She stretched sinuously and undulated against his hand, all while her fingers drove him crazy circling the head of his penis.
“Gathering gear and breakfast…is that the best you have to offer a girl in the morning? Especially when she’s facing four days of severe roughing it?”
He lowered his head to lazily swirl his tongue around her taut nipple before drawing the bud into his mouth. “I might be able to do better.”
She arched beneath him and gasped. “Oh, that’s definitely better. What else ya got?”
“What else ya want?”
“You. Inside me. Right now.”
“Are you always this demanding?” he asked, reaching for a condom on the beside table.
“Sometimes. When I really want something. But being naked with you definitely brings out the demanding in me. Is that a problem?”
“I’ll try to make the best of it.”
“Good.” She snagged the condom from his fingers then in a lithe rolling motion-no doubt courtesy of her yoga classes-she straddled his thighs. He reclined beneath her, his avid gaze drinking in the gorgeous sight of her astride him, her hair in wild disarray, nipples erect and damp from his tongue, dark-red curls between her spread legs glistening with the wetness of her arousal.
“You realize I’m now going to want to be awakened in a similar fashion every morning we’re on the trail,” she said as she slowly rolled the condom down his length.
“So you’re telling me you’re not only demanding, you’re spoiled, as well.”
“Figured it was best to throw all my bad habits right on the table.” She raised up on her knees, then slowly sank down the length of his erection. He sucked in a hard breath as her tight, wet heat engulfed him, sizzling lust along his nerves. When he was buried to the hilt, she looked down at him through half-closed eyes. “And if I’m spoiled, it’s all your fault.” She rocked her hips, her satiny inner walls clamping around him, dragging a groan from his throat as he thrust upward. “You’ve set an extraordinarily high benchmark. Be warned-you have your work cut out for you.”
He was quickly losing his ability to make lighthearted conversation. “Yeah, making love with you is arduous work. I should be getting hazard pay.” Reaching up, Brett filled his hands with her breasts, forcing himself to concentrate on holding off his climax until she came, a Herculean task given her control-sapping movements: rising onto her knees only to slowly sink down, a mind-blowing slide into sensual meltdown, then leaning back to clasp her ankles, gyrating as he thrust upward into her hot wetness, harder, faster, her grip milking him until the fight not to come was a battle he was about to lose. The instant he felt the first ripples of her orgasm squeeze him, his control snapped and with a ragged groan, he gripped her hips and pressed her down as he surged upward, thrusting deeper as his climax bore down on him like a speeding train.
His breathing and heart rate hadn’t yet returned to the normal range when he felt her lips brush across his jaw. She lay sprawled on top of him, her face buried against his neck. His hands still gripped her hips and he remained buried inside her.
“Wow,” she murmured against his ear.
“Wow,” he agreed, unable to produce more than one syllable. Yet really, why try when that one described their latest bout of lovemaking so perfectly? Although, he couldn’t quite ignore the unsettling realization that he’d completely lost control of himself and his body in a way he couldn’t recall ever experiencing before.
“You were wrong, you know,” she said.
“Okay,” he again agreed, proud that he’d managed two syllables and too sated and lax to argue.
Her warm chuckle blew across his jaw. “You’re very agreeable after sex.”
“Yup.”
“Good to know. Such knowledge might induce a woman to keep you in bed all the time.”
“Okay.”
Another huff of warm laughter. “Don’t you want to know what you were wrong about?”
“Sure.”
“You said ‘good morning.’ That’s wrong. It’s oh-my-God, you-just-drove-me-out-of-my-mind-and-made-me-see-stars, freakin’-fantastic morning.”
“I stand corrected.”
He felt her lift her head and he forced his eyes open. Her beautiful green eyes glittered like jewels. “I feel-” she inhaled a deep breath then smiled “-incredible. Ready to take on the world.”
“Good for you. I feel like I’ve been rode hard and wrung out.”
“Honey, you were.” She cocked a brow. “Is that a complaint?”
He huffed out a laugh at the way she kept asking him that question. “Hell, no. Except that you’re now full of vim and vigor and I’m ready for a nice long nap.”
She shook her head. “Typical man. Well, forget it. We have gear to pack. A bus to catch. Miles of rough terrain to hike.”
“You’re killing me.”
She laughed, then pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “C’mon, lazybones. You’ll feel better after a nice, hot shower.”
His hands swept over her lush bare bottom. “I think perhaps my strength might be returning. But if we take a shower together, we might never leave this room.”
“We have to leave this room-and soon. We only have one condom left.”
She squealed with surprise as he reared up to a sitting position. “Talk about incentive. Hang on, sweetheart.” After she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, he snatched up the last condom, grasped her beneath her bottom, then headed toward the bathroom.
“Hmmm, it would appear the word condom has the same effect on you as spinach had on Popeye,” she murmured, nibbling on his earlobe between words.
“So it would seem, although scientific logic would dictate that it isn’t the word itself but the person saying it that caused this sudden boost in energy.”
“Again, good to know.”
“I don’t suppose you know how to say condom in Spanish?” he asked, reaching behind the shower curtain to turn on the water.
“I don’t suppose I do. But I bet if we went to a store and kissed passionately in front of the clerk, he’d get the idea.”
“Problem is, once I start kissing you, I can’t seem to stop. Instead of ending up with condoms, we’d probably end up with arrest records.”
“True. Luckily I have an English-to-Spanish dictionary back at my hotel.”
“So you’re not only gorgeous and sexy and hot enough to set water on fire-you’re also very handy to have around.”
She traced his bottom lip with her tongue and his body leapt to life. And he realized there was no point in even trying to deny that this woman posed a serious risk to his heart.
“Right back at ya,” she said, her lips curving into a sexy smile. “And as soon as we get in that shower, I’ll show you just how handy I really am.”
He immediately stepped beneath the warm spray of water, knowing that his heart was quickly slipping from his grasp and not giving a damn. “Sweetheart, consider me more than willing to be shown.”
9
FIFTEEN MINUTES into the three-and-a-half-hour bus trip-and she used the term bus lightly, as the vehicle was actually a van that looked as if it had belonged to a group of Haight-Ashbury hippies-to the hike start point and Kayla realized that she clearly was far too accustomed to luxury. Her butt was numb from the hard, worn, springless seat and she clung to the metal railing next to the open window-aka the air conditioner-with a white-knuckle grip. The wind whipped her hair across her eyes, a blessing because the less she saw of how close the vehicle frequently came to scraping the huge boulders that lined the bumpy road, the better.
The instant the driver had thrown the vehicle into gear, they’d zoomed off at what felt like a breakneck speed and her heart had lodged in her throat, a place she suspected it would stay.