To the Limit (27 page)

"I don't know what bug crawled up your ass, but this just isn't working for me."

The blood rushing through her ears was so loud she could barely hear herself think. She was as confused as hell. She knew darn well he wanted the same thing she did.

Desperate times, desperate measures moment.

"Does this work for you?" She threw the blouse at him, reached behind her back, and unhooked her bra.

When she drew the straps down her arms and tossed the cream-colored lace at him, too, his eyes glazed over.

"Yeah." He swallowed, his expression stalled somewhere between helplessness and self-disgust when he threw her bra and blouse on the floor and reached for her. "It works. But when we get this out of our system, we're gonna talk."

He pushed her to her back on the bed and followed her down, stretching out full-length on top of her. "And for the record, I'm not just some cheap piece you can—"

"McClain," she said, laughing as she reversed their positions. She shoved him onto his back and straddled him. "Would you just shut up and kiss me?"

He fisted his hands in her hair and drew her mouth to his. "Well, if you're gonna get all bitchy about it."

Mac couldn't catch his breath. Couldn't catalog all the flavors and textures and the multiple levels of need Eve conjured as she moved over him. Her mouth devoured his even as she dragged his shirt out of his pants and whipped it over his head.

It was like being caught up in a storm, he thought when she went to work on his belt. All snap and crackle and raw, untamed energy. This was no meek kitten accosting him. This was a wildcat with claws and teeth. She growled in frustration against his mouth as her frantic fingers fumbled between them with the buckle.

"Dammit." She wrenched herself up so she was sitting astride his very happy lap. With an annoyed sweep of her hand, she raked the hair out of her eyes, then attacked the buckle again.

The sight of her consumed him. Her face was flushed with arousal and greed. Her eyes glittered; her lips were already swollen from kissing him. Her hair fell in a wild, silken tangle around her face. Good God Almighty. He'd dreamed about seeing her this way. Her breasts naked and pink and hovering above his mouth. Her hands all over him.

He reached for her, but she batted his hand away.

"Help me." She sank back on her heels in defeat.

Considering the fact that she had him so flaming hot his fingers didn't want to work, he made surprisingly quick work of the buckle. "You got a bus to catch or something?"

"Or something." She unsnapped and unzipped his pants, then urged his hips up off the mattress so she could drag the pants and his shorts down his thighs. She fished around in his hip pocket for his wallet, then tossed it on his chest while he toed off his shoes and socks and kicked his pants the rest of the way down his legs.

While he fumbled around in his wallet, she shimmied out of her panties, then straddled his lap again, settling over him, her warm, damp heat and constant motion driving him out of his ever-loving mind.

"There'd better be a condom in there."

"I may not have been a Boy Scout," he finally found what he was looking for, ripped a foil packet off a three-pack, then tossed the rest aside, "but I'm always prepared."

She ripped open the packet with her teeth, then did the honors herself.

Mother of God.

If Mac hadn't already been flat on his back, her thorough dressing would have put him there.

He sucked in a harsh breath when she touched him again. Damn near passed out when she got to her knees over him, took him into her busy, busy hands, and guided him home.

Searing pleasure. Consuming heat. He groaned, arched, and, gripping her hips in his hands, eased her onto him until he was buried to the hilt. Then he held on for the ride of his life.

Over and over she took him into her hot, pulsing center. Over and over she moved above him with wild, reckless energy. Over and over she destroyed him with blinding sensation that stalled his breath, scrambled his mind, and drove him to the edge of sanity and back again.

She set the pace. And it was wild. She set the mood. And it was carnal. He swore her name as he rose to meet her, to drive himself deeper, fill her more fully, squeeze out every thready sound she made, milk every drop of pleasure.

She was constant motion, her breasts swaying, her fingers kneading, her slender hips rocking to a rhythm that pleased her, decimated him, and had him digging deep for the strength to hold off.

He swore her name through clenched teeth and dug his fingers into her hips, stilling her long enough to catch his breath, for the haze to lift from his eyes.

"Don't stop," she begged, then lost her breath on a
whoosh
when he reared up and flipped her onto her back beneath him without ever leaving the gloving heat of her body.

Her protest slid into a, "Yes, oh God, yessss," that eddied out on an extended moan when he hooked an arm beneath her knee, pressed it into her chest, and, levering his weight on his good knee, pounded into her.

Hot, wet friction. Shattering need. He lost himself in the maze of it, buried himself in the drugging greed where all he could think of was ... more. He needed more of everything she gave him and he needed it now. Needed it like he needed to breathe, needed it like he needed water. He fed the need with every shuddering moan that escaped her, feasted on the give-and-take of her body until he couldn't absorb any more.

Release boiled up inside him, thick and heavy and rich. With a fractured groan, he buried his face in her shoulder. And when her inner muscles clenched and she came with a scream that faded to a low, keening whimper, he drove into her like a freight train, then derailed on an explosion that propelled him into pure, mindless oblivion.

When he could breathe again and string more than two thoughts together that made a modicum of sense, Mac hitched himself up on his elbows and studied the face of the woman who had just rocked his world to another dimension.

Judging from the blissful, sated look on her face, the sexy blonde sprawled beneath him and drifting toward sleep was pretty much finished with him.

Too bad. He was a long way from through with her.

"You alive down there?"

Nothing. She was as lax as sand.

He grinned, ducked his head, and drew one of those pearly pink nipples into his mouth. Soft. Responsive. When he sucked her deeper, she sighed and lifted her arms. Her hands, palms up, fingers curled, fell limply on the pillow beside her head.

And despite the warnings wailing like five-alarm-fire bells, he fell a little deeper in lust.

He bussed his nose around her velvety nipple. "Not quite so spunky now, are you, cookie?"

"I thought I was a cupcake," she murmured around a yawn that smacked of exhausted satisfaction.

"What you are," he whispered as he lifted his head from her breast and admired the way her nipple stood at attention, "is a culinary delight." He nibbled at her lower lip. "How will I eat you? Let me count the ways."

"You're no poet, McClain. And I was sort of counting on a nap here."

He ran his tongue along the center of her chest, detoured to the plump curve of her breast, and indulged himself on her other nipple. "Don't mind me. I'll just munch away while you snooze."

"Like
that's
going to happen with you licking and sucking on me that way."

"So," he slid slowly down her body, tasting that tempting flesh just below her sternum, "you're saying you don't
like
my licking?" He trailed his tongue in a slow, wet track around her navel. "Or my sucking?"

"I... umm ..." She squirmed and stretched and caught her breath on a sexy little hitch when he lifted her leg, lightly bit the inside of her thigh. "I don't think that's what I'm saying, exactly, um, no."

"Then what,
exactly,
are you saying?" He slid lower, settled his shoulders between her thighs, and teased her with the warmth of his open mouth against her pubic bone.

"Oh ... umm... what?"

"I may be reading more into this than I should," he whispered, parting her with his fingers, then fanning her clitoris with his breath, "but did you really want to have this discussion now?"

In answer he got a low, throaty moan when he nuzzled deep, stroked his tongue along her pretty pink lips, and feasted.

Eve lay on her back, her arms flung over her head. If her heart beat any harder, it would explode. She was so sensitive between her legs, she was sure she couldn't walk. For sure she wouldn't be riding any bicycles in the immediate future. Although she might be wise to pedal as far and as fast as she could go in any direction, as long as it was away from McClain.

At the moment, though, she couldn't muster enough common sense to even get out of the bed. She just wanted to lie here. Wanton and spent, satisfied and sluggish, and simply drift on the luscious aftermath of one of the most radical series of orgasms she'd ever experienced.

She'd say this for McClain. He was thorough. Of course, he'd been thorough the first time, all those years ago. And now she remembered why she'd been so hot to experience a repeat performance.

The man paid attention. The man gave until her ears rang. The man had an incredible mouth, and the rest of him wasn't too bad, either. Neither were some of his moves.

Beside her, he slept.

She rolled onto her side and watched him.

Even in sleep, his jaw was clenched beneath a growth of beard that was both dark and shadowed. The lashes resting on his cheeks were thick and lush. Movement behind his closed eyelids made it apparent that even at rest, he was on edge.

Yeah, even sleeping, he looked the part of a man who wasn't as easy with his world as he would like everyone to believe.

Danger, Wilhemina Robinson.

Despite her current state of euphoria, she recognized that this was a very dangerous moment.

She was devastated on phenomenal sex. Lying naked with a man who was really little more than a stranger. Mushy headed with an estrogen-induced desire to smooth the furrow in his brow, soothe the boy who was a little bit lost inside the man, fix the man who didn't have a clue that he was broken.

She rolled to her back again and stared at the ceiling.
And what makes you think you could fix him? What makes you think you're in a position to? And what makes you think he's any more in need of fixing than you are?

And the big question: was she crazy? Hadn't she learned? Hadn't she learned anything from her experience with Troy? Or from Shawn? It was great sex that had started her thinking about fixing them, too. Thinking about forever. And they'd both puked their cheating guts all over her party.

God. Men were all alike. And here she was, thinking mushy thoughts about one who had already let her down once.

Danger. Yeah. Even though she knew the physiological reason for all this tenderness exploding in her breast, there was peril at every turn. She'd read the textbooks. She was a classic victim of the dopamine released in her system by a series of complex neurological and physiological triggers. The short-term effect was what she was currently feeling. Giddiness, warm tingles, the need to touch, to share. In other words, she was dopey.

The long-term effect was even worse. It fostered hope. For love and marriage—which was laughable, since the only man within touching distance was not a man on whom to pin long-term hopes. She'd had plenty of experience with his kind.

And that, Ms. Garrett, is the only factual data to come out of this encounter.

Of course, it didn't help that someone was trying to kill her. That made for rethinking priorities, fussing with lines that had been drawn, second-guessing even the best of judgments.

She needed to get out of this bed.

"I hope that scowl isn't a direct result of what just happened here."

Just her luck. He woke up before she could make a break for it.

She couldn't look at him. Was fairly certain the tenderness she heard in his voice would also fill his expression and she'd be a goner. She blinked up at the ceiling instead.

"Actually, I was just thinking about getting dressed. We need to get to work."

She started to rise, but his hand on her arm stopped her. She managed to glare at him when he levered up on an elbow and leaned over her.