Page 8 of I Dream of Danger (Ghost Ops #2)

It was impossible to decide which was the better view. Maybe from the front with that rock-hard penis lying against his rock-hard belly.

Yes, definitely.

He stood by the bed for a moment, looking down at her. “Lie back down, honey,” he said softly, and she did, immediately, that ‘honey’ ringing in her ears. When he looked at her like that, called her ‘honey,’ she’d have obeyed him if he’d said, ‘put your hand in the thresher, honey.”

He sat on the side of the bed, making it dip and just looked at her, perusing her carefully, from her face, over her breasts, belly, down her legs to her feet, then back up again.

He sighed and she stiffened.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, and smiled at her. “Now open your legs.”

She smiled back and slid her legs apart.

He applied the washcloth between her legs and she winced to see it turn red and then pink. His eyes followed his hands as he cleaned her. His movements were impersonal, prosaic, and she was immensely turned on.

“I never even thought you might be a virgin,” he said, and stopped for a moment, almost indignant. “I mean, look at you! You’re a beautiful young woman. What’s the matter with the guys in this town? Are they blind? How the f—how the hell was I supposed to guess that you hadn’t done this before?”

Elle rolled her eyes. “First of all, Nick, you can say fuck . If we’re going to fuck you can say fuck.”

He stopped and his eyes widened in shock. His mouth fell open. She laughed. It took a lot to shock Nick. Or maybe not, if hearing her say ‘fuck’ made his jaw drop.

“Fuck,” he breathed, and she laughed again.

He shook his head. “Okay, my vocabulary aside, please tell me how someone who looks like you has never…” He stopped instinctively. “Has never—” He couldn’t complete the sentence.

“Fucked,” she offered.

“Okay.” He sighed. “So how can someone who looks like you never have fucked.”

Never kissed, either. She was really glad he hadn’t figured that one out.

She gave him the easy version. “Daddy started getting really sick in my sophomore year. It had been sort of funny before. Losing the keys, forgetting where he put his glasses even though they were on top of his head. Then he said he took early retirement. I only found out later that he was forced into it. There was no way he could sit on a bench. But then it got worse, very fast. One night the police knocked on the door at three in the morning, holding Daddy between them. He’d wandered off.

They found him in his bathrobe on State Street, and brought him home.

They were really nice. They were a little less nice the tenth time that happened.

And downright angry the thirtieth. It—it’s a terrible disease, devastating.

I had my hands full. I was young, but it was as if I had four small kids.

There isn’t a boy on earth who’d put up with that, and no one did. ”

The hard version—she was never even remotely tempted by anyone but Nick. He filled her head and her heart and no one came even close. Certainly not the callow, shallow boys in high school. And then they all left for college and she didn’t even have a chance to turn dates down.

“Assholes,” Nick said prosaically, and startled a laugh out of her.

“Yeah.” Yes, they were assholes. It was liberating to think of it that way.

“So.” He’d finished cleaning her up and was simply looking at her, washcloth in hand. “Here we are.”

His voice, his face were neutral.

Well, she wasn’t neutral. Not a bit. “Yes, here we are. I’m naked and you’re naked and we’ve already done it—sort of—so what are you waiting for?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Pixie,” he said, his deep voice low, “What am I going to do with you?”

“If I have to tell you, Nick Ross, then there’s no hope for you at all. I would think you’d know exactly what to do, since clearly I don’t. You do know what to do. Don’t you?”

The smile deepened, and his famous dimple, the one she’d teased him so much about, appeared. “Yeah, I guess I do. Except?—”

Her eyes widened. “Except?” Oh God, what now?

“Except I’ve never done it with a virgin before.”

Oh no. Elle rolled her eyes. “Actually, I’m not a virgin any more so that isn’t a problem.”

“No? You think it isn’t a problem?” He touched her, between her legs, eased his index finger inside her opening. She wasn’t expecting it. It hurt, just a little, and she winced.

“See?” His eyes bored into hers.

“It’s fine.” She shook her head without looking away from him.

Nick’s hand smoothed back down over her thigh, the skin of his fingers rough.

She shivered, and all of a sudden the cast of his face changed completely.

His eyes sharpened, became hot, the skin tightened over his cheekbones.

He looked slightly older, utterly male. Even if he weren’t sitting naked in front of her fully erect, she’d have known he was aroused.

“Let’s take this slowly,” he whispered, gaze never leaving hers, cupping one big hand around her thigh and separating her legs even further.

“Let’s,” she whispered back. She was so completely open to him, everything she was, laid bare.

Not just physically. She could actually feel her heart opening to him, like a flower unfolding instead of a chunk of muscle.

To deal with her father she’d had to close her heart up like a bank vault, otherwise it would have been unbearable.

She hadn’t allowed herself to feel anything at all for so long.

And now she felt . Everything. Inside and out. She felt the lines of attraction between her and Nick, strong, almost visible. She was connected to him. What he wanted, she wanted. He could do with her whatever he wished.

And her body was open too. In the few yoga classes she’d taken way back when, before Daddy got sick, the instructor had told them that there was an invisible line running through the center of the body.

She was open on either side, fully available to him.

Her shin was resting against him, against the hard muscles of his side.

She rubbed her leg against him, just a little.

It wasn’t just the female thrill of feeling a hard male, it was that Nick was so fully alive.

Just touching him made her feel fully alive, too, vital and warm and strong.

And she realized by comparison that she’d felt already dead and buried for so long.

As long as Nick was with her, as long as she could touch him, she was alive too.

His rough finger began circling around her, up and down, touching her lightly, but where he touched her, the skin sparked to life. Gently, lightly, his finger opened her, moved slightly inside.

She sighed, and felt goose pimples along her arm.

“You like that?” Nick murmured, and she felt his words resonate in her diaphragm, ripple along her skin.

She was beyond words. She nodded jerkily.

“And this?” His finger penetrated deeper, still circling, as if to widen her up.

And he was . Oh God. He was opening her up so he could put his penis back inside her. The image, the very thought, made every single muscle clench in anticipation, including down there .

Nick’s eyes narrowed even further. “Whatever you just thought, think it again. Because you just got wetter.”

Yes of course. Her body was preparing itself for him, becoming liquid. Not just her vagina, Elle felt like everything else was opening up, softening, becoming liquid. She felt like she could float away on some warm rocking sea.

She was slick now, she could feel it and she could hear it.

It could have been embarrassing hearing the sounds her vagina made as he moved his finger in her but she wasn’t embarrassed.

She was miles away from embarrassment, beyond even thinking of it.

The pleasure swamped any trace of that from her head.

His finger was moving in and out and not just around, swirling in her, opening her up. And then his thumb moved and caressed another part of her and it was as if he’d plugged her into something.

“Oh!” she stiffened. “What was that? Do it again!”

“Clitoris,” he muttered, and did it again.

For a second, the word didn’t penetrate her heated head and then she understood. What romance novels called the pearl of desire. Nubbin of pleasure. It wasn’t a pearl or a nubbin it was a button . Press it and you switch a woman on.

She’d washed herself a million times, right over that specific spot, and nothing like that had ever happened.

Nick’s finger and thumb were working their magic, and he bent to her. She smiled, instinctively opening her mouth, but it wasn’t her mouth he wanted. He bent lower and grazed his teeth along her breast. Lightly. Then he bit her and she jumped.

He lifted his head, smiling. “Yeah, that worked.”

Elle ran her hands through his hair. “It all works, Nick. Everything you do to me. It all works.”

“Yeah?” He bent to her again. “Let’s see.

” He licked her nipple, long sensuous strokes, then started sucking and each pull of his mouth went right to her groin in a line so straight it could have come out of a geometry class.

Exactly in tune with the tugs of his mouth.

He suckled lazily for what felt like hours, certainly beyond any notion of time she had.

The part of her head that marked time simply quit, poof. Gone. Now she was on Nick time.

Each time he pulled at her breast, her vagina pulled at his finger, in synch, like a little ballet her body was doing. His thumb was stroking her clitoris, but that was off the beat, out of tune, a quite dissonant heat.

Nick took her nipple between his teeth, very gently, and pulled.

It was just a tiny bite of pain, nothing really, but it was that tiny sting that pushed her into complete overload.

Time stopped, suspended, then rushed back in as her body convulsed, long, hard pulls of her vagina muscles and belly and thigh muscles, her entire body pulling toward the center of her, where Nick had his hand

Her back arched, her toes curled, everything spiraled inward then…exploded.