The Phoenix Candidate(4)

Chapter Three





He moves in a blur—glass on the side table, arm around my waist, and he hauls me up on my feet as he stands, pressing our bodies together. His hands move down to cup my ass as his lips find my neck again.

This time, his teeth come out.

Nipping, sucking, biting. He hasn’t even kissed my lips yet, but he’s devouring me from earlobe to collarbone, one hand still full of the cheek of my ass, the other now full of my hair so he can pull my head to the side and expose my neck more fully to his mouth.

He walks me backward toward the bed like we’re dancing, then I feel his hand flick against my spine. My bra falls away, and my breasts brush the hair on his chest.

Oh, hell, yes. In my heels, I’m still several inches shorter than him. I rub myself against his chest, the hardness of it suggesting a man who sweats outside, doing physical labor, rather than a gym rat.

But he’s traveling on business. What does this guy do? I mentally smack myself. No questions, Grace. Live in the fucking moment, for once in your life.

Jared’s in the moment, shrugging out of his collared shirt, toeing off his shoes, pushing his jeans down to his ankles and kicking them free. He bends to remove his socks, then wraps his hands around the back of my legs, anchoring them in place.

His lips creep slowly up my inner thigh as I stand, immobilized by this stranger. I feel him press his face against my very damp panties and inwardly cringe with embarrassment until I hear his groan, rich with want.

I can’t apologize. I want this, too.

His tongue finds my seam through the thin silk and he tests the lace edges with his tongue. His fingers hook under the waistband and he tugs my panties down my legs. “I need to taste you.”

He nudges my knees apart and I shiver in my heels, Jared’s fingers digging into the back of my thighs. His tongue moves over my folds, parting me, tasting, and I nearly come undone when he touches the bundle of nerves that sends electricity skittering through my body.

I steady myself with hands on his shoulders and let my fingers explore his dark brown hair that curls where it’s a touch too long to be businesslike. His tongue moves faster, working maddening little circles as a finger traces the bottom curve of my ass, nudges between my legs, and plunges inside me.

Holy hell. I can’t contain my gasp and moan. His finger curves, finding the sweet spot inside me at the same time his tongue buries itself in the hood of my clit.

My body is in meltdown.

I cry out—a ragged, incomprehensible word, a plea for more and more and more as the orgasm rips through my body. Jared’s arms wind tightly around my legs, supporting them as they become jelly. His tongue teases every ounce of my climax from me.

And when my body goes slack, my chest bent over his head and my nails gradually releasing his shoulders, he spins my hips and bends me over the bed, ass in the air. I pant to regain my breath as his hand dives into a pocket of his jeans for a foil packet.

Our eyes lock and I watch him. I move to roll over, but a hand on my hip stills me. “I’m not done with you yet, Grace,” he growls.

Sweet baby Jesus. The crinkling eyes are gone, replaced by hungry eyes, ready to devour.

Jared leaves my feet, still in heels, planted on the ground. My chest is draped over the bed as he tilts my ass up, parts me, and presses his cock inside.

It isn’t sweet or gentle or hesitant.

It isn’t fumbling sex between strangers, or the basic paint-by-number sex that defined most of my marriage.

It’s primal and so powerfully raw that my cry meets his groan as he slams inside me. I barely have time to take a breath before the next thrust, and the next, and I’m clawing at the bedclothes to anchor myself as he grinds deeper.

“This,” he says. “This is what I need.” His fingers lace through my hair, pulling my head back, arching my spine as he sinks in deeper. “Tell me what you need, Grace.”

“This,” I pant. “Harder.”

I stripped for him. Crawled to him. Let him lick me as I stood in his hotel room in nothing but heels. He’s stripped my inhibitions now, and I can finally ask for what I want. “Mark me. Make me scream.”

His hand connects with my ass on the next thrust, the hot sting and rush of warmth feeding an urge that I’d shelved in my fantasies between That sounds hot and Don’t you dare.

“I could never hit a woman,” my husband had said. “Don’t even ask me for that.”

Jared’s hand lands on my ass again, so hard I scream with surprise and a shiver of fear.

This man is a stranger. This man could actually hurt me.

But with his next lunge, his fingers trail delicately over the place he punished, soothing the sting, making me feel his gentle and hard, his soft and rough, his delicious contradiction.