Sugar Rush (28 page)
“What are you thinking?” He brought his fingertips back to her cheeks, then ran them along her bottom lip.
She moaned softly at the contact, and recalled, quite vividly, the way he’d leaped the counter and taken her in that claiming, branding kiss. Yes, there was a lot more rough and tumble to Baxter Dunne than she’d ever imagined. And now all that rough and tumble was sprawled naked in her bed, focusing a formidable level of attention on her.
“You’ve nothing to be afraid of, luv,” he said, as if reading her mind. And maybe he had. Or maybe there was something of what she was feeling in her eyes.
She felt like she was tucked up against a jungle cat, muscles coiled and bunched ... just waiting, tail flicking, all languid and relaxed to the casual eye, all poised for just the right moment to pounce. She tried to speak, but her throat had gone desert dry. She didn’t know what to say to him.
He leaned down then, and she held her breath as her pulse rate tripled, waiting, spellbound, mesmerized ... in almost excruciating anticipation for what he was going to do next.
He didn’t kiss her. He nuzzled the side of her neck as the palm of his hand lightly skimmed her bare shoulder. Her hips already wanted to arch up—violently so—and it was only the wound bedspread between them that kept them from doing it.
“I’ll leave you alone,” he whispered roughly, against her soft skin. “If that’s what you really want.”
“You—” The word came out on a strangled croak. She tried again. “You promised. Not to push.”
She heard him chuckle against her shoulder, where he was presently pressing the hottest, sweetest kisses she’d ever received. “I promised I wouldn’t start it,” he murmured. “You climbed into my bed, luv. Naked, I might add.”
“Not on purpose.” She intended the tone to be heated, but instead it came out like a plea.
He lifted his head. His hair was tousled and impossibly sexy, and his grin lent the whole look a wicked air. “Well, whatever the cause, the result has us here. Together. With no schedule demanding our attention, no eyes prying ... and nowhere to be until morning.”
She held his gaze, and tried—hard—to reclaim a single shred of common sense, a sliver of the rationale she needed so neither of them would make such a colossal mistake. “If we give in now, it’s going to be so much more painful when you go. At least for me.”
His smile faded, but as her eyes had adjusted to the moonlight, she could see the desire in his eyes, along with a wealth of emotion she shied away from labeling. It looked an awful lot like what her heart was feeling at the moment.
“Whether we give in or not, walking away from you will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
She swallowed, not sure what to say to that, or how it made her feel. Other than more conflicted.
“Less pain, more pain,” he said gruffly. “I don’t know that there’s a real measure for it any longer, Lei. Or that it matters what we do or don’t do.”
Her heart clutched at his earnestly spoken words. Being held in his arms, his warm touch on her skin, made the thought of his leaving all the more wrenching. “I wish there was a way,” she whispered back.
“They say love conquers all, but I think reality can crush even the most devoutly dedicated.” Baxter propped himself up higher on his elbow so he could look more fully into her eyes. “Even if you were willing to move back to the city, and I turned my world upside down so we’d have more time together ... at the end of it, after what you’ve found here, you’d be miserable back in New York. We both know that. Eventually you’d either resent me for it, or simply drown in the chaotic, stress-filled frenzy of it all.”
“I wouldn’t resent you,” she said. “I make my own decisions. But you’re right. I don’t want to go back to that kind of life again. I’d feel suffocated and cut off from what I really need. Just as I know your goals are different from mine, and you can’t do what you do on some dinky island off the coast of Georgia.” She untangled one hand from the bedspread to reach up and brush the tousled strands from his forehead. “I know that.”
He smiled down at her, and there was that sizzling combination in his expression, of gentle charmer and back alley survivor. She’d never again see him any other way. The impossibility of it all broke her heart just a little bit more.
Turning his head, he kissed her palm, his warm lips on her sensitive skin making her tremble. He traced lazy circles along her collar bone with his fingertips. “Do we take what small stretch of time the fates will give us, revel in that, and be thankful for the rich memories left behind? Or do I get up, get dressed, and leave you to sleep here alone ... and do my damndest—for the next two weeks while we work together—not to picture you as you are right at this moment, knowing I’ll never truly have you.”
“Baxter,” she said, and it was a plea, pure and simple. A plea for which thing, she couldn’t have said. There was nothing simple about the situation. The need, and the want, however, were both pure. Blindingly so.
He leaned down, and she held her breath, thinking if he would just kiss her, she wouldn’t have to decide. She could slide right over the edge into the escape of complete and utter sexual need.
But instead of brushing her lips with his, he leaned farther and brushed them past the soft swell of her ear lobe. “Perhaps the answer is to be found by asking yourself which you would regret more. I know what my answer would be.”
She shifted until he lifted his head enough to look into her eyes. “I honestly wish I knew, Baxter. I don’t know which will be the greater torture while you’re still here. Working next to you like I did all afternoon and evening, with us knowing exactly what we want, but knowing we’ll never take it. Or taking it, then having to work next to you knowing exactly what it was like.”
He smiled again. “Maybe it will be bloody awful and we’ll wonder what all the worry and fuss was about.”
She gave him a sardonic look. “Then maybe you weren’t having the same kiss I was having in the kitchen earlier.”
He leaned in and whispered right next to the corner of her mouth. “Oh, I was having the same kiss, luv.”
She could feel his heat, smell the lingering scent of ginger that had been steamed into them all afternoon.
“I should tell you this, though.” He brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth, then lightly along her jaw, making her moan softly, and shift her body under the bedspread, seeking something, anything, that would assuage the ache building up inside of her.
“What?” she said, quite breathless, as he trailed his almost-but-not-quite kisses to the tender spot just beneath her ear.
“If we decide to take ... it won’t be just for tonight.”
Her hips jerked at that, and there was nothing she could do about it. The very idea of having him, like this—repeatedly—was all she could do to lie still. “Baxter—”
“No. No more rules. No more boundaries. No more restrictions. If we’re going to take what time we do have, then I’m going to be quite greedy.” He nipped at her earlobe. “Voraciously, relentlessly, unrepentantly so.”
“But ... there’s Charlotte.” Lani squirmed, wanting so badly for him to stop torturing her and just take her, for God’s sake. She couldn’t be still if her life depended on it. “And ... and the Hugheses.”
“And there’s this bed, and us. And a whole island to explore, and beyond, if the time presents itself. I don’t just want you naked, Lei. Well, that’s not true. I will always want you naked. But no boundaries means just that. This isn’t only about sex. I’ll want your time, your attention, your laughter, your thoughts.” He tipped her face to his. “If we’re to have this time, then I’ll want all of you in it.”
The idyllic picture he was painting was that of her deepest desires. And she realized then that the stolen kisses, the burning need to have him naked, joined, thrusting hip-to-hip, wasn’t the driving force behind the feelings that were growing by leaps and bounds. They continued to grow, despite her attempts to steer clear of physical contact. It was the walks on the beach, sharing stories of their childhoods, sitting across the worktable from him after a very long, very trying day, and realizing that just having him there to talk to was pretty much the best thing ever.
She was going to be spending time with him, falling more deeply in love with him, whether she walked away that night, or not. And dammit, if she was going to feel all those things anyway, and have her heart ripped out after anyway ... then she wanted to feel this, too.
More terrified, and more exhilarated than she’d ever been before, she deliberately reached up and slid her hand along the back of his neck, burying her fingers, as she’d so often longed to do, in the thick, slightly shaggy waves that curled along his hairline. “Agreed then. No rules,” she whispered, pulling his head slowly down. “No restrictions.” A hot thrill coursed through her as she saw desire punch his pupils dark and wide. She lifted her head, and nipped his chin. “No boundaries.”
Then she tugged his mouth to hers, and for the first time—the first gloriously unrestrained, thoroughly uninhibited time—
she
kissed
him.
she
kissed
him.
Chapter 15
B
axter didn’t think there could be a torture more brutal than the cat and mouse game they’d been playing since his arrival on the island.
axter didn’t think there could be a torture more brutal than the cat and mouse game they’d been playing since his arrival on the island.
He’d been wrong.
So very, very wrong.
With Leilani as the aggressor, kissing her was a completely different experience. His body, already close to the edge of control with nothing more than a bedspread between them, was pushed to limits he didn’t know he had. And she was just kissing him.
Her hands were in his hair, nails raking his scalp. She was lifting up from the bed, pressing against him, as she took the kiss deeper, then deeper still, until he thought he’d embarrass himself in a way he hadn’t even as an untried lad with his first roll.
Moving on pure instinct, he pulled her beneath him and drew her hands down, pinning them on the bed next to her head. “Leilani,” he panted against her lips, “I’m—” He broke off and slid his mouth from hers, needing to find some semblance of sanity.
He kept her hands pinned, but her hips were still moving beneath his, begging him to rip, tear, shred, or do whatever was necessary to remove the goddamn bedspread from between their heated bodies. He wanted to glory in the feel of her skin ... all of it on all of his. Oh, sweet Mary, but he was never going to survive this.
“I’ve thought about this,” he said, as he nipped and licked his way along her shoulders, making her moan and writhe beneath him. “I’ve thought about every glorious detail. How I’d disrobe you, how I’d look at you in the moonlight, the sunlight, candlelight, or no light at all. I’d come to know your body so well, that by touch alone I could rightly imagine every last dip and curve.” He leaned in, pressed heated kisses to the side of her neck, making her gasp. “But oh, I’d want to see you. Watch you. Like right now, the way you respond to me, to my touch.” He drew his tongue along the soft line of her jaw, not sure who was being tortured more by the little whimpers she made as he did so.
“Baxter,” she breathed.
“You drive me mad, Lei.” He bit her earlobe with a little more edge than maybe he’d meant, making her body jerk, but the accompanying moan was one of pure pleasure. “I want to take, and take, and take, to drown in you. I want to sip, to suckle. I want to run my tongue into every nook.” He pressed her wrists to the bed, meaning for her to keep them there, then slid his hands to her shoulders as he moved his body lower on top of hers ... and took the bedspread with him.
“Peeling the linen from you is like unwrapping the richest, creamiest chocolate. And I know you will taste even sweeter, more decadent, more intoxicating.” To punctuate his words, he dropped kisses along her collar bone, then slid the twisted edge of the bedspread lower still, until he came close to the crests of her breasts. “Are they taut for me, Leilani?” he whispered roughly. “Are they waiting for my tongue, for my mouth to cover them, to lick them, suck them, make them wet, make them plump?”
“Yes,” she said, the word seemingly wrenched from her, as her hips tried to thrash beneath his weight.
He tugged the coverlet slowly down so the fabric dragged softly across the two tightly budded tips. She moaned, twisting beneath him.
“So perfectly tight, perfectly rosy, like the most exquisite toppings. I need to taste you.” He circled one nipple with the tip of his tongue, making it damp, then skimmed over it with his fingertips as he had with the bedspread, while he paid attention to the other with his mouth.
Lani was jerking beneath him, moaning loudly, and only because he kept all of his focus on attending to those two, perfect pleasure points, in the same way he could focus exclusively on the most intricate detail of a single dessert creation and tune everything else out, was he able to keep from coming right then. His body, his needs, were a distant second to fulfilling hers.
“Baxter ...” His name was a growl on her lips, and she reached for his shoulders, digging her fingertips in. “Please.”
“Not yet, luv.” He pushed her hands back to the mattress. “So much more to see. So much more to taste.”
Her responding groan of pleasure was long and low, her hips moving in a steady rhythm, as he smiled against her skin ... and moved lower still. “I love baring your warm skin to the cool air, love baring you to me.” He licked his fingertip then reached up and traced it over her nipples again. “Look at them glistening in the moonlight.”
Gasping, she pushed her head back into the mattress, arching her neck and shoulders, filling his palm with the soft roundness of her breast. He was tempted, so very tempted, to slide up ... slide in. Instead he continued his lazy path downward.
“I want you, Leilani. I’m so hard it hurts. But your scent entices me, lures me.” He drew the sheet farther down, past her navel, along the soft swell of her stomach. “I want to taste, to savor. Here.” He kissed his way to the tender flesh high inside her inner thigh. “And here.” He traced a similar path to the other side. “But I want to feast ... here.” He drew his tongue along the center of her, and groaned at the sweet taste of her.
Lani’s hips started to pump harder, and he could feel a fine quivering begin along her skin. She rocked and keened, and when he plunged his tongue deeply into her, she cried out, reached down and buried her fingers in his hair. Guiding him, urging him, demanding him, release broke over her in wracking, wrenching waves.
“Baxter, please ... please.” Her hips slowed, but her body continued to gather and jerk as the aftershocks kept twitching through her. “Now,” she demanded. “I’m—I’m safe, protected, we don’t need—” She broke off as he kissed his way back up the center of her torso while she continued to writhe beneath him.
The way she responded to him, making herself vulnerable to him, moved him in unpredictable ways. He shifted so he was directly on top of her and pressed himself between her thighs, which she parted, wrapping them around his hips, digging her heels into his lower back as she lifted for him, and took him in.
Take her, he did, sliding all the way in, groaning as she gripped him fully, so tightly, so wetly, so perfectly, it was the fulfillment of every fantasy he’d ever had. Even though his heart was drumming inside his chest, and his body was priming itself for a ferocious release, climaxing wasn’t the only thing dominating his thoughts. He met her every hip thrust, echoed every groan, every growl, as they worked their frenzied way to completion, together.
He could feel her climb again as she rolled her hips beneath him, and reality continued to eclipse fantasy. “Come with me, yes,” he said, claiming her mouth even as she was nodding in agreement.
He pulled her into his arms and moved more deeply, as she instinctively shifted to take him more tightly inside her. They moved with a rhythm that was as old as man’s creation, and uniquely and utterly their own. What stunned him, rocked him, as he raced straight to the edge of control, what ultimately drove him over the edge, taking her right along with him, was the deep, fiercely protective way he felt about her, cradled beneath him.
She was a strong, equal partner, proving herself a match for him in every possible way. But that wasn’t what was responsible for his heart being tugged, nor the way his conscience was being tugged even harder. He wanted her, all of her, in as primal a way as a man could want a woman. At the same time, he wanted to protect her, make sure no harm ever came to her. She was in his care. That’s what it came down to.
She was in his care.
Every part of her mattered to him. He knew he would lay down his life before he ever let anyone or anything be a threat to her.
To that end, as the shudders pulsating through their bodies gradually subsided, and their breathing struggled back to some semblance of normalcy, he kept her close, nestled in his arms. Rolling his weight from her, he took her with him, and tucked her against him, even as she was wrapping herself around him in much the same way. His heart tripped. The idea that they each were instinctively reaching to protect the other, nurture the other, moved him far more profoundly than the most powerful climax ever could. How mutually satisfying it was to give that, and to so naturally and honestly be given it in return.
Maybe that’s what an equal partnership truly was. Putting the other first, the feelings of fierce loyalty, and the need to protect, defend. It wasn’t just a man watching over his weaker, more vulnerable woman. Watch any lioness protecting her cubs and you get a glimpse of a woman’s innate strength and ability. He wanted to be protector, and ... to be protected, too. His heart, his emotional well-being, if not his physical self. He wanted to know she was there, would always be there, loyal to that desire, to him, as he would be, in all ways, to her.
She slipped one arm around his waist and snuggled closer, opening her hand and pressing her palm against his chest. Directly over his heart.
He closed his eyes, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He knew he wouldn’t share with her any thoughts or feelings presently rioting through his body, his head, his heart. He didn’t want to think about the inevitable, which was the future they would spend apart. It was far too brutal to contemplate in that moment. He didn’t think it fair to burden her with the true depth of his emotions.
He had no regrets, however, about having gotten to this place, to this new awareness, and hoped she didn’t either. A part of him thought it might be the better part of valor to get up, and go, leaving what they’d just shared as a singular, crystalline memory that he—and hopefully she—would forever have to savor. But even as he thought it, he knew the prospect of being with her again, whether in bed, walking on the beach, sharing a late night conversation, or smiling, side by side, at the camera, would be too tempting—too good, too ... much—to pass up.
He wanted it all. And unless she put a stop to it, he would take whatever was there for them, for as long as their time together allowed.
His next lucid thought came at some unknown point later in the night, when he stirred—literally—as he came to awareness, realizing she had slipped on top of him, and was presently recreating their original scenario ... only with her in the leading role. She was sliding the sheet down his body ... and following the trail with her tongue. And with very clever fingers.
He groaned as he came awake—fully awake—and had to fight the urge to roll her to her back and take her. He wondered if it had been as frustrating ... and intensely pleasurable, when he’d performed the same torturous journey on her.
“I love your scent,” she murmured, inciting him further, “your taste.”
Then he was the one growling and arching his hips when she took him into her mouth, her hands, until he could no longer contain himself.
“Lei, come here,” He reached blindly for her.
“Let me finish,” she said, but he sat up and pulled her to his lap, thrusting into her even as she straddled him.
“I want to be buried deep inside you when I—” And that’s as far as he got before the words were nipped off by the rampant surging of his body.
She held on, rocking with him as he roared into her, her arms around his neck, her teeth nipping at his earlobes, which only served to intensify his pulsating response.
“I swear I’m seeing more stars than I did on the beach,” he managed, struggling to get his heart to slow, and air back into his lungs.
He rolled her to her back, making her laugh as they continued to gasp for breath. “You’re a danger,” he panted. “A menace.”
“Yes,” she agreed quite readily. “I should be locked up. Held somewhere private, by someone who would keep a close eye on me.” She nipped his other ear, then punctuated her words with kisses. “A very ... close ... eye.”
They were laughing then, quite helplessly, until the need to breathe quieted them, and their playful nips turned into softer, more languorous kisses. He rolled them to their sides again, and they curled easily into the same position they’d nestled into before. Somewhere along the way, the sleepy, languid kissing turned into a slow, steady seduction. He couldn’t have said who was the seducer, and he didn’t much care.
The difference wasn’t in intensity; despite their earlier activity he was just as ready, just as wanting. With that edge of urgency removed, there was a softness, an easiness, a feeling that they had all the time in the world to simply sip, and take, talk, and kiss. He’d half thought they’d fall asleep at some point in the midst of it, either while she was dropping little kisses on his chest while he toyed with her hair, or while he traced his fingertips along her thigh, her arm, the contours of her chin and cheeks.
Instead, they came together quietly, gently, easily. As their need built, perhaps they were more intently focused than before. They shared long gazes, longer kisses, and when he slid slowly inside her, and she arched in a slow stretch of her back to meet him, he felt his heart slide up and over any remaining obstacle there might have been between them.
Afterward, she kissed him, smiling into his eyes, then curled up against him, under the protective wing of his arm, and fell instantly to sleep.
He was bone weary from the day, and wrung completely out by their lovemaking, yet he stayed awake far longer into the night. Holding her, stroking her hair, feeling her heart beat against his he wondered how in bloody hell he would ever find the strength to walk away from her.
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