Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(43)

Sweet Jesus.

Why in the hell had they waited so damned long? He shuddered, perilously close to losing it, and cursed under his breath. “Sadie,” he rasped out, grasping her wrist to still her hand. When she frowned, confused, he offered her as much of a grin as he could muster, then slid her jeans and panties over her hips, along those luscious thighs, down her shapely calves. He kissed his way back up, his mouth and tongue tasting every inch of her. When he reached her swollen sex, she lifted that sweet ass, urging him on with a strangled sound of need that sent a shudder through him. How could he resist?

She shattered apart the second his tongue flicked. But he grasped her hips and pushed her through her climax until she gasped his name and clawed at his shoulders, desperately trying to drag him back up into her arms. At last, he relented—if for no other reason than her gasps and moans of pleasure were making his cock weep with need, and he was hanging on by a very thin, very taut thread.

He was panting with the effort to hold back, his voice strained and rough when he gasped, “I don’t have a condom with me.”

But even as he said it, he was lowering himself between her legs, and she was guiding him to her sweet heat, arching into him. He’d always been safe—even when he was a stupid teenager who’d bang anything with a pulse. He always knew he’d only have unprotected sex with the woman he married. And there was only one woman he’d ever pictured in that role. And she was lying naked beneath him on the hallway floor, beautiful, sexy, and wanting him, too.

He plunged deep, sheathing himself completely, making them both gasp.

“Oh, God, Joe,” Sadie moaned, breathless as she rose to meet each thrust of his pelvis. “I love you.”

He instantly went still, the words knocking the air from his lungs. He blinked down at her, hardly daring to believe what she’d said. “What?”

? ? ?

Sadie wrapped her legs over Joe’s ass, the look in his eyes making her fear he was about to bolt again. “I love you,” she whispered, rolling her hips against him, not wanting him to stop. Their bodies had been joined mere moments, and Sadie was already perilously close to coming again. “Every time I’ve said it… This is how I meant it.”

He peered down at her for a long moment. “Sadie,” he breathed finally. “I don’t want you to say that because you think you have to…”

She took his face in her hands, searching his gaze. “I do have to,” she insisted. “Because it’s the way I feel. I always have. And I don’t want you to stop making love to me. Not ever.”

Joe held her gaze for a moment longer, but then something in his expression changed. And he claimed her mouth, savagely, hungry and demanding. And then he was thrusting hard, deep, claiming every ounce of pleasure that was theirs to share. Sadie rocked with each hard thrust, loving the way he filled her.

And as her pleasure reached its climax, starting at the center of her and exploding outward, she cried out, curling into him, clinging to him as he continued to rock her through it. And then when she felt his muscles begin to tense, she slid her hands up the shirt he’d refused to remove, dug her fingernails into his back as another climax built, urging him on and screaming his name when the next one shook her even more than the first. And when he finally let go, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close, pressed kisses to his shoulder, his cheek, and then his lips.

This time their kiss was slow, tender, unhurried. When it ended, she pulled on the edge of his shirt, pushing it up until, after a moment’s hesitation, he pulled back enough so that she could pull it over his head.

“I want all of you, Joe Dawson,” she told him when his gaze shuttered and he seemed on the verge of closing down on her. “For always.”

His expression softened then as he smoothed her hair. “Then I suppose I should get you off this floor and make love to you properly. Because I don’t plan on going anywhere.”

His words filled her with joy so intense that it was all she could do not to break into tears. But she somehow managed to just lift a brow and give him a flirtatious grin. “You mean it gets better than that? I’m not sure how that’s even possible. Because—sweetheart—that was un-freaking-believable.”

A smug smirk curled his lips. “Oh, baby… You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”





CHAPTER 4


Sadie curled up on her side, watching the shadows play over Joe’s face as he slept on his back, arms over his head, only a sheet covering him from the waist down. They’d made love twice more that night before taking a long, steamy shower together that had ended up in yet another intimate tangle.

She’d never considered herself a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but the level of pleasure and abandon she’d experienced with Joe far surpassed anything she’d experienced before. Whether that was more a testament to his mind-blowing skills in the bedroom or to the depth of her love was hard to say. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was there beside her, that they’d at last found their way into each other’s arms—and the result had been a level of bliss she’d never imagined possible.

Sadie traced a fingertip down the center of his chest to the network of scars on his abdomen that she’d glimpsed earlier. He’d been self-conscious about them even in the shower—until she’d kissed her way down to them and then over to the erection that had swiftly risen in response. She was pretty sure at that point he wasn’t concerned about anything…