Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(31)

Her legs twined around his, trapping him deeper. She bucked and wiggled to get him exactly where she wanted him, and he followed every cue almost before she gave it. More tears slid out, but she no longer cared about the makeup mudslide. She whipped her head from side to side, whimpering with every heavy lunge.

He cupped her head, stared into her eyes, and kissed her. A kiss to draw her soul out of her body, but he gave her his own in return. And the possessive, obsessive chorus of mine, mine, mine with each frenzied stroke—it was coming from her now, too. He was hers. All hers.

Things got incoherent after that, yet never had anything seemed so real, so vivid, so clear. They were gasping, yelling. The blanket tumbled with them as they slid off the couch and thudded to the floor, Bruno on the bottom. He slammed his arm into the coffee table, shoving it out of the way. It teetered, tipped.

She clawed the blanket off, wanting no barriers, and rode him hard, clutching his arms, her head flung back in pounding abandon. She was fever hot, glowing like a coal in the dark netherworld of that chilly apartment. He jolted upward against her, his fingers digging into her ass. Every thud of contact sharpened her wild, driving need.

He flipped her, pinned her, and she was on the bottom again, his tongue thrusting, twining with hers, his hips surging, heaving—

Pleasure ripped through them both, violent, relentless.

It left them a wreck of tangled, sweat-soaked limbs, gasping for breath. Flattened and limp. Sweet devastation.

Sometime later, the sweat had cooled. Bruno moved, feebly, to extricate himself. He slid out, leaving her collapsed, abandoed, alone.

And suddenly, horribly sad.

She braced herself for the moment of truth. What the truth was, she didn’t know, but it was sure to be anticlimactic.

Bruno dropped his head into his hands. “Mother of God,” he muttered. “That was . . . what just happened?”

She pushed herself up onto her knees. She’d lost a stocking in the frenzy. The other dangled off her ankle. “I, ah, don’t know.”

“Did I hurt you?” He sounded like he was holding his breath.

“No,” she said hastily. “God, no. Not at all. On the contrary.”

He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

She was hit by an unexpected wave of tenderness. Aw. He was an awfully sweet guy, totally apart from the celestial-sex-god thing. She reached to touch his face. He was so warm, the skin so supple, the stubble scraping her fingertips. She pulled away before he had a chance to reject the gesture. Didn’t want to embarrass the man to death.

He caught her hand, yanked her close, and suddenly they were kissing again, like horny teenagers in a backseat. It made something ache and burn in her chest. He clamped her against him, silently demanding intimacy of a magnitude she’d never even known existed.

But she knew it now. Like an eye inside her had opened up, revealing unheard of emotions. Dangers, too. Like she needed new ones.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop kissing him. Her arms were around his neck, strangling him, but he seemed to like it. She could feel his lips smiling as they moved over hers. “So we got rid of one dumb taboo,” he said. “Want to take a run at the other one?”

She giggled, like a silly girl. “Um, ah . . . you mean—”

“Letting me go down on you. You wouldn’t regret it.”

She hid her red face, her out-of-control, shaking giggles against his neck, tasting the salt tang of his sweat. “You better let me catch my breath,” she said. “That was intense.”

His body stiffened. “Too rough, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”

The silence sagged with the weight of all the things that were still too dangerous to say to him, but she had to find a way.

Her imagination just couldn’t quite get past this wall.

She took a deep breath. All she could do was wait for the right moment. God knows, it would be no chore to stick to him like glue.

“So. Ah. What now?” she asked, hesitantly.

His hand cupped her breast, lazily fondling her. The caress made shimmers of light move through her, sparkling inside her very skin. “I have some ideas,” he said. “It depends on you.”

“What depends on me?”

“Here’s my proposal. I take you to my condo. I call in sick to work. We sit together in the Jacuzzi, you on my lap. Madly tongue kissing.”

She giggled, weakly. “Um. Sounds good so far.”

“Then, stark naked and fully erect, I cook you breakfast. An omelet with everything but the kitchen sink, pan-fried potatoes, sausages, fresh orange juice, cheddar scones, coffee. We eat and go into the bedroom. Then I spend the rest of the day making you come.”

“Ah,” she whispered. “Wow.”

“And we take it from there,” he concluded cheerfully.

She was smiling like an idiot. Happiness was bubbling up inside of her, and it scared her. She had no place to put it. It had nowhere to go, no room to grow. No right to exist in her life, as it currently was.

It would turn to pain soon enough. Everything did. But who the f*ck cared right now? This might be the last fabulous time she ever had. Might as well go out on a high note.

“Sounds like a plan.” Her voice a breathless squeak.

They dressed quietly, not looking at each other. Shyness had descended upon them again, and it felt odd, after such intense intimacy. He lifted an eyebrow as she stuffed her hair back up under the black wig and perched the cat-eye glasses back onto her nose.