Taste Me (23 page)

The buttons slithered open, and Scarlett’s guitar-calloused fingertips burrowed under the elastic waistband of his snug boxer briefs. Strumming his length, she dipped her head to the crook of his neck and nibbled.

He thrust heavily into her hands, once. Twice.
Jesus.
If he didn’t slow this down, it would be over before it began. “Let me get these off,” he said.

She stepped back so he could wrestle out of his boots, jeans, and briefs.

“Stop right there,” she said suddenly. “Let me look at you.”

Taking several crucial steps back from the crackling fire, he obeyed. Waited. He shifted his weight impatiently, almost feeling her gaze stroking his butt.

Finally he shot her a look over his shoulder, and she twirled her forefinger in the air, giving him permission to turn around. Before she could treat his twitching dick to the same ogling she’d given his ass, he closed the distance between them. The scraps of candy colored silk she wore were in his way. Lukas edged his big hands under the hem of her camisole and drew it up her narrow torso, felt her breath snag as he avoided her breasts and lifted it over her head.

Shadows from the fire flickered over her pearly skin. He lowered his mouth and traced the shifting patterns with his lips and tongue, skimming over her shoulders and collarbone before taking a meandering route between her breasts.

When he finally licked her pebbled nipple, she clutched his head and held him against her breast. “Don’t move.”

Moving was the very last thing on his mind. When he leaned in, latched on, and suckled, she rose on tiptoe, clutching at him for balance. Before she could entirely right herself, he nudged his foot behind hers and tipped them onto the worn, leather couch in front of the fireplace. He lifted his head for a moment and stared at the picture she made, with her torso arched over the arm of the couch, breasts kicked up into the chilly air, her neck bared, and her hair waterfalling over the edge.

“Lukas,” she moaned, removing her hands from his head to clutch at her own breasts. She mindlessly arched off the leather, bumping her crotch against his mouth.

Jesus.
Covering her hands with his own, he buried his face in the fuchsia silk and wallowed.

Lukas half-expected to be dragged from the dream any minute now, waking lonely in his bed with his dick in his hand. But no, that was the couch leather rasping against his bare skin as he shifted over her. Those were the narrow elastic bands of her panties snapping in his hands. That was Scarlett, spreading her legs for him as he whisked the scrap of silk out of his way.

The firelight turned her pubic hair to flame. He covered her mound with his hand, threaded his fingers possessively through the soft decoration. Her taste already effervesced on his tongue, and he hadn’t touched her with it yet. Lukas closed his eyes momentarily, and then parted her with his big fingers. Her soft, pink center glistened with dew, and when his fingers slicked over her slippery center, Scarlett moaned, cupping his cheek with her hand.

His mate was ready to take him. Lukas thanked the universe for the snarled genetics that allowed him to experience her as no other man could.

Her hands latched onto his hair. “Lukas?”

“Hmm?”

She shuddered as his response vibrated against her most sensitive skin. “Don’t stop. Don’t… leave.”

You’ve got to be kidding.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Against his will, his hips flexed against the leather, trying to get some relief for his aching dick. He had to please her—now—because once she got her hands on him, he’d be a goner.

He held her in place as he licked and teased, taking endless minutes to respond to her every twitch and moan. When he finally gave her the firmer touch she craved, she crossed her cotton-clad ankles behind his head to hold him in place, her nails scratching against his skull. Her body clenched, gathering itself under his mouth and tongue.

She exploded with a sharp cry that rattled the windows in their frames. His vision went gray around the edges as he frantically inhaled, lashing himself to the mast to ride out the storm.

***

When Scarlett opened her eyes, Lukas sprawled over her, leisurely suckling on her hipbone like he had all the time in the world. Even though he outweighed her by more than two to one, his weight felt oddly comfortable, like a favorite blanket.

She swiped at the damp hair at his temples. “Hey.”

He lifted his head and smiled. “Welcome back.”

She tugged at his hair. “You don’t have to look so proud of yourself. So I passed out for a couple of seconds.”

When Lukas levered himself up and got off the couch to put another log on the fire, she missed the weight immediately. He looked really satisfied—far too satisfied for someone who hadn’t come himself.

After poking at the fire and closing the grate, Lukas turned back to her. Backlit by the fire, he looked absolutely huge, hewn from stone and larger than life until you looked for the softness. His small copper nipples nestled in a bed of fine hair, and a tawny trail bisected his lower abs, the hair broadening and coarsening as it reached his cock, which was rampantly and unapologetically erect. A well-healed scar marred the surface of his left thigh, but his legs looked as sturdy as tree trunks. Even his gunboat feet were sexy. His body looked hard as the mountains, and she felt like a boneless jellyfish washed up on the shore.

No wonder no one else had ever measured up.

He moved closer to her, leaning down for a kiss—the softest, most reverent kiss. Her salty musk mixed with the dark sin of his mouth.

She had to touch. His jaw would be clenched one hell of a lot harder by the time she was done with him.

She tugged him down onto the couch with her, painting his tongue with hers. While he was occupied, she cupped his balls in her hand, swallowing down his grunt like caviar. When he tried to pull back, she tightened her grasp. “You said you weren’t going anywhere,” she reminded him. “You can dish it out but you can’t take it?”

Yes, his jaw was definitely clenched.

“Scarlett…” he gritted out, “there’s nothing I want more than your mouth on me. To be inside you.” His eyes wandered her body, and his hands followed. “But… look.”

Scarlett looked at the whisker burns he’d scraped onto her breasts and stomach. Reddened fingertips tattooed her hips, and she had a hell of a hickey on her hipbone. “Yes,” she breathed as desire rocked her anew. “Look.”

He brought his forehead to hers.

Damn that sacrificial streak of his. What could she do that would—a brilliant idea popped into her head.

Oh, this was gonna be good. “
So you think that you hurt me just by touching me.”

He nodded.

“So… don’t. Don’t touch me.” She treated the head of his penis to a wicked twist of her wrist. “You
can’t
touch me.”

She scooted off the couch and knelt between his knees. “You can look, but you can’t touch. Does that make you feel better?” She indicated his hands, clenched into fists at the side of his legs on the leather couch. “Keep them right there. You don’t want to hurt me now, do you?” The mocking smile in her voice didn’t match her schoolmarm expression.

Sacrifice and need warred on his face—but his body was ready for action.

Scarlett sat back on her heels, raising her hands like she was poised in front of a piano. “Where should I start?” She stroked her fingers along the tendons of his feet and ankles, surprising a grunt from him. Wrapping her hand around his lumpy calf muscle, she lifted his foot to her mouth and quickly, sneakily, suckled on his baby toe.

His hands clenched the seat of the couch.

She was going to drive him mad. “Close your eyes, Lukas,” she invited. “Where will I touch you next?”

He obeyed, shuddering as her hot breath puffed against his sensitive anklebone. She nibbled her way up his shinbone to his knee. “Spread your legs,” she whispered. “Give me some room to work.”

He complied, and she rewarded him by skimming her lips and tongue over the gooseflesh pebbling his inner thigh. When she shouldered her way between his legs, pushed them open even wider, his cock jerked against his belly button.

“Do you want to touch yourself, Lukas?” she asked silkily. “You can, you know. You can touch yourself—you just can’t touch me.” She met his eyes with a mischievous dare. “I really wish you would.”

His hands stayed stubbornly clenched at his sides. She laughed against his inner thigh. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”

“You can’t imagine all the ways I want it,” he gritted.

“Even now, you’re denying yourself.” She licked his hip bone, and settled in to give him a hickey to match hers, nestling his cock between her breasts. “I don’t like it when you deny yourself, Lukas.”

It took longer than she thought it would for Lukas to finally stroke his hard flesh against her soft skin. When she abruptly replaced her breasts with her hands, and then took him into her mouth, he clawed welts into the leather with his fingernails.

He tasted like the midnight sea.

His hands lifted toward her head, hesitated, and then fell back onto the couch. Scarlett could feel his eyes on her, watching her explore his most intimate terrain with her mouth.

She licked him from root to tip and back again, taking the scenic route, breathing into the humid crevice where his balls rubbed against the leather couch. His breath stuttered from his throat when she bathed them with her tongue, and finally—
finally
—he lifted his hands from their death grip on the couch, tangling his fingers in her hair.

Scarlett didn’t know how much time had passed when she became aware of Lukas’s body tensing under her mouth and hands, of him pushing back gently against her shoulders. When she eased back, he reached down to the floor for his discarded jeans and got a condom from his wallet.

After donning it, he opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. She crawled up onto his lap, pouring her soul into a blazing kiss. He wound his arms around her—too tightly, but she didn’t care. Raising herself up on her knees, she held his eyes and lowered herself onto him, the broad head of his cock spreading her wide. He put his hands under her ass, stopped her dead, then lifted her slightly, allowing both gravity and her wetness to help him work his way into her tight, clinging sheath.

Up, down. Up, down. Millimeters at a time, until she was writhing in his hands, wiggling and straining against him. “Let go of me, damn you.” She was desperate to take more of him. To take all of him. It was imperative.

He obeyed, sending her sliding down the rest of his cock down to the root. She caught her breath as her clit settled against his pubic bone.

It felt like he’d flipped a switch deep inside her.

Inside them both.

Grabbing her hips in his hands, he pistoned in and out, dragging endless inches against her delicate tissues. “I can’t… stop,” he groaned.

“Don’t you dare.”

So he surged and pounded, wild as the sea, until the anchor finally snapped, freeing them both.

She and Lukas had shared the queen-sized bed after all—not that they’d slept a whole lot.

Lukas was gone. His pillow was cold, but the smell of bacon wafted from the kitchen, so she just might forgive him. What time was it? She’d been so dead to the world she hadn’t even felt him get out of bed.

She stretched and snuggled deeper into the nest of blankets, feeling the tug of every deliciously sore muscle. Did sex qualify as a workout? It must, because she hadn’t done anything else the previous day to earn her exhaustion. After she and Lukas had made love in front of the fire yesterday morning, she’d been diligently lazy for the remainder of the day, either reading in the hammock, or sitting on a chaise lounge writing, soaking up the sun like a solar panel.

Lukas, on the other hand, had done enough work for three people, putting away most of the summer recreational equipment and knocking off most of the winterizing tasks that prepared the cabin for the brutal weather to come. Most of the work required a lot more muscle than she possessed, so Lukas had waved off her feeble offers of help.

Scarlett felt oddly proud that he’d slept through the night—hogging the bed, yes, but given his size, she couldn’t really blame him for that. No cell phone buzzing at all hours. No 3:00 a.m. forays to his desk to catch up on email, or to take a quick call from one of his workers. No conference calls with Gideon Lupinsky and his investigative team, reporting yet another dead end that sent him to his stash of antacids.

Outside, birds chirped, and a dog barked down the shore. A small buzzing motor meant that a fisherman trolled for breakfast—or was it brunch? Then she heard a rhythmic thunk she couldn’t place.

Throwing back the covers, Scarlett got out of bed, hop-scotching from rug to rug to avoid putting her bare feet on the chilly wood floor. Quickly dressing in yesterday’s jeans, cami, and sweatshirt and jamming her feet into a pair of too-large flip-flops, she went to the kitchen. She was absolutely starving.

THUNK.

What was Lukas doing? Scarlett poured coffee into the thermal mug he’d set out for her, snagged a handful of the bacon, and then padded out onto the lake view deck, a big wooden platform without sides that supplied a level surface for the huge grill, an outdoor dining set, and cozy twin Adirondack chairs. To the left side of the deck, a pair of faded board shorts hung on the clothesline strung tautly between two sturdy birch trees. The hummingbird feeder was empty.

THUNK.

Lukas wasn’t down on the dock, or over by the sauna. She walked to the edge of the deck so she could see the broad expanse of shaggy lawn on the north side of the cabin.

And there he was. Out of habit, she stepped back so he wouldn’t see her, but immediately reversed herself. To hell with skulking around corners, because Holy Mother—if a man was going to chop wood looking like that, he deserved to be ogled.

Gauging from the pile of split logs, and the sweatshirt and T-shirt lying in the grass, he’d been at it for a while. The strengthening sun gleamed off his shoulders, and the waistband of his sagging cargo shorts was damp with sweat. His hair was loose but lashed to his head with a faded blue bandana.

She swallowed audibly. There was definitely a cause-and-effect relationship between the line of tortoiseshell hair disappearing into Lukas’s waistband, and the tugging sensation between her thighs.

Of Sasha’s two brothers, why did she have to fall in love with Lukas? Why not Rafe, the easygoing, unabashed sensualist? He’d be far easier to have a relationship with, but some critical alchemy was missing between them.

And it was definitely premature to define this… thing as a relationship. Sure, she’d slept with Lukas a handful of times, each one more memorable than the last. Though she’d mapped every inch of his body with her hands, mouth, and tongue, she hadn’t spent nearly enough time touching him to take his body for granted. Despite these physical intimacies, and the front-row seat she had into his work life, she didn’t have a lot more insight into his thoughts about them now than she did when they first slept together. But she was done hiding from him.

And he’d seen her. He stared, pupils dark and dilated, his nostrils flaring. Her nipples pebbled under her sweatshirt in reaction.

Lukas shot her a look so feral, so frantic, that she moaned aloud. He looked wild enough to do anything. Everything.

With a twist of his wrist, he buried the head of the axe in the stump.

Scarlett ran.

***

The need to chase Scarlett down and pin her to the ground thrummed through him, but, ever the hunter, Lukas stilled, watching her instead. She couldn’t get away from him wearing his brother’s sloppy flip-flops.

She didn’t run far. After scurrying down toward the lake, she veered off to the sauna, disappeared for a couple of minutes, and emerged carrying a bottle of shampoo and an armful of beach towels. Shooting him a look over her shoulder, she sauntered onto the dock, and set the items down.

She was definitely up to something. His mind exploded with sensual possibilities.

He joined her, his steel-toed boots thunking against the wooden railroad ties with each step he took. He brushed against her body before sitting down on the wooden bench at the end of the dock, unlacing his boots and peeling off his socks like he had all the time in the world. Standing, he watched her as he unzipped his cargo shorts over a mother of a hard-on, and dragged them down his body.

She stared. Licked her lips.

Shit.
She was better at this game than he was. Picking up the bottle of shampoo, Lukas threw it out into the water and quickly dove in after it, his gonads shriveling as he swam underwater a good sixty feet before breaking the surface. He needed a little cooling off, or he’d be on her like a shark on chum. The woman turned him into a snarling, unthinking beast. Hell, he might as well wash as long as he was out here. Grabbing the bobbing bottle, he poured some shampoo in his hand. “Come on in, the water’s fine,” he called to Scarlett, standing back on the dock.

What had he been thinking, bringing her here? He’d never be able to sleep in that queen-sized bed again without first thinking about how she’d shared it with him.

What would he do when she decided she’d had enough?

“Hey, be careful. I like that hair too much to see you scrub yourself bald.”

Despite the water temperature, her voice brought him surging again, as strong as when he’d first seen her standing at the corner of the cabin, watching him. He could taste her from here.

Ducking under the water to rinse the soap out of his hair, he surfaced and turned toward her, only to find her stripping off at the end of the dock, like he’d so blithely done a few minutes ago. The bright sunlight caught each wavy filament of hair and lit it like fire, and her skin was so pale it was nearly translucent. He would have to remind her about sunscreen when the sun rose higher.

He’d apply it himself—very, very carefully.

“Keep going,” he murmured, his voice carrying on the water as he swam toward her.

She’d removed her sweatshirt—Rafe’s again, damn it—and stood in jeans and that gorgeous camisole he’d had his hands all over yesterday. She peered up and down the lakeshore.

Reaching the dock, Lukas lifted a hand out of the water and stroked her ankle. “The nearest cabin is over a mile down the shore. No paparazzi here.” His voice softened. Dropped. “It’s just you, me, and… the wildlife.”

Scarlett glanced at his hand, latched around her ankle like a manacle. He could taste her excitement sparkling on his tongue. She dragged the camisole up over her body and shook out her hair as she dropped the scrap of silk to the rough wooden dock. A loon called, and the scent of creosote filled the air as the railroad ties used to build the dock heated in the sun. He was certain that every bit of the hunger, lust, and awe he felt was etched on his face for her to read, but he didn’t care.

“Keep going,” he repeated, tightening his grasp on her ankle.

Goose bumps sheeted her body. Holding his avaricious gaze, she removed her jeans and stood in the sun’s spotlight wearing only purple lace panties that displayed a hell of a lot more than they covered. Sliding her thumbs into the lacy waistband, she slowly dragged the useless scrap of silk down her thighs.

Jesus, was there anything more gorgeous on this earth? Lukas gobbled her long, slim form with his eyes. Where to look first? Her teacup breasts, their raspberry tips perking up before his eyes? The slender waist? The curving hips? Her luxuriously full bush, a humid wilderness he yearned to explore?

Throttle it back.
“C’mon.” He extended his hand. “Bath time.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How cold is the water?”

“Feels great,” he said cheerfully before tugging at her ankle and pulling her in.

Her shriek bounced and echoed, hurting his ears and driving birds from the trees, but even as she hit the chilly water, he felt her joy and delight sparkle into him. She quickly surfaced and climbed up his chest, latching onto his body like an octopus.

“Damn you,” she gasped, slinging ropes of long, wet hair out of her face. “It’s freezing!”

Lukas grinned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer to the heat pumping off his body. She twined her arms and legs more tightly around him, so tightly that no water molecule could find its way between them. Her nipples scraped his chest. Helpless, he lowered his head.

Scarlett suddenly yelped. “Seaweed!”

“You’re such a girly girl,” he sighed as she shimmied even higher to get away from the slippery plants. Nope, nothing was going to happen here and now, not with algae twining its way around Scarlett’s ankle, or with her teeth chattering from cold rather than pleasure. When he slipped inside of her, he wanted every bit of her attention.

“Come on. As long as you’re wet, let me wash your hair,” he said. “And then I’ll start the fire in the sauna for later.”

Her eyes heated and locked onto his.

Yes, later.

***

Scarlett slipped the headphones off and looked up from her notebook. Clouds were rolling in, and the sun had dropped just enough in the western sky that despite the day’s unseasonable heat, her borrowed bikini top and shorts weren’t quite warm enough anymore.

The notebook pages fluttered in the breeze. She’d written twelve pages of puke-it-up lyrics since sitting down after lunch. Yeah, they needed serious editing, but at least she now had something to fix.

And she was uncomfortably horny. Lukas had no idea she’d been listening to a recording of him moaning for most of the afternoon.

After washing her hair—the most sexually loaded shampoo she’d ever received—Lukas had simply lifted her out of the water onto the dock, bundled her in a beach towel, then suggested she relax. He’d started the sauna, the scent of the wood stove becoming more pungent and evocative as the day went on. After raking leaves together, Lukas had mowed the lawn, put away the kayak, taken down the badminton net, removed the motors from the boats, and drained everything of gasoline for winter storage, while she napped like a cat in the sun. Mid-afternoon, the sound of him firing up one of the snowmobiles had awakened her, and then she started to write.

And they’d watched each other.

Now, from her position up on the deck near the cabin, she had a great view of Lukas finally taking a break, fishing down on the dock. He still wore nothing but those ratty cargo shorts that seemed to drop lower and lower on his hips with each hour that passed—not that she was complaining, because she now had a primo view of those lickable dimples where his lower back met the curve of his butt.

It was a miracle she could hum a thing when her tongue kept falling out of her mouth.

Lukas swore without heat as the fish he’d been slowly reeling in spit up the hook. “Took the bait too, you son of a bitch,” he muttered, reaching into the white Styrofoam container at his feet and extracting another leech. Muscles shifted as he put the squirming leech on the hook and lifted the fishing rod over his head. With a flick of his wrist, line sang out of the reel, and the hook and leech hit the surface of the water with a soft plop about thirty yards out.

The tension lines around Lukas’s eyes had smoothed out a little, and regardless of what happened with their relationship, Scarlett was glad that he’d gotten this time away. He’d needed this as much as she had. Before she moved in with him, she had no idea he worked with the police as often as he did. It was after those calls from Gideon Lupinsky that Lukas most often reached for the Pepto-Bismol bottle.

Before last night, she hadn’t seen him get more than three hours of sleep at a time. But last night, she’d worn him out.

When she looked down to the dock again, she found him watching her with a glint in his eye. “Wanna help bait the hook?”

“Yeah, right.” They both laughed. Scarlett’s loathing for leeches was well-established. The screeching teenage hissy fit she’d pitched the one time a bloodsucker had innocently attached itself to her ankle had cracked most of the cabin’s windows. “Let’s not risk it. But I might be able to help.” After theatrically clearing her throat, she sang a series of high, clear notes that shivered over the water.

The fishing rod yanked in his hands, and he quickly set the hook.

While she mentally planned their menu, lightning flashed off to the west. The clouds were black and blue against the darkening sky, and thunder grumbled softly. Earlier in the day, the weathercaster on the scratchy local AM radio station had predicted a chance of thunderstorms, but… this was more than a chance. The front was coming in fast. “Lukas!” she called, pointing to the sky.

“Damn. Be up in a minute.”

She quickly rose from her chair and started buttoning things down. Folding the chaise, she put it inside the sliding glass door along with Sigmund, her recorder, and her notebook. Traveling the perimeter of the cabin, she closed and latched all the windows, closed the fireplace flue, and then went back outside to yank the flapping beach towels off the clothesline.

The lightning was getting close, and Lukas was landing a fish.