Girl Gear 3: Bound to Happen (21 page)

The emotional overload hit her and she looked up and laughed. She laughed until she saw the fire burning in Anton's eyes, and then her giggles died in her belly, replaced by an anticipation she hadn't felt for what seemed like ages. Like forever. Since the day she'd walked away and left him swimming laps in his pool.

The heat was one that came from a place deep inside him, a place he'd rarely shared. It was the fire she longed to see, a fire burning for her. The emotion she'd so seldom been able to tap when she'd nearly broken her heart trying. Hope flared, along with desire.

She remained sitting sideways in her seat, one leg crooked beneath her, the other on the floor, and dropped her hands to her thighs, where her fingers squeezed. She did her best to keep her expression and her tone level when what she felt was upside down. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Slowly he took a deep breath, released it with a muttered curse, then looked away. "You make it hard."

"Make what hard?"

"Saying no. Staying away." He turned back to her again. His expression had softened but desire still reigned. "I don't think you have any idea how sexy you are. The things that come to mind when I look at you. The things I want to do. It's crazy. Nothing else…" He shook his head. "No one else has ever gotten to me the way you have. The way you do."

Not the words of a man in love, were they? For a moment all Lauren could do was sit and stare and try to get past the hurt of what he hadn't said. Humidity and confusion enveloped her, and perspiration replaced the drops of rain on her skin. Thoughts raced through her mind, leaving her to think that this wasn't about her, after all.

Maybe he wasn't battling demons of her making but demons of his own. Maybe he couldn't trust where her passion, her love, were coming from, what she made him feel, because that trust would mean betraying the truths he believed about himself. Just as denying her sexuality would be her own self-directed lie.

What was it he believed about himself that kept him at such a distance? And how in the world were they going to find a middle ground?

Before she could think of where to begin looking, Anton reached out and touched her, running fingertips over one breast, then the other, brushing one nipple, then the other, both well delineated by the wet cotton fabric of her top.

Of all the times to go braless, she thought, doing her damnedest to keep her face passive, her breathing even, her heartbeat from running away.

The one thing over which she had no control, the one reaction that would show Anton exactly what he was doing to her, was also the most obvious to a visually oriented man. And so he continued his caress until her nipples drew into tight gumdrops and she would've done anything to have him taste her candy.

She wanted desperately to reach for the hem of her tank top, to pull the thin fabric over her head and off, to bare her body for his enjoyment, one in which she would share. But she didn't. She sat still. And instead of closing her eyes and giving the experience over to the rest of her senses, she forced herself to keep her gaze trained on his face.

He held the weight of her breast in his palm. Tension showed in the set of his mouth, in the tic of his pulse at his temple. He looked up … from beneath his downcast brow, he looked up. The angle gave him the appearance of great impatience, gave Lauren the sense that he was losing the battle of restraint.

"Take it off."

Three simple words, and her hands started to shake. Yet, more than the words, it was the tone of voice, husky, raspy and rattled. As if he no longer had control over a thing so simple as the sound that rolled from his throat. What had been anticipation slipped quickly into anxiety, apprehension even, as she reached for the hem of the shirt. She'd never felt more vulnerable.

While she pulled it up and over her head, Anton moved his seat, sliding it all the way back and away from the steering wheel. He leaned across the console then, reaching for and releasing the lever beneath hers. Her seat shot back and bounced against its mooring. As Anton climbed across the console, his expression intent on having his way, Lauren scooted over to give him more room. The door handle jabbed mercilessly into her hip until, hands at her waist, he lifted her onto his lap. Facing him, she straddled his thighs, her knees barely fitting around his hips on the narrow seat.

He closed his eyes, shook his head and shuddered. Lauren felt the tremors in his body, his powerful attempt to hold himself in check. Powerful, but unsuccessful, because when he once again met her gaze, the expression on his face told her things he'd never said with words, things he'd rarely said with his body.

A fiercely turbulent emotion sizzled between them, and now there was no going back. She didn't want to go back. She wanted to give this man all she was. She wanted to convince him how good they were together and how far they could go when their two became one.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked even as his hands went to the fly of his fatigues. The zipper's metal teeth grated all the way down, and Lauren trembled.

She raised herself on her knees and leaned toward him. He took her breast into his mouth as she worked her shorts over her hips and off one leg, settling back onto his lap even as he raised his lower body and tugged his pants to his thighs.

His erection pressed hard against her bare sex and bare belly. Her dampness spread and she whimpered as he moved his mouth across her chest, dragging the flat of his tongue from one mound of flesh to the other, drawing hard on her nipple even as he wrapped one hand around her back and worked his fingers down to squeeze her bottom.

His other hand he wrapped around his cock. Lauren could feel his fingers there as he held himself, squeezing the base of his shaft. She couldn't believe he was already so close to coming, but the physical evidence, the bulge of flesh pulsing told a truth he couldn't deny.

His excitement heightened all that she was feeling. She looked down, seeing the hair-dusted flat of his belly beneath the
rucked
-up hem of his tobacco-colored T-shirt, his abs crunched and his fist pushed down into the nest of dark blond hair. His penis was beautiful, rigid and ripe, plum red and swollen. She wanted to take him in her mouth.

But their close quarters restricted movement and so, instead, she leaned back, bracing her elbows on the dashboard. Anton rubbed the head of his penis between her folds, both of them hissing in a breath at the contact, both of them watching the sex play between their legs.

She wanted to take him deep inside. Instead, she let him explore, separating her with his fingers, rubbing his penis over the tight knot of her clit, spreading her open and pushing forward and upward, inserting a crooked finger and finding her G-spot. She squirmed in his lap, especially when his finger delved deeper between her legs.

She pulled in a sharp breath at the invasion, forcing herself not to grind down into his hand. Not yet. She couldn't come yet. Not when the sight of his erection was taking her arousal to incredible heights. She had never in her life wanted to get off as badly as she did right now, in this steam pit of a car, with the man she loved making her body weep with want.

With her legs spread wide, she dropped her head back until she hit the windshield glass. Anton teased her, with his thumb and his finger and his penis, pulling the latter through her slick folds and back, over and over, back and forth.

She couldn't help it. She began to writhe, to grind her hips in a circular motion, to pump up and down. She began to pant, steaming the already steamy air. She began to come, and she stopped herself, with shudders that racked her body. And then she lifted her head.

Anton's face was flushed, his hair in ringlets falling over his forehead, his mouth a tight line and his eyes on fire. His voice came from the pit of his soul when he whispered, "Yes?"

"Oh, God, yes!" She cried out as he entered her in one long, smooth stroke. He'd been gone so long and she'd missed him so much and she'd wanted him like this forever.

She came apart, rocked from her toes to the roots of her hair. She shuddered and she shook and she shivered, sliding her fingers down into her sex and squeezing hard before rejoicing in the tactile proof of their bodies joining.

She loved touching Anton where he filled her with his penis. She looked at his face and she smiled. His head was thrown back, the tendons in his neck standing in rigid relief. He grimaced, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his mouth open as he blew out short choppy breaths.

And then he surged upward, crying out as he filled her with the warmth of his seed. She pulled him in as deeply as their awkward position allowed, pushing him to reach for more.

A quiver throbbed the length of his body and he finally shook it off, finished and completely spent. His eyes were closed, his head back against the seat. Lauren waited, holding him deep inside, hating to let him go. Leaning forward, needing to feel the emotional connection stirred by their physical joining, she brushed his lips with hers.

He kissed her back, briefly, lightly, a token gesture of affection that had nothing to do with the heights they'd just reached with their bodies. She tried again, sweetly sucking his lower lip. He let her continue the kiss, let her tease him with the tip of her tongue, the gentle edge of her teeth.

But somewhere between one breath and the next, she was the only one involved in the mouth-to-mouth contact. Anton had retreated. And so Lauren sat up, lifting her hips to release him, tamping down the urge to cry the minute he pulled free. This wasn't how this was supposed to end.

He repaired his clothing, adjusted his still-hard penis inside his fatigues. And then he opened the passenger-side door and climbed from the Jeep. She had more to repair and adjust, but managed by the time he'd walked around to the driver's side and slid behind the wheel.

He turned on the ignition, stared out the windshield as he asked, "You are still on the Pill, right?"

A little late for that, wasn't it? "Yes. Don't worry. You won't be hearing the pitter patter of little feet nine months from now."

"Good."

The word punched her square in the stomach, making her want to curl over and retch.

He shifted into first, let off the clutch, and the Jeep jerked from the cutaway back onto the main road. Anton had nothing else to say. He made the drive back to
Belize City
in silence, inside a Jeep that smelled of sex.

Lauren stared out the partially opened window, welcoming the blowing rush of rain in her face. The fresh air was easier to breathe than the scent of desire gone wrong. The stinging drops pelting her skin were easier to withstand than the pain stabbing dagger-sharp in her belly.

The rain forest they passed was easier to look at than the man at her side, who no longer had a heart.

"OKAY
. I
HAVE
a question."

Having barely recovered from yesterday's rainy-day encounter with Ray, the next afternoon found
Sydney
sitting on the sundeck on the roof of the villa. She glanced from Kinsey, who sat in the twin to
Sydney
's own fan-back chair, to Poe, who relaxed in a matching cedar lounger, to Lauren, who did not relax where she sat in hers.

Stereo speakers wired to the deck from the villa's main room played a recording of a local reggae band. The umbrella table was pulled close into the circle of the female four and loaded down with pineapple and
starfruit
, figs and mangoes, plums and tangerines, all which Auralie had picked up on the mainland.

The men had gone fishing. And the women had joked all afternoon about keeping the cave warm while the cavemen were out spearing dinner. Except Lauren, who had wanted to spear Anton, a spearing of a sort that was not a sexual metaphor and was also not a joke.

Actually the women were starving and waiting, fingers crossed, for the fresh fish that Auralie had promised to bake with bananas and limes and an incredibly spicy rice pilaf for dinner. Until then, the fruit—much of it rum-soaked at Lauren's insistence—would have to do. Washing it down with the leftover rum and a wee bit of Coke meant any inhibitions they'd brought to the deck had long since met an untimely fate.

Stretching out her legs and wiggling her toes as she reached for a fig, Kinsey shot a sideways glance at
Sydney
. "Are you going to ask us your question, or are we supposed to snatch random answers out of the air?"

Sydney
wished she was facing all three of the others. She wanted them lined up, side by side, one, two, three, so she could get a look at their expressions when she dropped her bomb.