KellysWoman Page 3

  Sweet Jesus, his lips were on her nipple, sucking the pebble of dusky pink flesh into his mouth. She felt the nip of his teeth, the shaft of pure pleasure that connected her nipple and her clit. Filled with need, she arched against him, his name a silent litany of that need in her mind—what was left of her mind.

  “Oh God, I need you, Sean.” She writhed against him, pressing her belly against the cock that strained between them.

  “I know, darlin’. I know.”

  “Fuck me, Sean, please.”

  She knew she’d shocked him when he went still. He’d never heard her use language like that before, but she was tired of trying to be Miss Perfect—she’d tired of it long ago and she wasn’t playing that game anymore. She was who she was and right now, she was a woman who needed to feel this strong, stubborn, sexy ex-officer inside her body.

  With an irritated growl, she pushed him away from her, onto his back again, pinching his hard, brown nipples as she resumed her position straddling his hips. She leaned forward, looking as if she were going to kiss him, only to snag his lower lip with her teeth before letting her tongue venture between his lips.

  His mouth opened involuntarily at the sharp, delicious pain centered on his nipples.

  Sean’s ability to think absconded with the blinding flash of animal desire for the gorgeous naked woman on her hands and knees over him, caging his body with hers. When he went to enfold her in his arms, intending to get her beneath him again, she scooted back, grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the pillow, just above his head. He was mesmerized by the rise and fall of her breasts as she applied pressure to keep him in that position.

  Both of them knew he could get his way over the situation any time he wanted, but for now Sean was enjoying the woman who’d found the power he’d always suspected she might have. His sweet and gentle Kate would never have dreamed of taking the upper hand like this—he wanted her to enjoy it, because he sure as hell was.

  My chestnut-haired goddess. He let his arms relax under the imprisonment of her hands, his attention held equally in thrall by the glitter of desire in her eyes. This was a Kate he’d never seen—and he wanted her. His erection was already fierce, but seeing her like this gave him a hard-on that was pure agony.

  “Does your shoulder hurt like this?”

  Sean shook his head. He’d had a lot worse in his time and a little discomfort was nothing when compared with the prospect of seeing where this situation was headed.

  She moved his hands so that his wrists were crossed. “If I let go, can you stay like that? Are you comfortable?”

  “I’m fine, a chuisle.”

  He was even better when she arranged more cushions and pillows to support his head, shoulders, neck and arms.

  When she settled back, Sean couldn’t suppress the groan of hunger, of pure craving for the woman who held him captive. She was kneeling in just the right spot, so that her labia—as wet with arousal as he was hard—were directly over his cock. “Kate…”

  “Lie still, Sean. Close your eyes. Let me do this for you.”

  He felt her fingertips at the center of his forehead, felt them move to stroke a gentle path to his temples, over his cheekbones and then down along his jaw. She shifted position slightly and then her lips were over his Adam’s apple, almost as if she were going to take a bite out of it. Reflexively his back arched, tilting his head back and offering his throat to her almost in a form of surrender.

  Her lips and hands continued their tender exploration of his body. She was tracing the carved lines of his muscles, at the same time taking one of his nipples into the wet warmth of her mouth.

  Her teeth grazed the stiffening flesh. Her hands framing his rib cage made Sean feel as if he were held captive in the sweetest confinement imaginable. And when her nails lightly scratched down his sides, his washboard stomach contracted and it took every ounce of willpower he could find not to come.

  He shifted slightly, trying to stretch without moving and tamp down his level of arousal, which was clearly getting beyond any hope of control.

  What the hell…?

  Sean couldn’t prevent the upward thrust of his hips when his woman’s hands wrapped around his cock and began the motion that she knew sent him straight to the edge of orgasm. Her tongue lapping delicately at the pearl of fluid wasn’t helping either.

  “Kate—“

  “Hush, Sean, it’s going to be all right.”

  Jesus, it fucking isn’t!

  Sean was ready to come and there was no way he could stop it. He had to be inside her. As he lifted his hands from their position above his head, two things happened—Kate forced them back into place and at the same moment, she rose and eased herself down on his cock.

  Christ, she was so tight. He’d never doubted her word that she hadn’t been with anyone else since him, but if he’d wanted confirmation, he had it now.

  “Can’t…hold it, Kate.” He struggled to get the words out. Three years since he’d last been in a woman—this woman—and he was losing it completely.

  “Then don’t, Sean!” she urged breathlessly. “Let it go!”

  She was lying on top of him, framing his face with her hands while she kissed him with three years’ worth of unspent passion. Sean hugged her tightly to him, blind to the flash of pain in his shoulder as he rolled them both over and began to thrust into Kate’s willing, responsive body.

  So long. It had been so long for both of them. Sean tried to make it last, but he was too close. Naked inside Kate, he came with a violence that turned him inside out and left him overwhelmed with the shame of not giving his love her pleasure first. His head sank against her shoulder. “I’m sorry, a rúnsearc.”

  The arms around him held him in an embrace that wouldn’t quit. A gentle hand stroked his hair, the fingers threading through the strands to massage his scalp in a gesture that was loving and comforting. Forgiving.

  “Sean, we have all night. Rest now.”

  “No.” Sean lifted his head, felt his throat constrict at what he saw in Kate’s eyes. He kissed her, his tongue tracing the outline of her lips, the tip of it coaxing her mouth to permit him to enter. “I’ll make you come before I damn well rest.”

  Her pussy was wet with her arousal and his seed. This was how sex should be between two people who wanted each other the way they did—hot, sweaty and messy. He started again with her clit and this time he didn’t allow himself to be distracted.

  He held her as her body shook with wave after wave of pleasure. It had been three years for her, too, and he felt it in every tear that dampened his skin as she clung to him, pressing her body against his.

  Although he was becoming incapable of coherent thought, Sean knew that he couldn’t tell Kate how he felt—she wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Instead he lapsed into his second language and used that to tell her he loved her, how much he loved her, how much he’d always loved her, murmuring the words softly as he comforted her, until she fell asleep in his arms.

  “Tá grá agam duit.”

  Sean was very quiet—a man with a lot on his mind and Kate couldn’t say she was surprised. She had a lot to think about too.

  She hadn’t expected him to strip off and join her in bed. She hadn’t expected to want any intimacy with him, never mind make love three times and she definitely hadn’t expected to find herself considering the possibility of restarting their relationship.

  One thing she did know was that she still loved Sean—something she’d always known even if it had been hidden for a while. She’d loved him back then, even though she’d refused to tell him. She certainly couldn’t tell him now, but what if…what if there were a chance that he might actually like the person she’d become and be prepared to give her—them—another chance?

  “Kate?”

  She looked at his face—the side of his face. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. “What?”

  “I was wondering…Jesus, I could do with a cigarette right now.” He took a deep breath. “I
was wondering if you had any plans for the next couple of weeks.”

  She shrugged. “My time’s pretty much my own at the moment. Why?”

  “I’m driving up to Scotland tomorrow—I have a place up there. I was thinking…you might like to join me.”

  He was holding his breath. Sean Kelly—late of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, a man who had seen the worst modern warfare could throw at a member of the armed forces—was holding his breath, waiting for her answer as if it were the most important thing in the world to him.

  Kate leaned over, her goal to plant a teasing little kiss on his cheek, in the hope that she was about to throw him completely off balance. “Why not?” she said with a smile. “Sounds good to me. I’ll text Jilly and let her know our plans.”

  She got to her hands and knees and crawled slowly down the bed, her intention to give Sean plenty of warning as to what she was about to do. Kneeling between his splayed legs, she took his cock in her hand, relishing the feel of steel sheathed in velvet—he was already getting hard again. Savoring the moment, she leaned down and captured the crown in her mouth. With her other hand, she tenderly cupped the weight of his balls.

  “Jesus, Kate!”

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, while Kate was in the shower, Sean sneaked a look at the message she’d sent to her sister.

  Going to Scotland with S for a few days. Don’t worry, know what I’m doing. Still love him, sis. Never stopped. Kxxx

  A part of his mind, functioning at some abstract level on another plane of existence, was remembering her dislike of text speak and the way she’d verbally rapped his knuckles when he’d transgressed—the rest was staggering under the impact of the words he’d just read. She’d loved him then and she still loved him now.

  The phone beeped for an incoming text—Jilly’s response. Sean grinned. Jonas was failing in his husbandly duties if she had the time and mental capacity to text her sister the morning after she’d got married to the bum. Now if it had been him and Kate…

  He opened the message.

  Abt bldy time! U knw he lvs u, alwys has. Wld die b4 wld hurt u. Fck his brains out! ;-) Jxxx

  Now he understood at least one reason for Kate’s preference for texting in proper English. He got the gist of the message, which he quickly flagged as Unread. Suddenly sober, he thought of Jilly’s assertion—that he’d die before he hurt Kate. He had hurt her and something inside him had died at the same time. Hope. Except hope was struggling back to life, even as he sat there and he was fighting it every inch of the way because he couldn’t stand to see it die again. Just because she loved him it didn’t automatically guarantee that a happily-ever-after was in his future. Their future.

  She was massaging shampoo into her hair when he went into the bathroom. He slipped into the cubicle behind her, tangled his fingers with hers as he took over the task. Knowing she loved him…

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” he shot back. “What’s taking you so long? Breakfast’ll be here any time now.”

  “Yes, I meant to talk to you about that. It should have been here way before now—I ordered it for six.”

  “And I changed it to eight. I thought it would be nice to have a leisurely breakfast together before we head out for Scotland.”

  “You changed the time before I said I’d go with you.”

  “Just as well—we needed the extra time, if you remember. It could have been a little embarrassing if breakfast had arrived at six.”

  Judging by the glowing blush that suffused her cheeks, she did remember. So did he—and the embarrassment would probably be more his than hers.

  In all his previous intimate relationships, Sean had been the one to take the lead, but a short while ago, he’d found out what it was like to be woken by an insatiable woman hungering for his body, taking her pleasure from it and giving back more than he’d ever known before. He had willingly submitted to her desires.

  He’d wanted to come almost immediately, but had felt a strange compulsion to obey when Kate had told him to wait, that denial would make his orgasm even more enjoyable when she gave him the signal to release.

  She still knew his body so well. After riding him to her own peak of pleasure, she’d kept him on his back, forbidden him to mount her and made him come until his cock had nothing left to give. At the end, he’d almost begged her to stop, when the pleasure became unbearable. She had been an unrelenting mistress until the end, when she’d cleansed and comforted him, cradled him to her body until his was at rest again. He’d known nothing like it before.

  His sweet and gentle Kate had become a woman of fire and passion. He knew she hadn’t learned it from another man, so out of curiosity, he’d asked how she’d known to do the things she’d done—her response was to tell him that romance novels had come a long way since she used to read them as a teenager. A very long way.

  “Scotland’s a long drive from all the way down here.”

  He grunted in agreement. “Close your eyes. I’m going to rinse your hair. I thought I’d follow you back to your place, you can leave your car there, pack what you need and we’ll take the Land Rover up to Scotland, maybe stop off in the Lake District for a night to break the journey.”

  “Sean…”

  “I know,” he said easily, squeezing the excess water out of her hair. “One day at a time. Pass me your conditioner and that comb. Nearly done here.”

  He combed the conditioner through her hair, enjoying the relaxed intimacy. “I think I’d better tell you a bit more about the cottage—it’s in the middle of nowhere. Nearest village is about three miles away but the scenery is spectacular, even in winter. It’s about a mile from a small loch. The downside is that if there’s bad weather at this time of year, it can get cut off.”

  “That’s why you want to take the Land Rover.”

  “Need to. The forecast’s a bit doubtful—could be snow in that area while we’re up there. Are you all right with that?”

  “What? The prospect of spending two weeks in a Scottish cottage with you, cut off from the rest of civilization? What’s not to like?”

  She leaned back against him, her hand dropping to her side to stroke his outer thigh. For a moment, Sean wished he’d changed the time for breakfast to nine o’clock, then he pulled himself together and put some distance between himself and Kate, softening the gesture with a kiss to the side of her neck and a playful tug of her earlobe with his lips.

  “Why the hell did the lovebirds decide to get married in the middle of winter?” Sean picked up the sponge and squeezed some shower gel on it, then began to wash Kate’s back.

  “The church. They wanted that church and they wanted it on a Friday or a Saturday this year. Saturdays were all booked up—they were lucky to get yesterday, especially with it being so close to Christmas.”

  Christmas. Having been on deployment when they were dating back then, he’d never had the chance to spend one of those with Kate and their two weeks away now was due to end just before Christmas Eve—unless there was a miracle and they got snowed in together. Kate in his bed on Christmas morning would be all the Christmas present he’d ever want.

  Dragging his mind back to the job at hand, he rinsed the conditioner out of her hair. “Okay, if you’re all done now, go and get your backside into the bedroom and wait for room service. I won’t be long.”

  “And who’s going to wash your back, Kelly?”

  His body clenched at the light in her eyes as she looked up at him. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her, so that he could kiss her more comfortably, gratified to feel her lusciously long legs lock around his hips and thighs, while her arms found a secure home around his neck. “That job is exclusively yours, Miss Travers,” he murmured against her lips.

  “Exclusively mine. Well I’d better not be late for my new job, then.” She smiled and let her lips torment his again. “I’d hate to disappoint my boss on the first day.”

  His back to Kate, Sean braced himself
against the tiles—the first stroke over his back and he was almost on his knees in front of her. They’d done this before and the torment of her touch now was every bit as sweet as it had been back then.

  She was using her hands, not the sponge and he could feel every one of her fingers as she worked her way down his back. He was aware of the brief hesitation around his waist and then her hands swept over his buttocks. He looked down at the erection jutting from his groin in instant response.

  “Turn round and I’ll do your front.”

  He cleared his throat. “Might not be a good idea right now, Kitty-Kat.”

  The endearment slipped out before he could stop it—that had been his English nickname for her before, coined after a particularly passionate session when she’d left scratches all over his back.

  “I’ll be the judge of that, Kelly,” she argued. “Turn round.”

  He did and when she dropped to her knees in front of him and he felt her mouth take control of his cock, he leaned back against the tiles, willing the support to be enough to keep him on his feet while her mouth drove him crazy. Again.

  “Oh God, woman, are you trying to kill me?”

  * * * * *

  A couple of hours later, Sean was at the wheel of his ancient but reliable Land Rover, heading for the motorway on the first stage of the long journey north to Scotland. Still on sick leave for the purposes of recuperation, he’d been planning to make this journey after the wedding anyway, never imagining that Kate would be sitting beside him, her bags in the back next to his along with both their laptops.

  It was just lucky that Kate was able to take the time as well, but it made sense. She’d had the responsibility of organizing Jilly’s wedding and now that her little sister was safely on her way to Heathrow with Jonas for their honeymoon—somewhere considerably warmer than Scotland, as far as Sean was aware—she was free to take some much-needed time for herself.

  “If the gear changes give you trouble with your shoulder, I can do some of the driving, give you a rest.”