Kate Hoffmann - Declan

“Now?” she murmured, crawling back on top of him.

Dec groaned, pressing at the damp spot between her legs. “Now.”

This time, she came down all the way, until he was buried deep inside of her. Rachel sighed and then smiled. She’d imagined how this might feel, but it was so much better. He was thick and hard and he filled her completely, his warmth, his strength, his courage.

She began to move above him, drawing him in and out of her body in a slow and easy rhythm. Dec watched her, his gaze fixed on her face, his expression intense. But what began quietly, soon turned into something much more desperate and passionate.

As Dec’s pleasure began to increase, he grabbed her waist and flipped her beneath him. Bracing his arms on either side of her, he continued to move but now he controlled the tempo and Rachel found herself losing touch with reality.

Through a hazy desire, she watched his face, tense in an attempt to maintain control, the clenched jaw, the closed eyes, the focused expression. But she didn’t care. She wanted him to lose control, to give it up to her in the same way she’d made herself vulnerable to him.

He drove into her hard again and again, then stopped, leaning over her and kissing her deeply. “You’re making me crazy,” he said. “I want you too much.” He slid down on her body until he could catch his arms beneath her legs, then began to kiss her belly.

A moment later, his mouth was on her, his tongue teasing at her clitoris. Rachel knew the feeling, knew how intense the orgasm would be and how quickly it would come. But this time, she wouldn’t give in to it. She’d wait and share it with Dec.

He brought her close again and again and she fought the pleasure. And when she could fight it no more, Rachel put her hands in his hair and tugged him back up along her body. “I want you inside me when I come,” she said.

He filled her again, still as hard as he was before, and began to move. But this time, Rachel let go, surrendering to the wild sensations that coursed through her body. She wasn’t sure it would happen, but as he increased his tempo, she felt herself spiraling upward. There was no stopping it and Rachel shifted beneath him, finding just the right spot to bring her the rest of the way.

Her orgasm hit her like a surge of electricity, gripping every nerve in her body for just one unbearable second. And then Rachel tumbled forward, falling into it, the rush of pleasure, the shocking spasms and the overwhelming satisfaction.

She hadn’t realized that Dec had found his release at the same time until her mind regained some sense of reality again. He was gasping for breath, driving into her, and Rachel sighed, running her hands over his chest.

There had been nothing bizarre or kinky about it. It was perfectly normal sex. But at the same time, it was the most extraordinary sex she’d ever experienced. Because it was with a man who touched her heart and her soul. She was falling in love with Declan Quinn and there was nothing she could do about it.

DEC STARED DOWN AT the pile of magazines that Rachel had handed him, his mouth hanging open. “What the hell are you doing with all this porn in your office?”

“We used it for a study,” Rachel said, her eyes fixed on the book she was reading. “I couldn’t throw it away since we bought it with grant money. Besides, those magazines don’t really go out of date that fast. They’re all pictures.”

“You realize what you’re asking me to do?” Dec said.

Rachel glanced up from her book, sending him an exasperated expression. “How am I supposed to get any work done if you insist on talking to me the whole time? I have things to do and since you’re determined to accompany me everywhere I go, then you need something to occupy yourself.”

“So you decided porn would do the trick? That titty magazines would occupy me?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like porn,” she said.

“Well, I do occasionally indulge, but it’s not a huge part of my life.”

“I’m giving you permission to indulge, so just sit back and enjoy it. I’ve got at least another hour’s worth of work to do and then we can go.”

Dec sat back on Rachel’s leather sofa and picked through the selection of magazines. There were all sorts, from the standard men’s magazines to some pretty raunchy stuff. “What exactly were you studying?” he asked.

“We asked men ages eighteen to thirty-five to choose their fantasy female from the magazine. And then we took the qualities of those women, quantified them and ran them through a computer program to see if there was a typical fantasy object for most American men of that demographic.”

“So you sat around and looked at porn with these guys?”

“No,” Rachel said. “They sat in a room and went through the magazines. They picked out a girl, then brought it out to me or one of my assistants and we logged it into the book.”

“You put a guy in a room alone with a bunch of porn?”

“We asked that they refrain from pleasuring themselves with our porn, but I didn’t ask what they planned to do once they left. I’m studying sexual behaviors, Dec. It would be hypocritical to begrudge them their own pleasures.”

Dec flipped through one of the magazines. “So what did you find out?”

Rachel closed the book in front of her and set it aside. “There was a certain type of woman who appealed to the majority of the men. After we made a composite photo, we gave it back to the men in our study and asked them on a scale of one to ten, how they’d rate the woman as their ultimate fantasy. She scored an 8.7, which was statistically significant.”

“And what does that mean?”

“We postulated that society, through media images in television, movies and magazines, trains men to be attracted to a certain type of woman. Back in the caveman days, these women were sturdy, strong, good gatherers and able to bear plenty of children. And this held true up until the industrial revolution. But now, things are changing. Men don’t take into account how a woman will help extend his genetic line. He’s simply interested in the sexiest fuck on the planet.” She smiled. “Excuse my Latin.”

Dec frowned. “Is that true?”

“Our research proved that. Once a woman was freed from the difficult and dangerous work of keeping a home and bearing children, she was free to be something else-a sexual object. A woman could be incapable of sustaining marriage and a family, yet the strongest men will choose her because she has large breasts and a tight ass.” She frowned. “As you can see, this doesn’t bode well for the future of mankind.”

Dec chuckled at her sarcastic delivery of the last line. “I love listening to you when you get all academic on me.”

Rachel continued her work as Dec paged through the magazines. He found his mind not captured by the sexy images he saw, but by what he and Rachel had shared the previous night. Though he had been guilty in the past of choosing women because of their looks, with Rachel it was different. Not that she wasn’t the most beautiful woman on the planet, but he was attracted to her because of her intelligence, her vulnerability and her honesty.

And then there was the way she made him feel in bed. He wasn’t sure what it was and maybe it was a combination of all the things he loved about her, but when she turned her full attention to making him feel good, there was nothing like it in the world. Every touch, every movement, drove him wild with desire.

He drew a deep breath, the thoughts in his head spinning into further fantasies. He had been in a constant state of arousal since the very moment he’d met Rachel and until last night, there’d been no decent relief. But now, he had every belief that what they’d shared would be enjoyed again.