Girl Gear 3: Bound to Happen (25 page)

She worked him with her tongue. Long strokes along the underside. Playful laps over the broad flat of his plum-red head. Nibbles and kisses and open-mouth exploration. Bare flicks of the tip where a salty droplet trickled from the tiny
stitted
opening.

Her own body opened, her core swelling and throbbing and seeping. Her response became a painful wanting ache. Wanting him to fill her, to make her come. Wanting him because she wanted
him.

This born protector who'd rescued her so long ago when he'd been barely more than a boy.

This fantasy lover who'd occupied every one of the impossibly never-ending years since.

This flesh-and-blood man she'd grown to admire, understand and love.

Tears stung her eyes and she had to struggle for her own control and patience and concentration on the loving task at hand. A near-impossible feat she accomplished by cloaking herself in pure physical sensation. The beauty of Ray's body and her own body's response.

She wanted more than anything to lie back on the makeshift bed and take Ray with her. To open her legs and feel him drive deeply into her. She caught the salty scent of her own arousal, even while breathing her fill of Ray's musky essence, even while sampling his most intimate parts and savoring his taste, so unique, so unequivocally Ray.

This was one intimacy they hadn't yet shared, and she wanted to take as long as he would let her take. They were together. They had perfect memories to create. That would be enough, she swore, swirling her tongue around the warmly ridged head.

With a long, low hiss, Ray pulled free of her mouth. Hands at his hips and eyes closed, he struggled to back away from the edge where
Sydney
knew he hovered.

She knew because she'd felt him surge against her palm while her hand had explored the sensitive flesh between his legs.

She knew because she'd felt him pulse into the cupped flat of her tongue when she'd lapped the underside of his shaft.

She knew because his face was a strained mask as he tapped into deep reserves of strength to stop his release. And even as she looked on, fluid slowly seeped from the tiny slit, a creamy precursor to the burst of pleasure yet to come.

With a final shudder, he shook off the last of the restraint on which he'd been drawing and looked down. Still on her knees,
Sydney
sat back on her heels, maintaining the eye contact that raised the temperature of the blood racing through her veins. His eyes were beautiful, a fertile living green that gave rise to tender thoughts of how loving a man Ray was.

But this was not about love. This was about sex. Again, she forced the reminder front and center. And so when he dropped to the cushion before her and placed his hands on her thighs,
Sydney
pulled her legs in front of her, keeping her knees close to her chest, her feet tacked up to her bottom.

Ray was impatient. He wasn't going to waste time in an unnecessary seduction. Instead, he simply parted her legs.

Sydney
leaned back on her elbows, tacking her chin to her chest, casting her gaze the length of her body and watching as Ray lowered his head. He opened his mouth over her feminine center, breathing a stream of warm breath over her.

Even as she shivered, she watched. His hands were so big, the spread of his palms so wide where they held open her thighs. If she closed her eyes, she could feel the imprint of each finger. Instead, she looked on, loving the way his fall of dark hair looked against her skin.

His tongue boldly swept from the moist opening, where he thrust inside, mimicking the motions of making love, to the tight knot of her clitoris, where he
hghtly
sucked the aroused bud of nerves before tendering butterfly kisses and the gentle press of the flat of his tongue along the sensitive female erection.

Sydney
watched it all clinically, analyzing the physical action and her own response like a strangely detached observer. She was doing her damnedest to keep emotion out of the equation. But then Ray looked up. With his tongue lapping with
kittenlike
strokes, he looked up. And
Sydney
knew she was the biggest kind of fool.

Because her gaze met and snagged on Ray's, and his eyes told her that he was having none of this composure business. He was here to make her sweat. She watched his tongue. With her gaze still caught by his, she watched his tongue.

Watched the wide flat surface slide through her folds. Watched the tip curl and cup and wrap around her clit. Watched the blue-veined underside, so similar to the thickly veined length of his penis, as he licked her juices from his lips. And then she began to sweat. To squirm. To sizzle and steam from the inside out.

Oh, how had she ever thought she could make this encounter be all about sex when it was utterly, completely about Ray?

Her head fell back and her pelvis thrust upward. She wanted more. She wanted everything. She wanted him to stretch her wide open and fill her up. "Please, Ray. I need … more. I need you inside me."

It was a finger she felt slip into her. A thick finger that slowly hit bottom and just as slowly withdrew. Again she thrust upward. And this time two fingers slid deep inside, crooking up to caress the pillow of her G-spot while he continued to work on her clit with his tongue.

Sydney
cried out. She hadn't known anything, any man, Ray … she hadn't known Ray could make her ache with a need that reached beyond physical into her soul.

His hand played her like an instrument he'd practiced on for years. He knew where to touch, to tease, to tickle. When he pulled away, she whimpered. When he returned to test her with three of his fingers, she thrust her pelvis into his hand.

He wasn't giving her what she wanted and her patience was growing thin. She looked back at him, saw the fire in his eyes as he moved his hand away, and knew he had to feel the heat simmering in her gaze, in her skin, in that moist place where he waited.

Leaning on one elbow, she slipped the fingers of her other hand down between her legs, showing him how best to finger her. She dipped inside, where Ray had been, and made him watch while she gave herself pleasure, to her folds, her clit.

The look in his eyes told her how close he was to taking her apart. Exactly the way she wanted to be taken. She pulled her hand away slowly, separating her folds and showing him how ready she was to take him. And then she braced herself back on both elbows and spread her legs wider, issuing her invitation with her tongue caught between her teeth.

Ray didn't need a second prompting. He got to his knees and, his fist flush against his nest of dark hair, held the base of his cock so that it looked seconds from bursting. He moved up between her legs. She shifted onto her tailbone, giving him better access.

He spread her moisture with his plum-ripe head, stroking up and down through her folds. When he pushed forward, she watched. His penis stretched her opening, and her engorged lips swallowed his thick length, and all the while she watched.

She couldn't take her eyes away from their joining. Ray still held his shaft at the base, and the shared moisture glistened on his skin.
Sydney
had to touch him, and so she shifted her weight once again, leaning on one elbow while her free hand explored.

When she pinched her clit, Ray growled, a low, rolling sound she felt in her core. When she slid the V of her spread fingers over his shaft and kept her hand there, catching the ridge of his head as he pulled free, he groaned. When she licked her lips, telling him wordlessly how much she wanted to take his ripe fruit into her mouth and suck until he burst open, he couldn't stand it anymore and drove home.

She fell back against the cushions, wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and let him ride her hard. She welcomed his thrusts, and met every one with a thrust of her own, digging her heels into his backside for leverage. He didn't love her gently, but took her with a rough desperation, saying her name, along with four-letter words she didn't think she'd ever heard him use.

Her orgasm hit her when she wasn't even looking. The base of Ray's cock rubbed over her clit, the head scraped her G-spot with every deep thrust. She let herself go, grabbing his backside and pulling him as deep as he could possibly drive himself into her body.

Her head thrashed and her fingers clawed and then Ray came with a shudder that rocked her to her toes. She felt the warmth of him coating her inside and rejoiced in the intimacy she'd never shared with another man. An intimacy she never
would
share with another man. This bond was too rare, this closeness one she'd never thought to find.

He was silent; even as he finished, he didn't speak. If not for the warm fluid seeping between her legs, the tremors she'd felt rack his body, she'd have no other evidence that he'd come. "Why are you so quiet? You come without making any noise. Why is that?"

He turned his head so that his lips tickled her ear. "I don't want to wake you up. In case you've fallen asleep."

She smacked his backside. "That's not funny."

"Hey, it has been known to happen."

"Not with me, it hasn't." She didn't like thinking of other women he'd been with.

Ray raised himself on his elbows and looked down into her face. "Oh, right. It's you. I forgot there for a minute."

Okay. He was teasing her. He was letting her know that what they'd just done together was nothing more than the fulfillment of the promise they'd been working toward since their first night on the island.

This was exactly what she'd asked for, she realized, even as Ray lowered his head and tenderly brushed her lips with his, kissing her gently, lovingly, filling her soul with the emotion she'd worked so hard to push away. How could he kiss her like this and let her go?

And how could she kiss him in return, holding him close and intimately, his body still a part of hers, and ever walk away?

10

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T
HE HOUR FOLLOWING
dinner later that same day found
Sydney
in the first-floor office her father kept at the villa, a room into which she'd rarely ventured, and never in Nolan's absence.

His elegantly carved teak desk faced a floor-to-ceiling window that took up an entire wall. A wall, in fact, that was the sole section of the first floor unobstructed by the wraparound veranda.

The view beyond was more beautiful than she had the ability to describe. The palms, the sand, the gentle waves of the
Caribbean
with caps of starlit white. Wearing a pair of tribal-print lounge pants and a matching halter top,
Sydney
sighed and wrapped her arms around her body, wishing she could express what the beauty made her feel.

But the eloquent poem she longed to write failed to materialize. The ocean's music that sang in her heart remained trapped there, never to escape. The glorious moon rising into a sky left dark by the setting sun begged to be painted, but was caught, instead, on the canvas of her mind.

As much as she wanted to do all those things, the harsh truth was, she couldn't do a single one. Not with the justice they deserved. And for one very simple reason. Sydney Ford didn't have a creative bone in her body.

Instead, she had Macy Webb to write copy and Lauren Hollister in charge of layout and design. She had Kinsey Gray's uncanny ability to predict fashion trends, Chloe Zuniga's discerning awareness of color and style, and Melanie
Craine's
technological wizardry.

Sydney
considered herself lucky. She'd surrounded herself with women who possessed the skills and the traits and the talents she lacked. All she had to do was reach down into the creative gIRL-gEAR well for any expertise she needed, though none of it was truly her own.

Not that she came to the table empty-handed. She contributed the fundamentals required for business, a linear grasp of the concepts involved, a logical understanding of the required theories an executive officer needed to steer a company toward success. She had Nolan to thank for passing along the genes. And her mother to thank, too.

Had Vegas Ford not pointed out Sydney's creative shortcomings over and over again, she might've continued to set unattainable goals, to strive to prove herself worthy as the offspring of a world-famous artist, when she'd been so much more her father's daughter.