Harlequin KISS August 2014 Bundle (13 page)

Her pulse kicked up another notch as the devil whispered,
Kiss him,
and she contemplated doing just that.

That would
definitely
wake him up.

But what if he rejected her advances? It would be embarrassing and awkward. For a
very
long time. It would probably even kill her. She’d
probably die of mortification on the spot.

It would certainly be hard to come back from.

Another sinful whisper.
But what if he doesn’t?

Her finger inched towards his mouth, the very tip lightly touching the bow of his top lip. He shook his head slightly as if a mozzie had buzzed him and Claudia froze. His tongue darted out and swiped along where she had touched. But he settled
back to sleep again quickly.

Her heart was beating so loudly now she was surprised it alone hadn’t woken him up. Hell, she was surprised it hadn’t triggered a tsunami.

The possibilities of what could happen here scared the living daylights out of her—the number of ways he could reject her and crush her spirit made her cringe. But she realised something else as she waited like a scared
rabbit in the shadows for her heart rate to settle. In a few short months Luke would be heading back to London, and the thought that she might never get another opportunity to show him how she felt suddenly scared her a hell of a lot more.

Screw it.

And the devil smiled.

FOURTEEN

Luke drifted
up out of the many layers of sleep to a pair of lips brushing along his. Light and gentle but definitely a mouth. Definitely a kiss. His lips responded on autopilot to the pressure before his brain could compute the facts.

He opened his eyes. Claudia?

‘Claude?’ he murmured, her lips so close they brushed against each other again.

Claudia pulled
back abruptly, clearly startled. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry...I just...I...’

Every cell in Luke’s body stood to attention. Claudia was kissing him? ‘You just decided to...kiss me?’ he clarified.

Claudia shuffled away a bit, put some distance between them as she rolled back onto her elbow, propping her head up with her hand. She could feel the heat in her face and was grateful
it was too dark to see the resulting pink in her cheeks.

‘I’m...I don’t know what happened. I was just...no.’ She shook her head. ‘There are no excuses for it.’

Luke was fully awake now. Claudia had kissed him. A delicious buzz took up residence in his lips as the tension from the dance floor revisited. He rolled up onto his elbow too, facing her, his gaze drifting to her breasts where
a decent amount of soft swell made the cleavage interesting.

His breath hitched a little.

His pulse spiked a lot.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think I’d like to hear them.’

Claudia swallowed as her nipples hardened beneath his blatant gaze and part of her just wanted to grab his hand and bring it to one of them, feel him squeeze it again as he did that night all those weeks
ago now.

But she was in more than enough trouble.

‘You’re always so...clean shaven...so smooth...I was trying to find out if you’d missed a patch...or something.’

‘So, you were checking my
lips
for stubble as well? With...your mouth?’

Claudia cringed at how bad it sounded. She’d known this was going to be humiliating but had that stopped her? No.

Stupid devil.

Stupid.
Stupid. Stupid.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Your mouth...God...your mouth...’ Claudia shut her eyes. How could she explain this?

Tell him you lost your mind temporarily and apologise,
the angel demanded.

Screw that
, the devil butted in.
Tell him it looked so goddamn pretty and kissable in the glowing red light.

Claudia groaned, wishing they’d both shut the hell up.

Luke
felt a leap in his belly as the tortured little moan escaped her mouth. Every one of her words had gone straight to his groin and stroked. He wanted to kiss her very badly, to put her out of her misery, but the moment was too drenched in seething sexuality to let her off that easily.

He wanted to hear what she had to say about his mouth. And then he was going to put it on her cleavage and
suck her nipples deep inside it.

‘My mouth?’

Claudia’s eyes snapped open at the prompt that sounded more growl than request. He was really going to make her say it.

‘I was...curious, all right? I’ve thought about it...about kissing it...for ages. And suddenly...there’s this devil on my shoulder and it was saying how pretty your mouth looked in the light from the clock and it did...it
really did. And then I was...’

Luke chuckled. He was sure she wasn’t the first person to use the-devil-made-me-do-it defence but she sounded so damned confounded by it, he couldn’t help but be amused.

And flattered. He was flattered all the way to hell and back.

Yeah...he knew a little about that devil.

Luke reached out, bridging the short distance between them, sliding his
hand onto her nape, drifting his thumb up and down. It came into contact with the knot at her neck where the halter straps of her dress tied and it took all his willpower not to undo it.

‘How long?’ he asked, his gaze dropping briefly to her mouth. ‘How long have you wanted to kiss me?’

Claudia knew this was the perfect opportunity to lie. He couldn’t see inside her head. He didn’t know
the truth. She could just say ever since that day you groped me. Or since last week. Or something flip. But his gaze was heavy and it seemed to bore straight to the root of her honesty.

And besides, this seemed a moment for honesty. No matter how much it might come back to bite her in the butt.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly tinder dry. His thumb at her nape was seductive and she
fought against the downward flutter of her eyelids.

‘Most of my life,’ she admitted. It sounded so...desperate said out loud and Claudia wished she could snatch the words straight back. ‘Kinda pathetic, huh?’

‘No,’ Luke whispered. ‘Sweet.’

Claudia gave a half snort, half groan. He couldn’t have chosen worse words if he’d tried.

Luke felt the sudden tension in her neck. ‘What?’
he asked.

Her eyes opened fully. ‘I’m so sick of being sweet old Claude.’

Luke nodded slowly. ‘Okay. So what
do
you want?’

Claudia glared at him. What the hell did he think she wanted? ‘I want you to shut up and kiss me,’ she said not quite managing to keep her exasperation to herself. ‘What do
you
want?’

Luke shook his head. ‘Oh, you don’t want to know what I want.’

Claudia bristled further. ‘I’m not a kid, Luke,’ she said, staring at him with as much pissed off in her eyes as she could muster. ‘I can handle
whatever
it is you want.’

Luke had had a semi hard-on since waking to Claudia’s kiss but now it flowered to its maximum potential at her definitive assertion. He held her blazing gaze for a moment before dropping his to her mouth, her breasts, her
belly.

‘I want to rip this damn dress off you and feast on your breasts while I bury myself inside you. I want to make you come loud enough for Jonah and Avery to hear four floors away. And when I’ve done that I want to do it all again. I want to do it with you. All. Night. Long.’

Claudia wouldn’t have thought it possible for her throat to get any drier—she was wrong. Every cell in her
body practically went into a dehydrated torpor at his frank gaze and his even more frank admission.

‘Well,’ she said, licking her lips as she finally found her voice. ‘How about we start with mine and graduate to yours?’

Luke smiled at her then and she smiled back. ‘Good answer,’ he muttered before closing the distance between them and claiming her mouth.

And claim it he did. Deep
and hard, no finesse, no gentle initiation, it was full-on from the second their lips touched. Masterful and demanding, explosive and searing, sucking away her breath and her very ability to reason. It spoke of lust and longing and desires too long denied. It commanded capitulation and she submitted eagerly.

‘God,’ he groaned against her mouth. ‘I want you.’

And before she even had a
chance to answer he rolled her onto her back and then he was over her and then on her and he was kissing her again. Deep, wet, open-mouthed kissing, pushing her into the mattress with every thrust of his tongue, kissing her into the bed.

Kissing her into oblivion.

Claudia was finally able to grab a breath when he freed her mouth from his onslaught, but it was only brief before he sucked
it away again as he set about kissing a wet trail down her throat and into her cleavage. He swiped his hot tongue along the exposed swells of her breasts and Claudia moaned.

‘Undo your top,’ he said, his breath ragged. ‘I need to look at you.’

Claudia’s fingers shook from desire as she lifted her arms to do his bidding. She didn’t think to protest his command—because it
had
been a command—she
just did it. She wanted him to look too. Hell, she wanted him to do a lot more than that.

She needed him to
.

Finally her fingers managed the task and she was pulling her top down, exposing herself to his gaze. His satisfied hiss went straight to her nipples, hardening them before his eyes, and then he was feasting on them, exactly as he’d told her he wanted to, and Claudia was reduced
to a mass of cries and moans and pleas not to stop as he lashed the sensitive tips with his tongue and sucked them both in turn deep into his mouth, going from one to the other until she’d lost all powers of higher thinking and just lay there in a sexual bubble where the only thing that existed was his mouth on her breasts.

Not even his hand sliding down her body and back up under her dress
registered above the sensations he was creating with his tongue. And then he slipped a hand inside her pants, slid his fingers right into all the slickness and went straight for her clitoris.

The bubble burst.

‘Luke,’ she cried out, grabbing his shoulders as her body bucked and she felt as if she were falling. Her eyes flashed open.

‘Shh, shh,’ he murmured against her mouth, kissing
her long and deep and wet again as his fingers stroked her. ‘You taste so good,’ he whispered before returning to her breasts to feast again.

Claudia’s eyes practically rolled back in her head as his fingers circled and rubbed and his tongue swiped and flicked, both of them setting a rhythm that complemented the other, both of them rocking her, pushing her, dragging her, driving her closer
and closer and closer to nirvana.

And she was powerless to resist. She wasn’t even in her own body any more; she was floating above it somewhere watching herself as all the pieces of her started to come apart. As sensation swelled in her belly and something tore deep, deep, deep inside her, ripping her open, shredding her apart as it swelled further, growing and growing and growing until
it was unbearable, a pleasure so painful her body was begging for it to take her, consume her.

And then it did.

‘Luke!’ she cried out as it claimed her, breaking over her in an almighty shock wave that arched her back, squeezed her buttocks and stiffened her limbs.

‘It’s too much,’ she gasped as it bucked and writhed through her like some kind of possession, like the serpent itself.
‘I can’t,’ she said, fearing she would die as it broke over her again and again, dragging her breath from her lungs, pounding her heart in her chest. But it went on and on shifting and changing, stroking her body with a thousand carnal caresses.

And it
wasn’t
too much and she
could.

And as it started to ebb she reached for it again, crying out for more. She didn’t want it to stop. She
never
wanted it to stop. She wanted Luke, his mouth at her breasts, his fingers
exactly where they were
, like this
for ever
.

And he didn’t falter, he didn’t lift his head or shift his hand, chasing the tail of the orgasm as she moaned and whimpered, quivering through the dying vestiges, wringing out every drop of pleasure.

They were both breathing hard when Claudia finally stilled, Luke
collapsing against her, his forehead on her chest, his lips grazing the skin that lay over her heart.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, his voice drunk on a sexual high.

Claudia shook her head. No. She was never going to be okay ever again. She felt as if she’d been picked up and shaken and all the cells in her body had fallen out and been put back together in a completely new way. Her heart
beat like a drum and her blood surged through her head in painful intensity.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said, ‘I think I just blew a blood vessel in my brain.’

Luke chuckled. His head pounded pretty hard too. He kissed her chest, then all the way up her throat to her mouth where he kissed her gently, reverently, and she sighed against his mouth and he kissed her more just to hear it again.

‘I hope you can replicate that,’ she said when he finally pulled away.

Luke chuckled. ‘Repeat performances are my speciality.’

Claudia’s fingers caressed his nape, brushing against his collar. ‘God, I’m sorry, you’re still fully clothed.’ She cringed thinking about how she’d just lain there and let him
do
stuff to her. ‘I’m not usually a starfish, I promise. I just...I think you put
me into some kind of...stupor.’

‘Good.’ Luke kissed her brief and hard. ‘That was the objective. Besides, you’re not exactly naked either.’

Claudia looked down at herself. Her top hiked down, her skirt hitched up. ‘I think we should do something about that, don’t you?’

Luke grinned. ‘Absolutely,’ he said as he kissed her nose then eased off her, swinging his legs over the side of
the bed and pushing to his feet. ‘Take that dress off,’ he said as his fingers made short work of his buttons.

Claudia didn’t have to be told twice. It wasn’t exactly an easy task lying on the bed trying to wriggle out of a dress that was already a twisted, hot mess, especially when she couldn’t drag her eyes off Luke’s mad scramble to lose his clothes. In fact she stopped altogether when
he got down to his undies that were stretched to their limit by a very impressive erection.

Captain Sexypants indeed.

Luke glanced at Claudia as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear. The dress still covered her legs.

‘I swear if you don’t take that thing off soon I’m going to rip it off.’

Claudia shivered at the silky undercurrent in his voice. Her gaze
dropped to the hard ridge of his erection. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her belly twisting as she eyed if off, already knowing it was going to hurt
so damn good
. ‘I got distracted.’

Luke grinned as he pulled the waistband out slightly and looked down at what was causing Claudia’s distraction. He let it snap back into place. ‘None of this until I see more of that.’

He nodded his head in the
direction of her semi-nudity. Her dress was skew-whiff, her hair was a blonde mess and there were faint red marks on her breasts where he had sucked with a little too much enthusiasm, but she’d never looked more beautiful.

Claudia kicked free of the dress and reclined against the mattress, her arms above her head, arching her back slightly—he wasn’t the only one who could tease. She smiled
when he growled at her and said, ‘Those too,’ pointing to the scrap of red lace, the only thing between her and complete nudity.