A Drive-By Wedding Read online

  Her head fell forward, forehead touched his.

  “Jeth.”

  The single word was harsh, breathless; she wasn’t aware she’d said anything, but he heard, understood the half-frantic plea and dipped his head to find her collarbone with lips and tongue and teeth, licking, sucking, nibbling from one shoulder to the other. Stopping between to take a quick and less than satisfactory foray down the center of her chest to the rise of each breast, dragged his mouth over the spot behind which her heart pounded.

  Let his tongue mimic other actions, sliding it in and out within the sheath created by the valley of her breasts and her camisole.

  The teasing was almost more than she could bear. Her hands tightened on his shoulders, her thighs tensed hard on either side of his hips, her body arched and twisted violently, seeking respite from the sensations coiling inside her.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please.”

  Jeth might have said, “Easy, love, slow down,” but he was in no mood to soothe her; he was only in the mood to give her what she asked. Craved pleasing her, pleasuring her, sinking into her. So he slipped one hand inside the loose leg of her shorts, under the elastic of her panties and over her rump, anchoring her tight against him. Then he bent his head and opened his mouth over one breast, one cloth-covered nipple, and simply breathed a single, hot, humid breath over it while at the same time he glided his free hand inside the other leg of her shorts, traced his fingers lightly up the inside of her thigh to slip them under the front elastic of her panties.

  Threaded his thumb through the wiry curls hidden there and settled it gently into the dampness, seeking until he found the delicate pearl at the heart of her need and touched it.

  Allyn gasped and went rigid for a moment at the unaccustomed sensations, the invasion. Then Jeth flicked his tongue across her cotton-covered nipple and she cried out and surged forward, lacing her fingers in his hair, pressing her breast into his mouth, riding his thumb. Suddenly everything inside her seemed to flame, boil, liquefy and she was calling out, shuddering apart, being lifted out of the chair and straddled across Jeth’s lap so he could shift his grip on her and press a finger inside her, then two.

  Then she was shouting, sobbing, hostage to the tension, the pleasure that built higher and stronger than before—exploded again before her body had a chance to recover from its first release, and once more when he touched a spot near the entrance of her channel that seemed to be made of fire and light and stars—

  And the most absurdly blissful oblivion.

  Awareness returned in stages: sensation and boneless giddiness first; euphoria in the taste of wine and strawberries, the tang of Jeth kissing her both senseless and vitally alert in every pore; desire and unabated passion in the scent of musk that enshrouded them; urgency and wildness in the roughness of their breathing, the sounds that were not words but that communicated all; in the touch of fingers gone clumsy with need, the feel of the rag rug against her back; in the sight of Jeth’s dark visage rising above her drenched with hunger, with greed….

  With the intent to claim what was his and give back all he had to give in return.

  Then he bent his head and poured himself into a purely savage kiss and she got lost inside it, drowned in the overwhelming power, the strength that was Jeth.

  Gloried in the reciprocal strength and power she discovered were hers to command when she laid her palms along the sides of his head and kissed him back, thrust her tongue deep into his mouth, sucked his hard and evocatively into hers, made him groan.

  Eager to explore the power, the rawness of his passions, the newness of her own, she skimmed her hands down his face, his neck, the sides of his chest until she reached the hem of his shirt. Pulled it high enough to slide her hands underneath and knew it had to go; she wanted his skin, craved the feel of hard, lean muscle and flesh-covered bone with nothing between her and it.

  She dragged the shirt higher, tried to yank it off him but was waylaid by his reluctance to leave any part of her untouched and untasted even for an instant. He nibbled at her breast, teased it, laved and abraded the cotton over it, and she thought she would go mad. When he finally bit down, rolled her nipple with his tongue then suckled her hard, her mouth opened on a silent cry, and she arched upward nearly double; his shirt shredded in her hands, and she had his skin.

  Undone.

  If Jeth had thought anything at all before when he’d forgotten himself and let his baser appetites rule, he’d thought her fearless, headlong flight into her first, her second and her third climaxes by his hand had undone him. He’d been wrong.

  Oh, he’d been demolished, pulverized, shattered by the initial shock, then the fierce abandonment, the unguarded ecstasy he’d seen written on her face, but that had been little compared to this: the fire in her touch; the ferocious and uncompromised joy in her exploration of him; the potent and wholly erotic knowledge that she sought to give back to him everything he could teach her—and anything she could make up in her turn.

  He tasted her breasts, and she offered them fully, straining to feed him, nourish him, sustain him; he slid his ring hand inside the already stretched neckline of her camisole and jerked it down to free the flesh he’d been torturing both of them with by leaving it covered, and like his shirt, the straps of her camisole tore, then the three-button center broke open, the top ripped. She laughed breathlessly at the sound the rended cloth made, caught her breath and stiffened, trembled in his arms when his tongue at last made contact with the puckered flesh tipping her breasts.

  When he nosed aside the remnants of her shirt and trailed his tongue down the center of her belly, dipped and swirled it in the pouting flesh above her waistband, then dragged the waistband lower with his teeth, her body bucked in reaction, and she whimpered and reached for him. He held her hands away and continued his openmouthed exploration, finally using his hands to haul her shorts that last bit off her belly and away from the dark curls below.

  Lips and teeth explored her mound; his tongue sank between her thighs.

  She whimpered again and tried to open her legs to him, to close them against him, but her shorts hampered her.

  Jeth smiled ferociously against her thigh. “Patience, love,” he advised tersely, though he felt no patience himself. “All in good time.”

  “Please, Jeth.” A sharp gasp followed by a ragged moan when his tongue darted into her crease and found its silken core. “Don’t make me beg. You’re killing me.”

  “Why d’you think you’re the one on your back right now?” Jeth’s murmur was muffled; he planted a lingering kiss in her most secret of places and, when she frantically but involuntarily pushed herself off the floor into it, he tore her shorts the rest of the way down her legs and off, settled himself between her suddenly open thighs and drove his tongue deep inside her.

  She shrieked and coiled upward, hips jerking, body tightening without warning, pulsing and spasming in sudden release. He kissed her until the tremors lessened, then hauled himself up her body to kiss her mouth, bite gently at her lips. His fingers wandered into the dampness his mouth had created in points south, stroked and fondled and caressed until her insides were a molten mass, a shivery starburst waiting for a single meteor brush to send it spiraling out of control.

  “Tell me again why I’m the one on my back?” Allyn’s voice was thin, taut with the excitement his fingers, his breath, his nearness generated.

  He brought his lips to her ear, teased the lobe. “Because if you were doing this to me, you wouldn’t just be killing me, I’d be dead by now.”

  She moaned and shivered, twisted against his fingers. “So instead you’re torturing me to death.”

  He ran his tongue down her neck and around both breasts until he’d corkscrewed up and around each tip. “Tell me you’re not enjoying this. Slap my face. Tell me to stop.”

  “No.” She inhaled sharply, struggled to keep her train of thought. “I can’t. It feels—it feels…. Oh, heavens, Jeth-Jeth-Jeth! Please-please! It’
s not fair, I want to make you—oh, yes, there, Jeth, there—make you crazy, too!”

  The word ended on a squeak when he suddenly rolled onto his back and sat her astride him, right over the bulge behind his zipper. Still stroking her with one thumb, he tucked the first two fingers of his other hand into his watch pocket, withdrew a single foil-wrapped package.

  “Please,” he said simply. “Touch me. I’ll either let you know when I can’t stand it anymore, or you’ll put this on me when you’re ready. I want to be inside you, Lynnie. I want to come inside—”

  She shut him up with her mouth on his, while her hands fumbled the button and zipper of his jeans open, spread his pants wide.

  He went commando, sans shorts, butt bare within the soft denim.

  She bit back surprise by biting Jeth’s lower lip, suddenly intimidated to find herself handling the flesh that sprang to attention within her palm. She’d thought she’d have boxers yet to slide off him; she wasn’t sure she was as ready as she’d thought to find him positioned there, manhood already prodding her belly, boldly seeking entrance to that hot, wet place inside her.

  Jeth moved his thumb, and her body wept to hold him there.

  “Take your time,” he whispered, “Get used to it—to me. There’s no rush.”

  But the tension written across his face and the slurred strain in his voice told another story, made her belly hot with its own need.

  Still, just as he had done, she could wait, could make him wait….

  Or maybe not.

  She touched the tip of his sex with her thumb, ran the edge of it around him, taking in the shape and texture of him, while her fingers sidled down his length. His body jerked, convulsed upward, spearing him into her palm, sliding the base of his sex through the slickness at the mouth of hers. Moisture beaded beneath her thumb; perspiration glistened on his face, slickened his chest. He stiffened and tried to hold himself still, groaning with pleasure, with pain.

  “Judas, you’re killing me,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, Lyn, I want to make this last, but I don’t know if I can. Put that thing on me before something happens that I can’t control.”

  Heavy-lidded, smiling like the proverbial cat teasing the mouse, she undulated against him. “Who said you get to call me Lyn?”

  The question was as close to a purr as he’d ever heard in a human.

  He closed his eyes and shuddered; his body bowed violently off the floor, involuntarily rubbing against her. Sweet baby Jane, she learned fast.

  “Lynnie, quit. I want you too badly right now. I can’t— I can’t—ah, damn that feels good!”

  He opened his eyes, watched her run a fingernail through the beaded moisture at the tip of his sex, drag it gently down his length, then cup him. He saw what she did through a haze of understanding, yet his body still flexed and jerked instinctively, frantically seeking entrance to hers.

  “Oh, woman, do you know what you’re doing to me? You can’t know what you’re doing to me….”

  “You said I could touch.” She bent forward, and her hair draped around him, tickling, tantalizing, torturing and rousing nerve endings he’d never realized he had. “I’m touching.” She planted an openmouthed kiss on one of his nipples, then the other, laved each of them thoroughly. Her nipples brushed his belly, breasts cradled his burgeoning manhood between them. “I may be inexperienced but I’m not unread.”

  “Allyn, please.” Need was unrefined, breath as serrated as the edge of a steak knife. He shut his eyes again, braced his hands on her shoulders and thrust into that heavenly, sweat-glistened passage knowing that in a moment or two the ability to stop would be beyond him; the ability to think was already fading. “No amount of reading can have made you understand where I am right now, or how close I am to it. If you don’t put that damned condom on me, this is going to happen here, now, just like this.”

  The bewitching but audacious bit of baggage astride him kissed his belly and rubbed against him, raised her head high enough to smile naughtily into his eyes. Her tongue flicked between her teeth. “Bring it on. You got to watch me, it’s my turn to see it happen to you—”

  “Not this time, lady,” he said harshly. “Maybe later, but not now.”

  Too fast for her to see it coming, Jeth flipped her onto her back, snatched the condom out of her hand, ripped it open and rolled it on. Then he was between her knees, lifting them, nudging as gently as exigency would allow at the entrance to her womb.

  “Jeth!” Surprise, dismay, delight, breathless laughter.

  “I warned you, little girl.” He withdrew, pressed into her again, deeper this time. Her eyes closed, throat arched, lips parted, features took on a hold-your-breath concentration. The tiny but constant accommodations her body made to fit his, her tightness were exquisite torture. “If you play with fire you’re going to get burned.”

  She opened her eyes halfway. The blue of his eyes was fierce and brilliant, avid. She pressed her hips upward, breathing hard with the heightened sensation of fullness, the delicious pressure, her sudden sense of personal vulnerability to the physical power he visibly struggled to hold in check.

  For her. Because he didn’t want to hurt her. Because no matter what his body craved at the moment, he would not simply take his own pleasure and leave her behind just because she’d tortured him practically beyond bearing.

  The realization came to her that she was not the only one experiencing vulnerability or who held physical power in this situation.

  That Jeth was, as she’d known all along, the right man, the only man, the only first she would ever have or would ever want to have.

  Not to mention the only second, third, fourth…to infinity and beyond she ever hoped to have.

  Warmth engulfed her, flushed from her head to the soles of her feet, washed through like silt when the floodgates open. It was too soon to name this secret, this catastrophic understanding. She buried it deep where it could do no harm to either of them at the moment.

  Closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see the evidence she was sure must lie plainly in them.

  Cradled his head in her hands and arched into the touch of his fingers, his mouth worshiping her breasts.

  “Are you going to burn with me this time?” she whispered.

  “Definitely,” he muttered. “Yeah.” He bent and kissed her deeply, tongue plunging quickly in then out as he withdrew from her. Then he hooked her knees over his shoulders and reached down to fork two fingers gently inside her, spread them open slowly as he guided himself into her. “This might hurt,” he warned her.

  “I know,” she gasped. “It doesn’t matter. I want you, Jeth, I need you inside me, please, please—ooh!”

  He stroked the pearled nubbin above her channel with honey-wet fingers, and she opened to him fully. What was left of any barriers collapsed rather than tore, and he plunged heavily home.

  And paused.

  “Are you all right?”

  Sweat slicked his body, made hers slippery beneath him. Her legs trembled, the muscles in her thighs shook with reaction, her belly flexed and contracted trying to roll her hips around him, embed him deeper. His fingers continued to pet her, cherish and fondle, wanting to please, to comfort, to relieve.

  “Allyn, please, look at me.” Desperate. Jeth had to hear her say it before he went further.

  Before he went mad.

  “Are you all right?”

  She smiled, features drugged, intent on what he was doing. “Yes,” she murmured. “Are you?”

  He closed his eyes and sighed. He should have known she wouldn’t say what he’d thought she might. “No.” The truth. “But I will be.”

  “Good.” Another small, absorbed and intoxicated smile. “Now come home, Jeth. Bring me home….”

  That was the last he heard before she undulated her hips again, cried out over the stroke of his fingers, and the ripple of earthquakes inside her tore sense from him. He could only pump and buck and flow with the lava, with the heat that forged and molded him, milk
ed him, held him, drank from him. And at the last, he went shouting into one shattering, hugely drawn out volcanic eruption that finally became the unearthly glow of unbelievable satiation. Then he sank—for the first time in his life—into utter, complete, uncomplicated and peaceful darkness.

  Chapter 11

  After that Jeth couldn’t seem to keep his mind, his eyes or his hands off of her.

  His mouth didn’t particularly want to keep to itself, either.

  He’d come to himself collapsed on top of her, his pulse still pounding in his ears, cognizant only of the fact that something irreversible had happened to him both before but especially within that moment of little death.

  Primitive as it sounded, this woman was his; his body both recognized and clamored for the awesome responsibility, the commitment to her even as his mind fought the recognition. There would not be another woman in his bed, on his floor or anywhere else who was not Allyn. Gut deep, soul deep, he knew it.

  He’d never blacked out in climax before, never had a woman faint with him. And, good grief, he’d never even gotten all the way out of his jeans.

  Too sluggish to lift himself off her, Jeth simply slid sideways in their mutual sweat and flung an arm across his eyes. Damn, he hadn’t known. He hadn’t. If he’d known how he would feel after, what this would do to him, he would never have…

  He felt her stir, felt her hand rove lovingly, dilatorily across his chest and turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were barely open, she was hardly returned from that place that had made her one with him, but already she was aware of him, already reaching for him, soothing him, being with him.

  He shut his eyes and knew that Judas be damned or not, he’d have made love to her tonight because making love with her was as inevitable as breathing, as loving her might also be. And even though he didn’t want to love her, not now, not in the middle of this, not because of it, not when he couldn’t trust his emotions, he would not have stopped himself if he’d tried. Hell, he had tried and look where it had gotten him.