Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

The bathroom door opened and Raley stepped out. His hair was still wet. He had on cargo shorts, no shirt. He dropped his dirty clothes and the duffel bag on the floor beside his bed. He ran his hand around the back of his neck, then propping his hands on his hips, he looked up at the ceiling and mouthed something that could have been either a curse or a prayer.

Only then did he look at her, and when their eyes connected it was with an impact that stole her breath. He reached her in two strides. Before another heartbeat, she was being crushed against him and his mouth was on hers. Their kiss was long and lusty and left her wanting more.

When his lips skated down her neck, she threaded her fingers through his hair. “I thought you didn’t like me.”

“Not much, no.” He breathed the words against her lips before claiming them again.

His body was hard, his skin still damp and warm from his shower. When he spread his hand over her bottom and fit her against his lower body, she made a small, yearning sound. “Raley, about Jay-”

“Never mind.”

“It was a fling. Nothing more. A long time ago.”

“Okay.”

“And that night he died, I swear I don’t know what happened between us.”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“I can’t remember.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It didn’t feel-”

“Hush, Britt.”

“But you…” She rubbed herself against him. “You I remember. You I felt. I still feel you.”

A gravelly sound vibrated in his throat as he lifted her against him and carried her to the bed. “Take off your top.” Her mind was spinning because of what his fingers were doing inside the front of her pajamas bottoms, but she could think clearly enough to do as he asked. She pulled off her tank top and tossed it aside, then folded her arms around his head as he lowered it to her breasts. His mouth was hot and possessive.

The dual sensations of his swirling tongue against her breasts and his stroking fingers deep inside her, combined with the edginess of her emotions, rapidly brought on a shattering orgasm. But the release was momentary. When she coasted down from it, he was peeling her shorts down her legs, and once she was free from them, he kissed her softly just above her pubic hair. Gently, so that she barely felt the pressure of his thumbs, he exposed her to his tongue. The touch was feather light, but it sent an electric pulse of pleasure through her, breath-stealing in its effect, and the second orgasm, or maybe just an extraordinary aftershock of the first, radiated from it.

He didn’t stop until she came at least once again and was listless and breathless, begging him softly to give her a moment.

He turned onto his back, unzipped his shorts, and took them off. Seeing his erection made her smile drowsily. Reaching for him, she traced the rigid length with her fingertips, her touch as light as a whisper. He groaned and tried to move her hand aside. But she began to stroke him, and when her thumb pressed the smooth tip, his breath hissed through his teeth. “Stop, please. I don’t have anything.”

“I’m aware of that.” She moved onto him and slowly bent her head over his lap.

He thought the sexiest sight he’d ever seen was Britt’s damp hair spread loose and shiny across his stomach and thighs. But it wasn’t. Even sexier was when she gathered her hair in one hand and held it back so he could watch as her lips closed around him.

He heard his first gasped expletive when her tongue found the slit. And stayed. And kept on doing what it was doing until any sounds he made were completely involuntary and incoherent.

From that point forward, he didn’t know what else he said, or if he said anything, because the sensations that assailed him rendered him mindless to anything except this, this incredibly erotic experience that was all the silky wet dreams he’d ever had concentrated into one.

Sexier still was after he climaxed, when she pulled him over onto her. He lay his head on her breasts while he caught his breath and let his fever cool. It was so good, feeling her fingernails idly scratching his back, the gentle rise and fall of her breasts beneath his head, the beat of her heart against his cheek.

Finally he lifted his head and surveyed the exquisite terrain. He grazed her nipple with his lips. “They’re always slightly raised.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s maddening.”

“You didn’t buy the right kind of brassiere.”

“That depends on your point of view.”

Her soft laughter turned into a whimper of pleasure when he touched her lightly with his tongue, then sucked her into his mouth. Her legs folded across his back, hugging him close. That was sexy as hell.

But the sexiest yet was when he lowered his mouth to hers. It was a lazy kiss that went on forever, a melding of their mouths, an exchange of tongues, intensely intimate, dangerously evocative.

He got hard against her belly, and he wanted to be inside her so damn bad his heart ached for it as much as his body did. He had just enough willpower to resist burying himself again in the snug, wet heat he remembered from that one time that had been way too rushed, too brief.

He had to content himself with her nakedness beneath him, and with her matching desire, which manifested itself when she gripped his ass and pulled him tightly to her, groaning something about life not being fair.

She said, “You could-”

“I could, but I wouldn’t. Once inside you, I know I wouldn’t.”

So they had to settle for kissing, touching, and eventually spooning, his arm across her waist, their hands clasped between her breasts.

Just before drifting off, he whispered sleepily, “I may like you a little.”

BRITT?”

“Hmm?”

Raley, already up and dressed, leaned down and rubbed the curve of her hip. “Get up. Time to go.”

Squinting against the cruel glare of the overhead light, she rolled onto her back and came up on her elbows. Shaking her tousled hair off her face, she yawned. “What time is it?”

The bedcovers dropped to her waist. Her breasts were within reach and looked oh-so-touchable. But he resisted. “Just after six.”

“Six? It’s only a two-hour drive to the capitol.”

“That’s right.” He grinned at her bafflement. “I’ll explain in the car. Come on. Haul ass.”

Fifteen minutes later, as he drove away from the motor court, he noticed her yawning again. “Did I get you up too early?”

“You kept me up too late.” Then, smiling shyly, she looked across at him. Their gazes held for several seconds, but neither remarked on what had transpired between them last night. None of it. Not their fight. Not their first heated embraces. But especially not…

No, don’t even think about that. Like her sleep-flushed breasts, it was a distraction he couldn’t allow himself this morning.

She said, “I’m surprised.”

“At what?”

“Your bringing me along. I intended to come, but not without an argument.”

“After what you did to Butch and Sundance’s car last night, they’ll be breathing fire this morning. I was afraid to leave you alone.”

“They couldn’t have followed us.”

“I wasn’t willing to take even the outside chance.”

“You would worry about me?”

He gave her a look, and the smile she sent back was as good as a caress.

Well, almost. Not quite. Her caresses were mind-blowing.

He turned his attention back to the road and concentrated on his driving.

“How do you plan to sneak me into the capitol?” she asked. “I’ll be arrested on the spot.”

“I have a plan.”

“Good to know. But I have one, too.”

“What’s that?”