Jill Shalvis - Bared

She let out a sound that had him jerking his gaze to hers, but she didn’t look at him. She just stared at the lockers, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she could barely stand it.

Join the club, baby, he thought grimly. Without a word, he went back to his camera and starting shooting, talking to her only when necessary. She never loosened up, not as he’d been able to coax her to do on the other shoots, but today he just didn’t have it in him.

Some professional.

“Turn toward me,” he instructed. “Hands flat on the lockers at your side. Tilt your head down, eyes up at me.”

Without a word, she did, and he took those shots, too. Her slight stiffness actually worked in his favor-she was the slightly shy, slightly reticent, outrageously sexy schoolgirl. It was wrong, but he wanted her, wanted so damn much. By the time he put the camera down, his fingers were shaking.

“Is that it?” she asked, still against the lockers.

“That’s it.”

She pushed away and walked toward him, every sway of her hips a slam to his gut.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and backed up a step.

She didn’t stop until their toes touched. “I didn’t like that.”

“I didn’t, either.”

She cocked a hip and looked at him from carefully made-up eyes. “I don’t like you, either.”

“Ditto,” he said tightly.

“But I’ve never wanted you more,” she said in a frustrated voice.

Thank God. They lunged at each other.

THEY COULDN’T GET AT EACH OTHER fast enough. Rafe slammed his mouth down on Emma’s, open and hot and hungry. Given the sexy little growl that came from her throat, she felt the same way he did. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, just as he cupped a sweet, warm, rounded cheek in each hand and ground her against him.

Baby, oh baby, it was just what the doctor had ordered.

His head was still spinning. Just a moment before, he’d been furious with her, furious and desperate with the excitement she always stirred within him just beneath the surface, and now here she was, arching against him, opening her legs up even wider, which had her short skirt hiked up around her waist, leaving nothing but his jeans and her thin panties as barriers. When she rocked against him, he staggered, and might have dropped them both to the floor if he hadn’t backed to the wall to use it as support.

Her fingers tangled in his hair and held his head for her mouth. Her legs were stronger than he could have imagined, gripping around him so that he couldn’t leave.

As if he wanted to.

When she arched into him again releasing a helpless whimper into his mouth, he nearly whimpered back because he couldn’t touch her, holding her up as he was; he couldn’t get to her the way he wanted to. Instead he staggered away from the wall and carried her into the open prop room. Kicking the door closed with his foot, he reversed their positions, turning them so that she was the one with her back to the wall. Now he could thrust against her in mindless abandon. With her skirt bunched up around her waist and his fingers inside the back of her panties, the apex of her legs cradling his sex like a hot glove, he could hardly stand it.

Bracing her against the wall, he tugged the white button-down shirt off her shoulders, then slid the twin thin straps of her crop down as well. Since she didn’t have on a bra, her breasts spilled free, her nipples already tight and puckered. Even that wasn’t enough, so he reached down and dragged her panties aside. Wrenching his mouth free from hers, he looked at her glorious body. The erotic way he’d exposed her made him groan.

“You are so beautiful.”

She was writhing against him, making those sexy little noises in her throat, her lush breasts against his chest, gripping him for all she was worth.

“Rafe. God, Rafe, how do you do this to me every time?”

Just the way she said his name made him want to come, but he managed a low laugh. “What I’m doing to you…? Baby, it’s the other way around. You’re killing me, just killing me.”

Now she was nibbling at his throat, taking hot bites out of him, each one making his hard-on twitch. He was pressed between her legs as they moved their hips, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing in slow circles that were going to drive him right out of his mind.

“More,” she panted, and pulled his T-shirt up so that her breasts brushed against his bare chest.

His knees went a little wobbly-more so when she tried to work open the buttons on his Levi’s.

“You want to come again, Emma? With me?”

“Yes!” Her fingers fumbled ineffectively on his jeans.

Reaching in, he helped her, their fingers tangling together until the jeans were open, a huge relief as they’d been cutting off his circulation since the moment she’d walked into the studio. His penis jutted out from his shorts hopefully while she continued to move those hips, driving them both closer to the brink.

“Rafe-” She pushed at his jeans, tugged at his shorts. “In me,” she gasped. “Inside me now.”

He wrapped a fist around himself and poised at her slick entrance before he remembered and went still.

“Rafe?”

“No condom,” he said roughly.

Her eyes opened and she looked at him in trembly dismay. “No.”

He could only shake his head.

“I’m going to cry,” she whispered.

Slowly he released her legs. Then, holding her gaze, he dropped to his knees. He put his hands beneath her skirt and pushed it up. Kissed one thigh, then the other.

Then between.

Her head thunked back against the door. “Rafe-”

He kissed her again.

Then he used his tongue.

Her knees buckled, but he held her up, and when she shattered, he let her fall into his arms.

IT TOOK HER A MOMENT to regain control of her senses, but when she did, she felt the tension that remained in his big, rigidly controlled body. “I want to nibble, too.” She dropped a kiss on his right pec, over his T-shirt. With one hand on his arm, restraining him, she used her other to shove up his shirt. He was all sinewy and hard flesh, and when she put her lips just above his nipple, his muscles quivered. He let out a sound-a rough one that thrilled her-and lifted his hands toward her.

Catching them, she set them at his side and looked up at him. “No touching.” She added a smile. “You’ve watched me go wild for you. I want to watch you go wild for me for a change.”

“Shouldn’t we-” He broke off with a strangled groan when she licked his nipple-just one little lick, as if he were a delectable treat. “Emma-”

“Shh.” Dragging hot, wet kisses down his torso to his low belly, she paused to look up at him.

His face was a tight grimace. “Emma, we should-”

She pulled apart his unfastened jeans and kissed the spot, the tender, beautiful spot of skin she’d exposed. It wasn’t tan like the rest of him, and somehow that seemed achingly vulnerable.

“Em-”

She tugged at the opening again, a little harder this time, and hummed her pleasure as his erection sprang out, hampered only by his knit boxers.

“Stone might come back-” he started to say, but he broke off with another heartfelt groan when she pulled the fabric away from his body and let him free.

He was smooth and long and thick, and she let out a murmur of excitement. “You weren’t worried about that a minute ago.” She ran a finger down his rigid length. Feeling incredibly empowered and bold, she kissed the very tip of him.

“Emma.” His voice was no more than a harsh whisper, so she did it again. His head fell back, his fingers tightened in her hair. “What are you doing to me?”

In truth, she wasn’t quite sure. She wasn’t a virgin-she’d slept with three different boyfriends, but none of them had been relationships where she’d been sexually comfortable.

And not one of them, as she’d already admitted to Rafe, had been able to bring her to orgasm.

But Rafe had and it wasn’t just gratitude that had her wanting to please him orally, but a burning desire to try this, to bring him to pleasure, too, and make it her own.

His hands were fisted at his side now, his belly and legs rigid as he lay there letting her explore. She eyed the very tip of him, straining so desperately toward her mouth. It seemed no effort at all to take him inside, to run her tongue over him.

“Emma-” As if he couldn’t help himself, his hands tangled in her hair. “Don’t stop.”

“I won’t.” And she didn’t, not until Rafe lost the reins on his control and shuddered as helplessly as she had only moments before.

He still hadn’t returned to normal breathing when suddenly, from outside the prop room door, came voices, startling them into silence.

“You say they were just here?”

Emma blinked. That was Amber’s voice! What was her sister doing here?

“I said so, didn’t I?” Stone sighed. “Look, I left them right in this very studio when my sister paged me thinking she was in labor. False alarm.”

“Hmm…wonder how the shoot went?”

“With those two? Fireworks guaranteed.”

Inside the prop closet, Emma closed her eyes. Fireworks had definitely gone off.

“What do you mean?” Amber asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“Know what?” Amber’s voice went from wary to annoyed. “Don’t tell me he’s playing with her.”

“You really don’t know,” Stone marveled. “Well, you’re going to love this. As much as you and I can’t stand each other, they have the opposite problem-only, as far as I know, neither has admitted it.”

Inside the prop room Rafe stared at Emma. Emma stared right back.

“They’re hot for each other?” Amber went quiet for a moment. “This I can’t imagine.”

“Why not?”

“Because Rafe isn’t hot for anyone ‘Hollywood’ and, although Emma isn’t typical Hollywood, she works there, and her work is her life. And even if he’d lost his mind and decided to go for it, there’s the little fact that Emma wouldn’t want him in return. She doesn’t have time for me, much less anyone else. She doesn’t have time for anything but her writing.”