“Stop trying to save me, dammit.” She clasped his shoulders and practically shook him. “I don’t need a protector. I need you. I need this.” She ran her hand down his abs, and gripped him again. “Trust me, respect me, enough to give me what I need.”
Stop trying to save me. Shit. Was that what he was doing? A fist of desire slammed into his gut and reverberated all the way to his balls. He wanted this woman so deeply and constantly that even the thought of letting her go felt like losing a vital organ. Here she was, demanding exactly what he longed to give her, and he was being heroic? Fuck that. “Christ, you win.”
“Hurry,” she said again and used her other hand on her clit.
“One…damn…minute.” He ground out the words while he pumped a crazy load of Liquid Silk into his palm. Then he shoo’d her hands away and more or less slapped it on. She moaned and lifted for him. He rewarded her with another quick slap, making sure the flat of his palm connected with the plushest parts of her.
“Hunterrr!” Her fist slammed into the mattress. “So help me, God.”
No, God help him, because he grabbed his aching cock, lined himself up, and sank in, gritting his teeth against the need to pull back and thrust hard.
She went wild under him, rocking up, working him deeper, oblivious to the recklessness she courted. “Yes…yes…yes.”
“Careful. Careful. Careful.” He kept saying the word, while she took no care whatsoever. Instead, she flattened her palms against the mattress, lifted her hips even higher, and showed him somebody had been diligent with their Kegel exercises.
That little trick wrung the last of his caution right out of him. He took hold of the leg still braced against his hip, pushed it toward her shoulder, and held her there, open, his fingers digging into her slim thigh while he drove deep.
The rake of fingernails stung his ass cheek, but the burn only spurred him on. Eyes squeezed shut, face tipped to the ceiling, he pistoned his hips. The sound of his breathing clogged his ears. His pulse hammered in his head, his chest. His brutally needy cock. She met him thrust for thrust, best she could with only one heel for leverage. He wasn’t so far gone he didn’t register her participation, but some shred of courtesy compelled him to pry his eyes open and check on her—make sure nothing in her expression suggested she was reconsidering the merits of cowgirl, or ass-up, or her own devices.
She had her back arched, and her head tossed way back, presenting him with the long, pale column of her throat. Her gorgeous breasts bounced with every thrust. He wished he could get down there and rain kisses on them. Feel her heartbeat against his lips. But it wasn’t going to happen. Not when her body trembled under his. While he watched, she brought one arm up and crossed it in front of her face. The move worried him, but before he could re-establish a connection between the speech center in his brain and his vocal cords, and ask her if she was all right, she stiffened. She shoved her knuckles against her mouth as her inner walls tightened and released in rhythmic spasms around his shaft. He fought on for a few precious seconds he knew damn well were borrowed time, thrusting once, twice—doing his best to hit her clit and make the orgasm so intense she’d feel it for weeks. And then time, borrowed or otherwise, ran out, and all he could do was bite back her name before it tumbled from his throat at baby-waking volume, and brace his weight on his arms to keep from collapsing into a shuddering heap on top of her.
…
A low groan rumbled up from somewhere near the head of the bed. “If I wasn’t numb from the neck down, I’d swear someone just kissed my ass.”
She smiled and moved her lips to the next small, red, crescent-shaped indent. “You’re not the only one who knows how to tend to an injury.” So saying, she bestowed another kiss.
Hunter raised his head and inspected the damage, then turned back around and propped his chin on his crossed wrists. “Shit girl, that’s not an injury. That’s the mark of a job well done. And unless you actually break the skin, you’re not obligated to kiss it better.”
“Oh, well. If that’s the rule…” She sank her teeth into his highly bite-able glute.
“Ow!” His head popped up again. “Remember the two-can-play rule.”
The idea of him returning the favor set off a tiny burst of tingles low in her belly. Apparently she’d gotten the extended release orgasm. She kissed the new marks and then the dimples on either side of his spine, at the small of his back. “Truth is, I’ve been having naughty fantasies about this butt since the day you showed up at the hospital and bagged the baby supplies from the bassinet.”
“Huh. And here I thought you liked my smile.”
“I do. Both of them.” She teased her tongue into the very top of his “smile.”
He sprang up, quick and lethal, and in the next second she found herself flat on her back, with two hundred pounds of rock hard man pinning her to the mattress. “I like your smile, too, Madison.” The wicked look he leveled on her would make Satan blush.
“Don’t.” She tried to say it sternly, but her lips kept twitching. Her pulse fluttered, too, which he probably knew because he had his hands banded around her wrists. She tested his hold and then let her arms go limp. She didn’t have a prayer of breaking free. “I’m ticklish. You know I am.” Okay, stern-face, Madison. For real. “You’ll wake the baby.”
“You have a dirty mind.” He cocked his lips into the lazy grin she’d forever associate with him. “I meant this smile.” Those lips brushed hers, and then he drew back and gave her a serious look. “I’m glad to see your smile. It disappeared over the last few days.” He kissed her again and rested his forehead against hers. “I missed it.”
“I should have talked to you. I just…” Didn’t want to burden you with my worries and be the damsel in distress to your white knight yet again.
He shifted his big frame off her and settled back on the bed. The arm he extended across the pillows offered her head its favorite resting spot in the hollow between his chest and shoulder. She snuggled in and, because she couldn’t resist, traced her nails down the groove in the center of his chest.
Idle fingers stroked her hair. “Talk to me now. Why didn’t you tell me about running into your ex?”
The question came out neutral, but she heard the disappointment beneath his non-accusatory tone. She released a breath and flattened her hand against his heart, as if she could press some understanding directly where she needed it most. “Partly for the reasons I gave this evening. I thought I was being paranoid. To Officer Langley’s point, Cody’s not some super-spy or criminal mastermind. He’s a loser who occasionally got desperate enough to do something like break into his idiot ex-girlfriend’s apartment and steal the stuff she left lying around because she stupidly thought he would take no for an answer.”
“If I hear you trash his ex-girlfriend again, I’m going to make you eat your words.”
Yeah, well, there was the thing. Trash seemed to stick to her since she’d taken up with Cody. Shaking him off, and shaking off the trashy feelings, proved harder than she’d imagined. Which led to the other reason she’d kept her mouth shut. “She did precisely one smart thing where Cody Winslow was concerned—packed her bags and removed herself from a pathetic cycle of getting taken advantage of. One lousy thing.” She shook her head against his shoulder. “And I really wanted to believe I’d done it right and left all his drama behind. I didn’t want to give up that feeling—that sense of accomplishment. Even after running into him that day in the parking lot, I told myself he hadn’t followed me here, so he couldn’t get to us.”
“He can’t.” Two small words, said so firmly they might as well have been carved in granite. “I meant what I said. You don’t need to worry, Madison. You and Joy are safe. I’m going to keep the damn windows locked. We’re going to use the alarm. I’m off work the next four days, so Joy will be with me. You’re off work the following three, so she’ll be with you. Nelle knows the situation, and she’d never leave the baby unattended.”