It was fire and lightning, this kiss. It was being awakened from a lifetime of nightmares and finally given light. It was like being reborn.
Chaya heard herself cry out, felt her arms latching around his neck, her body arching to him, needing more. More contact. More touch. Oh God, she couldn’t get enough of him, and the need would destroy her. This need rocked her to her very core, to the center of that lonely, almost broken, spirit that had sent her running before. Because she couldn’t face losing anyone else. She couldn’t face losing Natches, too.
She trembled as she felt his hands caressing her, running along her back, pushing beneath her top and touching bare flesh. He moved against her, pressing his thigh between hers, rocking her against him.
She felt the delicate, sensitive flesh between her thighs flame. Wicked, greedy wildfire swept through her, and nothing mattered but more. More of his kiss. If she didn’t get more of his kiss, she would lose her mind from the need. More of his touch. She wanted to be na**d in his arms. Naked and shuddering and surrounded by Natches. Surrounding him. Burning as she only burned in her dreams.
“There, Chay.” He pulled her closer, one hand on her butt, forcing her to ride the hard muscle of his thigh as she ground herself against him. “See how good it is, baby? Remember how hot it is?”
Oh yes, she remembered. She remembered begging him for more, screaming for more. The memories were hazy because the pain had been overwhelming that night. But she remembered enough to know why she had ached in the darkness of the night after she’d left Iraq. She remembered enough to know that, once he took her, she was never going to be the same again.
No more sleepwalking. She had existed the past five years, forcing herself through each day, refusing to acknowledge that a part of her, that hidden, feminine core of her, was right here. In Natches’s arms.
“Natches, let me breathe. Let me think,” she gasped as his lips slid from hers—lazy, confident—and nibbled at her jawline. Her nerve endings rose up in a crescendo of pleasure.
“No thinking allowed.” The rasp of his day-old beard sent shards of the most incredible pleasure washing through her body. “Now, let’s get these damned clothes off.”
It was sexy. It was erotic. It was the most gentle act of sexual intensity that she could have imagined. He pulled her arms from around his neck, then, staring down at her, his forest green eyes darkening to moss, his palms touching her flesh along the way, he slid her blazer from her shoulders and over her arms.
Chaya stared up at him, unable to break the contact, the connection. He had done that before, she remembered. Stared at her, watched her eyes as he undressed her.
“This isn’t a good idea.” She tried to protest, but it sounded more like an invitation. It was an invitation. Everyone knew Natches did anything anyone else considered a bad idea. And the more erotic, the more wicked, that bad idea was, the faster he was there.
“Who needs good ideas? Come here, baby. Let me see those pretty br**sts just one more time. Lift your arms for me.” He pulled the hem of her shirt up and over her head, off her arms. It dropped to the floor as a hungry growl left his lips and long, thick lashes feathered over his eyes.
When he looked at her like that, she melted. Then she felt his hands at the belt of her jeans.
She was na**d from the waist up, or practically naked, because the bra she wore didn’t hide much from view.
“Natches, I don’t think I can stand through this.”
And she didn’t. Her knees were weakening. She could feel her legs turning to mush, right along with her objections. This was Natches. Wicked, erotic Natches. His kisses were a flame that burned to the icy core of her. His touch was an inferno, warming her from the inside out.
And she needed to be warm. Just for a little while. She needed to be warmed by him, just one more time.
As his lips moved over her neck, her arms found strength. As his hands pushed beneath the waist of her jeans, she struggled against him, pushing at his arms.
“Easy, Chay.”
“Not easy.” She nipped at his neck, clearly surprising him as she tugged at his T-shirt. She wanted him bare as well. She wanted to feel him against her, bare flesh to bare flesh. She needed it.
He whipped the shirt from his body and tossed it aside as her hands went to his belt. Shaking, uncertain, her fingers pulled and tugged at it.
“There you go, Chay. Get naughty for me.”
She tore at the metal button, then eased the zipper over the hard, throbbing length of his cock. She moved it down slowly, working it over the stiff ridge as a hard growl passed his lips.
He wanted her naughty? She wasn’t naughty; she was starving for him. Five years of pent-up hunger blazed through her, erupting from a well of need that she’d had no idea existed within her.
Those distant memories from five years before didn’t compare to this. The feel of his body, so large and broad, hard and muscular, bending to her, almost protectively. His lips on her neck, teeth rasping. His hands working her jeans over her h*ps as hunger seemed to permeate the air.
Chaya could feel perspiration gathering on her body, the heat building inside them, flowing around them, as she pushed at his jeans, frantic to get to the heated flesh of his cock.
“There you go, sweetheart; burn for me,” he growled as his hands slid around to her rear, clenched, then lifted.
He raised her along his body, dragging her from her goal as a protesting cry fell from her lips. A second later, she felt the cool top of the low counter, heard a chair falling to the floor as he kicked it out of the way, and then Natches was kissing her again.
She couldn’t get enough of his kisses, or his touches. She couldn’t kiss back enough, couldn’t touch enough. She was consumed, inside and out, by a need so fiery she didn’t have a hope of controlling it.
“Here, get these off.” He pulled away from her, despite her attempts to draw him back and the mewling sound that fell from her lips.
His hair was tangled, mussed from her fingers and framing his roguish face. Dark eroticism sharpened his features, his eyes. His bare chest was sheened with sweat, the hair prickling her fingers as she ran her hands down it.
She ached for him now. Ached with a power that had her arching as she fought to breathe, as he pulled the boots from her feet and tugged her jeans down her legs.
She was na**d but for the bra and panties. Scraps of material that did nothing to shield her from his eyes. And he was looking. His gaze went over her slowly as his hands smoothed up her legs, her inner thighs, parting them as he centered on the wet core of her body.