Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

For that, she needed…this. Needed him . Needed him kissing her until she couldn’t breathe, needed to feel the weight of his body crushing down and his fire and force deep inside her. Needed more .

She cried out with wordless affirmation when she felt his hands cupping her buttocks, lifting her into him. She laughed when she felt his back muscles harden beneath her palms as his head came down and his mouth found hers.

Yes! she thought as she lifted and opened to him. Come inside me! Kidnap my soul! Take it away and hide it from me. Then maybe I won’t have to think or feel or remember.

In all his life Troy couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like this. He’d never had a woman respond to him like this, with all need unmasked, all passion unbridled. He found it irresistible. Impossible not to get caught up in it, like being in the path of a flash flood. What else could he do but go with it, let it sweep him away, ride the crest for as long as he could, wherever it took him?

At the same time there was a part of him that knew and acknowledged that, for all the thrill and intensity of it, what was happening between them wasn’t the real thing. That in a way it was more like an amusement-park thrill ride than a force of nature. That the thrills were temporary, and barring some weird catastrophe or some really stupid lapse on his part, the consequences minimal. This was fantasy. Fun . It had nothing to do with love. And nothing to do with the rest of his life.

He recognized, too, that there was a darkness in this woman’s passion, a kind of desperation in the way she kissed him. He did. And God help him, he ignored it. Maybe he didn’t have time to think about it then; maybe he simply didn’t want to.

She kicked off her sandals, and he plucked her out of the pile of sodden clothing, carried her, cradling her bottom and riding her soft places against his hard ones while she wrapped her arms and legs around him, threw back her head and laughed out loud. He threw away his thoughts as he laid her on the bed and followed her down, holding himself away from her with his arms while his head swooped down to capture her mouth. She lunged forward to meet him, nipping and tugging hungrily at his lips, raking his back with her fingernails, inflaming him almost beyond the limits of his endurance.

Dimly aware that things were moving a lot faster than he wanted them to, he tried to get his brain to order his body to back off, ease up, slow down. He might as well have tried to stop a cyclone. Still kissing her mindlessly, his tongue deep in her mouth, he felt for the condom he’d tossed on the bedspread. Found it, and bracing himself with one hand, tore his mouth from hers and ripped open the packet with his teeth. He heard her approving chuckle, felt her hands helping him…a silky coolness, more agony than assistance. And then he was sheathed, first in latex and then…at last, blessedly…in her warmth and softness.

He was conscious first of a most exquisite sense of relief-and then of surprise. For all its swiftness, the penetration had not been easy. He’d felt her body arch and tense in involuntary protest, heard the gasp she’d so quickly stifled. He wanted to believe he could have stopped even then, if she’d asked him to, or at least had the self-control to gentle them both. But she wouldn’t have it. Her legs wound around him; her body tightened and pulsed, further enfolding him. She lifted her head and shoulders, surging upward to meet him. Her breath came in gasps.

Thought, reason and control slipped away from him like the last willow branch in the flood. Instead it was her arms he grasped, sliding his hands along their smooth, slender length until he found her hands. She clutched at him, then laced her fingers through his and glared fiercely up at him when he pinned them to the mattress. Her mouth opened in invitation-no. demand. He plunged down and poured himself into the kiss, his body tensing like an archer’s bow as he drove more deeply into hers. And again, deeper still.

Pressure hammered inside his chest, screamed through his head, turned his muscles to iron. He heard her whimper and thought, Oh, no, I must be hurting her. Please…don’t let me hurt her.

And then he began to realize that the whimpers were mixed with laughter, and that her body was already shivering and pulsing and rippling around him. That her breaths were coming in gasps, bumping breasts soft as powder puffs against his chest.

His own relief came with the violence of an earthquake. His body rocked with it; a groan seemed ripped from deep inside him. He’d lived through quakes before, including one in Turkey that had killed people, but nothing had ever shaken him as profoundly as this. Nothing. In its aftermath he felt as if a building must have fallen on him. He wondered if he would ever move again.

Little by little he became aware of the woman who lay beneath him, first of the moist warmth of her breath on his cheek, then all the places they still touched-the slick union of bellies, the tangle of legs, the gentle abrasion of her hair against his forehead. He lifted his head and looked down at her, not at her face yet, but at their still-clasped hands, and saw the white imprints her now slack fingers had made on the backs of his.

His gaze shifted almost fearfully to her face. Her eyes were closed now, the lashes wet and spiky, the darkness beneath them like bruises on her pale skin.

Awash with remorse and other feelings less easy to define, he had an urge to touch his lips to each eyelid, to gently smooth back the damp strands of hair from her forehead and maybe kiss her there, too. But suddenly he wasn’t sure he had the right to do that, or whether that sort of tenderness was even appropriate under the circumstances. He barely knew this woman. Who in the hell was she?

What had he been thinking of?

Her eyes were open, studying his face with a dark, smoky look he couldn’t begin to read.

“Hey,” he said huskily.

Her lips moved in and out, moistening themselves. He watched them, wondering how, after what had just happened to him, he could still be thinking about doing that for her, with his own tongue.

“Hey yourself.” Her gaze slid past him. “Sounds like the storm’s past.”

He made a soft, rueful sound. “Think it went by a few minutes ago.”

Her lips twisted as she pulled her fingers from his and covered her eyes with her hand. “I was afraid of that. How much noise did we make?”

“Nobody over there to hear except Bubba,” Troy said, nodding toward the head of the bed and the wall beyond. He eased himself to one side, propping his weight on one elbow. “Besides, I expect that’s why they call it the Moanin’ Springs Motel, don’t you?”

She gave her special snort of laughter. Troy grinned and leaned down, limiting himself to one quick, hard kiss, one he figured was ambiguous enough that she could take it just about any way she wanted to. Then he gently separated himself from her and headed for the bathroom.

Charly got herself raised up on her elbows just in time to catch a glimpse of his sculpted back and rock-hard buttocks before the door closed, blocking them from view. For a few more minutes she stayed right there, while her heart slowed its hammering and her body awoke to the reality of aches and throbbings in a dozen places, and her lips tingled with the memory of that last kiss. Then she slowly sat up, peeled back the thin covers and crawled between the tightly tucked motel sheets.

She lay in the quiet, listening to the rain drip from the eaves outside, her mind a blessed blankness. She didn’t think about the pile of sodden, dirty clothes lying in the middle of the threadbare carpet, or where her suitcases full of clean ones might be or what she was going to do about all of that tomorrow. She was simply too numb and too tired. Too tired to think about the stranger in the bathroom.