Dark Waters (2013) (32 page)

“For just one night, I want to be with you. I want to forget about everything else. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Couldn’t you just lie back and let me make love to you so I can remember what it’s like to be whole and undamaged?” She couldn’t reach his lips and he refused to drop his head. His little head was already giving him enough trouble for both of them, telling him to stuff his damn conscience and get fucking laid for a change. He let out a small breath of relief and despair as she moved away an inch. Then her hands gripped his shoulders and she hoisted herself up, wrapping her slender legs around his waist before pressing her lips to his.

He clamped one hand to her naked ass, the other around her waist as he staggered under the onslaught of her mouth. The heat and fervor of her obliterated his defenses and he kissed her back, itching and desperate to get inside her. He was done with being noble. Who the hell was he trying to kid anyway? “Let’s go back to the tent,” he urged.

“No.” She didn’t stop kissing him, his lips, neck, ears…
fuck!
His toes curled. “Here,” she demanded, “on the sand.”

“But—”

“I want to erase the memories, Brent.”

Erase
, not forget. She ran her tongue over his neck.
Fuck
. She must have known if she took her mouth off him, if she gave him a chance to think, he’d remember why they couldn’t do this. She was fourteen years his junior, a pure sweet brilliance that he had no right to be touching. But with her lips on his skin and her hands tracing the muscles on his back, his two brain cells were toast.

His fingers kneaded her ass and his erection strained against his zipper, instinctively trying to get closer to her hot core pressed up against him.

“It’s just sex,” she said, and kissed his lips again. His hands started to move over her curves, the smooth sleek muscles. The idea of “just sex” blew his brain. He didn’t want emotional entanglements. Didn’t want a wife. Couldn’t be trusted with that sort of
responsibility. And pushing Anna away was impossible, so they’d try it another way.

She was petite, but not fragile. Strong as iron and pure as the silver she was named after. Having casual sex didn’t fit with his image of her, but what the hell did he know? Maybe this was what they both needed. Although deep down he knew this was anything but casual on his part.

She must have felt his reluctance. She unwrapped her legs and slid down him, causing a thousand nerve endings to spring to stunned attention. Then she unflicked the button on his shorts, drew them down. Oxygen disappeared and he swayed as she took him in her hands.

He fell to his knees because he was toast. There was nothing damaged about this woman. Frustrated, he kicked off his shorts, and when she crawled over him, he pulled her up his body so she straddled him. She rocked against him and his eyes crossed. It was too dark to really see but she felt like raw silk as she rose over him. She stroked him and he just wanted to kiss her all over. A blast of cold hard reality hit home. “I don’t have a condom,” he gritted out.

“I do.” She scrambled over to her pile of clothes until she found her shorts and pulled one out of her pocket.

“When did you buy those?” he asked.

“In the store. Earlier.”

She’d thought about this.

She’d planned it.

Sex. With him. His mouth went dry. Blood punched.

Hell
.

Sweat ran down his temples. He grabbed her hips and held her still for long enough to bite out, “I’m clean.” He needed her to know. “I haven’t been with anyone in over a year.”

She rocked against him, and he rolled her on her back, then hesitated, worried he might have hurt her. She lay on top of their clothes and he could just make out her body in the moonlight.

“You’re so beautiful.” He touched his fingers to the tips of her breasts and she arched off the ground. He followed with his lips, drifted over the hollow of her collarbone, the swell of her breast, back to the sensitive curve of her neck. He touched the sweep of her hip and then the secret depths between her thighs. He eased one finger inside her and slid it very gently backward and forward over sensitive flesh. Every time he touched her, he wanted it to go on forever because she reacted with such startling force. She bucked and writhed beneath his hands, making whimpering sounds and thrusting her hips in gentle demand. He slipped another finger inside her and eased her wider. She felt incredible. Then he couldn’t resist anymore. He wanted more. He inched down her body and spread her thighs, felt her stiffen.

“What are you doing?” she asked, an uncertain edge entering her voice.

“Do you trust me?”

She laughed softly. “You think we’d be having this conversation if I didn’t?”

“I know we wouldn’t.” He was frustrated he couldn’t see her, but
Christ
. “I want to taste you. Can I taste you?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He put his mouth on her and kissed her, drenched in her flavor and her heat. There were no complaints, no resistance. Her body went lax, her hips rising off the sand and he held her steady against his mouth and feasted.

She tasted like spice and sin and sweet, sweet heaven. Her tightly bunched nipples called to him and he stroked them, flicked them, rolled them until she was panting.

She was incredible, like quicksilver in his hands. But she was so tiny, he was terrified he was going to hurt her, or crush her, especially after everything she’d told him. Then she draped her legs over his shoulders and her heels dug into his back as she threw back her head with a silent scream as she came. And he realized she wasn’t delicate or fragile, she was strong and supple and resilient.

Unbroken.

She pulled away from him almost immediately and sat up, looking shocked, breathing hard. He tried to quiet the fervor in his blood. Figured they were done, and he could deal with his raging hard-on in the cold lake. Then she pushed him onto his back and once more straddled his thighs.

“You don’t have to do this.” He deserved an A for effort. Maybe Olympic gold. “I’ll give you as many orgasms as you want.”

Her hand wrapped around him and he couldn’t stop the instinctive thrust of his hips.

“I just want to return the favor.”

“It isn’t a contest,” he gritted out. “I’m not keeping count of how many times you come.”

“Brent.” She sounded frustrated and a little bit pissed. He liked it. He liked the way she was acting all bossy and in control in a situation that should have unnerved her. Come to think of it, she’d never exactly been shy and retiring in his company. He didn’t scare her. How the hell could a woman who’d suffered the way she had not be terrified of him?

“I’ve never felt like this before,” she said. “I have never burned from the inside out or wanted a man as desperately as I want you. This is all new to me and I feel fabulous.”

She did feel fabulous, and he knew all about burning from the inside out. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he confessed.

“You won’t.”

She stroked him until he was so hard and throbbing he thought he might pass out. Her touch might be inexperienced but, hell, he was easy. He could barely think past the idea of getting inside her. He felt like an animal, all desperate and feral, denying himself a basic need. For what?

“If you don’t want to come inside me, we can find other ways,” she said. “I won’t force you, but I’d like to share this with you. I want you.”

He met her gaze in the moonlight. Saw the raw need and ragged lust. She was naked and
begging
him to have sex with her.
Obviously he’d lost his frigging mind. He ran his hands up her back, scraped his fingers down the lean muscles. “Fuck. I want you. I just shouldn’t have you.”

She fumbled with the foil package and then slid the condom over him, her expression a tight frown of concentration. Every muscle in his body shook. Then she positioned the tip of him exactly where he wanted to be, he gave up pretending this wasn’t going to happen as she slid slowly over his length.

Lord, have mercy
.

He gripped her waist and she squirmed, getting used to his size, internal muscles spasming around him. She rocked her hips and went deeper. Then she added a twist to the movement and he felt that spine-tingling, ball-squeezing, mind-blasting animalistic need, building and building inside him. He didn’t dare touch her because there was no control left for anything except wanting it not to end—never to end.

“Am I doing it right?” she asked hesitantly.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He gritted his teeth and stared at the stars, spotted the Milky Way as lust spiked through every vein, popped each nerve. Then she started rising up and sliding down and he thought he was going to black out. He couldn’t stand it anymore and gripped her hips and drove deeper, deeper, harder. Grinding against her, wanting to get more inside her so she could swallow him whole. Then she cried out in those small gasps that curled around him and squeezed so tight he couldn’t breathe. He let himself go, the hard release catapulting him to the moon as a nuclear explosion of white-hot ecstasy burned his mind, obliterating every thought in his head except this. Except her.

She collapsed on top of him, skin slick with a mix of sweat and sand and sex. Their hearts pounded each other as the breeze cooled their overheated bodies.

Holy motherfucking hell
.

She moved just slightly against him. Twitched her hips and he found himself growing hard again. He smoothed the hair off her cheek. What the hell had he done? He clenched his jaw.

“We’re going to need another condom,” he said. He was going to burn for this anyway, so he might as well go up in flames.

She leaned over and found her shorts, searched through the pockets once more. He lay there, admiring the view. She pulled out two condoms and dropped them on his chest with a flash of a grin in the darkness. He protected them both and pulled her back over him.

He didn’t know what
this
was between them. But maybe he shouldn’t worry. Sex was a great stress reducer. She rocked against him and his vision went blurry.
Christ
. His hands sought hers in the darkness and he rolled them so she was on her back, with him planted deep within her. He paused, knowing this was how she’d been raped—on her back in the sand. “Is this OK?”

She nodded. There were no shadows of pain or anguish in her eyes. Just liquid lust and bright feverish want. And maybe this wasn’t about him. Maybe this was all about Anna, and he could certainly live with fixing one broken part of her life. Her knees drew up, giving him a better angle, and then he slipped his hands beneath her, raising her up as he thrust hard, harder and couldn’t stop. Sand was everywhere, adding another fine layer of friction. There was nothing gentle this time. No holding back as her body demanded more, fingers biting, ankles digging into his ass.
This
was therapy. A way of getting off and getting some sleep. It was raw sex on a deserted beach and they both needed it.

He drove her to another orgasm and followed her over the razor’s edge, resting his forehead in the curve of her shoulder as he shattered. Then he carried her into the water and they did it again.

Anna had just spent the most incredible night of her life, making love with a man who’d not only been gentle and giving, but—once he’d gotten over thinking she might break if he pushed too hard—also ruthless and demanding. They’d stumbled back to bed in the early hours of the morning and finally fallen asleep. They’d woken up to warm sunshine and the soft scent of canvas and made love one more time before reality intruded.

She ached in unusual places and each twinge brought a wave of awareness, a reminder of what they’d shared and done to one another. She felt free. Liberated. Not only had she buried a lot of old pain, she’d figured out she could have a fantastic sex life too, a fact that had remained hidden from her all these years. She didn’t need to be repressed or in control. She just needed the right guy.

Could Brent Carver be that guy?

The idea seemed crazy, and yet…she didn’t have time to ponder. They couldn’t stay here, playing make-believe forever. The rising sun had brought with it an escalating need to act.

“I’m going to the restroom,” Anna told Brent as he finished packing up the tent.

He grunted without turning. He hadn’t said much this morning. Anna didn’t know if he was tired or just having second thoughts about being seduced. He wasn’t a man who liked to get close to anyone, and she’d battered down his walls last night. From the look on his face, she’d have to batter them down again next time.

She needed to get through to him that he was a decent human being who deserved good things in his life. Good people. Assuming they ever got themselves out of this mess.

She walked along the paved road to the nearby washrooms. In her stiff new jeans and baggy T-shirt, she couldn’t have felt less feminine or attractive, not that she cared right now. But it was a long way from the pretty skirts and sandals she usually wore and emphasized how dramatically her world had changed. She was wanted by the police for questioning, and traveling under a false identity. Clothes no longer mattered. Respectability and image no longer mattered. All that mattered was finding whatever it was her father had sent her, keeping Brent out of jail, and not dying. She’d discovered last night that she really, really wasn’t ready to die.