Trouble (30 page)

He let out a serrated sigh.

Holding his gaze, she bent to slide her jeans and panties off, freeing her warm feminine scent.

It immediately fogged his brain, intoxicating him and letting him know how wet she was, how ready.

Watching her straighten, he knew he was lost.

He pulled her into his arms. She moaned, rubbing herself against him as he squeezed her ass before sliding his fingers lower, between her legs. She gasped sharply, writhing as he stroked her.

She was velvety soft and creamy-slick.

And in this dizzying moment, he was having trouble getting his lungs to work.

“Killing me,”
he murmured.

“Good.”

She pressed her breasts against his chest—her nipples were hot, hard—and slowly trailed her hands down his torso to his belt. Before he could get his sluggish responses to work up a protest, she'd undone his buckle and zipper and begun rubbing his raging erection with her skilled hands.

He stiffened, wanting to slow her down even as his hips began to pump involuntarily.

His whole world filtered down to her glittering, heavy-lidded eyes and the easy up-and-down rhythm of her hands on his dick.

“Should I stop?”

“Slow down,” he said hoarsely, burying his lips in the sensitive hollow between her neck and shoulders and nipping until she cried out. “We don't want this to go too fast, do we?”

Her smile was knowing and satisfied. “I just want to make you to lose control.”

That horse was already out of the barn.

“You little witch.”

She laughed.

Impatience made him jerky as he kicked off his shoes, shoved his pants and briefs down his legs and stepped out of them. Time to shift the power here. He dropped to his knees and pressed his face between her breasts, reveling in her skin, her warmth, her scent. Catching a nipple between his lips, he rubbed his tongue across the swollen tip, sucked hard and, finally, nipped.

Throaty cry from Dara as her head fell back.

He ran his hands from her shoulders to her wrists, massaging her and delighting in the gooseflesh that rose behind his touch. She clung to his shoulders and shivered with exquisite sensitivity, her throaty noises urging him on.

His hands moved from her waist to her hips, then lower, kneading her butt. He ran his fingers along her shapely thighs and calves and trailed his lips in their wake.

“Come here.”

He pulled her down to the plush rug before the fireplace and rolled her to her belly. He straddled her, galvanized by his determination to touch every part of her tonight, to claim her. So he massaged her back and shoulders, then ran his tongue down her spine while she murmured unintelligibly, her arms stretched overhead, her fingers flexing into the rug. Then he rubbed his chin against her back, scratching and tickling with his mustache and cheeks while she laughed, squealed and squirmed.

When she'd had enough, he gentled, soothing her by gliding his lips across her nape until she crooned and purred. Then he turned her limp body onto her back and anchored her hips with his hands.

“Mike,” she said weakly staring at him down the length of her body.

“You know what to do.”

“Oh,
God
.”

Her thighs opened and her hips rose up to meet him. With a low growl, he put his head between her legs and his tongue on her sex, teasing and tasting her until her eyes rolled closed, tears streamed from the corners of her lids and she sobbed.

It was the most thrilling sound he'd ever heard.

Until she went rigid and cried out his name.

He suckled, milking all the pleasure he could find out of her body until she was as ruined as he was. And then the caveman part of him—and with Dara, he was discovering, he was far more caveman than not—roared for him to mark her with some visible sign that she was his. So, for the first time since his hormone-drenched college days, he latched onto the meaty inner portion of her thigh, bit, sucked and gave her a berry purple love bite. She loved it, crying out and pinning his head in place with her sharp little nails as her hips writhed.

She loved it even more when he did it again to the side of her breast.

Then, finally, it was time for him to claim that last part of her body. Ripping the foil package open with his teeth, he got his clumsy hands to behave long enough to sheathe himself. Then he held his penis and rubbed it insistently back and forth over her sex. She clamped her strong legs around his waist and pulled him closer.

Her heavy-lidded eyes sparkled with tears as she turned her face up to his. “Just do it. Stop torturing me.”

“You don't know how much I need you.”

“You're killing me, too. You know that, right?”

“Die for me, then.”

Surrendering at last to his need, he thrust deep inside her with one sure stroke. They both gasped; he was pretty sure something popped in his brain. There was no way he could have anticipated how exquisitely tight she was, or how strongly she would grip him. Her slick muscles clamped down around him and his control—what little he'd had left—went up in flames.

He circled his hips once, twice, and she cried out again, scratching his back and adding to his pleasure. Her shuddering spasms went on and on, clenching and unclenching around him until his mind emptied of every coherent thought but two:

She was his now.

He couldn't ever give her up.

“Don't you ever leave me, Dara.”

He inched out of her—slowly, slowly, torturing himself far worse than he tortured her—and she arched in response, rising up to meet him stroke for stroke.

“
This
is what I've wanted since the second I saw you.” He eased back inside. “
This
is what I want every time I look at you. Look at me.”

Her eyes, dazed and unfocused, fluttered open. She was sweaty and precious, everything he wanted and far more than he deserved. And she was
his
.

“I need you,” he told her, pinning her to the floor by thrusting as deep as he could possibly go. Her eyes rolled closed again and her kiss-swollen lips curled with unmistakable rapture. Dara, like this, was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Ever could see. He'd sell his soul to freeze time at this moment. “Don't you ever leave me. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

That was what he needed. Easing back inside her, he picked up his rhythm, pumping harder, driving toward an ecstasy from which he knew he would never recover.

And then, he shattered.

He cried her name over and over again, astonished a man could experience such searing pleasure and live.

We've done it
, he thought wildly, tightening his arms around her.

There was no going back.

At some point during the night—dinner forgotten entirely—they made it upstairs and into his massive king-sized four-poster bed. She lay propped up on the pillows, with his head nestled between her bare breasts, his hands absently stroking her skin while she ran her fingers through his wavy hair.

“Sean called me today,” Mike said sleepily, shifting over and settling on his own pillow so he could see her. “Again. I've been dodging him.”

“Yeah. Me, too. When will we tell him?”

His eyes wavered, and he looked away. “I don't know. That part's going to be hard.”

“Why don't you two get along?”

Mike hesitated for so long she wasn't sure he'd answer. Finally, he sighed.

“Sean was the greatest kid in the world.” He smiled at some distant memory. “I loved him. I remember the day they brought him home from the hospital. I felt like he was
my
baby. I looked out for him. I taught him everything I knew. I stuck up for him. I took him everywhere with me.”

“Did you fight?”

“Hardly ever. We got on each other's nerves, but never anything serious. He was so much fun, you know? He was funnier than any of my friends. And I was always serious, so I needed someone around like Sean.” His face clouded over. “But he could never focus. He never studied, never did his chores, never stuck through a whole season of a sport—”

“And you focused enough for two or three people,” she interjected.

“That's right. Things always seemed to come pretty easily to me—”

“Sports, school, girls.”

His smile was slow and lazy. “Yeah.
Especially
the girls.”

She could just imagine. Irritated by her irrational jealousy, she jabbed him in the ribs. He caught her hands and kissed her wrists. She froze immediately.

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

She snatched her hands away and tried to tamp down her renewed arousal. “I'm trying to listen.”

Mike's smile faded as he stared off in the distance again.

“Things started to change when he hit high school. Maybe because he was always failing and I was doing well. He started getting pissed off about everything. Pissed off at the coach for making him run harder, at his pet hamster when it died, at my parents because he thought they favored me. Mostly pissed off at me.”

“Nice.”

“He always thinks it's bad luck that good things don't happen to him. Nothing in his life is ever his own responsibility. And I would always cover for him because I couldn't stand to see him in trouble. I made excuses with my parents and with his friends and girlfriends. I don't know how he made it through college. I guess he had someone else there to enable him since I wasn't around.”

“You did the best you could to be a good brother.”

He grunted.

“You did,” she insisted. “I know you did. That's who you are.”

“When he graduated, he messed around with a couple of jobs, then I hired him because he said he wanted to be a lawyer, but his grades alone weren't good enough to get him into law school. I knew a couple years as a paralegal, plus me putting in a good word for him, would probably get him in. And that's what happened. We'll see if he makes it through.”

“How did he do when he worked for you?”

Wry laugh. “Terrible. I don't know why I expected anything different. He was late and disorganized. He lost files. He missed deadlines. The staff was resentful. It was two years of misery, but I couldn't fire him. Finally, when he went back to school, I told him I was done with the favors.” Mike paused. “He told me to go fuck myself.”

“There's nothing else you can do.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, his chin resting on her shoulder as he threaded his hands through her hair. “Our relationship was screwed up long before you came along.”

“I'm sorry anyway.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

It was very late, probably well past two. The scented candles he'd lit hours ago and put on the nightstand had long since burned down. Even though she'd achieved a state of supreme relaxation and contentment, Dara didn't want to let go of tonight.

She laid her head on Mike's chest, stroking the tiny hairs around his nipples.

“We need to go to sleep,” she said, yawning. “Otherwise, Jamal will take one look at our bleary eyes tomorrow and know what we've been up to.”

“He probably knows already, but yeah. And tomorrow's a busy day. We've got Aidan Sullivan coming in for trial prep.”

“I've read so much about his accident and his life in the wheelchair, I feel like I know him already.” She slipped out of his arms and off the edge of the bed. “When I get back, it's definitely time for sleep.”

He scowled and reached for her arm. “Where do you think you're going?”

“To the bathroom.” She laughed and twisted out of his reach. “Do you mind?”

“Yeah, I mind. You've got ten seconds. Better yet, I'll come with you.”

“I'm not going anywhere, so pace yourself, okay?” she said, still laughing. “At this rate, you'll be sick of me by Friday.”