Читать книгу The Millionaires' Club: Ryan, Alex and Darin - Cindy Gerard - Страница 13

Seven

She’d been wrong about so many things lately, Carrie thought as she sat on the lap of the man she had loved for so long. She’d been wrong about Nathan Beldon. She’d been wrong about her feelings for him. She’d never come close to loving him. Never come close to this breathless anticipation she felt as Ry’s chocolate-brown eyes fired beyond warm to barely banked desire.

And she’d been wrong, she realized with a victorious sense of wonder, about the effect she had on him.

He wanted her.

He was dying to have her.

And she’d never been so glad to be wrong about anything in her life.

Riding on a surge of power the knowledge fostered, her gaze locked on his face as he watched her peel back the sides of her blouse then slowly shrug it off her shoulders.

Beneath the red silk she wore a black satin demibra edged in delicate lace. Her breasts spilled over the top of the cups with every deep breath she drew. Just below her left breast, she could feel the elevated beat of her heart. She wondered if he could see it hammering there. Wondered if he knew what his thrilling order had done to her.

His throat worked hard as his gaze shifted from her face then back to her breasts again. “Now the bra.”

The dark intensity of his command sent a shiver of anticipation eddying through her body, heating her blood, but not once did she consider denying him. She reached behind her back for the clasp, unintentionally arching and thrusting her breasts toward him.

He sucked in a slow breath, and she felt his hands on her hips, felt his fingers digging into her flesh…as if he was fighting to anchor his hands there when he wanted them somewhere else.

She felt shy suddenly as the clasp gave and she slowly lowered the bra away from her body. Shy and brazen and…oh, my…beautiful as she read the heated reaction in his eyes.

It was so much suddenly…so much sensation, so much sensitivity. She couldn’t filter it all. Her skin felt flushed and on fire beneath his adoring gaze. Her nipples tightened painfully.

Too fast, she thought as sensations assaulted her with the speed and strength of a lightning strike. And too late to do anything but hang on for the ride, she realized as he stole her ability to breathe, let alone think, when he lifted her until she straddled his lap.

Her hands involuntarily clutched the hot, bare breadth of this shoulders. Her knees dug into the sofa on either side of his hips. The most feminine part of her pressed against the very solid evidence of his desire. Her bare breasts were on a level with his mouth…she could feel the warmth of his breath pulse in an irregular rhythm against her.

And it made her ache.

It made her burn.

Endlessly.

So did his hands, as he slid them up her ribs to cup and adore and stroke her swollen nipples with a caress so tender, yet so needy, a soft plea escaped her parted lips.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper just as he bent his head and surrounded her with the hot, wet pleasure that was his mouth.

The first touch of his tongue stole her breath. The gentle suction of his lips made her moan. And the sight of his dark head bent to her breast in the moonlight made every part of her that was woman appreciate the elemental and incredible mystery that was man.

Oh. Oh how she’d wondered. How she’d yearned and ached with the need to know, firsthand, what it felt like to have a man’s mouth touch her there…how she’d imagined what it felt like when her nipple changed from velvet soft to diamond hard. And always it had been Ry’s mouth she’d fantasized about. Ry’s dark hair shifting between her fingers as she held him to her breast, let him suckle and feast and feed on the insatiable hunger he seemed to have for the taste of her.

It was so good. So incredibly good to hear his gruff sounds of pleasure, to watch his mouth open wide and take her in as he went wild for her…so wild his fingers bit into her hips and he pulled her closer, needing more of her.

“You…make…me…crazy.” His voice was a low growl against the inside of one breast as he kissed and licked his way to the other. “You…taste…like…heaven,” he murmured and bit her lightly before licking away the sting then rimming her areola with his tongue.

It all became a lovely, thrilling, and wondrous blur after that. She was aware only of sensations, was steeped in them, lost in him…in the feel of his mouth touching her everywhere, coasting from breast to breast, racing along the line of her throat, tracking kisses across her jaw, then moving to her mouth to kiss her deeply and sweetly. All the while his big, working man’s hands moved gently over her body, unzipping her slacks, sliding them and her panties down her hips.

“Beautiful,” he murmured as he laid her back on the sofa and settled his long length beside her. His fingers brushed lightly over her curls, stirring lush longings, awakening carnal cravings she’d never known were a part of her. More than a part of her. They were driving her now. She couldn’t help herself…she arched into his touch not knowing what she was asking for…only knowing that she needed.

He knew. He knew exactly what she needed, she realized as he deftly found the center of her, delved deeply with his fingers and made them both moan. She was wet and swollen and the way he touched her…with reverence and desire and such gentle skill…had his name breaking from her lips on a sob.

It was everything she’d ever imagined, things she’d never dreamed, when he finally rose above her, guided himself to her opening and slowly pushed inside her. The pain was sharp, brief, then gone as he filled her where she hadn’t before realized she felt so empty.

In that one amazing moment, she knew she was everything to him and that knowledge almost…almost…transcended the exquisite pleasure of his slow and luxurious glide in and out of her body.

Nothing had ever felt so right. Nothing had ever felt so good. With instincts as old as time, as natural as the moonlight spilling through the windows, she wrapped her ankles around his hips and rode with him toward everything wonderful in the night. A building urgency boiled up inside her, then raced on a deliciously sharp edge of heightening sensation.

He’d led her sweetly to this moment, led her expertly and unerringly toward release. Yet when the climax ripped through her, she was unprepared. Like the tributaries of a flood-swollen river that gathered at one predestined point to spill into the sea, a thousand little pleasures peaked and swelled then met with the force of a storm at the spot where their bodies joined.

“R-R-Ryannnn.” His name eddied out on a stunned and amazed rush. She clung to him for dear life while her world exploded on a maelstrom of bliss she’d never known, never dreamed existed.

Ry had lost all power of reason the moment she’d brazenly reached behind her back, unclasped her bra and her breasts had spilled from black silk into the shadowy darkness of the moon-drenched night. Had hadn’t had a rational thought since. And when she clenched around him, cried his name on a jagged spill of breath, he’d never heard anything so honest or erotic in his life.

With her long legs clasped around his hips and her internal muscles gripping him from within, he drove deep one last time, then rode with her on the most incredible rush he’d ever experienced.

He gritted his teeth, buried himself deeper, utterly spent, completely wasted and inexorably humbled by her unbridled and unrestrained passion. She’d offered him everything. Held back nothing. And given him the world.

He closed his eyes and savored the aftermath. She was so soft. Her hair. Her sighs. Her beautiful breasts. The delicate skin of her belly, where even now she held the weight of his hips without complaint and ran her fingers in a lazy, exhausted caress up and down his spine.

As they lay in the dark, their heartbeats settling, their breaths evening out, he knew there were a lot of things he should be feeling. At the top of the list was guilt. He’d just stolen the innocence of someone he cared about; he’d just betrayed his best friend’s trust.

But the damage was already done.

And he hadn’t had his fill of her yet.

If the soft, kitten sounds she made when he finally hauled himself off her, then lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed were any indication, she hadn’t had her fill of him, either.

There would be time…lots of time, for guilt in the morning. But there were only so many hours left in this night. He intended to spend every one of them giving her pleasure.

Carrie lay on her back and grinned at the ceiling of Ry’s bedroom. She couldn’t quit smiling. She’d lost her virginity. Finally.

And it had been—she gave an all-over body stretch—heaven.

It had been…life altering.

It had been…Ry who had made it so wonderful.

Twice.

She turned her head on the pillow. Beside her, in the deepest part of a night that the moon had drenched in golden light, he slept. Sprawled spread-eagle on his stomach, the sheet riding low around his hips, he looked the picture of hedonistic indulgence. And, oh…had he indulged. Mostly he’d indulged her.

She clamped her legs together as a now-familiar ache—an ache his passionate loving had created—pulsed there. She supposed she should be exhausted. Instead she felt energized. From everything she’d read, she should be sore. And she was…a little. But not enough to keep her body from quickening with renewed desire and wanting to experience more, needing to learn more…like what pleased him, what excited him. Although, it seemed all she had to do was breathe and maybe stretch her arms over her head and that was enough to make his eyes darken to midnight and his hands grow rough and needy.

Hiking herself up on an elbow, she clutched the sheet to her breast and turned onto her side so she could watch him. Bless you, moon, she thought with a smile as it illuminated the room like a golden twilight, allowing her full visual access to his sleeping form. There was nothing about him that didn’t fascinate her. His back was so broad. His skin was so smooth and tanned, and beneath it lay muscles that contracted when she ran her hands over him. Like she wanted to run her hands over him now. All over him.

“Like what you see, do you?”

Her gaze shot upward from his hips to see he’d cracked one eye open and was watching her.

There was mischief and seduction blended with the sleep-gruff huskiness in his tone. Feeling brazen and confident of her new, devirgined status, she made a very un-virginlike move.

Grasping the sheet where it covered his hips, she peeled it slowly away, until his tight, muscled buns and thick strong thighs were completely uncovered.

“Like it even better now,” she said, and boldly ran her hand along his leg, from his knee upward around the curve of his buttocks.

He closed his eyes, sank deeper into the bedding. “You’re playing with fire, little girl.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I happen to have it on good authority that you’ve got a hose big enough to put it out.”

The minute she’d said it, she clamped a hand over her mouth. Felt her face turn ten shades of red. With very deliberate movements, she eased onto her back and, mortified, pulled the sheet up over her head and held it there.

The bed shook with his chuckle. “Wanna run that by me again?”

“Noooo. Oh, help. I can’t believe I said that,” she groaned, her words muffled by the sheet.

He laughed again as the mattress shifted and dipped and she felt the warmth of his lean body nestle up beside her.

He tugged on the sheet.

She held it fast. “I’m being embarrassed here. Don’t bother me.”

His index finger drew coaxing circles around her navel through the sheet. “If you come out…I’ll let you play with my hose.”

When she shrieked, he burst into laughter. It was contagious. She was laughing, too, when she lowered the sheet and tucked it beneath her breasts. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still embarrassed.

“Well…obviously, I need a little more practice with my pillow talk.”

“How about this?” He rose up on his elbow and gave her a slow, deep kiss. “You need a little more practice with this, too?”

She turned toward him, wrapped an arm around his ribs at the same time he threw a muscled thigh across her hips. “I don’t think I’ll ever have enough practice with that.”

His mouth curved into a smile against hers. “Lucky for you, I’m a very patient instructor.”

“Lucky for me,” she agreed as he opened his mouth wide over hers and delved inside with his tongue.

It was magic, his mouth. The way he could move it over hers with such hunger and skill…it made her heartbeat quicken. Made her blood pulse in places that retained rich memories of the pleasure he’d given her in the night. She couldn’t imagine anything better than the way his mouth moved over hers.

But then he started moving his kisses lower. To her breast. To her belly. Her eyes went wide, a little shocky when she realized his intent.

“Let me,” he whispered against the silk of her inner thigh when she clamped her legs together in an involuntary reaction to her growing sense of vulnerability.

“Let me,” he whispered again, this time a gentle, insistent command.

He kissed her hip point, ran his tongue down the sensitive groove where leg met body and with persuasive pressure and husky assurances, pushed her thighs apart and settled his shoulders between them.

And then he showed her the real magic of his mouth. With skilled fingers, he parted her feminine folds. With murmured praise, his warm breath whispered against her swollen flesh. With a single-minded dedication that sent her heart rate soaring and stalled her breath on a keening sigh, he surrounded her with wet heat and the electric glide of his tongue…and introduced her to the true wonder of being selflessly loved by a man.

West Texas was known for its brilliant sunsets. Sunrise could be a full-blown religious experience, as well. The colors painting the sky this morning rivaled any Ry had ever seen as he stood, fully dressed in jeans, flannel shirt and boots, staring out the kitchen window listening to the coffee perk. But the canvas of brilliant apricots, golds and lavenders splashed along the eastern horizon were lost on him. His mind was full of Carrie.

The red of her hair, the dusky brown of her sensitive nipples, the creamy ivory tone of her skin…especially the skin covering her belly and the inside of her silky thighs. His senses were steeped in the scent of her, in the sounds she’d made when he’d made love to her, the uninhibited joy she’d discovered in her sensuality.

Everything about last night had been incredible. Everything about her had been wonderful.

And everything had been wrong.

Jaw clenched with self-condemnation and guilt, he swore under his breath and called himself ten kinds of fool. He never should have started with her, but once he had, he hadn’t been able to stop. Inexperienced, untutored, virginal…even one of the three words that had applied to her should have been enough to make him put on the skids. Combined, there was more than enough reason to curb his baser instincts. But with Carrie, what should have been deterrents were unbelievable turn-ons. She’d been so hungry to know…so willing to learn…so incredibly responsive to the slightest touch.

Inexperienced, untutored, virginal. Now she was none of those things. He’d taken them all away from her.

With movements of automation, he reached for a mug, filled it, then resumed his study of the breaking dawn. And tried to figure out where to go from here.

By the time he heard her soft footsteps on the terra-cotta tile of the kitchen floor a few minutes later, the time for figuring was over. He knew what he had to do.

He turned slowly, schooled his face into a blank sheet of paper…and felt his heart hit the floor when he saw her.

He wasn’t sure where she’d found that shirt; it was old and blue and soft from many washings. And it had never looked like that on him.

She was all long, golden legs and demure smiles…and when she lifted a hand and shoved her hair from her face, revealing that Whelan cowlick that entranced and fascinated him, it was all he could do to keep from marching her backward toward his bedroom and tumbling her onto the mattress covered in tangled sheets and the scent of her.

He knew what she wanted. A “hello lover” smile. Open arms. Reassurances that last night was as wonderful for him as she obviously felt it was for her.

And she deserved all of that and more. But all he could manage was a grim scowl and what he felt was the right, if not the best, resolution to atone for his mistake. “We need to get married.”