TRANSFERRING HIS ATTENTION to her other breast, Dylan slid his hand up the smooth length of Dani’s slender leg. He loved her little gasps and mewls, the helpless little hums of pleasure that burst from her. He’d never needed to hear a woman’s soft sighs in response to his touch before, never craved the sight of her arching helplessly and demanding more.
Her fingers slid into his hair and clenched against his scalp but he welcomed the pain. It helped steady him as he palmed her crotch, sliding a finger between the hot glistening folds. And, God, he loved the way her body quivered and melted.
She rocked against his hand. “Dylan!” The word emerged as a strangled plea. “I... I-don’t-want-you-to-be-disappointed,” she said on a rush.
Even as her thighs tightened around his hand something in her voice alerted him and he lifted his head and stared into her flushed face. She bit her lip and avoided his gaze, shifting restlessly beneath him as though at any second now she would bolt.
When he blinked and focused everything in him stilled. “What are you talking about?”
“I... I... I’m sorry,” she stammered, blushing hotly. “I’m no good at th—this part...” Her lips trembled and she pressed them together as her eyes swam. “I’m s-sorry.”
For Dylan it was a defining moment. Despite the haze of lust clouding his brain, he knew instinctively that if he handled the next few seconds badly she would retreat into herself and he’d never get another chance.
The last thing he wanted between them—especially like this—was the specter of another man. A man who’d made her doubt herself, draw into herself. A man who’d put that guarded look in her eyes and had her stiffening whenever Dylan touched her.
But if he wasn’t patient—if he didn’t show her how good it could be—it would be all over before it could begin. Before they could begin. More than anything Dylan wanted that beginning with her, despite her fears. And he couldn’t work out why she should think she’d disappoint him when she was so lushly generous with her responses.
Eyes locked on hers, he dipped his head to place a gentle kiss on her lips. And then another. “You couldn’t disappoint me, babe,” he murmured, stringing damp kisses along her jaw and across the elegant cheekbone to place a brief kiss on the tip of her nose. “Trust me.”
When she just looked at him, it occurred to Dylan that she didn’t trust easily. She kept her emotions locked up tight and it would take a lot of patience to find the key. The guy who’d hurt her had a lot to answer for.
Gently brushing damp curls off her face, he murmured, “I won’t hurt you, Dani. I couldn’t. Not you.”
She bit her lip, looking tempted but undecided even when it was clear she yearned to believe him. She didn’t trust her own judgment. Didn’t trust her own body.
He would just have to show her.
Rocking his hips gently against hers, he watched as her eyes darkened and her lashes fluttered as his shaft slid against her tender flesh. Then she sighed, a sound of such sensuality that he wanted to catch it in his mouth before it escaped.
Her eyes dropped to his mouth and she lifted a hand to trace a fingertip along the line of his bottom lip. Giving in to the urge, he parted his lips and drew her finger into his mouth.
“Just relax and let me make it good.”
“It’s just this,” she murmured, sliding her finger free to cup his face, her palm warm and soft against his rough cheek. “This is all I can offer. Once. Here with you.”
Covering her hand with his, he turned to press his lips against the soft skin of her wrist. He wanted to argue because he had a bad feeling that once wouldn’t be enough—wouldn’t be nearly enough.
“Yeah...” he rasped, pressing his hips closer and nudging her with his erection. “And then we’ll do it again and again...until we’re done.”
Wild color rushed into her face and she snorted. “I meant—”
“I know,” he promised with a wicked grin. “I know exactly what you meant. But just so you know,” he added, his gaze and his voice softening, “you couldn’t disappoint me if you tried.”
And then, because he had only one chance to convince her that once would never be enough, Dylan set his mind to seducing her. Despite his own impatience, the pounding of his blood, he began with hot drugging kisses that swept away her tension and replaced it with another kind of tension. Until she was moaning and rocking into his teasing touches with an eagerness he’d never encountered.
God, she was sweet. And she’d thought she wasn’t enough...
He ruthlessly overwhelmed her with sensation until she was writhing beneath him, teetering on the edge of another orgasm as she begged him to take her. And when he finally rolled a condom down the length of his shaft, captured her mouth and thrust into her body, he felt as though he’d come home.
She was tight, incredibly tight, and he had to resist the urge to bury himself deep. But the moment he breeched her entrance her body clamped down on his invasion like a velvet vice.
Pausing to tangle his hands in her damp hair, Dylan shuddered and breathed through his lust. He gritted his teeth and pressed in another inch, scattering desperate little kisses down her neck and across her shoulder to her breast.
“Relax,” he rasped, his voice strained as he carefully drew back an inch, then eased forward again.
He smoothed his palm down her thigh to her knee, enjoying the feel of the long slender muscles flexing beneath silky skin. Curling his hand beneath her knee, he lifted her leg to ease his entrance, watching each expression as it flittered across her beautiful face.
She might lock down her emotions, he thought, gritting his teeth but she couldn’t keep her thoughts from showing on her face. It fascinated him to see discomfort at war with desire, excitement and a growing sensual impatience.
She shifted restlessly beneath him as he smoothed damp hair off her forehead with shaking fingers. “You okay?”
God. A woman had never made him shake before.
“I’m f-fine,” she gasped, a flush rushing across her chest and up her neck into her face. Clutching at his shoulders, she wrapped her legs around him and arched up into his embrace. “Oh God, it feels so...good.”
And, with his gaze locked on hers, Dylan pulled back again and slowly thrust in deep, drawing a low moan of pleasure from her throat. Muscles burning with effort and eyes fierce, he captured her hands and laced their fingers tightly together.
“Keep your eyes on mine, babe,” he huffed out with effort. “And hang on. I’m going to rock your world.”
I’m going to rock your world.
Dani bit her lip as heat gathered between her legs and spread across her belly. Her foundations were already shuddering and she wondered if she would survive this sensual attack.
With him filling her completely, stretching her inner muscles, she could almost believe that she wouldn’t disappoint him. Almost believe that she could be what he needed, what she desperately wanted to be. For him.
But that wasn’t going to happen, she admitted with regret, because she knew from experience that once a guy got to this point he lost the plot along with his control and she always needed more time. More time to get into the mood, to strain for that moment of glory.
Dylan hadn’t wanted to listen, so all she could do now was try to make it as good for him as possible and hope he didn’t notice her lack of...well, finishing.
He was the first man in a long while to make her feel like a woman—the first man to make her feel as though this amazing feeling was possible, that she could let herself go long enough to be swept away. It was an amazing feeling. Almost as amazing as the feel of him inside her, surrounding her, the scent of him in her lungs as he moved over her, thrusting deep over and over and over.
Her inner muscles quivered. Heat was building, spreading. Oh God, had it ever felt this good?
Keeping his strokes ruthlessly slow and deep, Dylan stared into her eyes until the thread deep inside her belly drew tight. She trembled, finding the way he looked at her more intimate than his possession. She wanted to look away, to shut her eyes and lose herself in physical sensation. Maybe then she could—
She jolted when he nipped at her lip. “Stay with me,” he growled, and her eyes flew open to that fiercely intense gaze as he thrust long and hard and deep.
She rocked against him more frantically. “Please...” she gasped, clutching at him, desperate to hang on to the only stable thing in her wildly spinning world.
His slick muscles rippled beneath her fingers, oiled steel straining with the effort to keep his rhythm slow and deep as he ruthlessly drove her toward something as tantalizing as it was elusive.
“Please...” she sobbed again, unsure whether she was asking him to stop or to take his pleasure, because she wouldn’t...couldn’t come. Not like this.
Ignoring her pleas, Dylan kept his eyes on hers, kept her hovering on the edge as that thread tightened, building...building...until one hard downward thrust drew her completely under.
Her body arched up as she came, his name a hoarse cry of stunned pleasure bursting from her lips. She clung to him, the walls of her body clenching and pulsing around him as his thrusts increased in tempo and strength, sweeping her away into another helpless orgasm even more intense than the first.
Breath rasping like bellows, he finally slammed into her one last time, driving her up the bed with the force of his own climax. His muscles turned to stone and his eyes were a fierce green blaze in his tight face. Then the breath whooshed from his lungs as though he’d slammed into a wall, and he threw back his head and emptied himself into her.
Finally he gave a rough groan and collapsed over her, buried his face in her neck, his arms bands of iron as he held her to him. And all Dani could do was cling on and drift on a cloud of sensual delight.
She might have been stunned by what had happened if she’d been able to think. Locked to him, around him, her body pulsing with little aftershocks, all she could do was feel.
And she felt fantastic—so fantastic that all she could think of was that she wanted to hold it to her for just a little while longer.
She didn’t know how long they lay like that but when her heart-rate slowed to just under stroke level she became aware that she was wrapped around him as though she was terrified he would vanish.
Embarrassed to be caught clinging, she quickly released him and tried to push him off.
Lost in the hazy aftermath of spectacular sex, Dylan felt her pulling away and instantly tightened his arms. He didn’t want to move; he wanted to keep them joined, keep this incredible feeling just a little longer.
He flexed his hips and smiled at the odd little sound she made in the back of her throat—kind of a mix between a squeak and a wheeze as her body rippled around his shaft.
And then she gave another little shove.
Groaning, Dylan managed to get his elbows under him. He didn’t want to move. He liked being this close to her, their bodies still intimately joined. He liked the feeling of their sweat-slicked skin fused together and the way their combined scent filled the air.
He looked at her. Really looked. And he was pleased to see the rosy glow flushing her skin even as she evaded his gaze. He continued to study her, smug in the knowledge that he’d made her come not once but twice. All while buried so deep inside her he hadn’t known where he ended and she began.
His grin widened. So much for disappointing him.
The rosy glow deepened. “Stop that,” she muttered, giving him another little shove.
“Stop...?” He chuckled, dipping his head to taste the pulse thundering at the base of her throat. Her muscles quivered as he slid a broad palm down her back to the base of her spine, where he pressed, keeping them connected.
It was when he rolled them over that he realized why he’d never felt anything so good.
The condom had broken.
The knowledge was like an icy slap in the face.
As carefully as he could, he lifted her off him and slid off the bed, heading for the bathroom as reality hit him like a blow to the head. No wonder sex had been better with her than with any other woman. No wonder being inside her had felt like being wrapped in hot wet silk.
His breath escaped in a whoosh but this time he really had hit a brick wall... Because right now his little swimmers were heading for Ground Zero.
Cursing, he quickly disposed of the condom and cleaned up before grabbing the edge of the counter to steady himself. He closed his eyes and dropped his head between his shoulders as reality washed over him. For the first time in twenty years he was facing the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy and...
Abruptly he pushed himself upright and caught sight of his reflection. Hell. He looked like hell.
He froze and took another look. Actually, no, he decided, he looked as if he’d just had the most spectacular sex of his life.
Cursing again, he turned and grabbed a pair of jeans that were draped over the laundry basket, pulling them on with jerky movements. In seconds he was yanking at the zipper with unsteady hands, telling himself that they would face it when—if—it happened.
He took a moment to splash his face with cold water and then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Face dripping, he turned to see her standing a couple of feet from the deck doors, wrapped in his sheet, her eyes wide and distressed in her pale face.
He grabbed a towel and dragged it over his face to give himself a minute. It wouldn’t do to lose it now—not with that look on her face.
When he looked again she was still exactly as she’d been, frozen like a deer scenting danger.
With the morning light pouring in through the doors she looked like a young Eve, wildly beautiful and thoroughly ravished. Her pale neck and shoulders rose above the sheet, and even from here he could see the reddened patches of whisker burn and hickeys beginning to darken her creamy skin.
She was poised to run, and something...something in her eyes...warned him to be careful how he handled the next few minutes—warned him that she was bracing herself for... What? Movement? Violence? Anger?
Despite his inner turmoil, the panic in her eyes made him feel sick inside—because a woman didn’t look like that for no reason. It steadied him as nothing else could have.
Tossing the towel aside, Dylan took a step—and stilled when her eyes widened and she stumbled back. For a long tense moment he watched her nibble nervously on her lip, swallowing the words that sprang to his lips.
“I told you, I’m no good at...at that.” She gulped, struggling for composure as she went red, then white, then red again. “I tried to tell you but—”
“I’m not disappointed, Dani,” he interrupted, aghast that she could think so.
But clearly she did, because the wariness was back and she looked ready to bolt at the first move from him.
Sucking in a steadying breath, he said quietly, “You felt it as much as I did.”
Her posture relaxed slightly but her eyes remained locked warily on him, as though waiting for him to attack. What the hell?
He shoved impatient fingers through his hair, furious with himself for the fine tremor in them. Dammit, if there was ever a time he needed control it was now. Unfortunately it felt as though she’d wrested his control from him with that first look into her soft gray eyes.
“Tell me you’re on the pill.”
A quick frown drew her brows together. “What?”
“Birth control,” he rasped, cursing himself when she flinched. Exhaling carefully, he said more quietly, “The condom broke.”
For long moments she stared at him, confusion swirling in that stormy gray gaze. Then abruptly her eyes cleared, her brows drawing together as his meaning became clear.
Her breath escaped in a quiet whoosh. “Oh.”
When she looked neither pleased nor distressed by the news, it was up to Dylan to repeat, “Are you?” his fingers tightening painfully on the door frame.
Expression carefully neutral, she said, “No,”—so softly he almost didn’t hear it above the pounding of his heart.
He let out a soft curse, his fingers white-knuckling the doorjamb. “So you could get pregnant?”
Her gaze instantly shuttering, she turned and moved to the open deck doors, drawing Dylan’s gaze from the long, elegant line of her naked back to the twin dimples at the base of her spine.
The urge to drop to his knees and put his lips there rattled him and he crossed the carpet on silent feet, telling himself it was to keep her from bolting down the stairs.
“No, I can’t,” she said in a low voice when he came to a stop behind her.
“How can you be so sure?” He wanted to put his hands on her, to soothe the tension pumping from her in almost visible waves.
She gave a ragged laugh and lifted shaking fingers to shove wild, tousled curls off her face. “Because it’s impossible.”
Studying her delicate profile, the tense set of her shoulders, Dylan thought back to when she’d been flushed and sated. He wished he could turn the clock back five minutes.
“What do you mean, ‘impossible’?”
For long moments she didn’t speak, and then her jaw hardened. She turned to lean back against the open French door and her gaze was coolly amused. “I mean I have Asherman’s syndrome,” she drawled. “So I guess that lets you off a very unpleasant hook, Dr. St. James.”
Ignoring the subtle bite in her tone, Dylan’s eyes narrowed, dropped to her belly where he’d seen and traced those thin silvery scars with his tongue. “Asherman’s?”
“I had an accident...years ago,” she said with careful neutrality, as though they were discussing a patient. But Dylan caught the convulsive movement of her throat as she swallowed. “A bad one.”
Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly as she dragged the sheet closer. As though to protect herself from the words, from him.
“There...um...there was a lot of internal scarring and—” Her delicate brows drew together and she hitched a bare shoulder, the movement jerky and filled with a roiling tension. “The gynecologist said my chances of ever conceiving were negligible.” She spun away and sent him a mocking glance over her shoulder. “So you see why this is just a one-time thing?” She looked away. “Men want certain...things. Things I can’t give them.”
Dylan took the step that separated them and wrapped his arms around her resistant body, drawing her back against his chest. She didn’t pull away but stood rigidly in his embrace, tension vibrating through her like a tuning fork.
“You have no idea what I want, Dani,” he said deeply, pressing a kiss to her naked shoulder. “But I think we can safely say that I’d be an idiot if I didn’t want more of what just happened.”
She jerked her shoulder irritably. “That’s just sex, Dylan,” she scoffed, and he fought not to feel offended by her quick dismissal of what had been the best sex of his life.
“Pretty spectacular sex,” he reminded her with a trace of humor, smug satisfaction rising in him when she gave a helpless little shiver at the reminder.
Damn, he wanted her again, he admitted silently. She was soft and warm and, despite the driving need to toss her back onto that bed and remind her just how spectacular it had been, more than anything he wanted her trust. He wanted her to relax, to laugh. He wanted her to open herself to him, to turn to him when demons kept her awake at night.
Discovering a yearning inside him for all that left him reeling. They’d only just met, he told himself. It would be insane to think this was anything more than what it was: two sexually compatible people having spectacular sex.
Dylan tightened his arms and inhaled the scent of warm, sexy woman. If this was all she would take from him, he decided, then he’d focus on giving it to her. For now.
He continued to nuzzle her neck until his patience was rewarded. Her body slowly relaxed against him, although she didn’t turn and she didn’t try to touch him. Relieved, he brushed a kiss against the tender curve between her neck and shoulder.
Beneath the scent of his soap he could smell both of them. He could smell a unique fragrance that was all her, and the discovery made him want to imprint his scent on her as much as he feared hers was imprinted on him.
Hungry for more, he licked her skin, enjoying the taste of warm freshness overlaid with the faint saltiness of exertion.
A shiver moved through her. She tilted her head to one side to give him more room to run his mouth up to nibble on the tender skin beneath her ear. Mouth curving against her skin, he buried his face in the soft cloud of dark curls, tenderly running his hands up and down her arms, warming her chilled skin.
Finally she gave a ragged sigh and turned to him, her hands leaving a line of fire across his pecs and down his abdomen. She brushed her mouth across his nipple, small white teeth emerging to nip at the tight bud.
He shuddered. The feel of her mouth on him ratcheted up his hunger until he felt as if he hadn’t recently experienced that explosive, bone-melting orgasm. And, with his legs threatening to buckle, he swung her into his arms, determined this time to taste the long elegant line of her spine down to those sexy little dimples. He would taste her secret places and watch her face as he thrust into her body.
He wanted to be staring into her soul when she shattered.
It was just sex, Dani told herself for the hundredth time. Incredible, mind-blowing sex it was true but just sex. And now it was over. She could go back to being on the wagon and enjoy being alone.
And maybe if she repeated that to herself enough she might begin to believe it. She might feel amazingly alive for the first time in her life—alive, consumed and possessed—but that didn’t mean he wanted anything more than she did.
He lived in his world; she lived in hers.
But if it was difficult to forget the incredible sex—an amazing first for her—what had come after was even harder. He’d teased and cajoled her to spend the day with him, and before she knew it, it was two on Monday morning and she was limp as a rag doll from yet another mind-blowing orgasm.
She’d lost track of how many she’d had—a miracle in itself, considering she’d believed herself incapable. As she’d lain there, boneless and mindless, it had dawned on her that anything that came after would be anti-climactic.
He’d been wonderful, so sexy and romantic, and he’d made her laugh. It was the first time anyone had made her laugh as well as sigh while he was buried deep inside her body.
Nothing had ever come close to this intense feeling of rightness, and she was afraid that if she stayed she would start thinking that it was more than just sex. Because, despite her determination to keep it simple, she’d found herself sharing stuff about her family, about growing up geeky and nerdy and largely ignored by boys because she was shy and smart.
When he’d said he wouldn’t have ignored her, she’d scoffed. “Girls like me are invisible to boys like you.”
“Boys like me are idiots,” he’d said, and when she’d rolled her eyes he’d gone on to tell her about why he’d needed to get away after losing his grandfather and a close childhood friend so close together. Working aboard the Mercy Ship, he’d admitted, had opened his eyes to the plight of children in war-torn countries and he was determined to do something to help.
How could she not be swept away when he was so darn likeable? Not just wickedly funny but dry and insightful. And then there was that incredibly sweet streak.
He’d likely be horrified that she thought him sweet but what else could she think when a man made time for a lonely neighbor on the houseboat moored at the next berth? Or answered the endless questions Hilda Frauenbach peppered him with about poisons found in Africa and whether the African pygmy was hostile?
She’d found herself watching, waiting for the mask to crack and the impatience to show but it hadn’t. Either he was better at hiding his emotions than most people, or he really was what he seemed.
How did a woman resist a man who was amazingly patient and affectionate outside of bed and so thrillingly impatient in it? A man who spoke of his family in a way that told her of the deep love and respect he had for them. A man who didn’t ridicule her opinions or force his on her. A man who respected her reticence even as he tempted her to throw caution to the wind.
He’d told her about the woman he’d met on the Mercy Ship and how she’d tried to pass off another man’s baby as his, laughing when Dani expressed her outrage.
“I’m lucky,” he’d said, smiling sleepily down at her. “If I hadn’t overheard Simone bragging to that nurse I might not have been there to rescue you from that killer puddle.”
She’d rolled her eyes but her belly had jittered nervously at the implication that he was glad he’d been there that night when she didn’t know how she felt. She’d told him how she’d met Richard and hinted at bits of her marriage but she couldn’t—wouldn’t ever—tell him about the bad stuff because it was her shameful secret.
And if something inside her had trembled in envy when he’d talked about wanting the kind of relationship his parents and grandparents had, Dani ignored it and allowed him to sweep her up into a fantasy of shared laughter, hot glances and mind-blowing sex.
With him wrapped around her, his deep, even breathing disturbing tendrils of damp hair at her temple, she tried to ignore the panic that had crept up on her until she couldn’t breathe.
Old insecurities came flooding back, until it was all she could do not to run screaming into the night. She waited until his hold loosened and then she slid quietly away. Like a memory.
Because that was all their weekend could ever be: a time out of time. She was back on the wagon and they were back to being just neighbors and colleagues.
Yep. Neighbors and colleagues. Exactly as it was supposed to be.
Now all she had to do was convince herself that was what she wanted. She was back on the wagon and... Well, memories—the kind they’d made these past two days—were better than regrets.