“So when can I get out of here and back to my life? Any news yet?”
“What’s the hurry? Do you have someone besides the admiral waiting for you on the outside?”
She didn’t like the tone of his voice, didn’t like the friendliness in it, or the silent invitation to spill her guts to him. She had no secrets; she had no reason to feel sorry for herself.
“I have a full life.” She shrugged easily.
“And an empty bed.” His voice lowered, the black velvet tone stroking over her senses as he moved toward her.
“My bed is none of your business, Macey. When I want a man there, I have no trouble filling it.”
And how many times had she had done that? Too few. And they had been gone too quickly.
“Why are you so defensive with me, Em?” he asked then, his tone too soft, too knowing, too sexy. “You snap and snipe at me as though I’ve done something to hurt you. If I have, I’d be more than willing to kiss it and make it better.”
He was teasing. That playful, come-hither male sexiness that she found so hard to resist. That she had to resist. Otherwise, there would be no way she could hide the feelings she had for him. Feelings that went beyond scratching a little sexual itch while they were confined together.
“If I’m so hard to be around, why did you take this job?” she asked.
“Why did I take this assignment?” He leaned close, his lips curving into a smile, his dark eyes gleaming with sexual intent. “I took this job to finally get into your pants, Em. To get you under me, around me, and to get so deep inside you that the last thing you think about is pushing me away. That’s why I let your godfather maneuver me like the good little SEAL I am. Now, answer my question. Why, Emerson Delaney, do you try to push me away every damned time I get close enough to do that?”
“I don’t know, Macey,” she snarled. “Maybe I don’t want to join the Macey’s Castoff’s club. Sorry, Lieutenant, but being part of the crowd never appealed to me, and being a part of your crowd appeals even less. So why don’t you stop trying to seduce me, get on your handy-dandy made-for-spying computer and find me a way out of this. Otherwise, we’re going to end this little fiasco as enemies, rather than the fragile friendship I thought we had managed to maintain.”
His brows lifted, amusement filling his expression.
“Do you let all your friends suck your hard little nipples in your godfather’s study, Em? If you do, I think I’m going to need to spank you.”
Flames raced through her body. Warning alarms were clanging through her head. But when his head lowered, his hand sliding into her hair to hold her still, feeling his lips on hers again, she was lost. Lost in the touch of a man she knew she could never hold, and unwilling to break free, because nothing, at no time in her life, had ever felt as right as Macey’s kiss. Macey’s touch. As belonging to Macey, if only for this moment.
SIX
HE WASN’T STOPPING THIS time.
Macey eased over the back of the couch, keeping his lips on Emerson’s, tasting the wild passion and honeyed sweetness of her kiss, her tongue, letting himself become trapped in her pleasure and his own.
This was the snare, and he knew it. A pleasure unlike any other that he had known in his life. For the first time, he could feel his lover’s pleasure as well as his own, and he was trapped within it. He wasn’t touching, stroking, giving pleasure in the hopes of having that pleasure returned. Hell no. Hearing her pleasure, feeling her tremble with it, the sound of it echoing in her shaking moan, that was pleasure.
He stroked his tongue over Emerson’s lips, felt them tremble as he took another short, drugging kiss. He let his hands move over her shoulders as he tried to sate himself with the sweetness of her lips and her inquisitive little tongue.
But there was no sating himself and he knew it. Had known it since that first kiss.
“Come here, Em.” He lowered her to the couch as her velvety hazel green eyes opened and she stared back at him with pleasure.
“Macey.” She licked her lips, and he followed suit.
He let his tongue run over them before taking another hard, quick taste of her.
“Don’t think, baby,” he whispered. “Let me touch you. Have you. Don’t you know I’d beg for just another taste?”
“Macey.” She blinked drowsily, sensually, her hands fluttering to his shoulders. He watched the hunger overcome the hesitancy in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because I can’t fight it any longer.”
“But you’ll break my heart.” He heard her breath hitch as his lips became distracted by the long, slim line of her neck. “You know you’re going to break my heart.”
He jerked his head up, his eyes narrowing on hers. “I take care of what’s mine, Emerson. Every part of it. And whether you end up liking it or not, sweetheart, you’re mine.”
Her arms curved around his neck, and he set out to mark his territory. The primal need to possess had him by the balls now, and he had a feeling it wasn’t going to release him anytime soon.
As his hand flattened beneath her shirt on the bare flesh of her stomach, a moan slipped past Emerson’s lips into the kiss he was stealing from her soul. Calloused and warm, the tips of his fingers stroking her flesh had her nerve endings howling in pleasure.
They strained together, hips arching, bearing down, the thick length of his cock pressed against her saturated core as her hands curved around his back, her nails digging into the material of his shirt.
It wasn’t enough, she needed to touch his flesh, needed to feel it against her. She tore at the cloth, tugging it upward to his shoulders, revealing the tough skin and hard muscles of his back. Pleasure whipped through her palms as she stroked his flesh and felt him tense tighter against her.
“Get naked,” he growled, tearing his lips from hers, lifting just enough to jerk his shirt from his body, then her shirt followed. A dark, almost black patch of chest hair arrowed along his hard abs and into the band of his jeans.
Her hands tore at the belt cinching his waist, pulling it free as his hands worked on the metal snap and zipper.
She tugged at the material, pulling it over his hips with one hand as she parted the front edges, pulled the snug boxer briefs from the thick length of flesh it covered and felt her mouth go dry.
His cock was so hard and the skin stretched so tight it appeared painful. Heavy veins throbbed in hungry demand and the wide, dark crest pulsed with a heartbeat all its own, pushing a silky pearlescent bead of pre-cum from the narrow slit.