Scorch (16 page)

Jacqui’s pulse was
racing and she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t get enough air. Couldn’t get enough Vin.

Vin. This was Vin she was sitting on, touching. His shoulders were smooth and hard, the scent on his skin dark and musky, the taste of his lips—

“Mmm.” She moaned into his mouth, stroking her tongue along his. In the back of her mind, she knew she ought to think this through more, think about consequences. She should feel shy or awkward, but everything about this felt so damned
good
.

She felt alive. Ecstatic and excited and expansive, like she was blooming. Flourishing.

He stroked her throat and ran his other hand down to the small of her back, encouraging her to grind herself against him. Her whole body burned. She thought she might explode, she was so hot.

He was a really good kisser. She liked the way he came on strong, then backed off, then came on stronger. She dug her fingers into his short hair and did the same to him, kissed him hard, eased up, then went deep and passionate.

He made a sound of approval and dug his fingers deeper into the cheeks of her butt.

Satisfaction licked like a flame behind her breastbone. His hand slid from her throat to splay over her breast, giving her a nice solid plane with his palm to press her nipple into. His other hand cruised all over her butt, cupping and shaping, getting to know her.

It felt really good. She arched, letting him know she liked the feel of him rubbing her cheek and wanted more of it.

Two hands went to her backside, caressing and rolling her hips so she grew more and more turned on, rubbing up against that rock-hard shape between her legs.

They kissed and gasped for air and kissed passionately again.

“I want to touch you.” She breathed, pulling back so she could run her hand down the hollow of his slouched stomach to squeeze him through his shorts.

His breath hissed in through his nose. He said a muted, “Yeah,” then, “Fuck, yeah,” as she burrowed beneath his waistband.

He wasn’t wearing underwear. That was all him, hot and smooth and so hard. Damp on the tip, pulsing in her fist as she gripped him, catching back a groan as she lightly stroked the thick, hard shape of him.

“Fuck, Jac, that feels really good. Are we really doing this?” He popped the button on her waistband.

“Don’t you want to?”

His answer was a push of his hand into her shorts that made the zipper splay. He cupped her through her underwear and she had a vague regret that she hadn’t known this was going to happen. She wore boring, white cotton things, but he didn’t seem to care.

“You’re really wet. C’mere.” He jerked his chin, asking for her kiss as he pulled his hand out of her shorts, then pushed back in, this time under the cotton.

She let out a sob of surprised excitement as his fingertip slid down her slippery cleft, parting her, grazed her clit then pushed to gently penetrate.

She grasped at his finger with her inner muscles, tightened her fist on his shaft, pushed her tongue into his mouth as she kissed him and they stroked each other.

It was incredible. Crazy sexy and incredibly arousing. She braced her free hand on his shoulder and he rubbed her nipple with his other hand and she thrust into his penetrating touch. He ate her mouth and kept his hand nice and steady for her and let her rock against the heel of his palm.

Pretty soon she was almost there. She rubbed him harder under his shorts, wanting him with her.

He pulled away from their kiss and lifted her shirt.

“Give,” he said, staring at her beaded nipple.

She was so close! He was still holding his hand firm against her, touching her hip with invitation for her to keep rocking.

She threw off her shirt, braless under it, and pushed both hands against the mattress behind his head, arching as he ducked his head against her. He pulled his hand almost out of her shorts, making her choke out a noise of protest, but he went back in, two fingers pushing inside her, working deep, increasing the sensations as he opened his hot mouth over her nipple and sucked hard.

“Vin!” She closed her arms over his head and rocked herself into his hand. It was selfish and earthy and she was
so turned on
. “Oh, please, oh—Oh!”

She came hard with a shudder and a string of noises louder than any she’d ever made in her life. It was embarrassing except not. She honestly didn’t care because her entire body was clenched in such a delicious fist of pleasure, contractions racking through her in glorious waves.

He kept sucking her nipple and gentled his hand. She tightened her muscles in protest as he eased out to softly caress her, keeping her floating, wringing out every last pulse of pleasure from her climax while he tongued her nipple.

Then he turned his head to flick her other nipple before he tipped back his head against the edge of mattress. His blue eyes glowed from behind the sooty line of his narrow lashes, hot as the center of a flame.

“That was really hot.” He was smiling faintly, flushed and intent, so sexy-looking she thought she’d die right there, utterly manstruck.

She sank onto him, kissing him with deep gratitude. Adoration. She folded her arms across his shoulders, behind his neck, and put everything she had into telling him with her kiss how good that had been for her.

There was absolutely no reason she should still be aroused, he had satisfied her thoroughly, but as he opened his hands under her breasts, gently lifting them, and her tingling loins met that firm log trying to tear a hole in the front of his shorts, she wanted to feel him inside her.

She wanted him to move on her and come with her.

She moaned and wriggled in invitation, then rose onto her knees again. Her knees were stinging with friction against the carpet, but she didn’t care. She leaned away to open the night table drawer. The condoms were from the time between her going off the pill and seriously trying to get pregnant. She’d found them as she had cleaned up in here and hadn’t known what to do with them.

Now she had a pretty good idea.

As he recognized the box, Vin’s brows went up.

“We’re really doing this?”

“Unless you have somewhere you need to be?” She held his gaze as she took one out and tore it open with her teeth, trying to act as smooth and blasé about it as she imagined the most experienced women were.

Then she sheepishly handed the little circle to him.

“That’s as far as I go. I don’t know what to do next.”

He choked out a laugh and took it from her. “Are you sure—?”

She hooked her hands in the waistband of his shorts and backed down his legs, saying, “Lift.”

He picked up his hips, allowing her to slither them down his thighs, to take them off and toss them aside.

“I guess you are,” he drawled, eyelids still low, gaze fixed on her as he smoothed on the condom. Then he pulled off his shirt and rolled into a crawl, coming toward her much like a panther stalking prey.

“Let’s finish getting
you
naked.”

She caught her breath, suddenly finding herself overwhelmed by Vin’s powerful form, clutching at his shoulders as he loomed over her.

If she had thought she had been in control of what had just happened between them, she knew better now. Unlike her, he was very experienced.

And strong. And adept.

The scratch of carpet was under her back before she knew it. He gently pressed her there and cleared her shorts past her knees in what seemed like one motion. He kissed her inner thigh, her stomach, braced himself above her and looked her over with a proud kind of admiration, like she was something that belonged to him.

Her stomach fluttered and her inner muscles pinched in sexual excitement.

“Vin.” She breathed in protest, shifting self-consciously. The way he stroked her inner thigh was nice, but it wasn’t the most modest position, especially when he nudged her legs open even more.

“You’re so damned pretty, Jac.” He leaned to lick her nipple. “I can’t decide if I want to go down or get inside you.” He lightly traced the sensitive skin of her bikini line, then lifted to watch. “What do you like?”

“Right now? Everything you do.” She pulled at his shoulders, wanting him to cover her, but he was solid. Way too strong to do anything he wasn’t ready to do. “
Kiss me
.”

“So impatient.” He ran his lips down her neck, his clever hand smoothing and exploring, claiming her from thigh to waist to breast. “Where’s the fire, Jac? I think it’s here,” he said, lifting again to watch as he moved his hand back to her mound.

She shut her eyes, shy, but the way he touched her felt really good. He gently parted and caressed, seeming to know exactly where to trace his fingertip so he was both soothing and inciting.

Her breath hitched.

“I seriously need a taste of that,” he said in a rasping voice.

“Quit
teasing
.” She tried to roll into him again, but he flattened her without effort, big body sliding down, one hand catching behind her knee and pressing so she was completely open to him.

“Who’s teasing?”

He
was. He brushed light kisses everywhere but
there
until she whimpered and lifted her hips, fingers in his hair and his name escaping on a frustrated moan. “
Vin
.”

He growled out a noise and
oh
. This was definitely not his first rodeo. He was really good at that. She quit thinking about first times and fairness and daylight and let him pleasure her. He wasn’t in any hurry, didn’t move when she said, “You don’t have to.”

He tantalized and she grew more and more aroused.

She
writhed
.

“
Now
you’re ready.” He rose to take a hard suck off each of her nipples. He was godlike, skin burnished bronze, face sharp and filled with lust. He kissed her with barely restrained passion. “I want to fuck you really deep and hard, Jac. Tell me if it’s too much.”

She only tipped back her head and groaned out a, “
Yes
,” that was ragged with hunger.

He thrust and she was so slippery and aroused, it was a white-hot drive all the way in. He gave her one heartbeat to accustom herself to the feel of him stretching her depths, to let him know if it was too much, then he withdrew and thrust with that same slow, shattering power.

“Like it?”

“Yes.” She clawed at his shoulders, locked her knees at his waist and dug her heels into the hard muscles of his tight buttocks, urging him to do it again. Harder.
Deeper
.

He gathered her under him, bracing her as he got serious.

She loved it. She absolutely loved the raw, animalistic, abandonment of it. Fleshy sounds and earthy moans. She threw herself into the act, into the fire of his need, trusting him to take care of her. He did. He thrust hard and steady, holding back his own pleasure as he stoked the flames of desire in her until she thought she’d scream from the heat. From the acute pitch of tension. From craving for—

Climax struck her like lightning, expanding as a flash fire inside her, making her arch with the power of it. Jagged cries tore from her throat.

“Jac!” Vin caught up in a few short strokes, pressed deep and stayed there, shuddering, rolling thunder through her in shivers of ecstasy. Filling her. Imprinting her with his weight and scent and the throb of his organ inside her, his groans of culmination thrilling her.

As the shooting pleasure eased to pulses of deep, gratifying bliss, he settled over her like a blanket of hot, sweat-dampened silk.

*

Vin rolled onto
his back, saw Russ’s bedroom ceiling, and threw his arm over his eyes. What the fuck was he doing?

“I didn’t mean to get that rough. Are you okay?” He couldn’t recall another time he’d been so intent on
claiming
a woman. He’d called her impatient, but he had been greedy for every single liberty she was willing to grant him and more. He wanted more right now. How was he still aroused? He had just emptied his entire being into her.

“Shh,” she whispered, voice thin and emotive enough to make him shiver. “I’m still floating.”

It only lasts a minute
, he silently advised. Then the ground rushed up and reality smacked your knees into your chin.

There was a wastebasket beside the night table. He only had to move his arm to discard the condom. He did, then sighed and covered his eyes again.

Waited.

For the reckoning.

Because there would be one. There always was.

His brow pulled involuntarily and his lips pressed together. “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you? I’m not an animal. That just got…really wild.”

“It did.” She sounded dazed.

He lifted his arm to look at her.

She turned her head. Her eyes were dry, but her soul was naked. This was the defenseless Jacqui who didn’t have a single shield against the cruelties life chose to visit upon her. It was the Jacqui who raised all his protective instincts to high alert.

He wanted to enfold her. Lock out the world. Be her shield. Take every single hit for her.

But he honestly didn’t know if he could do it without being destroyed along the way. So he resisted his impulse and just looked at her.