“I really doubt it’s the lawyer. It may be just a fling with a human, Lelandi. I wouldn’t make anything of it.” He began rubbing her shoulders, kneading out the tension.
“He hasn’t been with a woman in a very long time, you told me. And he never stays with one overnight. It sounds to me that she might be a lupus garou.” Lelandi smiled and snuggled tighter against her pillow. “If he’s found his mate, then I only have to work on Tom.”
Smiling, Darien shook his head. “Tom’s bound and determined to wait for his dream mate. After I found you, he said he wanted to find a woman like that.”
“Well, if he doesn’t find one that way, I’ll have to help him along. Is Jake bringing the woman he’s with home to us soon?”
“I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you. And even that’s circumstantial. He might have just been getting ready to take his own shower.”
She frowned at Darien, looking as though she was annoyed he’d ruin her hopeful news. “But…?”
“Why would he be staying at a hotel in the first place?
When I asked him about the shower running, he acknowledged it was but wouldn’t say anything further. If he’d been getting ready to take a shower, he would have hurried to end the conversation. But he wasn’t. As if he was waiting for someone to get out first.”
He massaged some more as Lelandi took a deep breath. “Why wasn’t he in the shower with her then?”
Darien chuckled. “How would I know?”
“Hmm, well, it sounds to me as if he’s working his way up to things… which makes it sound like she’s a lupus garou. If she were human, he’d just get on with business and be out of there.”
“Maybe,” Darien said.
She ignored him. “He didn’t even want to go to Breckenridge. Guess he’s changed his mind now. I wonder who she is.”
Poor Jake. If Lelandi had anything to do with it, she’d have him mated to the woman before he knew what hit him.
The shower curtain slid aside and Jake’s attention remained focused on the closed bathroom door. He envisioned Alicia’s silky skin covered in water droplets and licking every one of them off.
Before he could give much more thought to the matter, she opened the door to the bathroom, letting the steam out. Dressed only in a skimpy bath towel, she stood in the doorway for a moment looking at him and seeming a little hesitant.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, frowning.
She twisted her mouth a little and shook her head. “I forgot to get a change of clothes.” Her brows elevated a bit when his eyes shifted from her body to her face. But still she didn’t move.
Wrapped in the towel, she was beautiful. Her dark hair was dry except for the ends that were dripping wet. The towel was so short that it was more like a big hand towel than a bath towel, unless it was for kid-sized individuals.
The fabric had little body, and even less when it was damp.
Clutching the towel in front of her, she took a deep breath and moved toward him. He was frozen in place, wondering what she had in mind. Hoping she wanted to join him in that bed of hers, which was way too big for just one person.
She paused in front of him and said, “My bag is behind you.”
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. Stray water droplets clung to her breastbone, a couple cascading down her throat.
He glanced lower and saw some trailing down her thighs.
With a purely primal instinct, he rested his hands on her bare shoulders and licked the droplets off her throat. She sighed and acquiesced, tilting her head back and baring her throat to him.
If she’d been a wolf, it would have been the equivalent of showing how much she trusted him. She appeared to revel in the feel of his tongue on her skin, her free hand grasping his shoulder as if to keep her balance. Then he worked his way down to her breastbone, capturing all the sweet drops kissing her skin, and she released a soft moan, her fingers gripping him harder, as if she was about to sink into the carpeted floor.
But he hadn’t finished and crouched at her legs, lapping up the sweet droplets clinging to her thighs. She chuckled, the sound throaty, sensual, aroused. “Tickles,” she said with a hushed voice.
When he stood, he saw her nipples pressed against the thin, barely there towel and looking aroused and needy.
He preferred thick and luxurious towels when he showered and dried, but on Alicia, thin and barely there was perfect.
His hand cupped a towel-covered breast as his mouth captured hers, moving her against the wall and pinning her there. As she moaned into his mouth, his desire for her ratchetted up several notches. He molded his hand to her breast, the terry cloth rough against her soft mound of flesh, the nipple pressing against the fabric. His thumb began stroking the taut nub through the terry cloth.
“Hmm, Alicia,” he whispered against her lips, drugged by the feel of her, by the whisper of her heated breath against his mouth, by the sound of her heart pounding as hard as his. She clutched at the towel until he deepened the kiss, and then her hands went around his neck and the towel slid forgotten to the floor.
Scooping her up, he carried her to the bed, yanked away the cover, and deposited her. He shucked off his clothes as she watched him, her gaze lowering to his rigid arousal. She made him hard with a touch, a glance, a whisper of a kiss. No woman had ever affected him the way she did.
When he was naked, he joined her in bed, his hand caressing her breast, his eyes looking into hers—dark, rich chocolate and full of desire.
He bent his head and kissed her parted lips while her tongue touched his, teasing and penetrating his mouth, and he sucked on her tongue, smiling when she moaned in capitulation.
His hand massaged the supple mound of her breast, enjoying her softness compared to his hardness. He leaned over and licked her nipple, mouthed it, and tugged gently on it the way she had done his. But his fingers soon swept down her soft belly and lower until he found her wet curls and the place at the apex of her thighs already swollen and moist with eagerness. She parted her legs, combing her fingers through his hair as he plied her with strokes between her legs meant to bring her to joyful climax.
Her pelvis arched against his stroking fingers as she lightly moaned with pleasure, pushing him to deepen his movements while he watched the expression on her face —lost in bliss, her tongue moistening her lips, her eyes heavily lidded with lust. He loved the way she writhed under his ministrations. Loved bringing her to climax and seeing her expression of elation. Wanted to do it again and again.
Alicia hadn’t meant to allow this to happen, hence the hesitation when she’d stepped out of the bathroom to get her skating skirt out of her bag but found Jake standing in front of it. Dressed as she was in the skimpy towel and the way he was eyeing her with interest, she was certain he wasn’t going to let her get away with just pulling a handful of clothes from her suitcase. Not that she wanted to discourage him. That was part of the problem.
She didn’t have an ounce of willpower when it came to wanting him. But she imagined that if she had managed to get dressed, he’d want to undress her once he saw her in the skimpy ice-skating outfit, and they’d be right where they were now.
His fingers stroking her caused a flare of white-hot heat to erupt deep inside her. With her nipples tingling with delicious feminine appeal and her freshly showered skin even more sensitive to his every touch, she arched against him like a feral animal, craving more and faster and harder and deeper. She’d never felt as wild or uninhibited as she did with him. She wasn’t sure why, but at the moment, she didn’t care. She just wanted to enjoy the fiercely intense sensations of pleasure that he made her feel.
Her bucking against him encouraged him to stroke and push his fingers deep inside her chasm, to explore and rub and send her hurtling to the edge of the earth and beyond. She was so close to climaxing, the sweet ecstasy just within reach, and then the explosion came, the rapture of his touch pushing her over the edge into a starry universe of pleasure. Her insides quaked with completion as she cried out softly, her hands clasping his waist, then moving over his hips and his buttocks, and sweeping up his back.