adrian-run-to-you-v1 Read online

  His hands spear into my unbound hair, dragging me to his mouth for a fevered kiss.

  I can’t help wriggling closer to him, craving his firmness against the ache that still throbs in my core. Each lick and thrust of his tongue makes my arousal coil tighter, reigniting the fire that was merely banked by my climax, but far from extinguished.

  I moan, breaking away from his lips on a shallow pant. “I’m getting you all wet.”

  His hands move down to my bare ass, gathering me deeper into his lap. “You hear me complaining?”

  “No,” I say, managing a laugh. “But I think we should get you out of those clothes.”

  He smiles, his eyes smoldering. “I like the way you think.”

  I begin undressing him, starting with his jacket. I push it off his muscled biceps, my gaze flicking to his when I realize he’s wearing a shoulder holster and firearm strapped over his dark gray shirt. The black leather strap is thin and discreet, but the pistol snapped into the sheath is deadly serious.

  “Are you always on duty, Boy Scout?”

  A grimness seeps into his expression. “Always.”

  He removes the holster, reaching around me to carefully set it and the weapon away from us on the floor beside the bed. I can hardly wait to attack the buttons on his shirt. His skin is tan and smooth beneath the crisp fabric. And scarred.

  I hadn’t realized it the last time he was in my apartment, when I’d run my hands under his T-shirt. All along his left side, dozens of silvery, healed shrapnel wounds--some worse than others--pepper his chest and shoulders. The same side where he lost his leg. I want to know more, I want to understand everything he’s been through, but not now. Right now, I just want to be with him.

  I open his shirt further, pushing it off his arms and then leaning down to kiss the center of his chest. His skin is hot beneath my lips, like velvet beneath my tongue. I kiss each scar I find, from his throat to his shoulders then down onto the ridges and valleys of his muscular abdomen. I revel in the controlled power of him, in the battle-tested beauty of his body.

  His hands are in my hair, caressing my scalp as I move over him, kissing and licking my way back up to his mouth. When our lips join, his tongue invades, hot and hungry. Splaying his hand against my spine, he presses me against his bare chest. My nipples brush the smooth warmth of his skin and I moan into his mouth as arousal spirals through me.

  “I need you, Gabe.” I rock into his embrace, needing the contact even more than I need my next breath. “I want my hands on you.”

  I reach down between us, hastily unfastening his belt. It jangles softly, the only other sound except for the rush of our combined panting. I open the button of his dress slacks then tug down his zipper. His erection juts upward, the thick length straining the fabric of his dark boxer briefs. My mouth waters, and a surge of hot need floods me.

  I slip my fingers inside the waistband and he groans, his stomach flexing sharply at the contact. His cock fills my grasp, overflows it. The girth and length and weight combine to make the hunger inside me roar into a wordless sound of pure need. With greedy hands I free his erection from the confining aggravation of his briefs. He helps me, pushing his pants down off his hips. The movement makes his shaft surge in my hold. He makes a strangled noise, pumping restlessly now.

  I scoot back on his thighs to get a better look as I run my hands all over him. His spine arches as I stroke him, his powerful body rigid and taut as a bowstring.

  “You’re beautiful, Gabriel.” I mean it sincerely, but he chuckles wryly, as if he takes my praise as a joke. I glance up at him. “What’s funny about that?”

  “A woman who’s utter fucking perfection tells me I’m beautiful.” He scoffs, slowly shaking his head. “You haven’t seen the worst of me.”

  His voice is low, almost a warning. I’m not sure he’s talking about physical flaws, not when I can see there is a storm brewing in his eyes. He’s trying to keep it shuttered from me, but it’s hard to hide wounds from someone who also bears her own.

  I reach up with one hand and cup the back of his skull, compelling him to look inside me too. “I want to see all of you. I need to know that what I’m holding onto is real.”

  “Don’t I feel real?” His mouth quirks, wicked and sensual, at the same time he thrusts deeply into my grasp on the hard length of his erection.

  He’s evading and I know it, putting up a wall I don’t feel equipped to climb. Not now, when my desire for him is still swamping me.

  “Come here,” he growls. Cupping my face in his warm palms, he draws me into his kiss.

  His mouth is fierce on mine, leaving no room for my doubts. There is no room for anything but pleasure and sensation when my breasts are crushed to Gabe’s naked chest, our bodies melding together as he deepens our kiss into a breath-stealing conquest of my lips.

  He’s even harder now, and the feel of so much power in my hand makes my desire twist into something ravenous. Panting, I break our kiss on a moan and slide off his lap, easing down onto the floor on my knees in front of his bent legs.

  I tug his pants and briefs off his hips, captivated by the sight of his cock as it springs free, jutting high against his taut abdomen. I lick my lips in anticipation, swamped in carnal need of this man. His eyes are hungry on me too. But I detect the firming of his jaw, the fractional halting of his breath, as I pull his clothing farther down his thighs and uncover the top of the prosthesis on his left leg. A cushioned sleeve starts halfway up his thigh, covering the sturdy plastic cup that’s attached to the metal calf, ankle, and artificial foot below it.

  Letting his pants fall off his knees and down around his ankles, I run my hands over the soft bristly hair on his bare thighs, sliding my fingers back up to stroke the length of his arousal all the way to its crown. I spread his knees with my body, turning my head to drag a kiss along the inner portion of one thigh, then the other.

  I draw back, drinking in every scarred and beautiful inch of him as my hands make another slow trek along his legs. I keep going, sliding my caress over both his knees, the one that’s bare, warm flesh and the other that’s encased in the cool sleeve and plastic socket of the prosthesis.

  “Does it turn you off?”

  His voice is low and flat, emotionless. I glance up and find his gaze rooted on me, his handsome face schooled into a bland expression that I would never mistake for anything close to casual. I press my mouth to the inside of his left thigh, just above the edge of the sleeve.

  “Nothing about you turns me off.”

  His skin tenses beneath my lips and my tongue, and I hear the ragged breath he inhales through gritted teeth. I rise up on my knees, kissing my way back to his cock. He groans when I take him deep into my mouth, his hips bucking as I move atop him, my tongue teasing the underside of his shaft.

  On a guttural curse, he arches up, pulling me off him and dragging me onto his lap again.

  I swipe my tongue over my wet lips, frowning at him. “I wasn’t through with you.”

  “No, baby,” he says, taking me in a raw kiss. “We’re just getting started.”

  I moan against his mouth, delirious with desire. “Your pants,” I murmur. “Don’t you want to take them off?”

  He gives a faint shake of his head. “The leg would have to come off first. It’s a process.”

  “I can be patient,” I say in between kisses. “The wait’ll be worth it so I can have my wicked way with you.”

  His answering chuckle vibrates against me. “You might have patience for that, but who says I do?”

  He reaches for something in his discarded suit jacket and I raise my brows when I hear the faint crackle of a condom package. “You come prepared.”

  “You’re the one who likes to call me a Boy Scout.” He gives me an adorably unrepentant smirk as he tears open the packet and suits up.

  “Just how often do you go home with random women you pick up in dance clubs? Or maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “You’re not random,” he
says, dead serious. “This is not random. It wasn’t supposed to happen--you and me. I knew where to find you tonight. I should’ve stayed away, but--”

  “But what?” I ask, suddenly afraid of his answer.

  He shakes his head, lips pressed flat. “If I could have convinced myself to take any other woman in that place home tonight, believe me, I would have. But it’s only you I want, Evelyn.” He curses, a tight, violent hiss. “Fuck. What I want is this.”

  I nod, bereft of words. All I have is need.

  I shift on Gabe’s lap, positioning myself over him until he is seated at the mouth of my sex. I sink down on him, taking his length slowly, gasping as the girth and power of him fills me. Completes me. Breaks me wide open.

  “Oh, God,” I moan, moving atop him.

  He holds onto my hips, meeting every wet slide of my sheath with a strong thrust. I knew it would feel good to have him inside me, but I was wrong. It’s heaven. It’s more pleasure than I can bear.

  Our tempo turns frenzied. Gabe’s arms cage me against his heat and strength as he drives deeper and deeper. My climax builds quickly, a tide I neither slow down nor escape. I close my eyes against the overwhelming pleasure of it, catching my lip on a broken moan.

  “Let me see you, baby.” Gabe’s harsh whisper commands me. “Let me see you come for me.”

  His rhythm is masterful, merciless, pushing me right over the edge. A cry rips from my throat as sensation explodes through me, sharp and white and jagged.

  “So beautiful,” he snarls against my parted, panting lips. “Ah, Christ. You feel so fucking good wrapped around my cock.”

  A low roar boils out of him as he pounds into me from his seated position on the bed. My legs are all but useless now, my head resting in the curve of his bulky shoulder, my body still caught in the aftershocks of my orgasm. Gabe does all of the work, his hands clutching my ass, his hips driving hard and tireless.

  I can sense the moment when it all becomes too much for him. His muscles tense under my hands, every inch of him feeling like granite against me, while inside me, his strokes are tight and deep, hard shudders striking a place in me that’s so sensitive it nearly makes me weep. Then he bites off a sharp curse and I feel him erupt inside me.

  And still he keeps rocking into me.

  The friction is delicious. I can’t help myself from moving along with it, desperate to hold the pleasure close. The pleasure, and the man delivering it.

  “How many condoms do you have, Boy Scout?”

  His chuckle sounds a little breathless against my ear. “Enough.”

  “You sure?” I angle into him, taking each upward thrust as deep as I can. Each withdrawing slide is met with the protesting squeeze of my inner walls, striving to keep him inside.

  He moans, his cock jerking inside me and still as hard as when we began. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”

  I lift my head and meet his dusky, heavy lidded gaze. “Nothing about me is easy. Didn’t you say so yourself just the other day?”

  “So I did,” he admits, a devilish grin curving his mouth. “And just so we’re clear, I never back down from a challenge.”

  19

  ~ Evelyn ~

  I wake in the darkness, sometime before dawn. I’m drowsy and sated, aching in all the right places.

  Gabe is not in bed with me, but when I sit up I notice that his suit jacket and shirt are folded with military precision on the bench at the end of the mattress, along with his holstered weapon. I don’t see his pants or his prosthesis, which he removed sometime last night before we depleted his condom supply.

  I smile at the memory of how vigorously and thoroughly we pleasured each other.

  And that’s all it takes for arousal to unfurl inside me all over again. I groan, clamping my thighs together against the rising ache I still have for him.

  So much for my sexual drought. Gabriel Noble not only opened the dam last night but obliterated it.

  I slip out of bed and follow the sliver of light coming from the connected master bathroom, pausing to grab a short kimono from my large walk-in closet as I go.

  Gabe is freshly showered and seated on the marble edge of the big soaking tub, a white guest towel wrapped around his hips. His broad, muscled back is bent forward as he scrubs a hand over the top of his damp, tousled brown hair.

  “Good morning,” I murmur, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “Hey,” he says, glancing up. His voice is low and rough, like it was last night when he whispered so many delicious, dirty things to me. “I hope you don’t mind that I used your shower.”

  “Of course, I don’t mind.” I let myself soak in the sight of him, finding it difficult to calm the flutter in my stomach as my gaze travels from his handsome face to his thick shoulders and the solid planes of his chest and lean abdomen. His prosthesis is propped against the bathroom wall near him. I don’t want to stare at his legs, but I don’t avoid looking, either.

  After last night, I can’t look at him enough. I’ve explored every inch of his gorgeous body, and I’d love nothing more than to start all over again today.

  I step inside the bathroom and seat myself beside him. “What time is it?”

  “Almost five. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “It’s okay.” God, he smells good. And the droplets of water on his golden skin only make me want to lick him dry. “You’re leaving early.”

  I sound disappointed because I am. He was so tender and giving in bed, I can’t deny that I was looking forward to waking up in his arms.

  “It’s Monday morning,” he says. “My day starts early, so I have to get going.”

  I lean toward him, pressing a kiss to his bare shoulder. “You sure there isn’t anything you want before you go?”

  The corner of his mouth quirks. “I can think of several things. Unfortunately, I’m already late and I need to swing by my place and change clothes. I wasn’t planning to stay over.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  He nods, reaching up to stroke the side of my cheek. When I turn my face into his open hand and kiss the center of his palm, he groans. “You start that and I’m going to want to finish it.”

  “I don’t see a problem with that.”

  “My team will. I’ve got a meeting with them this morning at headquarters.”

  “Call in sick. I will too. We can go out for breakfast and some more condoms.”

  He chuckles. “Tempting, but I can’t. After the meeting, I’ll be with Nick and Beck reviewing the new security system installation for your boutique later this week.”

  “Tell them you’re playing hooky with me. Or I’ll tell them. My brother will understand.”

  The look he gives me is so stark it makes my breath catch. “No. He won’t understand, Evelyn.” He glances away then, muttering a harsh curse. “Your brother will fucking kill me if he finds out what I’ve done to you. And for good damn reason.”

  “What you’ve done to me?” I laugh, but he only grows soberer. Distant. I swear he flinches when I place my hand on his back. “Hey. I was only kidding about saying anything to Andrew. I won’t. My sex life is none of his business, just like his is none of mine. Not that he has a sex life. I’m pretty sure my big brother is a monk.”

  This attempt at humor falls flat too. Gabe swears again, low under his breath. “I gotta go.”

  He reaches for his prosthesis and his slacks that lay on the edge of the tub at his other side. Afraid to say anything else that might worsen the gap that seems to have opened up between us so quickly, I get up and brush my teeth at one of the sinks as he hastily puts on his boxer briefs, then grabs the sleeve that fits onto the stump of his left leg.

  He struggles with it, his hands moving hurriedly. He peels it off and starts over. When he does it a third time, the curse that explodes out of him makes me jump.

  “Can I help?”

  “No.” Another curse, more vivid this time. Then he blows out a sharp breath. “Do you have any a
lcohol?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Rubbing alcohol,” he clarifies. “It’ll help lubricate the sleeve.”

  “Sure. I think I have some.” I check the cabinets and find a bottle near the back. “What else do you need?”

  “Just that.”

  I bring it to him and stand back while he pours some into his hands, then smooths it onto the silicone sheath. He sets the open bottle down and starts aligning the rounded cup of the sleeve at the bottom of his stump. I can see the sides catching again, friction tugging against it instead of allowing the sleeve to roll smoothly over his knee and onto his thigh.

  “Do you need some more?”

  He nods tightly. “Just a bit, right here.”

  I kneel down in front of him, then pour the alcohol in my palms and rub it onto the silicone where he indicated. His skin is warm beneath the sleeve, his thigh muscles taut and strong. The silicone covering slides easily under his hands now, and he finishes adjusting it into place.

  He gives me a rueful glance. “Bet you think I’m real fucking sexy now, right?”

  “Just real,” I tell him. “And that’s okay. More than okay.”

  He scoffs quietly, his lips pressed flat as he reaches for the prosthesis. “I hate that you’re seeing me like this. That’s why I don’t do this kind of shit.”

  “Stay over at a woman’s place, you mean?”

  “Relationships,” he says. I hear the anger in his voice, but it’s the deeper wounds that open up an ache in my breast. It’s the fear I see in his gaze now that moves me. “I don’t do this. I haven’t been with anyone like this--like you--since I got out of the hospital. Hell, I wasn’t very good at relationships even before I got injured.”