At the reality of her regrets.
At the realization that he’d never have more of her than this.
Then, in that same spot, a sharper pain stung. For a minute it didn’t register as separate from the other hurt. Then it came again, another small bite of sensation and he looked down, pushing her away at the same time.
Her eyes were half-mast, her mouth swollen. She reached up to his chest, tracing with her thumb the shallow tracks of her teeth. “I did that,” she said.
Astonished, he stared at the marks and then at the smug expression of the woman.
“I want to do it some more,” she said.
His skin flashed hot and then he was on the move, dragging her from the shower and then dragging a towel over their flesh, the entire time battling the elegant woman whom he’d always assumed didn’t have a whiff of warrior inside her.
But she went heads up into a skirmish with him right now. Apparently she wanted un-delayed, unfettered access to his body and she fought to touch him, taste him, crawl over him even when they were standing, even when he was trying to do something as uncomplicated as getting her across the room and horizontal on that whipped cream- colored bed.
“Take it easy,” he said, holding her by the shoulders so he could move without their feet tangling and taking them both to the floor.
“I want it hard.”
Shaking his head, he laughed. “Really, baby. Relax.”
“Not till I get what I want.” She lunged for him, and twined her arms around his neck and one calf around his hip. The hot, melting center of her body scalded his thigh. Groaning, he bent his knee to give her some friction.
She moaned, and licked across his pecs to find one of his nipples. He hissed in a hard breath, then gathered his resolve and folded her up in his arms.
She made a muffled protest against the side of his neck and rubbed one of her nipples along the hard plane of his chest. Striding for the mattress, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You’re a maniac, do you know that?”
“Maniac for your body.”
He laughed, dropping her to the mattress, then following her down as soon as he managed to get on the condom he had in his pants. She went wild again, writhing under him, delivering hot kisses, scratching his back with her nails.
Lust slammed into him again, harder this time. Desperate to slow things down, he reached back to close his hands on her wrists before the sharp edge of her fingernails had him coming over her belly before he could make it inside her.
He pressed her hands to the mattress and reared onto his knees to put space between them…and to let him look at her creamy skin, her pretty curves, the pink-tipped breasts and the pink wetness waiting for him between her splayed thighs. She was breathing hard.
He didn’t think he was breathing at all.
“Noah. Noah, please.”
There was desperation in Juliet’s voice, renewed tension in her quivering body. His inner sexual thug was gleeful, urging him on in single-syllable words.
Fuck her. Fuck her fast. Fuck her hard.
But this was Juliet. Juliet!
The woman he’d watched, the woman he’d wanted, for something like a hundred years.
So he closed his ears to that low-life gangster and treated her like the lady she was. He penetrated slow, sliding against hot, tender tissues at a pace that had him gritting his teeth. She moaned as he seated himself as deep as he dared, but he didn’t let that little sound hurry him either.
Instead, he took his time and took her with the caution and care that she deserved. He used a gentle rhythm and shallow strokes, but still pleasure burned. When his climax could no longer be denied, he wet his thumb and touched her again, sending her on a soft, sweet journey. As her body quaked against his, he ground his teeth harder and resisted the urge to plunge deep. Holding steady, he didn’t move another inch, but let her squeezing contractions around his cock do the work to bring him off. His body shaking, he swallowed his groan of satisfaction until both their bodies were still.
As he pulled away, Juliet’s eyes were closed and her mouth looked bruised. Guilt swamped him—those kisses had been too damn rough—and he tried to apologize by pressing his lips to her forehead. She made a little murmur and shivered, so he drew the covers over her and went off to deal with the rubber. When he came back, she was sound asleep, and he stood there, watching. The sun was higher in the sky and now flooded the room. When its rays burnished the gold of her hair, Noah closed his eyes and turned away from the almost-painful brightness.
Twelve
All war is deception.
—SUN TZU
Marlys stood by the door of her boutique, wrapping up her good-byes to one of her few former bed partners. A pharmaceutical rep, Phillip dropped by when he had some minutes to burn between appointments. She figured he had other, ulterior motives as well: He liked the coffee at the bakery next door, and he loved congratulating himself on having never offered her the flashy diamond and marriage proposal he’d planned.