Mission: Irresistible (26 page)

Her pulse throbbed in the hollow of her neck. Tentatively, she reached out and touched him there for the very first time. She was shocked at how big he felt in her hand. Her breasts swelled, grew warm.

He unbuttoned her blouse, undressed her with care. By the time he was finished and Cassie was standing naked before him, they were both trembling.

“You have the most gorgeous figure,” he breathed, running a hand from the curve of her breast down the cinch of her waist to the flare of her hip. “Hourglass, curvy, a real woman’s body.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I love the way you love your own body. Most women don’t, you know.”

Her cheeks heated, and she suddenly felt shy. Impossible, improbable, illogical. Cassie didn’t do shy. She ducked her head, confused by her feelings.

Why did she suddenly feel so incredibly weak-kneed and defenseless? What was this strange hesitancy, this unexpected quietness?

Harry caught her chin, lifted her face up, and forced her to look at him. “I want you,” he said, and with those three words her shyness disappeared.

There was nothing slow or lingering about his kisses. They started out hot and hard and quickly jumped to a frenzied pace. Passion poured out of him, poured out of her; it mingled, flowed, and became one blinding, driving force.

He tenderly caressed her breasts, and the space between her legs went hot and wet. His kisses slowed, then turned languid. He was changing things on her. His tongue licking hers was like fire dancing in the darkness.

He walked her backward until her butt bumped the edge of the bed.

“Lie back,” he commanded. “And wrap your legs around my waist.”

She did as he asked, curling her spine into the mattress. Her pulse thundered in her ears. What was he going to do next?

His cock bounced playfully against her belly. He was standing on the floor, looming over her.

She was on the bed, her butt almost hanging over the edge, her legs wrapped tight around his waist. She grinned. Once he was inside her, she would have control over his thrusting. What a great arrangement.

But then he surprised her completely.

He slipped his hand down and gently massaged between her thighs. She flinched. The sensation was so invariably sweet. He leaned down and his mouth fastened onto hers, kissing her as he tickled her slick feminine folds.

And then he inched his finger inside her, easing in and out until she thought she might scream from the superbness of it all.

Harrison slipped a second finger inside her while his pinky stayed on the outside, doing some very interesting tricks. His wrist swayed back and forth to a smooth, balanced rhythm. All the while, his ambitious pinkie was circling lower, around and around and around, increasing the tempo and thoroughly glazing her with her own wet, honeyed essence.

“Oooh,” Cassie said and shifted her hips upward, definitely wanting more of that technique.

And then he took it one step further and rimmed her tight, puckered rosebud. Caressing it carefully, pressing in with a light, steady pressure.

She groaned and grabbed the bedcovers with both fists. He did not stop. He kept up the warm, provocative finger glide. In and out and over and around. On and on and on he went, until she was dazed with need and desperate to sate her hunger.

“Where,” she gasped, and then had to stop to catch her breath before she could continue with her question—“did you learn how to do that?”

Never in a million years would she have guessed that a guy who spent so much time with ancient artifacts would be so knowledgeable about a woman’s body. She hadn’t given Harry nearly enough credit for versatility.

“Poindexter reads a lot.” He grinned.

Mental note to self. Date more intellectuals.

“But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, sweetheart.” Harrison eased his hand from her and then dropped to his knees so that her legs were wrapped around his neck and his mouth was level with her most tender assets.

She hissed in her breath through clenched teeth, and her entire body tensed with exquisite pleasure.

His hair tickled her inner thighs. He plied his mouth delicately over her tiny straining ridge. He sank his hot tongue inside her, licking insatiably.

Wickedly his tongue controlled her. She was his puppet. He could do with her whatever he wished.

The slippery sensation was beyond anything she’d ever experienced. His tongue glided into her molten center and he worked his diabolical magic.

She moaned and arched toward him, providing him with easier access. The quivering sensation was indescribably, scrumptiously private.

How had their relationship progressed to such intimacy so quickly?

The affair that burns the hottest, fades the quickest.

It was something her mother used to say when Cassie had asked why she’d dropped yet another boyfriend.

But Harrison’s devilish tongue soon shook such thoughts from her head. He grasped her hips with both hands, holding her pinned to the mattress as she thrashed and writhed. Her body absorbed his heated breath.

Oh, she was done for.

She rode his tongue, pushing and pulling, rocking and bucking. She was searching, grasping, desperate to make it happen.

Her orgasm erupted from the very core of her soul. Exploding outward through her center, flinging into her limbs. Her muscles tightened, then went instantly slack. Her pulse pounded, and she saw a rhapsody of red-white starbursts.

Wet heat spilled out of her, flowed over him as the sound of his proud laughter filled the room.

Well, she thought, dreamily. She’d done it. She’d kept him out of her bed.

He had been standing on the floor the entire time.

CHAPTER 19

T
hanks. I needed that.” Cassie sighed contentedly.

“You’re welcome.”

They were piled up in the middle of her bed. Her head resting against his shoulder, her body curled into his side. A smug smile played across his lips.

She traced the smile with her fingertips. “You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t you proud of me?”

“What do you think?”

His grin widened and her heart just sort of splintered into two pieces, and in that moment she knew she had to tell him about Duane, even though she didn’t understand why.

“Harry?”

“Uh-huh?” He sounded drowsy, self-satisfied. She noticed he’d stopped telling her to call him Harrison. Slowly but surely she was wearing him down.

“Can I tell you something?”

He turned his head and peered at her with his good eye. “Absolutely.”

“Would you really want to know why I freaked out on you today?”

“You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“Yeah, I do. You gave me that beautiful butterfly apology, and it wasn’t even your fault.”

“Shh,” he murmured. “It’s okay. Honest. Forget about it. I don’t care.”

“I do. I acted like a crazy woman, and I want you to understand why. It’s important to me.”

“Okay.”

“I was married once.”

Harrison didn’t say anything. Cassie gulped back her fear and plunged ahead. It was still difficult to talk about, even after eleven years.

“His name was Duane Armstrong. And I was madly in love with him.” She had been apeshit crazy for Duane in that sick-in-the-head-obsessive-teenage way. It was humbling to admit it now. That she’d been so wrong about what love was.

“Uh-huh.” Harry didn’t sound any too enthused to hear about this.

“I wanted to marry him more than anything else on earth. He was handsome and fun and daring. He was twenty-one and I was seventeen. Everyone in my family was against it. Even my dad, which surprised me, because he and Duane were two of a kind. But I was young and headstrong and wildly in love, so I married him anyway. For the first couple of months it was great. One good time after another.”

“Then what happened?” On the surface his voice was teasing, but underneath she heard the tension. He was jealous. “After a while did you discover you didn’t like picking up his socks off the bathroom floor?”

“It’s not so much his socks I minded picking up,” she confessed. “It was his crack pipe.”

“Dammit, Cassie, are you serious?”

She felt his muscles tense beneath her. “I was an utter fool.”

“No, you weren’t a fool. You might have made foolish choices, but you were never a fool.” He sounded so vehement. Like he really believed what he was saying.

“I was so ashamed. I didn’t tell anyone what I was going through. Not even Maddie.”

“It must have been really hard for you, handling that all alone, hiding such a secret from your family.”

She nodded. “The drugs really took their toll, and quick. Duane got crazy jealous. Possessive. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he locked me in the cellar while he went off on a two-day drug binge.” She shuddered, remembering.

“Damn my hide.” Harrison hissed in his breath. “And I had my head so far up my ass I let the cellar door slam shut on you. And that guy could have blown you up inside there.” His voice hung on a clot of emotion.

“It wasn’t your fault, Harry. I was having a post-traumatic stress flashback. There’s no way you could have known. I just wanted to explain so you could understand me better.”

“How’d you get the courage to leave?” He softly stroked her hair, and his touch was so incredible her heart just ached from the sweetness of it.

“I tried to help Duane. I really did. Tried to get him to join Narcotics Anonymous, but he denied he had a problem. I couldn’t stick it out. I flaked. I didn’t have the stamina for the long haul.”

“Is that why you don’t want to ever get married again? Because you think you did something wrong?”

Cassie nodded and clenched her jaw to keep from crying. Revealing her most shameful secret to him was much tougher than she’d thought it would be.

He gently slipped her head off his shoulder, threw back the covers, and got out of bed. He marched over to the remnants of her collage wall, his bare buns flexing in the light from the bathroom. Her heart fluttered. He was so magnificent.

He fisted his hands. “Which one is he?”

“Oh, Duane’s not on my collage wall. I only put happy memories up there.” Cassie sat up in the bed, curled her knees to her chest.

He looked over at her. The expression on his face plucked at her heartstrings. “It tears me up inside to think that someone hurt you. I’d like to kill the bastard.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “He died in a car wreck the day after I left him.”

“God, Cassie, sweetheart, I’m so sorry you had to live through that.” Harrison stalked across the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and drew her into his arms.

She was trembling.

“It’s okay,” he murmured and pressed his lips to her forehead. His soul caved in for all she had suffered. He tried to mentally cut off his rational mind from his emotions, but he couldn’t stop sympathizing with her pain. “You’re all right.”

She clung to him and buried her face against his chest. Harrison had never felt so needed, so manly.

“I felt so responsible,” she said. “I kept thinking that if I’d never married Duane, never
committed
to a relationship, he might not have gotten drunk and driven into that bridge abutment. He might still be alive today.”

“Duane was a troubled man. Surely you’ve figured that out by now. His death had nothing to do with you and whether or not you stood by your wedding vows. You were only seventeen, Cassie. A kid.”

Harrison rubbed circles on her back, wishing he could make her see the problem had been with her ex-husband, not with her, not with marriage or commitment. He felt her tears on his skin. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up until she met his gaze. Then he kissed her.

Slowly, sweetly, gently.

But it didn’t stay slow, sweet, and gentle.

Things changed quickly, as they usually did with his quixotic, quicksilver Cassie.

Her body loosened, but her grip on him tightened. She increased the tempo of their kiss, stepping it up several degrees when she slipped her tongue past his teeth.

Their body heat mixed, mingled. Sharp need for her buried under his skin, fiery and fierce, spreading through his veins, taking him over.

What had started out as a comfort kiss ripened into a frantic, insatiable coupling of their mouths.

His hand went to the soft curve of her waist and his fingers sank deliciously into her flesh. He liked her meaty ripeness, loved caressing her full, rich curves.

She threaded her fingers through his hair, murmured low in her throat. He paid attention to her sounds and moved his fingers accordingly, sliding up from her waist to lightly stroke her lovely breasts.

She was so gorgeous. He was fully aware of how lucky he was to be here. He wanted her so badly. Wanted to bury himself deeply inside her and never emerge.

He dragged his kiss from her mouth, down over her chin, to the underside of her supple throat. He knew he’d discovered an erogenous zone when her body tensed and a small helpless moan escaped her parted lips. She arched against him, her body pleading for more.

Supercharged, Harrison dipped his head lower, his tongue seeking those sweet, rock-hard nipples she thrust at him. He wet them both with his mouth and then rubbed the pad of his thumb over one nipple, while gently suckling the other.

She gasped and writhed.

He was on fire for her. His body was an inferno; he was so hard he didn’t think he could go one more minute without sheathing himself inside her.

And when she reached down and slipped her hand along his inner thigh, he had to close his eyes and fight hard to keep from losing control completely. He was so scared he was going to screw this up.

“You relax and enjoy this,” she said. “Stop playing with my nipples, roll over on your back, and just relax.”

Music to every man’s ears. He groaned and rolled over.

“Do you like for me to touch you like that?” she whispered, kneading his leg, moving closer, ever closer to his hard, flushed penis.

“Oh, babe, yeah.”

It was so extraordinarily erotic, her hand on him. He lifted his head and looked at her, watching the lusty emotions play across her face.