"I am," she replied dryly, then sucked in a breath when he eased his thumb into her silky-wet cleft and slid it up and down. "A natural L'Oreal number ten, Lightest Ultimate Blonde, blonde," she informed him breathlessly. Then her eyes lost focus. "Ohmigracious, Zachariah. Oh. My. Gracious ."
He tapped his shoulder again with his free hand and experienced a possessive sort of satisfaction when she immediately swung her feet up to prop her heels on them. Wrapping his hand around her slender ankle, he turned his head to press a kiss into her instep. Then reluctantly disengaging the hand that stroked between her thighs, he used it to grasp his hard-on and line up its broad head with her entrance. Leaning forward, he slowly pressed himself into her until he was buried to the hilt in her wet, furnace-hot, vise-grip depths. Pleasure shivered over his skin as he held himself still deep inside her. "Damn, you feel good."
"Oh, my gosh. Do I ever." She moved experimentally. "I. Feel. Full . So full. Which feels wonderful. Except—"
He eased his hips back, then pressed them forward. "Except?" Eased them back again, and pressed them forward.
"Well, except, you're too far away. I want to hold you."
He dropped forward, catching himself on his palms on either side of her shoulders. It drove him deeper into Lily, and she moaned as her legs slid down his arms until they hooked on the inside bend of his elbows. She reached up and locked her fingers behind his neck. "Oh, please," she murmured. "Zach, please."
And he began to withdraw and thrust back into her, withdraw and thrust, with increasing speed and force. Lily started making desperate noises deep in her throat and her Cuban-heeled pumps bounced in the air with every slam of his hips. Zach stared down at her, and she returned his look with an unfocused, lust-blinded gaze. "Christ," he muttered, and lowered his head to catch her mouth with his own. She kissed him back hungrily and sank her fingernails into his shoulders. Then her soft moans began to escalate and grow higher in pitch, and she strained to meet his pistoning hips. Suddenly she stiffened all over, her pelvis thrust high, and hard contractions deep inside of her clamped and released around his dick, milking its length furiously.
Ripping his mouth free, he threw back his head. Then, grinding out her name, he slammed his hips forward one last time and in scalding, bone-rattling pulsations, he began to come.
And come.
And felt her climaxing around him all the while as he continued to come.
Until, finally, totally boneless and feeling like a homeless stray suddenly in possession of his very own hearth, he collapsed atop her.
Chapter 15
Lily's arms slid away from Zach's neck and flopped onto the mattress. Her legs, released by his collapse, followed suit and splayed bonelessly upon the duvet. Holy petunia. So this is what really good sex feels like . She was perfectly content to lie crushed beneath the weight of Zach's inert body—until it occurred to her that she couldn't hear him breathing and was far from sure if that was his heartbeat she felt, or merely the thundering of her own. Summoning all her energy, she raised her right hand and petted his damp, muscular back. "You still alive?"
"Dunno," he muttered into her neck. But one of his hands lifted to stroke her from armpit to hip, then eased into a slow return caress back up her side. "I think I may have died and gone to heaven."
That's nothing. I think I may have gone and fallen in lov—
No. Shocked, her hand dropped back to her side. That's not true, so don't even think it . It was simply a case of having a sexual experience beyond anything she'd ever known. Don't confuse it for anything else, Lily .
But it was hard not to panic when Zach, obviously reacting to her growing tension, raised his head to look down at her. "You okay?"
"Yes. Sure. It's just… you're kind of heavy, and I, um, have to use the bathroom." Oh, jeez, you are such a liar. Not to mention a coward . But she was still relieved when Zach immediately lifted himself off her. She eased to the side of the bed. then sat up with her back to him while she took a couple of silent, restorative breaths. When he suddenly ran his fingertips down her bare spine, she just barely refrained from leaping straight into the air like a spooked cat. Instead, she flashed him a smile made vague by the fact that she didn't quite make eye contact when she glanced back over her shoulder.
"I'll be right back," she murmured to his hard jaw, and rose to her feet, tugging the top sheet free of the bed and winding it around her as she padded to the bathroom.
A moment later found her with the door firmly closed between them, and her hands braced on the vanity as she stared at the worried expression looking back at her from the mirror. "I'm not falling in love," she vowed in a low voice. "I am not falling in love!"
"Did you say something?" Zach called.
"No. That is, I'm just talking to myself."
She heard him laugh and looked back at her reflection. Dear God . She met her own horrified gaze. I'm falling in love .
This was awful. If she had to go fall for some guy, why him? He was the worst choice she could make— the complete and utter worst.
It was pure reflex that thrust her chin in the air. So, big deal, then. The answer to that is don't… Just don't fall in love . A little distance, a little perspective, and she'd get over it. Heck, it was probably nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to really good sex anyhow.
Oh, Lily, please. She blew out her breath. Lie to Zach if you have to. But don't lie to yourself .
She'd had good sex before. Maybe not as earth-shattering as what she'd just shared with Zach, but pretty darn great. The point was, she hadn't immediately gone from thinking Dang, I feel good to I must be in love .
Of course, she'd never tried to convince herself she lacked feelings for the current man in her life, either. Until Zach, she'd always gone into her admittedly limited relationships believing they were going somewhere. And if that didn't tell her something right there, she didn't know what would.
She was very much afraid this was the real deal. It might not make sense, but there you had it all the same.
The question was, what did she do about it?
For instance, even if he were to return her feelings— and face it, that was a mighty big if—was she willing to simply set aside her dream of opening her own restaurant to follow a soldier around the country?
No. Straightening, she dropped the sheet to reach for her periwinkle satin robe hanging from the back of the door. Let's get real here for a minute . Love was all very grand, but despite what the songs would have you believe, it wasn't always the be-all and end-all of every problem. Her dream was something she'd nourished for a lifetime … and that wasn't an aspiration one just blithely tossed aside. Not to mention she'd had her fill of moving every nine months with her parents and wasn't prepared to do it again.
Zach would probably be horrified in any case, if he had any idea she was in here attempting to decide their future. Chances were fair to decent that before he'd ever made his move, he'd figured the odds of her equating a roll in the hay with the chime of wedding bells. And considering she was a long way from anyone's idea of a starry-eyed kid, he'd undoubtedly come to the conclusion that she was old enough to know the score—that she could be trusted not to build fantastical scenarios out of thin air simply because the two of them had finally acted on the sexual tension that had been simmering between them since they'd first laid eyes on one another.
Tweaking her hair into some semblance of order, she pulled herself up to her tallest posture, then pulled her robe closed and tied the belt around her waist. She had to get back in there before he began wondering just what the heck she was doing. About all she could do at this point was take the situation as it came and live minute to minute if that's what it took.