A Sexy SEAL Novella Anthology (15 page)

Oh, God.

Gwen’s head fell back against the softly
cushioned wall, trembling as Noah drove into her again with a
satisfied moan. Her hands slid over his shoulders, fingers gripping
the rigid muscles before her nails skimmed down his biceps. Her
hands couldn’t even wrap around the broad, rounded muscles. She
squeezed but they were rock-hard. Somehow that turned her on even
more, another ripple of passion spinning through her system.

This was Noah.

Here.

In her arms.

Inside her body.

He felt so good.

She shuddered, because he was so, so
amazingly good.

Gwen couldn’t hold back her moan.

Hearing it, Noah plunged harder, his hands
angling her higher to meet his thrusts.

She shuddered, another orgasm coiling tight
and heady in her belly.

She knew she needed to stay quiet. They were
having sex at his brother’s engagement party, for crying out
loud.

In a public hotel.

In a freaking coat closet.

She shouldn’t be doing this.

But, oh, God, it felt so good. And she
couldn’t hold back her moans. Not when he made her feel like
this.

Her skin was on fire, her body filled with
so many needs that she thought she’d die if they weren’t met. Needs
only Noah could fill, wants only Noah could understand. In this
moment, he was her whole world.

Gwen’s fingers tightened, her nails digging
into the concrete hardness of his biceps as he skimmed his lips
over her cheek, along her jaw. His teeth scraped a fiery trail
along her throat before he buried his mouth in her neck, nibbling
and sucking at the sensitive flesh just beneath her ear.

Gwen’s eyes flew open as he nipped, the pain
sending hedonistic spirals of pleasure surging through her
body.

She tightened her legs around his hips, her
thighs gripping his body so tight that not even air could come
between them. She couldn’t get enough of him. He was her dream
lover, her ideal man.

He was her everything.

Gwen barely had time to compute that
realization before he took her mouth again. His hands were like
fire, moving over her body with a blistering heat. Inciting needs,
desires, an intense craving like nothing she’d ever felt
before.

Not even with him.

Suddenly terrified of the power of her
cravings, sure that she was building toward heartbreak along with a
wild climax, Gwen tried to regain a tenuous thread of control. But
she couldn’t find a single one. All she could do was ride the waves
of pleasure and trust that she wouldn’t break when she reached the
end of the fall.

His tongue thrust in time with his body,
sliding in and out with delicious friction. Faster and harder,
harder and faster. Gwen’s trembling thighs tightened, her body
tensing as her climax began uncoiling, snapping loose tiny
explosions of passion.

Noah ripped his mouth from hers, burying his
face in the curve of her shoulder as his fingers dug into her
hips.

His thrusts grew sharper, his moves
jerky.

He plunged, hesitated, then as his teeth
scraped the soft flesh of her throat, he plunged again.

“Mine,” he breathed, the word a guttural
moan in her ear as he gave one last thrust before groaning his
release. “You’re mine.”

The words made her whimper.

The image made her tremble.

The power of his claim sent her flying over
the edge, her own body exploding with a climax so strong she saw
stars explode in bright, neon colors against her tightly clenched
eyelids.

The orgasm spun through her body, this one
so powerful that Gwen felt like she was dying from the power of it.
Everything went black, even the sparkling stars behind her eyes
disappeared. A bell-like ringing filled her ears. She wasn’t even
sure if she was breathing or not.

The only thing she was sure of was Noah.

He was her anchor, his body pressed tight
against her, securing her to the wall so she didn’t slide into a
quivering mass of melting pleasure all over his feet.

She wasn’t sure when she came back into
herself.

It was a slow realization that she could
feel her toes, that she could hear Noah’s still-labored breath,
feel it hot against her shoulder where he’d buried his face.

Her muscles were still like water, her
thighs heavy and trembling and her insides quivering with tiny
aftershocks of pleasure.

It took her a few moments to identify the
feeling pulsing through her system, filling her heart. Happiness.
Pure, intense happiness. She hadn’t felt like this in years.

How long had her hands been rubbing small,
soothing circles over the damp skin of Noah’s back? How long had
they even been in here?

It seemed like it’d only been a
heartbeat.

It felt like it’d been forever.

However long it’d taken, it was worth it.
Because they’d been so good. So incredibly wonderful.

She felt so right in his arms.

She wanted to stay here forever.

Forever?

Gwen’s breath, already so labored that it
burned her throat, disappeared. Panic clutched her belly, shoving
aside all pleasure in its terrified dance. Her hands still
trembled, but the shaking was fear now.

Fear that she’d just made the biggest
mistake of her life.

A mistake she wouldn’t be able to recover
from this time. After all, how many times could a broken heart
heal?

Even as the terror of those thoughts gripped
her, she couldn’t bring herself to pull out of Noah’s arms. Not
when she knew her time here was so short.

She didn’t realize that a single tear had
slid down her cheek until the salty warmth coated her lips. Gwen
pressed them tight together, breathing in deeply through her nose
to try and shore up her strength.

“Why?” she asked, the word barely above a
whisper.

Noah stiffened under her hands, muscles
tightening against her body. She waited, but the anger she’d
expected him to react with didn’t follow. Neither did he pull back
to give her that charming smile of his, or try to talk her into
another round of mind-numbing sex. That’s what he’d always done
before when she’d tried to tiptoe around any words that might be
construed as relationship talk.

Instead, he sighed. His breath danced
through her hair, cooling her heated skin. The tension poured away
as he pulled back to give Gwen a soft kiss.

When she saw his expression in the dim
light, she realized he hadn’t ditched the tension. He’d simply
handed it over to her.

“Why? Because we’re great together,” he said
quietly, his fingers skimming over her face before sliding a long,
damp strand of hair off her temple. “We belong together.”

Gwen’s breath disappeared.

A buzzing filled her ears and her mouth went
dry.

“Belong together?” she asked, her words so
faint she wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. “How?”

“Like this,” he said, proving that his
hearing was just fine as he gave her butt a gentle squeeze. “We’re
hot, babe. Flaming hot. Look at us. After years apart and all it
takes is one look, one touch? That says something.”

It said that between them they had a
volatile chemistry. One that burned hot and fast. Didn’t that make
it all the more dangerous, though?

“Think about what it’ll be like in a
bedroom. Or a shower,” he teased with a wicked smile that said he
remembered vividly how much she liked water games. “I’ve got a few
more days leave. We can spend them pleasuring each other until I’m
on leave again.”

And that, she realized as her head spun, was
the closest she’d ever heard to a commitment from Noah Morelli.

“What d’ya say, Gwen? You want to go out
there together, to let everyone know that it’s you and me now?”

Gwen closed her eyes against the pain
piercing through her heart. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to
grab onto whatever he offered—anything he was willing to give—and
hold tight with both hands.

She’d been in love with Noah since she was a
giddy girl of seventeen. Even when he’d broken her heart, she’d
still loved him. She’d learned to accept that she would love him
forever.

That’s just the way it was.

So she’d waited half her life to hear Noah
say he wanted her. She’d imagined it plenty of times, the words
even echoed through her dreams. She’d never doubted that he liked
her. They’d been friends too long for her to wonder about that. And
desire? From the first time they’d gotten naked together, the heat
between them had been incendiary.

But she’d spent almost four years wishing
Noah would want her out of bed—or away from the wall or off the
countertop—the same way he wanted her during sex.

She’d spent the last three years secretly
wishing he’d come back, that he’d tell her that he wanted her more
than he wanted to keep that stupid
no-relationship
vow. In
those wishes, it’d been easy to imagine herself thrilled if he
did.

Gwen trembled, trying to find the strength
to breathe.

Because she wasn’t thrilled.

Instead, she was miserable.

Gwen wondered if there was something
seriously wrong with her. Or maybe it was New Year’s Eve. Could she
blame all of this on the calendar?

She’d just had sex with Noah.

The man who’d walked away and broken her
heart. The one she’d spent three years trying to forget.

And ten minutes after seeing him for the
first time in three years, she stripped naked and rode him like a
polo pony.

And loved every orgasm of it.

Now he was offering her more.

More sex.

More naked rides.

More orgasms.

How could she say no?

How could she say yes?

“Let me go,” Gwen murmured, her legs sliding
down his to settle on the floor. “Please, Noah. Let me go.”

She was proud of those words. After all,
she’d managed to offer them without crying or screaming.

Go her.

“Give me five minutes and we can do it all
over again,” Noah teased. But from the intense look in his eyes as
he searched her face, she could tell that he’d caught the edge in
her voice. Either that or he was picking up on the terrified
tension in her body.

But he didn’t release her.

She didn’t struggle. Not because it wouldn’t
be dignified—to hell with dignity. The only reason she didn’t
struggle was because she had no strength.

But when he caressed his hand over her
breast and she flinched, Noah sighed and loosened his hold on her.
Gwen forced her knees to lock and angled her shoulders against the
wall to ensure she didn’t sink to his feet.

“We should return to the party,” she said,
even though facing a roomful of people after having hot,
against-the-wall sex with a man she hadn’t seen in three years held
no appeal.

No, she definitely didn’t want to face that
ballroom full of people. She couldn’t leave without telling
Russell, who’d insist on going, too. Which would only upset
Bryanna.

As usual, Noah had left her with no
choices.

“Maybe we should talk first,” Noah suggested
quietly. His eyes didn’t leave her as he bent down to pick up her
dress from the floor.

He’d never wanted to talk. At least not
about anything that could open the dreaded door to an emotional
discussion.

“You want to talk?” she asked, narrowing her
eyes to peer at him through the dim light. She was so surprised
that her hand froze halfway to taking her dress back.
“
You
?”

“Don’t you think we should?”

Gwen took the dress, holding it in front of
her. Not so much out of modesty but more because she was too busy
staring at him to figure out how to put it on.

“We just made love in a closet,” he pointed
out. His voice was calm and reasonable but the way he grabbed his
pants and yanked them on was anything but. “Now you want to ignore
the implications of what happened here so you can hurry out to
rejoin...”

He looked away instead of finishing.

Suddenly very aware of her nudity, Gwen
stepped into her dress, pulling the skirt up as quickly as she
could.

“Russell.” She squeezed her eyes closed for
a moment, wondering why she felt so ashamed. There was no
commitment between her and Russell. Until tonight she’d thought
they were just friends. But sneaking off to have sex with another
man on the night her friend planned to propose was a pretty lousy
thing to do.

“Russell,” Noah agreed in a heavy voice. He
grabbed his shirt, but didn’t put it on. She wished he would. Even
in the dim light, his chest was a temptation of epic proportions.
She needed all her wits to get through this conversation but all
she could think of was touching him again. “So what’s the deal? Are
you seriously going to hook up with him?”

Gwen forced her lids open, meeting his gaze
as she tried to figure out how to answer that. To him, and to
herself. Before she could, he gestured with his shirt to indicate
the closet.

“However serious you are, you need to factor
this in,” he demanded. “You can’t agree to marry someone else when
this is here, between us. That’s every kind of wrong, Gwen. To him,
to you, to us.”

She knew her mouth was hanging open, but
Gwen couldn’t find the strength to pull it closed. Us? He was
talking about the two of them as a couple?

For a brief second she wondered if the
government was involved in some sort of cloning program, making
multiple sexy SEALs for combat and this was a fake Noah. But she
knew better. Only the real Noah could make her explode like he
had.

Thinking about that last orgasm reminded her
that she was still pretty much naked. Gwen finished pulling her
dress into place.

“Why?” she asked again, pulling her zipper
closed before folding the halter over her still tingling,
over-sensitized breasts. Before she could find the hooks, Noah
stepped around to secure the straps himself. His hands were gentle
as they brushed her hair aside, his fingers warm as he ran one hand
down her back when he was done.