Desert Rose (Book #1 - Warrior Series)

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  An hour later, David found Emma stretched out on the sofa. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow and steady. He settled into the chair closest to her, still not quite able to wrap his mind around what he now knew about her. He held his breath when she stirred, her shift in position atop the cushions causing the robe she wore to part from her thighs to her toes.

  Desire steamed through his veins as he indulged himself in a leisurely study of those shapely legs – legs that seemed to go on for frigging ever – legs that made him want to groan aloud his need to sheathe his sex deep within her body and feel them wrapped around his hips as they made love. He must have made a betraying sound, because when his gaze reached her face, he saw that her eyes were open and she was watching him with a curiously tender expression.

  “Feel better?” she asked as she took in his startling transformation.

  Gone was the grime of deprivation and captivity. Gone were the filthy flight suit and the steel-toed flight boots that he’d worn since being shot down. And gone was the heavy beard that had obscured his hard cheeks and stubborn chin.

  Obviously naked beneath the towel fastened low on his hips, he literally took Emma’s breath away. She cared little that he hadn’t opted to use the robe she’d left on the bathroom counter for him. In fact, she was almost relieved that he hadn’t put it on.

  Scrubbed clean and freshly shaved, he was a new man. A striking man, but not at all handsome. Definitely not handsome. That tame word would never in a million years be applied to David Winslow. He was big and powerfully constructed – so much so that her heart did a little tap-dance of pleasure. And as he shifted in his chair, the air in her lungs stopped cold. She realized that even his slightest movement reflected the lithe grace of a predator. And, my God, the man looked ready to prowl.

  He remained silent, though, apparently not yet ready to answer her question. Instead, he seemed to have questions of his own to ask, questions that lurked in his eyes as he studied her. So, she waited him out and continued her study of him.

  The strength of his character and his Montana origins showed in his steely jaw, direct gaze, and sensual lips. His uncompromising personality was apparent in the sturdiness of his starkly male body. Although bruised and likely scarred in a variety of places by the torture he’d endured during his captivity, the damage inflicted upon his flesh did nothing to diminish his appeal.

  “I feel much better,” he finally said.

  “I like you without the beard.”

  He dipped that strong chin in acknowledgement, his expression remaining oddly neutral.

  “What are you thinking, David?”

  “That I want … I need … to take you to bed.”

  Warmth and desire swamped her. “I want you, too.”

  She sat up without further comment, swinging those impossibly long, impossibly spectacular legs of hers off the cushions. Her upward momentum dislodged the towel that had encased her damp hair. As it fell away, her nearly waist-length mane tumbled free like an unraveling bolt of obsidian silk past her shoulders and down her back.

  Hunger lanced through him as David pushed up from his chair, took her extended hand, and drew her to her feet. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded, captured by his incinerating gaze – a darkly territorial gaze that asserted both male prowess and his personal claim on her. “I’m very sure.”

  He raised his free hand, stroking the mass of unbound hair, his gliding fingers indulging in pure sensory appreciation. “It’s almost blue, it’s so black.”

  She shrugged. “Chalk it up to an excellent gene pool.”

  His hot gaze ran riot over her, his hand trembling as he withdrew it from the damp strands. “Excellent. Good word. Christ, if I’m dreaming don’t wake me up.”

  He gathered her up and into his arms in one fluid motion. As he cradled her against his broad chest, she looped her arms around his neck and remained silent as he carried her into the guest room. And with every step he took, she ached all the way down to her soul for this man.

  He held her like precious cargo, and she felt the sluggish, simmering flow of the blood in her veins. She felt simultaneously weakened and empowered. She felt utterly seduced, just as he’d seduced her with his touch in the prison cellblock when all they’d been able to do was hold hands and dream of freedom. And she felt needy, but only for his touch – his passion – his hunger.

  Once he lowered her to her feet beside the bed and they faced each other, she held his gaze. Without pretense or false modesty, Emma shrugged free of her robe and let it tumble to the floor. A hard gust of air burst out of him. As the raw sound faded, she freed the towel knotted at his hips. It, too, fell to the floor.

  Then, she stepped forward, surrendering fully as his arms encircled her and he drew her into his heat. Her senses quickened, her heart raced, and she trembled with need.

  He tightened his embrace and bent his head, the subtle flex and flow of the muscles that crisscrossed his chest and ridged his flat belly tensing as she melted against him. His sex lengthened and swelled to near bursting. Sucking in a sharp breath, he fought for control.

  Then he claimed her lips, instantly deepening their connection when he thrust his tongue into her mouth. His kiss devastated her with its overt carnality, and she gloried in it.

  Instinct and too many other emotions to name drove her. Coherence fled. Everything within her became centered on David, the way he tasted, the feel of his mouth fused to hers, the invasive darting of his tongue, and the possessive sweep of his hands down her back and over her hips.

  Emma moaned her pleasure, her fingernails digging into his back as she clung to him. Her body wept for his possession, and her knees threatened to give way. And somehow, he knew. He knew exactly what she needed.

  He shifted one of his hands to a position between their bodies, hesitating for just a heartbeat before he skimmed his fingertips down over her belly and then slid them along the silk covered, swollen seam of her slick cleft. She moaned at the trail of burning sensation he left in his wake. He drank in the pleasure-filled sound even as he delved into her sheathing heat with first one finger and then a second.

  “You feel like you’re on fire, Emma.”

  “Now, please. Need you … inside me,” she whispered against his lips.

  The coarse word he muttered echoed in the stillness like a whispered prayer. Without warning, he lowered her onto her back atop the bed. He came down over her, bracing his upper body weight on his elbows as his narrow hips wedged apart her thighs.

  She gripped his shoulders, trembling when she felt his sex at the entrance to her body, the thick head throbbing and hot and poised to claim her. The interior of her body felt as heated as honey placed atop a flame.

  She glanced down, taking in the dense pelt of mahogany hair that covered his chest. The swirling pattern invited a fingertip inspection. Her fingertips, she decided. Only hers.

  Emma brought her gaze back up to his chiseled features. He appeared to be cast in granite, but she knew that granite was cool to the touch and David was not. She felt his heat and hunger right down to her soul – this man composed of muscle and bone and sinew, this man so capable of compassion and fierceness, kindness and aggression, this man who could seduce her with the simple act of breathing.

  She recalled the way in which he’d aroused her to the point of mindlessness with the simple stroking of his fingertips across the palm of her hand. Now, he watched her with an almost proprietary manner, which only served to strengthen her desire for him.

  “I need to keep a promise,” she said.

  “Promise?” he asked.

  He studied her exquisite face and those extraordinary eyes. She was so much more than he’d imagined, more than he’d dreamed of possessing, more than he’d ever craved in a woman. His hunger for her overwhelmed, made every muscle in his body tighten like coiled steel.

  His control began to disintegrate. Need thrummed inside him. Fantasy and reality warred within
him. And yet, here she was. Naked. Tantalizing. Enticing. His to touch. His to linger over, to savor, to consume. His for the taking.

  “What promise?” he managed to ask a second time.

  She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her lips to the side of his neck to bestow a stinging little nip and then a gentle, healing kiss. When she drew back, she met his curious expression. “That first day in my cell, I made myself a promise that I’d put my arms around you and hug you at the very first opportunity. That was hug number one, but I think I still owe you at least a thousand more.”

  He flinched. “Gratitude.” He ground out the word, and it sounded ugly. All the emotion left his eyes. He looked as cold as ice despite the heat rolling off of his body in waves. “Is that what this is, Emma? Gratitude?”

  She frowned. “Of course not.”

  “I don’t want gratitude. And for the record, you don’t owe me shit. Not now. Not ever.”

  When he began to shift away from her, she gripped his shoulders and stopped his withdrawal. “This is not gratitude with sex offered as a thank you … this is us, David. There’s a world of difference between the two.”

  He wanted to believe her. Taking advantage of a vulnerable woman wasn’t his style. It never had been, and it never would be. And she was vulnerable, despite what she seemed to think or what she said. She’d faced the constant threat of rape for three solid weeks, and she’d been forced to confront her own mortality. “A lot has happened to you, Emma … I don’t want you to make a mistake or regret…”

  “We are not a mistake and regret won’t ever be a possibility.”

  He released a pent-up breath, his gaze slowly drifting from the determined look in her huge blue eyes, down to the delicate curve of her shoulders, and then on to the bounty of her high, full breasts. They responded to his visual caress, swelling and firming beneath his gaze. Her nipples beaded, as if inviting his mouth.

  His eyes shifted lower still – to her narrow waist, the soft curve of her belly, the feminine width of her hips, and the thatch of black silk at the top of her parted thighs – all of the parts of her that beckoned to him, seduced him, rendered him nearly mindless in his need of her. He’d have to be dead and in his grave not to want her. He closed his eyes, fighting to keep a clear head.

  “I want you, David. I can’t even imagine not wanting you.” She searched his expression. His hesitation had something to do with his past or his ingrained integrity and sense of honor, she felt sure of it. “I meant it before when I said you’re a part of me, a part of how I define myself.”

  “Emma …” He stopped speaking when she pressed her fingertips to his lips to silence him.

  “Don’t talk. Just listen to me, please. I’m not a child. I am an adult, and I know my own mind. I think it’s your turn to trust me.”

  “I do trust you, but … ”

  “Prove it,” she challenged.

  His jaw tightened. His sex surged, nudging at her hot slick cleft, seeking entry, seeking surcease, seeking heaven. Still, he didn’t move a muscle as he stared down at her. His restraint cost him, though, because he felt like he was being flayed with a sharp blade.

  “Trust me to know what’s right for me, David.”

  All of the fight went out of him then. He surrendered to the certainty and persuasiveness of the naked beauty sprawled beneath him on the bed. Never mind that a war raged just beyond the walled garden of the house in which they’d found shelter, and never mind that they’d both be executed if they were found by the secret police of this godforsaken country. For now, it was just about the two of them. Reality be damned.

  He stopped resisting, and he stopped thinking. Instead, he filled his hands with her breasts and brushed his thumbs back and forth across already peaked nipples. Even as shudders rocked her body, his desire for her roared up inside of him like a hurricane, desire so profound that it shocked him.

  He lowered his head and took a beaded nipple into his mouth, tonguing and teething while Emma moaned low in her throat and arched into him. He moved to her other nipple, tormenting and teasing as if he had all of the time in world to devote to her pleasure. She cried out, arousal heating her skin and making her long graceful limbs tremble. All the while, he held her as though she were the most vital thing in his world.

  He sank down over her, his lips whispering up the side of her neck as he gathered her close. She shimmied beneath him, the delicate scrape of her taut nipples against his chest like delicate tongues of fire. She shifted yet again, the undulation of her lower body rousing his need to be inside her to even more acute heights. Reckless hunger rampaged through him.

  “I have to convince myself that you’re real and not something I’ve imagined,” he said, his strained voice revealing his consuming hunger for her.

  “I’m real,” she whispered. “And we are very real.”

  Lifting his head, he studied her. He marveled anew at her beauty, the startling blue of her eyes, and the heat and desire radiating out from them as she looked up at him.

  She turned her head to press her lips into the palm of one of his hands before she said, “Please make the world disappear, David.”

  It was the serenity in her eyes that crumbled his iron control – crumbled it to dust. He succumbed to the sensual woman in his arms and to the molten desire that ravaged his senses. He kissed her with a ravenous hunger, losing himself in the taste and glory of her.

  Emma arched beneath him like the tautest bowstring. She moaned his name, and her fingers dug into his lower back in a tactile plea. He answered that plea for both their sakes. He couldn’t do otherwise. He thrust into her, seating himself in her depths to the hilt in one long, powerful stroke of his thick erection.

  He drank in Emma’s answering cry of pleasure, not bothering to bite back his own low groan of relief to finally be inside of her. Hot wet flesh gripped his sex, her tight channel pure bliss. Her legs – those incredible long legs – circled his hips. And so began the ultimate intimacy, that sensual dance he’d spent countless days and nights imagining, although the actual dance made the one he’d conjured in his imagination seem insignificant by comparison.

  Would he ever get enough of her? he wondered. The short answer – never.

  She met his every thrust, becoming utterly volatile beneath him. She reminded him of a wildfire as she responded to him, to the slamming of his hard flesh into her sheathing heat, to the hungry joining of their mouths, and to the possessive, near frantic stroking of their hands on each other.

  Emma. A miracle. His miracle. The miracle capable of tormenting and tantalizing. The miracle that rendered him mindless even as he possessed her. The miracle that could not possibly last.

  Next time, he promised himself, he would linger over her, but for now his desperate craving for release came on hard and fast. Not surprising after three weeks of foreplay in that God damn prison cellblock.

  Even now, Emma stoked his need. Not deliberately, he felt certain. Inexperience now translated into pure feminine instinct. He felt her body begin to tighten around his hard shaft, and he sensed her surprise in the moment before her body’s movements turned almost frantic. Gasping little cries spilled past her lips.

  He lifted his head and watched her, tension etched into his features. Desire darkened his hazel eyes until they looked like bottomless black pools.

  “Please,” she whimpered.

  “Please what?”

  Emma clutched his shoulders. “I need…”

  He didn’t break stride as he found the knot of nerves at the crown of her sex with his fingertips. “This?” he asked.

  “Oh, God, yes, David,” she groaned. “Yes.” That final word possessed a faintly sibilant note.

  And then Emma began to unravel, sensations unlike anything she’d ever before experienced encompassing her and spinning her into a sensory oblivion. David intensified his stroking penetration, thrust after hard, quick thrust into her searing heat awakening countless tiny muscles in her core that nearly sent
him over the edge of his own precarious cliff of restraint. Shivers and spasms rippled through her, each one milking his cock and dismantling, centimeter by centimeter, his own control.

  Urgency drove them with sharp spurs. They burned for each other in a conflagration so encompassing, both lost touch with everything but the currents of white-hot pleasure suffusing their merged bodies.

  She climaxed suddenly, a sharp bursting low in her abdomen followed by a protracted release that seemed to consume her body and soul. He reveled in the possessive clutching of her sheathe. Reclaiming her mouth, David inhaled her shocked cries and gasps as she came apart within the safe harbor of his embrace.

  He continued to surge into her depths while she clung to him. She chanted his name, the sound reminiscent of a mantra. His own control now ravaged beyond rescue, he surrendered to his own release.

  He thrust high and hard, again and again until he exploded within the scalding clasp of Emma’s still quivering body. His seed jetted into her in an orgasm that seemed to go on forever, ultimately setting off yet another climax deep within her. She cried out her surprise, clinging to David as she rode out the stunning force of a second powerful storm.

  Short sharp breaths of pleasure filled the otherwise silent room. They clung to each other, both sweat-soaked and trembling and utterly stunned.

  Sanity and awareness returned, but slowly.

  He sank down over her, trying not to crush her with his weight. When he brushed a light kiss over her lips, she opened her eyes and gave him a dazed, sated-looking smile.

  “Wow.”

  He arched a dark eyebrow. “Wow?”

  Her smile morphed into a grin. “Triple wow.”

  “You’re usually more articulate, Miss Hamilton.”

  She groaned, which made him chuckle. “Sorry. Tired. But you know what I mean.”

  “I do, and I wholeheartedly concur.”

  “Glad,” she murmured before she brought his head down and kissed him. “So glad.”

  He took her with him as he rolled onto his side, cradling her against his chest, entangling their limbs, inhaling her scent. He held her to his still-racing heart and stroked her from shoulder to hip.

  Emma exhaled a warm breath across his throat and curled into him, sighing, “Love … you … David Winslow.”

  His arms tightened around her. Although he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, he said nothing. Soon after, her breathing slowed and she drifted into a deep sleep.

  Convinced that Emma’s feelings for him had been shaped by the circumstances of their imprisonment, David kept his own emotions under wraps. That he’d fallen in love with her wasn’t even the point. Neither one of them could predict how she would feel once they were free, when she wasn’t emotionally linked to him out of necessity thanks to a situation over which she’d possessed no control. That, unfortunately, was the point – at least as far as he was concerned.

  He held Emma as she slept, unable to let down his guard as long as she remained in jeopardy. He intended to get her to the Canadian Embassy as soon as was humanly possible. Above all else he wanted her safe, and he didn’t give a damn about what he might need to do in order to achieve that goal.

  CHAPTER 8