Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(69)

A flush of anticipation turned her cherry red, flustered and dizzy. Her thigh muscles clenched and released beneath his warm, stroking hands. “I told you we weren’t going to…ah…”

“For f*ck’s sake, what does a guy have to do to get a straight answer out of you?”

She winced. “Um, a guy has to ease off a little,” she whispered.

He rolled his eyes. “What did I say this time?”

“It wasn’t so much what you said. It was your tone. So matter of fact. How’s your clit? The same way you would say, how’s your sciatica? How’s your bunion? How’s your Great Aunt Edna?”

He leaned forward and pressed his face against her bared thighs, shoulders vibrating startled laughter. “Oh, babe. You kill me.”

“I certainly hope not. Please don’t laugh,” she said, in a small, stiff voice. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m just nervous, that’s all.”

He lifted his face. “Nervous?” His voice was incredulous. “With me? After all we’ve been through? Why, for Christ’s sake?”

As if she should have to spell out why a gorgeous, mysterious, insatiable sex god who had saved her from an unspeakable fate might make her, well, nervous. Hah.

He lifted up a wad of the billowing skirt of the nightgown. “I love this thing,” he said. “It smells like…mmm. Like…”

“Fabric softener?” she suggested.

His teeth flashed in that seductive grin. “It’s sexy.”

She looked down at the thing, her mouth twitching. “Oh, shut up,” she said. “You are lying. Like a rug.”

“Speaking of rugs.” He hoisted her nightgown up over her waist, then her breasts. “You never answered my question. About your clit. Oh, man. Look at you. I’m not lying now. So f*cking sexy.”

She was naked beneath the nightgown. Faint with gratitude that her most recent comfort ritual had involved shaving her legs and slathering herself with lotion.

“It’s better,” she confessed breathlessly “Almost, um, normal.”

Right. As if normal was a word that could describe how her crotch felt right now when he smiled like that. That hot, tingly glow was about as far from normal as it was possible to get.

He gripped her hips and pulled until her butt slid forward on the couch, and she sprawled there, helpless and tangled, her head propped up against the sofa back, her nightgown rucked up to her neck in big, billowy folds. A big, gorgeous male silhouetted against the backdrop of the chattering TV screen, staring at her intimate bits. Stroking her, opening her, dragging slow, lazy wet kisses over her trembling thighs, against her mound, teasing and tantalizing—

He lifted his head. “So how is your Great Aunt Edna, anyhow?”

She melted into laughter just as he put his mouth to her and the shock of it set her off, then and there. A long climax wrenched through her, jerking breathless little sobs of pleasure from her throat.

After the spasms had eased down to a delicious glow, he gazed at her for a moment. “Thank you,” he said.

She giggled shakily. “Huh? Me? Aren’t I the one who should be thanking you?”

“No,” he said, still caressing her clitoris with his slowly circling thumb. “You’re so sweet to me. In spite of everything. I don’t get it.”

Tears rushed into her eyes. “Believe me,” she said with total honesty, “neither do I.”

He bent down and went at her again, lapping her, suckling her, sliding his tongue with delicate skill along the involuted folds of her sex, as if hungry for some sustenance he could only obtain by pleasing her.

And he did. He melted her down completely. Moved her, the way he had with that embrace in the kitchen. He knew how to deliver unspeakably sensual pleasure with his licking, lashing tongue, his delving fingers, his clever lips. His tender ferocity unraveled her, but she felt the pleading behind it. Like he was desperate for something, and this was the only way he knew how to ask for it. Or to earn it.

And she couldn’t withhold anything from him. He had her under a spell. She had no choice but to offer him everything, the chaotic glow of her emotions and the desperate eagerness of her response, shining brighter, rising to a crest—

And it broke, and the wave pulsed through her, washed over her, leaving her naked, and brand new. As tender as the dawn.

Time had warped and expanded, into an infinite, dreamlike interval with no beginning, no end. It moved, but like a slow river and they were afloat in it, sometimes dozing, sometimes tossed in the rapids or churned in a pulsing mass of chaotic foam, then floating on in a pool of delicious sloth again. Finally, when she was boneless and spent, he lifted his face, wiped his grinning mouth and grabbed both her hands. He tugged until she was forced to sit, her naked thighs flanking him where he kneeled before her, holding both her hands tightly.

His burning eyes asked a question. No need to put it into words. He pulled a condom out of his pocket, and tucked it into her hand.

“You do the honors,” he said simply.

She stared at him, wondering at his skill, maneuvering her into needing desperately what she’d tried so hard to withhold. Chump that she was. No way could she live without it now. She needed everything he had to give her. A little part of her felt scared and weak and foolish to let herself be used again, but there seemed to be another person rising up inside her who wanted to do the using. Ravenous for Nick’s raw male sexuality. His power and vigor, his life-giving heat.