Noah (43 page)

“I am…” He cleared his throat when his voice sounded a little too rough and aroused for his liking. “It is not my wish to deny you anything,” he explained reasonably. “You are free to do whatever you like. I know you are an independent person. But,” he hurried along when a wicked smile curled the corner of her delicious-looking lips, “but I am older and wiser when it comes to the world you have entered, and you have to understand that my advice has reason behind it. Good reason. And a desire to keep you safe.”

“Hmm.” She seemed to contemplate that for a second. Then she stood up and turned toward him as she pulled at her towel. The cotton cloth fell away from her body, leaving him with a breast-level view of her sleek body. “I have a desire to keep you safe as well,” she told him softly. “Safe here, in my arms.”

She slid her arms around his neck, stepping around his leg so she could get even closer. This brought the hard peak of her nipple to brush boldly over his lips. He made a repressed sound of need as she so easily mastered and called forth the fire from within him. It flowed over his skin and bones, melting through both until he was little more than hard, tensed muscle and an aching heaviness of arousal. All of which he knew she was counting on, shameless and relentless siren that she was.

“Noah,” she whispered against his hair. “I want you. And I know you want me.”

“Wanting you is not in question,” he murmured, his mouth brushing over her warm skin as he spoke. He let the tip of his tongue touch the surface of her breast, and she caught a breath and shuddered. “I will always want you.”

Noah gave in to her temptations, drawing her rigid nipple into the warm cavern of his mouth, flicking his tongue over her with expert speed and pressure until her knees went a little weak and she clung to him with a soft moan of delight. He left her with a teasing scrape of his teeth. If she wanted to play at seduction, he was more than happy to oblige.

“Oh, that feels so good,” she breathed into his ear as she rubbed her face against his hair. “I don’t know how or why, but it makes me so…so…”

“Hot,” he supplied for her roughly. “Hot enough that I can feel it radiating off your skin.”

He reached out to caress the globe of her breast with a long, graceful stroke meant to tease ever so lightly. His fingers then drifted down along the curve of her side as he reached to suck on her dark, tempting nipple once again. This time his draw on her was tighter, rougher. He was more insistent on hearing her cry out, which she did readily. Her head bowed to touch his, her damp hair hanging against his face and neck a chill contrast to the increasing warmth emanating from him.

Noah moved to gently run his tongue over a fading welt traveling diagonally over the rise of her breast. She eagerly sank her fingers into his dark hair, holding his head to herself with a shuddering sigh. Her nails rubbed against his scalp as he moved to attend the opposite breast, the sensation sending a shiver down his spine.

“I feel as though I’ve waited all day for you to touch me. It’s weighed in the back of my mind, rushing forward any chance it got, even with everything that’s happened tonight,” she told him.

The late night shadow of his whiskers burned over her skin; his tongue and lips scorched. Kestra felt his hands gliding into the bend of her waist and she sighed with contentment now that she was secure in the understanding that whatever his wishes a minute ago, he was now fully engaged in the moment. Noah broke away, pressing his lips to her breastbone as he chuckled against her.

“So sure of yourself, are you?” he asked as his heated hands skimmed down her hips.

She smiled into his silky hair.

“All evidence seems to point in my favor,” she agreed, her sly tone daring him to refute her.

“And if I were to stop, just to teach you a lesson, my brat?” He asked this as his fingers slid to the V of her hips, brushing with teasing touches through trim white curls. She felt so soft and damp, her heat an exciting balm against the pads of his fingertips. Her sweet, sexy scent washed over him, as did a surge of craving for her that struck him low. He could never leave her.

Never. For the rest of his life.

Kestra gasped as he discarded his noncommittal teasing and slid his fingers into her welcoming flesh. Just as quickly they were gone and he was making a sound of deep frustration over their awkward positions. He practically gave her whiplash as he swung her down onto the bed with a bounce. He pushed her knees apart, his gaze hot and intent as she opened to his viewing and anything else he wanted to do to her. She was breathing hard enough to fill the room with sound, and he smiled at how eager she was to feel what he had taught her to feel. What they had learned to feel together.

Noah bent to kiss her knee, his mixed-colored eyes flicking upward to meet hers, making certain he kept her fully engaged. He brushed a seeking palm along the inside of her smooth inner thigh. His mouth quickly fell into its path, making a sound of anticipation hiss from her lips. Kestra’s eyes closed in reflex, but the sharp squeeze of his fingers demanded she rethink breaking off eye contact with him.

“You wanted to play,” he scolded thickly. “Let us play.”

He pushed off with a knee on the edge of the bed and he landed over her entire body, braced on his hands, a palm on either side of her head and on his knees between her thighs. Kestra inhaled, taking in his aggression and his scent all at once. He pressed the front of his thighs to the backs of hers, pushing her farther open, leaving her exposed and vulnerable and making her heart pound when she realized he was still fully clothed and she was completely served up to his every whim.

“Ahh,” he growled softly in her ear, his lips playing over her sensitive lobe. “Finally she understands that two can play this game.”

“May the best one win?”

“May we both win,” he corrected, punctuating the sentiment with an erotic sweep of his tongue down the length of her neck. He shifted his weight to a single hand, resting his freed palm and widely splayed fingers against her collarbone. He swiftly skimmed downward over her breast, on to her belly, which dipped in an anticipatory tremble as he brushed her with a painter’s creativity for a long minute, exploring all curves and sensitivities.

Kestra sighed with obvious relief when his fingertips finally returned to their hastily abandoned exploration of the ready folds of her feminine body. He exhaled hotly against her mouth a moment before catching her up in a kiss that plumbed the depths of his passion for her. She felt his wild thoughts bursting across her mind, taking her breath away.

So wet. So hot. For me. I could spend a lifetime learning how to be inside you.

Kestra clung to his shoulders as tense pleasure sprang through her body from all the attention he was paying her. But at those thoughts, she was suddenly galvanized into action, her fingers falling to his shirt, dragging it from the waistband of his pants. He groaned deeply when her touch slid up over the bare skin of his back, but he refused to remove his hands from her to allow her to strip him of it. She cried out when two long fingers slid into her ready opening, the nectar of her aroused body hot to his touch as it bathed him. He felt the surge of answering longing thickening in his groin, his erection straining for its favorite haven.

But he’d longed for her all night, on one level or another, having been twisted through a wringer of every emotion ever created, and he wouldn’t give in too quickly now. For her, however, he had completely opposite plans.

He sought that special point of stimulation that so enjoyed the skillful sweep of his thumb. He combined this with the plunge of his fingers deep into her body and the sucking of his mouth upon her breast. He felt the sudden bite of her nails into his back and he shuddered in unison with her. Her hips lunged up off the bed to meet the rhythm of his fingers, just as he transferred his mouth to her belly and the sensitive line down the center of it. His progress below her navel deprived her of her grasp on him beneath his shirt, so she was forced to satisfy herself with a clutch of deep fingers in his hair, holding him to her—or perhaps pulling him away, he couldn’t tell which from one second to the next.

When Noah’s tongue replaced the work of his thumb against her, Kestra cried out with pleasure. At first it was a sound of denial, begging him not to push her to that level of hypersensitivity. Then it changed to acceptance, and finally encouragement. He felt the press of her knees against his shoulders, tasted the delightful ambrosia of her need as it built and flowed over his tongue. Her inner muscles clutched at his fingers, seeking blindly for release. A release he pushed her toward the next moment with an artful combination of strokes, both of taste and touch.

He loved the abandon of her orgasms, the vocal cries bordering on and sometimes surpassing screams. Still he pressed her, teased her, dragged out every last gasp and hitching whimper he possibly could before her strong legs practically kicked him away from her oversensitive body. Then, at last, he rose to his knees and stripped off his shirt. She lay spread out before him, flushed and ready still, gasping to catch her breath, all of it painting a picture of beautiful arousal that spurred him to strip faster.

When he was nude at last, he drifted up the length of her body using the brush of his mouth to herald his approach. He felt the trembling of her legs, the soft, gasping shudders of her breath, and it humbled him that she allowed him the trust and openness necessary for her to reach such a point of helplessness in pleasure. When she wound her arms around his neck and drew him down to her mouth, his heart pounded with the intimacy and emotion she was using to speak to him through them. Still she guarded her thoughts about the matter, and it stung him painfully, but he was willing to accept what she offered. It was more than she had been willing to give mere days ago.

For the moment, he allowed himself to be lost in the sensation of her silken legs wrapping around his, the press of her calves against his buttocks drawing him down to her, bathing his hardened shaft with welcoming liquid as he settled against her.

Kestra slid her hand between their bodies, seeking him, pressing him against her wet folds until he and her fingers were saturated, the head of his engorged penis rubbing her so intimately that they were both groaning with the eroticism. She had needed him forever, it seemed. While he had taken his time pulling pleasure from her body, she had writhed with the want of him. His manipulations had left her soaring, yet bereft, because she hadn’t had him deep within the heart of her, hadn’t clutched him to her very core where she so ached to hold him.

“Come inside me, Noah,” she begged him on a gasp. “Please…please…” That word became a litany as she whispered the plea over and over, sometimes strangling it in her throat as he bided his time sliding against her. But she felt the rivulets of sweat skimming off his body to drop onto hers, saw the dampening of his hair that put increasing curl into the dark locks. She knew, though, what he was seeking. Knew he would find it if he kept teasing her a few moments longer.

She burst into release, colors exploding brightly behind her eyelids as they clamped down tight in reflex. Finally, as she was quaking and pulsing still, he found her threshold and began to ease into her.

Noah pushed against the rhythmic squeezing of inner muscles as he entered her. She was slick, but tight, trying to finish her spasms of pleasure and adjust to his girth at the same time. It was a breathtaking and unbelievable sensation, and his pulse pounded under the onslaught.

“Kes…ah, baby…” He could barely speak as he slid farther into her, her hands sliding down to clutch at his hips in guidance, goading, and desperation.

Kestra felt him shift, brace a knee, grab her hip for leverage, and then he sank to the hilt within her. How was it possible? How could he make every time feel like the first? As if it were something new and wonderful they were only just discovering? As they went, they became less wild, but more intense. Was that even a differentiation? Yes, yes, she thought, it was.

Because she was beginning to care for him, and beginning to allow herself to accept that he truly cared for her. As a person. For who she was. Not because of genetic predisposition.

And that changed everything.

He suddenly covered her mouth with his, his hands sinking into her hair and cradling her head with tenderness and warmth.

“Shh,” he whispered against her kiss-swollen lips. “Time enough for thinking come the dawn. Just feel me, baby,” he coaxed her gently. “For now, just feel me.”

She nodded, allowing the sudden surge of panic to ease back into the racing pulses of passion. She did as he directed, focusing completely on the feel of his hard invasion into the very core of her. Noah began to move very slowly, drawing out each withdrawal and incursion back into her with blinding control. Kestra understood that all he wanted in the world was her pleasure, and he was going to go to hell and back to see she had it. She realized that he felt it was the only way he could express himself to her, the only way she would allow him to.

So he did so with the utmost of eloquence.

She pulled him back to her mouth and kissed him, her heart wrenching into a back flip as she put more feeling into it than she’d ever done before in her life. If he could use body language to fulfill the needs of expression, then she could, too. The kiss and the emotion she put behind it seemed to stir him as nothing else could. She felt it in the sudden slam of his body into hers, the impact as his breath shot out of him, and the pulsing spear of fiery heat that burned her suddenly from the inside out. Speed suddenly became all important. He pushed up the tempo until she couldn’t see or think straight, never mind catch her breath. His mouth worked against hers between gasps for breath and pauses to take her a little bit harder and a little bit deeper.

“Sweet Destiny,” he gasped hoarsely. “How you feel!”

Like heaven. Like hell. Everything…everything.

He resorted to the touch of their minds when he was too breathless to finish his decree. It was all the more intimate, so much more stirring, as if he were stroking her soul.