Which pissed him off. He’d had her, several times now. How could he still want her like this, with such a strong power he shook with it?
But some things, he knew, there just were no answers for.
“In fact, there are no words to thank you enough,” she murmured, her hands on his shoulders. She tipped her face up to send him a tentative smile, making it even harder to resist her-it warmed his heart. Yep, the organ he’d thought dead and buried reared its hopeful little head and made him smile back.
Stupidity at its finest.
“Wow.” She traced his lips with a finger, smiling dreamily. “You’re so beautiful when you smile, Noah.”
“Stop.”
She did, but before she could take her finger off his lower lip, he sucked it into his mouth.
Hers fell open, as if she needed it that way just to breathe, and that reaction, along with her sharp intake of breath, turned him on so fast his head spun.
Even though it’d been spinning since she’d first stepped onto his plane.
“No one else would have done all you have,” she said softly. “No one else would be willing to go with me now, to relive their biggest nightmare.”
Jesus, she was still trying to thank him. “Bailey-”
“I mean it.”
It wasn’t her gratitude he wanted, not even close. At the moment he wanted something far easier to swallow, and far more base. She was cradled between his thighs, making it easy to slide his hands down her hips, her smooth legs, and then back up again, this time beneath her skirt.
Her breath caught. “Noah.”
He loved that husky tone that had come into her voice, but just in case she planned to keep on thanking him, he covered her mouth with his to shut her up. Or so he told himself. But what he really wanted was to lose himself in the depths of her mouth, her body.
Hell, who was he kidding? He wanted her, all of her, heart and soul, because somehow, in some way, she’d become the salvation of his. His fingers encountered-oh God-some tiny lacy panties, the operative word being tiny.
Another thong.
Oh, yeah, he thought, cupping her bare cheeks, letting his fingers meet in the middle to trace that intriguing scrap of lace up…and down…and up…
Bailey’s breathing changed, became choppy, and her fingers fisted in his shirt over his pecs. She had a few chest hairs in the midst, but he held back his wince because no way did he want her to take her hands off him.
He needed those hands, needed them on him in the worst possible way.
When his fingers slid under the lacy strap of her thong, she sucked in a serrated breath.
“Spread your legs,” he whispered, then helped her along by nudging her feet apart with one of his, which gave him access to all he sought. “Ah, yeah, you’re wet.” It made his own breathing go as choppy as hers. “Is this more thanks, Princess?”
“No-” she managed. “That’s…that’s how much I want you.”
Lifting his head, he stared into her dazed baby blues.
“I want you,” she repeated softly, and taking her hands off of him, she pulled off her sweater and let it hit the floor. Beneath she wore a white lace bra that played peek-a-boo with her nipples, which were pebbled into two hard, pouty points. She let the straps fall off her shoulders to her elbows, so that the cups slipped, barely, just barely now, still covering her.
Her gaze shimmered with heat, such heat he knew he was playing with fire, and also something else, something more and deeper, and even harder to resist-affection.
It was that which slayed him.
So he closed his eyes and dipped his head, kissing his way down her throat, down to a high curved breast, and farther, dipping his tongue beneath the lace to tease.
Her hands fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, but he didn’t help her because that would mean taking his hands off her body and he couldn’t do that, he just couldn’t. He had her shoved hard against the buttons on his Levi’s in the front, his hands up her skirt in the back, one gripping her ass, the other playing in her slippery heat. He couldn’t have been any closer, and yet it still wasn’t enough.
He needed to be buried inside her, needed to be milked dry as she came apart for him, needed to hear his name fall from her lips as she did.
“Please,” she sighed in a pleasure-drugged voice, her head falling back as he continued to kiss her breasts. She stirred restlessly against him, rocking her hips in an age old rhythm. “I need-”
He knew. He needed it, too, and he played his fingers in and out of her, swallowing her whimper with his mouth, but it still wasn’t enough. She was fumbling at his Levi’s, working the buttons free, and then she slipped her hands inside. One touch of her hands encircling him, and his hips jerked upward. Then she stroked him, and he saw stars.
Christ, was it always going to be like this with them, fiery hot and unstoppable? He felt like a freight train barreling without brakes into his first stop, and there was nothing he could do. He yanked her thong down.
She tried to do the same to his jeans, but he was still sitting on the barstool. With a little growl of frustration, she sank her fingers into his hair and tugged his head up. “Help me,” she demanded.
With some half-baked Neanderthal idea of carrying her over his shoulder to his bedroom, he surged to his feet, but the bedroom seemed much too far away. Hell, the couch in the living room seemed too far. So was the kitchen table, just behind him.
Turning her back to him, she surveyed the room with the same desperation he felt. As if weak-kneed, she leaned on the barstool, and the hem of her skirt rose enough to expose a hint of the panties he’d tugged to her thighs. Turbulent heat and desire whipped through him, and with a hand low on her back, he let out a breath.
Oh yeah, there was a picture, Bailey bent over his barstool. Wrapping his fingers in the hem of her skirt, he pushed it to the small of her back, then nearly staggered at the sight of her white lacy thong barely clinging to her upper thighs, at the pink glistening glory between them, at the sweet curves of her amazing ass, the twin dimples at the base of her spine.
Utterly unable to help himself, he bent and put his mouth there, then worked his way up as his arms banded around her, his hands cupping the weight of her breasts, his fingers grazing her nipples.
Her hands came behind her, grabbing his hips, yanking him flush to her. He was going to last exactly one more second like that, so he took her hands in his and brought them in front of her, stretching her out, settling them on the edge of his granite countertop, tightening his on hers in a silent plea to keep them there.
She did, arching her back, still rubbing her ass up and down on him as everything within him began to draw up tight. Even his toes began to curl.
He couldn’t hold back.
With her, he could never hold back.
He’d wanted to make her come first, wanted to hear her pant out his name in that breathless, sexy-as-hell way she had when he’d put her in the throes, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, and fisting himself, he gripped her hip, bent his knees, and thrust home.
She cried out, a primal sound.
Heat, pure and simple, slid through him. He groaned with the pleasure of it and sank over her body as he gave himself up to what she made him feel, gliding a hand around her front, up her belly, over her breasts, his other holding on to her hip as he began to move.
He watched as he slid in and out of her, glistening, rock hard to her gorgeous softness, which gripped him like a velvet glove with every thrust. He was drowning in her, literally drowning. Every part of him was so primed to go off that he could no longer see past the sexual haze in his own head. He bent over her, pressing his mouth to her ear, the side of her neck, running his nose over her skin, absorbing the feel of her, her scent. On the very edge, he slid his hand down her belly and further, grazing his fingers over her center, his entire body jerking again when she let out a low gasp as he gently drew her between his thumb and finger.