Out of Control (23 page)
The combination of all three together was heart-stoppingly erotic.
Finally the last button was opened, and her blouse slid down her shoulders and onto the deck. Her skirt followed with a swish of silk and there she was, Molly Anderson, in the black lace underwear that he knew—he knew—she’d put on just for him.
She unhooked her bra, slipped out of her panties and . . .
Granny was not the first word that came to mind.
She was overweight by America’s foolish standards, but not by Jones’s. To him, she was perfection. Soft and smooth and completely, lushly, provocatively female.
She was Mother Nature, Mother Earth—with beautiful, full breasts peaked with generous dark nipples and womanly hips that could cradle and comfort and take a man to heaven without him fearing he’d snap her in two.
She laughed. “I love it when you smile like that.”
“I love it when you’re naked like that,” he countered.
“I’m not feeling nervous anymore,” she told him. “Just . . . really ready for some of that full penetration sex that you’ve spoken of so often.”
She settled down on the air mattress, arranging herself back on the pillows so that she was half sitting up, hair spread out around her. Gravity did amazing things to her breasts, accentuating the taut erection of her nipples. With her eyes heavy lidded and that little smile on her face, she was a picture of total female arousal.
It was all he could do to walk slowly toward her, to keep himself from tearing off his clothes and lunging into her.
He kept his movements controlled, deliberate, as he pulled his T-shirt over his head, as he kicked his feet free from his sandals.
He hesitated for only the briefest fraction of a second before he unfastened his shorts, but then he remembered. This woman had already seen him naked. She knew about his scars.
All of them.
And she’d even promised not to ask him about them.
Jones pushed off his shorts and Molly’s smile widened. “Still no underwear,” she said. “I’m curious, Dave. Is that by choice, or from the lack of a reasonably priced department store in the neighborhood?”
“By choice,” he told her. It was bizarre. She was naked and he was naked, and they were having a conversation about his lack of underwear. “Although, I got used to not wearing any back when I didn’t have much of a choice about anything. Now wearing it makes me feel like I have too much clothing on.” He paused. “You’re unbelievably beautiful, by the way.”
“You are, too,” she said. “Come over here.”
“Not yet. I’m not done looking.”
“I want to touch you.”
“Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual. But too bad. I’m taking my time. I’ve been waiting months for this.”
“Months?”
Jones smiled at her. “I’ve been walking around in this state ever since I first saw you. A few more minutes isn’t going to hurt too much.” It was the day he’d gone to the village to hire men to help him clear the airfield. Everyone had been so suspicious of who he was and where he’d come from—except Molly, who’d given him a warm smile. “I’m a fan of anticipation, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit down over here for a little while and anticipate.”
She laughed as he did just that. “You are such a liar. You’re the King of Immediate Gratification. You just want to hear me beg. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
It was remarkable how well she knew him. He’d barely told her anything about himself, and yet . . . “Begging would put a really nice spin on this particular fantasy, yeah.”
Molly didn’t say a word. She just held his gaze, smiling that smile that made his blood run hot as she let her legs fall open.
“Or not,” Jones said, up and heading toward her. “Not begging also works for me.”
She reached for him, sitting up to kiss him as he knelt between her legs, as he took her in his arms and lowered himself on top of her. She wanted him inside of her, and God, he wanted to be there, too, but he hadn’t yet put on a condom. Besides, he wanted to touch her first. To touch her and kiss her and taste her, to breathe her in.
But she was naked beneath him, and all that soft, smooth skin against his felt too damn good.
And when she pulled away from his kiss to gasp, “Okay. I’m begging. Please. Please—”
It was a long ride home. There’d be plenty of time for foreplay after they got it on.
She had a condom waiting for him. He covered himself in record time, and then . . .
He’d always prided himself on being good in bed, good with women. He’d always had willpower to spare and could pleasure a woman for hours, giving her exactly what she wanted, without ever losing his own control.
But with Molly—the one woman in the world he was willing to die to be with—it was as if he were seventeen again.
A woman liked the first time to be meaningful. She liked eye contact and acknowledgment—a certain amount of reverence—that this, his very first moment inside of her was special and unique.
But Jones crashed his way inside of Molly as if she were a hooker at one of the assembly line whorehouses in Jakarta. He was completely out of control even before he buried himself inside of her, and once he did, he couldn’t have stopped if his life had depended on it.
She was ready for him, thank God. She was hot and wet and oh Jesus so tight, and the sound she made was sheer pleasure, and that word she was crying was more.
So he gave her more. Hard and fast and deep as she sucked his tongue into her mouth and gripped him tightly, her legs locked around him. He fucked her—there was no other word for it—with absolutely no finesse.
It was sheer luck that she climaxed before he did. All he knew was that he was on the verge, and that it was going to happen too goddamn soon whether he slowed down or not. Not even the potential humiliation was enough to act as a damper.
“God, Molly,” he gasped. “I can’t keep from—”
But then she shattered around him, the power of her release making her shake.
That was all he needed. He was right on her heels, shouting her name in a rush of mind-blowing pleasure.
She still clung to him, so he let himself stay right there, on top of her, his heart still pounding, his face buried in her fragrant hair.
They drifted. It might’ve been two minutes, it might’ve been twenty. All he knew was that he wanted to stay right there, just like this, for the rest of his life.
But then Molly laughed. “Good Lord,” she said. “You certainly do deliver, David.”
David. Dave. Maybe it was frustration that, despite her words of satisfaction, he knew he should have made the sex better for her.
But whatever the cause, he knew that he didn’t want her to call him Dave. Not now. Not ever. But especially not while they made love.
“Call me by my real name.” Jones lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. “Call me Grady.”
“Shhh,” she said, skittering away from him, forcing him to pull out of her. “Are you crazy?”
“Yes,” he said. He was. Definitely crazy. “Come on, Molly. Do you know how long it’s been since someone who doesn’t want to kill me has called me that?”
“Too bad,” she said. “It’s because I don’t want to kill you that that name is never going to cross my lips. Never.”
She was serious, but he was, too.
“Please.” It was his turn to beg. He gestured around them at the boat, at the river. “It’s not going to get any safer than this.”
“I don’t want to get into the habit,” she told him. “I won’t risk your life that way.”
“Please.”
“Don’t ask me to do this!”
“Just this once.” Jesus, why was this so important to him? “Just today. Let Molly Anderson make love to Grady Morant, not some lowlife loser named Jones.” His voice broke. “Please.”
Molly had tears in her eyes as she reached for him. As they sank back on the air mattress, he didn’t know if he was holding her or if she was holding him.
She kissed him—sweet kisses—as she ran her fingers through his hair.
“You’re a dangerous man, Grady Morant,” she said in a voice that was softer even than a whisper. “You have the power to make me want to do things I know damn well I shouldn’t do.”
He kissed her—her mouth, her throat, her breasts—and she sighed. “Maybe we should just stay out here on the river forever.”
“I don’t know,” Jones murmured. “Something tells me people would miss you and send out a search party.”
“No search party for you?” she asked.
“No. A lynch mob, maybe. But only because they would all assume I’d kidnapped you.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I could disappear,” he lifted his head to tell her, “and unless you disappeared, too, no one would even notice I was gone.”
Molly touched his face. “Not anymore.”
Jones kissed her, filled with a curious mix of emotions. Elation. Dread. Anger. Sooner or later, he was going to leave. Sooner or later, if he stayed too long, the past would catch up with him. He’d have to disappear before that happened.
He would disappear before that happened.
He tried to remember what it felt like to be missed, but Molly whispered, “Make love to me again, Grady.”
Grady.
It felt better than it should have to be someone he’d long since buried in the past, and he kissed her again, angry both with himself and with her for making him feel things he shouldn’t need to feel anymore.
He wanted to put on another condom, to lose himself in her again, hard and fast and rough, but he stopped himself. He slowed himself down, got back in control.
This time, he was going to do her really right.
Yeah, this time, he was going to make her miss him for the entire rest of her life.
Savannah would have been convinced that Ken was moments from falling asleep—if it weren’t for the fact that he gently disengaged his fingers from hers.
His head was back and for the past hour he’d been staring blankly out the open door at the sameness of the jungle below as if hypnotized. He looked as if every muscle in his body were completely relaxed.
So she was caught off-guard as he suddenly launched himself across the helicopter’s cabin. The men with the big guns were caught off-guard, too, and before anyone could do anything, Kenny opened the chopper’s second sliding door—she hadn’t even realized it was there—grabbed her briefcase and the crate that was holding it in place, and threw them both out of the chopper.
From where she sat, if she craned her neck, she could see both the crate and the case, tumbling toward the ground. The sun reflected crazily off the briefcase’s metal surface.
The bigger of the gunmen—the Russian man who seemed to be in charge—was furious. He gave an order, and all four of the guns went up, aimed at Ken, who seemed to be inches from following the briefcase out the door, holding tightly to some kind of net attached to the wall.
“Kenny!” Savannah knew he’d gone too far this time. She didn’t speak Russian, but it was obvious that in a matter of seconds Ken’s bullet-riddled body was going to plunge toward the ground.
And it was a long way down.
“If you want that money, you better keep both of us alive,” Ken shouted at the big Russian. “That briefcase doesn’t just have a combination lock on the outside. There’s also an interior lock that’s voice activated—and it won’t open unless the commands are given by both Savannah and me. Do you understand? Kill us—kill just one of us—and you won’t get a dime of that money.”
One of the gunmen shouted something in Russian.
“No, I’m not lying,” Ken countered. Did he speak Russian? Savannah realized that there was so much she didn’t know about him, so much she wanted to know. Please God, don’t let him die!
“The lock’s got a built-in security device,” he continued. “The money inside’s been treated with a chemical that’ll cause it to burn very quickly at a very high temperature upon exposure to oxygen. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t actually believe I could make this shit up, do you?”
Yes. Savannah knew he was making it all up. She’d bought the case herself just a few days ago and there was no interior lock. But the Russian didn’t know that, and Ken’s delivery was so convincing, she nearly found herself believing him.
“If the case is tampered with, or if you try to override or bypass the lock in any way,” he warned them, “it’ll fail to trigger the release of an agent to counteract that chemical, and your two hundred and fifty K will be ashes. This is SOP—standard op—for traveling with sensitive documents. It’s not usually done for money, but we wanted an insurance policy.”
The gunmen were having a heated argument in Russian. The tall man shut them up with a single hand in the air. “Why did you throw the briefcase from the chopper? Why not simply show us this second lock?”
“And have you force us to open the case right here and now?” Ken shook his head as he laughed. Four guns were pointed at him, and he was laughing. Yes, there was a lot Savannah didn’t know about this man. “No, this way we land, and you and I and Ms. von Hopf here can discuss alternative solutions to all of our problems while the four Stooges take a few hours to find the money.”
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