“No.” It was the same abrupt tone he’d used in the parking lot when he’d backed off from kissing her. But this time he didn’t back off. He simply stood there, looking down at her with hot dangerous lights dancing in his blue eyes. “I’m on the thin edge of control here, Slim, and if I put my hand down your blouse now, I’m going to end up fucking you where you stand, right here against this door, in front of God and everybody. Is that what you want?”
She almost said yes. The word hovered on the tip of her tongue for a dangerous moment, enticing them both with the possibility of flagrant debauchery. And then Tom put his hands on her shoulders, jerked her away from the door, and turned her around. “Get the key, Slim, and open the damned door.”
Roxanne fumbled for the key, fumbled as she fit it into the lock, fumbled as she turned the doorknob and stepped over the threshold. She should be aghast, she knew. Ashamed of her lack of control. Appalled at her willingness to make a public spectacle of herself. Yesterday, she would have been. Maybe tomorrow, she would be again. But right now, she wasn’t. Couldn’t be. Right now, she was on fire, burning up from the inside out, trembling with desire. The only thing on her mind, the single driving thought in her head, was the overwhelming need to assuage the heat, to quench the aching desire, to find sweet release with her good-looking, dangerous cowboy.
And then the door crashed closed behind her, and his arm encircled her waist, and he spun her around, crushing his mouth to hers, and she ceased to think at all.
He propelled her backward toward the bed, his mouth fastened to hers, feasting, his hands moving over her body, frantically molding her breasts and back and the sweet, subtle curve of her bottom through her clothes. Her kisses were as greedy, as wildly intemperate as his, her hands as frantic, touching him everywhere she could reach. The backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed and she tumbled onto it, pulling him down on top of her. They bounced once, sending the cowboy hat she still wore somersaulting over the edge of the mattress to the floor. Entwined like tangled kudzu vines, they rolled across the bed and crashed into the headboard. It banged against the wall and they rolled away, mouths still hotly fused, hands still moving frantically, bodies pressed together, legs entangled, hips grinding together. Tom’s foot hit the rickety bedside table, causing the equally rickety bedside lamp to wobble on its base, sending shadows flickering precariously across the walls and ceiling, counterpoint to the intermittent flash of red neon from the motel sign pulsing through the slanted blinds on the window.
Neither one of them paid it any heed. Neither of them would have noticed if the lamp had gone crashing to the floor. The only thing that registered was the searing wildfire need that ricocheted back and forth between them, the only thing that mattered was satisfying that need.
Immediately.
Now.
Tom shoved both hands under her tiny denim skirt, pushing it up to her waist, and curled his fingers under the low-slung waistband of her leopard-print panties. And then he paused, still on the thin edge of control, and stared down into her wide, whiskey-colored eyes. She stared back at him, her gaze avid, unwavering, and unabashedly eager, without coyness or equivocation, primed and ready for whatever came next.
“This first time is going to be a fast, hard ride,” he said, his voice low and guttural. “If that’s not what you want, say so now.”
She bent her knees, planting her boot heels on the edge of the mattress, and lifted her hips. “It’s what I want.”
He yanked her panties off, tugging them past her raised hips, dragging them down her legs, wrestling them over her boots, and tossed them on the floor. His hands went to his fly, his fingers working frantically at the metal buttons to free his erection as he slid his body back up between her legs. He grasped her bare thighs, his strong callused fingers digging into her flesh as he spread them wider, meaning to drive himself into her, hard and fast the way they both wanted, to take her with elemental, unthinking fury.
But something about the way she lay there, her minuscule skirt pushed up around her waist, her bent knees splayed, her soft, hot, woman’s body open and vulnerable to his every desire, had him suddenly gentling his approach. She was so pretty and fragile there between her legs, all plump and pink and glistening, with the feeble light from the bedside lamp glinting on the smooth pale skin of her thighs, and the red neon pulsing like a heartbeat, giving her an all-over rosy glow. The soft blond hair between her legs had been waxed or shaved or whatever it was that women did, into a narrow little rectangle that barely covered her mound. It was rawly sexy, and inexplicably, elegantly refined. Just as she was.
He softened his grip and slid his palms down the inside of her thighs, slowly, caressingly, until his thumbs just touched her vulva. Her body jerked beneath him, a tiny involuntary movement that could have signaled rejection or acceptance of his intimate invasion. He raised his gaze to her face again. She stared back through the frame of her splayed knees, her lips moist and parted, her cheeks flushed, the expression in her eyes as soft, as hot, as open and vulnerable as her body.
Slowly, still holding her gaze with his, he slid his thumbs down and then up, then down again—once, twice, three times—gently skimming her most sensitive flesh. Her body undulated, like a field of ripe wheat rippling in the wind, and she uttered a breathy little sound, half moan, half sigh, that shuddered out between her lips.
“You’re wet.” His voice was low and caressing, his gaze voracious and admiring. “Hot and wet and slippery.”
“Yes.” She didn’t blush. Didn’t look away. “I am.”
“I want you wetter. I want you—” he moved his thumbs inward a fraction of an inch, pressing down, closing in, capturing her distended clitoris between them in a sensuous little squeeze play “—dripping.”
Her body tightened, straining, and the sound she made was definitely a moan. A deep, throaty, on-the-edge moan.
He eased his thumbs back a teasing fraction of an inch from her slick swollen center and watched her eyes flare wide in mindless entreaty, watched her bite her lip against protest and plea. Her desire was palpable, her anticipation a living, breathing thing between them.
He knew exactly what she wanted.
Needed.
Had to have.
In another mood, he might have made her say the words, might have teased her—and himself—by making her ask for what she wanted. Instead, he slid his hands under her hips, slid his body down off the bed until his knees were on the floor and his shoulders were wedged between her thighs.
“We’ll save the hard riding for later,” he said, and buried his face between her legs.
Roxanne nearly levitated off the bed at the first heated, silken stroke of his tongue against her throbbing clitoris. Her back arched like a bow. Her hands clutched at the worn chenille bedspread, gathering it into her clenched fists. Her booted heels pressed down into the edge of the mattress. She moaned. Loudly. And then more loudly still as he brought his fingers into play again, opening her more fully to his lasciviously talented tongue.
It felt as if every nerve ending in her body began and ended in that one tiny nubbin of sensitized flesh between her legs. She throbbed. She ached. She vibrated with need. And, then, in a blinding, incandescent blaze of sheer primal lust, she came. It was gut-wrenching. Breath-stealing. Mind-blowing.
Sublime.
“More,” she demanded, when her breath finally shuddered back into her lungs and she could breathe again. She released her death grip on the bedspread and reached down, fisting her hands in his dark, silky hair, pressing him closer, straining for another peak. “More.”
He acquiesced with satisfying gallantry and greed, with no hint of hesitation or resistance, as if continuing to pleasure her with his mouth had been his intention all along. And, maybe, it had been. She was sweet and tender, so incredibly hot and responsive that it was pure, unadulterated