Fallen Angel (16 page)

She stared at him, still looking stunned as she hovered just inside the doorway.

"Do I finally have your attention, Geneva?"

She gathered herself under his steady gaze. He watched her do it by sheer force of will. He even grudgingly admired her innate strength as she squared her slender shoulders and lifted her chin.

"You have my attention, Thomas. Cruelty always does that to me."

"What you did wasn’t cruel?" he demanded.

She paled and made her way to the nearest chair. She sank into it, her purse and briefcase thudding to the floor at her feet.

Thomas approached her, drew her up from the chair, and relieved her of her coat. Taking Geneva by the hand, he led her into the private sitting room adjacent to his office. He didn’t pause until they stood in front of the couch positioned before the fireplace.

"Sit down."

Geneva slowly lowered herself onto the couch. She moved with the caution of the extremely wary as she perched on the edge of the cushion.

Thomas towered over her, forcing her to look up at him. He took in her poised–for–flight posture. "Stay put."

Rebellion sparkled in her eyes, but she didn’t move a muscle.

He rescued their drinks and returned to the room, kicking shut the door. Geneva flinched as it slammed, her gaze never leaving Thomas. He placed their wineglasses on the end table next to the couch, and then put a flame to the already prepared logs and kindling in the sitting room’s fireplace.

Thomas loosened his tie, shedding it and his jacket before joining Geneva on the couch. Unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt, he reached for his wineglass and took a drink.

She held her breath as she watched him. Stared at him, actually. She’d never seen him this angry before, and she didn’t blame him. She’d acted like a coward. No getting around that fact.

"Talk, Geneva."

She studied his face, and she saw more there than she wanted to see. More than anger. More than frustration. Much more. Pain. Deep pain.

"Your past, Geneva. That’s the boulder you’ve dragged back into the path of our relationship, isn’t it?"

She pressed her fingertips to her temples. "You make it sound so easy. It’s not."

"It would be if you trusted me."

"I do trust you."

"Prove it." Standing, he walked to the mantle, his gaze still on her.

She wondered if he knew what he was asking of her. "Not ready yet," she whispered.

Tears brimmed in her large blue eyes, and she fought the urge to weep. What would be the point in revealing her past? The truth would end things between them once and for all, and she wasn’t ready for that. She wanted more. Needed more, especially after the night they’d just shared.

"Come here," Thomas signed.

She stiffened. "Why?"

"I need to touch you, if only to prove to you that I’m real and that I’m not going anywhere."

Filled with a combination of anguish and hope, she went to him, wanting to believe that he spoke the truth, desperate to believe that the woman she’d become during the last several years somehow compensated for the woman she’d once been.

Thomas drew her into his arms and held her.

Geneva relaxed by degrees. With his hands drifting up and down her back, he unknowingly soothed her with the kind of tenderness that also contained the power to seduce.

She couldn’t change her past, so she finally stopped wishing for the impossible. And in the quiet minutes that followed, Geneva finally realized that she possessed the courage to risk everything.

Thomas was right. The time to tell the truth
had
arrived. Whatever the outcome.

She felt no shame about her past. If anything, she was resigned to the reality of why and how she’d become an explosives expert in the first place. She was, after all, Patrick Talmadge’s daughter. And because she’d been his companion during those nomadic years, wandering the globe in search of strife and conflict, it wasn’t surprising that she’d perfected her skills under his tutelage.

To deny her past meant that she would have to deny her father. She couldn’t and wouldn’t do that, not even for Thomas Coltrane. And if he rejected her, she would survive. She’d survived far worse—invariably sadder and always much wiser, of course. But still standing, still loved by her family, and still in possession of her self–respect.

She’d managed to avoid rejection for years, although the safety of her reclusive life had cost her in a thousand and one other ways. Thomas had brought back to life her dreams of loving and being loved, but he also possessed the power to shatter them—even if he didn’t realize it.

Geneva lifted her face from the warm curve of his neck and met his gaze. Any words she might have uttered remained unspoken when Thomas cupped the back of her head and guided her lips to his. He kissed her then, his mouth possessive as he drank in her shocked exhalation.

He wrenched free of her just moments later, muttering, "If seducing you is the only way to get you to talk to me, then so be it."

Gasping for breath, Geneva tried to tell him that she didn’t understand what he’d just said, but he reclaimed her mouth, silencing her. Her hunger for him exploded across the landscape of her senses like a firestorm. She feared that this might be their last time together, and she refused to deny herself.

She lost her ability to think or reason under his passionate onslaught. She eagerly succumbed to the darting penetration of his tongue as it invaded her mouth and the roaming of his hands over her body.

She even forgot that they were in the sitting room of his office. She cared about nothing but Thomas, because he had become the center of her universe.

Tasting him, touching him, and destroying any boundaries, real or imagined, between them became her focus. She matched his thrusting tongue stroke for stroke, her hands frantic as she tore at the buttons of his shirt. This time she needed no assistance as she parted the fabric and plunged her fingers into the dense hair that covered his chest.

He groaned in response to her touch, then caught the hem of her sweater, dragged it up and over her head, and cast it aside. His hands went immediately to the catch at the front of her bra. Flicking it open, he palmed her breasts as they sprang free.

Geneva gasped, then moaned when she felt his fingertips at her nipples. They peaked instantly, tight pale mauve knots of pure sensation. When he took one of the tips into his mouth and sucked, she nearly wept from the pleasure cascading through her.

She reached down to stroke his hard shaft. This time, her fingers were less clumsy as she unbuckled his belt, opened the front of his trousers, and freed his sex. He pulsed under her touch, which sent additional rivers of pleasure spiraling through her.

Thomas claimed her mouth again, his kiss enflaming and seductive. He managed to shed his clothing and then stripped away what remained of hers. Taking the steps to the couch in a few strides, he brought Geneva down atop him as he sprawled back across the cushions. His hands encompassed her breasts, and his mouth became voracious as he drank deeply of her. He saturated his senses with her taste and the feel of her heated skin.

Geneva shifted atop him, flowing over him like hot silk until she positioned herself astride his thighs. She inched forward, her pelvis nudging against his rigid length.

She clutched at his shoulders before she brought herself to her knees and crouched over him. She felt his searing gaze, saw the hunger in his eyes, and savored his need of her.

He bracketed her hips with his hands, halting her downward motion.

She met his gaze. And she waited.

He spoke slowly. "You want this?"

His question pierced her heart. How could she not want him? "I want you, Thomas."

He closed his eyes, his hard grip easing. He exhaled, expelling only a fraction of his hunger and tension.

Geneva slowly lowered her body to his. Her desire for him spiked to new heights as she impaled herself with his powerful erection.

A shattered sound escaped her. Tears of relief spilled from her eyes as she settled atop him, their bodies merging, becoming one. She quivered inside as she rode him, the intrinsic sensuality of her nature revealing itself.

A tremor passed through Thomas, telegraphing the depth of his need. She watched his face as she moved over him like undulating satin. His hands shifted from her hips to her breasts, hands cupping her flesh, thumbs flicking at her nipples. Pleasure arrowed through her, sending streamers of heated sensation into her bloodstream.

When he looked at her, she saw that his desire for her had darkened his eyes. The threat of loss stabbed at her. She loved him so deeply, so completely, she knew her heart would break when he abandoned her. Her pace quickened, as if by intensifying their lovemaking she could thwart the reality that he would soon reject her.

Thomas smoothed his fingers over her breasts, dragged his knuckles across her lower abdomen, and then clasped her hips. He stilled her body and arched upward, deepening his penetration. She felt his sex pulse deep inside, and she gloried in his strength, his hunger for her. Leaning forward, she pressed stinging little kisses to his neck before she shifted her attention to his chin, where she gently nibbled.

Geneva wanted to purr, and she did exactly that as she tormented and teased him with nipping kisses and tilting motions of her hips. He claimed her mouth in the same instant that he surged even more deeply into her hot wet channel, then caught and inhaled her stunned gasp as he guided the movement of her lower body.

Geneva felt every inch of his rigid length. She trembled, her body starting to tighten into itself. Feeling as though she might break apart at any moment, she savored the sensation, just as she savored the act of intimacy they now shared.

She rode him even more forcefully, the tension deep within her body spiraling ever tighter. Thomas matched her reckless pace, responding to their mutual urgency as he pounded into her.

Geneva felt he might consume her, and that thought fanned the flames of her desire for him even more. Gasping for breath, she tore her lips from his and arched into him. Her insides quickened. Soft cries escaped her as she slammed against him.

He drew her forward, covered one breast with his hand and took the nipple of the other one into his mouth. He sucked at her sensitive skin, taunting her with catlike swipes of his tongue and careful teething. He soon gave her other breast equal attention.

Geneva abruptly lost control, her senses shattering with a kind of violence that drew a scream from her as she climaxed. Glittery sensations swept over her and then hurled her into a world of sensory pleasure unlike anything she’d ever known. Thomas held her and protected her throughout the storm. And in the aftermath of her release, she slumped across his chest, gasping for breath and clinging to him.

Thomas’s hands trembled from his own need for release as he stroked her back and hips. He shifted their bodies a short while later, gently tucking her beneath him. He moved slowly at first, teasing her, rekindling her desire with a shallow pumping motion, then deepening his penetration when his restraint began to fail him.

"Yes. Oh, yes," Geneva whispered as she twined her arms around his neck and brought his lips down to hers.

His body glistened with sweat, and the muscles mapping his limbs and torso grew taut with tension. He took her with him, stoking the barely banked flames of her passion until she was once again writhing beneath him. He felt her surrender to the need prompted by the combustible sensations flowing anew through her body.

Circling his hips with her legs, Geneva answered his every thrust with a counterthrust of her own. She slanted her lips across his, sucking his tongue into her mouth as he pounded into her. His pace increased, and with it her own.

She felt complete as a result of his possession, then experienced a sensation akin to recognition. She’d found the mate she had always longed for, and she consciously imprinted on her heart the taste and feel of his passion and sensuality. And in that moment, she experienced only one regret—she would never hear the sound of his voice.

Neither one held back in the minutes that followed.

They teased.

They tantalized.

They tormented.

And their bodies blended with a fluidity that heightened their mutual pleasure. The turbulence of their mating finally pushed them both over the edge.

Geneva cried out, her climax so stark, so thorough, her entire body stiffened with shock. Sensation after sensation rippled through her, over and over again until she felt disconnected from everything in the world but Thomas.

He succumbed to her release and went spinning beyond control just moments later, his own need for completion too strong to resist any longer. His body trembled, and he splintered apart. He moaned her name and his love for her.

Geneva, her face pressed against his neck and still buffetted by the aftershocks of her own release, didn’t realize that Thomas had spoken.

Sinking down over her soon after, he struggled for air as he cradled Geneva against his chest and rolled them both onto their sides. He turned off the lamp. The warmth of the fire eliminated the threat of a chill, so they simply held each other in the darkness.

He knew they needed to talk, but their lack of sleep the night before, the rigors of the day they’d just experienced, and the sound of Geneva’s slow breathing lulled him into believing that they could relax for a while.

** ** **

Geneva waited until Thomas had fallen asleep before she eased out of his embrace and got up from the couch. She located her panties and bra, slipping into them as she stood before the fireplace. As she stared at the dwindling flames, she battled the urge to walk away from Thomas again.

No, she thought, the time for running has long since passed. And she wasn’t a coward, no matter what he might think.

Geneva turned away from the fireplace, but she paused when she noticed that Thomas had awakened and was watching her. When he said nothing, she reached for her sweater and slipped it over her head.