Uncommon Passion (15 page)

sport, and sex was a part of life. Didn’t need anything but the job.

There was an inevitable reaction to the stress of the job. Warm water trickling over his cock only

heightened the reaction. He braced both arms on the wall under the showerhead and let his brain work over

all the possibilities for a morning with Rachel. Last time he’d made her ask for what she wanted. This time

she’d see how she dealt with a man with one thing on his mind.

When he saw her little dented Focus pull into the parking lot, he unlocked the door, then sat on the arm

of his sofa. She pushed the door open. Her eyes widened when she got a good look at his face, but she

closed and locked the door before dropping her purse and crossing to stand in front of him.

“What on earth?” she asked.

“SWAT got called out,” he said.

“I’d hate to see the other guy,” she quipped. “I can come back another time.”

“You’re exactly what I need.” He didn’t say anything. He just sat there, a bottle of water dangling

between his knees while Rachel studied him with those unreadable whiskey eyes. When her gaze became

too much he leaned forward, wrapped one arm around her waist, and hoisted her over his shoulder. In the

bedroom he knee-walked to the center of the bed, then put her down with her back to the plain wood

headboard. He straddled her legs, then worked his fingers into her hair, pulling out pin after pin until he

lost count and the sleek mass streamed down over her shoulders and brushed her cheeks. “I want you to

use your mouth on me.”

She didn’t move or react in any way, and he wondered if he’d just thought the words, not actually

voiced them into the sunlight filtering through his blinds. He was prepared to explain himself, to justify the

demand by saying guys liked it, they’d expect her to know what she was doing. But without moving she

reached for his hand and lifted it to her mouth. Her soft, hot breath on his abraded knuckles sent his nerve

endings into high alert.

That wasn’t what I meant, but oh, fuck that’s hot . . .

“What happened?” she asked before she flicked her tongue into the sensitive skin between his fingers.

“He ran,” he said. “Must have scraped my knuckles when I tackled him.”

She turned his hand and kissed the inside of his wrist. “Why did he run?”

He paused to savor the sensation of her full mouth on his inner arm. “He was trapped. No one wants to

be trapped.”

She flicked him another look, then put her mouth to his shoulder. Slowly, her mouth covered his chest

with kisses as her hands smoothed down his ribs. He inhaled short and sharp when she found a sore spot.

Again she bent forward and this time she used her tongue to trace the ridges of muscle in his chest before

she hesitantly lapped at his nipple. This time his shaft pulsed between her legs, so she kept it up, her

confidence growing with each pass of her tongue over his flat nipples.

“Jesus,” he said when she leaned back. He straightened, bringing his abdomen in line with her face. She

looked up at him, dark hair highlighting her pale face flushed with heat, and those mysterious eyes, then put

her mouth just below his navel. The touch of her lips, wet and gentle and teasing all at once, made his cock

feel like it was hardened steel. He’d felt this before after a good day on the job. He usually worked it off

drinking, dancing, fucking.

Never before like this. Never before knowing that what she’d do for him was the first time she’d done

this for anyone.

Her breathing was even but shallow when she lifted the elastic waist of his shorts over the head of his

cock. It bobbed free at mouth level. She gripped it, stroked down to the base, then bent forward and licked

the precome from the tip. Her lashes fluttered upward. Barely breathing, he stared down into her eyes.

“Keep going.”

She licked the tip again. Traced the outline of the head with her tongue. “Tell me what you like.”

Heat seared through his balls. He leaned forward and braced one forearm on the wall above her head,

then used his index finger on the spot just below the flared head of his cock. “That’s a good spot. Work

your tongue over it. Harder,” he added when she hesitantly lapped at it.

She focused on that spot, then closed her lips around the tip and swirled her tongue around the head.

She developed a rhythm of tongue and lips, sucking and licking, her eyelashes black curves against her

pink cheeks as he looked down at her. Her face was bare of makeup, no mascara, no lip gloss or color of

any kind, and the simplicity of it all made him groan low in his chest. No facade, nothing for her to hide

behind.

“So hot,” he murmured.

The words rasped into the air and she looked up. For a brief moment he thought he might come then

and there at the sight of Rachel’s lips stretched around his cock as she peered up at him. Then she

straightened, taking a moment to work her jaw and spread her saliva down his shaft. Muscles in his

abdomen flinched as she jacked him.

“Again,” he said. “Harder.”

This time he reached down and moved her hand in tandem with her mouth, showing her how to

stimulate every inch. When she developed the rhythm he wound his fingers in her hair, resisting the urge to

cup her head. He already had her backed to the wall, already felt his orgasm seething in the tip of his cock.

He was holding back from thrusting into her mouth when she leaned back and gasped.

There was probably a trick to breathing through a blow job, but he didn’t know it. She flashed him a

smile as she looked up at him, her hand moving up and down his shaft, and the hot look in her eyes told

him everything he needed to know. He reached down and opened her blouse and bra, spreading the fabric

to the side to expose her breasts. Her nipples were hard and rosy, while a paler pink flush glowed on her

collarbone.

She watched him stare at her breasts like he’d never seen any before. When he looked at her face again

she had a little smile on her mouth. “I want to make you come.”

“Here?” he asked as he smoothed his thumb over her lower lip, feeling the hot, swollen flesh, the

slickness inside. “Or here,” he added as he trailed his abraded hand down her throat to the tops of her

breasts.

How far would his former virgin go?

In response she leaned forward and took him deep inside her mouth. He groaned and leaned forward,

thrusting into her mouth as deep as her fist around his cock would let him go. She didn’t just let him do it.

She sucked and licked and with each stroke he coiled more of her hair in his fist until his entire body was

rigid with need.

“Rachel,” he growled. “Rachel, now—”

Release exploded at the base of his spine, pulsed out into her mouth. In some dim corner of his mind he

knew she’d startled under him, knew she had no idea what to expect. But then her fingers tightened on his

hip, holding him in place, taking it all until he slumped back on his heels, arm still braced against the wall,

shaking hard enough to reverberate through her body. He looked into her eyes, trying to decipher her

emotional state as he brushed his thumb across her wet, swollen mouth.

• • •

Raw emotion poured from Ben in hard, crashing waves, breaking over Rachel from the moment she

walked in the door. His face was battered, a black eye forming, his nose slightly swollen, and his gaze held

a conquering warrior’s heavy-lidded, imperious look. Some primitive place, buried deep at the back of her

brain, sent molten need streaming down her spine and into her sex while he took what he needed from her.

Now he slumped over her, arms braced on either side of her head, his temple next to her cheek as he

breathed in deep, hard exhales intended to make space for the oxygen his body craved. He smelled like

sweat and soap and sex. She turned her head and touched her tongue to his cheekbone, feeling a day’s

worth of stubble rasp as she added salt to the musky, somewhat bitter taste on her tongue. She never would

have done that if she’d not been carried away by Ben’s transformation into hard, rough male. She hadn’t

been thinking about being pure, being chaste, being holy. She’d only felt.

Rachel the virgin was long, long gone.

More of his weight settled against her thighs as his muscles continued to relax. One hand still at his hip,

she lifted the other to squeeze his biceps. He turned his head to look at her. Her heart skittered in her chest

at his intense blue gaze, the satisfaction etched around his mouth and eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

Not really. She wanted sex. Now. Not oral sex or his hand between her legs, but him inside her with all

of that raw intensity back. Ben, however, was in no condition to provide it.

“No,” she said.

He sat back, going from satisfied male to alert protector in the blink of an eye. “Fuck,” he said, then

swiped his hand over his eyes. “I thought . . . you didn’t . . . I . . .
fuck
.”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I wanted to do that. I just . . . wanted more.”

His brows drew down. “You think we’re done?”

“We’re not?” she said.

A little huff of laughter, then he said, “The hell we are.”

He sat back and unwound his hand from her hair, then pushed back off the bed. She pulled together the

edges of her blouse as he did, the scrape of cotton over aching nipples pure torture.

“Stay put,” he said, glancing at her now-covered torso, then strode into the kitchen. He came back with

two bottles of water, cracked the seal on one and handed it to her. She swallowed gratefully, pulling her

knees up and to one side as he leaned back against the headboard next to her.

“You okay?” he asked again.

“I liked that,” she said. She would
not
deny what she did. How it made her feel.

He tilted back the bottle and stretched his legs out. The focus of so much attention and energy now lay

half hard against his thigh. “Why?”

She thought about how to phrase this. “It was real. Authentic.”

He looked at her and smiled. “Yeah.”

“Explain what just happened.”

He shrugged. “Adrenaline,” he said. “Fights, chases, tough takedowns, the daily ups and downs of the

job. It all feels like fight or flight to the brain. All that energy has to go somewhere. In men, it goes straight

to their cocks.”

“But you didn’t want to have sex?”

He choked on the last swallow of water. “Feeling a little neglected, sweetheart?” he drawled.

Neglected
wasn’t the right word. Needy, demanding, desperate all came to mind, not to mention unsure

how to handle the teasing. She pushed herself higher against the headboard. “Yes, to be honest,” she said.

“You were very aroused and I wanted . . .”

“Tell me.”

She slid him a glance out of the corner of her eye. “I wanted to be under you. I wanted to feel what you

felt. Inside me.”

He pulled her to straddle him. “And I wanted to take the edge off before we had sex,” he said.

One quick look showed he was hardening again. His pulse thumped in his shaft, lengthening and

thickening it. She looked at him, noting the changes. His mouth looked as soft and swollen as hers felt, his

gaze heavy lidded and intent. Twin red flags stood high on his carved cheekbones, as if passion etched

away part of the mask he wore.

He smoothed his hands from her shoulders to her wrists before lifting each palm to his mouth and

kissing the center. Nerves fired when the combination of hot, soft lips and rough stubble scraped her skin.

She wasn’t sure if the electric jolt to her senses came from the touch, or the knowing look in his eyes as

they met hers. He kissed the pads of her fingers, each in turn, then her inner wrist before she tugged her

hand free.

“You do that so easily,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Arouse me.”

He shrugged. “It’s not me. You’re a natural, honey.”

“Do all women respond the same way to the same things?”

“No,” he said. His hand lifted to her nape where his fingers trailed lightly over a patch of skin. She

shuddered. “That’s a sensitive spot for you. I’d bet, with enough time and attention, I could get you hot just

from kissing your neck. We’ll try that some time.”

“Good,” she said, her voice made husky by the slow, hot honey slipping along her nerves.

She traced the edge of his mouth, keeping the touch light, her gaze alternating between the captivating

image of her finger at his lips and his eyes, where the secrets of arousal were most easily read. His breathing

was even until she pressed the fingertip between his lips, to the tip of his tongue. His eyelids drooped for a

moment, then he licked the fingertip as he looked right at her.

Eye contact turned the heat up a notch. She trailed her fingertip down over his bristled chin, along his

throat to the point where stubble gave way to surprisingly soft skin. Then she bent forward and kissed that

very spot, brushing her lips back and forth between scrape and silk. His pulse picked up under her mouth