Road to Seduction (Kimani Romance) (8 page)

“I need you inside me right now,” she whispered. “I’ll do anything.”

A seductive smile inched across his face. “Yeah, you will.”

He was already planting his hands on her butt and lifting her. Springing up, she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her jiggling breasts to his face. Without missing a beat, he greedily latched on to one of her nipples and sucked her deep into his mouth as he swung her around. By the time he’d ripped the duvet to the foot of the bed and laid her onto the cool sheets, they were both muttering mindless words of encouragement. The only thing Isabella understood was the extreme urgency, his and hers.

Half atop her, he reached for a red foil package on the nightstand—when had he put those there?—looked down at her writhing body, and paused to study her with wide, appreciative eyes. One slow hand stroked her neck…her breasts…her belly. He thumbed and tongued her nipples, torturing her as though the future of humanity depended on how wild he could make her and how hard she writhed. Isabella mewled and tried not to come even though her aching inner muscles pulsed for him. She saw him lift the package to his teeth through her flickering lids.

“Are you ready to let me in, Isabella?” He rubbed the broad head of his penis against her, demanding entry.

Limp with relief, she spread her thighs.
“Yes.”

Trembling now, glistening with sweat, Eric worked his way inside her tight body, half a millimeter at a time. Isabella’s eyes flew open and she cried out, long and loud because the sensation was so exquisite. Watching him with open astonishment and parted lips, she waited while he filled her bit by bit.

Eric stared back, looking as stunned as she felt. The shaking in his arms got worse the deeper he went, until finally he’d seated himself to the base and his entire body vibrated with his need.

An arrested moment passed, during which all they could do was watch each other. Isabella tightened her legs around him, digging her heels in to bring him as close as possible, and his hard body vibrated with lust although he didn’t move.

She just couldn’t believe that she was here with him, making love with him, being possessed by him.
This,
she now knew, was the moment for which she’d unknowingly waited all these years: Eric levered over her, his heavy body pressing hers deep into the mattress, his eyes glittering at her, his body inside hers. The taste of him in her mouth, the scent of him on her skin, the feel of him imprinted on her soul.

Making love with Eric was so stunning, so indescribably beautiful, that she realized one thing with utter clarity: if she died right now she would have no regrets because she’d shared this moment with him.

Clamping her fingers into his hard round butt to absorb the flex and play of his muscles, she pumped her hips once, twice. His trembling increased as they surged and flowed together, and then he paused.

“Now, Isabella.” Eric leaned down to nuzzle her lips and swiveled his hips one slow time. “Come
now
.”

She did.

It was the slow slide of his tongue into her mouth that did it; she didn’t need anything else. Without a thrust of his hips or a
stroke of his thumb over her core, with nothing more than the tight, delicious friction of Eric inside her body and the taste of him in her mouth, she came.

Huge, crashing waves convulsed her rigid body and bowed her over backward until Eric had to struggle to keep hold of her. Her frantic hands reached high overhead and scrabbled for something to hold on to, something to keep her from hurtling through space forever, and finally gripped the top of the headboard. With a grasp tight enough to splinter the wood, Isabella rode it out as the endless convulsions wracked her body.

Nothing had ever prepared her for this.

Eric shushed her and muffled her primitive cries with his mouth. His hands, soothing now instead of tormenting, stroked over her skin as though to calm her down. If she’d been capable of speech she would have told him not to bother. If she’d been capable of movement she would have smacked him for trying to gentle her when he’d been the one to get her this worked up in the first place.

A moment’s rest was all she needed. With a sudden burst of strength, she flipped him onto his back and straddled him. “Your turn,” she said as she began to move.

F
rantic and out of control, Eric bucked beneath her, driving deeper, harder, as though her body could possibly absorb any more of him. He pulled her down and took her mouth and his kisses were long, deep, and wet.
Sweet
. So sweet she could die from them, would happily die from them.

Bracing on her forearms, she watched his face and tried to memorize this moment, to sear everything on her brain because this was all she could ever have of him. She would not forget the way he scrunched his eyes closed as though he was in pain. She would not forget the way he chanted her name. She would not forget the hoarseness in his voice. She would not forget the fact that, one time in her life, Eric Warner had needed her this desperately—that she had once done this to him.

Suddenly his eyes flew open and he skewered her with his bright, fierce gaze. “I’m never letting you go.”

“Eric,” she said, but his name was only a whimper because the pleasure was building again, the wave retracting and preparing to crash. “We agreed—”

But he only got more agitated. His hips pumped harder, hurting now with the sort of delicious pain that would cause her to have trouble walking later, and the desperation rose in his eyes. “You’re not leaving me.”

“Shhh.” She was full of primitive needs today, all of them incomprehensible: the need to make love; the need to be ruthlessly possessed; the need to comfort Eric. Stroking her hands over his skin, she murmured to him. “It’s okay.
It’s okay
.”

“You’re mine now.”

There was no time for more talking, no room for it. Eric went rigid and all his warm flesh turned to stone beneath her hands. Burying his lips in the curve of her shoulder, convulsing with a force strong enough to shake the bed he came with a shout of her name and a final thrust of his hips.

When he dug his nails into her butt and forced her to absorb the full impact of his body surging into hers, she came, too. This time the waves crashed over her with enough momentum to make her first orgasm look like a ripple or two in a child’s plastic wading pool, and she cried out with it…cried and cried and cried.

They soothed each other and gently returned to earth.

“Sunshine,” he murmured in her ear. “My
Sunshine
.”

They were both still panting a few seconds later when he smoothed her hair, palmed her cheeks and, with a tired smile, kissed her with a tenderness that broke her heart into a million pieces.

Eric went to the bathroom and came back to an unpleasant surprise: Isabella, her incredible body now enshrouded and practically mummified in a white sheet, standing in a corner and muttering as she rummaged through her overnight bag on the chair.

He’d imagined her waiting for him in the tumbled bed with the drowsy smile of a well-satisfied woman and open arms anxious for his return. Also on his mind: a long afternoon getting to know each other’s bodies followed—eventually—by a joint shower and a delicious room-service dinner in bed.

So much for that fantasy.

The taste of bitter disappointment soured on the back of his tongue.

His ego, which was still smarting from her ridiculous
let’s have sex one time and move on with our lives
proposal, did not take kindly to the sight of her furtively snatching fresh undies and clothes—
my God, how much lace did that woman own?
—out of her bag as though she needed to dress and flee the vicinity of the bed before the Gestapo arrived to drag her away. All the tension they’d so beautifully relieved came slinking back into the room, more nerve-wracking than ever.

“Hey.” He fisted his hands on his hips, fighting his irritation.

Shooting him a quick glance over her shoulder, she clutched the sheet tighter to her chest with one hand and resumed rummaging with the other.

“Hey.”

Finally she found what she was looking for and fished out a hot pink flowered dress the color of Pepto Bismol but somehow perfect for her because it matched her free spirit. But seeing her with new clothes had the unfortunate effect of reminding him about his catastrophic loss of control earlier when he’d ripped her out of the old ones.

He felt his cheeks heat as he remembered how desperate he’d been to see her body, to touch her, to possess her. Worse, his penis, which really should have been happy if not comatose at this point in the proceedings, perked up hopefully.

The renewed arousal was something he could ignore. It seemed to be something he just needed to get used to as part of his changed relationship with Isabella. What he couldn’t ignore was the way Isabella’s face fell when she spotted her ruined clothes on the plush carpet beneath her pretty bare feet, or the way she winced when she stooped to pick them up.

Oh, God
. His stomach gave a sickening lurch.
He’d hurt her
.

Hurrying across the room, he touched her arm as she straightened. Shame made his head hang low and he couldn’t even look her in the eye. When had he become the kind of animal that hurt
a woman during sex? When had he ever been that frenzied with lust? What the hell happened to him when he touched Isabella?

“I’m sorry, Izzy.” He cleared his scratchy throat and tried to find the words to express how bad he felt. “I didn’t mean…to hurt you. I shouldn’t have been so…rough.”

Two things happened, one good and one bad. The bad thing was that Isabella flinched away from him as though the light touch of his hand on her bare arm destroyed her flesh. The good thing was that her face flamed with the kind of heat that made her appear feverish and she darted a glance at his groin, which was still semi-engorged and achy.

A shy smile turned up the outermost edge of one side of her mouth, and then was gone. For that one second she did not look like a woman who’d been injured by his base impulses. She looked like a woman who’d had the sex of her life and wouldn’t mind another round.

“You didn’t hurt me.”

Relief tinged with hope flared in his chest. Was she telling the truth? He hadn’t thought he’d done anything wrong at the time, but of course he hadn’t been in anything close to his right mind.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

For the first time she looked him in the eye, and that brief connection was so hot he felt his retinas burn and his heart singe. But then she looked away and there was no connection at all, only an excruciating awkwardness that was the worst torture imaginable after what they’d just shared in that bed.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

She backed toward the bathroom, making a show of shaking out her clothes and folding them over her arm. But he saw her gaze flicker over his naked body again, lingering for just a second on his privates, and she licked her lips. This, of course, sent him over the edge into full-fledged arousal.

“Isabella.” He took a step toward her, needing her again and cursing himself for the strength of his lust and weakness in his blood.

A flare of panic crossed over her expression and she edged
farther away, looking as though she’d like nothing better than to sprint to the bathroom, where it was safe, and bolt the door against him.

“I’m taking a shower. And you should—” she swallowed hard—“get dressed.”

Like hell he would. He’d never been shy or ashamed of his body and he damn sure wasn’t going to start now. Especially since he was just discovering the wonders of making love with Isabella and fully intended to do so again.

Right now.

“Why?” To his further irritation, he sounded like a furious dictator, not a man who had seduction on his mind. “What’s the rush?”

Still she wouldn’t look at him. Some spot just to the left of where he stood held her rapt attention. “We need to pick up Zeus—”

The
dog?
Was this some sort of a cruel
joke?

“Zeus isn’t going anywhere.”

“—and get to my parents’ by dinnertime. They’re expecting us.”

What did she just say?
What?

Stunned anger left him stuttering and speechless for ten long seconds, and it wasn’t just because of his doomed erection.
That
he could deal with. What he couldn’t deal with was a distant Isabella who wouldn’t look at him, let him touch her or, apparently, change her outrageous position on a relationship with him even after they’d had the kind of sex most people only dreamt about.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to be calm. Tried to sound reasonable.

“I thought we were going to spend more time here, Izzy. This can’t be
it
.”

“It is.” Above the top edge of that stupid sheet her breasts heaved and he knew that her calm voice wasn’t telling him the whole story. “We said we’d get each other out of our systems, and—”

“Am I out of your system already, Iz?” he snarled, losing a good chunk of the little composure he had. “’Cause you sure as hell aren’t out of mine.”

He waited, daring her to try to lie her way out of this one, but she had the good sense not to go down that road. Instead she tried a diversionary tactic that would’ve been a lot more successful if she’d had the guts to look him in the eye while she said it.

“
One
time. That’s what we agreed to—”

“Yeah?” Fired up with outrage and growing frustration, he abandoned the whole attempt to remain calm which was, obviously, impossible. “Well, I think we should revisit this
agreement
—”

“I don’t.”

“—because it’s
bullshit
.”

“Then why did you agree?” she cried.

“I think that’s fairly obvious.”

For the first time she seemed to get upset. Her brows flattened and her eyes blazed brown fire at him. He took heart, telling himself it was because she was as scared as he was by what was developing between them, but maybe that was just his desperation deluding him.

“You know what?” Her voice rose and cracked at the end, coming dangerously close to a screech. She flapped her free arm in a wild arc. “I don’t care why you agreed. The point is that you
did,
and now I expect you to be man enough to keep your word.”

“I don’t think my manhood is in question at this point. Do you?” He edged closer and, when she didn’t protest, put a hand around her waist.

Isabella backed up a hasty step and stumbled when she stepped on the edge of her sheet. Righting herself, she pointed at him as she shouted.

“
You stay away from me
. We agreed to one time, we had our one time, and now it’s
OVER
.”

He didn’t mean to smirk. Really he didn’t. He was furious, she was furious, and nothing about this whole tangled situation was a laughing matter. But there was something so incongruous about her standing there, wearing nothing but a murderous expression and a white sheet, that he couldn’t stifle a single bark of laughter.

She made a little growling sound in her throat that reminded
him of the warning Zeus made when you tried to take away his chew toy before he was done with it, but he didn’t care. If she was angry with him, that was just too bad and she’d have to get over it.

“Do you realize how
ridiculous
this is? We can’t un-ring the bell we just rung. The horse is already out of the barn, and—”

“Stop mixing your metaphors,”
she yelled.

Ah, yes. One always had to be grammatically correct with an elementary school teacher, even during the heat of a passionate argument. The urge was there to laugh again but he tamped it down, figuring that any more laughter would cause her to reach for the nearest lamp and clock him over the head.

“Isabella.” Pausing, he shook his head because he just couldn’t figure out how they’d come to such a weird point in their relationship. “If you think we’re never going to have sex again, you are certifiably
insane
.”

“You arrogant son-of-a—”

“In fact, I’d be willing to bet most of my inheritance that we’ll be having sex again in—” he checked his watch, calculated travel time and the dinnertime visit with her family, then added an extra half-hour for good measure “—about seven hours.”

“In seven hours,” she said with a slow emphasis on every syllable, as though she wanted to make sure even someone as dumb as he was understood what she was saying, “we are going to be asleep at my parents’ house, and
I
will be in my old bedroom and
you
will be on the sleep sofa.”

This time, striving for maximum irritation value, he let the smirk come. Embraced the smirk. “Wanna bet?”

She glared at him for a few seconds, killing him a good twenty or thirty times with her eyes, before whirling and stalking off. Her only answer was the teeth-clacking slam of the bathroom door.

They made it to Greenville by dinnertime after spending the worst afternoon in the history of car travel trapped in the SUV together. A few hours of Isabella’s frigid silent treatment made Eric long for the peaceful simplicity of a nice cross-country trip to the Grand Canyon with, say, four or five preschoolers. Several
screaming, hitting, yakking kids, surely, couldn’t be any worse than what he’d just endured: the glares, the huffs, the cold shoulder. Even Zeus, recovered now to tail-wagging health, seemed pissed off at him and hadn’t let Eric scratch his ears upon his return, with Fluffles, to the backseat.

Finally they arrived at the working-class east Greenville neighborhood and small brick home where Izzy’s family had lived since before the dawn of time. As usual, the sprinkler watered the lush green grass, which was clipped and trimmed to horticultural perfection, and the top of the hedges beneath the windows was so level that Eric could probably balance a beer mug atop it.

Nothing about the house had changed, at least not as far as he could see. Mama Jo’s flowers overflowed from various beds and pots stationed on the porch and up and down the walk to the driveway—impatiens, geraniums and black-eyed Susans, among others, and there seemed to be no requirement that the flowers match or even complement each other. The result was a hodgepodge that would no doubt be the shame of any local garden club, but which Eric thought was beautiful.