own answer.

Heat flared golden in the depths of her eyes and resounded low in Alex’s body. A challenge given. A challenge accepted.

She rolled off the door and Alex smiled at his own unconscious description. Yeah, she rolled…or maybe flowed. Whatever, it was a long, sinuous unraveling that he wanted to freeze-frame in his memory.

Hell, who was he kidding? He loved everything about the way she moved. Sometimes full of energy and purpose.
Sometimes loose and athletic. Sometimes with smooth leonine grace.

Like now, he thought, as she circled him, not touching, just studying him like a hunter on the prowl. A lithe, agile hunting cat, hungry for his body. His every muscle bunched with anticipation, tightened with heated arousal at the thought of her stalking him, taking him down, her mouth on his body.

She disappeared behind him, the flutter of her exotic patterned skirt a whisper of sound and motion, her scent in the air and in his nostrils as he waited. Waited for her touch until he thought he might snap. And then he sensed her closeness, felt the warmth of her breath between his shoulder blades an instant before her hands skimmed down his arms, then repeated the flat-palmed glide up his sides and down his back.

Frustration twitched in his flesh. He wanted more. He wanted those hands beneath his shirt, that breath on his skin. That mouth on his body.

She circled back to the front and their gazes collided. “Hard to tell which is your smooth side.” Her voice reflected her eyes. Hot. Aware. Turned on. “You’re hard as a rock.”

And she hadn’t touched him anywhere below the waist.

“You need a closer inspection.” He lifted a hand, brushed his thumb across her lips. “Why don’t you undress me?”

Her lips quivered under his touch. “Here?”

She had a point. They stood a scant two feet inside the door. A whole spacious suite beckoned. A king-size bed, with the best linen Carlisle money could buy, lay turned down and waiting.

But still…

His thumb ghosted across her cheek, lingered on the
beauty spot. “I’m not fussy about where. You walk into a room and you’re all I see. You touch me and everything else fades to black.”

Her breath hitched, a sound of wonder, of wanting, and she turned in to his body, so close her skirt skimmed against his thighs and their knees brushed. Warm breath shuddered against his chin, his throat. “I think I just discovered your smooth side.”

“It’s not a line, Zara. It’s the truth.”

For a second she went still, and he sensed her weighing that, analyzing it in her sharp brain, and then her fingers lifted to touch his abdomen and chest in a half-dozen places. The merest drift of a caress. The hottest lick of flame.

Alex sucked in air. Her scent, sweet, warm, female, went straight to his head. He trapped her hands against his chest, held them against the thickened drumbeat of his heart, before drawing them to his top button. “Take off my shirt. Please, Zara. I want to feel these hands on my skin.”

He felt the flutter of response in her hands, or perhaps it was his flesh that shuddered because when he dropped his hands away she started unthreading buttons with surprising sureness, her fingers quick and steady until they neared his waist. Then she fumbled with delicious effect. Warm breath huffed against bared skin and her knuckles dragged over his tensed abs while she battled with that last button.

Finally, she grabbed two handfuls of shirt and pulled it free of his trousers and the last button gave. Then her hands were on his chest. Her hands and her mouth and the hot murmur of her breath as she said, “I’ve thought about touching you like this. All night.”

“I’ve been dreaming about it.” His hands combed through her hair, let the cool tresses play against his hot skin. “All week.”

“Really?”

Oh, yeah. And not just like this. He’d dreamed of those long, elegant fingers, that lush siren’s mouth, on him everywhere. “You have no idea.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Really?” he asked, echoing her question, her tone.

He felt her smile against his skin, felt it seep into his flesh and saturate his blood. “Did you only dream about
me
touching
you?
”

“Is that a hint?”

Her thumb grazed his nipple. “Was I too subtle?”

Alex laughed, low and lazy. He let his hands slide to her shoulders and down her back. Less than a minute ago he’d been too edgy to contemplate lazy or any laughter that wasn’t wound as tight as his impatience. But she’d surprised him again with her humor.

Surprised him with how easy she was to be with.

Dipping his thumbs under the hem of her shirt, he stroked the warm skin beneath. His fingers spanned her waist—beneath the silky drape of her shirt—and he started to walk her slowly backward, into the sitting room. “When I was waiting outside the restaurant, wondering if you’d show up—”

“I wouldn’t have sent you out there,” she cut him off, sharp and affronted, “and then stood you up!”

“Good to know.”

“I would have called.”

He stopped walking. Ducked down to look into her face. “You thought about doing that, didn’t you?”

“At least a dozen times,” she admitted. “Every time I tried to call Susannah. Every time I changed my clothes.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“So am I.”

The honesty in her words and her steady gaze settled rich and warm in his chest. He had to kiss her again, not with the unrestrained hunger of before but slow and deep and giving. He kissed her mouth and the strong line of her jaw and the little spot on her cheek. “I approve your final choice,” he said when he moved on to her ear. “In case you were wondering.”

“My final choice?”

Gathering the soft fabric of her shirt in his hands, he slowly pulled it up and off. “Of clothes. You said you changed a dozen times.”

“Well, it wasn’t quite that many, but close. I’m not used to thinking about what I’m wearing.”

“That’s okay.” Alex fingered the strap of her bra, let it slide down her arm then followed it with his mouth. His hands glided down her back and over her hips. “I’ll think about it for you.”

“You’re offering to act as my wardrobe consultant?” Her amused question ended on a breathy hitch when he gently bit the skin of her shoulder then laved it with his tongue.

“Sure.” Slowly, inexorably he bunched up the material of her skirt. “I’ll choose your clothes for you as long as I get to take them off.”

A smooth line, Alex thought, liking that he had his edginess, the wildness he loathed, back under control. Rewarding himself by drawing up her bunched skirt and letting his knuckles graze the backs of her thighs and the tight curve of her backside…the tight
naked
curve of her backside.

For a fleeting second his fingers fisted in the soft fabric of her skirt. He sucked in a quick breath through his teeth. Then he let that air—plus all the gathered folds of her skirt—go so he could cup those tight naked curves with his palms.

“A G-string,” he breathed.

“Is that the underwear you would have chosen, as my wardrobe consultant?”

In answer he drew her hard against his body. Stroked his hands over her warm, smooth skin and absorbed her shudder of response with a long, wet kiss. And when the lust dimmed to a dull roar and his brain cleared enough to distinguish his surroundings again, he resumed walking her toward the bedroom.

Before they made it to the bed, he managed to prize his hands from her body long enough to undo the waistband of her skirt. He took a half step back to watch it slither past her hips, to study those long, toned, runner’s legs, to imagine them locked around his hips, holding him deep inside her body. The pulse of sex started to beat through his blood, a hard hum of insistence that filled his senses, and then her hands were on his trousers, an exquisite torture of unbuttoning and unzipping, of touching but not touching nearly enough.

Their eyes met and shared a wordless message of heat and urgency and need. With swift hands and quick catches of breath, they shed the rest of their clothes and sank together to the turned-back bed, rolling in a heated slide of skin against skin, of passion-warmed bodies against the cool expanse of sheets. Again their eyes met and of an accord they slowed, steadied, stilled…until Alex turned them one more rotation and settled on his back.

For the moment he had Zara exactly where he wanted her. Stretched on top of him, her breasts grazed his chest with every breath, her legs tangled with his. She was all sleek curves and finely toned muscles, long and strong and perfect. Slowly he slid his hands over her back, adjusting the weight of her hips until she cradled his arousal between her thighs.

But what froze him in that instant wasn’t the fit of their bodies or the teasing lure of her moist heat. It was the intensity of her expression as she looked down at him.

The rush of empowerment, the sense that he’d waited forever to look into this woman’s eyes while she took him into her body, stalled the breath in Alex’s lungs and squeezed viselike in his chest.

For a second it was too much, a blinding flash of fear that he might give more than he wanted, and then she leaned down and kissed him and drove the beast away with the honeyed taste of her passion. He twisted his hands in her hair and held her there, bound to his mouth and slowly melting over his body, yielding to the thick, insistent heat between his legs.

Longing coiled strong and low in his gut. The desire to spread her wider and push inside. To claim her in the most primitive way, naked and unprotected. His hand traced the length of her spine, and she arched and stretched against the pressure, humming with pleasure into their kiss, against his lips, into his mouth.

Alex’s need flexed, stretched, pulsed. He palmed her hips and held her there, hot and wet against him, the worst and the best of tortures. Then with a low growl he rolled her onto her back. “You have no idea how much I want this.” All the primitive fire of his need blazed in his eyes and grazed the edges of his voice as he rocked slowly against her. “To forget myself. To forget to ask about protection.”

His words seemed to take a second to sink in, but then her eyes widened with understanding, alarm, dismay. Alex felt a jolt of remorse. He shouldn’t have admitted to that primitive temptation. Not after last weekend and all they’d talked about. Quickly he rolled away, over to the bedside
table and the condoms he’d bought after leaving the gym.
Just a meal
he’d said, while he prepared for much more.

“I can’t believe I would forget.”

Frowning at the appalled note in her voice, Alex looked back over his shoulder. Her stricken expression caught hard in his chest. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay. My mother taught me better. I always carry protection. Always.”

He came back to her, pressed a kiss to her mouth, another to the pucker of worry between her brows. “I didn’t forget. I’m sorry I sowed that doubt. It was unforgivable. I’ll always protect you, sweetheart.”

Something flickered in her eyes. Doubt? Skepticism? Whatever, he didn’t like it.

“Don’t you trust me? If that’s—”

“It’s not you,” she said quickly. Her gaze rested, dark and serious, on his. “Or maybe it is you. You make me forget my common sense.” She touched a hand to his mouth and her voice grew husky. “You make me forget…everything.”

Her fingers skimmed his lips with silken heat, the sincerity of her words stirred much deeper, richer, hotter. Alex closed his eyes for a second, two, and then he trapped her fingers against his mouth. Opened both eyes and lips as he murmured, “Fade to black.”

“You’re dangerous,” she breathed as he licked across her fingertips. As her quiver of reaction echoed through his body.

“You must have me mixed up with someone else.” Eyes never leaving hers, he took her hand from his mouth. “I’m safe.” Drew it down his body to touch the part of him he’d made safe. “Steady. Dependable. Reliable.”

“Is that how you see yourself?”

“Yes.”

For a second she gazed at him speculatively, then her
fingers slid down his shaft and her look turned hot, wicked, erotic. “I’ll give you safe.” Those teasing fingers wrapped around him and he jerked in response. “But not so steady.”