Mean Streak(59)

“You would have done for any stranger in need.”

“Hell I would,” he said harshly. “Yeah, I would have taken an injured person to an ER, dropped them off, and driven away. No risk, no involvement, no chance of exposure. But you, the most serious threat of all to—” He looked around at the interior of the cabin. “To everything. You, I wanted to hold on to for just a little longer.”

He held up his hand and closed it into a fist, as though demonstrating. “You’ll never appreciate the risk I took to keep you here. You sure as hell can’t identify with the struggle it’s been to keep myself off you.” He walked toward her, and when there were only inches separating them, he asked, “You still scared of me?”

“Very.”

He took another step. “But you’re not running. How come?”

“Because I do identify with that struggle.”

The sound he made was part groan, part growl. “You’d be smart to stop this now, Doc.”

He gave her time, but when she didn’t move, he reached around her with one hand and splayed it over her bottom. It seemed the heat of his hand dissolved the fabric of her running tights as he brought her up against him. He slid his other hand under her hair and curved it around the back of her neck, as he had done the night before.

“Last chance.”

She placed her palms on his chest and then slid them up onto his shoulders.

“Okay. I warned you. I told you that if I ever got my hands on you again—”

“You’d put them all over me.”

“That’s not all I said I’d do.”

He covered her lips with his and unleashed the hunger he’d restrained the night before. Nothing was tempered, not the introduction of his tongue, not the need with which her mouth opened to him, not the darkly erotic words that he whispered when he finally broke the kiss and released her, but only so he could hastily undo the buttons of his shirt she wore.

He opened it and looked at her, his gaze scorching every place it touched on. He caressed her tummy with the backs of his fingers, gauged the narrowness of her rib cage by bracketing it between his hands, then plumped her breasts in his palms. She leaned into them and made small wanting sounds when his fingertips charted the tapering shape of her breasts all the way to the tips which hardened beneath his caress.

“Damn,” he murmured.

Taking her hand, he towed her over to the bed, where he pushed the shirt off her shoulders so he could continue to look at her while he pulled his sweater over his head and threw it aside.

Then his hands went to his fly and deftly unbuttoned it. His eyes never breaking contact with hers, he slid one hand inside the vee of soft denim and made an adjustment that caused her breath to hitch.

“I won’t last long.”

“You won’t have to.” She lay back on the bed and scooted up to make room for him.

He got onto the bed on his knees, leaned over her and peeled off her running tights, then positioned her bent legs on either side of his hips. He looked down at her with such avid interest, she went hot all over.

Swearing with impatience, he worked his jeans down, then did as he’d said he would: he put his hands on her. First insistently against her inner thighs as he spread them, then tenderly when he stroked where she was wet and achy, then aggressively beneath her ass as he tilted her up. He pushed into her in one, purposeful glide.

“Jesus, Doc,” he groaned, “I promised you it wouldn’t hurt.”

“It won’t.”

“It might.”

Flexing his hips, he seated himself even deeper, then stretched out above her and began moving. Mating. All raw, male power and surety. Unapologetic, dominant and possessive.

Encircling her wrists he raised her hands above her head. Looking directly into her eyes, he slid his other hand between their bodies and touched her with such carnal precision, she arched up into his hand, rubbing herself against it in a silent plea that he press, circle, stroke. And he did. Again and again. He lowered his head to her breasts, sipped at her tight nipples and flicked them with his tongue.

Her orgasm was shattering.

With a snarled obscenity he pulled out barely in time and imprinted her body with his.

Writhing and straining, they wrung out every ounce of pleasure, and when he came, the pulses were strong and intense. Then they seemed to melt into each other, spent. It was a long time before he released her hands and moved off her.

When she finally had the wherewithal to open to her eyes, he was lying beside her on his stomach, cheek resting on his stacked hands, black lashes casting long shadows on his cheekbones.

There was a sheen of sweat on his back. The skin was smooth, the slopes and hollows of his musculature beautiful. His jeans rode low, in the seductive territory where the dip in his back swelled into his ass.

Feeling her stare, he opened his eyes. It was like twin lights coming on inside a blue glass bottle. His attention was drawn to the semen on the flannel shirt that was now hopelessly twisted around her. His eyes moved back to hers. Sounding defensive, he said, “You sorry yet?”

By way of a reply, she reached out and brushed her fingers across the small of his back. Then a bit lower. Then her fingertips ventured beyond his waistband and flirted with the shadowy cleft.

“You keep doing that, I’m gonna have to roll over.”