Jacob pulled Ariel through the door of the hotel suite, already sliding his hands up her short dress, pulling at the lacy panties beneath. Their mouths locked together, they grasped at one another feverishly.
Ariel tore at Jacob’s belt, slipping the leather through the belt loops of his jeans and fumbling with the buttons beneath. Jacob lifted her in his strong arms and pinned her against the wall. He pulled the neck of her dress down from her shoulder, exposing her full breast, and lowered his mouth down on the tight bud of her nipple, circling it with his tongue, teasing and nipping at it with his teeth. Ariel cried out with pleasure.
She was crazed with desire for him. She’d waited for him long enough. She couldn’t bear it. She hadn’t felt like this about a man in … well, ever. She wanted to close up every particle of distance between their bodies. She needed him to press himself into her, to feel the full length of him penetrating her very core. Clutching at his shoulders, pulling his mouth up to kiss her again, she whispered in a ragged voice she didn’t even recognize, “Now. Now.”
And she looked into his eyes.
All the intensity and passion she’d seen in those eyes as he’d sprinted up the hill on his bicycle was now focused on her. She felt transfixed by that golden light. Skewered. She couldn’t breathe.
Oh no, she thought, what if I pass out?
What if Jacob Hunter over-excited her so much that she ended up unconscious? That would be embarrassing. But she didn’t need to worry. He was holding her completely, pressing her to the wall with his body. She couldn’t collapse. She drew a shuddering breath and saw Jacob’s eyes darken as he traced her lips with a fingertip.
He wanted her, too. It was written all over his face.
“Ariel,” whispered Jacob and reached into his back pocket. He removed a condom and tore the package open with his teeth. The whole time his eyes held Ariel’s; his gaze was mesmerizing, intoxicating. Ariel’s panties were around her ankles and she kicked them off. Her skirt was up around her waist.
She couldn’t believe what was happening. He ran his hand up her thigh, higher and higher, until he dipped his fingers into the wetness there. Moaning, she hooked her leg around his waist and he lifted her up.
Slowly, deliciously slowly, he eased his full length into her, pushing his hips against her. Her head fell forward. Her hair was in his face, in his mouth. Their sweaty foreheads banged together and Ariel laughed a rich, low laugh.
“Careful, Hunter,” she said. “You’re not wearing your helmet.”
Chuckling, he held her even tighter against him, his hardness filling her completely. “Once I hit my head so hard I saw double,” he said. “That doesn’t sound so bad to me right now.” He pushed her hair back with one hand. “The only thing more beautiful than you is two of you,” he whispered.
“Shucks,” Ariel whispered back, between kisses that made it hard for her speak. “You should be the writer … ” She felt Jacob grin against her mouth.
Then his tongue was moving over her lips, sliding over her tongue. Their kiss grew deeper and deeper, and Ariel could no longer find words. Jacob began to move inside her. She met each thrust with a torque of her hips. He was so hard, so big. She dug her nails into his neck, forced his head down to her. She could hear his ragged breathing in her ear.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stand you doing that … ” he managed. Her next motion made him groan. She allowed herself a smile of pure triumph and moved her hips again. He cried out, his breath hot against her.
“Don’t stop. Do it harder,” she said. “This is the sprint. We have all night for the longer stages.”
“Are you challenging me, Ariel Hayes?” Jacob panted.
“Show me what you’ve got,” she said and rolled her hips until her own breath came in mewing cries.
He began to move against her more quickly, digging his hands into the silky flesh of her buttocks. Her head fell back and banged against the wall in rhythm with their movements. She didn’t care. Each time he plunged into her she felt an explosion of sensation rocketing through her body. His slick shaft moved against her clitoris again and again.
Sooner than she would have thought possible, Ariel felt a mounting crest of heat rise through her and as it broke over her entirely she gasped again and again, coming harder than she ever had in her life. As she spasmed around him, Jacob followed her into climax, burying his face against her throat and forcing her hips down on him until they were both exhausted, slumping together in a tingling post-orgasmic glow.
Raising his head, still holding her, their bodies melded into one, he kissed her. His kiss was long, deep, slow.
“Hmmm … ” said Ariel. She lifted a hand to rub the back of her head. “I think I was the one who needed a helmet.”
She and Jacob let their foreheads touch, leaning into each other, laughing.
When had Ariel ever felt this comfortable with a man? Let alone with a man who’d just pushed her dress around her waist and ravished her against a wall? She had never felt so good. Her response was more than physical. Suddenly she realized that her connection to this man, her need for him, had to do with much more than her body. Her response to him was instinctive, rising from the deepest part of her. Overwhelming. Undeniable.
A part of her brain was still thinking clearly enough to find this alarming. Not just sleeping with a subject. Falling in love with him.
Then that part of her brain fell silent — extinguished by the languorous sweetness of Jacob’s kiss, by the feeling of absolute comfort and safety she found within the circle of his arms, the desire for him that flickered, even now, like a flame coming to life, a flower blossoming.
“That was some sprint,” Jacob murmured. “My best yet.”
Twining her hands in his blond hair, she returned his kiss with a fullness, a generosity, a surrender that took both of them by surprise. Jacob’s arms tightened around her. Still kissing her, he carried her to the bed and laid her gently down, her hair spread about her head like a blazing halo.
He sat on the side of the bed beside her and looked at her. Ariel felt that no one had ever looked at her like this before. That no one had ever, truly, seen her, in the way Jacob was seeing her now.
• • •
Slowly, gently, Jacob undressed her. Each part of her body that was revealed to him seemed more beautiful than the last. Finally, she lay before him entirely nude, reclining in complete relaxation, her half-lidded eyes meeting his fearlessly, un-self-consciously.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a perfect body?” he asked.
“Me? Hardly,” Ariel snorted. “Remember, I was a dancer. My body was always wrong. My neck was too short. My torso was too long. My thighs were too big. Even my hair was wrong. Can you imagine Clara in the Nutcracker with hair like Little Orphan Annie?”
“Wow.” Jacob whistled. “Sounds like they did a number on you.”
“I always took it with a grain of salt,” said Ariel. “A dancer has to be more than an ideal body. I never wanted to be the plastic ballerina in the jewelry box. I tried to make being different work for me. Not having the traditional dancer’s body just forced me to try harder. To dance with more energy. To take more risks. My mother used to tell me that I should never try to be someone different than who I was. I should just try to be my best self. And that self would be beautiful.”
Jacob lay down beside her on the bed. He regarded her silently for a long moment, propped up on one elbow. Then he ran one fingertip from Ariel’s delicate ear, down her graceful neck to the hollow between her collarbones. He continued to trace a line between the lush globes of her breasts, down across her tight stomach to the well of her navel.
“You are beautiful,” he said. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Ariel opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again when the look in Jacob’s eyes told her that was serious. He meant it.
He let his fingers slide around her waist, then ran them up to her breasts again, the movement so light that Ariel shivered. Her body broke out in delicious gooseflesh. He moved his fingers back down to her rounded hips and then allowed them to drift even lower, watching Ariel’s face as her eyes began to glow with desire, her lips parting slightly with anticipation. Reaching the tuft that hid Ariel’s sex he ran his fingers through it, feeling the drops of moisture that clung there. He moved his fingers into the soft, slick folds of her labia.
Both of them began to breathe more quickly as Jacob’s fingers moved against the most sensitive parts of Ariel’s body. Spreading her folds with his other hand, Jacob dipped two fingers inside her, his thumb on her clit. Pressing, circling with his fingers, he caressed Ariel until she writhed and gasped.
Unable to resist tasting her, he lowered his head between her legs and groaned at the sweetness collected there. Two fingers still inside her, he laved her soft bud with his practiced tongue. Ariel let out gorgeous moans of pure abandon. Jacob felt his penis swell to the point of bursting. He seized her full buttocks and kept her trapped against his mouth as she tried to buck him away.
“Oh, oh, yes, please, oh,” she was crying incoherently, frenzied by her need. As she came, she arched herself into him, her hands in his hair, rocking her hips with the rhythm of her climax. He released her and held himself above her, gazing into her flushed, nearly delirious face.
Jacob didn’t think she could imagine how hard she made him.
Feeling her swollen vulva press against his lips, tasting the welling moisture that his touch brought forth, clasping her hips with his arms while the waves of her orgasm rolled through her had almost been enough to make him come, too …
Almost.
As her body stilled and her muscles loosened, he quickly stripped off what remained of his clothing. Working his way up her body now, he kissed each part of it he’d run his finger down before. Then claimed her mouth. She gave herself up to his kiss completely.
Jacob’s penis was rock-hard against the inside of Ariel’s silky thigh. Asking with his eyes, he received his answer immediately. She was ready for him again.
Holding himself with one hand, he parted her lower lips with the other. She opened to receive all of him. Each time she shifted her hips, Jacob felt that she’d accepted him more fully, somehow taken him deeper into her center. Everything was electricity, fire. He moved into her again and again, groaning with exultation. This was better than any sex he’d ever experienced — better, maybe, than being on the pedestal at the Paris-Roubaix.
He’d never thought he’d be able to say that about anything.
Pushing the length of his throbbing penis again and again into Ariel’s heated depths, cradling her face as he kissed her full lips, kneading her breasts and clutching her waist and hips to bring her more tightly against him, to lock their bodies together in a melting embrace, he wondered if he’d ever feel anything this good again. He remembered Ariel’s words: We have all night for the longer stages …
What stage were they on? It was impossible to tell. With Ariel, it seemed like the race never ended, like there would always be new heights to scale, new peaks, new triumphs …
He knew he would never get tired of the ride.
Then sensation overwhelmed him, erasing everything but the feeling of Ariel’s body against him, around him, and he exploded inside her.
• • •
When Ariel came back to her senses, she realized she was clinging to Jacob. Her fingertips dug into the muscles of his back. Her thighs squeezed his lean hips. He pushed himself up on his arms, and she thought for a moment he was trying to pull away from her.
But he wasn’t. He had just lifted himself off her so that he could gaze down at her. The look in his eyes melted her completely. Even though she’d seen him look at her like that before, she could never quite believe it.
He loved her.
He hadn’t said it yet, but those golden eyes couldn’t lie. Ariel stretched her arms above her head and arched up. He lowered his head to kiss her breasts. He kissed her throat. Bit playfully at her lips.
Jacob Hunter loved her. The knowledge blossomed inside of her. It felt nourishing. Exciting. Did he know it? Had he admitted it to himself?
Ariel felt a moment of panic. It wouldn’t last. She wouldn’t be able to hold Jacob Hunter’s attention. She would have fallen permanently, irrevocably in love with him, and he would be gone, speeding through the Pyrenees toward his next romantic liaison.
I need to leave this bed, she thought. I need to protect myself. I need to run away before it’s too late.
There were many reasons why a relationship with Jacob Hunter wouldn’t work. He was a gorgeous, famous cyclist with an international female fan club. She was a career girl who had enough trouble making time to date men from other boroughs, let alone men guided from country to country … well, by the pole star.
To top it all off, she had lied to him about who she was. She had been sent to Colorado to essentially ruin his reputation. Maybe the muckrakers were right. Maybe Jacob Hunter used drugs.
She didn’t think so. She wanted to defend him.
Even if it cost her a job.
Her mind started racing and Jacob could see the cloud cross her emerald eyes. “What are you thinking?” he asked her.
“I should go back to my room,” she said. “I should … I mean … it’s late … You need your rest, your strength … ”
“I need you, Ariel,” said Jacob. He kissed her and she moaned, half-desire, half-desperation.
This affair with Jacob Hunter was going to be a mess. She could think of a million reasons why she should get up and leave. But her body and her heart had another agenda.
Don’t think any more tonight.
She linked her arms around Jacob’s neck. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot about your legendary endurance. And you forgot something about me.”
“Hmmmm.” Jacob grinned. “What would that be?”
“My legendary dancer’s flexibility,” Ariel whispered.
Jacob’s eyes widened. “Your legendary dancer’s flexibility,” he repeated, a wicked smile lighting up his handsome face. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
So Ariel showed him. Until the morning sun came through the window.