Tango in Paradise (11 page)

She didn’t answer, unwilling to say the words he wanted to hear, needed to hear. She wished he’d keep talking. But he remained damnably silent.

On a choked whisper, she finally said, “Because I can’t
not
respond to you.”

She felt him withdraw from her and fought the urge to cry out and beg him to return. She wanted him to bury himself deep inside her, not make her face the reasons she wanted him. She dropped her head forward against the blinds.

“Not good enough, April.” His gentle tone belied a controlled anger. “I want you. Here. Now. On the desk. On the floor. Up against the damn wall. But it’s you I want. Specifically, totally, and without regret. I think you want all that, too. Except for that last part.”

He abruptly moved up behind her until his body came into contact with the back of her body—
enough contact to make his desire for her an absolute certainty. “I need that last part. No regrets.”

April had already come to the conclusion that they would make love, when she’d kissed him under the jacaranda tree. But she now knew it wouldn’t just be a physical joining, slaking only desire. No. He knew her too well. Yet, there was so much he didn’t know. This wouldn’t be simple or easy.

He would leave in a few weeks, but in that moment she knew she’d be the richer for having given her all to him—and, in return, having received all he would give to her. “No regrets,” she said softly, honestly. Her spine remained straight, though, still not giving in to the need to lean into him, to let him take the last of her control away.

“I know something, someone made you doubt yourself. I just don’t want any doubt between you and me, okay?” He punctuated his question by pressing a heartbreakingly gentle kiss on the sensitive skin at her nape.

He understood. Beyond reason he understood, and April knew he would care for her—body, mind, and soul—as no one else ever had. Or ever could. His intuitiveness was as powerful a stimulant as his body and his words. She melted.

Jack groaned. “Don’t come undone on me yet, sweetheart. I’m so hungry for you it will take a while to work it all off.” He pulled the ebony stick holding up her hair, letting the shiny waves caress
his face as he buried his lips under her ear. “I need to see you.” He pulled her pliant body back against his chest and reached for the cords that operated the blinds. He pulled them all the way up, bathing them in the glow of the three-quarter moon.

Wrapping his arms around her waist, he nuzzled her neck, willing himself to slow his need to take her immediately. He wanted to revel in her every breath, her every sigh. God, he wanted to pull her underneath him on the cold, hard floor. He took another deep breath of her sweet scent, the hint of muskiness rising from her skin burning his senses. Using everything he had in him he pulled the remainder of his control together, only to have her wrench it away completely with two words.

“Touch me.”

He bit his inner cheek. Hard. “If I do, I won’t stop. Not until every inch of your skin knows the feel of me.”

“Yes.”

No longer trusting speech, Jack moved trembling fingers up the length of her arms to her shoulders, then slid them slowly down along the sides of her halter dress. The high neckline, tight at the throat, covered her completely, yet provided the tantalizing freedom to slip his fingers in at the sides and across her breasts. She inhaled swiftly as
he cupped her fullness and whispered softly in her ears. “So soft and sweet.”

Still holding the light weight of her in his palms, he gently rubbed long fingers across her nipples. Her breath came in small gasps then, and Jack was rocked by the knowledge that his need for her could actually intensify. Fiercely maintaining his control, he continued to gently manipulate her breasts, and was rewarded when they became fuller and firmer in his large hands.

Tempering the urge to use his teeth to tear open the buttoned neckline of her dress, he forced himself to release her breasts. But his hands never left her warm skin as he slid his fingers back along the edge of her top and lifted her hair. “I want you to see my hands on you.” He released the pearl buttons at her nape and her top fell to her waist, her dress held on only by her slim belt.

“Sweet heaven, are you beautiful.” Jack nestled his chin on April’s shoulder and whispered in her ear. “Look down. Watch my hands cover you.” He moved his thumbs in slow circles around her hardened nipples as he spoke, evoking small gasps and a light shudder. “So small and perfect.”

April couldn’t remain silent any longer. “So large and gentle.” When he paused, she covered his large hands with her smaller ones and he continued to caress her. The sweetness of his lovemaking, the eroticism of his words, made her feel almost
removed from herself, yet more in touch within herself than she’d ever been, or could hope to be again. Except with him.

She watched the moonlight create shadows under his palms as he cupped her and whispered in her ear all the places she was going to watch him touch her. Small moans passed her lips unheeded. She was beyond coherent thought, responding to the purely primal demands of her body.

“Turn around. Touch me.” She did as he asked and he cursed the shadows that deprived him of seeing her. Lifting her onto the small windowsill, he pressed her back against the cool glass, inhaling her gasp into his mouth. He pulled her arms around his neck as he pressed his tongue deep between her open lips. He tasted her, all of her.

Their tongues dueling, then thrusting until he groaned, he pushed her skirt to her hips and pulled her legs around his hips. Finding the strength to leave her mouth he whispered, “Don’t let me go,” then moved to taste her breasts.

She whimpered and bucked against him as he drew first one nipple, then the other into his hot mouth and drew them out to their fullest. “Take off my shirt,” he commanded roughly. “I want to feel you against my chest.”

April was half out of her mind by then and all but tore the shirt from his body. Once he was bared, she didn’t pull him back into her arms. She
couldn’t. Not yet. First she wanted to—had to—taste him the way he had her. Inch by slow, wet inch.

She felt the tremors race across his skin and thrilled in the knowledge that he was dancing on the edge too. She moved to the pulse point along the side of his neck, which was erotically illuminated by the moonlight. She pressed a soft kiss on the very spot that pulsed, then ran her tongue over it before gently biting it. Abruptly Jack yanked his upper body away from her, his chest rising and falling in deep, rapid breaths.

Jerked halfway back to reality, April’s mind swam for a moment and she spoke the first thought she had. “Did I hurt you?”

“Never,
mi cielo
.” He paused to take several deep breaths, completely unaware of the name he’d used or of the fact that her eyes came into sharp and complete focus almost immediately. “But if your hot little tongue had wet so much as another inch of my skin, I couldn’t have gotten my pants off in time to get inside you.”

April felt pummeled, confused by the hard reality of his words and her body’s continued response to them. Nonetheless, the endearment had thrown her, knocking her out of their syncopated rhythm. She felt lost, cheated, angry. But why? It was just a stupid nickname.

“April?”

The word was a combination query and demand. As in tune to her as she was to him, he had to know she’d pulled away too, in mind if not in body. She felt a hot burning beneath her eyelids and pressed them shut to keep the tears from falling.

All the beauty and passion that had built up to near bursting, only to be robbed of completion, of a satisfaction that would have fulfilled needs she’d never been aware of having. “I’m sorry.” It was a wild understatement.

She felt his finger under her chin and spent all of a second trying to resist the slight pressure. She started to speak as she lifted her chin. “It isn’t that I don’t—” Her words died as she looked into his eyes. Totally devoid of color in the lunar light, they pierced her heart. “—want you,” she finished softly, in awe of the intensity with which he looked at her, into her, into the very soul of her. And as quickly as that she was back on the edge.

“You touched me, kissed me, and …” He stopped, his voice giving out. He looked over her shoulder toward the distant waves.

For a long moment she remained silent. He seemed to be slipping away from her and she wondered if she’d imagined the wonder in his voice. She tightened her legs, which were still around his waist, and he moved against her immediately. This time she reached up and turned his chin toward her.
“I know. And somehow you were already deeper inside of me than anyone has ever been.”

His eyes exploded in color as black pupils swallowed up the translucent irises in a savage wave of desire. She gulped at the naked hunger that drove into her like a physical thing, then without hesitation pulled him back toward her, needing to be what he wanted, to give what he needed. And more than anything, to be a part of the powerful force that was Jack.

“Nothing and no one can ever, ever compare to what you just gave me.” Jack had barely ground out the words before he claimed her lips in a punishing kiss that he instinctively knew she would return fully. She gave all of it back and more. “Hold on tight,” he ordered against her lips.

She clamped her thighs tightly and held on to his shoulders as he lifted her in his arms. He turned to her desk, but there was no place to put her down. She started to press small hot kisses on his neck and he looked wildly around her office, hoping for a couch or even a soft rug. Nothing but cold tile and narrow padded chairs met his gaze.

Her breasts crushed against him, she started nipping gently at the skin stretched across his shoulders, and he knew he would lose his mind if he didn’t have her now. But it was when she pulled his earlobe into her sweet little mouth that he went out of control.

In one broad stroke he swept the entire contents of her desk into a crashing heap on the floor. She didn’t flinch, just pressed the tip of her tongue into his ear instead. A groan that started in his groin ripped through him and he went over the edge completely. He turned and sat her on the desk, pressing her back flat as he moved hard between her legs. She kept her legs wrapped around his waist and they began to move together as he ravaged her neck and breasts with kisses, sucking, licking, and biting every inch of skin he could reach.

April squirmed under him, hating the zipper grinding into her, needing him now. Hard. Long. And thrusting. Deeply. “Jack. Jack.” His name was a plea for release.

“Yes. Say it, April. What do you want?”

“You. Now.” They were both panting heavily, the heat from their bodies making their skin slippery.

Jack yanked his wallet from his pocket and threw it down next to her head on the desk. Then he ripped his belt open, pushing his pants down, tugging them from under the legs at his waist. “Where? Where do you want me, April?” She squirmed as he spoke and he pulled her dress out from under her belt, unhooking her legs only long enough to slide it down her legs and fling it across the room.

He looked down at her and felt his knees begin to give. Bathed in white light, she wore only sheer
yellow panties and the slim gold belt. As his gaze devoured her, her back arched, thrusting her breasts high in the air. “Where, April? For God’s sake, where?”

Her hair was a wild mass splayed around her head as her gaze lowered from his eyes, moved down his chest, swept across his abdomen, and stopped when it encountered his throbbing erection. Without looking up, her voice thready with need, she answered, “Inside me, Jack. Deep inside me.”

With a sound that was more growl than groan, Jack slipped the condom from his wallet and all but yanked it into place. He leaned over her, tamping down the incredible animalistic urge just to thrust into her. Instead he pushed his tongue into her mouth and slid his hand between her legs, pressing his finger inside of her. “This deep?” he asked against her lips. He pushed deeper. “Or this deep?”

April tightened her legs and pushed against him. “Deeper.”

Jack’s breath left him in a shuddering hiss, then he kissed her long and hard as his fingers slid out of her and he pressed himself against her instead. He pushed into her, slowly. The pain of restraint was excruciatingly thrilling and he knew then he could die from the pleasure of it. “Mine. You … are … mine.”

He pushed himself completely into her and she met him thrust for thrust. Jack felt the last shred of civilized behavior slip away as his belly slapped against hers over and over. Giving and taking equally, he felt the need to possess her permanently—in this life, in their next life, and for all eternity.

Just at the brink he locked his gaze on hers, pausing for a fraction of a second. They said nothing, but in the next instant, as they both went over the edge, a look passed between them that bonded them, one to the other.

Irrevocably.

Jack pressed his full weight on her, shudders still racking his body. Only when April moaned softly did he pull himself together enough to shift his weight to his forearms, leaving his chest brushing against hers. He looked down at her face, but their position blocked most of the light. He wanted to see her eyes, wondering what she felt at that moment. Wondering if she felt like he did. Like the world had just spun into a new orbit.

She moaned again and he moved to get off of her, suddenly realizing how uncomfortable she must be. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he pulled out of her and shifted away, angry at his total lack of consideration for her. His need for her had been so intense, so all-consuming.… He bit back another oath. He wanted her spinning in space with him,
when the reality was she’d probably be happiest if he’d just get off of her.

“Don’t leave me yet,” she whispered, gripping his waist with her thighs to keep him close.

Feeling even more like a bastard, he immediately leaned back over and tucked his hands under her back and hips. “April, I’m so sorry.”

She had started to grab on to his shoulders, anticipating his pulling her up, but his words stopped her and she tilted her face to him. “Why?”