Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans Book 4) - Julie Ann Walker Page 0,77

featherbed with silk sheets. It wasn’t a hot tub with fragrant bubbles. But it was theirs. Their little hideaway. Their refuge from the world outside and any second thoughts about the repercussions of their decision. In a word, it was perfect. A place without place. A time without time.

“Maddy,” he whispered, slowly lowering her to the ground so that she was aware of every inch of him on the descent. The heavy muscles in his chest. The impossible hardness of his stomach. The thick length of him unabashedly throbbing and flexing against her.

Her world condensed down to this room. To the two of them. Right here. Right now. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but this man who was broken and bitter. Who was equally fearless and funny. Who could promise her nothing, but who meant everything.

“Say it again,” she whispered, her voice echoing softly in the dark when her feet hit the floor. “I like it when you say my name too.”

His Jersey accent did something wonderful to it. Making it harder sounding. Tougher sounding. Erotic sounding. When he said Maddy, she wasn’t a silly Southern belle. She was a temptress, a seductress, a siren.

“Maddy,” he said huskily, and she groaned, feeling passion fill her until it pushed against her ribs, her backbone, until her whole being ached with the enormity of it.

Then he was gone. Just like that. Her hands grasped at the darkness but came away empty. Her flesh chilled upon the absence of his intense heat. Then she heard the sleeping bag shush when it hit the wood floor. And suddenly he was back, herding her backward, using his big body and his superior strength to pin her against the wall. The metal was cool at her back as he reclaimed her lips in a kiss so lazy and long and thorough that by the time he allowed her to come up for air, she’d forgotten how to breathe.

“I wanna make this about you,” he said, leaving a string of kisses across her cheek and back to her ear. “Tell me what you want, Maddy. Tell me how you wanna be touched. How you wanna be kissed. How you wanna be fucked.”

With her eyesight gone, all her other senses were enhanced. For the first time she could hear the subtler bass notes in his sexy baritone, smell the lighter scent of suntan lotion underneath the salt water and Irish Spring soap clinging to his flesh, and taste the lingering flavor of a sports drink beneath the natural sweetness of his breath.

“Tell me all your fantasies, Maddy,” he continued, pressing his forehead to hers and running one finger down her cheek and over to her mouth so he could feel her swollen, parted lips. Feel her words when she finally gave them to him. “Tell me so I can make ’em all come true.”

“Bran,” she moaned. He shuddered when her breath feathered over his finger, like it’d burned him, but the pain was so good. The temptation to suck the digit inside her mouth, to take a part of him inside her, was too much. So she did exactly that and was rewarded when his uninjured thigh thrust between her legs, pushing high, lifting her on tiptoe. She rubbed herself against him even as she sucked.

“You’re so damned sexy,” he whispered before replacing his finger with his tongue, spearing deep over and over again. “Tell me, Maddy,” he insisted again. She was so wet she had to have soaked through her shorts and into his. “Tell me, damnit,” he growled when she didn’t answer him. He nipped her bottom lip. A warning. A gentle reminder that, when it came to this, he made all the rules.

“S-suck on my pulse point,” she stuttered.

He immediately obeyed, his hot lips closing over the spot on her neck where her heart hammered close to the surface of her skin. His hot tongue laved sweetly before he sucked deeply. And it was like an invisible string was connected from that spot on her neck to the swollen bundle of nerves between her legs.

“Touch me,” she rasped, running her hands over his big shoulders, amazed at the hardness of his muscles, at the density of his bones, at the smooth firmness of his warm skin. He felt exactly like what he was. A big, strong, very manly man. And everything that was female in her delighted in the differences between them. His hard to her soft. His rough to her smooth. His toughness to her