Come A Little Bit Closer (The Sullivans #7)(49)

Every inch of her skin ached for his touch. When she woke from having a dream in which she was safe and warm in his arms, her heart broke as she’d reached for him and realized he wasn’t there.

“That’s why I came to find you,” she told him, hating how shaky, how breathless her voice was.

It was getting harder and harder to get her brain and mouth to work around the desire—and the longing—that was billowing up like an oncoming thunderstorm all around them.

“The lingerie is beautiful. I can’t possibly deny that, or lie to you by saying that I’m going to take any of it back to the store.” She could feel her skin flush deeper with every word. “But the fact that I can’t resist wearing the beautiful things you bought for me doesn’t change anything.”

He looked like he was having trouble breathing for a moment. The storm gathered in even closer as he finally choked out, “You’re wearing them?”

Oh God, why had she told him that? She was trying to push him away, not draw him closer.

Wasn’t she?

Chapter Eighteen

Neither of them could look away from the other. Their bond, the pull between them, was already too strong. And bigger than either of their good intentions—hers to keep her distance and his to remain patient.

In the end Smith didn’t know who moved first, whether he was the one wrapping his hands around her waist to pull her against him, or she was the one sliding her hands into his hair. But it didn’t matter who made the first move.

All that mattered was that she was in his arms again.

Her mouth was soft, her lips sweet from the candy she must have been sucking on that morning, her taste even more seductive than he remembered. He needed her too badly to have any thoughts of finesse, but thankfully, even as he pulled her onto his lap, she was crawling over him, her skirt hiking up higher and higher on her gorgeous thighs.

Still, he might have been able to keep it at least partially together if he hadn’t felt, then tilted back to see, the lacy edge of a garter. His curse was low, borderline pained, as he traced the lace over her thigh with his fingertips. Her skin was so soft, so warm as she made little sounds of pleasure at having his hands on her again.

With one quick yank, the rest of his patience disappeared, and he had her skirt bunched up around her waist and his hands cupping her hips.

Holy hell, she hadn’t just worn the lingerie he’d bought her...she’d put on the slinkiest, sexiest pair of stockings and panties that he’d given her. Were it not for the punishing workouts he put himself through every morning, his heart would have stopped right there.

“My God, you’re gorgeous.”

His fingers moved from the lacy edge of her garter, up the soft skin of her inner thigh, to skim the inside edge of her panties. He could already feel how wet, how ready, she was for him as she whimpered softly, then rocked into his hand.

“Show me more.” He nipped at the underside of her neck as he begged her to put him out of his misery. “Please, Valentina, I need to see more of you.”

She stared at him with big, beautiful eyes. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “Completely crazy,” she said again, “but I can’t stop wanting you anyway.”

With trembling fingers, as she began to unbutton her blouse, Smith not only drank in the inch-by-inch reveal of her creamy skin, he also relished her admission of how much she wanted him despite all of her reasons not to. He knew how cautious she was about actors, about the spotlight, and yet here she was anyway, one more time. Somehow, he needed to make her see that she couldn’t live without him...and that the two of them were worth all the irritations and inconveniences that came with his life.

He wanted so badly to taste her, to hear her sounds of pleasure as she leapt off that first peak in his arms, but somehow he managed to hold off until her blouse was open nearly to the waist.

“Valentina.”

With one hand sliding into the slick heat between her thighs, he lifted the other to cover the swell of her breast, so gorgeously on display in a bra that just barely covered her ni**les. He leaned forward to take one of those luscious peaks into his mouth, cupping one breast even as his tongue slid beneath lace to slick over beautifully aroused flesh.

Only, instead of sating him, the taste of her made him even hungrier, and so desperate that he couldn’t keep the hand still at her core, couldn’t stop his fingers from playing over her arousal, then sliding hard and fast into her.

Just that fast, with his fingers in her, his mouth on her, she came apart, her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders, her neck and back arching her br**sts into his mouth, her hips rocking into his.

He wanted to savor her, wanted to take hours to pleasure her again and again, to appreciate every inch of her beauty, her sweetness. But the three days—and nights—he’d been made to wait to have her again had been three too long, and just as he’d told her in the store the day before, he didn’t have a lot of practice with waiting.

Keeping his head on straight just long enough to pull a condom he’d been praying he’d get the chance to use soon from his back pocket, then to unzip his pants and get it on, Valentina’s mouth found his just as he lifted his hands back to her waist and positioned her over him. Less than a heartbeat later, she was lowering herself down over him and taking him inside.

Their mouths collided just as fiercely as the rest of them, the pull and thrust of his body against—and into—hers a mirror of the way their tongues were stroking, sliding together. And as she took over their rhythm, her hands gripping his shoulders tightly, her thighs strong and taut as she rocked into him again and again, Smith let go of her waist to cup her br**sts with his hands, the lace nowhere near as soft as her flesh in his palms. On a growl, he yanked at the fabric so that his mouth, his hands, could cover her instead.