Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

“You’re such a good kisser,” he murmured, because she was. So many women wanted to press, then pull back, press, then pull back. They didn’t want to dig in to the kiss, to commit to it, to find that the tangle of tongues and breath and desire has its own appeal. Shawn opened herself to his kiss, and he appreciated that.

“Thank you,” she said, her lips shiny, eyes slumberous. “I don’t think anyone has ever told me that.”

“That’s because they were idiots. You make a man want to kiss you all night and then start again in the morning.” He did. He wanted to disappear inside her kiss, lose himself in her warmth, her taste, her willingness.

“Whatever you want,” she told him, the sincerity almost bringing him to his knees.

Shawn got what he craved. She understood it. That he didn’t want a woman to kowtow to him, to do what he wanted out of fear, that he wanted her to do it out of trust, out of the understanding that her surrender would bring them both more pleasure than they’d thought possible.

“There’s something really very perfect about you, Shawn.” He rubbed both her nipples to tight peaks with his thumbs, enjoying the dilation of her eyes and the lazy backward tilt of her head, her hips reaching for his. “I want you to know that there is nowhere I’d rather be than right here, right now.”

“I feel the same way. I didn’t expect to, but I do.”

“Good.” Rhett kissed her neck, the curve of her breast. He sucked at her nipples through the satin of her bra, first one, then the other. He trailed his tongue down her belly, dipping into the depression of her belly button, enjoying the little jerk she gave. Moving lower, he scraped his teeth on the fabric of her jeans, knowing she would want to grab his head, guide him to the perfect location. That she would want to thrust herself onto him.

The whimper she gave was evidence he was right. “Would you like to touch me?” he asked her, murmuring against her clitoris, his breath hot on her jeans.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“No,” he told her, pulling the zipper down and flicking his tongue inside.

This moan was more pronounced and she shifted on her feet.

She was wearing cotton panties, already damp with her arousal, and it was easy to soak the fabric with his tongue and wiggle his way to the swollen button. He popped the snap on her jeans so the waistband would slide farther apart, giving him more depth to his invasion, but still containing her hands in the pockets. Spurred on by the sounds she was making, which were growing increasingly desperate, Rhett peeled her panties down from the top and sucked on her clit.

Shawn let out a cry of ecstasy, which turned to despair as he snapped the panties back in place and stood back up. He took her hands out of her pockets. She watched him with hooded eyes, her breathing labored, cheeks and chest flushed pink. Keeping his gaze locked on hers, he undid the catch, then jerked her bra down her arms before moving behind her and tugging her wrists back toward him. He tied her hands together with the bra and let them rest on the curve of her ass.

When he shifted in front of her again, he asked in a tight voice, “Okay?” He didn’t want her to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with.

She nodded, swallowing hard. Her breasts were pert and tempting, her hair tumbling into her eyes, her lips slightly parted. Her jeans were sliding a little on her hips, giving him a tantalizing view of her stomach and hip bones. There was something demure, coy, about the tilt of her head, her gaze meeting his from under her lashes. Goose bumps raced across her arms.

He suddenly wanted to devour her. He wanted to eat and bite and lick every inch of her. He wanted to lose control and consume her with his lust, to take and tear them both apart with frantic passion. Knowing he couldn’t unleash the full force of his sexual need, he settled for biting her earlobe, his teeth sinking in deep enough that he heard her gasp in pain. He didn’t want to hurt her. It brought him back under control, just as he had known it would. He soothed his actions with soft kisses and murmured words of nothing, his fingers teasing into her panties, enjoying the warm, wet welcome he received when he drove two fingers deep inside her.

“Shh,” he said when she gave a whimper, her hands jerking instinctively against the restraints.

He swallowed any further protests with a kiss as he coaxed and teased pleasure from her, seeking her G-spot. When he found it, sliding across the sensitive spongy spot, she jerked again, her mouth breaking away from his, her forehead resting on his shoulder as she fought against an orgasm. He could feel her muscles straining, feel the tightness of her nipples against his chest, hear her ragged breathing. She had remembered to wait, and that gave him immense satisfaction.

“Do you need to come?” he murmured in her ear, enjoying the brush of her lips on his shoulder.

“No,” she whispered.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes. And no.”

Holding the back of her head, he slowed down his stroking, not wanting her to tumble into an orgasm. “Which is it?”

“Of course I want to. But I also know it will feel good to be driven crazy.”

That was his girl. “Then we’ll go with door number two. Because Shawn, you’re right. It will feel good when I drive you crazy. You’re going to scream my name before we’re finished.”

And when she did, he had a feeling that for the first time ever, he wouldn’t despise the name he’d been given.

SHAWN nodded, no longer able to speak. She was concentrating too hard on not losing control and coming on Rhett’s finger. It was too soon. She wanted to draw out the anticipation, but he was so good at setting her on fire, stroking her into hot ecstasy that here she was, struggling to hold on.

It wasn’t just his touch, though he had found her G-spot in about thirty seconds. It was having her hands behind her back. It made her breasts jut out in a way she wouldn’t naturally do. It made her exposed, unable to fold forward, to embrace, to touch. It made it all about her. That was the most shocking and sensual realization of all. She never would have thought that making herself vulnerable would make her powerful, yet it did.

Sensation was heightened, intensified.

Rhett had slowed his movements to a steady hypnotic glide, moving away from her sensitive spot, but intuitively understanding that if he just jerked away from her entirely, it would catapult her into an extremely unsatisfying orgasm. Breathing deeply in and out, she calmed herself down, regained control of her body, and managed to pick her forehead off his shoulder so she could see his face, gauge his expression.

His green eyes had darkened, and he was watching her with an expression she didn’t understand. It looked . . . tender. Unnerved, she tried to pull away but his hand was still in her pants, his finger still inside her, other hand cupping the back of her head. Holding her firm, he shook his head, just a slight shake of disapproval and she felt a flush of . . . what? Disappointment in herself for disappointing him?

Oh, hell, no.

Now she was really freaked out. She started to rear away from him, full-blown panic rushing over her. Given that her feet were entangled with his and her hands were tied and he was holding her, she ended up stumbling backward and would have fallen if he hadn’t prevented her from going down. Which made it worse. She realized that without her hands to brace her fall, she would have landed hard on her ass, or worse, on her face.

“Shawn.” He gripped her steadily, bent his head to make eye contact, but she couldn’t look at him. “Shawn, look at me.”

She stared at the wall, breathing hard, overwhelmed and confused. If she looked at him, he would see that she was suddenly terrified. Of how he could make her feel. Of how she could easily come to depend on him.

That wasn’t her. She didn’t depend on anyone. Because they would let you down. Leave. Like her father, and in ways so much more hurtful, her grandfather checking out and putting conditions on her inheritance.

Oh, God. Tears rose in her eyes, and one leaked, inching down her cheek, and she couldn’t even wipe it away. She was mortified.

“Baby, talk to me. What’s going on?” Rhett gently lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. When he saw the tear, he wiped it with the pad of his thumb and then sucked the droplet off his finger.

That disarmed her. “Why did you just lick my tear?” she asked, yanked out of her maelstrom of emotion. Sometimes Rhett was just freaking weird.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I just wanted to taste it.”

She gave a desperate sort of laugh. “You’re really bizarre.”

“I know. I’ve never tried to hide who I am.”

No, he hadn’t.

“Why are you crying?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her waist, but loosely, like he knew she would bolt if his grip was too tight.

Which she would.

“I don’t understand what you want from me.”

He studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Awkward to her anyway. His stare was intense, as it always was. It stripped her bare, made her long to look away again, to hide from him.

“I don’t want to take anything from you. You don’t need to give me anything. I just want to be with you. Does that make sense?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “It’s just . . . you looked at me and I didn’t get it. It was like you . . .”

Shawn stopped herself. She couldn’t say it out loud. She would feel like an idiot. A presumptuous idiot.

“Like I what?” he urged.

When she still didn’t answer, he frowned, the smooth skin between his eyes forming a deep trench that told her his expression was frequently one of concentration. Which she knew.

“I don’t know what I look like,” he told her. “But I know what I’m thinking. And what I’ve been thinking as I kiss you and touch you, is that you’re an amazing woman and I want to give you pleasure, make you happy. And you know what that means?”

She shook her head. Sometimes it was really hard to believe that Rhett was so much younger than her. He had an easy confidence in who he was, what he said, that she envied. Yet at the same time, he made her feel very feminine, very cherished, something she’d never experienced before.

“It means I care about you. It means that if you believe in fate, it guided us both to that bar that night because we’re supposed to be here, together, doing this. This is right, Shawn, me and you. And you can’t tell me otherwise, because I won’t believe you.”

Oh, God. She had never been particularly romantic, or gushy, or emotionally exposed. But she could have sworn that everything in her just heaved, like her soul sighed in pure bliss. She even heard the exhalation of air from her mouth, a soft rush that proved she did in fact believe him. She trusted him.

That’s what was so scary.

He kissed the corner of her mouth, first right, then left. “Say something, baby.”

She shook her head. “No. Because if I do I might ruin this moment.” It didn’t have to be forever. It just had to be now.

So she kissed him. She reached out and poured her overflowing feelings into a kiss, which he accepted and deepened. As their tongues teased over each other, their moans eager and increasingly desperate, Rhett undid the bra locking her wrists together behind her back.

“I want you to touch me,” he murmured, his voice rough and gravelly.

She wasn’t going to argue with that. Greedily, she ran her hands over the hard plane of his abdomen, over his chest, his biceps. He was so hard, so solid. Like the man himself. There was nothing soft about Rhett, physically or otherwise. Indulging herself, she felt up his ass through his jeans. Equally solid.

When she shifted her touch to the front of his jeans, finding his erection with ease, she was feeling down the length of it, awed by its steely quality, when he broke off their kiss and covered her hand with his.

“Not yet, baby. Let me make you come first. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

With any other man she would have given a flippant response. A casually tossed “Duh” or the equivalent. But she wasn’t even tempted to be snarky with Rhett. It would be, well, disrespectful. So she said simply, “Yes.”

He kissed her neck and it caused goose bumps to rise all over her arms. She was lost to him, and she knew it. When he guided her back to the bed, she let him lay her out and she waited, in a sort of warm and squishy state of anticipation as he stripped her jeans off, followed by her panties. There was no rush on his part, no rough jerking of clothes, just a steady progress, the drive on his face clear. He was a man who focused on one thing at a time, she had learned. He didn’t start something and not finish it. He didn’t talk to her while scrolling through his cell phone checking e-mail and social networking sites. He didn’t watch TV and jump up at every commercial to do a chore the way she did.