Carrie slept terribly that night. The combination of an unfamiliar bed, the shocking revelations from the women about Bass’s possible feelings for her, and worry for Gary made for a mix of toxic dreams.
When she woke in the morning, the four women were gone. Wow. They’d been really quiet not to have awakened her. But then, she supposed they were trained in the art of stealth. She went looking for Bass and found him in the ready room talking and joking with a bunch of guys there.
When she appeared in the doorway, he looked up instantly, and his face lit with a smile for her. Oh. Was that what the women SEALs had been talking about?
Warm little squiggles erupted in her stomach.
Bass held an arm out to her and she stepped up beside him, startled as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and said, “This is the woman I was telling you about.”
She recognized Commander Perriman from last night, and in the light of day, his eyes were silver. And they were frankly alarming when he turned that icy gaze on her as if he could look right into her soul. Even his voice was cool as he spoke to her. “Bastien’s been telling us about your recent problems. We’re expecting the translation of your journal back today, and maybe it can tell us more about who’s so interested in you. Then we can form a plan to take out whoever’s threatening you.”
She blinked, shocked. “The SEALs aren’t responsible for me.”
That got a round of laughter, but she didn’t see what was so funny.
Perriman said gently, “We take care of our own, Miss Price.”
She got that. But she didn’t belong to—
Oh. She looked up at Bass in quick surprise. Had he claimed her as someone he cared about to all these other SEALs? His deep blue gaze gave away nothing as she searched his eyes for an answer. The guy definitely held his emotional cards close to his chest.
Of course, he might have told his buddies he was interested in her purely so they would help him capture whoever’d broken into his garage.
That made more sense. Sure, he’d kissed her once. But that didn’t make for an actual relationship. For all she knew, he’d kissed her because he felt sorry for her and not because he was actually attracted to her. Who could blame a healthy, red-blooded male for kissing a woman he woke up to find draped all over him in his bed? Surely, it hadn’t meant anything to him.
She’d been needy and naïve to think it had signaled actual interest in her. Just like she’d been silly to believe the patter of a bunch of women who’d trained with Bass. For all she knew, they were playing some kind of joke on Bass by setting her up to throw herself at him.
The men around her were talking animatedly, and she tuned back in. They were debating the merits of her and Bass returning to his place with a contingent of SEALs hiding in the bushes, and using her as bait to draw out whoever was interested in her.
Bass was adamantly opposed to the plan, but pretty much everyone else seemed to think it was a great idea. Personally, she had no desire to dangle on a hook like a helpless little worm.
She eventually caught Bass’s eye and looked over at the door significantly.
Immediately, he broke into the conversation. “Back in a minute.” He guided her out into the hall without ever removing his arm from around her shoulders. It was almost as if he liked the contact.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I can’t sit around being bait for you guys. I’ve got a show to film. I can do all the background shots and can even do a bunch of the night filming without Gary present. Once he shows back up, we can do a bunch of quick clips of him, and then he can do voice-overs for the stuff I shoot now. Frankly, it works out well for the show to do it this way, because, God bless him, Gary can’t act his way out of a paper bag.”
“Where are you supposed to film over the next few days?” Bass asked.
“I’m scheduled to start the night shoot at the bed-and-breakfast I was at yesterday.”
“Is the night shoot when you film your ghosts?”
She smiled up at him ruefully. “Congratulations for asking that with a straight face. And yes, it is. I try to capture shadows and flashes of light and filming anomalies that can be enhanced into alleged ghost sightings.”
“Congratulations for saying that without putting air quotes around the phrase, ghost sightings,” he replied dryly.
She laughed. “Hey, it’s a job.”
“I’m not letting you do any filming without me. Not until we catch whoever kidnapped Gary and is coming after you now.”
“You think it’s the same people?” she asked in alarm.
“It has to be. What are the odds that two members of the same television crew would be attacked within days of each other by entirely separate people?”
She had to agree with him. Even if her past did come looking for her, it would take more than a single day to get to her.
“Where’s this bed-and-breakfast?” Bass asked. “I want to let the guys know where we’ll be.”
She gave him the address and watched, perplexed, as he poked his head back in the door of the ready room and called out the address. “Carrie has to film at this place tonight. Anyone wanna go ghost hunting with her?”
She rolled her eyes as the jokes flew thick and fast at that. She’d heard them all before, and she stood by her standard response. Filming the show paid her bills.
* * *
They might have joked about it; but as she stepped out of the Hummer with her big bag of camera equipment that Bastien had fetched from her van, still parked in his garage, no less than six SEALs were waiting on the front steps of the bed-and-breakfast. And one of them was holding her overnight bag. Oh, Lord. Had one of them gone to her place to paw through her underwear and toiletries?
But as the guy held it out to her, he said, “One of the female cops who works with Bass got this stuff for you.”
Thank goodness. “What are all of you guys doing here?” she asked the group at large.
Bass answered, “The guys will be spending the night with us. No one’s getting close to you on the SEALs’ watch.”
Oh my. The owner was going to swoon over all these hot guys moving in with her.
Carrie’s prediction turned out to be entirely accurate. Amelie, indeed, was so flustered she had trouble fetching eight room keys and passing them out, let alone instructing everybody on how to get to their rooms in the warren of winding hallways.
After she set her little bag down in the middle of her bed, Carrie stepped out into the hall in time to see SEALs heading off in both directions. Bass stepped out of his room directly across the hall from hers, and she asked, “Where are they going?”
“Reconnoitering the hotel layout. We couldn’t find any floor plans on this place before we came over here. In a little while, we’ll be able to move around this place blindfolded.”
“It’s an old house, not a military installation,” she responded.
“It’s the site of potential operations.” He shrugged. “Even if this weren’t a security assignment, SEALs would roam around and get the lay of the land in a place like this out of force of habit.”
“Because it’s important to be prepared?”
“Exactly.”
“Has anyone told you you’re a little bit crazy?” she queried.
“I’m a SEAL. I’m a lot crazy.”
The way he said that, with pride and affection, made her understand why the idea of giving up being a SEAL to be a full-time cop was so hard for him.
She asked him, “What made you choose to be a SEAL?”
“The challenge of doing the impossible, I suppose.”
“Are you that big an overachiever, or are you simply an adrenaline junkie?”
He stared down at her. “Why do you care?”
“Just trying to understand what makes you tick.”
“You’re overthinking it, Carrie. The mountain was there. I climbed it.”
He wasn’t being honest with her. People didn’t put themselves through the rigors of SEAL training just because it was there. What wasn’t he telling her about himself or about his background? Obviously, the truth was something private and personal to him. And just as obviously, he didn’t trust her enough to share it with her.
She sighed, belly-punched yet again with the fact that she wasn’t good enough for a man like him. “I’m going to shoot a fill of nighttime background shots and then turn in. You have fun traipsing around the house.”
“We’ll try to stay out of your shots.”
She grinned. “Go ahead. Let me catch you guys on film. You’d be the hottest ghosts ever recorded.”
“No thanks. We’re better off if there’s no public record of our faces.” He added, “If you get scared or can’t sleep or just get lonely, my door will be unlocked,” Bastien replied.
Okay, she hadn’t seen that coming. An open offer to join him in his bed, huh? Taken aback, she blurted, “Aren’t you worried that the ghost will come in your room and haunt you if you leave it unlocked?”
Bass laughed at that. “The day I’m worried about a ghost is the day I check myself into the loony bin.”
“Oooh, you shouldn’t have said that. Now you’re gonna get haunted for sure,” she teased.
Grinning, Bass shook his head. “Go take your pictures. I’m gonna stroll around a bit and get my bearings. This place is a maze.”
With Amelia not hanging around bugging her, she got the footage she needed in under an hour and packed it in for the night.
She tried to sleep, but the stress of everything was catching up with her. She stared at a crack running across the ceiling plaster over her bed for hours, but no answers came to her. She had no idea what had happened to Gary or why, and she had no idea what the deal was with her and Bastien.
She was definitely interested in him. He was at least mildly interested in her. But enough to do something about it? Enough to break his stated rule about not dating suspects and his unspoken rule about not having serious relationships at all? Should she take him up on his invitation and crawl into bed with him? Maybe strip off her pajamas and go for the gusto? Of course, with her luck, Bass would think it was a joke and laugh his head off at her. Or worse, he would kick her out of his bed.
A cheap alarm clock on the nightstand said it was just after 1:00 a.m. when the first hard splats of rain hit her window. A gust of wind sent tree branches rattling against the side of the house, and something banged not far away, making her jump.
A faint moaning sound caught her attention, and she shook her head ruefully. Good thing Gary wasn’t here. He would be knocking frantically on her door, demanding she get up and go ghost hunting with him right away. She would tell him it was the wind, but he would insist it was spirits calling to him from the nether world.
Maybe that was why, when she finally drifted off to the pounding of the rain, she dreamed of Gary. He was calling out to her to help him, moaning rather like a ghost himself. Then he exhorted her to finish the work he’d started. To finish the quest.
She tried to ask him if he meant his treasure hunt, but the ghostly image of him either didn’t hear her or didn’t want to answer. A pair of faceless men came up behind him then and carried him away, down into a dark abyss she knew to be death. In her dream, she cried out to him. But he never looked back at her.
She sat bolt upright, mumbling, “Don’t leave me...”
Carrie flopped back against the flattened feather pillows. God, she was so lonely. Gary might have been a pain in the butt, but he’d been her constant companion and had staved off the ugly truth that she was all alone in the world except for him.
Meeting Bastien had been a stark reminder of what she was missing by cutting herself off from other people, by traveling all the time and never staying in one place long enough to develop friendships, let alone actual relationships. She could totally relate to Bastien’s choice not to date seriously. But the price of it—these moments in the dark, late at night, when the scary world was banging at her window...
Had she done the right thing by running away all those years ago? By not facing her attacker? By taking the coward’s way out?
Oooooooh. A sigh of breath, as if someone moaned in great pain, disturbed the patter of rain.
What was that?
She was no rookie to creepy sounds associated with ghost hunting, but that strange moaning noise was unnerving. No wind she’d ever heard had made that noise.
Her curtains stirred, and she jolted away from them, staring. The window was definitely closed and locked. She’d checked it before she went to bed. There must be an air vent somewhere in the room, making the curtains flutter like that.
The moaning sound came again, so close it sounded as if it was practically in bed with her. What the hell?
She sat up, clutching the covers close to her chest. Of all people, she knew for sure that ghosts were not real. Which meant a human was making those noises. If someone was trying to freak her out, they were doing a darned good job of it, though.
A flash of lightning outside was followed by an almost immediate crack of deafeningly loud thunder that made her jump. She thought she caught a glimpse of a shadow outside her window, a human-sized shape in the tree, as if someone had climbed it and was peering inside.
Ohmigod.
She bolted out of bed and flew out of her room, shooting across the hall to leap into Bastien’s room in about one second flat. She plastered her back against the door, breathing hard.
Bass was out of bed and standing in front of her in about the same amount of time. Crud, that man could move fast. “What’s wrong?” he bit out.
“I thought I saw someone outside my window. It was nothing, I’m sure, but it spooked me.”
He touched his throat with a finger and ordered tersely, “I need someone to check out Carrie’s room, inside and out, ASAP. She thought she might have seen someone outside her window.”
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
“My men. We’re all wearing earbuds and microphones.”
“You went full commando in a bed-and-breakfast? Isn’t that a tiny bit of overkill?”
“What if there really is a guy outside your room?” Bass responded.
Oh, God. There went her pulse again.
Bass gathered her into his arms as if he sensed her panic. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”
She mumbled against his chest, “I feel so stupid.”
“No need. You have every reason to be jumpy.” A pause, then he added, “You’re freezing. Come get under the covers and warm up.”
He deposited her in his bed, which was still warm from his body. Heat wrapped round her like the hug he’d just given her, comforting and secure. She was disappointed when he didn’t join her. Instead, he continued to stand over by the door, listening at the panel.
Without warning, he slipped outside, leaving her alone in his room. Great. Now she could freak herself out in here.
She stared fixedly at the alarm clock on his nightstand, her tension climbing with every passing minute. What was going on out there? Why had he bolted out of the room like that?
The door flew open and she froze in terror, her gaze darting around frantically in search of a weapon. That alarm clock was her best bet. She started to dive for it when Bass murmured, “It’s me.”
She collapsed across the pillows. “Good thing you identified yourself. I was about to bean you with the alarm clock.”
Bass lifted the covers and slipped in beside her. “Come here.”
She rolled toward him, and he drew her into his arms. He smelled of rain and fresh cut grass and his shirt was damp. “You’re wet,” she announced. “You should take off that shirt before you catch a chill.”
“Our body heat will dry off my clothes soon enough.”
“Why did you go outside?”
“The guys spotted someone moving around out there.”
“Did you catch him?”
“Nope. Whoever it was took off when we closed in on him.”
“I thought you guys were super stealthy.”
“We are. Which makes it interesting that the person noticed us and managed to slip away.”
“Interesting how?”
“Whoever’s after you is no amateur.”
Her heart sank. She couldn’t hide behind Bastien and his buddies forever, and Lonnie Grange was a patient man. If he’d found her and decided to take revenge upon her, he wouldn’t ever give up. She said heavily, “I’ve got to leave New Orleans. Go somewhere far away from here where no one can find me.”
Was she going to have to change her name again? It had been a royal pain to jump through all the legal hoops to make that happen the first time. If it was a matter of life and death, though, she supposed she had no choice. But the prospect of starting over again, from scratch, of starting a new career in a new place, of living like a mouse, catching no one’s attention, speaking to no one, making friends with no one—
Bass interrupted her grim thoughts. “Have a little faith. We’ll catch this guy and make him talk. We’ll figure out what he wants. Between the SEALs and the NOPD, we’ll solve this puzzle.”
“If you catch this guy, a new one will replace him. They’ll just keep coming,” she mumbled.
Bass went still against her. “What makes you think that?” he asked alertly.
Because Lonnie Grange was rich and powerful and had an endless supply of thugs eager to do his dirty work. Yup, she could really pick bad guys to tangle with.
She blinked, realizing too late what she’d let slip. “Nothing. It’s just that if these guys are after Gary’s treasure, there will always be another treasure-hunter greedy for whatever he thinks Gary can lead him to.”
It was a lame excuse and sounded ridiculous even to her ears. Bastien made no comment, but she could literally feel his brain working overtime.
Crud. Desperation to distract him rushed through her. She did the only thing she could think of. She snaked her arms around his neck and tugged his head down to hers.
“Kiss me, Bass.”
He resisted her for a moment, and she felt his stare upon her in the dark. But then his mouth closed on hers, and she sighed in relief. His lips were warm and restless, gentle and demanding, all the things she remembered from their first kiss and more.
His arms tightened around her and her stomach pressed against the hard ridges of his abdomen, her legs tangling with his. Her toes barely came to the top of his feet, and for once she enjoyed feeling small and fragile in someone’s embrace.
As big and overpowering as he was, though, he handled her with a gentleness that said he knew the extent of his strength.
His mouth slanted across hers, his lips warm and firm. She kissed him back eagerly, inhaling the taste of him, lingering toothpaste and that hint of the outdoors that always clung to him.
Using the tip of her tongue, she tested his lips, and his mouth opened immediately. With a groan in the back of his throat, he deepened the kiss, drawing her even closer to him. His left hand plunged into her hair, cupping the back of her head, angling her to fit him more perfectly, and holding her as if she was made of precious crystal.
But then he tensed and lifted his mouth away from her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.
“I don’t want to mess this up.”
“You have a lot more experience at this romance stuff than I do. I wouldn’t know if you got it all wrong or not.”
“Still.”
“You won’t mess anything up,” Carrie declared. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
He kissed his way across her cheekbone to the sensitive spot behind her ear. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You’re a SEAL, for crying out loud.”
He kissed his way down her neck and across her collarbone before lifting his head. “That only means I know how to be a warrior. It doesn’t mean I know a damned thing about how to do relationships.”
“You say that like I have some idea what I’m doing,” she replied, raising her chin to give him better access to her throat.
“Then I guess we’ll have to figure this out together.”
Figure out what, exactly? She stared at him as he loomed over her, only able to make out the general lines of his face, the planes of his cheeks, the angles of his nose and brows. She reached up with her fingertips to trace the familiar outlines. “You’re so pretty,” she murmured.
“I thought that was supposed to be my line to describe you.”
“I’m nothing to write home about. But you’re kind of spectacular.”
His lips curved against hers, inviting her to participate in the smile. As if she could refuse that. She smiled and kissed him back until he muttered against her mouth, “I’m glad we’ve established that you’re kind of blind, then.”
“I’m a camerawoman! I’m not blind, and you’re hot!”
He laughed then. “I’m glad you think so. You are rather delectable, yourself, Miss Price.”
“Now who’s blind?”
He kissed his way down her throat to the V-neck of her T-shirt, pulling the soft cotton down out of his way as he explored the gentle valley between her breasts. His breath was warm and his mouth warmer against her skin. “Everything about you is just right.”
“I’m a midget.”
“Sweetheart, I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
His hands slipped under the hem of her T-shirt and up her ribs, lifting her to his mouth. One hand slipped around her side to cup her breast, and his thumb rubbed lightly across her nipple, making her cry out a little and arch up into the contact.
“So sensitive,” Bass murmured. “So damned soft.”
His big, calloused palms swept up her body, shoving her shirt over her head. Cool air wafted across her skin, making her shiver a little. But then he was there with his mouth and hands and furnace-like heat to chase away the cold, the gentleness of his touch belying the hardness of his hands.
For a moment, she froze up, panic consuming reason. But then she told herself firmly, This is Bass. He would never hurt you. She repeated that to herself over and over until the moment of anxiety subsided, leaving only his heated hands and soft mouth on her skin, and her pulse racing frantically in response.
She plunged her fingers into his silky hair as his lips roamed across her stomach, seeking and finding all her ticklish spots. She cradled his head in her arms as he laid his cheek against her stomach, pausing there as if making a memory of the moment.
It was exactly what she needed—a reminder that Bass was a good man who appreciated her as a person, respected her as a woman, and genuinely found her attractive. Not to mention he was both honorable and honest. He was precisely the kind of man she’d wished for all these years and never expected to find.
“You smell like a woman,” he murmured against her belly button.
“Is that good or bad?”
“All good. You smell sweet. Edible. Like home. Like...fresh-baked cookies.”
“That must be the vanilla shampoo I use.”
“You’re everything I’m not,” he said as he dipped his fingers into the waistband of her flannel pajama bottoms. “You fascinate me.”
His hand cupped her rear end, his fingertips skimming the base of her spine and the incredibly sensitive spot there. Her nether regions melted a little, and suddenly her limbs felt boneless.
Her own hands roamed across his chest, frustrated by his damp T-shirt, and she tugged it up impatiently. Better. Skin.
She kissed his chest, loving how his pectorals jumped under her mouth and how his stomach tightened into a sexy washboard as her hands stroked his waist. She found the deep, muscular indent at his hips and traced it downward to where it disappeared into the top of his jeans. Hungry for more, she reached for his zipper.
One of his big hands closed over hers. “Before we go any further, are you sure about this?”
Everything inside her went deeply still.
Was she sure? She’d had sex now and then in college, and she’d gotten through it okay. Trauma from the past hadn’t intruded too much. But then, she also hadn’t been very emotionally involved during those encounters. Unlike now.
This was Bass. Kind, stern, uncompromisingly decent Bass.
“Yes,” she said firmly.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I’m sure about this. About you.”
He smiled against her mouth, “All right then. Last one naked’s a rotten egg.”
She laughed as he rolled away from her fast. She reached for her pajama bottoms, but he was there before she could hardly touch them.
“Slowpoke,” he declared. “Let me do that for you.”
She squeaked as he disappeared under the covers, grabbed the waistband in his teeth, and dragged them down her body. When he got to her ankles he quickly stripped away the flannel and kissed his way slowly back up her leg. He paused at the back of her knee and licked her until she giggled, then he continued up her thigh until she gasped.
How could the act of kissing her leg make her feel so wanted like this? Or maybe it was that he was willing to take his time with her, make sure she was enjoying herself first. Either way, something warm and fragile unfolded inside her heart.
“Open for me, baby. I want to taste you.”
The intimacy of what he was suggesting staggered her. She might have protested, except he commenced murmuring words of praise about how beautiful she was and how much he wanted to give her pleasure, his mouth all the while teasing the incredibly sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. He nuzzled the juncture of her thighs with such undisguised enjoyment that her reservations melted away. Her leg muscles relaxed, and he kissed his way toward her core, taking his sweet time about it.
She’d never been with a man who savored the experience and felt no rush to get to the finish line. But then, Bass was a lot more confident and sure of his masculinity than the few college boys she’d had sex with.
Gradually, she relaxed as he cupped her hips in his hands and kissed everything but the throbbing center of her nervous desire. The longer he delayed, the more a strange tension built in her lower belly, straining toward...something.
“Bastien,” she finally mumbled in complaint.
“Hmm?”
“What are you doing to me?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. How does this feel?” He kissed the softness where her thighs ended and then drew his tongue along the sensitive crease.
“Umm, it feels nice. But...” She trailed off, unsure of what was missing.
“But it’s not this?” he murmured.
She lurched as his tongue licked slowly and deeply between her labia, finding the core of her desire and exploding it to life in a single hot, wet stroke. Lights exploded behind her eyes, and her entire being jolted at the crazy pleasure ripping through her. Oh. So that was what all the fuss was about. Well, then. No wonder people liked sex.
“Again?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” she panted.
He obliged, sucking and licking and tugging at her throbbing flesh until she cried out, fisting her hands in the sheets and writhing beneath his mouth. She vaguely realized that her legs were thrown wide, granting him full access to her most private places, that her nipples were hard and hungry for attention, and that her entire consciousness had narrowed down to where his mouth was slowly but surely driving her out of her mind.
A wild buzzing sensation started to build in her extremities, racing inward toward her core, growing stronger and stronger until it crested all at once, crashing through her in a rush of pleasure that made her cry out as her entire body spasmed, arching off the mattress and into his mouth. Shock tore through her. She’d never expected to enjoy sex at all, let alone thought it could feel like this!
“That’s it. Sing for me, Carrie.” Barely giving her a moment to draw breath, his mouth closed on her again, and her hypersensitized flesh throbbed again. His lips closed around the bud at her core. One graze of his teeth as he sucked on the swollen nub, and she came again, even more sharply and powerfully than the first time. Tears of gratitude leaked out of the corners of her eyes, so overcome was she at realizing a normal, healthy sex life was possible for her.
Bass surged up over her, covering her body with his. He started to kiss her, then stopped abruptly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. In fact, everything’s unbelievably right.”
“So those are happy tears, not sad tears?” he asked cautiously.
“Those are ecstatic tears.”
“Ahh. I can live with those.” He confessed, “I’m a bit terrified when it comes to dealing with tears. They kind of freak me out.”
“You?” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think anything rattled you!”
“Honey, you rattle me so hard I don’t know which end is up, sometimes.”
“Me?” she asked in a small voice. That warm, fragile feeling in her chest expanded a little bit more, taking root a little more deeply in her soul.
“Yes. You.” He kissed her deeply then, the taste of her still on his lips. It was foreign and erotic, and she surrendered to it—to him—too overcome with pleasure to do anything but ride the wave he’d created in her.
She vaguely heard a plastic tearing noise, and then something hot and smooth, hard as steel touched the core of her pleasure. Impatient for more of this brand new world he’d opened up to her, she wrapped her legs around his hips, urging him to hurry.
“Easy, darlin’. I’m trying not to hurt you, here.”
“You won’t,” she panted. “I want you. Now.”
Bass groaned in the back of his throat. “You’re killing me, woman. Let me be a gentleman, here.”
The burning heat of him slowly pressed a tiny ways into her.
“Bass! Stop teasing me!”
“As the lady commands,” he muttered. And then he kissed her and stroked all the way home, filling her to bursting and absorbing her cry of pleasure into him at the same time.
Her internal muscles contracted and released spasmodically, and her hips rocked forward hungrily. “More,” she gasped.
Bass withdrew a little ways, and she tightened her legs around him in alarm.
“Never fear,” he murmured against her lips. “I’m not going anywhere. Not after I waited so long to get here.”
He plunged into her then, filling her once more. Drugging pleasure speared through her and she groaned her approval. “Again.”
“Demanding little thing, aren’t you?” he teased. But he didn’t keep her waiting and plunged into her again, wringing a keening cry of joy from her this time.
She hung on for dear life as he established an unhurried rhythm that her body picked up on and mimicked immediately. But he was definitely in the driver’s seat as she clung to him and he cradled her, carrying her higher and higher toward she didn’t know what. This was all uncharted territory for her, and she was happy to let him steer this ship wherever he wanted to take it.
A deeper pleasure built inside her this time, rising steadily to fill not only her body but also her mind, an emotional connection to Bastien that was a hundred times more seductive than the explosive pleasure of before. She looked up at him, losing herself in his shadowed gaze, amazed and overwhelmed to share herself with him like this and to have him share himself with her.
And a sharing it surely was. This was not a collision of self-absorbed bodies seeking momentary gratification that sex had been for her in the past. This was something entirely different. For the first time, she truly understood why people called it making love. She used her body to express everything she couldn’t say in words, opening herself to him, using her legs and arms to draw him closer, kissing him with unbridled hunger, touching his face with her fingers in the same wonder she felt throughout her body.
Bastien never took his gaze off her, watching her with hawklike intensity. God only knew what he was reading in her face. But it was okay. She was willing to share everything she was with him in this magical space they’d created, separate from the real world.
Emotions built up inside her until they refused to be contained any more, and as Bass increased the speed and intensity of his movements, her own body matched him. She strained with him toward wherever their final destination might be, eager to get there. With him.
An urge to laugh and cry and shout out her pleasure came over her and she stared up at Bass, her only lifeline to anything at the moment. Bass’s jaw tightened and his eyes glazed over as she looked on. She’d done that to him. She’d sent him to a place of pleasure so intense he was totally lost in it.
As her own orgasm clawed its way toward release, she, too, gave in to the primal demands of her body, losing herself in the slide of sweaty flesh, the piston strokes of Bass’s body against her swollen, pulsing flesh, the flex of his back muscles beneath her hands, the woodsy smell of him, the salty taste of his neck as she kissed him.
Bass surged into her one last time, his entire body arching against hers, and she met him halfway, crying out her own magnificent release. They shuddered violently against each other, clinging convulsively as their bodies and souls emptied into each other.
Everything she’d ever dammed up inside her heart broke loose, and she cried out as too many emotions to name—both good and bad—tore through her, laying her utterly bare to Bastien.
He stared down at her, and she stared up at him, too stunned to hide everything she was feeling from him. She regained feeling slowly in her fingers and toes. Gradually, awareness of his weight registered, but it was a delicious sensation she relished. He was breathing hard. Hah! She’d winded a SEAL! Of course, she was panting just as hard.
They lay like that for a long time, recovering from the intensity of their lovemaking. Her thoughts were disjointed, jumping from one observation to the next in random fashion. That was amazing. Shockingly, she felt safe. Sex done right really wasn’t related to violence. She trusted Bass.
Eventually, Bastien murmured, “You okay?”
Always the perceptive one, wasn’t he? “Okay wouldn’t be the word I’d choose to describe myself.”
Quick alarm flashed in his eyes. “What word would you choose?”
“Flabbergasted.”
“Umm, as in good?” he asked.
“Not good—great. Fantastic. Spectacular.”
He chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. “Glad to hear it. And yeah. You’re all of that.”
She let out a long, slow breath. He thought that of her? Really? She had to let that sink in for a minute. Eventually, she murmured, “Thank you for enlightening me.”
Bass leaned to one elbow and used his free hand to push her hair back from her face. “It’s not usually like that for you?”
“Umm, no,” she replied vehemently.
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Lousy taste in guys. Rotten past. Low self-esteem. Too shy to let go and enjoy. Trust issues. Take your pick.”
“Wow. Good thing I’m a brave man or that list might send me running for the hills.”
Yikes! The last thing she wanted to do was to spook him now. “Good point. Never mind,” she said quickly.
“No. Not never mind. I want to know you. All of you.” He gazed down at her searchingly, as if he would, indeed, peel back her emotional armor and discover all her most closely held secrets.
She waited for the panic to come, the need to run from him and keep running until he couldn’t possibly find her. Except it didn’t come, tonight. At all.
Flummoxed, she stared up at him. What was so different about this man that she might actually contemplate revealing everything about herself? Heck, she barely did that inside her own mind. Surely it was more than the amazing sex that made her want to tell all to Bass.
The answer was obvious, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit to herself how far and how hard she was falling for him.
In a bid to shift the subject to safer territory, she said, “What are you thinking, right now?”
“I’m thinking that I’ve never met a woman like you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Definitely good.”
That earned him a smile from her. She wriggled a little beneath him and his eyes widened as she felt him stirring where their bodies were still joined.
The humor faded from his eyes as he stared down at her and he spoke quietly. “I think it’s time you told me your real name.”