Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(53)

“I don’t care,” he said.

“Of course you don’t,” she said crisply. “You’re a caveman. We’ve already established that.”

“So can I throw you over my shoulder? Drag you into my cave?”

“No, you may not!” she snapped. “This is my cave! You can carry in the coffee mugs, and put them in the sink. That’s what you can do.”

“Shouldn’t have asked,” he said. “Asking was a big tactical error.”

She folded her arms under her tits. Her nipples poked through the threadbare fabric. “Too bad you didn’t think of that before.”

Laughter threatened, but he had plans for the next half hour that did not include another sobbing fit, so he breathed it carefully down. He scooped up coffee cups with one hand, Becca with the other, and pushed her, stumbling ahead of him into the kitchen. He deadbolted the door, rinsed the cups, and set them carefully in the drainer.

He turned to her. “So?”

She gave him a narrow look. “So what?”

“I didn’t just put them in the sink,” he said. “I rinsed them out.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, boy, Nick. I’m overwhelmed.”

“Good.” He pried her arms away from her chest and jerked the robe down over her shoulders so that it bared her breasts, and trapped her arms in the folds of silk. He caught her arms, trapped them behind her back. “You like being overwhelmed. It gets you off.”

“You overdo it,” she whispered, and moaned into his mouth as he claimed her lips in a ravenous kiss. The puckered buds of her nipples tickled his chest, and he explored the sweet, silken, coffee flavored depths of her mouth as he pressed her closer.

“Maybe,” he said. “But it works for you.”

“This part, yes. Just not what happens after,” she said.

He stared down into her wide, somber eyes, ringed with long wet black lashes. She wasn’t fooling herself this time.

Her statement hung between them like a lingering chord. She waited for him to deny it. For him to reassure her that it wasn’t true.

But he couldn’t. The rules weren’t going to change just because he wanted them to. Being locked into this cage made him furious. Sick of the f*cked-up situation, sick of eating poison, constrained at every step, by danger, duty, guilt and fear, sick regret.

He wanted this. The universe could chuckle at the cosmic joke at his expense all it wanted, but he would have this one thing. For him. Not for always, but for now, for right now, he would have it. Have her.

He spun Becca around till she faced the wall and buried his face in her neck as he wrenched open his jeans, dragging up handfuls of her dressing gown. He filled his hands with the warm silky curves of her ass, the hot cleft, the slick folds between. He fit himself to her, pulling her hips back to get the angle right, and they cried out together as he shoved his cock into the tight, wet clutch of her.

The sweet friction, the fluttering resistance of her * around his cock head almost did it. He forced himself deeper, thrusting inside until the whole length of his cock was kissed with her dew, clasped in that tight, throbbing sheath.

She cried out, her slender arms trembling where she was braced against the wall, her cunt muscles fluttering and clenching around the intrusion. “No,” she said. “Don’t. It’s not…I don’t like it.”

He stopped cold. His instincts rarely led him wrong in sex. At least not in this phase of it. He touched her ass cheeks, with slow, soothing strokes, trembling with his own desperate eagerness to let go and have at her. “This way I won’t rub your sore clit.” His voice was raw with effort. “I can make you come this way. I promise. You’ll love it.”

“It’s not that.” Her voice shook. “I just…it makes me feel the way I felt with…with them.” Her voice cracked.

He knew instantly who she was talking about. His arm tightened around her waist. His body shook with the strain of staying still. He gritted his teeth, cursed silently. Women and their goddamn complicated notions. It was like blundering through a f*cking maze.

“It’s not your fault. The way they looked at me, but they didn’t see me. At all. When I can’t see your face, it makes me feel…” Her voice trailed off, and he heard her swallow. “Alone. Worse than alone. I’m sorry. I’m not blaming you.”

“Don’t apologize. You’re the last one who should be apologizing right now.” He ground out the words as he eased his cock out of her.

They stared at each other for a moment, and he picked her up and carried her into her bedroom. She stiffened, grabbed his shoulders like she was afraid he was going to drop her.

He deposited her on the bed. There was a cheval mirror by the dresser. The answer to his prayers. He dragged it over, situated it in front of her so she was staring at herself. She tried to smooth her hair. Curled into a knot, wrapped her arms around herself.

“I’ll look right at you. Eyes locked. The whole time,” he told her.

She looked uncertain, that rosy, blurred lower lip caught between her teeth. Her eyes big and haunted.

“I can’t see anything but you,” he urged her. “I swear it.”

She wiped away tears, shook her head. “I just feel so messed up,” she whispered. “I told you, I’m not the adventurous type, and this whole thing was awful. It wiped me out.”