Under the Microscope

shirt.

A small sound escaped from between Raine’s lips at the sight of his bare chest, at the feel of his naked skin beneath her palms.

He kissed her, holding nothing back. She could feel it in the possessive stroke of his hands, in the hard press of his body against hers, centered desire to desire. She could taste his growing impatience, feel the rising heat that met and mated with the rhythmic pound of her blood, the deep-seated pulse in her core.

She was wet for him, weeping for him, aching in places that were familiar yet not, as though her sensuality had awoken from a long, torpid hibernation and was hungry and ready to feed on sex, on Max.

Only Max.

She traced the hard planes of his chest with fingers that trembled with urgency, and maybe a touch of fear. The burgeoning emotions were bigger than she’d expected, huger than she was prepared to face, but there was no turning back now.

Max’s skin was a warm slick over hard muscles that coiled and relaxed beneath her touch as he drew her closer, or maybe that was her moving, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that they were wrapped together, twined together until it was difficult to tell where he left off and she began.

She broke the kiss to lay claim to the skin at his throat, which was faintly abrasive with his growing beard, faintly salty with the events of the day. He hummed his approval and dropped his hands to the hem of her shirt, easing it up and over her head so smoothly she barely lost contact with him.

Then it was all contact. Skin to skin. Heartbeat to heartbeat.

He unsnapped her bra and cast it aside, then stepped back until they were facing each other across the hotel room. He looked like a god, clothed in jeans below and nothing above. The dull light of a single lamp softened the planes of his face, making him look less fierce. More approachable.

All but his eyes, which were fixed on her with an almost frightening intensity.

Raine looked down at herself, at her breasts and the smooth skin of her belly. On any other day she might have flushed and tried to cover herself. But now, with this man, she stood fast and grew warm under his inspection. Then, inwardly amazed at her own boldness, she touched the button at the waistband of her tailored slacks. “I’ve thought of us doing this, too many times to count.”

At the flare of heat in his eyes, modesty fled. She toed off her boots, unsnapped the pants and slid them down over her hips, hooking her bikinis on the way down.

Max’s eyes followed her every move. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

Raine wasn’t sure she was, either, wasn’t sure she needed to. Oxygen didn’t seem nearly as important as chasing the sensations that flowed through her body like lava.

Naked, she stood for a moment, letting him look his fill, reveling in the tension that crackled between them. It lasted a moment. Two. Then he let out a low, reverent oath, crossed the room and took her.

That was how it felt, as though she were being taken. He swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed in an action that should have seemed foolish, but instead jammed her heart into her throat with excitement and an edge of fear that he might let her fall.

Then she realized it didn’t matter.

She’d already fallen.

On that thought, on that hit of hot, wild desperation, she turned her lips into his neck and nipped the soft spot where his pulse pounded in time with hers. He murmured something-her name perhaps-and shifted her in his arms so he could take her lips with his, take her under again as they dropped to the bed, twined together.

She rose above Max, naked while he remained half-clothed. Then she paused. “Oh, hell. We don’t have-”

He held up a finger. “Yes, we do. It’s not all snacks and soda in that gift shop.”

She grinned, bubbles of light froth and excitement expanding in her chest and bursting through her as she dropped from the bed, padded naked to the crinkling bag and extracted the small packet. Power spiraled through her. A sense of rightness.

This was right. No matter what came after, this was right for her. For them.

Riding on the high, she turned back with the thin box held between her thumb and forefinger. “You planning on a three-fer?”

She faltered when she saw that he was standing beside the bed, gloriously naked, supremely confident.

He was as heavily muscled and perfectly proportioned as she had imagined in her darkest, unacknowledged fantasies. But the whole of him was more than she’d pictured. More warrior-like. More masculine. And his proud, jutting flesh suggested that he was up for anything.

He held out a hand. “Come over here.”

She hesitated briefly as nerves tangled with needs inside her, then crossed the room and pressed the condoms into his hand. “I was hoping we’d end up like this.”

Part of her wished he’d say something about this being a beginning rather than an end, but no such assurance was forthcoming. Instead, he kissed her-a simple, closed-mouth kiss that quickly spiraled into something more, something larger than itself. Skin slid across skin, inciting delicious friction, torturous want.

She drew him down to the soft bed, or maybe he urged her down, she wasn’t sure anymore whose idea was what, she only cared that the kisses didn’t stop, the friction didn’t stop.

The heat built. Quiet was forgotten; gentle was lost to the inferno of passion as they strained together, twined together, kissing and nipping until Raine’s entire essence was steeped in him.

He said something on a low growl. The dark, almost violent sound of it pulled at her, inflamed her, called to something deep within her. She whispered his name in a demand, a plea, and parted her legs, wrapping them around him and rolling so they reversed to a position as old as humanity itself, with him atop her, his hard flesh nestled at the juncture between her legs.

The need pounded in her blood while he sheathed himself in one of the condoms and set the other two on the bedside table. Then he was back there with her, truly with her, focusing all his attention on her with a fierceness that might have been intimidating had she not trusted him.

But she trusted him. Hell, she loved him. So she opened to him, welcomed him, demanded him the way her body had been clamoring for his, ever since that first moment she’d knocked on his apartment door and been forcibly reminded of what she’d left behind in Boston.

At the time, she hadn’t understood. Now, as he slid into her on one graceful thrust of hard against soft, flesh against flesh, she finally did understand.

When she’d run from her hospital room, she hadn’t just left her job and a man who might have been her lover. She’d left a piece of herself behind. She might not have ever understood the enormity of it, the finality, except for one thing-

As he moved inside her, as he loved her, that piece was restored.

The beauty and power of it, the heat and the mad frenzy gripped her tightly. She might have struggled against the hold, except it was pulling her exactly where she wanted to be, down into the swirl of pleasure and sensation and flesh and Max, only Max, who waited for her at the center of it all.

Their eyes locked as surely as her legs gripped his hips and her hands anchored at his shoulders. She saw herself reflected in his dark irises, saw the flicker of candlelight and emotion. And heat. So much heat it nearly scorched her, burned through her like a nearing wildfire, increasing with every second.

Their bodies moved together with relentless rhythm, slowing down, then building as the sensations layered within her. But where always before Raine’s climax had turned her inward, until she concentrated on that deepest core of herself, this time, the sensations radiated outward, encompassing Max, drawing him into her pleasure as it spiked and imploded, carrying her along with it.

No, she realized as her body pulsed and clenched around him and he groaned deep within his throat, within his soul as he emptied himself into her. The tidal wave of sensation wasn’t carrying just her along with it this time. It was carrying them. Together.

The tide built and crested, then just when she thought the ebb was inevitable, Max moved in a long, slow glide of flesh against flesh. Raine cried out in surprised pleasure and tightened around him once again, wringing a groan from him. Her name perhaps, or a prayer.

As the sensations faded, as the dim light came into focus around them, Max collapsed gently atop her, pressing her into the yielding mattress with his good, strong weight.

He said her name. Pressed a kiss to her temple. And laced his fingers between hers and held on.