Her thighs clenched, and she let her gaze slide from him to her once unadorned bedroom. “I don’t know. The ambiance in here is pretty nice.”
He’d brought the flowers from the hotel back with them. At some point that day, he’d taken the time to put all of them but a bouquet he left on the dining room table in her bedroom. The roses had transformed her bare sleeping quarters into a secret garden. “Thank you for bringing the flowers.”
He shrugged. “It seemed a shame to waste them.”
“Yes.” But she would have been too self-conscious to ask to keep them. Sentimentality had little place in the life of a soldier, and old habits were hard to break.
Daniel pushed his pants down his hips, along with his jockey shorts, and her thought process scrambled again. Smooth, dark skin over well-honed muscles made her breath catch in her throat, but even his magnificent physique was overshadowed by the sheer presence and male beauty of the hard flesh jutting out from his body.
“You’re gorgeous.”
“That’s my line.”
Her eyes reluctantly traveled up his body to his face at the humor in his voice. Despite the smile lingering at the edges of his lips, his look seared her.
She opened her mouth to speak, and nothing came out. She swallowed and tried again. “It’s not a line.”
“No. It’s not.” He stood, proud and unembarrassed by his nakedness. “Invite me into your bed, Josette.”
“I thought I did that earlier,” she said, her voice hoarse with the effect his nakedness was having on her.
He didn’t reply, but stood there waiting in silence.
Apparently he wanted something more than tacit agreement, or a statement of intent. “Is an invitation so important?”
“Yes. This is your bed. Accepting my presence is not the same as welcoming it.”
She wanted to know why the distinction was so important to him, but was not prepared to have another drawn-out discussion. She would ask him later.
Flipping back the covers, she revealed the almost there, sheer pink panties and short stretchy tank top she’d put on for bed. She didn’t own sexy nightwear, other than the gown he had given her, but had started buying more feminine underwear some time ago…right about the time she met Daniel.
His dark brown gaze showed no disappointment in her lack of a proper negligee.
“Come to my bed, Daniel. I want you.”
His nostrils flared, his jaw locking into granitelike firmness, and he came over her in a silent rush that left her tumbled back against the pillows.
“Do you want to feed your obsession some more?” she asked breathlessly.
He shook his head as though her words bothered him. “I want to make love with a very sexy woman, with my woman.”
She cupped his face and drew his head down until their lips were almost touching. “Make love with me, Daniel. Make me feel like a sexy woman, like your woman.”
He made her feel like living fire. Taking what little clothes she wore off of her with a lot more urgency than he had shed his, his mouth devoured what his hands had uncovered, sending flames licking through her feminine core. As she arched under his lips and exploring hands, desire to consume him with the same blazing inferno inside her pierced her being.
She wanted him to feel everything she was experiencing, everything! The fundamental desire to be with a man created to be the other half of her. The agonizing emotion she had never expected to experience. The clawing need for completion that came from the sharing of spirit as well as flesh.
She needed him to feel it all.
Flipping out from under him, she pushed him onto his back, and he let her, his eyes black with need she would never again mistake for anger. She straddled him, shuddering when her labia kissed his erection. It was so profoundly intimate, she wanted to engrave the sensation on her mind for all of eternity.
His big body went rigid, and she smiled, loving this evidence of her effect on him. Licking her lips in needy anticipation, she gave in to the uncontrollable desire to lift her pelvis slightly, only to come back down and kiss his hard sex again with her highly lubricated flesh.
“Don’t do that,” he said harshly.
“What? This…” And she moved her pelvis once more.
He groaned and arched up to meet her hungry femininity. “Don’t lick your lips.”
Didn’t he know that after saying that, she had no choice but to do it again?
“Why not?” she asked before slowly running her tongue along first her upper and then lower lip.
He watched her as if his gaze were welded to her mouth. “It makes me crazy.”
She rocked so her swelling flesh caressed the entire length of his velvety hardness. “I like making you crazy.” Then she bent forward and kissed him all over his smooth, rock-hard chest, nipping him below one nipple with her teeth.
“Josette.”
“I have absolutely no desire to do this to Hotwire.”
“Good,” he growled.
“This either.” And she circled his nipple with her tongue until it was as hard as the rest of him and then sucked on it while he pulled in air like a man put on oxygen to survive.
After several seconds of the sensual torment, he grabbed her head and tugged her face up to his. She kissed him with hot, open-mouthed intensity that he returned with aggressive passion. His hands moved down her spine and over her backside until one finger slipped into the intimate crevice at the apex of her thighs.
She wriggled against the teasing finger, aching already for a more solid possession.
Moaning, she rubbed her clitoris against his sex in an effort to assuage the growing ache in her lower body. It wasn’t enough, but heat pooled in her womb while her inner muscles clenched, telling her climax was imminent. She wasn’t ready for the intimacy and touching to end. She wanted to come with him fully imbedded inside her, their flesh joined as deeply as possible. Only, she couldn’t stop her body’s movement, and she moved closer and closer to losing all control.
Whimpering, she tilted her pelvis and lifted her hips without thought until his hardness was poised at the entrance to where she most wanted him to be. Fingers like vises locked around her waist and stopped her from taking him fully inside.
Chapter 11
Her mouth broke from his, a protesting moan of anguish erupting from the very heart of her.
“Not yet, sweetheart.”
She looked down at him, her vision blurred by passion, but even so, she could see the harsh cast to his features so at odds with the tenderness in his voice.
“Why not?”
He grabbed something from under the pillow, keeping her still with his other hand as she tried to move downward again. When she saw what he was holding, frustration for the need to delay roared through her.
“I’m going on the pill,” she muttered from between gritted teeth.
His slashing smile touched her like a caress. “Fine, but tonight, we don’t have any choice.”
And no way did he want her getting pregnant. She scooted backward, making room for him to don the condom, but chilled by the reality of what it symbolized. The transitory nature of their relationship and Daniel’s absolute certainty he did not want a child with her.
Of course safe sex wasn’t all about pregnancy, but she knew deep in her soul that Daniel would never have made love with her if he was putting her at risk. Since she’d never been with anyone else, he couldn’t be worried about what she might expose him to either. This was about keeping the intimacy between them physical and allowing no consequences to come from it.
No result but a heart she already felt cracking under the knowledge he would walk out of her life the same way he had walked into it. Alone.
Daniel held the dark blue foil packet up. “Do you want to put it on?”