The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) (34 page)

She found herself shifting to a rhythm that pressed her breasts into his palms—and gloried in the connection.

Her lashes had fallen; raising her lids, she looked down into his eyes. Watched him watching her, watched him drinking in her pleasure and delight.

She knew he wouldn’t ask, much less move to do it; she had to do it herself.

She released his hands, reached down, found the hem of her chemise, then in one smooth movement, she drew it up and off over her head. After freeing her arms, she tossed the chemise away. She’d expected to feel his hands, temporarily removed, immediately return to her bared skin; she’d steeled herself for that intimate shock, but it didn’t eventuate.

She looked at his face—and saw something close to reverence in his expression. Something akin to worship as his gaze traveled over her, from her bare shoulders to her breasts, swollen and flushed, their peaks rosy and so tightly ruched, down over her midriff to the indentation of her waist, then over the subtle curve of her taut stomach and the flaring of her hips, down to the triangle of dusky curls that screened her most private flesh.

His hands had fallen to her knees. Now they gently gripped, then he skated those large, hard hands up the smooth expanse of her thighs—to her hips. He gripped, long fingers splaying around and over to caress the curves of her bottom.

She closed her eyes and let her head tip back as heat and desire, love and passion, expanded and swirled higher and higher within her.

She could barely breathe for the force of the sensation.

Caleb stared at her. He’d never in his life seen any sight so fine. So entrancing.

So arousing.

He wasn’t just hard; beneath the inadequate restriction of the sheet, he was as rigid as iron and aching.

But he still had time for this. For her.

To fully absorb whatever this was and to follow wherever she wanted to steer it.

He was hers, and he’d known that from the moment he’d first seen her—in the jungle, gathering fruit with Diccon.

And she’d been his from that moment as well, even if she hadn’t known it.

He had to wonder if she knew—and accepted—that now. Was that what this meant?

If there was one thing he’d learned through all his many encounters with the opposite sex, it was that, despite his often quite firm convictions, he rarely understood what they were thinking.

She, and this, and even more what he was determined would be were too important to chance to his not-always-accurate understanding.

When she caught her breath and looked at him, although acutely aware of the heated compulsion already racing through his veins, he forced himself to meet her eyes and ask, “Where are you taking this—and more importantly, why?”

He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t need to think, that the answer came tripping from her tongue. They’d both just gone through a life-and-death experience—both survived that salutary shock. He knew what that did to one, how it focused the mind on the things that truly mattered. And how what was revealed could drive one.

So he wasn’t surprised when, sirenlike, she licked her lips and somewhat breathlessly said, “Life is for living, but it’s also short. We need to—and should—seize every moment and live it to the full.”

His gaze locked with hers, he tilted his head. “That’s my philosophy.”

She nodded. “And I’m embracing it.” Her hands fell to his chest; her fingers curled unconsciously, as if to hold him. But she didn’t look away, didn’t break their connection. “You told me what you want, what you intend to offer. You were clear, while I...I wasn’t.”

A hint of self-deprecation slid through her eyes. “I wasn’t clear because I wasn’t truly certain, not in my thoughts, although my emotions—my heart—knew better. So I didn’t respond to your declaration then, but I am now.”

Her eyes didn’t leave his, but the hazel darkened, her gaze growing more intent as she said, “So this? This is me joining you. This is me joining my life to yours—irrevocably and forever. Because I want us—you, me, and both of us together—to have every last possible reason to fight for what we might have. To fight and survive, here and beyond. Because, like you, I firmly believe that the future we can both see will be worth it.”

He wasn’t about to argue. His heart swelled; he had to haul in a huge breath just to accommodate the expansion, or so it felt.

But she hadn’t finished. She leaned closer; her head hanging over his, she looked into his eyes. “So I’m embracing your philosophy, and I’m embracing you. With all my heart. With all my soul and everything I have in me.” She tilted her head. “Because I’m not frightened anymore. Because I’ve learned that there are far worse things to be frightened of than taking a risk on love. Now I know I have the fortitude to look death in the face—and still fight—I know I have the courage to embrace you, to embrace love. To seize yours and make it mine.” She lowered her face until their lips—heated and hungry and yearning—were less than an inch apart. “And to give you mine with an open heart.”

He didn’t wait for more. He raised his head, set his lips to hers, and claimed.

She welcomed him and urged him on, her tongue dueling with his. She lowered her body to hover over his, swaying seductively, and the sensation of her breasts, heated lush silken flesh, brushing tantalizingly over his chest sent fire racing through his veins.

Heat rose like a furnace wherever they touched. He couldn’t get enough of the feel of her smoothness caressing his rougher skin. His hands roved her back, greedily exploring the gentle dips, the satin planes, then with a will of their own, they swept over her hips, and he filled his palms with the ripe curves of her bottom.

He kneaded, and the flames leapt higher.

Then she undulated, pressing her hips to his, and the conflagration inside them roared.

Passion spilled through them, an incendiary elixir that ignited them both.

Her hands turned as greedy as his, searching, caressing, arousing. He found the softness between her thighs and delved, and she gasped and pressed down on his hand. He responded, sliding first one, then two fingers into her softness, probing, then stroking the sleek slick flesh, and she quickly found her rhythm. She rode each and every thrust, her body shifting and swaying over his in a shatteringly evocative dance. And through their kiss, through the tension gripping her body, through the pressure of her thighs gripping his hips, she wordlessly begged for more.

Demanded more. She reached between them and closed her small hand about his erection, squeezed, then stroked.

His reaction blanked his brain.

Before he could think again, she broke from the kiss, reared up, positioned the broad head of his erection at her entrance, and sank down.

Or tried to.

Despite the scalding slickness, she was untried, and he...

He shook his head. Then realized she couldn’t see; her eyes were tightly closed, and she was biting her lower lip.

“Sweetheart, I appreciate the sentiment.” His voice was so gravelly, so low, so starved for air he wasn’t sure she would make out his words. But he gamely forged on, not entirely sure from which brain the words were coming, “But that’s not going to work this time.” He gripped her hips, half lifted her, and rolled.

Only then remembered his head wound, but to his intense relief, no adverse reaction assailed him.

Instinct surged, driven by the new position, by the sensation of her nubile body caressing his and the firm sliding grip of her thighs along his flanks; he settled her beneath him and rose above her, sinking his palms into the pillows on either side of her head. He braced his arms and looked down on the face of a madonna lost in lust.

Angelic, yet invested with so much passion that the sight locked the breath in his laboring chest.

Then she opened her eyes, and desire blazed in the hazel. With her gaze locked with his, she moved—deliberately—to draw him to her. Inviting him into her body, into her softness, into her warmth.

As she’d said, into her embrace.

For a fleeting second, he hung there and simply drank in the sight. Caught in wonder and trapped by hunger and the searing realization that they stood on the cusp of a forever he’d only recently glimpsed. He was breathing as hard, as desperately as she. The hot honey of her welcome, of her need, coated the engorged head of his erection, and he wanted nothing more than to simply sink home, yet it seemed he had to ask, “Are you truly sure?” He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and managed to grind out, “Please say yes.”

“Yes. I want you—now.”

That was all he needed to hear—exactly what he needed to hear. With every rein he possessed gripped tightly in a mental fist, he kept his eyes closed and eased slowly—so slowly he thought he would go mad—into her tight channel.

Scalding velvet softness engulfed him. He pressed further—and felt the tearing rupture of her maidenhead, heard the quick intake of her pained breath.

He froze and held still, waiting,
waiting
...then he felt her ease beneath him, sensed the first faint stirrings of resurgent desire, and let the reins slide. Just a little.

Just enough to push home, then withdraw and ease into her slick heat once more.

Five strokes, and she was riding with him.

Ten, and she was driving him on, the cadence of her sobbing breaths a rapid tempo whipping him urgently on.

Kate gripped the bulging, flexing muscles of his arms, sank her fingertips in and clutched tight, desperately using the contact to anchor her as passion, and he, whirled her on. Into and through a landscape painted by passion and shaped by desire, one she’d never imagined could be, where every rasp of his hair-dusted limbs against her smooth skin sent a riot of sensations rampaging through her. But that was nothing to the until-then-unimaginable feeling of him filling her, stretching and impaling her. So large and steely, so hard—and so astonishingly and amazingly welcome.

Her body had yearned for this—for this closeness, this intimacy. Now she understood. Now she finally comprehended where passion and desire could lead—to another plane of connection, another level of fulfillment.

But as the heat and desperation built, as the flames that seemed to have enveloped them both flared ever higher, she knew she—and he—needed more. Something more. She caught her breath on an almost painful hitch, then surrendered to instinct, released his arms, and reached for him.

She wrapped her arms around as much of him as she could and pulled him down. To her.

He grunted and obliged. Without breaking the rhythm of their joining—something that now seemed vital and critical to them both—he came down on his elbows.

The change in sensation—the instant escalation—as his hard body rode directly over hers, the heavy muscles of his chest abrading her breasts, the hair at his groin more definitely riding over her mons, the altered angle as he thrust harder and deeper into her, sent her tension rocketing, ratcheting tighter and tighter.

Driven by a need she could never deny, she clamped her hands about his face and drew his lips to hers. Wantonly lured him back into an exchange even more fevered than before.

He plunged into her mouth and into her body. Again and again, to their own pounding beat.

She gasped through the kiss, clung, and poured all she was into urging him on.

Abruptly, a wave of intense sensation caught her up and swept her high.

High and still higher. Until she knew nothing beyond the coruscating delight of an intense pleasure that built and built.

Then sensation imploded in a starburst of brilliant, sharply exquisite feelings that streaked down every nerve, shot through every vein, then slowly sank, dissolving into her flesh.

Leaving her floating in a bliss-filled void.

One, two, three more deep thrusts and he joined her. She heard his low, guttural groan, felt the spill of his seed warm inside her.

Then he slumped, his weight pressing her into the bed.

And still she floated.

She reached up and stroked the hair at his nape, then gently touched his cheek.

Caleb felt that touch, that wordless blessing, to his bones.

It took effort, but he managed to lift his head enough to look into her face.

The madonna remained, although she now looked thoroughly ravished—and thoroughly sated.

Then her lashes rose, and he found himself looking into hazel eyes lit by a glow impossible to mistake. He let himself fall, let himself sink—let himself drown.

Then her lips, swollen and rosy, lightly curved.
“This,”
she murmured, “was everything I wanted. Everything I needed.” Her tone was one of blissful wonder.

Her lids lowered. Her fingers stroked his cheek one last time. He only just caught her final whisper.

“I needed to, and wanted to, share the wonder, the joy, the bliss...to experience the sheer power of
this
with you.”

He felt her slide into slumber, sated and replete.

Feeling the same lassitude creeping over him, he tried to do the gentlemanly thing and relieve her of his weight, but even though she slept, the instant he tried to move, she gripped him with her arms, with her legs—with her sheath.

He surrendered, slumped into her arms, and let sleep—and her—have him.

* * *

As it happened, through the night and into the morning, Kate had him several times.

They woke every few hours, but she took up the challenge and, on each occasion, succeeded in keeping him abed and largely horizontal.

She felt a ridiculous sense of achievement when, finally, they emerged from the medical hut in response to the call for the midday meal. Neither had got all that much sleep, but he was walking steadily, with his eyes alert and his wits about him.

As for herself, she felt like a new woman. As if overnight, through the heated hours, she’d matured—and perhaps she had.

She’d taken an irrevocable step. She’d put her faith in love and put her hand in his.

And from now until they died, she and he would face life together.

She didn’t need to ask to know his mind.

Together they would fight, first to survive, and then to thrive—to claim the future they wanted and, even more now than before, were determined to make their own.