Chapter 12
When Rinehart’s strong arms surrounded her, Laura melted into him. He was a stranger, a man she had thought was an enemy only hours before. Yet she was warm in places she didn’t know could be warm, aching in places she instinctively knew only he could soothe.
Blinking into his hot stare, she searched for the anger she’d seen moments before, the accusation he’d thrown her way, but she saw neither, felt neither. Still, she couldn’t let it go without some resolution, not after the conviction his words had held, not when she knew that Lucan had been tortured because Rinehart had tried to help her. She’d spent her entire adult life trying to make a difference, trying to do the right things. But everything seemed to be falling apart. Her kids were in danger. She was in danger. Now it appeared others, too, had faced danger on her behalf.
“I didn’t mean for Lucan to get hurt,” Laura whispered. “I…wish you wouldn’t have tried to help me. Not at someone else’s expense.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, took a short, hard breath before his gaze fixed on hers, the depths of his stare like dark pools of dire emotion. “It is I who didn’t mean to hurt you, Laura.”
She touched his cheek, her fingers trailing to his strong jaw. The rasp of stubble against her skin sent a dart of awareness through her body. “Yes,” she murmured, “you did.” She swallowed against the ache he’d created. “And it worked.” He started to object and she pressed her fingers to his lips. “But you had good reason. I misread your guilt and judged you. I’m sorry.”
He grabbed her hand, curled her fingers around his, and kissed the tips. He stared down at her with so much passion she could hardly breathe. “Laura,” he said huskily.
The deep, dark pools of his eyes filled with desire, lust, hunger. Little darts of fire licked at her limbs in response. This was what she needed, this escape. A shelter in the midst of a firestorm that wouldn’t stop raging.
It was true, there were still unanswered questions between them, but they were alike in some way she had yet to identify, alike in a way that drew her to him. One night, she told herself. One night. That was all this had to be. One night to let go, to be touched, to be held. God, it had been so long.
“I want you,” she confessed, boldly staring into his eyes, boldly asking for what she wanted—and what she wanted was him.
Fire lit his gaze, and a low growl escaped his sensual lips. His head lowered, his mouth slanted over hers, his tongue pressed past her teeth and found her own. Hot strokes of that velvety tongue followed, answering her declaration without words, telling her that he, too, needed this escape. He needed her.
They went from slow sensuality to raging desire in all of thirty seconds. His hand rode beneath her dress, beneath the thin strap of her thong. He nipped her bottom lip and gently eased her backward, pressing her shoulders to the headboard. His hot stare stroked hers before he ripped away her panties and spread her legs. Her dress was high on her hips, and remotely she thought of the cameras. That worry was quickly dismissed as Rinehart positioned his big body in front of her, a protective wall hiding her from anyone else who might be watching. She was exposed to him, Rinehart, and no one else. Exposed to the heated inspection he cast upon her spread legs, lust radiating off him with such force she shivered with the impact. The primal, almost animalistic need in him bit at her senses, telling of the depth of his desire and stirring her own. Her nipples tingled; her core ached. Never had she felt so intimate with a man, so fearlessly exposed to a man.
When his head slowly lifted, the depths of those dark eyes drew her in, pulled her into a hypnotic spell. She was sinking deeper and deeper into the recesses of sensual escape, and she didn’t fight it—for once, she was ready to let go.
As if he welcomed that silent declaration, he spoke then, his voice gravelly. “You’re beautiful.”
His fingers climbed up her thighs, his callused prints rasping at her skin with erotic results, teasing her with where he was going, what would come next. She gasped as his thumb found her clit, biting her lip as pleasure charged through her body, moaning as he used the other hand in combination, expertly caressing the slick folds of her sensitive flesh. He leaned forward, kissed her neck, nipped her ear. Whispered, “Forgive me, Laura, but I have to see you come before I turn out that light.” With that declaration he kissed her, his tongue delving into her mouth at the same moment his fingers slid intimately inside her core. With long, sensual strokes he caressed her to the edge. Caressed her to the point where she clung to his neck, her hips arching into his hands, her mouth begging for more of his taste. The buildup was fast, intense, overwhelmingly hot. She shattered with such intensity, her mouth tore from his; her head fell back against the headboard, and her breath lodged in her chest. She shook with the impact of pleasure each spasm delivered. And he expertly stroked the spasms, stroked faster and then slower, into waves of gentle completion, easing her into blissful satisfaction.
Her body eased into the mattress, and she blinked up at him. A rush of newfound heat flushed her cheeks, this time borne of how easily he’d taken her completely over the edge, how easily he’d made her forget everything but pleasure. And she’d done nothing for him, leaving him on the brutal edge of arousal without release. She could feel the impact of that neglect, the hunger eating away at him, the need.
What did happen? A question easier answered if his fingers weren’t exploring with such delicious precision. She swallowed hard against the pleasure, somehow finding a desire-laden whisper. “You said to keep my friends close and my enemies closer.” Laura traced the flexing muscle of his bare shoulders. “But I’m not sure you’re close enough yet.”
Rinehart had felt how much she wanted to open up emotionally, felt how she’d fought to keep up her walls. How he had felt these things, he could not say, but he had. If she could not pull down the walls herself, he would do it for her. If not forever, then for at least this one night. Rinehart stood before Laura naked and aroused, ready to give himself to his mate, a silent message in his actions. There were no barriers between them tonight, nothing to separate them.
Together their hands slid the hem of her dress upward, and he helped her maneuver it over her head. His erection settled between her legs, the wet heat of her core invitingly hot. He helped her remove her bra, covering her full breasts with his hands. Her nipples pebbled against his palms, and he yearned to see them, to know the color—pink? red? a rosy color, perhaps? Without the ability to see, he used his hands and mouth to drive a sensory exploration—one where her moans were erotic bliss; her sighs, erotic taunts that drove him to elicit another. He kissed her, touched her nipples with his fingers and then with his tongue.
Several seconds ticked by as they lay there, bodies joined, his head buried in her shoulder. How long, he didn’t know. But slowly, they shifted into motion, mouths melding in a scorching kiss, a kiss that devoured, a kiss that provoked. They were hungrier now, their bodies pumping, swaying, clinging. Hands all over each other.
Laura answered him with pleasure, crying out a moment before the spasms of her orgasm pulled him deeper, stroking his hard length with her release. Again, the urge to sink his teeth into her shoulder, to claim her, washed over him again. One last, desperate thrust, and he exploded inside her with such intensity his body shook until they eased into one another, still pressed close together. He didn’t want to move, afraid of losing the short time he had with her. Instead, he rolled onto his back and pulled her with him. She sighed and snuggled to his side. Her hand reached up and brushed his jaw before settling in the center of his chest. The tenderness of the act stole his breath. He’d experienced nothing like that in fifty years, perhaps in a lifetime.