CHAPTER 17
BAILEY OPENED HER EYES as John lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He laid her against the cool comfort of the silk sheets and began to draw the blanket over her body, his expression tortured.
She couldn’t sleep. There was no way she could sleep, no way that she could ever drift off fast enough or deep enough to still the agony, the betrayal she had dealt, or her own guilt.
“No.” She pushed the blankets away as he braced one knee on the bed and moved to him instead. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“You need to rest, baby.” His voice was deep, dark. It was as tortured as she felt, but she felt something more as well. The need for a comfort that could only come from his touch. An affirmation that there was indeed something Ford Grace hadn’t been able to kill. He hadn’t killed the man she loved.
No matter the name he took, no matter the shape of his face. This was still Trent. He was still her soul.
Moving to her knees, she gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it from her body, the cool air of the room striking her nipples, sensitizing them.
So many nights she had lain alone, crying, aching because there had been no justice for those she loved. Because there had been no comfort in the darkness of the night for her own soul.
Her comfort was here now.
She tossed the shirt to the floor, stared into his eyes, and cupped her own breasts, her fingers finding the hard tips of her nipples and pinching them slowly, pulling at them as he suddenly swallowed tightly.
She had never teased him like this. She should have, she realized, because his gray eyes turned almost black as a hard flush mantled his cheekbones.
“Baby,” he breathed out roughly. “This won’t help you rest.”
“I don’t want to rest.” One hand continued to cup a breast as she moved the other down, between her breasts, over her stomach until she pushed her fingers past the elastic band of the loose cotton pants she wore.
She found herself with her fingers. As he watched, his gaze narrowing on the movements beneath the material, she found the dampening folds of her pussy and caressed the sensitive pearl of her clit softly.
“I want you,” she whispered. “All night, John. Take me. Take me until I know nothing but your touch, know nothing but the pleasure you can give me. Don’t leave me alone.”
She slid her fingers from the pants, the tips wet, glistening with her juices, and moved them to touch her lips, to taste herself.
He caught her hand before the tips touched the curves, his breathing suddenly hard as he pulled them to his mouth instead and tasted her, sucked her fingers between his lips and raked the sensitive tips with his tongue.
Bailey moaned. She couldn’t stop the sound, still rough from her tears, rasping with the pain that burned inside her and the hunger rising to scorch her.
“What the hell do you do to me?” he asked as her hands moved to the buttons of his shirt and fought to undo them quickly. When the tiny disks slipped through her fingers, she gripped the edges of his shirt and jerked them apart, sending the buttons flying.
“The same thing you do to me, perhaps?” she panted.
She could forget the world in his arms. She did it every time he touched her. She needed to do it now. She needed the world and the guilt to recede, to evaporate for just a little while.
She watched his jaw clench as his hands moved to the waist of her pants and with a smooth shift of muscle in his shoulders, jerked the material over her hips and to her knees.
His hands weren’t rough, but they were insistent, dominant. This was what she needed. That blazing hunger that burned inside him. She needed all of it, every desire that had filled his imagination as well as hers.
“I used to dream,” she whispered as she stared into his hungry eyes, her hands going to the belt that cinched the waist of his pants. “When I was alone.” When she had thought he was gone. “When it was dark. I would touch myself, and imagine you. You would forget yourself with me. You would touch me like you were never going to touch me again. You took me as though it were the last time you would ever have the chance.”
The belt came loose and she sucked in a hard breath as his hand suddenly cupped between her thighs, covering the swollen, sensitive flesh of her pussy while his upper palm rasped against the engorged bud of her clit.
“What did I do to you?” His voice was dark, dangerously sexy. It whispered of rain-swept nights and fierce passionate storms.
She pulled the clasp of his pants loose, lowered the zipper.
“Your lips went to my nipples,” she breathed out roughly. “You sucked me, hard. Your teeth and tongue rasped them.”
Her head fell back as a cry tore from her throat. His lips moved to a nipple, covered it. He tugged at it with his teeth, lashed it with his tongue, then sucked her in deep as she pushed his pants over his hips, freeing the thick, fierce length of his cock.
She loved him, loved his touch, his kiss, loved the heavy shaft that she knew brought the edge of pleasure and pain so destructive to her senses.
Her fingers tried to wrap around the heavy flesh, but they wouldn’t reach. She contented herself with stroking it, feeling the dampness that coated the wide crest and the fierce throb that pounded through the heavy veins.
Her other hand gripped the hair at the nape of his neck, held him to her breast. She gloried in the heated feast he was making of her flesh.
He wasn’t holding back. So many times she had felt him holding back, taking her gently when he needed to take her harder. Suppressing his own needs for what he thought were hers.
His teeth tugged at her nipple again before releasing it and moving to the other. Bailey whimpered at the incredible sensations that tore through her. It was like strokes of lightning tearing from her nipple to her clit, clenching her womb. The burning sensations overwhelmed her and tore another cry from her lips as her head dipped, her teeth moving to his shoulder to clench at the tight flesh there.
A hard male groan echoed from his chest and he pulled back, one hand clenching at the back of her head, as her lips moved lower, her teeth rasping against his flesh, nipping, taking heated, stinging tastes of his skin while he used his fingers to lead her down his body.
“D’you think you’re the only one who dreamed?” His voice was almost a snarl above her, the lightest flavor of an accent coming through as he shed his pants and knelt fully on the bed before her. “Come on, love, give me what I need. Let me watch you take me, Bailey. Suck my cock, baby.”
She moaned as her lips reached the wide, glistening crest. Her tongue licked over it as she teased him, evading the caress she could feel he sought.
He wanted in her mouth. She wanted him there. But she wasn’t about to give in to him so easily. Bent before him, she braced one hand on the mattress and raked down his thigh with the nails of the other.
She felt him shudder and felt the juices flowing from her sex at the knowledge that she could affect him like this. That he needed her as much as she needed him.
She had never felt him like this, never felt that hunger clawing so close to the surface of his lust before. It was there in the tight tension of his body, the steady pressure of his hand at her hair, holding her in place as his cock nudged insistently at her lips.
She licked over the demanding crest again, blew a rough breath of air over it, and tempted him to take more, to demand more from her.
“Little tease,” he growled.
Holding her head still, he pressed his cock more firmly against her lips, parting them, pressing inside as she felt flames lance over her nerve endings.
She could feel his fingers tight in her hair, tugging at the tender roots just enough to send fresh flares of ecstatic sensation tearing through her.
“Suck me,” he demanded roughly. “Suck my cock, baby. Hot and deep.” The last was a harsh, heavy groan as her lips parted and sucked him inside, hot and deep.
Her mouth closed around the thick flesh as she felt it throb against
her lips. The thick shaft clenched beneath the caress of her fingers, and his body tightened until she wondered how he could bear the strain.
Hot, electric lust flared between them, burning Bailey with its intensity as John began to move in short, shallow strokes, fucking her lips with an almost desperate hunger.
This was what she had dreamed of as she’d touched herself through the years. Her lover, the man she loved, giving her those parts of himself that he had always held back.
John wasn’t holding back now. Both hands were in her hair, pinning her in place as he took her mouth with slow, shallow thrusts that had moans rising in her throat.
Her tongue worked over the head of his cock with each thrust, rasping against the sensitive underside and drawing a hard, deep growl from the depths of his chest.
The taste of him was heated male, rich with lust and a burgeoning hunger that throbbed through the heavy shaft. His fingers pulled at her hair, his short nails flexing against her scalp as she filled her mouth with him.
She wanted more. So much more. She wanted the hunger burning like a conflagration between them, destroying them before they were both reborn.
“Damn you.” His voice was rougher now, his strokes inside her mouth gaining in speed as his flesh seemed to swell and tighten, the hard throb of blood increasing in pressure.
It was already like a heated iron beneath her lips, so hard and hot she felt bruised even as her arousal grew.
She worked her mouth over the throbbing crest, sucked at it, deep and firm, loving the feel of his cock pulsing in her mouth, the knowledge that he was fighting release, that his body was straining to hold back.
He was close. So very close. She could almost feel the deep, heavy pulse of his semen working up the shaft when he suddenly drew back, drawing the prize from her just seconds before it was in her grasp.
Within seconds she found herself on her back, the pants torn from her legs, and John’s lips between her thighs. Her legs fell open, spreading wide as he pushed them apart with his hands, his head lowering.
His tongue swiped through the wet folds, pausing at the entrance to ream it hungrily before licking up, circling her clit, then drawing it into his mouth.
Hard, brutally hot strikes of sensation tore through her, arching her hips to him as she felt the first one, then two fingers slip inside the clenched entrance of her pussy.
She drove herself onto the penetration, gasping, crying out as she felt the stretching pressure fill the sensitive portal. The feel of his fingers inside her, the suckling pressure of his mouth, and the sound of his heavy moans were too much to bear.
Bailey could feel the waves of sensation centering in her womb, radiating outward through the rest of her body. Flames were licking over her body, sizzling across her flesh, and slickening her skin with a heavy layer of perspiration.
She could feel her juices building, gathering, easing between his fingers and saturating her flesh as he thrust them into her, sending her senses reeling.
She was lost in a kaleidoscope of pleasure, of sensations that struck hard and fast, never ending, racing through her body and her bloodstream with a force and speed that left her breathless.
His suckling mouth was a demon as it held her clit captive, his tongue a fiery force of rapture as it stroked, caressed, and lashed against the sensitive bud.
Bailey swore she couldn’t survive another second of it, but her hands were locked in his hair, holding him to her as she begged for more.
She had never known pleasure like this except in John’s arms. And never had he let himself go like this. Never had he ravaged her senses as he was tonight, drawing her into a world in which only pleasure and the two of them existed.
“So good,” she moaned, arching closer to his suckling mouth. “Oh God, John. It’s so good. So hot.”
She writhed beneath his mouth, so close to orgasm that she could feel it aching to explode through her system. So close, and yet he held her on the edge, refusing to allow her to slip over just yet.
His fingers worked deeper inside her, thrusting into the snug entrance as she arched her hips, rotated them, a strangled scream escaping her throat as the sensation evaded her once again.
“Please,” she panted, unable to stand the intensity of pleasure, dying for a release that stayed just out of reach. “Please, John.”
His answer was a dark, low growl as he released the pressure on her clit to kiss it instead. Deep, sharp little kisses that had her moaning in need as she arched closer, fighting to find that peak.
“Not yet, baby.” His fingers slid from the aching depths of her pussy as he gripped her thighs before pulling himself up along her body.
“Now.” Her hands fell to his shoulders, gripping them as she tried to push him back down her body.
“Not yet. Together. We’ll come together, Bailey, or we’ll not come at all.”
He hooked his hands beneath her knees, lifted them, bracing them against his biceps as his hips moved into place, his cock pressing against the snug entrance that wept for him.
Bailey froze, her gaze locking with John’s as his head lowered farther, his lips grazing hers, stroking against them as he began to work his cock inside her.
It was exquisite. It was a pleasure unlike anything else she could have imagined. It was a pleasure unlike any other he had ever given her.
Holding her gaze, his lips taking sipping kisses, sharp little tastes of hers, he worked the heavy, engorged head of his cock inside her. He stretched her, filled her until the sharp bite of pleasure was like a fiery central ache. It radiated through her body, struck at her clit, her nipples, tightened them until they felt too sensitive, too swollen to bear.
“God, you’re sweet, love,” he groaned as the head of his erection lodged inside her. “So sweet and tight. You burn me alive.”
But the flames were tearing through her.
Her arms tightened around his neck as she tried to breathe, tried to control at least a small measure of the heated, desperate pulses of need that racked her body.
“Stop teasing me,” she cried out as he pulled back before working his cock deeper inside her. “Please, John. Now. I need you now.”
“Sweet Bailey.” The sigh of his voice rippled across her lips as he lifted his hands and pulled her arms from him. Clasping her wrists in one hand, he pulled them over her head, holding them there as his hips bunched.
She could feel the need striking through her with violent intensity now. It was throbbing deep inside her, her clit was a swollen mass of nerve endings, her womb convulsing with the need for release.
Bailey was shaking, shuddering with the need that she couldn’t control. Her legs tightened around his hips as a strangled scream tore from her throat. Then her cry echoed around her as he tightened and thrust inside her, deep and hard.
Her back arched. Pleasure streaked up her spine, wrapped around her skull, and sizzled through her nerve endings. Brilliant pinpoints of light dazzled her senses and left her burning in the middle of a maelstrom that she had no hope of controlling.
“Fuck me, you’re tight.” John’s strangled groan sent another rush of sensation tearing through her. Pleasure upon pleasure. She wasn’t going to survive this, even though she had begged him to give it to her.
She arched to him, moaning as he slid back again until only the engorged head remained lodged inside her. A second later another fierce, deep throat lodged him to the hilt again, stretching her open and revealing nerve endings that flamed with the heated stroke.
“I can’t stand it.” Her head tossed against the bed, her legs tightening around his hips as the fiery whirls of sensation centered in her pussy and at her clit.
“Just a bit longer, baby,” he groaned. “Hold on to me just a bit longer. God, there’s nothing like fucking you. Like being so deep inside you I can feel your heartbeat.”
She could feel his heartbeat. It throbbed against the sensitive tissue of her pussy, vibrated into her clit, and had her senses spinning.
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Perspiration gleamed on his face, a rivulet of moisture easing down his forehead and dampening his thick lashes. He looked like a sex god rising over her, impaling her with paradise.
Looking down between their bodies, she watched as he drew back, his heavy flesh glistening with her juices, parting her, then surging inside her again until not even a breath could pass between them.
It was the most erotic sight of her life. He moved slow and easy, thrusting inside her with deep, slow strokes, letting her watch him take her. Watch her flesh part and hug the silky wet column of his cock as he took her.
“I want to hold you here forever,” she sobbed, unable to tear her eyes from the sight. “I don’t want to lose this, John. I never want to lose this.”
She wanted to stay right here, stuck in a time warp, watching his flesh merge with hers, his heavy erection impaling her, releasing her, stretching her again.
Releasing his hips from the vise of her legs, she planted her feet in the bed, tilted her hips, and took him deeper, dragging a hard, heated moan from his lips.
“Sweet baby,” he rasped. “God help me, Bailey, I’d die without you now.”
The Australian accent, faint but there, had her convulsing around him, nearly orgasming from the sound alone, from the sense of the past rising up to swamp her, to merge with her present.
This was how she had dreamed. Just like this. Of the pleasure, each stroke slow and easy, the need spiraling inside the both of them until they could contain it no more.
Until they had to act. Until they couldn’t bear it another second.
His thrusts became heavier, harder. He gripped her thighs, pushing them back as he braced himself with his knees and began to thrust inside her. To shaft into her with hot, long strokes over his cock.
His hips surged against her, over and over, impaling her with a pleasure that burned hotter and bright with each stroke.
She cried out his name. Her neck arched, her legs tightening as she felt the breath rush from her lungs and sensation imploding inside her.
His pelvis stroked her clit, sending a surge of electric intensity swarming through it until it erupted in ecstasy at the same moment that her pussy began to convulse in orgasm.