HIS BODY WAS SOLID with muscle and heated as though a furnace had been lit inside him. Cate planted her elbows in the sand on either side of his head and let her thighs fall where they would—as long as she had skin-to-trousers contact.
She smiled into his eyes. “Hello.”
“Long time no see.” His voice was soft, his eyes a heavy-lidded glitter in the dark. “Do you still kiss the same way?”
“How did I kiss?” She nuzzled the skin just above his collar. Slowly, her body was remembering how he had felt under her years ago. Remembering, and contrasting then with now. There was simply more of him. More muscle, more strength, more mileage…and more of that magnetic quality that promised a woman the ride of her life.
“I can’t explain it,” he whispered. “You’ll have to show me again.”
His lips welcomed hers. If she’d had any doubts about how they would fit together or if she’d forget how they’d once created such passion in their kisses, they were swept away.
Because, damn, he was better at this than he used to be.
She tilted her head a bit more and they fit together like two pieces from the same shattered pot, her curves fitting into his angles, her softness meeting his hardness. His tongue teased the sensitive surfaces of hers, wooing and tempting, drawing her in and making her forget her very surroundings. There was nothing in her consciousness but the heat and the taste of him and the wild rockets of desire going off in her blood.
His hands held her against him at the waist, then slid lower to cup her derriere and press her gently against the unmistakable bulge in his trousers. “Are you sure you don’t want to go back up to my place?” he said against her lips.
“And waste all that time? Not a chance.” She let her lips linger on his, learning the differences in texture and how each created a different response inside her.
“There,” he whispered. “That’s how you kiss. As if each one is a complete experience you might never have again.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not at all. Try another one.”
She tried one at the corner of his mouth, then she focused on that full lower lip. Unlike some men, Daniel didn’t seem to think that kisses were like mile markers, flashing by on the highway to orgasm. He seemed content to let her explore and taste and even breathe in the scent of his skin as she rappelled slowly down his neck and nuzzled the intersection of throat and chest.
A man like this shouldn’t be wasted on a fling. Cate squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on the delicious abrasion of the hair on his chest against her cheek. On the way his rising heat triggered an escalation of her own desire. Because if she thought about the way she was using him, she wouldn’t be able to continue—and right now, every cell in her body was demanding not only that but completion as well. She was the one barreling down the highway to orgasm, and it was all because of him and the chemistry that flared between them.
“I want to taste every inch of you,” she murmured and went to work on the buttons of his shirt. He rolled to the side and helped her with the last two.
“Anything you want.” She pulled the soft cotton out of the waistband of his pants, and he shrugged it off and laid it on the sand. “Now, what about this blouse?”
It was just a flowered bit of silk that had cost a fortune, even on the sale rack. With blissful male disregard for its label, Daniel pulled it off and the cool fabric slid along her arms in a farewell caress.
His mouth was hot on her skin, tracing the same path she had just forged on him. Was he having the same treacherous thoughts? Did making love with her mean a fling for him, too, or could there ever be anything more?
She might never know and right now was a bad time to figure it out. Because when he arrived at her throat, he continued down her body until the lace of her bra stopped him.
“Nice lingerie.” His tongue on the curves of her breasts made her breath come faster, and when he reached around and unfastened her bra, the sudden relaxation of its fabric was like a surrender, taking her past a barrier she could scarcely admit was there. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the fragile lace arc through the air to land on her sandals, and then she stopped caring because his lips had found her nipple.
The wet heat of his tongue abraded her sensitive areola and she arched up off his shirt, helplessly seeking more. He nibbled her flesh, rolling her nipple on his tongue until she lost herself in the sensation of it and the whimpering sounds she made were carried away on the breeze.
The muscles of his shoulders flexed and shifted under her hands as he moved along her cleavage and began his exploration of the other breast. Cate barely restrained herself from begging him not to prolong the trip—she needed his mouth on the other nipple now. But he made sure she enjoyed the journey, even though the anticipation she felt as he slowly circled and licked, nibbled and explored on the way to the apex had her gasping with the effort.
And then she had her reward—pleasure shimmered somewhere deep inside as he tugged gently right where she needed him to. Her body couldn’t do anything but soften and moisten and melt.
He had made her feel this way on those warm nights in Mexico, too, but there had always been an undercurrent of guilt, of urgency, as though they were doing something wrong. Now that feeling was gone and she could give herself up to the pleasure as voluptuously as she wanted to. She was here on her own terms, she told herself firmly, with no second thoughts…and if Daniel made her feel a little out of control, a little bit over the edge, there was no one here to witness it but him.
When he lifted his mouth from her breasts, his eyes were heavy-lidded and a little glassy, as though he were drugged. “I could just eat you up all night,” he said, his voice ragged and soft.
“Please do.” With a grin, she pushed him over onto his back. “But these jeans are stopping me.”
“You could lose the skirt, too.”
In moments they had all their clothes off and had fashioned a patchwork blanket out of them to keep most of the sand out of the way. Then Cate settled to the urgent and necessary task of tasting the skin on his stomach.
“Woman, you’re going to kill me,” Daniel choked as she swirled her tongue along the ridges and planes of his abs in exactly the same way he had tortured the curves of her breasts. When she applied a little pressure with her teeth, she could feel the tremors in his belly under her mouth, and smiled against his skin.
How delicious to know that she could do this to the famous Daniel Burke. She, Cate Wells, who had never licked a man’s abs in her life, could make him tremble and harden with anticipation in the same way he had made her soften and gasp. Her body had never felt so alive, so conscious of every nuance of his breathing and the movement of his blood. Somehow it made her feel very sexy and powerful, and she forced herself not to think, not to analyze, but simply to move lower, just to see what he would do.
“Cate!” he ground out as she reached the junction where his abdomen met his thigh. His erection from this angle was huge and demanding and she held her breath. Whatever he was about to do was bound to be good.
“Enough.” With one smooth movement, he rolled her on top of him, so that he lay on the pool of clothes, his face a study in light and shadow, his eyes bottomless with desire. “You can’t do that to me and get away with it.”
“What will my punishment be?” she asked, torn between laughter and anticipation.
“Twenty lashes with wet kelp.”
She grinned down at him, her hands on his chest. She’d wanted fun with her sex, hadn’t she? Couldn’t she be happy with that? “I have a better idea.”
She was straddling his waist, and now she slid down until she could feel the rock-hard power of his erection between her thighs. Her entire body tensed with anticipation while the sensitive, slick tissues of her vulva caressed his length, teasing both him and her.
“You look like a goddess,” he breathed, and her heart clenched at the expression in his eyes—as though he’d seen a vision, and that vision was herself.
“Everyone knows we goddesses like to be on top.”
Balancing with one hand on the ground, she took him in her other hand and lifted up a little so she could stroke herself with the big, cushiony head of his penis.
“Ah, Cate…” Now even the muscles in his thighs were trembling, and she realized exactly how much it was costing him to let her take her time and explore not only her own responses, but his, as well.
She knew the mechanics of making love as well as any woman, but what she hadn’t known was this sense of power that welled up at the same time as this helpless adoration of every play of light on his face, or this wonderful addiction to the scent and the heat of his skin. How was it possible for one woman’s body to contain such a fountain of both physical and emotional sensation?
It was impossible. The first tremors of the impending explosion began to build deep inside her with the glorious, wet friction.
“Daniel, oh, I’m—”
Without a word and without interrupting their rhythm, he grabbed her at the waist and rolled her onto the mat of their clothes, and as the first waves of orgasm crashed through her, he slid into her body as if she had been waiting all these years just for him.
“Daniel!” she cried at the orchestra of new pleasure, as his length filled her emptiness, filled it, stretched it and made her body scream with the newness of it.
And yet, he didn’t stop. Even as she shuddered and her mind tilted sideways, he thrust into her again and again, and she lifted her knees as if to pull him even deeper. It felt as though the atmosphere were bending, the beach were bucking, mimicking the tidal wave in her body. Daniel cried out and convulsed with his own release, dropping to his elbows to gasp an incoherent word into her ear.
But the waves kept coming. She’d never known an orgasm like this—it felt as if her whole body were still shaking and a sound like thunder roared in her ears. She’d known it would be good. But she’d had no idea that sex with Daniel would be such a cataclysm.
Daniel gasped something that turned into a shout and she finally realized what he had been trying to say. It wasn’t her name, either.
“Earthquake!” He rolled off her body and pulled her to her feet in one smooth motion. Her bones and muscles were still liquefied with the magnitude of what she’d just experienced, though, and she fell to her knees.
“Cate, get up! We have to get out of here.”
The roar in her ears began to separate into terrifying components. The breakers foaming in lashed at the beach, thrown off their incoming rhythm by the lurching of the earth. A chunk of shale split off the cliff above them and crashed down not six feet away, impaling the sand. Beneath her knees she felt the beach still shuddering in the moment of tectonic release, in exactly the way she had with her own release thirty seconds ago.
“Cate, run! Get away from the cliff!”
Daniel grabbed her wrist and tugged her to her feet a second time. Together they staggered toward the waterline, the ground jerking so that every step landed a few inches away from where it was meant to go. They probably looked like a couple of drunks, walking a line that kept jumping out of the way.
Behind her, Cate heard a rumble that goosed her into a run. Wide-eyed, she looked over her shoulder.
“Daniel, the cliff! It’s coming down!”
In the moonlight it looked as though the whole cliff had liquefied into a moving waterfall of stone. Cate’s perception of reality wavered for a second—the cliff couldn’t move like that, it wasn’t possible—until she blinked and saw that the layers of shale were shearing off and sliding toward the beach, raining chunks as big as her body onto the sand where they’d been lying.
“My clothes!”
“Cate, no!” Daniel grabbed her around the waist and, stark naked, they stood at the waterline with cold ocean slapping their ankles angrily. Cate hardly felt it.
“The whole cliff. It came down right where we were—where we—”
“Were making love.” Daniel’s voice was soft but grim as he widened his stance and braced himself while he held her. The secondary seismic waves were fading even as they spoke, the way the vibrations of a train fade after it passes. “They’ll be feeling this in San Francisco in a couple of seconds.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “It’s been a long time. I’d forgotten what it was like.”
“I didn’t think they got these in New York.”
She shook her head, her hair moving on her bare shoulders. She was beginning to feel sand in places where sand wasn’t meant to go. “Not NewYork. At home in San Diego. Very frightening. Do you think it’s over?”
“Hard to tell.” He hugged her from behind, and she felt her courage coming back from where it lay flattened somewhere on the beach. “My guess is there will be some aftershocks. We need to get back to the lodge. It’s not safe here, with all the falling rock.”
“But our clothes! Not to mention my good shoes!”
He pulled back a little and looked at her. “You’ve just narrowly escaped death in true Indiana Jones fashion and you’re worried about your shoes?”
Sheer relief at their escape mixed with a touch of hysteria as she erupted into unexpected laughter. “No, of course not. I’m worried about getting back to the conference center. Look at us. We’re stark naked!”
“Yes, I had noticed that. You have the greatest ass of any woman I know. And your point?”
“Daniel, this is no time for jokes.”
He grinned as he stepped forward to stand beside her. His fingers found hers in a tight grip. “We can’t go near the cliff in case there’s an aftershock and we get conked by another piece of falling rock. Our clothes will have to wait until it’s safe.”
“But how are we—”
“Stick with me, kid.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. And you’ll buy me rocks as big as diamonds.”
With a laugh that she’d remembered his old joke, he headed for the path on the other end of the beach, where the river had been carving its channel for centuries. She tightened her grip on his hand. He had a reputation for getting into and out of tight spots in the most flamboyant and newsworthy way possible. She’d buy a ticket to see him get her out of this one.
With her professional reputation—if not her clothes—intact.
ADRENALINE AND A KIND of savage joy coursed through Daniel’s body as he and Cate navigated the path up the riverbed in the dark under the trees. He hardly felt the rocks and tree roots that crisscrossed their route, tripping up their feet and making the going difficult. Most of his consciousness was consumed with Cate. Making love to her, getting her out of the danger zone, getting her to safety.
Tonight was without a doubt the best night of his life. To engage in foreplay over dinner—to have Cate respond to him in such an uninhibited way—to be able to give her the pleasure he’d been dreaming about for so many years—he grinned into the dark with sheer satisfaction.
An aftershock rolled under their feet, lifting and subsiding like a whale breaking the surface of the sea. It wasn’t nearly as severe as he’d expected. Once he had Cate safe—and clothed—chances were good he’d be able to go back down to the beach to get their things without worrying about a chunk of rock taking him out.
They climbed the tree-covered slope that led to the grounds of the conference center, then stopped at the edge of the lawn, concealed in the shadows, to do a recon of the situation.
Cate hopped on one foot, picking something out of the sole of the other. “Why do those trees have to have prickles for leaves?” she complained in a whisper. “I think I’ve been permanently perforated.”
“Want me to carry you the rest of the way?”
She put her foot to the ground and straightened, her body a pale length of determination. “No, thank you. I’d rather suffer under my own steam.” Her gaze tracked the open space between their hiding place and the nearest building. “It’s not that late. How am I going to get to my room without being seen?”
“I don’t think you are. We’ll go to my cottage and I’ll lend you something.”
“How come you get a cottage and the rest of us have to regress to dorms?”
“Because I’m the keynote speaker, remember? Plus they needed somewhere to keep all those cartons of books.” He pointed. “I’m on the far side of the main lodge, up the path from the dining room.”
“In other words, about as far from this nice dark tree as you could possibly get.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t take earthquakes into account when I signed the contract. So we’ll need to circle around on the high side—” he indicated the slope to their left “—and come down above the cottage.”
“Why not go around to the right? It’s shorter.”
“That’s the river side. We’re more likely to run into people coming out of their rooms and stragglers from the night-owl sessions. People’s instinct is to get outside when there’s a shaker. And the lawn facing the river is nice and open. I’m betting everyone is already huddled out there.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. Point taken. My feet are never going to be the same.”
“I’ll give them a nice hot soak when we get to my room.” He smiled and took her hand. “Come on. We’re more likely to be spotted if we stay here.”
He could have let go of her hand and had one more to navigate with in the dark, but she didn’t seem inclined to ease up on her grip, either. Their feet made soft noises in the dried grass and leaves underfoot, blending in with the sound of the onshore breeze in the trees and the faraway boom of the ocean. It took them fifteen minutes of ducking and running, punctuated with curses as their bare feet found every rock on the hillside, before they slid to a halt under a pine twenty feet from his cottage.
“Can you see anyone?” Cate panted. She pulled her hand from his and pressed it to her chest, drawing his gaze to her bare breasts for about the twentieth time since they’d left the beach. It was a simple fact that he liked sex in the rough, and if ever there was an environment for someone with discovery fantasies, this was it.
Under the branches of a cedar, the cottage was dark and silent. He hadn’t left any lights on, and the windows reflected the light of the waning moon. A big, round flowering bush of some kind blocked his view of the door, but from what he could see on either side of the little building, they were safe.
And Cate’s body was a temptation he simply couldn’t resist.
He stepped closer and slid his hands around her waist. “The only person I want to see is you, naked in the moonlight.”
“What?”
He was so ready for her. His swollen erection nudged her derriere, then slid between her legs as he pulled her against him. “Who wants a mundane old bed? I want you up against this tree.”
“Daniel, what about—oh.”
He cupped her breasts in both hands and brushed his fingertips over her nipples. “You have the sweetest tits.”
“Daniel, we can’t,” she gasped. “Oh, that feels so good.”
Her flesh filled his hands with their warmth and fullness. He squeezed gently, pressing against her from behind, while she braced herself with both hands on the tree trunk. The arch in her back pressed her rigid nipples into his palms.
“Touch yourself,” he whispered and licked her earlobe. “Tell me how wet you are.” His tongue traced the edge of her ear and she shivered.
Hesitantly, she reached down, and he jumped as her fingers closed around his cock as it thrust between her legs. “Not me, baby. I know how ready I am. Tell me what you find.”
Over her shoulder, he nuzzled her skin and fondled her breasts while he watched her fingers dip low and touch her cleft. “Mmm.”
“Tell me.” His whisper was getting ragged, and he held himself back from tipping up her hips and plunging into her.
“I’m all creamy and swollen,” she said dreamily, “but that could be from last time.”
His legs were trembling from the effort to control his excitement. “What does it feel like to touch yourself while I fondle you?”
“I like your tongue better,” she confessed. “And I like it when you suck my nipples.”
“You can have it later,” he promised between clenched teeth, “but right now I want to slide inside you while you make yourself come.”
“I want you to, too,” she sighed.
“Tip your pretty little ass toward me, darling, that’s it, and spread your legs.”
Oh, God.
He gripped her hips and probed her swollen, wet lips, then slid into her. Her body clenched around him, then relaxed as he found a hot, slow rhythm. Stroking her breasts, he tried to give her as many sensations of pleasure as he could while his own body shouted with urgency.
“Daniel—Daniel—oh—”
He felt it almost before he heard her feathery little gasps. She shuddered against him and her entire body seemed to tighten and release around him as she came. At last he let himself go and the orgasm roared through him, blanking out the sounds of the night and leaving only the awareness of Cate and how her hips rammed against him as she took him even deeper.
He gathered her into his arms and he fell against the tree, its bark rough against his sensitized skin. “I can’t stand up,” he said a little helplessly, and took her with him to the ground.
He sat there for the few seconds it took to remember how to breathe, her body cradled against him so she wouldn’t lie in the dirt and pine needles. He didn’t care. In fact, the scent of pine needles was going to remind him forever of Cate. Probably when he was eighty and fetching a Christmas tree with his grandkids, he’d smell pine and get a hard-on, just from the memory of this moment.
A few moments passed and Cate stirred. “Remind me not to let you loose in a forest if this is what happens.” Her voice was full of quiet satisfaction.
“It’s the adrenaline.” He adjusted her in his lap so she was more comfortable.
“Narrowly missing death is a big turn-on, I’ve heard,” she agreed. “The urge to make sure the species doesn’t die out.”
“No, it wasn’t that. Watching you running through the trees is what brought it on. You’ve spoiled me for ordinary beds now.”
Her body shook gently as she chuckled. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate one. After a shower.” She got to her feet and checked the landscape around the cottage again, and he deduced that, while he’d be happy to sit out here and enjoy the afterglow as God intended it to be, she had other ideas. He got up and joined her.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s make a run for it.”
“Isn’t it locked? Your keys are down on the beach with your pants, aren’t they?”
He took her hand again. “Nah. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and I’ve got nothing with me that anyone would want. Except maybe a few cartons of books. I left it open.”
“You’re more trusting than I am.” She followed him across the grass, which felt soft and cool underfoot in comparison to the rough terrain they’d just crossed. “I never leave without locking my door, no matter where I am.”
“You need to spend more time in the wide open spaces,” he said over his shoulder as he turned the door handle. “You’d have more trust in your fellow man then.”
He pushed the door open and slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her inside.
Had she ever made love in the shower? he wondered. And was it possible for a man to come three times in as many hours?
He couldn’t wait to find out.