Making His Move (7 page)

“Um, thanks.” She sounded soft, and shy. “You, too.”

“And you make me so fucking hot that I do and say outrageous things.”

She brought her arms under her chest as she looked over her shoulder, and he suddenly found himself drowning in those big, beautiful eyes that made him want to grab her up in his arms...and keep her forever. “I’m not complaining, Chris. I like the way you are. I like everything about you.”

“I like everything about you, too.” The doubtful look she gave him had him shaking his head. “It’s true, you know,” he murmured, bracing himself on his left elbow and hip so that he could roll her on to her back beside him. Curving his right hand around the side of her throat, he held her warm, luminous gaze as he went on. “I don’t give a shit that you’re smarter than I am. I fucking love your brilliant mind and your gorgeous body and your wry sense of humor. You are one hell of a woman, Sophie Ward, and I know damn well that I’m lucky as hell to have you here with me.”

“
Oh
.”

With another gruff laugh at the startled look of pleasure on her pretty face, he leaned over to press a soft kiss to her forehead, then licked his lips. Arching a brow at her, he asked, “Why do you taste like a fortune cookie?”

“Uh, long story,” she mumbled, blushing so pink she looked sunburned.

Intrigued, but sensing it was a story she was too embarrassed to share, he forced himself to do the manly thing and get up, so that he could grab her a washcloth from the bathroom. He tossed the condom he’d picked up from the side of the bed into the trash bin, then ran a washcloth under the cold water, knowing she might need it to soothe any soreness and swelling between her slender thighs.

When he came back into the room not a minute later, Chris was surprised to see that she’d drawn the sheet up over her naked body. Then he remembered how shy she was, and decided it was going to be fun as hell, getting her comfortable being naked in front of him.

She slid a dubious look at the wet washcloth, until he started coming toward her. Her attention diverted by his body, she watched him with an appreciative, heavy-lidded gaze as he walked back to the bed, studying his body from the top of his head and moving down, slowly taking him in. When she reached his right knee, she bit her lip, her expressive brows knitting together. He knew she must have seen the scar before, since he’d run into her sometimes when he was coming into work from a long run on Coronado and wore his shorts, but she’d never asked him about it. When she lifted her gaze back to his face, her silent question in those beautiful eyes, he heard himself say, “I blew my knee out my junior year of college, playing football.”

She winced. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he told her, sitting on the side of the bed and turning to face her. “It led to a better career than sports could have been for me. I needed something that kept me in line and gave me structure, so I went to work for another cousin of mine who’s a former Navy Seal. He started his own private security firm when he got out of the military, and was willing to take me on and train me. In all honesty, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

With a tender look of concern, she asked, “Didn’t you miss football?”

Leaning over her body, he braced himself on his free hand near her hip, and grinned. “Not as much as I would have missed meeting a certain little sexy-as-hell scientist who works at the Blackwood Research Institute if I’d never gone to work there.”

She laughed softly, the husky sound melting down his spine and settling with a thick heat in his balls. He shook his head at himself as he grabbed the sheet and started lowering it down her mouthwatering body, determined to convince her to let him tend to her with the cold cloth...before using everything he had to prove to her just how amazing they were together.

An hour later, Chris turned his head toward Sophie, where she was lying beside him with a drowsy expression on her pleasure-flushed face, and asked, “You sleepy?”

“Mmm...Maybe a little.”

“Then take a few minutes to grab a catnap,” he murmured, rolling to his side and pulling her soft, naked body into his arms, holding her close. “You’re going to need the energy.”

She smiled against his chest, and Chris closed his eyes, thinking he was one lucky son of a bitch to have found her.

And one who was determined to do whatever it took to keep her.

“W
hat are you doing?” Sophie asked sleepily, hearing the gorgeous man lying beside her, all but wrapped around her, fumbling with the phone receiver as he tried to get it back in the cradle on his bedside table. It was early Friday morning, and they would have to get ready for work soon. Especially since she needed to run by her apartment for a fresh set of clothes. But she planned on getting her fill of him first. Not that she could ever get enough. She was as insatiable as he was — and, God, had he been insatiable.

He’d taken her four...no,
five
times during the night, each searing encounter even more intimate than the last. Her lips started to curve with a smile at the memories, until she realized this might very well be the end.

With her cheek pressed against his muscular chest, she could feel as well as hear the deep rumble of his voice as he said, “I just called the institute to let them know that we’re both sick today.”

“We are?” she asked, surprised when she heard herself give a soft, happy laugh.

He gently fisted her hair and tugged her head back so that he could see her face, the sinful grin on his lips melting her down. “You bet your beautiful ass we are.”

“Mmm...Okay,” she conceded with a smile, stretching carefully as he loosened his grip on her hair, her body hurting in all kinds of bizarre places after the marathon of sex that had lasted through the wee hours of the morning, once they’d awakened from that first short doze. Slipping on a pair of shorts, he’d taken Max out for a bit, then ordered a couple of pizzas for dinner and grabbed them two cold bottles of beer, before dragging her back to his bed, where they’d picnicked on the tangled sheets.

They’d talked about anything and everything while they’d eaten. She’d shared the hilarious story of how she’d met Nat on a disastrous double date, and he’d told her about his nephew, Jase, who he spent a lot of time with, ever since Karin’s husband had run out on them for a younger woman. When they were full, she’d helped him gather up the plates, pizza boxes and bottles, and then he’d placed her on his kitchen counter, spread her legs, and eaten her out again for what he’d called his “dessert”, before carrying her back to his room, where they’d gone at it so wild and hard, she was surprised they hadn’t broken the bed.

She honestly hadn’t known that sex could be like what they’d shared. So raw and intense and exciting. Sure, she’d expected it to be amazing with Chris, because he was an amazing guy. But she’d mistakenly thought that the way he could make her feel was something that only existed in fiction.

Boy, had she been wrong.

As if he’d read the intimate nature of her thoughts, he tugged the sheet down until her breasts were bared to the cool morning air...and his dark, heavy gaze. Cupping one of the dainty mounds in his big hand, he stroked the callused pad of his thumb over her tightening nipple, then over the inner swell, where he’d marked her with his wicked mouth at some point during the erotic night. Lifting his gaze back to her face, he studied her expression, then looked deep into her eyes. “You’re so beautiful, and you don’t even see it, do you?”

“I look like a boy,” she murmured, a wry grin tucking itself into the corner of her mouth. “Especially in the boob department.”

“Like hell you do,” he argued in a velvety rumble, shaping her sensitive breast with his hand. “Yeah, you’re slight. But you’re so fucking soft, and you have the sweetest curves.” He came closer, rubbing his open mouth against hers, the golden stubble on his chin making her shiver. “I love the way you feel, the way you smell, the way you taste. You’re the most feminine little thing I’ve ever known, Soph. Completely beautiful, inside and out.”

Undone by his incredible words, she couldn’t hold her questions inside any longer. “Chris, what is this?” she asked in a soft, breathless rush of words. “What we’re...doing...together. What is it?”

Rolling on top of her, he settled himself possessively between her already spreading thighs, his tattooed forearms braced on either side of her head, his dark eyes locked hard on hers. “I think you know exactly what this is, Sophie.”

Did she? Or was she being naïve, thinking this was as special to him as it was to her? She was desperate to find the answer, but her thoughts fractured as he started to push himself inside her, her emotions manifesting themselves in physical desire. She needed that thick, breathtaking penetration more than she needed her next breath, but her swollen entrance barely gave way to the first broad, succulent inch of his cock.

He lowered his head, his firm lips touching her ear, and growled, “Come on, baby girl. Let me in.”

“I’m trying,” she panted, stroking her hands down the sleek, muscular length of his back, his heady scent filling her head.

He nipped her earlobe, then soothed it with his tongue. “Open up and take me all the way, sweetheart. The way that only you can.”

She spread her thighs even wider, arching beneath him, and another thick inch carved its way into her. Then another.

“Christ,” he groaned in her ear, his powerful body shuddering as she took a little more. “You feel so fucking good, Soph. It’s like you were made for me.”

“Give me
more
,” she pleaded, breathless, her nails digging into his firm buttocks as she tried to pull him deeper into her.

“I fucking love how greedy you are,” he muttered, reaching down and gripping her behind her left knee, then lifting it higher. He moved in measured nudges, careful not to hurt her, while she begged him for
faster
...and
harder
. And then she was finally giving way for him, her body pulling him in with a tight, voluptuous suction, her sex already pulsing with excitement, her orgasm so close she could taste it.

“Don’t worry about my cock.” He pulled his head back until his face was just above hers, his voice so low and rough it made her even wetter. “I put a condom on before I called Blackwood.”

“I wasn’t worried. I was just wondering how you can keep getting hard like this,” she gasped, drinking in her fill of the tender, possessive way he was looking at her, while his deliberately slow thrusts drove her wild. “I mean, we’ve been going at it all night long.”

“Sophie, baby, haven’t you learned anything in our time together?” he drawled, the corner of his mouth twitching as he pressed her down deeper into the mattress with his powerful body. “When it comes to you, I swear to God I’ve got no stopping power.”

He pulled back slowly, teasing her with the veined width of his shaft and his heavy cockhead as it moved through her clenching tissues. She would have been worried she was built too small for him, if it wasn’t obvious how much he enjoyed the tight clasp of her sex. He thrust forward to prove his point, filling her with his hot, massive cock, parting those tight walls and claiming her pussy for his own all over again. Then he lowered his head to her chest, sucking and licking at her nipples until they were throbbing and swollen, so sensitive she could have come from nothing more than the talented touch of his mouth.

 “Before this day is over,” he told her, lifting his head and locking his hot, piercing gaze with hers, “I’m going to shoot my cum all over these pretty little tits while you watch me.”

She gasped, too breathless to speak, his quickening rhythm and sinful voice stoking the fires in her higher...and higher, until she felt like she was going to detonate.

“I want to cover you in it,” he growled, fucking her so hard she had to reach up and brace herself against the headboard. “Pump it on to your tongue until it’s filling your mouth and you have to swallow it down. I want it shining on your lips when I shove my dick back inside you and drown your beautiful little cunt in it, Soph. Want it dripping out of you. You make me feel like a fucking animal marking its mate, but I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to. Does that freak you out?”

“No,” she groaned, shaking her head. “It makes me hot, Chris. I want all of that, too. All of it.
Everything
.”

Giving her a molten look of hunger, he reached between them, rubbing the callused tip of his index finger against her clit, and that was all it took to send her crashing over the edge. She came screaming and sobbing, the pleasure almost too intense to endure, his deep, satisfied growls at her ear letting her know precisely how much he loved making her lose control.

And when he followed her over, ravaging her mouth with an explicit, devastating kiss as he throbbed inside her, his hips grinding hard against hers, it only got better.

“
Will you stay with me?
” Sophie heard him ask, moments later, when they’d moved on to their sides, arms and legs tangled together, bodies still flushed with the heat of passion and pleasure.

Her breath caught at the seriousness of the question — because they both knew he didn’t mean just for the day or the night or the weekend.

“Chris,” she murmured, a small frown working its way between her brows, while fear took hold of her heart. “I...I’ve never been very good at this.”

His dark gaze burned with fierce, intense emotion. “Neither have I,” he told her, his thumb brushing across her rapid pulse as he cupped the side of her throat in his hand. “But then, I’ve never found myself feeling like this, either. I don’t care if we’re rushing it. I want you, Sophie. It’s not easy for me to talk like this. Hell, I’ve been accused of being the most closed off, shut down bastard on the planet. I don’t...I don’t talk easily. About a lot of things. But I’m doing it...for you.”

“I want you, too,” she whispered, taking an unsteady breath, irrationally terrified of the happiness that seemed to be waiting just within her reach. “But I don’t want to get hurt. That’s why I tend to be too guarded to let people get close to me.”

He nodded, taking a moment to think about what she’d said. Then he pulled her a little closer, and told her, “I know it sounds crazy, considering how quickly it’s all happened, but you’ve got me completely addicted, Soph. I’m fucking crazy about you, but I can hold off on getting too sappy until you’re ready.” An endearingly crooked grin curved his lips, his warm brown eyes crinkling at the corners, as he added, “But you should know that I’m in this for the long haul. And I swear to God I won’t hurt you, baby.”

She started to smile, her throat too choked with emotion for words to get through, her eyes filling with a hot, happy rush of tears. But his attention was suddenly on the closed bedroom door, and she realized she hadn’t just imagined the odd noise that had sounded as if it came from the far side of the condo. She’d assumed it was Max, bumping into something while he was playing, but Chris’s reaction made her ditch that idea. He wouldn’t look so pissed off if it were only his dog getting up to some mischief.

“Goddammit,” he grunted, quickly rolling off of the bed. “I thought we’d have more time.”

“What is it?” She pushed her hair out of her face as she sat up, watching him pull on a pair of sweatpants. “Chris, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”

He was already heading toward the bedroom door, his colorful shoulders tense, biceps like boulders as he shoved both hands back through his hair. Opening the door, he looked back at her, and said, “Just trust me, okay?”

“You’re freaking me out,” she whispered.

His dark gaze held hers, his expression almost...desperate. “Whatever happens, I
will
make this right, Soph.”

She caught her lower lip in her teeth.

“Just give me a chance to explain when I get back.” His voice was harsh, the handsome planes of his face tight with worry. “
Please
, Sophie.”

She gave him an uneasy nod, and he turned and walked out of the room. Sophie quickly jumped out of bed and grabbed the robe she’d worn while they’d cleaned up after dinner last night, and hurried out of the room behind him.

She didn’t know what exactly she’d thought to find when she followed him into the living room. But a stunning, drop-dead-gorgeous redhead hadn’t been it. Dressed in a short sundress, with long legs that went on for a freaking mile, the woman stood on the other side of the room, near the closed kitchen door, while Max clawed and whined from the other side, sounding desperate to get out.

The instant Sophie entered the room, the woman’s big blue eyes went wide with shock, and she turned an accusing look on Chris, who was stalking toward her. “What the hell is she doing here, you bastard? How could you do this to me?”

“Calm the fuck down, Erin.
Now!
I won’t have you upsetting her.”

“Her! You’ve got to be kidding me! You fucking cheat on me and you’re worried about her! What about
me
?”

“That’s enough,” he growled, grabbing her arm and pulling her with him toward the kitchen. They disappeared behind the door, Max’s whining fading beneath their raised voices.

What...the...fuck?

Feeling like she’d been doused in a bucket of freezing cold water, Sophie wrapped the robe tighter around her shaking body. She could hear the beautiful woman screeching ugly, angry accusations, her brittle voice cracking with fury and hurt, Chris’s low rejoinders impossible to hear. But there wasn’t anything he could say that Sophie needed to listen to.