Page 8 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

CHAPTER THREE

Eyes closed, Sophie drifted. She was wiped out, completely depleted. Every cell lax, ripe with pleasure, a pleasure she thought had left the world. Apparently not. Apparently there were small pockets of mind-blowing pleasure still around.

And the source of one was lying on top of her, heavy as an elephant.

A tap on her cheek. Her eyes fluttered, but she couldn’t open them. Too much effort…she drifted again.

Another tap. Annoying. “Sophie,” a deep voice commanded. “Open those beautiful eyes.”

“Mmm.” She tried to breathe in but he was so heavy he was bending her ribs.

But still, it was a wonderful sensation.

A heavy male body, brimming with heat and life.

Her arms tightened around him, then slid away as he lifted himself up off her, resting on his forearms. “Sophie!” It was a barked command, in a voice used to command.

Her eyes popped open.

“God.” His own eyes closed for a second, then opened again, narrow and intense. Was he—was he angry? “Don’t do that to me.”

“What? Do what?” Her senses were muddled.

How could she think when that intense icy gaze was locked on her?

When she was held in a cage between incredibly brawny arms?

She had good peripheral vision and those arms alone were worthy of contemplation.

Not huge hunks of meat like body builders or wrestlers but rather long lean super-toned and tanned muscle.

Big raised veins that you had to build to carry oxygen to all that brawn.

The ceiling light picked out the blond hairs on his forearms, thick and wiry.

She could feel the strength of the hands holding her head.

He wasn’t using his strength in any way against her.

No, she felt safe and protected. But the power in those hands somehow seeped through skin and bone, perceived as an elemental force with just the lightest of touches.

“Disappear.”

She blinked. “I disappeared?”

She most certainly had not. If anything, she was pinned, like a butterfly, to her hardwood floor.

His weight on her from the waist down, long strong legs next to hers, taut abdominals right on top of hers.

His torso was held away but those large hands curling around her head ensured she couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe without him knowing about it.

And, of course, he was still inside her. Talk about being pinned.

Sophie squirmed a little, just enough to make the point that she couldn’t go anywhere, not with him on top of her, in her.

“I can’t go anywhere. You can feel that I can’t go anywhere.”

That grim expression hadn’t changed. “You were drifting. With your thoughts.”

Without her willing it, her hand lifted from the floor and caressed his cheek. It was warm, slightly bristly. His beard was blond, heavy. “No,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. “I was savoring. I thought—I thought I would never touch another human being again.”

He let out a long sigh, touched his forehead to hers. “Yeah. That’s why I wanted you with me, not drifting away.”

“It doesn’t make any difference anymore, given that society has collapsed, but…I just want you to know that I’m not in the habit of making love to the first guy who falls on top of me. Just for the record.”

He lifted his head at that and stared into her eyes. “Oh yeah. I got that. You’re very tight.”

Yes, she was tight. Her last lover had been—what?

—two years ago? She gave an inward sigh.

They were all going to die, and soon. Why, oh why hadn’t she had more sex?

Why had she been so picky ? All her girlfriends had complained about it.

Everyone except Elle, of course, who had an even more pathetic love life than she did.

There was some guy in her past she was still in love with even though he’d dumped her, brutally, ten years ago.

Sophie didn’t have that. Didn’t have anything like that in her past. No star-crossed loves, no yearning for someone. All she’d had was safe, mild-mannered men who cared for her more than she cared for them and wasn’t that sad?

Right now she wished fiercely she’d spent her college years sleeping around and having a good time like her roommate Sharon. Sharon had majored in men and Sophie had majored in biology and they’d both been A students.

She should have had more sex, oh yeah. Except…

it would have to have been like what she’d just had, right now.

With the guy who was staring at her intensely.

With the guy who was still erect inside her even after having had a climax.

With the guy who’d made love to her so fiercely she thought her heart would stop.

There hadn’t been any sex like that, ever. And that was why she hadn’t had too much of it.

Jon shook himself. “You’re on the floor and I weigh a ton. You must be uncomfortable. Sorry about that.”

He slowly pulled out of her, his still erect penis sliding against super-sensitized tissues. Oh God. Heat blossomed in her groin, a sensation so intense it was almost pain.

A burst of breath came from her. She could finally breathe properly, but having him withdraw was—sad. The breath came out as a sigh and she was instantly embarrassed. Who knew what he thought of her, and now she was sighing because their love-making was over.

Men liked that. They liked the idea that sex with them was overwhelming. It rarely was, but Sophie had learned the fine art of faking it. But that sigh had been real and it probably fed right into his ego.

A peek up at that suntanned Nordic God, though, didn’t show a smirking male face. Not even a smiling one. He looked grim and tough and dangerous. Of course he had to be tough and dangerous to make it through even a couple of feet of infected, let alone hundreds of miles.

He stretched out a big, sinewy hand and she took it.

She didn’t need help getting up but refusing a hand would be churlish.

He lifted her with astonishing ease, one-handed.

And, surprisingly, she did need help. Her legs were wobbly, unused muscles stretched.

His semen was wetting her thighs, the feeling so strange she staggered.

A big arm went around her waist immediately, his hold so strong she could have let all her muscles go lax and he would have held her upright.

“You okay?” Those laser-bright blue eyes bored into hers, face pulled tight. You’d think he’d spent the past half hour beating her up instead of giving her the best sex of her life.

“Yes, of course.” Sophie tested her legs.

They could hold her up. She hoped. How strange to be so embarrassed with him, now that he only had an arm around her.

When he’d been in her, making love to her, she hadn’t been embarrassed at all.

There’d been no room for anything but heat and the wildest sort of pleasure. “I’m sorry. I just?—”

She couldn’t even finish the sentence. His gaze was so mesmerizing, words fled from her head.

She was a scholar, a scientist. Words were to be used precisely, to describe natural phenomena. She’d always used words like a scalpel and here she couldn’t think of a one. He was still holding on to her, so tall he was bent over her a little, his face close to hers.

He wasn’t smiling at her utter inability to form a sentence, as any other man would be.

Striking a woman dumb was probably every man’s dream.

That strong arm tightened around her waist as he lifted his head slightly to examine her closely.

Not a lover’s look. A doctor’s look, making sure she was all right.

Okay, now she was embarrassed. Granted, the sex had been off the charts, but she had to come back from ecstasy, which wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

Her thighs were coated slick with his semen now, the lips of her sex felt swollen, incredibly tender.

His big body curved over hers was so close she had to dig her fingernails into her palm to keep from touching him.

She twisted slightly and came against his still-erect penis and heat flashed through her, unstoppable.

A great, rolling wave of it, and her sex clenched.

Oh God.

“You just—” he said. With his chest so close to hers, that deep voice seemed to sink right into her diaphragm and vibrate upwards instead of entering her head normally through her ears. “You just what?”

Sophie shook her head sharply. She placed her hands against that massive chest, palms flat against his pectorals.

Oh God. She wanted to push him away slightly, gain a little breathing room, get away from this magnetic field he exerted, but her body betrayed her.

She could feel every muscle against her palms through the thin cotton tee.

She had always been disciplined, focused. Right now she dug deep into her depths to find just a little of that discipline and pull away.

“I just need to use the bathroom,” she said, finally pulling her dressing gown tightly around herself. With every ounce of her being she wanted her voice to be cool and matter-of-fact, but she was breathless. She didn’t even know if she’d said the words or if she’d just mouthed them.

His arms opened immediately and she almost staggered at the sudden lack of support. A big hand shot out to her elbow, then he withdrew his hand when it was clear she was steady.

Or at least she looked steady. He watched as she walked across the room, tightening her silk robe again, as if he hadn’t already seen, already touched, her naked flesh. In the bathroom Sophie leaned her hands on the rim of the sandstone sink, blew out her breath and looked at herself in the mirror.

What she saw astonished her. She was expecting to see her usual pale face overrun with embarrassment. What she saw was a rosy version of herself, rested and relaxed, the exact opposite of the person she’d been seeing in the mirror these past few weeks.