Jill Shalvis - Out of This World

Then he dropped to his knees, scraped my thong to one side and leaned in and put his mouth on me.

Oh. My. God. I fell back against the desk, gripping the wood at my sides like an anchor, as he took me on a rocking ride that left me unable to control my senses. Lights burst behind my eyeballs, my blood rushed through my veins, roaring in my ears, so that I couldn’t hear a damn thing. I think I probably cried out, maybe even screamed his name, but I didn’t have enough self-awareness left to be embarrassed. All I could do was ride it out, wave after wave, only to have him bring me up yet again, and again…

Finally I came back to myself, only to hear what sounded like Frankenstein gulping air in and out of a set of taxed lungs. “Someone’s breathing loud,” I whispered.

“That’s you.”

I opened my eyes. Kellan was leaning over me, a hand on either side of my head, bracing his weight off me.

He’d just given me the most amazing oral sex of my life, and I think, given the way his eyes glittered, he probably knew it.

And the crazy breathing? It was me. Damn, how mortifying. But the more I tried to control it, the more ragged it sounded. “Sorry.” I tried to sit up, but he held me down.

“Don’t be sorry. I like knowing I can do that to you.”

I ran my gaze down his body, stopping at the unmistakable bulge behind his button fly. “Tell me you have a condom.”

With a sheepish smile that said he wasn’t all Superman all the time, a fact that possibly endeared him to me all the more, he pulled one out of his pocket. “It’s one of yours.”

“You were hoping-”

“More like praying.”

I laughed, and realized that was a first-laughing with a man I wanted so badly, I was shaking for him. I took the condom out of his hand and tore the packet open.

He opened his jeans.

I slipped my hands inside.

He hissed out a breath.

“Good?” I murmured, melting all over again.

“Cold,” he muttered. “Christ, your fingers are ice.”

“Baby.”

He hissed again, but since I could feel him growing, swelling, even more, I didn’t worry. In fact, I grinned. “You still want me.”

“Go figure.”

Watching him put on the condom, his jaw tight enough to be jumping, the tendons in his neck standing out in bold relief, his arms and shoulders tense, was an experience I’ll never forget. I pushed up his shirt for the sheer pleasure of watching his abs contract beneath my fingers, and had barely pulled the material over his head when he eased himself into me.

The pure gratification of the connection stunned us both into immobility. I could feel him, thick and pulsing inside me, could feel his tremors, and knew how rigidly he controlled himself. I didn’t want that, so I wrapped my legs around him, driving him forward, deep enough to make me gasp.

“Jesus.” His gorgeous eyes went blind, and he dropped his forehead to mine. “Am I hurting you?”

“Only if you don’t move.”

“I’m trying to make it last longer than two seconds,” he managed.

“It’s been longer than two seconds.”

“Rach-”

I dug my heels into the small of his back, and I bit his jaw.

“So violent,” he murmured, but still held back.

“Kel, I want you as out of control as I was!”

His eyes softened. “Ah, Rach. Don’t you know that you look at me and I’m out of control?”

“Love me,” I whispered. “Please? Just love me.”

That did it, and finally, finally, he began to move, watching himself fill me in a way I couldn’t remember ever being filled before. I closed my eyes to savor the feeling, and also, maybe, to hide a little.

“No,” he whispered, open and honest in a way that didn’t come as easily for me. “Rach, look at me.”

With a struggle, I opened my eyes, struck by the combination of tenderness and affection and heat I found in his.

“Yeah,” he breathed, his own beautiful gaze holding mine prisoner now. “Love that.”

I’d never done this, connected like this, eyes open, heart open…and by doing so, I found myself giving so much more than I’d ever given before. I gave him all of me, everything I had, and a bit afraid, I clutched at him.

“I’m right here with you,” he promised softly, and bending for a kiss, finally took me where I wanted to go.

Oblivion.

And he was right next to me the entire way.

When I could breathe again, I realized I had my face plastered into Kel’s neck and my fingers embedded low on his back. I pulled back slowly, and blew the hair out of my face.

Kel looked no less shaken as he pulled me upright on the desk. “What the hell is that?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, smiling into his unsmiling face. “I don’t think it’s fatal.”

He looked at me for another long beat, then nodded. “That’s a relief.”

But then he turned away, leaving me vaguely uneasy.

“Kel?”

“Truth or dare.”

“Truth,” I whispered.

He didn’t turn to face me. “You really think this would be happening between us if we hadn’t come here? You know, to the sexually healing B &B from hell.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it, not wanting to lie. I honestly had no idea how it was that I’d not been so attracted to him before. It had taken this trip, being within such close proximity-

“Never mind,” he said, again fiddling with the Blackberry. “We have more important things to do. Such as figuring out what the dot means for tomorrow.”

Our gazes met, and the somber knowledge flitted between us. As bad as things were, we both knew it could get worse, so much, much worse. I tried to think about it, but I was so tired, I yawned widely.

Kel tucked both the Blackberry and the laptop beneath his sweatshirt. “Bed,” he said in a quiet, authoritative voice that I was beginning to react to like I suspected his dolphins did. Kellan McInty, animal whisperer. Rachel whisperer.

“You need some sleep before we figure out the rest of this swap thing,” he said. “And so do I. Back to the guest house.”

“With one little pit stop on the way.”

“Let me guess. The freezer?”

“Problem?”

“No. I don’t care if you eat every last cookie in the place. As long as Marilee doesn’t find out.”

“Why? Are you afraid of her?”

He stood there, shirt a bit wrinkled from the time it’d spent wadded on the floor, his jeans disturbingly low on his hips, looking good enough to jump. Again.

“Actually, I have bigger things to fear at the moment,” he said.

Which left me to wonder. Did he mean the swap, the impending dot…or me?

We escaped the office and made our way through the dark inn, me in front leading the way with my night-vision abilities in order to save Kellan’s toes and shins. I steered us through the living room and into the kitchen. The wood stove was still hot, with embers glowing red. We were halfway across the floor when a creak sounded from above.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Kellan had one hand in mine, and he was so close behind me that I could feel his warm breath brush my temple, blowing bangs into my eyes. He felt big and warm and safe, and right then and there, I experienced a warm fuzzy the likes of which I’d never experienced before.

Or I would have felt warm and fuzzy if I could have shaken off the sense of impending doom.

“What was it?” I asked.

The sound came again.

Someone was moving around quietly, not wanting to be heard.

Kellan squeezed my hip, putting his mouth to my ear. “Can you focus on it? Who is it?”

Damn, I kept forgetting I could tell. I looked up, and sighed. “Marilee. She’s pacing her bedroom.”

“Why?” he wondered.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, but first…” I headed straight for the freezer and grabbed a few cookies, offering one to Kel, who shook his head. Damn, that was probably how he stayed so much leaner than me.

We went out into the night. Again, that odd sense of noisy silence surrounded us-air rustling through the trees, a coyote calling in the distance…

Or some other wild animal that I didn’t want to meet.

The stars scattered across the black-velvet sky lit our way, but I’d have rather been home, with so many city lights, they drowned out the stars.

Inside the guest house, Kel set the laptop and Blackberry on the coffee table, and took me straight to the bedroom, where he pulled back the covers on the prissy, lacy bed and waited until I obediently slipped between the sheets.

“You coming in?” I asked, and batted my eyes.

“Bad idea.”

“I’m cold.”

He pulled the covers up to my chin, tucking them in, as if looking at me would weaken his resolve. “I’m not falling for that one.”

“I am cold.”

He put his hands on his hips, looking tense, rough around the edges and slightly temperamental. “You want me to crawl in there with you and share my body heat.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And other things.”

“You’re quick, Kel.”

“I need to think. And I can’t do that when you’re near me.”

“Ah, that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

If possible, he looked even more tense. “I’m not feeling particularly sweet, Rach.”

Well, if that wasn’t arousing. Tossing the covers aside, I came up to my knees on the mattress. I cupped his beautiful face and looked deep into his drown-in-me eyes. “I want you.”

“For now.”

“At the moment, now is all we have.” And besides, thinking ahead to what I’d want tomorrow, or the day after that, wasn’t in my genetic makeup. “Can’t that be enough?”

A shuddery sigh escaped him, and his hands came up to my hips, squeezed. His voice, when he spoke, sounded tortured. “No.”

He said it so gently, it took a moment for it to sink in.