TAKING ADVANTAGE OF her momentary adrenaline rush, Jenna stripped her dress over her head and flung it on the other side of the couch. When she was finished, she braced her arm across the back of his couch and gave him a smoldering look, a Penthouse siren in black lace bra, panties and sheer black hose. There was no man alive who could resist her.
Across from her, Cam sat. Frozen. Resisting her.
Keep the adrenaline moving. Flowing. Ignore the icy chill. You’re a siren. Be the siren. You play God on a daily basis. How hard can this be?
Still he sat.
In her highly overworked mind, this whole evening had gone much differently. For instance, in her version of how everything would play out, he would have ripped her clothes off immediately.
Where was the ripping?
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked, and yes, there might be been a quiver in her voice.
“I think I swallowed my tongue.”
“Then it’s very convenient that I’m a trained professional,” she answered. Some of her nerves were starting to ease. Now they were talking. Now he was falling into line.
“Dr. Ferrar…” he started, and she held up a hand.
“Excuse me, but when a woman is in your living room in her underwear, it’s best to drop the formalities.”
“Jenna.”
It pleased her to hear him say it. The way his voice got deep and rumbled in his throat.
“Yes?”
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I know it’s not a good idea, but it’s the best one I have.”
There was an odd look on his face, uncomfortable and annoyed. Finally, he spit it out. “I don’t like being a mercy fuck.”
Mercy fuck? Jenna could only stare. He had no idea how long she had worked with a personal trainer. The lengths she had gone to to find the exact perfect lingerie. Yes, she might be a doctor, committed to the caring and compassion, but compassion only went so far. As far as Jenna was concerned, there was compassion and then there was sex, and never the twain shall meet.
“There is no mercy involved.” Except perhaps for that moment when he was pounding inside of her, and she was begging and pleading for mercy….
“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to keep me here. It’s flattering and really bighearted, but seriously, I’m not your personal mission.”
Did he truly believe that, or was this some devious, underhanded way of subverting her authority and going about his own merry way, terrorizing emergency rooms everywhere?
Jenna studied the innocent gleam in his eye, and decided that yes, this man was devious, underhanded and stubborn.
She chose her words carefully.
“Don’t be so stupid. You are a man. A sexual being. If you sit there rejecting my advances, then I’ll have no choice but to assume that either I’m repulsive or you’re gay.”
The innocent little twinkle faded, and he cupped his burgeoning crotch. “Not gay.” She glared and he backtracked even further. “And you’re not repulsive. Not even close.”
“Glad to get that out of the way, but I’m a little out of my depth here. Yes, I’m willing to strip and portray myself as a woman of loose morals and yogalike flexibility. But for the record, it won’t be pretty. It won’t be graceful, but it would be heartfelt.”
“I think it’d be real pretty,” he murmured, a flattering bit of awe in his voice. It was about time he showed some appreciation for a naked, not repulsive woman in his living room.
“Cam…” she said, leaning forward with earnest sincerity and not in some slutty move to flash him her breasts.
The breast move worked. She could see that some of the determination faded, and when he spoke, he spoke to her cleavage. “Jenna, this is not smart.”
“Smart? You will lecture me on smart? This from the man who mutilates his body on an annual basis? I’d say that the smartest move you could make was to—” she waved a fill-in-the-blank hand “—make a move.”
Silently he stared, but she was winning, and now they both knew it. It was there in the furtive glances that dipped beyond her Pilates-flat belly, toward the front of the sheer, extraordinarily sheer, black lace panties.
Boldly she opened her legs, splayed them in a triple-X move that was designed to draw attention to her pelvic region.
His gaze locked there. Glazed. Almost Pavlovian. Fascinating.
“I’m still leaving in the morning,” he stated firmly, ceding the battle but claiming the war.
As if.
Jenna smiled her sweetest, most innocent smile and stood. She reached behind her, trying to unhook her bra, but the clasp was stuck or maybe her fingers were swollen. Whatever the case, she couldn’t undo the tiny eye hooks. Who the hell had designed this sucker? Master Lock?
Before she made a complete fool of herself, he turned her, and she felt his hands on her back. Some of the cold melted away. He had nice hands. Large, rough palms and long fingers that were destined to know the secret of the bra clasp.
But he didn’t undo it right away. Instead, those big hands slid beneath the strap, stroking, caressing.
“What are you doing?”
“Touching you. I thought that was the idea. You’re very touchable.”
The long strokes continued, up and down, excruciatingly gentle. “I thought you were a builder,” she murmured, tilting her head back, eyes closed, in imminent danger of losing all sense of balance.
“Yeah. So?”
“You don’t have a builder’s hands,” she said, her breath escaping on a whisper.
“You don’t have a doctor’s breasts, but you don’t see me ragging on you about it.”
“What sort of breasts do I have?” she asked, swallowing when his hands moved up, curling around her shoulders, her neck. Not content, those hands slid down her front, slipping beneath the silken fabric of the bra, freeing her breasts.
“Soft to the touch, highly sensitive.” His thumbs flicked over the twin nipples, toying them to attention, and Jenna felt her knees start to tremble. He pulled her closer, bracing her from shoulder to knee. She felt the bulky chest, the rough friction of his jeans against her bare skin, and the long piece of his cock that was pressing impatiently against her ass.
He continued the sure movements with his hands, a slow languid survey that was turning her to a boneless mass of tissue and nerves. It had been so long since she’d felt like this. Relaxed, pleasured…healed. Next his clever mouth explored the slope of her neck, finding an erotic little spot behind her ear that she didn’t even know she had.
“There?” he asked.
“There is nice,” she said on a sigh.
While his mouth dallied, his hands moved lower, beneath the band of the panties. “You don’t have a doctor’s underwear, either.”
“You have a problem with that?” she asked, liking this teasing, liking the touch. He’d surprised her with this. Surprised her with his patience. It wasn’t easy for her to relax; there was always something else on the list to be done. But right now, she only wanted to do this.
“I want you to lose them,” he whispered, sliding the scrap of material down her legs, until it fell to the floor, leaving her bare except for hose and heels. Yes, it wasn’t completely comfortable, but she was okay with that, because she was starting to feel…sexy.
His rough thumbs traced over her cheeks, parting the highly charged flesh, and making her hips tighten with his flirting touch. “So soft, so tempting. An ass this fine should not be covered.”
“There are a lot of nerve endings there,” she explained, not that he needed the anatomical education, but by talking, by keeping her mind focused on the logistics of what they were doing, she didn’t feel quite so…emotional.
Not that emotional was a bad thing, but she did twelve-hour rotations with her feelings packed in ice. Letting go wasn’t easy for her. Letting someone else take over wasn’t in her nature.
In fact, her body jerked in protest, just from the feel of his hands. He cupped her cheeks, kneaded, and her body jerked again. Toward him. “It’s a very sensitive area,” she hissed, her eyes desperately locked to the view from his window. She wanted him to stop touching her, even while she could feel the moisture beading down her thigh. Her instinct was to turn to see, to watch, to know what to expect, but the complex sensations that were roiling inside her kept her frozen, nervous and highly aroused.
She heard a shuffling noise and felt him press his mouth to said sensitive nerve endings, and she shivered at the frankly wicked touch. Standing naked while a man kissed her ass hadn’t been in her nature either…until now.
Then his hand slid between her legs, one long finger finding the heavy seam that frankly couldn’t take much more. She heard his sigh and wondered how he could be so relaxed, when she was about to hit the ceiling. Her hands fisted, clenched, in a mirror move to the stroke of his hands. Every nerve, every muscle, every cell in her was tuned to the rhythm of that finger. Slyly he explored between her thighs, the vulva, expanding the labia majora, and then oh please yes…the labia minora.
“More. Nerve endings. There,” she bit out, her muscles clenched because Cam was finding each and every sensory receptor, and did she know she could get this stimulated?
His mouth touched her, and her heart stopped.
“Cam…” she pleaded, because this wasn’t her.
He took pity on her, and in one easy move, he lowered her to the couch and slid his big body over her, his eyes remarkably tender for a man who assaulted himself on an annual basis.
“The first time I saw you, I got embarrassingly hard, thinking of you…like this.” He gaze raked over her, heavy-lidded and hungry, and instantly Jenna knew what was for dinner. Instead of being nervous, she felt tense and raw…excited.
“The first time you saw me, you had a concussion. Vision can be…compromised.”
“There were two of you. Both of you were naked.”
Then his mouth took hers, soft on her lips, and she could taste him, taste herself. His tongue slid between her lips, so slow, so insidious. Once again, there was that rhythm.
She loved the way he kissed, that easy slow glide of his tongue that lulled her like the ocean. Her bare hips rose higher, grinding against the thick bulge in his jeans, so close, yet so far…. He laughed, low and dastardly, and then thrust against her, denim to skin, and her eyes drifted closed. This time when his hands returned to her thighs, she was the one who sighed, arching her swollen breasts into the rough cotton of his shirt. Then his finger slid inside her again, and she laughed, trying for low and dastardly, as well. Instead, she sounded nervous.
For good reason.
His tongue licked her belly, the curve of her waist, and she sucked in a breath at the decadent contact, feeling an answering pulse of desire between her legs.
“Cam?”
“Yes,” he whispered in between those magical kisses.
His hands parted her soft folds, and he pressed a hungry kiss there…in the clitorial region, where a large earthquake was starting to form.
Her hips arched up to meet that talented, tickling tongue.
“You don’t…have a builder’s…mouth,” she told him, trying to keep her brain from exploding.
Cam lifted his head and smiled. “It’s all engineering. Every component can only stand so much stress before it buckles.”
And then he proceeded to demonstrate. The stroke of his tongue was longer, more liquid, or maybe that was her, but she could definitely feel the force of the orgasm building inside her. Each flick across her überjuiced flesh created a new tremor. Her heels dug into the couch, sliding back and forth. The ever-increasing pressure began to drive her to the breaking point.
“Cam,” she warned, her hands grabbing the cotton of his shirt. She wanted skin, she wanted flesh. She wanted relief.
“Break for me,” he ordered, and then he took her clit in his mouth and suckled her. Hard. The spasms began, her muscles primed for explosion.
It was too much. Jenna shattered.