Without meaning to, she physically recoiled from the question, her thoughts too close to the surface to ignore.
His brows drew together. “Josie, is something wrong?”
Did she really want to ruin what time she did have with him, entertaining ultradepressing musings about how much it was going to hurt when their relationship ended? No, of course not. That would be stupid.
And she wasn’t dumb.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said with what she hoped was reassuring brightness, and then she winked at him. “But I don’t think it will fit.”
His eyes narrowed and then glittered in understanding, and that incredible smile flashed again. “I didn’t mean on you, little warrior.”
She eyed his erection with blatant skepticism. “I didn’t either.”
He stared at her and then burst out laughing. She grinned in response and then remembering how successful the ploy had been in the park, tickled him. She loved the joyous sound coming from him. It made her feel special, because she knew that he hardly ever gave in to it with other people.
As it was, he laughed so hard she fell off of him. It took several seconds longer to get the condom on him than it should have, but by the time they did, they were both ready to finish what they’d started.
He flipped her onto her stomach, and she twisted to look at him. “I don’t want a massage; I want you inside me.”
“I will be.”
He pulled her hips up and slid a pillow under them, making her realize he meant to enter her from the back. She shivered nervously as his fingers separated her slick folds. This was new and for some reason felt very different, as though she was more vulnerable to him than when they made love in other positions.
“Don’t worry, you’re going to like this,” he whispered in her ear as he pressed into her from behind.
As he deepened his possession, she felt amazing inner sensations she hadn’t experienced the night before. He touched a nerve center inside her that made her grind her bottom against him.
“It’s so good,” she moaned out, needing to give vent to the feelings of sweet torment.
“Oh, yeah…” He thrust deeply into her, and she realized he was nowhere near all the way inside.
By the time Daniel’s pelvis was rubbing against her bottom, Josie was writhing under him like a woman possessed.
He kissed the back of her neck, her temple, her cheek. She felt completely surrounded by him, cherished and cocooned in his ardor. She turned her face toward him, and their lips met briefly, but she couldn’t stay that way long. She didn’t have the strength or muscle control…Pleasure had drained her, and she hadn’t even climaxed yet.
Her head fell forward against her hands, and she gasped as each thrust caressed the nerve center deep inside her from an unfamiliar angle. Her body tensed until every muscle was taut, but she didn’t go over the edge. Instead the feeling of an impending cataclysm subsided, and her muscles went involuntarily slack. The same sequence happened twice more, taking her to a peak that turned out to be a plateau. She was nearly sobbing with frustration as her body tautened once again, the feeling more intense than any of the times before.
“Daniel,” she cried out.
“What’s the matter, baby?”
“I’m so close!”
“Yes.” He thrust inside her, pulling her hips up toward him, and she thought she would die from the pleasure he gave her.
If she didn’t implode first.
He kept thrusting, his hard penis caressing her insides intimately and with purpose, but the spring inside her only grew tighter and tighter.
“I want to come,” she moaned against the bed, her hair wet with perspiration and her back slick with it.
“Okay, sweetheart.”
What did he mean, okay? Did he think just by saying it, she would climax?
He slid his hand under her and cupped her mound—a statement of possession, but also an incredible source of delight. She pressed against his hand, instinctively seeking more. He slipped his forefinger and middle finger between her slick folds. Catching her clitoris between them, he rubbed up and down, squeezing his fingers together to increase the pressure and sensation on her sweetest spot.
She splintered apart, her sense of reality shattering as her entire body convulsed with unbelievable bliss. Grinding her bottom against him, she sought deeper penetration until no rational thought remained while wave after wave of sensation crashed through her.
Daniel rammed into her from behind, driving for fulfillment and holding her hips up when she would have collapsed onto the bed. Suddenly, he buried his face in a pillow she’d shoved to the side earlier, his body going taut, his hips forcefully pressed into hers.
The pillow muffled his hoarse shout of satisfaction, but she reveled in his uncontrolled reaction to her. He was rigid with orgasm for the longest time, his sex, big and oh so hard, inside her as he erupted in a series of convulsions that left them both limp and spent.
She was barely aware of him climbing off of her and leaving the bed and only registered in the periphery of her mind when he came back and pulled her into his arms for sleep.
Curled up on one end of the couch, Josie absently drank her coffee while reading one of her dad’s journals. He had some odd thoughts, that was for sure, but everything he wrote made sense if you looked at life from the perspective of a man who had seen too much brutality to trust in the goodness of human nature.
She felt uncomfortable at times reading his most personal thoughts because his emotions ran more deeply than she had ever thought they did. But he’d been the one to tell her to read the journals in the first place. Well, he’d said journal in the singular, but how was she to know which one had the information he wanted her to glean out of his writings?
“Josie…”
She looked up to find Claire standing over her, dressed for exercise in a pair of Lycra shorts and an oversized T-shirt that had been washed so many times the athletic logo on the front was barely discernable. However, her running shoes were one of the best brands on the market and almost new.
“Going jogging?”
“Uh-huh.” She pulled her hair up into a scrunchy, taming the wild curls in a slightly less wild ponytail. “I thought I’d ask if you wanted to come, but you look pretty engrossed. And come to think of it, Nitro would probably have a male mercenary’s version of a hissy fit if you tried to go outside without him anyway.”
Josie had to agree. “It’s weird. I mean, he knows I can take care of myself, but he still acts like a mother hen about some stuff.”
Claire smiled, tightening her ponytail. “Don’t knock it. It’s pretty great to have someone watching out for you.”
“Even if it’s a little confining?”
“So’s a seat belt, but given the option of going through life without one, I’d vote for safety first.”
Josie laughed, shaking her head at Claire’s analogy. “I won’t tell Daniel you think he’s an oversized seat belt. I don’t think he’d understand.”
Claire’s smile was rueful. “I appreciate that. Nitro is not a man I’d be comfortable offending.”
“I’d say he’s a pussycat under all that male bravado, but I’d be lying.” The iron in Daniel’s character ran bone deep, as if it had been forged early and tempered by life since.
“No kidding. Better you than me, is all I’ve got to say. Not only is the man as immovable as a stone wall, but he’s got a possessive streak a mile wide, too. He looked ready to kill somebody every time you smiled at Hotwire last night.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Says you, but then you were busy looking at Hotwire and not your boyfriend.”
“I wasn’t flirting or anything.” Even if she’d wanted to, which she hadn’t, she didn’t know how.