Desert Rose (Book #1 - Warrior Series)

SPRAWLED ON her back, Emma jerked awake. She struggled to free herself from the hands that restrained her. She fought now, just as she’d fought those cruel hands in her nightmare.

  “… you’re safe, Emma. Relax.”

  The reassuring voice finally reached her. She shuddered and opened her eyes to David’s worried gaze. Drawing in a steadying breath, she nodded as the tension slowly eased from her body. “Sorry. Nightmare. I … couldn’t … get free …” she gasped.

  He gathered her close. “I understand.”

  Emma nodded, her respiration slowing. “I know you do. I really am sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” His warm lips whispered up the side of her neck and paused at a sensitive spot just below her ear. She smiled as fiery streamers of sensation unfurled within her. She very nearly purred a few moments later when her nipples tightened into beads of acute sensitivity.

  “Lovely,” she murmured as she turned, rolled into him, aligning her body to his, and lifted her hand to his cheek. “Am I dreaming?”

  “No, you’re not dreaming. And neither am I, thank God.” He smiled.

  Frowning, she trailed the tips of her fingers down the side of his beard-stubbled face. “You look tired. You didn’t sleep, did you?”

  He shrugged. “Not important.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “I’ll get some rest, Emma, but not quite yet.”

  She reached up, slid her hand across his shoulder to the back of his neck, and felt the muscles that bunched beneath her fingertips. “You’re tense. What did I sleep through? Has something happened?”

  “The neighbors on both sides of us are back.”

  She paled at that news. “When?”

  “A few hours ago.”

  How long, she couldn’t help wondering, had she been asleep? “What time is it now?”

  “Late afternoon, probably around four or four-thirty. I’m not exactly sure.”

  She glanced across the room at the drapery covered windows, registering the glow of daylight beneath the bottom edge of the hemmed fabric. “I slept all day?”

  He nodded. “Amazing, isn’t it, what a decent bed can do for you when you’re running on empty?” His hand settled on her hip, fingertips lightly stroking.

  The consuming silence finally occurred to her. “It’s so quiet. No bombs exploding, and no one is shooting guns into the sky.”

  “It’s been that way for about an hour,” David said. “Things won’t crank up around here until dusk. Once it’s dark and all of the crazies emerge from their asylums, it’s game-on, though.”

  Emma felt chilled by their circumstances despite the warmth of David’s body. “What an insane way to live.”

  “Or to die.”

  “Let’s change the subject. Will you rest for a while if I promise not to fall asleep?” She pressed her lips to the pulse throbbing at the base of his throat.

  His hand tightened on her hip, his already heavy shaft hardening even more against her lower abdomen.

  “Will you?” she pressed, worry in those two words despite the desire winnowing its way into her bloodstream.

  He nodded before admitting, “I’ll need to for at least an hour or two, since I don’t have two alert brain cells left to rub together right now. We can’t leave here for several more hours, so there’s plenty of time for me to grab some shut-eye.”

  “We’re going to lose ourselves in the darkness once we leave here.” She wasn’t asking. Instead, she’d just stated her understanding of how they would manage the final leg of their journey to the Canadian Embassy.

  He closed his arms around her, drew her close, and rolled onto his back. “Precisely, Ms. Hamilton.”

  Perched astride him, Emma smiled as she straightened. She took his hands, drew them up to breasts, and pressed his palms to their fullness. “Brilliant plan, Major Winslow,” she half-whispered, half-moaned.

  He flicked his thumbs back and forth across her nipples, sending arrows of pleasure darting to every region of her body. She gave him no opportunity to speak. Instead, she curled over him and found his lips.

  David’s hungry, open-mouthed response ignited her senses. She sank into the depths of his totally carnal kiss, and her nipples tingled as he continued to lavish attention upon them with clever fingers. She trembled with desire, gripping his shoulders as he plundered her mouth.

  When he released her lips, he met her gaze. A lazy smile lifted the edges of his lips, and his heavily-lashed dark eyes spoke volumes about his desire for her.

  “You need to sleep,” she whispered, on fire for him but aware that he should rest.

  “I need you more,” he countered.

  Emma felt the throbbing of his sex against the sultry entrance to her body. She bent her head and pressed a kiss to the fading bruise that marred his right shoulder. As he bracketed her hips with his hands, her lips glided to his collarbone, the tip of her tongue leaving a hot trail of sensation in its wake. At the pulse point at the base of his throat, she felt the pounding of his blood and she lingered there to lick at his skin.

  She lifted her head some time later to look at him. His grip on her hips tightened. She sucked in a sharp breath when he shifted her into even more intimate contact with his hard, thick sex. His eyes darkened, hunger gleaming in their depths.

  “You want me,” Emma breathed.

  “Need and want … two sides of the same coin where you’re concerned.”

  As if to prove the statement, he altered his position beneath her, making her moan with pleasure when the head of his cock pressed against her slick cleft. He paused then, poised to penetrate her body as she crouched over him. She shifted slightly, allowing him a few centimeters of connection. He held perfectly still, ceding control to her as they stared at each other.

  She clutched his shoulders, knees pressed into the mattress and her long dark hair like a veil designed to shield their bodies from view. Her respiration, emerging now in short gasping pants, was the only sound in the room. She slowly sank downward, impaling herself on his hard flesh in a long glide until he filled her to overflowing.

  His eyes fell closed and his head went back to expose the corded muscles of his throat. An inarticulate sound escaped him as her body relaxed around his shaft. She whispered his name on a shattered little sigh.

  “Too much?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

  “No.”

  “Christ, you’re perfect, Emma.”

  “No.”

  He opened his eyes, clearly not expecting the challenge in her tone.

  “We … are perfect … together.”

  His lips quirked in amusement. “I stand corrected … ma’am.”

  She grinned. “I couldn’t do this standing up if my life depended on it.”

  “You never …” He groaned when he felt those glorious little muscles deep within her body tremble and tug at his sex. “ … know.”

  Her eyes fell closed as he brought his hands up to frame her face. She felt his sudden possessiveness when he plunged his fingers into her disheveled dark mane and held her head still.

  He met her surprised gaze, admitting, “I can’t keep my hands off you.”

  “I can’t get enough of you, either.”

  “You’re as sensual as I knew you’d be.”

  Emma smiled, glad he felt that way. “I worried you might be disappointed.”

  “Never. Not in a million years. You’re a natural.”

  “Only with you.”

  When he closed his eyes and tension suffused his body, she assumed he was simply responding to the intimate alignment of their bodies. His fingers, still massaging her scalp, unexpectedly flexed and then tightened. She traced his dark brows with her fingertips, unconsciously try to soothe him.

  “I wouldn’t have made it without you these last weeks,” he said. “The isolation … and the beatings … were close to destroying my sanity.”

  The rawness of his voice and the sudden shift in his mood startled her. Her fingers stilled, and she studie
d him. The grimace marring his rugged features assured her that he was remembering torture sessions with his interrogators.

  “You gave me a reason to fight back,” he continued. “I’ll always appreciate what you did for me.”

  “We helped each other,” Emma reminded him, surprised to find his apparent gratitude as distasteful as he’d found hers.

  She wanted his love, but life had already taught her that real love could only be given as a gift. It couldn’t be forced. Not ever.

  His fingers tightened against her scalp once again. Emma couldn’t ignore the tension coursing through him. She sensed he’d suppressed his own anxiety in order to help her through the last three weeks, and she suspected that he might now be grappling with some form of delayed shock.

  “David?”

  He looked at her, a bleak expression on his face.

  “We’ll heal each other, just as we helped each other. With us, it’s all about instinct. Trust us. Trust our instincts. Please.”

  Emma kneaded his temples with gentle fingertips. She felt his grip on her ease, but the anguish lingered in the depths of his eyes as he gazed at a spot somewhere beyond her shoulder. Nothing could have prepared her for the gritty edge to his voice when he spoke a few minutes later.

  “I need you to love me, Emma. I can’t stop thinking about the last three months. My mind won’t let me shut it off.” He blinked, refocusing on her. “It’s my turn to ask you to make the world go away, even if it’s just for a little while.”

  Swallowing the tears that threatened to choke her, Emma slowly leaned forward. David’s hands glided unsteadily over her shoulders and then down her back before pausing at her hips. Though she’d never loved anyone as much as she loved him at this moment, it suddenly didn’t matter that he might not love her in return. His need trumped all else.

  She captured his lower lip with gentle teeth, stroking its width with the tip of her tongue before initiating darting forays into his mouth. His fingers dug into her flesh as he gripped her. His sex, still sheathed deep within her, surged and pulsed with strength.

  David trembled beneath her caress, and a new kind of tension began to seep into his body. His hands moved constantly, and his calloused fingertips ignited sparks of sensation everywhere he touched her.

  She nipped at his lower lip before venturing beyond to sample the taste and heat of him. She sucked at his tongue even as she silently vowed that she would use her love for him as a healing balm.

  Love and desire guided her as she savored David’s unique taste and explored the varying textures of his mouth. In truth, she felt as though she’d been hurled into the center of a raging storm. Breathless and thoroughly aroused, she undulated against him and hungrily devoured his mouth.

  She eventually relinquished his lips to move like hot satin down his muscular torso. Although he protested when she eased free of his penetration, she made up for it by teasing, tantalizing, and then dazzling him with her mouth and hands until she reached his aroused sex.

  Despite her inexperience, Emma trusted her instincts, her compelling need to give pleasure to him. She registered his startled groan as she closed her mouth around the head of his shaft, and she proceeded to reduce his world to blurred sensations, tingling nerve endings, and sensual cravings. And just as she’d given him the gift of her love, she gave of herself, without restraint, without concern for her own needs, and without conditions.

  Emma eventually retraced the route of her consuming caresses as she moved back up David’s shaking body. She made the journey at a leisurely pace, lingering to press a gentle kiss to a fading bruise along the edge of his ribs, pausing to drag the tip of her tongue over a flat male nipple.

  She shifted atop him once more, hips poised above his pulsing sex, breasts plumped against his broad chest. About to reclaim his lips with her own, she gasped when he closed his hands around her waist and moved her all the way forward until she straddled his shoulders in a low crouch.

  As he clasped her parted thighs, her startled gaze dropped down to his face. The fire burning in his eyes froze her in place and kept her from protesting.

  She trembled as he smoothed his fingertips up the silken skin of her inner thighs, his intent clear when he glanced at her and then very deliberately stroked the moist, swollen cleft of her body with the tip of his tongue. She jolted with shock, her eyes falling closed as she moaned her pleasure.

  Gently insistent masculine hands urged her even closer. Emma couldn’t resist. Tremors of sweet sensation swept up her thighs and into her abdomen, her body clenching and unclenching in anticipation. A new, enthralling kind of hunger swept over her.

  “David?”

  “Trust me, babe,” he whispered.

  “I do.”

  He settled his mouth over her sex, returning the intimate kisses she’d bestowed upon him only minutes earlier.

  Emma felt certain she might eventually die of the pleasure, but she no longer cared. She felt her senses expand with each erotic, exotic caress. When his tongue darted deeper into her body, she groaned.

  David became the center of her universe. He thrilled her with a diligent tongue that rasped over her responsive flesh and hands that stroked and massaged her thighs and hips.

  Not even her wildest fantasies could have prepared her for David’s sensual assault. He skimmed his fingertips up her body and closed his hands over her breasts, then simultaneously sipped at sensitive flesh and plucked her nipples into even tighter pebbles of desire that arrowed deep into her core.

  She swayed suddenly, air shuddering in and out of her lungs as a climax rippled through her. She fought to remain balanced above him as he prolonged her orgasm. Finally, David guided her down to the bed, tucked her beneath him, and knelt between her parted thighs.

  He paused then, his smoldering gaze sweeping over her face and breasts. Quivering with need, Emma wondered if she saw love shining in his eyes.

  Determined to have his strength within her, she gripped his hips, drew him nearer, and discovered that he needed little urging. She buried her face in the curve of his shoulder, a scream of relief lodged in her throat as he thrust into her body.

  Slipping his arms around her, he brought her up against his broad chest and surged even more deeply into her. Emma’s breath caught and then gushed out of her in a rush of pleasure. She sensed that in burying himself in the clasp of her body, David was relinquishing some of the desperate emotions of the preceding months in favor of a sensory journey of healing love.

  Their pace soon matched the frantic cadence of their racing hearts. Emma splintered, spasming deep inside as a startled cry spilled out of her. David drank it in, along with her obvious pleasure. Once again, she came apart within the safety of his embrace, clinging to him and too breathless to speak. He followed her into his own sensory oblivion, plunging deeply until a choked, almost agonized sounding groan escaped him. He stiffened as pleasure slammed into him in a series of stunning, sensation-filled waves.

  They held onto each other as aftershocks rocked their still-joined bodies. It took time, but their respiration eventually slowed to normal.

  Emma placed a stilling hand on his shoulder a short while later when he began to shift away from her. “Stay with me.”

  He snugged her against his sweat-drenched body and rolled them onto their sides. “I don’t want to crush you.”

  She smiled at his concern, her lips curving against his throat. “Never happen.”

  When he peered down at her, she felt a renewed sense of peace flowing through him.

  “You’re amazing, Emma.”

  She pressed her cheek to his chest, needing to hold reality at bay for just a little while longer. “Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before. It was everything you said it would be, and then even more.”

  He eased back a few inches and tipped her chin up with his fingertips so that he could see her face. “I've never known anyone like you.”

  “That makes us even.”

  “It makes
us lucky.”

  She smiled again, still shaken. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “More than lucky.”

  “Much more.” Lifting her hand, he brought it to his lips, pressed his mouth to her palm, and stroked the center with the tip of his tongue.

  Emma released a shaken breath. Even his most playful touch aroused her. She curved her hand against the side of his face. “Rest for a while, why don’t you? It’s my turn to watch over you while you sleep.”

  He smiled, his fatigue still evident.

  She planted a quick little kiss on his lips before she pulled herself up to a seated position beside him. “No arguments, Major. You’ll be useless later if you don’t sleep now.”

  He gave her a casual salute before rolling onto his back. “Yes, ma’am.” David slanted a glance in her direction, as if poised to speak as he studied her.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Thank you … for being you.”

  Emma nodded before she glanced away, restraining the impulse to tell him how deeply she loved him. This wasn’t the time, but she wondered if there would ever be a right time. She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, uncertainty gnawing at her and eroding a small portion of the joy she’d found in his arms.

  He reached out to trail his fingertips up and down her back. “Why so pensive all of a sudden?”

  Forcing herself to smile, she managed a bright-eyed look. “Just planning my wardrobe for tonight’s expedition.”

  When he frowned, Emma realized he was too familiar with her to accept such a superficial explanation.

  “You aren’t telling me the truth. Why?”

  “I’m nervous about tonight, that’s all.” She hadn’t lied, but hadn’t told him the entire truth, which made it even more difficult for her to look at him.

  His expression gentled. “We’ll make it.”

  She caught his hand after he ran his fingers across her shoulder and down the high slope of her breast. After lacing their fingers together, she nodded and pressed the back of his hand against her cheek. “Sleep,” she whispered. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”