The Missionary

solve every problem there is, but it goes a long way towards it.” She touched her lips to his chin, and then placed another kiss on his jaw line. “Stop trying to distract me.”

“I though distracting you was the whole point?”

Wren frowned. “You know what I mean.”

Stone laughed, but couldn’t hold the humor for long; her kisses were drifting from his jaw to the shell of his ear, her breath tickling, her hands skating oh-so gently across his bare chest. Warm hands, warm mouth, soft body, soft skin.

He knew he should resist. It probably was at least partially the after-effects of adrenaline and danger driving them both to this. But, then again, he’d wanted her, desired her before any of this had ever happened. Their relationship had definitely been pushed beyond the student-staff model. It was something else, now. They’d witnessed death together. Stone had killed for her. That brought two people closer than anything else ever could, or would.

She was kissing the corner of his mouth and caressing his chest, his shoulders, letting her fingers explore his stomach—careful to avoid his wounded left side—and her touch was a drug all its own, pushing away the pain and the exhaustion, filling him with the burning energy of desire.

He still had his hand on her ass, and he explored the taut muscles, then found her bare thigh. She breathed a moan as his touch slipped up the back of her leg, from the crease of her knee to just beneath her ass. He hesitated there, but Wren’s body writhed under his hand, silently begging him for more. His fingers pressed into the firm flesh, driving them both wild with need. She attacked his mouth with her own, devouring him, pleading with him.

Stone brushed a lock of black hair away from Wren’s mouth, grazed her cheek with his knuckles, and then bent down to capture her mouth with his. He held nothing back, this time. His hands found their way to her shoulders and back, just above the towel, his touch loosening the wrapped fabric. She shivered at his touch, clutched his shoulders with fierce fingers.

And then she pulled away again, but this time, her gaze remained locked on his as she released her hold on the damp cotton of the towel. With a deep breath, Wren pulled the tucked-in end of the towel free. The fabric sagged, then fell away from her body to pile on the floor around her feet.

And just like that she was naked in front of him.

Stone felt his chest constrict at the sight of her. She was all tan skin and dark hair and endless curves, her brown eyes half-seductive and half fearful. She stood still, one leg bent at the knee, black hair cascading over one shoulder. He let himself really look at her, finally. Full breasts, high and heavy, bell-curve hips and strong legs, hands at her sides and lips pressed together. She was nervous, but refusing to cover herself, he realized. She was waiting for his reaction, for his approval.

* * *

Wren was barely able to contain the trembling. She was hot, and then cold, and then hot. Her skin itched, crawling with invisible bugs. Her knees knocked, threatened to buckle. Part of it was the withdrawal, part of it was sheer nerves. She’d wanted this with Stone for so long, and now it was happening.

She could barely focus on him. She was on fire. She was ice. She felt every moment as if she was on the verge of throwing up, nausea boiling in her stomach like magma beneath the Earth’s crust.

She needed the heroin. It was the oddest sensation, needing something she didn’t want, had never wanted. But yet she needed, somewhere in her bones, the heady, forgetting rush of euphoria. It was all she could think about. For as much as she wanted Stone’s mouth on hers, for as much as she’d dreamed of Stone taking her in his arms and making love to her, all she wanted was to crawl into bed and hide from the sick need in her gut.

But Stone was waiting. She’d started this, approached him, forced him to face his desire for her. She couldn’t let the drug control her. She wouldn’t let it stop her from taking what might be her only chance to be with him.

She shivered as the cold hotel room air hit her bared skin. She felt her nipples pucker and go erect, both from the cold and from Stone’s gaze, hot and molten brown and rife with lust. She fought the inclination to cross her arms over herself, and instead let Stone stare at her. He wanted her. She saw it in his eyes, saw in the way his fingers clawed into his biceps until his short-clipped fingernails left crescents imprinted in his sun-darkened skin.

Keep going, she told herself. She fought down the withdrawal-induced nausea and tried to focus on the memory of his kiss, his hands on her butt, his fingers caressing her skin. Chills overtook her, and she couldn’t quite stop the chatter of her teeth.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Stone asked, his voice suspicious.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m just…excited. And a little nervous. It’s been awhile.”

“It’s been awhile for me too,” Stone said. “Look, we don’t have to rush this. We’ll go home and take this at our own pace. It doesn’t have to be now.”

Wren closed the gap between them so the rigid tips of her breasts just barely brushed his hard, hot chest. “I want to. I want it to be now. Besides, you’re the one who said we may not make it out of this alive. Now may be all we have.”

His hands circled her arms, slid up and down twice, and then moved to her shoulder blades, down her back and to her waist. “I know what I said. But I don’t want you think I’m saying we won’t make it. We will. I promise you we will.”

Wren lifted up on her toes, clutched the back of Stone’s neck, and kissed him. In a book, the kiss would erase all of her aches and doubts and fears and sickness. In a book, she would be able to forget it all and lose herself in the taste of his mouth. He really did taste wonderful. But this was reality, and she couldn’t simply forget the blazing heat of chemical addiction. It was alive within her, boiling her blood in her veins, sending armies of crawling things itching under her skin.

She kissed him anyway, until she had to stop for breath.

His hands scoured her skin, scraped and stuttered over her hips, cupped her ass and squeezed it, tickled her thighs. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck, to the hollow of her throat and the delicate curve where neck became shoulder. Then, to her breastbone, and she shivered, hot all over and shaking, knees quaking. She couldn’t breathe, and now his lips were touching the upward slope of her breasts and the nausea stomping in her belly was nearly forgotten in the sweet ache of arousal.

She felt his mouth close over her right nipple, and the tug of his lips was matched by a tug between her thighs. She held on to him, focused every ounce of her attention on feeling him, only him. One of his hands slid over her skin just above her aching core, and the other remained behind to cup the weight of her buttock. She wanted to gasp his name breathlessly, but she couldn’t summon even that. She could only hold on to his neck and shoulders and give over to tactile sensation.

His fingers delved between her thighs, grazing the crease of her pussy with his long middle finger. She let her thighs move apart, clinging to his neck, pressing her lips to the warmth of his throat, kissing and nibbling and then giving way to gasps as his fingers slid inside her and began to explore.

He seemed to know exactly where to touch her, how to stroke her. Within seconds, she was unable to stand up on her own at all, and Stone was lowering her to the bed and kneeling over her, never slowing the slow sweep of his fingers, or the suckling of his lips on her nipple.

Wren bit her lip and tried to ignore the roiling of her stomach, tried gamely to focus on the raw fury of her building orgasm.

She moaned, scratching at his shoulders as he moved his mouth to her other breast. He shifted position, and she felt the hard bulge of arousal against her thigh. She lifted her hips into his touch, moving with his rhythm, seeking release from the ache. His fingers inside her accelerated and his teeth grazed the sensitive, erect nub of her nipple. She couldn’t move or think or feel anything but the blasting pulse of heat low in her belly and the tugging in her breasts as he released her hand to gently twist and flick her nipple.

And then, just as the heat and pressure became too much to bear, Stone’s fingers slid upward inside her and his thumb rolled over her throbbing clitoris and Wren came apart, crying out and clawing his back with her fingernails, pressing her lips to his throat and whimpering as the orgasm blasted through her.

She clung to Stone, shaking and quaking, heat raging in her veins, every ounce of strength within her leached away, now.