Rescue Me (8 page)

"I hate being bored, don't you?" she whispered, tracing the creases beside his eyes, then the shape of his nose, then trailed down to Braille his mouth, her touch soft as air.

Sam tugged at the zipper at the base of her throat and started easing it down inch by slow inch. Her pupils dilated. "Intolerable," he told her, his voice thick.

"Any cards in that pack of yours?" she asked, her hand tangling with his as she started pulling the zipper down on his suit. The backs of their hands brushed as their movements mirrored one another. Each zipper parted, one tooth at a time.

"Nope." He bent his head the few inches separating them and skimmed his mouth over hers. Her lips parted and she welcomed him inside. She tasted… like heaven. Everything Sam had ever wanted was right here in his arms.

Beth touched his lower lip with the damp tip of her tongue making Sam's breath snag in his chest. He pressed his advantage and licked back, tasting the sweetness of her mouth as if he'd never kissed her before. After waiting so long for this, he didn't want to rush it. Tamping down the primitive urge to take her without fanfare, he kissed her tenderly, with all the pent-up longing he'd been suppressing for a year and a half.

He kissed her lingeringly, succulently, enjoying the hell out of the tastes and textures of her mouth and the increasingly urgent sound of her breathing. Beth reciprocated, her cool fingers stroking his face,ratcheting up his need for her even more.

She broke away, panting slightly, a flush riding her cheek bones. "I suppose teaching me to fire one of your guns will draw a crowd?"

"The four- and two-legged variety." He used his thumb andpinky to spread the two halves of the deep V

apart to expose the velvety roundness of her breasts. Small and plump and absolutely perfect. Her nipples were the same pale coral as her lips, and already hard and responsive, just waiting for him to taste them.

She spread her fingers on his chest, kneading the muscles, then slid her hand across hispecs to his nipple.

"Swimming is probably out of the question?" she asked as she rubbed a thumb over the sensitive peaks.

He pinched her nipple, making her moan low in her throat, then she reciprocated, doing the same to him.

Sam grit his teeth at the sweet sensation and used his wrist to push her zipper down another few inches.

"Leeches."

"Nasty." Above their heads her fingers tightened in his, as her free hand wondered randomly over his chest, combing through his chest hair, making him crazy. She licked the seam of his lips, then whispered in a sultry voice, "Wannaplay doctor?"

Chapter Seven

"God yes." His voice was husky, his eyes dark with desire.Elizabeth thought his hand shook a little as he gently touched her cheek. "You be the patient first. I've waited too damn long to see you naked. And if you put your hands on me now I'll go off like a rocket."

"How long?"

"Eight inches?"

Elizabethlaughed. "How long have you wanted to see me naked?"

"Eighteen months, six days, and nineteen hours."

"That's almost as long as we've known one another."

"It's
exactly
as long as we've known one another."

Her nipples pebbled and ached. She wanted him to touch her so badly. She'd imagined his touch on her breasts, dreamed erotic dreams where Sam kissed her body everywhere. She wanted that. She wanted him. "Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, pressing her hand over his where it curved around her breast to show him how she wanted him to touch her. He didn't need instruction. The pressure, the pull and caress, were perfect. He kneaded and stroked until her breath caught.

"You were married." He bent his head to take one eager nipple in his mouth, then sucked hard enough to make her moan. She speared her fingers into his hair to hold his head there.

"Then," he said huskily, trailing his tongue across the upper curve of her left breast. "You were talking divorce." His teeth surrounded the nipple, teasing and tasting untilElizabeth 's hips came up off the floor. It was hard to draw in a breath.

"Then you
got
the divorce." Sam pulled the zipper down on her suit as far it would go, then skimmed his flat hand down her belly. His fingers slid beneath her skimpy blue cotton panties to touch her. "Then." His voice was thick as she shifted to allow him access to her wet heat. He slipped two fingers inside her, andElizabeth 's breath snagged. "Because I'm such a far-thinking guy, I waited a full,
interminable
, year to be sure I wasn't going to be your transitional lover."

She reached down and urged him to exert pressure where she needed it. "Rob and I had a very amicable divorce." It was hard to think, let alone try to talk. "I—I—Deeper. Yes, like that…Ahhh —I didn't
need
a t-transitional guy. But oh, God, Sam I wanted you too. From the moment I saw you." He withdrew his hand, and for a momentElizabeth lay there stunned. "Don't stop!"

"Gottaget naked. Now." He finished unzipping, then pulled the tight-fitting fabric off his shoulders and down his body.

After a shaky start,Elizabeth struggled out of hers too. And the only way she managed that was taking her eyes off Sam's cut abs and the swirls of crisp dark hair on his tanned chest. She wanted to lick him all over.

"I must admit," she said, sitting up to yank down the legs—pretending that they were having a normal conversation only so that they didn't jump each other's bones instantly—"that—" God, they were so ready for each other that she wondered if they might jettison off the branches supporting the tent. She was in such a hurry to get naked, her hands shook.

"When my husband told me he'd met someone else I was hurt." She kicked the entire black suit off and turned to see him watching her, his dark eyes gleaming in the false dusk inside the tent.Elizabeth placed both hands on his chest and pushed him onto his back. She followed him down. Using him like a very hard, not particularly comfortable, mattress. It was sheer bliss feeling his skin against hers.

"Not a gaping wound hurt," she told him, nibbling a path from his throat to his chin, while his large hands skimmed down her back. "Because," she licked the curve of his lower lip, "we didn't have that kind of passion. But hurt that after I'd worked so hard to make our marriage work, he'd gone off and found someone else." She opened her mouth over his and found his tongue. She felt as though sparklers fired off in her blood.

While she kissed her way to his ear, he scooped her hair off her neck and started tasting the tendons there, making her shudder. "Then you walked into the clinic that day in the middle of all my personal drama and I forgot everything."

Elizabeth's mind went blank as his tongue traced an erotic path up the side of her throat and then swirled inside her ear.

"A-All that testosterone, a black eye, your arm bleeding. And even though I thought you'd been in some skanky bar fight." She smiled at his growl of mock outrage. "I thought you were the hottest, sexiest man I'd ever seen."

"Yeah?" he whispered directly into her ear.

She shuddered. "Oh, yeah." It had been lust at first sight. "I thought you weren't interested." Struggling to make sense of her failing marriage, building a new practice, and paying off monumental med school loans,Elizabeth had been broadsided by her visceral and blatantly sexual attraction to a stranger when her

life was already in an upheaval. She'd put Sam away to think about late at night. And think about him she had. With the way her life was going at the time, she was almost relieved that he hadn't felt the same immediate attraction that she had. If both them felt the same way, she imagined that it would have been impossible not to act on it. By his apparent disinterest,Elizabeth had managed to stay true to her marriage vows, however tenuous they'd been.

Her brain was fogging. Sam flipped her over. It wasn't easy, the tent was barely big enough for the two of them. He leaned over her, his fingers tangled in her hair, his gaze hot, his thumb making lazy circles at her temple. "That kiss I planted on you six months ago didn't give you a head's up?"

"It gave me
pheromones
and
blood pressure
up," she assured him, tracing the curve of his smile. Even though her body pulsed and throbbed, and she was wet for him, their lazy, we-have-all-the-time-in-the-world conversation was drawing out the finish unbearably. "But that was the only indication that you even knew I
existed
."

His fingers skimmed up to cup her breast where it plumped against his chest.Elizabeth shifted to grant him access to her nipple. He squeezed it this side of exquisite pain, then stroked his thumb over the erect peak. The sensation shot directly to every nervecenter in her body.

"You didn't notice I was practically stalking you?" He demanded, kneeing her thighs apart.

"I
did
notice that you were pretty much everywhere I was, yes. But you never came over and talked to me. Never asked me out. You kissed me once and then I didn't hear from you again. You disappeared for amon —"

He slipped inside her. Hot and hard. "Ah. You noticed."

"Wait. Don't move," she begged, the sensation too strong, too sweet. She wanted him so much her heart ached with the need. Here he was, this man that had set her pulses racing for what seemed like forever.

Here he was, SamPelton , with his hips spreading her thighs wide and his warrior eyes gleaming as he looked down into hers.YesYesYES !

"Of course I noticed." She tried to speak around a pant as she started to rock her hips against his. "One minute every where I looked there—
Ah
—There you were, then you kissed me like there was no tomorrow and
disappeared
for a month. It was enough to… give… a girl a freaking… complex."

His penis flexed inside her, andElizabeth moaned, then bit him on the shoulder. The pleasure he was giving her was indescribably, both sharp and sweet. Her body tightened unbearably around him as he threw back his head, the tendons in his neck showing in sharp relief.

"I was out of the country on an—op." Sam pumped his hips andElizabeth made a soft appreciative sound in the back of her throat, stroking her hand down his back, then digging her nails into his hard butt cheek as he hit his stride. "And I was waiting—I'm trying to draw this out, sweetheart. But I'm going to go off like Vesuvius in about a second if you don't stop moving under me like that. Lie real still—I was waiting the year out."

She couldn't keep still, everything they did pushed her higher and higher, untilElizabeth didn't know where she stopped and Sam began. Her internal muscles contracted around his penis buried deep inside her. His hands were gentle as he stroked her back and her behind in strokes that he
maybe
thought were soothing, but were instead making her crazy with lust, love, and need all jumbled together.

Sam's body was a furnace above hers, sweat gluing their skin together as Sam skimmed his hand down her side, then touched her intimately where they were joined. She shifted slightly to give him better access, and thought,
We fit together perfectly
, and said out loud, "Yes, God yes, I love when you touch me there. Just like that. Just. Like. That." And—
I love you
.

Elizabethloved the taste of his skin, loved the scrape of his jaw against her breast, loved the smell of him.

Loved the satiny feel of his tanned skin and crisp hair beneath her marauding fingers.

"I figured after that—Hmm." She bit his earlobe, and he groaned his pleasure, so she did it again. She felt his desire, and it doubled her own. "I figured that you weren't following me at all. It was a string of co-coincidences. You took my dormant libido from stalled to overdrive, then—poof. You were gone.

When you came back it was if that kiss had never happened. I knew you weren't
shy
, so I was convinced you just weren't that into me."

"Make no mistake," he said, his voice raw with emotion as his thrusts became more aggressive, as if he couldn't wait another second.

To hell trying to postpone this.Elizabeth was just as eager. She needed it
now
. "Do it
hard
? she told him, wrapping her legs around his narrow hips and locking her ankles in the small of his back. She wanted to devour him, and set her open mouth on the thundering pulse on his throat.

"I was into you. In every way a man can be into a woman I was in… to you." He plunged deep, sending them both over the edge in a shower of sensation that lasted a long, long time.

Sam kissed her shoulder. "Our ride's here."

"Hmmm." She stretched, then wrapped her arms around his neck. "I thought we had a late checkout."

She took a little nip on his lower lip. "How'd you manage to get dressed without waking me up?"

"Special ops training. Up and at 'em, sweetheart. We have a reservation at another hotel. One with a soft bed, and no roommates."

"Woohoo."

Her smile zinged through Sam's blood stream like liquid sunshine. Wanting to make love to her again wasn't an option, unfortunately. He was looking forward to making love to her for hours on end with no interruption, and without being distracted listening for the bad guys.

Their time would come to laze in bed all day. This wasn't that day.

Looked like they were going to get out of here in one piece.
If
Thadiwe's men weren't smarter than the average chimp and had managed to elude him.
If
they got down river unscathed.
If
the hidden chopper hadn't been discovered and sold for parts. None of those things would have fazed Sam before. Having Beth with him changed everything.

"Here." He handed her theDEET . "The mosquitoes are having a freaking convention out there."

He slid toward the tent opening and yanked down the zipper. "I'll wait outside to give you room."

"Stay. I love being in tight quarters with you."