Hotter Than Wildfire (15 page)

They looked at each other, the soft waves of the ocean coming through his open French windows like the sound of the world breathing.

Harry looked almost in pain, his face drawn, deep grooves bracketing his mouth. He huffed out a breath. His light eyes almost glowed in the penumbra as his hands tightened on her.

“Okay. I don’t know how we’re going to do this. If I’m not in you inside of five minutes, I’m going to die. My heart will simply explode, and it won’t be pretty. But the thing is this—I haven’t had sex in a couple of years, which creates two problems. One, I don’t have any condoms. If I had any condoms in some drawer somewhere they’d be powder by now. And two, I can’t promise to pull out because I’m going to come the second I’m in you. It won’t mean anything because the way I feel right now, I will stay hard for the next ten years, but I don’t have any control over anything right now.” He huffed another breath. “What are we going to do?”

Ellen didn’t answer right away. He had on a white shirt, which he’d put on to go upstairs to dinner at Sam and Nicole’s. She had the impression a white shirt was about as formal as he ever got. She couldn’t even begin to imagine him with a tie. Good, one less thing to worry about.

She reached around and ran her hands slowly up his chest, savoring the feel of him, hard and lean and perfect. He wasn’t wearing an undershirt, and as her hands moved up, she could feel male nipples under her palms and she stroked one with a thumb.

Harry jumped. There was no other word for it. His breathing rate increased.

“Ellen?” The cords of his neck were standing out and his jaw muscles were tight. “Did you hear a word I said?”

“Hmm?” Up, up, until she came to the top button of his shirt. She undid it, then the next one and the next one and the next one. Until his shirt hung open, coming together only under his belt.

Oh. It was enough to make her slack jawed. There wasn’t a pirate in any romance novel who could even hold a candle to Harry with his shirt open. His chest hairs were a mat of curly, dark-blond hair that covered his pectorals, thinning down to his belly button. There had never been a chest like this in the history of the world. Even his scars were beautiful.

“Ellen?” He sounded strangled now.

She brushed one panel aside and saw a hard male nipple with a light copper aureole around it. Moving forward slowly, as if in a dream, she nuzzled it. When she licked him there, just to see what he tasted like, he jolted again.

“For Christ’s sake, woman,” he gritted.

Delicious. He tasted absolutely delicious. Salty and sweet, at the same time.

She smiled up at him. “If you’re worried about disease, it’s been much longer than two years for me. So I guess we’re both disease free. If you’re worried about performance, believe me, whatever you do, you’ll be better than me. If you’re worried about pregnancy, I had to go to a doctor a couple of months back. I had stopped having my period because of stress. I was prescribed a series of shots, one a month, to regulate them. As a side effect, they’re contraceptive, too. My last shot was ten days ago, so—”

His eyes had widened as he listened.

“Christ,” he breathed, eyes fixed on her face. “Bareback.”

It took her a second to realize what he meant. “Oh, um, yeah.”

He exploded into action, reaching behind her to take the pins out of her hair, hands moving down to unzip her dress, tugging her panties down before it had had time to pool at her feet, pulling her shoes off, lifting her out of the dress, placing her on the bed, ripping his own clothes off—the bottom buttons of his shirt pinged all over the empty hardwood floor—and coming down on top of her.

Ellen barely had time to register what was happening when he spread his knees, strong hairy thighs opening her legs, reaching down to open her up, and she felt the huge, hot, hard head of his penis and then his hips tightened and he moved hard inside her, shaking and sweating. He barely made it all the way inside when his penis swelled and he exploded inside her, every muscle tight as she felt the hard jets of semen in splashes of warmth inside her.

He was holding tightly to her head, kissing her hard, groaning into her mouth, hips rocking back and forth as he continued spurting inside her and it went on and on, until he finally collapsed on top of her, hot and huge and heavy and sweaty, breathing like a bull.

“God,” he breathed then jolted. “Your shoulder!”

He lifted himself up on his elbows, looking appalled, and Ellen pressed down on his neck. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “It doesn’t hurt.”

With a deep sigh, he settled back on her, broad chest bellowing, as if he’d just run a marathon.

His breathing gradually slowed. His face was buried in the pillow next to her head.

“You should be singing ‘Rocket Man’ about now,” he said into the pillow, his voice muffled.

Ellen smiled up into the ceiling. “Well, something tells me you’re not done yet.”

He was huge inside her. Climaxing hadn’t made him soften a bit. His orgasm had had a fabulous effect, though. He’d pumped so much moisture into her that she was able to accommodate him. That first entry had been painful. He was large and she hadn’t made love in a long time.

Harry turned his head on the pillow and smiled at her. “Oh man,” he breathed, the words a little slurred. “I’m not ever going to be done. Gonna stay right here the rest of my natural days.”

She took in a deep breath, or tried to, anyway. The man weighed a ton. It didn’t make any difference, though, because who cared about breathing when there were all these fantastic sensations flooding her system?

His back alone was a source of fascination. Huge, broad shoulders, lean, hard planes of muscle that she could follow with her fingertips, one by one. She cupped the ball of his shoulder, pressing hard with her fingers, unable to make any kind of impression. If he weren’t so warm, she wouldn’t believe she was touching human skin.

Power hummed just under the skin, the kind of power she’d never felt before from a human being. An otherworldly energy, a life force that thrummed up through her fingers, just by touching him.

And it was an incredible aesthetic experience, too, because the man was so ripped. She traced her fingertips and then her palms over his shoulders, his back, following the powerful lines of the muscles. Amazing, just amazing, that any man could be so strong. Over the shoulder blades—steely muscles over bone—along the deep indentation of his spine, the strong muscles wrapped around his ribs. She sighed in deep contentment when she reached his backside, digging in her fingernails, which here too failed to make any kind of dent, and raking them up over his butt.

That had a real effect, as she felt his penis ripple and swell inside her.

“You like that,” she murmured against his shoulder.

“Mm.” Harry smiled lazily and turned his head just enough to kiss her shoulder. One big hand ran slowly up her rib cage and cupped her breast, thumb circling her nipple. “I like everything.”

His thumb made another slow circle and her vagina contracted, hard. “You like that, too.”

Ellen barely had enough air to speak, because the rush of heat had incinerated her lungs. He wasn’t even moving and it was the best sex she’d ever had.

“Yeah.”

“What else?” he asked, nipping her earlobe, moving his mouth lower to scrape his teeth along her neck. Goose bumps broke out all over her body and she contracted again around him.

The neck! The neck was an erogenous zone! She ran the palms of her hands up and down the hollow of his lower back while he licked the area behind her ears and she contracted again. Behind the ears…who knew that was erogenous? When he breathed into her ear goose bumps traveled over her skin again, and when he raised himself up a little on his elbows, face suddenly serious, eyes narrowed until only a golden slit showed, and licked her ear, she contracted again. And again.

She could feel his breathing pick up against her ear and could feel against her hands the bunching of the muscles in the small of his back as he started rocking inside her. Small movements at first, each sparking off a wildfire of sensations, then one long, deep plunge, and another, and she stopped breathing, stopped moving, because in another second…

Her entire body contracted around him, arms and legs clinging, her sheath clenching tightly around him over and over again, the pleasure so intense it was electric, almost unbearable, his movements sharp now, his penis rubbing right against a concentration of nerve endings, each one going off like a little firecracker…

The bed was creaking, slamming against the wall, and they were both sweating, every molecule of their bodies conspiring to make them cling together, everything so intense she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t because he was kissing her so hard, tongue deep in her mouth. Each breath she took she breathed in Harry, every move she made brought him closer to her, his chest rubbing against hers as he worked inside her, hard belly slapping against hers, so that it was as if his entire body were making love to her, from his mouth to his toes.

Closer, she wanted even closer, to all that power and strength and heat. She held him even more tightly, entwined her legs around his, and bit him on the jaw in her excitement.

It was as if she’d shifted a gear in him. His entire body gave a kick and his movements inside her grew faster, stronger, the friction burning her up. The large base of his penis ground against her, against the flesh that had become supersensitized, sensations so intense they hovered on the knife’s edge of pain, and she could feel another orgasm coming, speeding toward her like a freight train. She stiffened, back arching, breath caught in her lungs, and hung there, shaking, on some kind of plateau, and then she simply exploded, contractions sharp and fast around him.

He exploded, too, movements hard and strong, erupting inside her until her entire body was marked by him, inside and out.

It was simply too much, sensory overload. Lungs bellowing, heat pulsing in every cell of her body, she saw stars behind her closed lids. The craziest cliché in the book and it was true.

Her muscles slowly settled, grew lax, her breathing slowly coming back to normal. They were plastered together by his sweat and hers and her entire groin area was wet with his semen and her excitement.

It had never really occurred to her how…how
earthy
sex was. How incredibly intimate. The sex she’d had up until now had been polite, even a little remote. Now she felt Harry’s skin as her own, his breaths as her own.

They were as close as two human beings could possibly get. He was inside her, his body entirely covering hers. Mouth, chest, sex twined with his.

The cold and loneliness she’d felt this past year was simply banished.
Poof!
As if it had never existed. She was joined to this man every way there was, skin rubbing against skin. She was sure she smelled of him and tasted of him.

“Oh,” she breathed, and couldn’t say anything else. Words were blasted from her head. There really weren’t any words for what she felt, only sensations. Warm, golden sensations.

“Oh yeah,” Harry agreed in a rough whisper.

Silence descended. Not the awkward silence of two people who didn’t know what to say to one another, but the silence of something too big for words.

Harry was still hugely hot and hard inside her. Wasn’t that unusual? Weren’t men supposed to…to detumesce after sex? After two climaxes, surely he should have lost his erection.

But no.

Ellen’s eyes closed and she felt as if she were floating in a warm ocean, floating, floating…

“I hope you’re not thinking of sleeping,” Harry whispered in her ear. “Because I haven’t even begun.”

 
Seattle

  “Christ, hurry up.” Montez hopped from foot to foot, breath pluming in the frigid air. He wasn’t dressed for an op and it was fucking
cold
up here on Cougar Mountain, ten miles from Seattle.

Driving up, they’d stopped at a hardware–fishing gear–grocery store in the sticks and bought two shovels, gloves and a big tarp.

He hadn’t actually been there when his men had buried the body, but his men had sent him the GPS coordinates, precise to the inch.

Once they were over the spot, Montez had started to dig side by side with Piet, but Piet had simply held up his hand and motioned him to one side.

O-kay.

Truth be told, he didn’t mind that he wasn’t allowed to grub around in the peaty soil, unearthing a dead body. Piet wanted to work alone? Fine.

Piet must have done a lot of gravedigging in his life, because he worked as steadily and regularly as a machine. Within half an hour, there was a huge pile of dark, loamy earth piled up next to a coffin-shaped hole with clumpy dark sides.

With half an ear, Montez had been listening to the sounds Piet was making, like a sort of music, with the background a steady whistling noise through the pines.
Slide-hiss, clunk, patter. Slide-hiss, clunk, patter.
The iron of the shovel biting the earth, shoveling under a clump of earth, being tossed to the side.

The sounds changed and Montez walked to the side of the hole.

Piet was digging around something. Something that was appearing minute by minute as he dug, like an image coming out of a bath of photography chemicals. Soon, Piet had dug all around and a body was exposed. Montez looked down, shining his flashlight. Blond hair, now dark with clumps of soil, a fancy designer jacket, creased and filthy, brand-new boots, still shiny. He recognized those. He didn’t recognize anything else.

Skin sloughing off from bones. Skin dark, features bloated beyond recognition. Montez frowned.

Piet glanced up briefly, without stopping his movements. “Looks different—been in the ground a week, yeah?” He spread the big tarp around the right side of the hole, letting some of the tarp dangle down over the side. “Help me,” Piet grunted, and Montez jumped in with him into the hole. They muscled the dead weight of Roddy Fisher up onto the tarp, rolling him up in it. At the end of the exercise was a long, sausage-shaped plastic roll that Piet heaved up onto his shoulders as easily as hefting a shovel.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Go where?” Montez had no idea why he needed the body.

Piet settled the body onto his shoulder. “To stake it out, as bait.”

San Diego

  Harry usually woke up abruptly, coming up out of sleep like a deep-sea diver cresting the surface at the last second with a gasp. He had nightmares often, and coming awake instantly was a self-defense mechanism.

Get me out of this fucking hellhole, fast.

But now he woke up in swoops, each stage with a little more sensory input, each stage better than the last.

First, eyes closed. A sensation of warmth. He usually woke up from his nightmares icy cold, no matter what the weather outside was like. Now, he felt warm all over. There was a soft, warm weight on his left side, spreading warmth throughout his body. He moved his hand, cupped around something soft and warm.

He felt…good. Fantastic, in fact. He rarely slept through the night and was usually tired when he woke up. It wasn’t until he had his second or third hit of coffee that he felt ready to face the world. Now he woke up so refreshed he felt like a lion.

There was something soft and gently rounded attracting the palm of his hand like a magnet. He ran his hand up and down, encountering warm…woman.

His eyes popped open. He hadn’t any sex since before Afghanistan. He’d been living in Nosexistan for two years.

The sex he’d had before was technically okay, but impersonal. He never wanted to stay the night and he never had women in his own house. Her place or a hotel room, he didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t his own space. And he always left after the sex, before falling asleep. Sleeping the night through with a woman made him vulnerable.

He never knew when he’d have one of his nightmares, waking up screaming in the night. No one could know how messed up he was, and he couldn’t mask it asleep. In the night, he was exposed and open.

So the feel of a woman under his hand was surprising. Terrifying, actually, because it felt so damned good.

He looked down and smiled. A mass of shiny, red-brown hair was spilled over his chest. He saw a pale, perfect profile, lashes so long they cast a little shadow, skin like cream with a touch of rose underneath, so unlike the icy white color she’d had while he’d sat vigil beside her.

She was a quiet sleeper. Even with her head on his chest, he couldn’t hear her breathing, but he could feel the slight rise and fall of her narrow ribcage. She was tickling a few chest hairs with her exhalations.

A slender arm crossed his chest, a narrow, long-fingered hand curled around his ribcage, holding him even in her sleep. His skin tingled where it touched hers, all along his side. One bended leg was thrown across his, knee just under his crotch. If he hadn’t had a massive hard-on, the knee would have been right over his dick.

He hadn’t gone down even for a second since they’d kissed. Not even close. It was like he was plugged into this electrical socket called Ellen that made everything in him stand up.

Last night flashed through his mind in one pulsing, red-hot memory and his cock lengthened and thickened. He couldn’t see his dick because sometime in the night he’d pulled the covers up over Ellen’s shoulders, but by God he could feel it.

After being essentially dead meat, a hanging piece of flesh he forgot about for days at a time, useful only as a conduit for pissing, his cock now throbbed with feeling. It had had a taste of something it wanted more of. Much more. So much, he couldn’t imagine ever being sated.

He obviously was pumping something into the air, because Ellen stirred, eyes moving back and forth behind her lids. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide and they found themselves staring at each other.

He watched her as she blinked, trying to put together the unfamiliar pieces: his face, the fact that they were both naked, that she was plastered against his side. She stirred, her leg glancing across his cock. His very hard cock.

She turned stoplight red. It was amazing to watch. One pulse and her color changed completely, down to her breasts. Or at least what he could see of her breasts. Harry would have happily checked to see whether the red ran down to her nipples, but she was suddenly clutching the blanket around her as if it were a lifeline.

He tried not to sigh. If it were up to him, he’d simply turn her a little, lift her leg with his hand and slide right in. Oh yeah. That first, fiery moment when he entered her…oh man. Nothing in his experience of fucking had come even close.

Was she sore? She had to be. She’d been so fucking
tight
that first time he entered. Good thing he’d come immediately and lubricated things a little. Harry had no idea how much time he’d spent in her—even the concept of time passing had fled his mind—but it had been a lot. She had to be sore.

And, come to think about it, most of last night had been about him, not her. The level of excitement he’d felt had simply fried his brain.

He was always in control while fucking, it was Harry’s Law. He had always been big and strong, and…well…big all over. It was always possible to hurt a woman while fucking—squeeze too hard with his hands, hold her too tightly, plow her too hard.

The thought made him really sick, so from that very first time standing in a doorway, he made sure he was in control and not hurting her. That was Rule Number One.

And, alas, there was also Rule Number Two, which was, Don’t let her get too close.

Fucking was great, a fabulous stress reliever. Mostly fun, always exciting.

Relationships, not so much. He’d never really had a relationship, actually. Being someone’s partner meant…talking. Opening up. Letting her into his head.

Letting her see the demons.

No. Absolutely not. What was in his head was going to stay there. The only people he let see his vulnerabilities were his brothers. They knew and they weren’t talking.

So fucking was great, and if the lady wanted more than that, here’s the door, the world’s full of men.

Last night had been an eye-opener. First, he hadn’t been as much in control as he’d have liked. Actually, he hadn’t been in control at all. Not once had he thought his moves through, parceling out the intimacy, this much and no further. There hadn’t been any governing mechanism at all up in his head. It had all been in his body, and not just his cock.

There had been this enormous sense of…letting go. He hadn’t held anything back, not emotionally and, unfortunately, not physically. He’d quit when Ellen had become practically comatose.

She hadn’t complained, though. She’d smiled at him, stroked him gently, touched him in a way that…oh man. There weren’t any words. The emotions roiling around in him felt good, but really unsettling and brand new.

Well, enough navel-gazing. He was ready for round two—or was it round five?—but she wouldn’t be.

Still, that left a lot of room for other things.

Kissing her neck, nuzzling her collarbones, down to those small yet spectacular white breasts with the deep-pink nipples…he got sidetracked at the nipples because they tasted so fucking good. Like a cross between vanilla ice cream and the ocean.

Yeah.

Ellen’s hands were on the back of his head, fingers deep in his hair, and that felt really good, too.

It all felt good. Incredibly good, in fact. Touching her pale skin, the taste of her, her hands on him…

He sent the hand not stroking a breast down over her side, following that incredible dip of her narrow waist, across that flat belly and ah…bliss. The lips of her little cunt were soft and swollen, moist. He touched her at the opening, his finger and his mouth on hers making lush sucking sounds in the morning silence, then tested her inside.

Warm, soft, wet. But there’d been just a little hesitation there, the tiniest of flinches, which she immediately stifled. Yeah, time for plan B.

Harry kissed his way over that lovely belly, down to where his unshaven chin caught a little in the soft cloud of dark-red hair between her thighs. And farther down.

He settled between her thighs and lifted her legs and opened them, content for the moment just to look.

Jesus, she was so fucking beautiful, even here. Soft and pink, small petals unfurled, tender flesh glistening. He looked up and met her eyes, those gorgeous green eyes. There was this moment of magnetic connection that frightened him, so he bent down, opened her with his fingers and kissed her, exactly as if he were kissing her mouth.

Her cunt tasted even more delicious than her breasts. Sweet and salty, utterly intoxicating.

And oh, man, he could
taste
her arousal. He tilted his head for a better, deeper fit and she clenched, a hot, warm pulse against his mouth, followed by the softest of sighs.

He urged her legs even farther apart with his hands and she was fully open to him now, completely his.

Every stroke of his tongue was met by a pulse, a sigh, then a moan. Deeper, deeper…her thighs started trembling and then suddenly she stiffened, gave a wild cry that echoed in the room, and started coming against his mouth, her entire body tightening under his mouth and hands, soft moans rising higher when he licked her clitoris.

Oh God, there was nothing better than this, nothing. He forgot everything, even his own body, completely immersed in hers as she came and trembled against him.

The trembling slowed, stopped and she gave a big sigh. Her arms flopped to her side, exhausted. He was pretty wiped out himself. He opened his eyes and looked at her, suppressing a grin as he crawled back up to her.

She had her head back, staring at the ceiling, one arm off the mattress, breathing heavily.

“You okay?”

“Huh.” She wriggled fingers and toes. “Yeah. I think so. Everything seems to be working, though I think I either blacked out or had a religious experience there.”

The grin broke out. He was feeling pretty good himself. He could climb a mountain and wrestle lions and tigers to the ground if he could just get his muscles to work.

“You know what?” she asked the ceiling.

“No, what?”

“I’m hungry.
Starving.
” She slanted a glance at him without moving her head. “I could eat a horse and spit out the bones.”

“Uh huh.” Harry wriggled his own toes, or tried to. Nothing much was moving. “As soon as I get some motor control back, I’ll take care of that for you. Could do with some grub myself.”

God, it was true.

Harry couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hungry. When he first came back from Ramstein, eating had seemed impossible. It was as if his stomach were filled with sand. The very idea of food had nauseated him. It was only because Sam and Mike insisted, to the point of buying takeout and standing over him until he choked down as much as he could without actually vomiting, that he had eaten at all. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be hungry.

Christ. Sex, hunger. All those forgotten things were roaring back, as if he’d been away for a long time and had just come back, stronger than before.