Something Wild (25 page)

She moved closer, closer. Her fingers reached out to him and she lifted his hands from the arms of the chair. He had no idea what she planned. Heaven forbid that she should touch him again, lick him again. He wouldn’t survive another erotic onslaught.

She nudged his knees apart, and smiled slyly as she looked down at the hard, stiff rod that was actively applauding all her moves. Her humming pulsed through the room, reverberated against his body, charmed him. And when she had him more fully under her exotic spell, she stepped between his legs and positioned his hands on her hips, holding them there as she swirled her belly mere inches from his face.

“You’re driving me wild,” Mike told her when he was able to drag enough air into his lungs to speak. “When do I get to drive you wild?”

“You already have. I don’t want to be still when I’m near you. I want to move in ways I’ve never moved before, to do things I’ve never done before. Exciting you makes me wild.”

He sucked in a deep breath as her belly and hips worked their hypnotic magic on him, swirling around and around, mere inches from his mouth.

He’d barely exhaled when she slowly lifted her left leg and wrapped it around his shoulders. Breathing became an impossibility as his gaze slid over the lightly tanned flesh of her incredibly long leg, studying each muscle, each curve, her inner thigh—her skimpy white panties.

“Make love to me.” Her fingers whispered over his lips. “Show me that reality is better than a dream, that waiting for you was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Making love to Charity would be an answered prayer. She was his wife, the woman who’d make his days and nights whole again. The woman who could drive away his guilt.

Tilting his head, he kissed the inside of her knee and slowly, meticulously, caressed her silky stocking, slid his palm toward her heat. His fingers inched upward to warm, bare skin, and further still, until he reached barely-there silk, damp silk.

He watched her eyelids drop and her lashes fall against her cheek, watched a smile tilt her mouth as his thumb swirled over the patch of fabric between her thighs, gently at first, adding pressure gradually, until a sigh escaped her lips. “Mmmm, don’t stop.”

Stopping was the last thing he’d ever do, how could he when she lightly thrust her hips toward him, urging him on, as if he needed to be coaxed. He pressed a kiss to the soft warm skin at the edge of her panties, inhaling her scent, as he slid a finger under the silk—and found more silk, found velvet. So soft. So tender. So unbelievably breathtaking.

His finger swirled over slippery skin, then slid deep, deep inside her. She was tight and hot and her body shuddered. Her hips ceased to whirl, to thrust, and a purr sounded deep in her throat.

“Don’t stop, baby,” he growled. “Dance for me. Dance only for me.”

She became a belly dancer, her stomach gently surging, rolling, hypnotizing. “I love the feel of you,” he said, nipping the skin of her thigh, sliding a second finger inside her heat. “So hot. So wet. So ready.”

Tugging the narrow strip of silk away from her soft, sweet folds, he touched her with the tip of his tongue, his gaze darting to her face to see her mouth part slightly, to see her own tongue moisten her lips. He slid his tongue over her, lost in the taste, in the downy feel of her.

Her belly rolled harder, and he slipped his hands under her bottom and imprisoned her heat against his mouth. He nibbled and sucked on her wet and blazing flesh, inhaling her tantalizing and exotic scent.

“Please, Mike, please,” she begged, “make love to me.”

At last, he gave in to her pleas, swept her into powerful arms and carried her to the bed. He ripped back the covers, flicked the Belgian chocolates off the pillow, and laid her down in the center of the mattress.

With big fluffy pillows propping her head, Charity watched him draw her panties inch by inch down her legs, watched his penis thrust forward, hard, magnificent, eager. He left on her garter belt, her stockings and her spiked heels, nudged her legs apart, then lay between them.

As he lowered his muscular body over her, she felt rock solid heat press against her belly and longed to feel it entering her for the first time, stretching her, filling her, loving her.

He braced his arms on the pillow at either side of her head and looked down at her, his green eyes as sizzling as his body. Sweeping a lock of hair from her forehead, he kissed her brow, and his own wayward lock of hair tumbled forward and teased her skin, just as his tongue teased her lips. “Had enough?” he whispered.

“Why? Are you tired?”

He shook his head. “I rarely get tired, and even when I do, if I want something desperately enough, I go after it until... until it belongs to me.”

“I belong to you, Mike.”

“Then wrap your legs around my waist, and dance for me some more.” She did exactly what he said, crossing her ankles behind him, for once wanting to be controlled, for once, wanting to be touched.

“Move your belly, Charity. Move for me.”

She throbbed inside, needing desperately to know the feel of him within her. She swiveled her hips, felt his hand slide between them, felt the probing heat of him strain against her.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

She’d never seen such concern in a man’s eyes, such fear and longing, and she smiled. “I’m tough, Mike.”

“Not tough, Charity. Soft. Loving.”

He captured her mouth in his, and she almost lost her senses to the power of his kiss. Then she felt him press into her, so hot, so big.

He wanted to rush, to thrust hard and fast into her depths, to satisfy the driving, fierce need of his body, but he held back. He would be her first lover, her only lover, her last lover. Their first time together would be a memory he’d cherish forever, and he needed it to be a long, wonderful memory—for both of them.

Charity was velvety soft. Wet and tight, and Mike sucked a deep breath through his teeth as he pushed into her, half an inch, an inch, afraid to hurt her, afraid he was too big and she was too small and that they’d never fit together.

Warm hands clasped his face. “Mike?”

His eyes popped open. “What?”

“I’m not a delicate piece of China. I promise I won’t faint if you just take a deep breath and push. The only way I’m going to keel over dead is if you don’t do it
now
!”

He grinned. “Always ready to oblige a lady.”

He might not be a trained dancer, but he knew how to move his hips, and he thrust into the very core of her body.

A shudder ripped through her and he felt her tense. The muscles deep inside her tightened around him. He knew she wasn’t doing that on purpose, knew he’d hurt her, so he held still, watching the strain on her face while—okay, he’d admit it—while he enjoyed her contractions, her throbbing, her sweet, tight heat.

At last, a slow smile touched her mouth. She wiggled beneath him, and her magical hips began to swirl, around and around, torturing him, driving him to the brink.

Hazel eyes looked up at him. “Could you withdraw—just a little,” she quickly added. “Then, ummm, I’d really like you to do that lovely thrust again.”

“You mean this?”

He slid out an inch or two or three. He moved back in—a little farther, a little farther, and then he repeated the process.

“That’s it. A little faster, maybe.” He complied readily, which brought a wider smile to her face.

Hungry hazel eyes stared up at him. “I could dance a little more, if you’d like.”

“Dance, Charity. Never stop dancing.”

Her sleek hips moved against him, bumping, grinding, and even though he was a better cowboy than he was a dancer, he learned her routine and taught her a few of his own, moving within her, loving her.

Each one of her moans gave him a new lease on life, each plea not to stop drove him on and on until he rolled onto his back, carrying her with him.

“Remember the way you rode Satan?” he asked on a ragged breath. “Do the same to me.”

Her cloak of hair swept over him. She straddled his hips, splayed her fingers over her pelvis, and with a look of pure pleasure on her flushed face, she took the hard, hot length of him inside her.

And she danced, and rode him hard, and suddenly he knew why Satan had let her stay on him for so long. She was pure, unadulterated sin. Sexy. Bewitching. A temptress.

Thank God he’d found her.

In one fell swoop he pulled her beneath him again and thrust deeply, sweeping his arms around her, capturing her mouth and letting her cry and moan against his lips. She writhed beneath him, and then he felt her intense throbbing as her fingers dug into his back and didn’t let go.

But he did—he let go of the control that had always been a part of him, and exploded inside her.

It was the most powerful sensation he’d ever known, until Charity wrapped her arms around his neck and with tears in her eyes whispered, “I love you.”

A million climaxes couldn’t rival those three little words.

And a million climaxes would never be enough.

Never.

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The nightmare came back, ripping
Mike from sleep, from the peace he’d found in Charity’s arms, a peace he thought would be his forever.

His wife’s arm was draped over his waist, her body snuggled so close a casual observer might have thought there was only one person in the king-sized bed—a bed he needed to escape. He eased Charity’s hand from his stomach and she stirred, her eyes opening sleepily. He kissed her palm and she smiled for half a moment before drifting back into pleasant dreams, the kind he wished he could have.

It wasn’t quite five in the morning when he climbed from the bed and went to the window. Trying to go back to sleep was useless. Waking up this way, in a cold sweat with visions of Jessie’s hospital room, of beeping machines, and snaking tubes, of needles in Jessie’s thin, lifeless arms, and eyelids that fluttered but never opened, haunted him. They’d become a routine, as much a part of his life as preaching on Sunday and riding the prairie in rain, sleet, snow, or shine.

He pressed a fist against the wall and stared past the bright lights of Vegas, wishing he could see the heavens, wishing the horror and guilt of Jessie’s death would leave him. But he might as well have been staring through the hospital-room window again, because all he could see was the woman he’d once loved.

The doctors had told him there was no hope, that she’d been without air for so long that oxygen had ceased to get to her brain. “It’s highly doubtful that she’ll ever function again,” they’d told him. It was the words
highly doubtful
that haunted him still.

He’d been alone in making the decision. Jessie had no family but him, no one but him to stand beside the bed and watch her, only existing because she was hooked to machines. His pretty, vibrant wife could lay comatose for a very long time, or so the doctors told him. There was a slim chance she could live without the machines, too. Either way, a compassionate doctor had said, her quality of life would be negligible.

He remembered holding Jessie’s hand, remembered asking her what she wanted, but she couldn’t tell him. Her eyelids would flicker, her fingers would twitch, but that was all. She couldn’t answer him. Couldn’t kiss him. Couldn’t comfort him.

He would have asked God to help him make the decision, but he’d already felt that God had abandoned them. It was the only time he could remember his faith faltering. It was the one time when he’d needed it the most.

In the end he made the decision himself. He didn’t turn to God, to Jack, to his parents. He just stood at Jessie’s bedside, took her soft, cold hand in his, and asked the doctors to shut off the equipment.

And then he begged Jessie to live.

But she didn’t hear him, and since he’d turned his back on God—God hadn’t heard him either.

A few minutes later, Jessie was gone.

His penance for losing his faith, for playing God, was the nightmares.

He thought he’d been forgiven when Charity came into his life, when Charity fell in love with him. Charity was the woman he needed, the woman he wanted desperately and loved with all his heart; but she wasn’t the answer to his prayers.

A warm hand caressed his back and two loving arms stretched around his waist. He felt Charity’s lips on his back, her cheek resting against his shoulder blade, felt her take away some of what haunted him.

“Something wrong?” she asked softly.

He shook his head. “Just having trouble sleeping. It’s nothing new.”

“Too much on your mind?”

He nodded.

“If I knew what it was, maybe I could help.”

He couldn’t tell her about Jessie’s death. Couldn’t tell her or anyone else what he’d done— that he’d killed his wife. This was a cross he had to bear on his own. “It’s nothing.”

He heard her sigh, long, hard, and sad. He knew what she was feeling, that she was his wife now, that he should share his burdens with her, but she didn’t argue, didn’t try to coax a response from him. Instead she squeezed in front of him and nestled her bare behind against his pelvis. He wrapped his arms around her and they stood together quietly, just staring out the window.

“Are you going to miss all of this?” he asked, a new fear coming to light in the wee hours of morning.

“I might, if you have trouble keeping my mind, my time, and my body occupied.” Turning in his arms, she smoothed her hands over his chest, then smiled up at him. “But I find that highly unlikely.”

She had an uncanny way of taking his mind off his troubles. He knew they wouldn’t leave indefinitely, but he didn’t want to think about them now. Instead he kissed her softly, a grin touching his mouth as he whispered, “Mind if I occupy your body right now?”

“I’m all yours, Mr. Flynn. All yours.”