Beachcomber (33 page)

Christy gave a tiny choked cry and her hands stilled.

“Luke… .”

“Hmm?”

But whatever she’d been going to say was lost as the scalding heat of his mouth closed over her bare breast.

“Oh,” she said instead, in a surprised tone as the sheer pleasure of it made her shiver. She could feel her heart pounding, feel her blood racing, feel the urgent tightening between her thighs as he suckled her breast, nibbled it, licked it, gave it his full attention, then
moved on to work his leisurely wiles on its twin. He took his time, and when finally his mouth found hers and he kissed her again, Christy could do nothing but kiss him back and quiver with sensation and thread her fingers into the curls at the back of his head. She didn’t even realize that they’d shifted position so that she was once again lying on her back until he lifted his head.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been wanting to get you in bed?” His voice was thick and low, a dark, seductive murmur that wrapped around her like velvet.

“How long?” she whispered, quaking, then stiffened in anticipation as his hand left the breasts he’d been fondling to slide down over her navel, over her stomach… .

“Ever since the first time I saw you. You were running… .”

Christy caught her breath on a little gasp as his hand slipped inside her panties. It covered her, moved between her legs, and her body clenched.

“Oh God, Luke… .” Closing her eyes, she abandoned herself to sensation. Her heart was pounding so hard and she was breathing so fast that coherent thought was all but beyond her. She was wearing only her panties now, and the feel of the soft Polartec covering the firm sand beneath her back reminded her that they were outside, doing it on an open beach, and the thought was so erotic that she moaned. Her nails dug into the blanket and she arched her back, welcoming his touch, wanting it.

“You feel so hot down here. I knew you’d be hot down here.”

He found the tiny bud that burned and quivered for attention. Christy sucked in her breath and squeezed her thighs around his hand, quaking, knowing that she was going to come if he didn’t stop and trying not to, not yet, because what he was doing felt so good and she wanted more.

He slid two fingers inside her, pulled them out, then put them in again.

Christy cried out, and her hips rocked against that hard hand in an urgent plea for him not to stop.

“Easy,” he said, and did it again, and again, until she thought she would die with the sheer goodness of it. It felt so wonderful, his hand was so big and hot and he knew just what to do with it, how to turn her on, what made her shiver, what made her pant.

“That is so good,” she whispered, shaken, and he kissed her mouth and then her breast even as his fingers continued to work their magic on her.

“Luke. Stop. Please.”

She closed her legs again at last, wanting him to stop, needing him to stop right then or she would explode into flames. He seemed to understand, because he lifted his head, and his hand stilled in its exquisite torture. Then it was gone, and she was left quivering, quaking, burning, weeping …

“Let’s take your panties off.”

He kissed her navel, pressed the hot wetness of his mouth against her belly, then hooked his fingers in her underwear and pulled them down her legs. By the time they were off Christy was so far gone with lust that she was breathing in erratic little bursts, arching her hips
up to meet the truly enormous erection that she could feel bulging through the shorts he still wore, reaching for him with both hands.

“Luke.”

“Hmm?” She heard the soft whisper of her panties hitting the sand.

“I want you naked, too.”

“In a minute.”

His hands curled around her knees, then slid up the softness of her inner thighs, parting them. When Christy felt the brush of his chest hair against her thighs, she began to shake.

“Oh, no, I …” She clutched at his hair, knowing what was coming. This was something she wasn’t comfortable with, Michael had never liked to do it and she really didn’t like it anyway, and besides …

“Shh.”

His bristly jaw scraped against the inside of her thighs and she felt him settle between them. Her fingers stilled …

Then his mouth found her. The sensation was so unbelievably erotic that she moaned. He kissed her there, his mouth and tongue burning hot against her. He’d done this before, that much was clear, he knew his way around a woman, and he made her gasp and squirm and quiver with pleasure. When he lifted his head at last, kissing his way up her stomach, her body was pulsing with tremors and her legs were twining around his and she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

“Luke. Now. Please.”

He kissed her mouth, and she tasted herself on his lips and went wild.

Reaching for him, barely able to see him in the darkness, she first encountered the smooth sides of his rib cage, then stroked his flat, washboard-hard belly, and finally slipped her hands inside his shorts. He was right there, swollen so big he reached almost to the waistband, hot and damp and clearly hungry for her. She touched him, her fingers sliding over him, then closed both hands around him. He was huge and hard and she wanted him inside her so much that she ached.

“Ah, Christy,” he said, going perfectly still.

She tightened her grip, moving her hands in the ageold rhythm of man-pleasing, and he groaned, then groaned again and pulled away from her. Then he yanked at his shorts and she helped him and finally between them they got them off. When they were both naked he pushed her flat on her back and covered her, his thighs sliding between hers and opening them wide, his mouth finding her breasts.

Her hips came off the ground to meet him and her hands found and gripped the firm smooth contours of his butt as he touched her. His body was on fire, burning her, and she whimpered and squirmed in invitation.

“Jesus, I want you,” he muttered in a rough whisper.

Then he pushed inside her, forcing her hips back down against the blanket, filling her with a burning hot satin over steel instrument that felt better to her than anything ever had in her life. Moaning with pleasure, Christy slid her hands up his back and rocked up
against him, drawing him deeper still, on fire with the pure bliss of having his body joined to hers.

He withdrew, then thrust again, deep and slow. She dug her nails into his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist and gave a little mewling cry of pleasure.

“Oh God, if you do that again I’m going to… .” She broke off, panting. Even in extremis, as she very nearly was, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it out loud.

He said it for her, his voice a growl as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed hot kisses along the base of her neck.

“Come? Good. I want to make you come. I’m going to make you come.”

Then he kissed her. Their tongues mated with greedy passion as he pressed her down into the blanket, filling her, taking her with slow, controlled movements that had her moaning and squirming beneath him. His hand slid between them, sliding over her stomach, seeking the heart of her, the quivering flashpoint that needed only one final touch for her to explode.

He touched her there, pressing and stroking, and she gasped and arched up off the ground, and came, in a shattering series of Technicolor explosions that drove her out of her head with passion, with pleasure, with need.

“Luke,” she moaned. “Oh God, Luke,
Luke …
”

In answer he lost control, driving into her in fierce, deep thrusts that came so hard and so fast that she was caught up in the pounding rhythm all over again, until once more she quivered and shook and clung and came.

“Christy,” he groaned at the end, and buried his mouth in the hollow between her neck and shoulder as he found his own release, grinding into her trembling body, convulsing over her, shuddering, and then, finally, going limp in her arms.

Afterward, they lay still for a long time, with him on his back and her sprawled on top of him. Her arms were looped loosely around his neck, and her head rested on his chest. He was warm and sweaty, relaxed, breathing deeply. She thought he might be asleep.

Typical man, she thought with a touch of asperity, and opened her eyes. The clouds were gone. Overhead there was a sky full of stars.

Then he moved, instantly distracting her from the beauty of the glittering sky, sliding his hand up her back, bending his head down toward her. She panicked a little as she realized that he was awake after all, because she wasn’t quite sure what she thought about what had happened between them, about how to act or what to say. Something on the order of,
Hmm, that was some really good sex
just didn’t seem to strike the right note.

But the time was at hand, because he was tightening his arms around her and his bristly chin was nuzzling her cheek. Oh God, was he already up for doing it again?

“There’s someone walking around in the woods right behind us,” he said in her ear. “Don’t make a sound.”

23

O
KAY, LUKE REFLECTED,
so maybe being in his underwear wasn’t going to stop him from doing anything he could do with his clothes on, but being naked was definitely having a dampening effect on his macho impulses. Kicking bad-guy butt with his yang flapping in the breeze wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time. Especially since this guy seemed to like knives. Luke almost shuddered, and started groping around on the sand for his shorts.

Finding them, he started pulling them on.

Christy elbowed him in the ribs. “Maybe it’s one of the turtle watchers,” she whispered.

Maybe. But they’d been based a good distance away, and they hadn’t shown any tendency to go wandering in the woods. If they were looking for Christy and him, they’d most likely walk along the edge of the beach.

If it wasn’t a turtle watcher, that might not be a bad thing. This guy was starting to piss him off. When he’d spotted the bruise by Christy’s eye, he’d realized that he’d had it up to his eyebrows with her being hurt. He hadn’t meant it to happen, it shouldn’t have happened,
it was no part of his game plan at all, but this case had suddenly gotten way more personal than he’d ever intended. Not only did he want to nail Michael DePalma in the worst way, but now he also wanted to make him pay for the terror and emotional and physical trauma he’d caused Christy.

There was almost no doubt in his mind that Donnie Jr. was behind what was happening to her. And it was going to cost him. Before this was all over, before packing him off to prison, Luke meant to personally kick his butt, rub his nose in the dirt, and walk off with his girl.

My girl, now.

That was an unsettling thought, Luke realized as soon as it popped into his head, but he didn’t have time to worry about the whys and wherefores of it just at the moment. He had his shorts on now, and he felt ready, willing and able to take on the world. If the bastard who’d attacked Christy was out there sniffing around, he was about to get a surprise.

Unless the guy had a gun, of course. Then all bets were off.

Discretion being the better part of valor, Luke settled back down on his stomach beside Christy and watched the woods for the telltale glimmer he’d seen before. There was still maybe an hour to go before dawn, and with the sea pounding behind them his ears were all but useless. Even now, with the faint light of the moon and stars, he couldn’t see more than shadows—except, once again as it was apparently turned back on, the white beam of a flashlight moving over the ground not so very far away.

Way too close for comfort, in fact. Close enough so that he could see every detail of the tangled vines and tree trunks and sea grasses that mingled at the very edge of the beach as they were caught in the flashlight’s beam.

Beside him, Christy gasped. The sound, which she immediately muffled, told him that she had spotted the same thing. He could feel her stiffness, feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest that told him she was breathing hard, feel fear emanating from her in waves.

“Hang tight,” he whispered in her ear before dropping a kiss on her cheek and shifting into a crouch, ready to do his manly, protect-the-woman, confront-the-bad-guy thing. She clutched at him, whispering something in an urgent tone, but he had little fear that she would complicate an already volatile situation by following him. After all, she was naked. He knew how that felt, and
she
was a girl. Even if she wanted to follow, by the time she located her clothes and got them on he would have this business over and done.

The flashlight was a little farther to the south now, tracing a kind of steady zigzag pattern that told him someone was searching for something with a really impressive degree of zeal. Keeping low, moving as quietly as he could over the firm sand, and then, when he reached the forest, wishing vainly that he’d taken the time to pull on his sneakers, Luke crept up on the searcher.

Calling on all his years of training, he slipped from tree trunk to tree trunk, meaning to make the takedown as quick and silent as possible. In front of him,
close now, the flashlight was a dead giveaway as to the location of his target.