Eve’s Wedding Knight

from her and the world rushed in on a wave of sound and sensation, leaving her shocked and reeling, conscious of the ache in her throat, the burn of tears behind her eyelids. She opened her mouth, searching for words, and when she couldn’t find them, pressed her fingertips to her lips in mute apology, though he wasn’t even looking at her. She supposed she should be glad of that.

Then she realized what he was doing. Realized that he’d taken the beer bottle from her nerveless fingers and the plate from his lap and swiveled around to place them on the shelf that ran across the side of the sleeping compartment behind him. That he was gathering up the silverware and napkin, the pie and the rolls and placing them on the shelf, as well. And that the shelf formed the head of the bed they were sitting on. And that they were sitting on a bed.

What had she been thinking of, to suggest as a meeting place, of all places…a bed?

With the decks cleared, Jake turned back to her, his face grave and eyes as dark and opaque as molasses. Wordlessly he reached out, and with his thumb, touched the faint scar on the bridge of her nose that was all that remained of her facial injuries. She closed her eyes as she felt his fingers fan over her cheek and temple and burrow into her hair. He had big hands, powerful hands, with long, strong fingers. Hands that had been trained to kill- perhaps had killed. But oh, how gentle they were… She remembered how he’d touched her, how skillfully he’d massaged her neck and how gently, when moments before he’d been mercilessly pounding a leather dummy with his fists.

She heard a sound, an inarticulate murmur. Opening her eyes, she saw Jake’s searching hers, bright with unspoken questions. Not knowing what to say to him, instead she put her hand over his and guiding the palm to her mouth, pressed her lips into it. As silent as she, he lifted his other hand to touch her cheek and finger the short tendrils of hair past her ear, and she covered that hand, too, and held it cradled against her head. It was a strange and unbearably tender embrace.

So tender, she could only stand it for a few moments. Then the swelling ache inside her became shudders, a gust of released breath…and in that instant before it could become a sob, he swooped down, caught her open mouth and pulled her to him. And in so doing, it seemed, let go the leash…opened the floodgates. He kissed her with a hunger so intense, it shocked her. It robbed her of her breath, all thought, reason and will.

In the beginning, she’d only meant to kiss him-she’d have sworn it. But now it seemed to her that there’d never been a question where that first kiss would lead. Now she knew that she wanted him-had been wanting him-and that was all that mattered. Wanted him so desperately, she wondered how she’d ever survived so long without him. Wanted him-needed him-as much as she needed her heart to keep beating, and her lungs to draw their next breath. To her it was as simple, fundamental and inevitable as that.

They came together and surged upward like two waves, two irresistible forces meeting, and kneeling upright, mouths hungrily exploring, tore frantically at each other’s clothes. Eve’s coat was easiest, and went first, followed immediately by her short, button-front cotton knit top. Jake’s casual plaid shirt and pullover sweater-probably chosen because he’d hoped they’d be less conspicuous in that rural neighborhood on a Thanksgiving Day than his customary FBI uniform of suit, white shirt and tie, not knowing they made him look like a walking ad for L.L. Bean- proved more difficult, if only because neither of them wanted to let go of the other or stop kissing long enough to pull it over his head. Somehow, though, they managed to divest him not only of his clothes, but of his inevitable agent’s accessories. His gun and its holster, his beeper and badge went on the shelf beside the abandoned dinner plate.

Then it was just Jake in his undershirt and Eve in her bra, and that quickly those barriers, too, were disposed of.

Kneeling face-to-face, both naked to the waist, they paused…but only for a moment. It wasn’t a time for lingering explorations, for feasting the eyes, for stimulating the senses. Those senses had been stimulated quite enough as it was.

Eve felt sick with desire-dizzy and light-headed. When Jake reached for her and dragged her to him, she whimpered. His body was a furnace; she clung to him desperately, straining to get closer, dug her fingers into the muscles of his back, raked his shoulders with her teeth. He did the same, trying, it seemed, to touch every part of her at once. Forgetting to be gentle, but who cared? And there were no words. The only sounds they made were gasps and pants and whimpers of pleasure.

As if he’d reached the limits of his endurance, he suddenly captured her head between his hands, held it still while he first gazed with smoldering intensity into her eyes, then swooped down like a raider and took her mouth and plundered it without mercy, until she tore away from him sobbing, and cried out in panic and fear-not of him, but for her own sanity.

She couldn’t fight this. Instinctively she knew that her only relief lay in surrender. With eyes closed she tipped her head back and gave herself up to the waves of desire. Rocked on the rhythms of her own body, utterly lost, like one cast adrift on a stormy sea, she trusted him to be her anchor. Weightless, she had no grounding, no point of reference save for the burning heat of his mouth. And it was everywhere-a searing brand on her throat, a pounding pressure where her pulses leapt and jumped beneath the skin…gently laving the soft hollows of her neck, then fiercely raking the taut and quivering cords. It was an overwhelmingly sensual and exquisite torture. She felt it in every part of her, every corner of her being.

“Please…” she whimpered, not knowing how to articulate what it was she wanted. Just… “Please…Jake…”

While his hands held her hips pressed tightly against his body so that she felt its heat and hardness, its rocklike strength and powerful desire, his mouth continued its journey of conquest, as inevitable and devastating an assault on her senses as a wildfire. His lips whispered over her breasts like promises. His teeth raked a rigid nipple, his tongue bathed it with cooling moisture. His mouth encircled it, drew it deep into a melting, tugging warmth, and she thought she would explode, break apart in his hands… shatter into a million tiny pieces.

Her hands found his belt buckle, the waistband of his trousers. And as if it was the signal he’d been waiting for, his found hers, as well. She felt the scrape of fabric on sensitized nerve endings, the cool kiss of air, and then the warm embrace of his hands…and pleasure so intense, she wept. With his head cradled against her breasts, she buried her hands and her face in the thicket of his hair, and the sobs rippled through her like seismic waves.

He whispered something she couldn’t quite hear, and his arms came around her, encircling her in comforting warmth and reassuring strength. She pressed her face into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, reveling in the rasp of his beard on her cheeks, tasting the saltiness of his skin, drinking in the familiar spicy smell of him-oh yes, she remembered that smell. Had she known even then, somewhere deep inside, what it would come to mean to her? Now it seemed as if she had always known, as if she’d been born with his scent programmed into her genes.

Dimly she felt him drag her legs across his lap and shuck away her jeans and panties. She gave him no help. She was far beyond that. And then he laid her down, oh, so gently, and moments later followed her, having sloughed away his clothing like an old skin. She opened her arms to him with a welcoming chuckle and felt his body slide over hers…smooth and warm and silky hard. Ecstasy settled over her like a gossamer blanket woven of star bursts and sunbeams.

Nowhere in her consciousness was there even a glimmer of doubt, or the faintest echo of suggestion that there might be things she should attend to, reasons why she ought not to be doing this-here, at least, and now. Her world, her existence was Jake. His arms were her foundation, his body her fortress, his face her sun, moon and stars. He was the air she breathed; his heartbeat was her heartbeat; his mouth was her nourishment. When she closed her eyes she felt as if she’d ceased to exist as a separate entity entirely; she existed only as part of him.

So when he pulled away from her and, kneeling between her parted legs, began to blaze a new trail of kisses and love bites over her body, she cried out and clutched at him in panic, writhing and whimpering in inarticulate protest.

And with a low growl of understanding-as incapable of words as she-he straightened, and stroking and gentling her with his hands, reached under her thighs and drew them even farther apart…positioned himself and then at last, with excruciating care and quivering self-restraint, drove himself home.

Breath rushed from her lungs in a gasp of shock, relief and pleasure. She arched her back and opened to him in delighted welcome, half lifting her body to meet him. He scooped his arms under her and raised her to him so that she found herself again more upright than reclining, sitting astride his thighs and clinging to him in joyous abandon. The strength in his body both awed and exhilarated her, she felt the trembling of self-control deep within his