Claiming Her SEAL(20)

     



 

He withdrew instantly and took a deep, fortifying breath that did nothing to beat back the need to possess.

"Emma," he murmured with a presence of mind he pulled from God knew where. "I wasn't exactly prepared for this."

Her eyelids fluttered open. "Oh. I guess I wasn't either. I didn't even think-But it's okay, I'm on the pill."

"That's …  not the only issue." Not quite sure how delicate he needed to  be, he opted for truth. "I was stationed in the Middle East. I wouldn't  blame you if you insisted on a condom for that reason alone."

Any man in uniform had a history of conquests. Of course, he had a clean  bill of health, and he couldn't even recall the last woman he'd been  with. It had been months and months.

"Do I need to worry?"

"No. But you shouldn't take my word for it."

"We're in the water. If you say it's okay, it's okay."

Her geographically based faith in him was borderline ridiculous. He was  Dexter no matter where he was. But moonlight spilled over her expectant  face, painting it a strange tinge of bluish-silver, and something  shifted inside.

What if he could be the hero she thought he was? What if the water did  hold some kind of magical properties that would allow him to be the  lover she deserved? She wasn't a nameless woman who knew the score and  had her own pain to kill. That alone made her different. Gave him  permission to be different too.

"It's okay," he assured her, and somehow it was. Amazingly so.

Almost tentatively, he cupped her face and touched her lips with his,  testing. Seeing how it felt to be slow. Gentle. To let himself feel  every stroke and savor every taste instead of driving them both to  completion as fast as possible, which was his normal M.O.

She sighed, her breath mingling with his, and with the condom discussion  out of the way, he was free to explore her with a leisurely perusal  that he'd have sworn he didn't care a thing for. Hard. Fast. Ruthless.  These were the elements of foreplay that he understood. But all at once,  he wanted to please her and her alone, instead of seeking a mutual  cataclysmic orgasm at warp speed.

Walking her backward, he took her to the edge of the shore and laid her  back against the wet sand where the waves rushed over their legs and  then receded in a timeless rhythm. Ravenous to see all of her, he knelt  on the sand and gathered up that scrap of pink, drawing it off  reverently. Then he spread her legs to reveal all of her secrets to the  moonlight as she watched him with heavy eyelids.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured and leaned in to kiss her belly, at  the spot just below her navel, which had been taunting him from the  first moment he'd laid eyes on her in that white bikini.

He meant to nibble his way down the line of her abdomen, planned to  follow the crease where her thigh started, and then acquaint himself  with the taste of her in her wet center, but as he laid his lips on her  skin, her fingers tangled in his hair. She exhaled, and his name floated  to him on a whisper. Not Dex, but James.

Suddenly he didn't want to move. His head drifted to the side and he  laid his cheek on her stomach, breathing her in. A smoking-hot woman was  spread out naked below his head, a woman whose hot, slick desire for  him he'd already felt with his own fingers, and all he wanted to do was  this?

Dear God. He was in so much trouble.

Enough. It was sex, not some spiritual quest to enlightenment. What the  hell was wrong with him? He was going too slowly; that was the problem.

With renewed purpose, he crawled up on his knees, lunged forward, and  took her mouth in a punishing kiss, though who he thought he was  punishing became painfully unclear when she opened her lips to him,  kissing him back with instant enthusiasm. Heat exploded in his  midsection and raced along his skin with a sense of urgency he couldn't  ignore. Bracing his forearms in the sand on either side of her head, he  tried to take back control of the kiss, but she was having none of that.

Her fingers danced along the hem of his shirt and yanked, pulling until  their locked lips prevented further progress. Drawing back, she got his  shirt off in seconds and then went to work on the ties of his shorts,  which only made things worse as her fingers brushed the bare tip of his  erection.

His lungs collapsed as he fought to keep his reaction under control  while simultaneously trying to get her hands away from his crotch. He  half rolled away, but she followed, throwing a leg over his as they  grappled with the last barrier between them. Finally, blessedly, the  ties loosened and she slid off his shorts. Only to eagerly turn her  attention to what she'd uncovered.         

     



 

Gaze firmly fastened on her prize, she pushed him onto his back in the  sand, turning him into a sand-encrusted sugar cookie instantly, and he  let her because his whole body had gone weak under her hot perusal. Then  her sweet hands cupped his erection and tightened, and that was nearly  all she wrote.

Jackknifing involuntarily, he pulled her hands away and held them over  her head. "Sweetheart, you must not be very clear how this works."

"I just want to touch you. You're so magnificent," she whispered. "Hard but soft and so very beautiful. Please."

With a strangled groan, he lay back in the sand, bare to her and her sweetly expressed agenda. Who was he to argue with that?

Eagerly, she knelt over him, her hair dragging down the length of his  body as she felt him up to her heart's content. Meanwhile he struggled  to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head as she lit him up like  the Fourth of July with nothing more than her fingertips on his skin.  And that was just the northern half.

As she traveled south, the heat built, stabbing through him like so many  hot pokers of unfulfilled lust that he couldn't have said his own name  at gunpoint. Which he'd been asked to do a time or two and well knew the  degree of difficulty.

With a wicked little smile, she tentatively touched the tip of her  tongue to the head of his erection, and he genuinely feared that his  bones might shatter under the pressure of holding back the gush his body  ached for.

"Emma," he gasped as her mouth closed over him.

And then she sucked, molding her tongue to his ridges, tasting him.  Drawing him deeper into her mouth until his hips rolled involuntarily,  seeking release that felt shockingly imminent. He didn't want to come  this way. It was too fast, too one-sided. She deserved better.

"Emma." His voice broke as his control nearly snapped. "Please. I'm begging you-"

Her head lifted, and she raised her brows. "Was I not doing it right? Sorry, I could-"

"You were doing it right," he growled. "Too right. I'm about to lose my mind."

"Oh." She smiled. "Then I should keep going?"

For the love of God. "No. Please."

If that wasn't a mixed message, he didn't know what was. But she  interpreted it her own way and climbed his body to settle her hips at  the juncture of his, wiggling experimentally until the tip of his  erection was snug against her wet heat.

A primal instinct nearly overtook him, urging him to push upward. But he  funneled every ounce of will into resisting because …  he didn't know  why, but it seemed like he should.

His eyelids slammed closed as she kissed him, teasing him with her  tongue as she dipped her hips, wetting his tip and then withdrawing.

"James," she murmured. "Look at me."

God help him, he did. Her blue eyes, darkened with passion, captured  his, and the moonlight played with her hair as she manacled his wrists,  holding them against the sand. Slowly, slowly she eased her body  downward, taking him into her center millimeter by aching millimeter,  and still she didn't look away. When he was fully sheathed, she said his  name again and clenched her muscles, holding him inside her for a  perfect moment of union    .

Something tore open in his chest, spilling warmth through his body that  wasn't at all sexual and came with a side of rawness tinged with danger  he couldn't explain, but it didn't matter because his voice didn't work  anyway. Everything started and ended with Emma. She was curse and cure,  all rolled into one enigmatic, unsolvable puzzle.

And then she started to move. Her hips rolled and bucked, sheathing and  unsheathing him, in a rhythm that matched the surf. Pressure and heat  built, spiraling on itself in a double helix of pleasure, and her gaze  stayed latched to his as she drove them both into a frenzy.

He wanted …  more. He wanted to touch her, to make her feel all the things  she was making him feel. To ask if she was experiencing something that  was nearly divine in its glory. But he couldn't because he didn't  understand what was happening well enough himself to articulate it.

Relentlessly, she drove him toward release. She wasn't gentle. She  didn't make it nice and sweet. It was a brutal stripping away of all the  things he'd have sworn he knew about himself. And then with a cry, she  came, contractions rippling down his length until it triggered his own  orgasm. She collapsed against his chest, and he found his voice as he  gripped her hips, emptying himself into her with a hoarse groan.