Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) (15 page)

She was driving him straight to the brink. Consciousness was getting hazy around the edges, the last vestiges of good judgment slipping away, but he pulled his rational self together just long enough to grip her forearm urgently, and tug at it to make her look up at him.

He gestured at the cameras with his chin. “Do we really need to do it this way?” he gasped. “With the cameras?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling a little sphinx-like smile. And
damn it
, she still sounded so calm, so in control. “The cameras are the whole point.”

He stared hard into her eyes, trying to puzzle her intentions out. “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t need to,” she said, and lowered her head again, and this time, thank God in heaven, took him fully into her mouth.

He groaned at the feel of the wetness and heat closing around him, almost blacking out from the feeling of relief.

And another feeling, too—one he didn’t even have a name for. He wasn’t fighting it anymore, whatever it was, the thing she must have had planned when she set up all these cameras and lights to record everything they did together. He felt
seen
.

Flayed
, even.

Stripped bare in every sense. No defenses left.

There was nothing he could do to resist it now, so let it all be out there for the cameras to record. What he really was.

As Amber worked him sensuously with her mouth, he began panting like an animal, and a slick sheen of sweat broke out over his chest and stomach. The muscles of his abdomen and his thighs, his shoulders and his fists, all squeezed harder and harder by the minute, the pressure in his body building to an almost overwhelming intensity.

He had no control, it was true. He’d never had control where Amber was concerned.

That was the whole point—what he’d been trying to tell her all along. When it came to desire, his will had never been under his command. It could take him anywhere, make him lose himself.

Intensity like this was dangerous. It made relationships implode.

But he couldn’t pull himself back from it now if he tried. As her warm, slick mouth laved him up and down, sucking on every pull away, his balls tightened, concentrating everything in him towards his center. The whole surface of his skin hummed, crackling with a blazing white energy, and against the force of that sensation, his mind began to go blank.

Only one vague thought remained to him: he didn’t want to do this alone. He wanted her with him when he came.

“Amber,” he growled, tugging at her arm again. “Please—come here.” His eyes met hers, urging her, begging her to come to him. “Please. If this is the last time—let’s do it together.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled around his hard cock. With one last, devastating swirl of her tongue around the head, she pulled her mouth away and crawled up towards him on her hands and knees, her breasts and hair swaying and her lips bright and lush and wet.

She was so beautiful, so perfect in every way, breasts and hair and lips and her blue, blue eyes, and he didn’t wait, he took hold of her hips and pulled her down towards him and sank himself deep inside her hot, slippery sheath.

He slid one hand across her thigh and down into her curls, finding her nub with his thumb, and flicking it up and down as she gripped his shoulders with both hands and rode him. And nothing in his life had ever felt so goddamn good.

Amber threw her head back now as she moved up and down atop him, her slick, tight walls gripping his shaft and driving the last shred of control from his grasp. She tossed her hair fitfully and bit her lip, driving herself down harder and harder against him, until they were both moaning and gasping, and she was saying over and over and over, “Nick, Nick...my Nick.”

And he answered her just as fervently, “Amber, my Amber.”

Chapter Eight

When Nick woke, he was alone in his cabin, tangled up in his own sheets and blankets. He scarcely remembered staggering back here last night after he’d left Amber’s bed. Apparently he hadn’t even had the presence of mind when he collapsed here to set his alarm, because the sun was high in the window—
damn it,
eleven o’clock in the morning.

He groaned and kicked off the bedcovers, pressing the back of his skull into his mattress to ease the dull pounding that filled his head. The space between his ears was dull and woozy, as if he’d been sleeping off the after-effects of being drugged.

Which, in a way, he had been. The moment they touched, Amber hit him like a powerful narcotic, saturating his brain with pleasure so he couldn’t stay rational, or listen to the demands of his own conscience, or follow through on
decisions
he’d made.

Like the decision never to touch her again.

Had they really
done
all that last night? With the goddamn
cameras
rolling?

He couldn’t quite remember why he’d agreed, or even
when
he’d agreed. In fact, he had fairly distinct memories of telling her what a bad idea it was, and how they shouldn’t be in that room together at all.

Things would so much easier if he’d just dreamed they’d done it. But he knew it wasn’t a dream—a hint of her scent clung to his skin, and the muscles of his hips and thighs still ached from straining up off the bed to get closer to her touch. And his mind thrummed with memories of her kneeling above him, her hair loose, her breasts soft as velvet, and, Jesus, everything that happened after that, her hands and mouth on his cock, everything she’d done to him, driving him beyond control, beyond madness.

And damn if he didn’t want to go do every bit of it again, right now, and never stop.

He was hard as steel again just thinking about it.

He rolled himself out of bed and stumbled into the shower, hoping the steam and spray and then a good scrub-down with a towel would help clear his head, and maybe even drum some sense into his idiot, rampant cock. He turned full-face into the spray until it bleared his eyes and nearly baked his flesh, but it made no difference.

Thoughts of Amber still overwhelmed him.

Had sex always felt like that to him? That intense?

He tried to recall being in bed with other women, going down on them, having them straddle his hips and moan, but the images he could conjure up seemed blurred and vague, as if what happened with Amber had literally blown his mind, and the synapses that held all his old erotic memories had been burned away.

With other women, he’d always felt in control, the core part of him safely held back. But not with Amber. With her, he gave everything away.

And now what? What were they supposed to do?

And what the hell was Amber planning to do with what she’d caught on film?

Last night, when it was all over, Amber had just kicked him out. Told him to go back to his own cabin and leave her in hers. She wouldn’t even let him help dismantle the cameras and lights—which they were going to need today, to get through the five pages of script they were supposed to get filmed.

And wasn’t
that
going to be awkward?

But maybe work would bring his sanity back. He yanked on his clothes and boots and slapped the sides of his face a few times for good measure.
Work
. Yes, work was what he needed. Work would help anchor him.

But when he stepped outside into the morning sunlight, Amber was nowhere to be seen. And neither was the rest of the crew, except for Onyx, who was standing outside the Ranger Station with Ranger Donnell. Which she seemed to be doing an awful lot lately—a very strange combination, the punk rock girl and the guy in the uptight, spotless uniform. Onyx was smiling as she talked to him, though, looking almost giddy and girlish, things Onyx usually wasn’t. At all. And the Ranger was leaning in towards her, with a fascinated intensity in his eyes that was definitely something more than professional obligation.

Were the two of them
sleeping together
?

It seemed absurd, that pairing, but something in the way their bodies were oriented suggested that, if they hadn’t yet, they were damn close to doing it. Nick would bet his best camera on it.

And right there, he had his proof: sex did stupid things to people, took them out of their rational selves, spun them out of control. Desire fooled otherwise sensible people into thinking things could work that any other person with eyes could see was a laughably bad idea.

Better not to mess with sex at all. Or to treat it as a basic bodily function with no connection to emotional relationships. Either way, keep it safely in a box, no one got hurt.

He walked up to Onyx—no doubt doing her a favor by distracting her from her hunky ranger friend, even if she wasn’t clear-sighted enough to see it now. “Where the hell is everybody?” he asked her.

Onyx’s eyes were still focused on Ranger Donnell, and, no surprise, they had a slightly glazed over, mesmerized look. “On hiatus for the day,” she said, distractedly.

“Hiatus?” he said, brows rising. “What the hell? Amber knows how tight our schedule is. We have to—”

“It wasn’t Amber,” interrupted the ranger, who, noticeably, had to tear his eyes away from Onyx to address Nick. “The order came from me. I’m really sorry, but we have to suspend your outdoor filming permit for the day. Safety reasons. We’ve got some pretty violent weather on its way.”

“Violent weather?” Nick looked up at the sky, which was blue and bright with morning sun. Maybe last night had muddled his mind more than he realized, but he certainly didn’t see evidence that a storm was brewing. “What are you talking about? It’s a beautiful day.”

“For now,” said the ranger. And he pointed to the west, at the sky behind Nick. “See that huge cloud there? See how tall it is, but flat and black along the bottom? Like an anvil? That’s a classic thunderhead. A big one. And any time now, it’s going to rip open and dump some pretty serious damage on this whole area.”

The cloud loomed across the horizon, very dark at the bottom, it was true, but fluffy and white above, with sun gleaming bright along its upper reaches. It didn’t look particularly threatening.

“That’s one cloud,” Nick pointed out. “It could just pass over.”

“It won’t,” said the ranger, tucking his thumbs into his belt loops and staring at the sky, giving it an expert, accessing look. “It’s going to get nasty. Lightning. Rain. High winds. Hail, probably. Flash floods, definitely, given how high all the creeks are right now. Not safe to be out in that.”

Nick didn’t care about safe.
Out
was precisely where he wanted to be
.
Moving. Not standing in one place where he had to
think
. Thinking meant trying to make sense of what he felt about Amber, and he didn’t like where that was taking him.

He was all but climbing out of his skin.

“We’re smack in the middle of Hail Alley here,” said the ranger firmly, no doubt noticing Nick’s restlessness. “We get some serious golf balls raining from the sky in summertime. All those fancy cameras of yours would be toast after five minutes in the open. Not to mention humans don’t fare so well getting hammered in the face with those things.”

Damn it
. Amber sunk every penny she had into the new Alexas, and they couldn’t make this film without them. At the moment, he didn’t much care what happened to his skull, but the cameras he couldn’t risk.

Onyx gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Tough luck, camera guy. Amber already gave everybody the day off. Told them to rest up so we can do double-time tomorrow.”

“Great,” said Nick. “Resting up.”

He was willing to lay bets Onyx had plans to do some
resting up
with her ranger friend while she had the chance. Meanwhile, Nick’s leg was jumping and energy seemed to be jolting its way up his spine, and he had no way to discharge any of it.

“Oh, and Amber’s doing some editing in her cabin,” said Onyx. “She said nobody should interrupt her. Not even you.” She gave him a suspicious look. “She was very insistent on keeping you out of there. Which means there’s a serious disturbance in the Force. You finally going to tell me what’s up with you two?”

“Nothing’s up,” he said. “She’s working on something independently, that’s all.”

“Independently, right,” repeated Onyx, skewering him with a glare. “That’s just not natural.”

Oh, Onyx had no clue about
natural
. Nick’s nature wasn’t something he was proud of. And that was precisely why he didn’t need a warning—he had no intention of going anywhere near Amber’s cabin, or of being alone with her anywhere anytime soon. No way—he just couldn’t trust himself.

So instead, he got some coffee and a bagel from the Ranger’s Station, rooted in his backpack for a paperback novel he’d been meaning to finish, and flung himself down in an Adirondack chair under a beautiful old Ponderosa pine.

He skimmed a page. Then another, realizing pretty quickly he hadn’t absorbed a word. Taking a lungful of sweet morning air, he tried to clear his mind and force himself to relax.