Hot and Bothered - Erika Wilde Page 0,50

Her lips were parted as she panted for breath, her face flushed from arousal, and he strummed his fingers from her shoulder to her waist, causing her to shiver in response.

He couldn’t wait much longer and wanted her to be with him when he came. “Send us both over the edge,” he rasped, and bucked upward, prompting her to move as well.

She picked up his rhythm, matching him thrust for thrust, and the pleasure between them grew, driving them both higher. A desperate, keening sound escaped her as the heat and friction escalated. Seemingly needing more, she wrapped one arm around his neck, aligning their bodies from chest to groin, and used her other hand to frame his face as she lowered her head and captured his mouth in a deep, hot, tongue-tangling kiss that mimicked the fast, hard, frantic mating of their bodies.

The intensity was too great, the tumult of emotions he harbored for this woman too overwhelming, and Noah felt himself falling headlong into a searing orgasm that ripped through him like an electrical shock. And then she was moaning into his mouth, and he felt her convulsing around his shaft, milking him, shuddering with the force of her own release as she gave herself over to him in every way that mattered.

* * *

Natalie woke up in the middle of the night with a start, her body flinching as if someone had physically jolted her awake. Her heart pounded hard in her chest and she was trembling from the inside out. It took her a moment to realize that she was safe in bed with Noah, and that being chased through dark alleys to a dead-end street had all been a bad dream.

A very realistic dream, she couldn’t help but acknowledge, one that had taken on nightmarish qualities that even now, despite being fully aware of her safe surroundings, made her shudder. The man in her dream who’d chased her had taken on the face of the guy who’d been watching her at the restaurant the day before, and that in itself bothered her. She’d been running desperately, trying to escape him. The fear she’d experienced in her dream had been distinct and stifling and continued even now as she tried to make sense of it all.

Unbidden, a brief image flashed in her mind, of walking beside Noah and her being pursued by the same man in her dream. More disjointed glimpses appeared, of her fleeing Noah’s embrace in a panic. Blindly running across the street. Hearing the slam of brakes and the sickening impact of being hit by a car.

Then she remembered nothing else, though those images felt real and familiar. She tried to conjure more recollections, something that would better explain what she’d envisioned, but all she got for her effort was more fragmented pieces to add to the already complex puzzle in her mind.

There was no doubt that she was recalling flashes of her accident, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the man she’d seen at the restaurant had a link to her past somehow. And what if he wasn’t only a part of her nightmare, but was connected to her reality, as well? She desperately wanted to remember details, but a part of her was also afraid of knowing the truth for fear that the sense of security she’d come to know with Noah might shatter, leaving her to flounder all on her own.

Doubts and uncertainties mingled with the other disturbing emotions her dream had evoked, and she huddled beneath the warm weight of the blankets, as if the covers could protect her from the oppressive thoughts and haunting visions tumbling through her head.

Noah shifted beside her, his hand absently sliding across the strip of cool sheet separating them. A frown furrowed his brow, and he blinked his eyes open. His expression relaxed when their gazes met in the shadowed darkness, an intimate, soothing connection that instantly eased the tension from her body.

“Natalie?” he murmured sleepily, and came up on his arm to get a better look at her, which caused the sheet to fall to his waist. He must have sensed her distress, because concern immediately flashed across his expression. “Honey, are you okay?”

The man had the uncanny ability to know when she needed him the most. His presence. His internal strength. And his intuitive ability to calm her when she felt so close to falling apart. “I had a bad dream,” she told him, and heard the quiver in her