Lindsay McKenna - Never Surrender

Gabe eased his fingers slowly up her warm rib cage, felt her soft, smooth skin against his roughened fingertips. He couldn’t help smiling into her slumberous-looking blue eyes that burned with arousal. The candlelight made her flesh glow an unearthly but breath-stealing color. Golden, radiant skin beneath his exploring hands.

Magic.

He picked her up and carried her to the bed and then bracketed her thighs with his own.

Gabe ran his index finger from the lobe of her ear down the length of her neck and across her proud shoulder. He devoured Bay with his eyes and his heart. He could see the faint beat of her heart near her left, curved breast. She meant the world to him. Gabe could not conceive life without Bay in it. Her flesh was radiant beneath the flickering candles. He monitored her expression, listened closely to her breath, watched the sharp rise and fall of her rib cage. He slowly curved his hands around each of her breasts. Bay’s expression tensed as she anticipated the touch of his thumbs wreaking pleasure across her taut nipples.

Anticipation was one of Gabe’s favorite ways of bringing her to the edge, increasing Bay’s hunger for him, for craving his touch, getting her keyed and so damned close to an orgasm until she started coming apart in his hands.

Her lips parted with a hitched breath, and she gripped his arms, waiting, wanting.... Gabe held her pleading gaze and smiled a very male smile. Leaning down, he exhaled his warm breath across the first nipple without ever touching it. Bay moaned with anticipation. He slowly circled it with his tongue, never touching the hardened center, tasting her salty flesh, drinking it into his body, drinking her into his heart. Her skin was firm, trembling and incredibly velvet beneath his exploring tongue. Feeling her frustration, her need of him, he finally gave her what she wanted: he drew the peak into his mouth, suckled her strongly, listening to her give a sharp cry of relief.

Gabe practiced the same tactical strategy with her other nipple, listening to her sigh and then a catch in her breath, craving his touch. He’d planned this for days, how he would tease her until she was mindless, achy and wet with the promise. But he never wanted to see tears, just the pleading in her eyes, her husky cries, as he turned her inside out with his hands, fingers and mouth. And then, he’d enter her, take her with him, his final objective to have her orgasm as many times as she wanted before he unleashed his power within her that final time. He brought his knees inside her thighs, opening her.

Gabe stroked the inside of her thighs, feeling how damp, how ready she was for him already. Her entire lower body cramped and convulsed as he slowly traced her wet feminine entrance. He knew how much she needed him inside her.

His thick, heavy erection lay across her belly as he captured one of her nipples in his mouth, suckling her. He sensed her need, that feeling of urgency. But he only gave her that patient, heated grin and eased her gently back down on the bed, making her wait.

Leaning down, he rasped near her ear, “Now...how do you want me, baby? Just tell me. I’m yours....”

Moaning, Bay gripped his hips urgently, crying out, “I need you...please, Gabe, I ache so much I hurt...please...”

He nodded, spreading her thighs, his erection at her wet entrance, barely brushing her, seeing her eyes shutter close. Her hips bucked upward to capture him. She sucked him deep into her. A groan ripped through Gabe as he arched forward, his body straining as she pulled him even deeper into her core. He kept steel control over himself, swam into that shocking, heated pleasure of sheathing into her. Bay was first. Always. Forever.

Gabe watched her eyes go wild with yearning, her hands grasping his hips, pushing herself against him in a begging gesture. He smiled and captured her lips. Her ragged breath exploded into his mouth, and he drank it down, drank from her lips, drunk with the heat streaking through his body, hardening him even more, wanting to thrust so deeply they’d never be able to untangle themselves from one another when it was all over.

Bay gasped wildly, then moved her tongue into his mouth at the same time he’d thrust forward deeply into hers. As she shut her eyes, he could feel her orgasm building, empowering her even more. He thrust his hips at just the right angle to give her intense, jolting pleasure.

Suddenly, a serrated cry spilled from her lips, and Bay threw back her head, spine arching upward. Gabe’s large hand slipped beneath her hips, holding her just the right way, increasing the pressure times ten. Her cries grew stronger with each powerful rippling orgasm as it tore through her. The tide surged through her in invisible, violent waves. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t gasp, captured in the storm of her body releasing fully and completely. And then, she collapsed, breathing hard against the bed, her body shuddering and her limbs suddenly going weak, barely able to move.

Then and only then did Gabe release the steel control over himself. He swam in the heat and slickness of her gift to him. He could do no less for Bay, surging into her soft, accommodating body that so tightly surrounded him. The heat seized him, and he could feel the glovelike tightening pushing his hungry body into overdrive. His lips lifted away from his teeth as he pumped relentlessly, hungrily, into her. His release exploded out of him. Beads of sweat popped out across his brow, his eyes tightly shut as he rode that hot, fiery explosion hurtling down through him. He had no idea how long it lasted, but it was a damn long time. Finally, Gabe collapsed on top of Bay, fighting to keep his full weight off her.

“Come here,” he said, his voice rough. He didn’t want to leave her body just yet, and he pulled Bay against him, his one leg between hers so they could remain coupled. “I love you, baby. God, I love you,” Gabe whispered against her lips, taking her gently this time, with all the tenderness he possessed as a man. Tonight was her night. Tonight, he wanted to love Bay with every cell he had in his body, make her his.

* * *

THEY REMAINED TOGETHER in every way, Bay’s head resting tiredly on Gabe’s massive chest, her arm limp across his torso. She dozed with him. The clock read three in the morning when Bay drowsily awoke, still in Gabe’s arms. He stirred, sensing her coming awake. Taking her to his side, he nestled her against him, tucking her in, his arm sliding around her shoulders. He kissed her brow. Her hands grazed his chest, her fingers tangling in his soft hair. His skin grew taut, muscles reacting to her gliding touch.

“Mmm,” Bay said, pulling back just enough to catch his sleepy gaze. “That was world-class, Griffin. You continually surprise the pants off me.”

He chuckled darkly and raised his hands, tunneling his fingers through that soft, curled mass of hair across her shoulder. “I like surprising any pair of pants off you. You look damn good naked.”

“That was a Hill expression,” she said archly, leaning up on her elbow and placing a kiss on his smiling mouth. A mouth that knew how to take her to the rim of the universe and back. Bay absorbed the tenderness burning in his eyes and rested her brow against his. “I just don’t want this night to end, Gabe.”

He sighed and moved his hand across her shoulder. “It will, baby, but you can always take it with you. Remember it and us in the quiet moments over there in Afghanistan.” Not that there would be many.

Bay didn’t want to discuss leaving. “I want to talk to you about our wedding.”

Gabe woke up a little more. The seriousness in Bay’s softened expression forced him awake. “Sure.”

She traced invisible patterns across his upper chest with her finger. “Our wedding is something positive. And right now, that’s all I want in my life, Gabe.”