Cara Summers - Risking It All

Not quite gently, he clamped one arm around her waist and kept the other gripping her arm as he pulled her into the shower with him.

“I can be Rachel.” She nipped his earlobe. Somehow she’d managed to get hold of the soap, and her hands slid over his skin leaving trails of ice and fire in their wake.

“I love touching your body.” Her voice had become a breathy whisper. “Do you like it when I touch you here?” Her hand slithered from his shoulders down his chest.

“How about here?” Her fingers drew a line to his waist and then lower. “Or here? Do you like this?”

He closed his eyes as her slick, hot fist enclosed him.

“Or I can be Calli.” She dropped a quick line of kisses along his jaw and began to pump him gently.

“Or I can be both.” Her laugh was a breath in his ear before her tongue darted inside. And then she was whispering, “I could be two women at once. Is that your fantasy, Steven?”

He felt his head literally spin, his strength drain away.

“I could give you your fantasy,” she breathed. “Right now, I’m Rachel.”

Chance felt the subtle change in her posture. Her hand grew firmer on him and began to move more quickly.

“All during dinner, I thought of doing this. And this.” She ran a slick hand over his shoulder and down his back to spread her fingers over his buttocks. “If you’d been sitting next to me, I would have found a way to touch you—even with Lady Latham watching us from across the table. Can you imagine it?”

Her whispered words had the image filling his mind.

“We might have been caught while I was slipping down your zipper, inch by inch. And then I would have done this.” Her hand stilled, then milked him in one long pull.

With a moan, Chance slammed one hand against the shower wall to steady himself.

“You like that. Would you like me to make you come this way?”

This was madness. As he lifted his head and tried to clear it, she was all he could see—those wide eyes, the color now as dark and mysterious as the sea at night. That soft, soft mouth. In the misty steam that swirled around them, she made him think of a mermaid, and for the first time in his life, he understood how mythical sirens had lured sailors to their deaths. Those men simply hadn’t cared about anything else.

Then she smiled, and releasing him, she stepped closer until the length of his hardness was pressed against her softness. Her mouth was at his ear again.

“Now, I’ll be Calli. I’m not nearly as experienced as Rachel, but I read. When I was on the patio watching you play poker, I thought about this wickedly sexy book I read. It was all about what went on in this Victorian brothel. On Friday night, the men would gather in the parlor for a game of cards, and the lady of their choice would crawl under the table, and slip between the gentleman’s knees…can you picture that?”

As the image formed in his mind, she slithered down his body and took him into her mouth. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. He was drowning in her. Everything he was became centered on the sensations she brought him—the movement of that soft, hot mouth, the sharp press of her fingernails as she kneaded them into his backside.

He’d never felt a pleasure so intense. He wanted it to go on forever. But he wanted to be inside of her when he came. The struggle between those two desires was brief and vicious. But he finally found the strength to free himself. He knelt with her on the floor of the shower.

Water sluiced over them. Her wet hair clung to her forehead in jagged wisps, making her look different once again. The thought had barely entered his head, when she drew his ear to her mouth again.

“I’m a stranger you’ve just met. You don’t even know my name.” Her quick, wicked laugh only punched up the heat that was boiling inside of him.

“We have no history, no future, no expectations. You just know that you want me. You do want me, don’t you, Chance?”

Later he would wonder if it was her use of that name that pushed him to the edge. He didn’t know exactly who she was. When he looked into her eyes, all he saw was himself, trapped. All he was certain of was that he needed her with a desperation that threatened to slice him in two.

She smiled, but it wasn’t Rachel’s smile this time. Nor was it Calli’s. “I want you. Now.”

Chance was sure that he heard something inside of him snap as he dragged her to him.

HIS MOUTH crushed hers. The kiss wasn’t loverlike. It was hard, demanding, and Natalie reveled in the onslaught of sensations sprinting through her. This was what she’d wanted, the mindless passion that only he could bring her. She could almost feel the barriers crumbling inside of her. He made her so aware of herself, so free.

No other man had ever made her feel this way. It was forbidden. It was delightful.

Even as his mouth devoured her, his fast, clever hands were everywhere, molding, pressing, possessing. Pleasure, hot spiky arrows of it, pierced her at every contact point.

When he drew back, she was trembling. Then he dragged her close again. “You’re mine.” His voice was a harsh whisper in her ear. “Mine.”

Mine. The word echoed in her head as his mouth returned to hers. She’d wanted this madness, craved it from the moment she’d opened the door and seen him standing there. Now, he gave her no time to think, to breathe—no time to orient herself or anticipate. He ran his hand up her thigh and slipped two fingers into her, and her hips bucked to meet his touch. When he began to move his hand, her body moved with him, her muscles bunching, straining until her release, hot and hard, rocked her system. Only then did he drag her beneath him and drive himself into her on the floor of the shower.

“Look at me.”

Shuddering, breathless, she opened her eyes to him. Water poured down, but even through the mists, she could see his gaze—dark and fixed on hers. Her vision and her body were filled with him. Her whole world had narrowed to him. There was nothing that she would have refused him.

“Say my name,” he said.

For a split second, she hesitated, trying to clear her mind enough to remember who she was supposed to be. But he’d stripped all of those women from her.

Swearing, he withdrew and thrust into her again. “Say my name.”

“Chance,” she said. And she knew that it was Natalie who’d said the word, Natalie who was giving herself to him.

He nodded even as he began to move.

Wrapping her legs and arms around him, she gave herself over to the ride.

WHEN NATALIE opened her eyes in the morning, she found herself staring at Chance’s sleeping face. Even as her mind readjusted to reality, recalling the job, the danger, the events of the night before, she kept studying him.

In sleep, he looked different. There was a hint of vulnerability, a hint of the boy that was seldom there when he was awake. Both pulled at her, and she felt her heart take a slow tumble.

Not good, she thought, as she pressed a fist against her chest. She was pretty sure the heart gymnastics thing had nothing to do with hot, sweaty sex or fantasies about what went on in Victorian brothels.

Where had that one come from anyway? She’d never read a Victorian porn novel in her life. And she’d better remember that the Victorian scenario hadn’t been the only fantasy going down here. This whole thing she was playing out with Chance was a fantasy. He didn’t even know she was here. He thought he was with Rachel and Calli. He certainly had no idea that the woman who’d given herself to him in the shower and all last night had been Natalie.

Suddenly, she frowned. No, she hadn’t given herself to Chance. The word give was too closely associated with the heart acrobatics. And Natalie Gibbs was much too smart to give her heart to anyone. Maybe Calli was that type. As for Rachel, well, Natalie hoped that any cousin of hers would be wiser than that. But at least Natalie knew the kind of heartbreak that came when you allowed yourself to take that long fast fall into love. She’d seen what could happen up close and personal. Love had left her parents pining for something they could never have. And love for her dead husband had killed her mother.