“Bad spins.” She let him work her arms through the sleeves and then latched onto him again. “Don’t go. You keep things still.”
“Chloe—”
She burrowed into him and sighed. “Don’t go.”
He sighed and looked down at himself. His T-shirt and jeans were worse for wear, too. Resigned to a sleepless night spent ignoring a persistent hard-on, he stripped down to his boxers, settled back against the pillow, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder while she nestled against his side. So much for not torturing himself.
…
Chloe didn’t need to open her eyes to know she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. First off, a warm, solid weight lay across the curve of her hip, trapping her to an unfamiliar mattress. Second, whatever she had on didn’t feel like her tank top and sleep shorts. Third, the rock-hard appendage poking her butt most definitely didn’t belong to Ready-Teddy.
She blinked her eyes open, squinting against the pale light prying through a slim gap between dark blue curtains. The bedroom she saw by the dawn’s bleary light was way too tidy and shipshape to ever be mistaken for hers. A glance down solved two of the mysteries. She wore an oversize white T-shirt, and a strong, muscular, unquestionably masculine arm accounted for the weight across her hip.
A disjointed image flashed through her mind…her, tossing her cookies in front of the Stars & Bars while Michael supported her and held her hair away from her face.
Oh, Chloe, nice going. She closed her eyes and stifled a groan, but the hazy memories just kept playing behind her eyelids. He’d driven her home, found her a toothbrush, coaxed a couple painkillers and some foul-tasting juice down her throat, and helped her change into one of his T-shirts. Then he’d tucked her into bed, but the darn thing had been spinning so badly, she’d clung to him and begged him to make it stop. The last thing she remembered was a strong, steady heartbeat under her cheek and his calm voice telling her everything was going to be okay.
Except everything wasn’t okay. She drew an unsteady breath and faced facts. After the debacle at the clinic yesterday, she was well and truly fucked.
The arm draped over her hip slipped into the curve of her waist, and tightened, pulling her back against a solid frame. She traced a small, light scar on the side of his wrist and wondered if he’d gotten in some kind of hand-to-hand, marine-style, combat. He murmured something in his sleep that sounded suspiciously like, “Right there,” and then his lower body shifted too. Next thing she knew, the head of his erection nudged the gap at the top of her legs. She turned her face into the pillow to stifle a moan as his shaft slid between her thighs. After the events of the last thirty-six hours, one highly frustrating irony remained inescapable. She was well and truly fucked—in every way except literally.
When a big hand smoothed up her torso to torment her breast and another slid down her abdomen and between her thighs, she pressed her hands over his, tipped her head back, and let the moan come. The sudden tightening of his hold told her she’d woken him. Screw it. Might as well accomplish the one thing she’d set out to do.
She twisted around until they lay face-to-face and admired his shadowed jaw, alluringly bed-rumpled hair, and sleepy, slightly cautious stare. “How do you feel?” he asked.
She swept the T-shirt over her head, tossed it aside, and then guided his hand back between her legs to let him figure the answer to that question out for himself.
Didn’t take him long. He closed his eyes and groaned. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“It’s the best idea I’ve had all day.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but it’s only six a.m.” Then his eyes popped open when she reached down to where he was jutting out from the flap in his boxers and wrapped her hand around his cock. “Oh…Christ. You…ah…dammit…you had a lot to drink last night. I don’t want to take advantage—”
“Fine. I’ll do the taking.” With that, she pushed him onto his back, worked his shorts down, and straddled his hips. His hands landed on the tops of her thighs. For a moment she worried he’d lift her off, but then those hands clasped her hips and rocked her against him.
Their sighs overlapped, and then his turned into a low curse when she shifted around. “Wait,” he said, but she ignored him and kept right on adjusting her position until she had him knocking at heaven’s door. He felt so good under her she wondered if she’d go off like dynamite just from the burning heat of him.
“Wait.” The word came out more firmly this time, and, to her abject dismay, he tightened his hands on her waist and lifted her until she hovered above him.
A humiliatingly desperate sound escaped her throat and she pushed down in an effort to reclaim her seat. “Don’t you want me?”
The world spun and the next thing she knew she was flat on her back, pinned under two hundred pounds of unyielding marine. “I have wanted you nonstop since the second I met you. It’s relentless and painful and bordering on crazy.” He bit her earlobe hard enough to give her a hint of the torture he’d endured. She gasped and twined her legs around his waist.
“For the last two days, all I’ve dreamed about is you. In those dreams you climb on top of me, and I slide into you until you’re so full you’re about to burst. I go as deep as I can, and then I hold still and let you use my cock like your personal toy until you’ve gotten off to your heart’s content. When you swear you’ve wrung yourself out, you can’t possibly take anymore I flip us around, bend you over my bed, and prove you wrong. I pound us both straight on through until we come so hard we can’t walk.”
She swallowed and somehow found her voice. “That sounds”—his lips burned a path along her jaw and stopped just short of her mouth—“good.”
“It sure as hell does, but we’ll have to plan better for that particular adventure because”—he kissed her fast and a little savagely, and then broke away and looked down at her—“no condom.”
She blinked while his words sank in and then groaned under the weight of her disappointment. Condom…oh yeah… That. Something they’d neglected during the near miss at the clinic, and really, she knew better after all the crap Drew had pulled. By some miracle, she’d avoided a nasty parting gift from her ex, and when she’d stared at that clean bill of health, she’d made a promise to every divine being in the universe never to test her luck again. She had a whole box of condoms at her apartment, but something told her if she walked out his door, she wouldn’t be coming back. Getting tangled up with a guy who had the power to make her completely forget her basic, common-sense rules—little fundamentals like no sex with a client and no unprotected sex—probably wasn’t the best idea.
…
Michael counted the pulses fluttering at the base of Chloe’s throat and waited for her to say something. Something like, “I have a condom in my purse,” would be ideal. Instead, she shook her head, muttered, “Twelve months and counting,” and shot him a resigned look. Then she added, “You should lie back. This position puts a lot of strain on the base of your spine.”
&nbs
p; “I feel fine.” He lifted and lowered his hips to prove it.