Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(93)

He didn’t have the strength to do the right thing. Even to protect her. And he loved her. What a dickhead. Weak and selfish.

“If I dream, you know to get the hell away from me, right?” he persisted. “Don’t try to wake me, don’t try to touch me. Clear? Got it?”

“Sure.” She smiled mysteriously over her shoulder. “I promise. No physical contact of any kind. Scout’s honor.”

He squinted at her. “You’re messing with me.”

She started to laugh. “This isn’t fair. What good is it to have a man tell me he loves me if he won’t touch me, and won’t sleep with me, and won’t put out? Screw that!”

“You haven’t told me if you love me back,” he said.

Fuck. He chickened out as soon as the words were out of his mouth and lunged to put his over her mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to you. It just popped out.”

She yanked his hand down. “But I—”

“Sometimes I talk too much.” He kissed her as he pushed her down onto the cold iron steps of the spiral staircase, caged by the curving bars of the railing. He pushed her legs open. “It’s an impulse-control thing. I’m working on it. And I’ll put out, big-time. Believe me.”

He sank down, put his mouth to her. She protested, giggling and squirming, but he was fiercely intent upon knocking her off whatever train of thought she might have been traveling.

He cupped her mound with the V of his index finger and forefinger and lifted it, parting her * lips and making the taut, rosy bud of her clit pop pertly out of its hood. Ready for worship and giddy distraction from thinking. Thinking was a bad idea for stressed-out girls. Better to be whimpering, thrashing, coming. Getting a clue of the advantages of being loved by him, one of those being lots of prolonged, enthusiastic tongue action. He just could not get enough of her. Her taste and texture and scent. The softness of her inner thigh against his cheek. Plump, tender * folds, drenched with salt-sweet girl juice. He suckled her clit, finger f*cking her, delving for secret hot spots.

It took a few minutes, but he felt when the tension in her body changed from resistance to urgency. Her quivering thighs were clamped around his head; her snug channel squeezed hungrily around his fingers. He put on the brakes a couple times, made her wait, fingernails raking his shoulders. It made him smile against her juicy muff.

And then, the strong, eager pulse of her * around his fingers as pleasure jolted through her. Sweet satisfaction.

He wiped his face. “So. We were going to discuss ramifications?”

She could not move. He scooped her up, tossing her over his shoulder. Her body vibrated with silent laughter.

The bed at the top of the stairs was recessed into a space with three big windows on each side, so that one would feel like they were in a bed that was floating on air. He tossed the comforter back and set her down on the snowy white expanse of the sheet.

He sat down beside her. Slid his hand into hers. Waited.

She sat there, catching her breath and hiding her face against his shoulders. After a few minutes, she looked up. “It occurs to me that this crazy situation might just have a silver lining,” she announced.

He gripped her thigh, high up, where he could circle his fingertip delicately around the top of her sensitive slit. “No! Really?”

“I didn’t mean just sex,” she said tartly. “Believe it or not.”

“Guess I’m not trying hard enough,” he remarked.

She batted his hand away. “Shhh. What I mean is, you finally have a chance to put it right. To straighten out the great painful dilemmas of your existence. When do people ever get to do that? Never, Bruno. Most of us just have to suck it up. Whatever our baggage is.”

Suck it up. Yeah, that’s what he’d done, for eighteen years. “Aside from the question of whether we survive this great opportunity, what the hell’s with you? You working on that glass-half-full attitude again?”

She slid off the bed and to her knees, facing him. “You bet I am,” she said throatily. “And I am going to help you do the same thing.”

His blood thundered, looking into those lovely eyes, at those hot, soft lips. “Oh, yeah? And how ae you going to do that?”

“Like this.” She leaned forward and sucked his cock into her mouth.





She’d meant for it to be playful, to lighten the mood, make him laugh. But her sensual assault had the opposite effect.

He dragged in a ragged gulp of air and arched over her, clenching handfuls of the sheet. He shook, his body as taut as a mass of high-tension cables. She caressed him, voluptuous twisting strokes and swirls with her hands and tongue, but his quivering tension worried her.

She looked up. “Hey, Bruno,” she urged. “Relax. Breathe.”

He cupped her face and kissed her. Sweet, desperate kisses, so tender and pleading, they undid her utterly. Any plan she might have had of cajoling him into a better head space fell apart. He was seething with raw feeling. No games, no tricks. Just two naked souls, trying to knot themselves together for all eternity.

It made her heart flower, hot and helplessly yearning. Expanding into something bigger, wider, someone who could maybe take in the world and accept it. Love it, even. Good and bad.

He spread her out, and she stretched and arched for him in total trust. His weight pinned her down against the cool linen, the boundaries of her universe exquisitely defined by his body. His mouth moving over hers, drinking her in.