Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(68)

He was home free, the arrogant, manipulative jerk.

Chapter

16

H e followed her into the living room, where her TV glowed and chattered in the dimness, and sat down smack in the middle of her couch, slouching his long body with lazy grace. Leaving her no place to sit but beside him. She tried to leave a minimal safety margin between them when she set her butt onto the cushion, but the laws of couch physics changed in Nick’s proximity. The weight and mass of his big body bowed the springs, and she slid straight into the magnetic pull of his body. Wedged against him. Thigh to thigh.

He was so hot. The gravitational pull of his body so powerful.

His muscular arm had been draped lazily over the back of the couch, but now it was draped over her shoulders. The side of her face was pressed against the fresh-smelling cotton of his black polo shirt. She identified aftershave, detergent, a tang of salty male sweat, and oh, dear, oh gosh. She was in big fat trouble. The whole side of her thigh had gone nuts and was having a shivery little mini-orgasm. Pleasure rippled down her leg, up her side, just from the hot contact.

His hand, too, curled around to cup her shoulder, stroking her. Trying to calm her down, lull her into docile complacency. Hah.

She jerked forward, struggling out of his octopus grip, grabbed the phone from where it lay on the floor and put it back into its charger stand. Then she groped for the remote and stuck it into his hand, just to give him something to do other than pet her and hypnotize her with the force field of his seductive, restless male heat.

“Pick something,” she ordered him. “As long as it’s not sports.”

He clicked around with a swiftness that made her dizzy, and found something on the science channel about volcanos.

Volcanos, for the love of God. She wanted to make a snide comment about it, but the words muddled in her mouth as he began to stroke her shoulder again. “Hah. Very slick,” she said, breathlessly.

“Is it?” His teeth flashed in the gloom. “I haven’t used tricks like this to get my arm around a girl’s shoulders since junior high school.”

“Oh, no?” She tried to laugh. “I suppose you no longer needed to, after, hmm? At that point, they all started flinging themselves at you?”

“Pretty much,” he said blandly.

“Spoiled rotten,” she muttered.

He slid deeper into his careless slouch, pulling her tighter against the sinuous length of his body. Drawing attention to the very long, thick bulge in the front of his jeans. Not trying to hide it in the least.

She tried to ignore it, but it was so blatantly evident, lit up by the TV screen images of Hawaiian volcanos spurting magma. Rivers of lava. The scientist narrator droned on. She was motionless, unable to breathe. Hypersensitive to every breath he took, every shift of his weight.

She pretended to watch TV until she was an electric, shivering mess. A morass of emotion. His other hand was now resting on her thigh, and was caressing it, in a slow, sensual rhythm that made the fabric creep and bunch up above his hand, moving by tiny, steady increments.

“You think you’re so sneaky,” she whispered. “I see exactly what you’re doing. It won’t work.”

“It won’t?” He reached the hem and placed his hand below it, on the bare skin of her thigh. Her muscles jerked in response. “My reasoning was, if you don’t notice, then it’s working. And if you do notice and you don’t stop me, then it’s also working.”

“Oh, please. You are such a—”

Her words choked off as he kissed her.

She stiffened, but he held her face and insisted, his warm lips exploring hers with slow, pleading gentleness. Not opening or invading, just offering her a reverent intimacy that she could not resist.

Her eyelids fluttered, her body was racked with a shudder of surrender, and she arched, relaxing into his grip. Her head dropped back into his waiting hand as the kiss changed, became hot and hungry and clinging, making her gasp for breath, gasp for more. It might be smoke and mirrors, might be just a cheap illusion of the tenderness she needed, but it didn’t matter. She would take it. She ached for it.

He slid off the couch, swinging around so that he kneeled in front of her, pulling her face forward so he could keep kissing her with all the sweet intensity she longed for. He shoved the coffee table away to make room for himself, and pressed her knees open so he could scoot closer.

She was seduced utterly by his sensual gentleness, his generosity. He had won, but she didn’t care, because the kiss had its own wonderful momentum, its own agenda. There was no way to tease apart who gave, who took, and the sheer beauty of it was so keen, it made her shiver and ache, with the longing to surrender everything to him.

He lifted his head slowly, eyes hooded and dilated, and dragged his hand roughly over his mouth. His breath was hard and ragged.

“How’s your clit?” he asked.

The question jolted her out of her sensual haze with a painful bump. “Good God, Nick, that was blunt!”

He grinned. “Hey, why beat around the bush?”

She actually laughed at the lame pun before she could stop herself. “Oh, please. What a comedian. Don’t quit your day job. Oh, wait. I take that back. Do quit your day job. Please. I hate your day job.”

He ignored that, stroking her knees, his eyes intent. “Well? Last time it was too sore to touch. Is it better?”