Kylie Brant - The Last Warrior

His inaction lasted only seconds. Then his mouth came alive beneath hers, and he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her. His dark, sensual flavor arrowed through her system, played havoc with her pulse.

When his tongue pushed into her mouth, she met it with her own. Her fingers delved into his hair and she brought him closer. He knew exactly how to kiss, she thought dizzily, hard, hot and wet, as if he was staking a claim. He exuded a smoldering sexuality that a woman couldn’t help but want to test. And once tested, come back for more.

She unbuttoned the first three buttons of his denim shirt, then swept her hand in, fingers tingling where they touched warm smooth flesh. One of his hands came up to clasp hers, and slowly, reluctantly she opened her eyes.

“Hard to keep this straight. Are we done being smart?” he rasped.

Remembering their last conversation when she’d sent him away, she pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth. “How about if we settle for being careful?” He didn’t respond, just continued to look at her with that heavy-lidded gaze. “I’m going to be here for several months, Joe. And then I’ll leave. There’s really no reason to deny ourselves this, is there?” She took his bottom lip in her teeth, scored it lightly. “As long as we both want the same thing until then, what’s the harm?”

There was a long moment when she thought he’d answer. But then the moment passed and he opened his car door, her hand still in his. Fingers clasped, they walked up her front stairs, the sexual awareness growing with every step.

Delaney fumbled for the keys she’d slipped in her pocket, opened the door. Already she was having second thoughts. Who was she kidding here, really, herself or Joe? But before the thoughts could take root and doubt bloom, he followed her in the doorway and crowded her against the wall, his mouth in search of hers again.

Her muscles took on the consistency of warm wax. There was the hunger she remembered in his kiss. The hint of savagery that called to an answering wildness in her. She’d never been one to shy away from danger. And there was danger of a sort in Joe’s arms, in the fierce pressure of his mouth, in the dark promise of his touch. But it was a danger she longed to explore.

His hand went beneath her shirt, unsnapped her bra and she gave a hum of approval as she made short work of the rest of the buttons on his shirt, eager to feel flesh against flesh.

Their hands battled as they strove to undress each other and then he was pressed against her. She hissed in a satisfied breath at the contact. Her hands roamed his back, muscle punctuated by vertebrae, then traced the corded strength in his shoulders. His chest was smooth, his bronzed skin several shades darker than her own. And she had a slightly primitive compulsion to taste it with lips and tongue.

He shuddered against her when she did and Delaney had a moment to savor his reaction before she found herself swung up in his arms. His eyes glinted down into hers. “The bed this time.”

Lazily, she linked her arms around his neck. “We found the bed last time,” she reminded him. “Eventually.”

He dropped her on the bed, his face stamped with unmistakable male appreciation as he swiftly stripped, modesty obviously not a factor. And he definitely had no cause to be modest. Delaney propped herself on one elbow to admire his hard flat abs, lean flanks and the straining length of his manhood.

Her perusal was cut short when he joined her on the bed. Her hands streaked over him, down his sleek ridged sides, around to clutch at his taut buttocks.

He had her naked in a few swift movements, then she pushed at his shoulders, urged him on to his back. A satisfied smile curving her lips, she slid on top of him, and savored for a moment the exquisite sensation of bare flesh to bare flesh everywhere they touched-legs, hips, chests.

There was something fundamentally sexy about a man who let a woman enjoy his body, slowly, languorously, without attempting to take control or hasten toward the end. She kissed the cord at the side of his neck, tested it with her teeth, before moving lower to explore the dips and hollows where sinew met bone. She teased one hard male nipple with her tongue. Her palm slid along his side, over his hip, across his belly, and she felt the muscles jump and clutch under her touch.

His hands were hard, just shy of rough, as they swept over her shoulders to find her breasts. Her vision blurred as he took a nipple between thumb and forefinger, squeezing lightly. As a result her nip to the skin just above his hip was a bit sharper than she intended. But the resulting hiss she heard from him wasn’t one of pain.

He was hard, turgid and she pressed her mouth along his belly, careful not to touch him where he straining and ready with anything more than a whisper-soft breath. Her fingers skated down a solid muscled thigh, nails scraping lightly and she could tell the exact moment when his patience neared its end.

The fingers he threaded through her hair were just short of desperate as her palm skated closer, inch by infinitesimal inch, until she closed her fingers around his rigid length. The satisfied sound he made abruptly strangled when she took him into her mouth.

She had mere moments to relish the flavor of him, infinitely dark and sinful, to slide her tongue down his velvety shaft and up again to taste the heated drop of his desire at the tip. To stroke him in a way designed to create a madness in his blood, a frantic hammering that would echo the tattoo of her own pulse.

He drew her up for a long desperate kiss, teeth and tongue clashing, his fingers wrapped in her hair, cupping the back of her head to hold her close. And she knew then that her efforts to drive him just a little mad entrapped her as well. In seducing, she was seduced. Her ministrations had the blood chugging through her veins, inflaming her passion even as she deliberately stoked his.

She felt him tense below her and knew that in another instant he’d have her stretched out beneath him. But she wasn’t ready for it to be over. Not until they both were shuddering with desperation. Not until she’d etched a lasting memory on his mind, one that time and distance wouldn’t completely erase, even after she was gone.

She tore her mouth from his and straddled him, her hands stroking his sweat-slicked skin. His clever wicked fingers were finding all the places guaranteed to make her forget everything but the urgent need to find the shattering satisfaction she already knew he could bring her.

He was fumbling with the foil packet he must have taken from his jeans pocket, cursing viciously when it took too long to open. Delaney took the latex sheath from him, positioned it and then rolled it with excruciating slowness down his shaft.

His face was a hard mask of desire, brutal in its intent. The sight called to something reckless in her, a fervent wish to tempt and tease until his uncertain control shattered. But his hands were on her breasts, the deliberate teasing of her nipples firing a path straight to her womb. He rose to take one in his mouth, not quite gently, and her vision hazed.

She pressed him back, guiding his hands over his head to close his fingers around the old iron headboard. His eyes slitted as she took him in her hand and guided him to her softness. Then paused until he gasped a curse, a prayer, before taking him in, one tiny fraction at a time.

He felt thick, huge. That first bolt of pleasure had her head lolling, breathing growing strangled. She took him farther inside and then, when she heard him groan, lifted again. She drove them both a little crazy by keeping her movements shallow, denying them both the urgent motion they craved.

Somewhere in the distance she heard an animal’s mournful cry and the sound called to something basic in her, an elemental primal need to mate. She opened her eyes, tried to focus. Joe’s face was sheened with sweat, his hands clutching tightly around the worn painted iron. Every muscle in his torso, his biceps and shoulders stood out in stark relief. She leaned forward, closed her teeth against one rock-hard pec and unleashed the beast.