wanted to get inside her, deep, stroke her, fill her—and have her know exactly who was driving her to orgasm.
Reckless determination drove him, especially when her fingers threaded under his mask, through his hair, and he took her other nipple in his mouth. She arched to him, not just inviting, but offering, stabbing the sensitive tip against his tongue.
It was time. It had to be. Ten years of torture had to end.
His pulse damn near raced out of his chest at the thought that he could be inside her, to the hilt, bare skin to skin, looking deep into Lauren’s eyes as his name fell from her lips.
“No!” she said suddenly, pushing at him.
Stunned, he lifted his head. No?
“This has to stop,” she insisted. “I don’t want this anymore.”
Yes, she did, and he wasn’t past playing hardball to prove it.
Noah slid a pair of fingers into her panties and right into her wet center. Immediately, they were drenched and scorched by her wet heat. She clamped down on his fingers, her sheath all but weeping to be filled.
“You’re lying. You want this very much.”
She whimpered as he teased her sweet spot with his fingertips. “My body does. But my mind… Stop that, please.”
He stilled, but didn’t remove his fingers.
“Why do you think you don’t want this? Wednesday should have proven that I won’t demand your love.”
Lauren sent him a jerky nod. “I know. But it’s unfair to both of us.”
“Unfair?” Interesting perspective. He’d keep pursuing that as he pursued his way deep into her body. “I have mind-blowing orgasms with you. Whatever is between us is so hot, it’s off the charts. I don’t feel short-changed. In fact…”
With a hurried sweep of his hand, her panties glided down her thighs, over her calves. Before she even opened her mouth to protest, the little scrap of white cotton hit the floor.
“I feel damn lucky.” He wedged his shoulders between her legs.
“No. You shouldn’t. You— Oh my God,” she cried.
He raked his tongue through her drenched slit and settled right where she needed him. She was so damn wet. And swollen. Her soft folds pouted for attention. And Noah was all too happy to give it to her.
“No,” she protested weakly. “Oh, I can’t. I shouldn’t…”
“Come for me, sugar. Let me taste you all over my tongue.”
“But…but I—”
“Shh.” He lifted her hips in his hands and brought her soft pussy right up to his mouth. His own personal feast. And where she was concerned, he was so fucking hungry.
He dived in, teasing her with a dart of his tongue around her folds, into her silken channel…but never quite reaching her clit. Delving between her lips, skimming just to the side of the hard knot of nerves that screamed for his attention, he brought her to the brink, put her on edge. Sweat broke out across her skin. Her thighs trembled as she clutched the sheets and closed her eyes, as if focusing on the sensations. Her ragged pants made him smile.
Backing away, Noah shrugged off his shirt and doffed his boots and pants in a handful of seconds.
The mere act of undressing gave her too much time to cool down and think with nothing but her insecurities and fears.
“Please…don’t. We can’t.” Lauren sounded as if she were crying about that fact.
“We can. Look how easy it is…”
Naked now, he slid back up her body, parting her thighs wider and wider as he covered her completely. And with one determined thrust, he slid home, so damned deep into her swollen, grasping pussy, the sensations of her flesh, of coming home, tore a groan from his chest.
“Oh God,” she wailed. “It feels so good.” She squirmed against him. “But it’s not right.”
She managed to get the words out in a broken whisper.
So slowly it made his teeth grit, Noah forced patience—even though he swore he had none left. “Why isn’t it right? You’re not attached. Neither am I.”
He plunged home again, balls slapping against her ass. She gasped, and her body sucked at him greedily. Noah clenched his teeth. Damn, the woman set him on fire.
“But…” She struggled for breath once, twice. “Who do you think of when you’re inside me?”
Crazy question. “You. Always you.”
Another withdrawal that made her hiss in pleasure, another hard bump against her G-spot as he rammed deep. He could feel release boiling in his balls, barely under control. He rasped in a breath, then another. Damn, how was he going to maintain enough control to show her who he really was and help her understand how she truly felt about him?
“I’m thinking of someone else.”
Noah stopped. Dead stopped. A curse hovered on his tongue. Who the fuck was she thinking of when he was buried balls deep in her? Who was the son of a bitch she wanted more than him?
His brain broke free of the lust-induced haze, and he remembered that Lauren didn’t know who he was. Not right now.
Forcing himself to relax—and hoping he hadn’t read the situation wrong—he pumped into her body again, once more, a light tease of flesh on flesh. Slow. Designed to inflame, not satisfy.
Her sex clamped down on him again. Much more of that, and she’d short-circuit his brain.
“Who are you thinking of?” he demanded. “You can tell me.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered.
He teased her again with another friction-filled stroke and raised her need another notch. “You can. I’ll pretend to be him if you need it.”
“No,” she gasped. “I’ve been pretending. I want the real thing now.”
Great news…if she was actually thinking of him, of Noah. “You think you can’t come without him now?”
Even as she lifted her hips in invitation, conflicting words tumbled from her mouth. “I don’t want to.”
“I don’t think your body is going to give you a choice.” He filled her with ruthless strokes of his cock. “Neither am I.”
The time for words was over. The time to strip her of control and learn the truth had come.
Fitting her hips into his hands, Noah lifted her to his cock and let loose, sinking into her with every hard inch, every bit of power he had. He dragged his head against the sensitive flesh inside, just behind her clit, then slammed down, grinding against her, hitting the little knot of nerves on the outside, too. And he chanted her name, growling it in her ear, telling her how much he loved being inside her, how hard he wanted her to come.
She couldn’t resist for long. Soon, panting, writhing, she tightened around his cock, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. She mewled and wrapped her legs around him, tightening…tightening until her pussy was like a vise on his cock.
Pulses fluttered around him, and Noah clenched his teeth to stave off his own need to come. She was close…so close. An indrawn gasp. Another.
“What’s his name?” he demanded. “In your mind, who are you fucking? Who’s going to make you come?”
Around him, she closed her eyes and her sheath fluttered again, harder. Then she clamped down on him in one wild beat and she screamed, “Noah!”
Yes. God, yes. She was thinking of him. She wanted him inside her bed, her body. Hopefully, her life.
By some miracle and a lot of grinding of teeth, he managed to hold off his own desperate need for climax as he pumped her through her orgasm, which raged around him.
With a vicious yank, he ripped off the mask and rumbled, “Open your eyes. Open them!”
Her lashes fluttered up from her flushed cheeks, slowly rising. Her dark brown gaze fastened on his naked, moonlit face.
She blinked once. Again. Confusion filtered across her face, drawing her brows down in something near a frown. His heart pounded as he gritted his teeth and waited. Sweat poured across his skin as he forced himself still, fighting the urge—the instinct—to pound deep inside her until she acknowledged him. Until she accepted not just the lust, but the undeniable need an
d emotion boiling between them.
Then her face changed again. Finally, recognition. And with it, shock.
“Noah?”
She closed her eyes again, shutting him out. He felt her panic and an arctic chill sweep through her body, into him.
No. No! She was not going to do this, to close herself off from him. He’d already endured ten years of watching, of wanting. Since the day he'd met her, on the day she’d married Tim, he’d done nothing but ache. She’d admitted that she thought of him when Mr. Mysterious possessed her body. Why would accepting the reality they were the same man upset her?
“Yes, Lauren. Me. Look at me.”
He was still growling like her midnight stranger, and she responded to it, opening her eyes once more.
Their gazes connected, and he felt the electric connection in his clenching gut and down his sizzling spine. The sensation settled into his cock, searing him. He hardened further at the thought of having her again. As himself. Always.
“Look at me," he snarled again, “while I fill you. Fuck you. Make love to you.”
* * * *
Shock still reverberated through Lauren's system as his insistent growl echoed around her. He filled her aching sex again, now so sensitive after her last orgasm. She gasped.
Noah. He was deep inside her now. Noah. All this time…
Noah.
Improbable. Impossible. How could Noah be Mr. Mysterious? But it appeared to be true, even if she couldn’t wrap her mind around it.
Why was he here? Did he really want her? Was this just a quick, fast screw for him? But then why go to the trouble of inventing Mr. Mysterious, sneaking into her house…telling her he wanted to make love to her. That he did, in fact, love her.
“Oh my… I—I don’t understand,” she managed to get out.
“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I want.”
She knew he wanted to come. The way he thrust into her again made that totally clear. He was so engorged, she could swear she felt every ridge, every vein, of his cock. The rasp of his steely shaft against the raw nerves inside her made her clutch at the bed, grasping the sheets in her fists. God knew that, greedy or not, she wanted to come again, too.
But did he want more? Everything she wanted…but was terrified to pursue?
“I’ve spelled it out,” he clarified. “Explicitly. When I bound you to your bed and fucked you last Friday, what did I tell you?”
It was him. No denying it now. No imagining that Noah had just shown up tonight and magically figured out who Mr. Mysterious was and what he’d been doing to her. He knew…because he’d been there, too.
“That you wanted me.” Her voice trembled.
“That I’d wanted you for years and I intended to have you.”
He punctuated the statement by grabbing her hips and stroking deep inside her again. Deep enough to make her gasp. Her sensitive walls fluttered around him and heat burned low in her belly, under her clit, now pulsing in demand.
“When I spread you across your dining room table and took you, what did I tell you then? Do you remember?” He filled her again with another ferocious stroke that burned inside her. A knot of need tightened unmercifully as he filled her completely again and again.
The pleasure finally compelled her to answer. “Yes. You told me you loved me.”
“Exactly. Do you remember that, next, I climbed into your bathtub with you and held your head as you sucked my cock before I took you on your bathroom floor?”
How could she forget?
She tilted up to meet his next thrust, anticipating the jolt of need. It morphed into an ache beyond any she could fathom. Or handle. She raised her gaze to his face again. To him. She zeroed in on his eyes. His dark pupils dilated wide, ringed by that intense icy blue. Sweat beaded at his temples, rolled down his neck. He exuded feral masculinity as both his hands tightened and his shoulders bulged. He sank deep inside her, pleasure stealing across his angular features, sharpening them. That same pleasure ripped a possessive growl from his chest.
Resisting it wasn’t possible, even when a thousand shining thoughts and hopes bombarded her.
“Lauren,” he rasped, his voice on edge. “Don’t look away.”
Helpless, as if his gaze held her captive, she shook her head, but her stare never wavered.
He lifted her legs on either side of his hips, and she locked them behind his back, taking him deeper than ever before. Next, he reached up, cradled her face in his hands. The intensity of his eyes, the raw, scorching need burning from his gaze scalded her senses.
“For ten fucking years, I’ve wanted you. Waited for you.”
Each phrase, he punctuated with another demanding thrust into her body, another nudge at her heart and soul. He stretched her wide, scraping every sensitive nerve in her channel. Her body trembled with need. Her mind spun. All this time, he’d thought about her? For the last week, Mysterious and Noah, the same man? That thought alone was enough to blow her mind. But to think that he’d wanted her for ten years…
He covered her mouth with his, and Lauren gave in to sensation, not having the will or the strength to resist. Just like his cock, his tongue slid deep, taking total possession. She was too aroused, too aware of this man, to refuse.
“I love you.” He looked right into her eyes, pushed deeper into her body, as he said it. “I’ve always loved you.”
His words illuminated every dark corner of her body, echoing through her heart. And she burst into a million pieces, exploding all around him, rocketing up to a hot swirl of stars, bright lights, and searing pleasure that slammed her with every pulse of her womb.
Noah tore his lips away and tossed his head back on a dark groan of pleasure, roaring as he filled her one last time and released inside her.
One look at his flushed face told her he’d not only given her pleasure, but his heart. A bit of his soul. That expression said that he intended to take hers as well.
Lauren feared he already had.
Chapter Ten
Lying with her head pillowed on his chest, Lauren listened to his slowing heartbeat. Heavy lassitude wound through her limbs. Tangled together, she and Noah were both damp with a sheen of sweat. Bliss ran sweet through her body. Despite her best intentions, she’d fallen for him hard.
He was her mystery man. He’d been sneaking into her house, stealing into her body with torrid passion time after time. And those words of love he’d uttered just before her orgasm…totally stunning. The shock and disquiet punctured her lazy satisfaction. Euphoria slowly deflated.
Uncertainty blasted her when Noah turned his gaze to her, intent and questioning.
Lauren didn’t know what to say. He wanted her to be happy about his revelation. To laugh and say yes to more. She wanted that too…but wasn’t ready for love and devotion with anyone, even Noah. Especially Noah.
He was all drive and single-minded intensity, all plans and strategic execution. He’d turned that dedication and ability on her…and if she wasn’t careful, she’d be a goner. What was she saying? Where he was concerned, she already was.
Bad move. His declarations of love aside, it would only be a matter of time before he dumped her for a calendar model or some other twit who had more in her bra than her head. And where would she be? More alone than ever. Completely brokenhearted. No thanks.
Even knowing that, she couldn’t quite let him go. She should and she would. But not yet. And no wonder. He could drive her to