Christmas Heat

Chapter 8

She had spent the day going over it. She had thought it to death, reasoned it around every corner and curve she could reason it around, and come to the same ending each time. If she walked away from this, if she let him walk away, she would never forgive herself.

Like Noble, she had feared for so long that she would never find that feeling that something or someone belonged just to her. That one heart beat for her, her heart for him.

For a year she had kept her distance, but only because Noble had kept his. It would have taken very little for her to go into his arms.

The mating heat was a frightening prospect. The tabloid stories, if they were even 80 percent true, were enough to make any woman pause. But at least she had an idea what to expect, she told herself as she stared back at him. At least she had a chance of finding that unknown something she had been waiting for so long.

"This isn't like last night, Haley," he warned her. "There's no stepping into this and pulling back. Do you understand me? Once I kiss you, it starts. I promise you, stopping won't be a part of what comes later."

"I understand that." She nodded. And she did, she hoped. Yet he still stood there, staring at her, his expression tight, arrogant, fierce.

She gripped the hem of her sweater and, as he watched, pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. She wasn't wearing a camisole today. She wasn't even wearing a bra. Her breasts were swollen with need though, her nipples standing out, hard and desperate for his touch.

She licked her lips and gripped the elastic band of her cotton pants.

"Not the panties," he growled. "Leave them on."

Her heart raced in her chest as she remembered the sight of him holding her panties to his face, inhaling the scent of her the night before.

Gripping just the waist of the pants, she eased them over her legs and stood before him in nothing but the thin silk-and-lace panties she wore now.

She shivered as the winds howled outside, and inside, the bedroom filled with steamy, erotic lust. His black eyes moved over her body as he sat down in the chair next to him slowly and lifted one booted foot to his knee.

He unlaced his boots slowly, watching her, simply staring at her, stroking her body with his gaze as she felt her breathing constrict in her chest.

No, no man had ever stared at her like Noble did.

His boots thumped to the floor.

"Do you ever touch yourself?" he asked her as he began unbuttoning his shirt, obviously forcing himself to do the chore slowly.

Haley flushed at the question. "Sometimes."

"Do you think of me?"

She licked her lips nervously. "Yes."

"You play with your nipples?"

Oh Lord, she was going to melt to the floor. Each time he spoke, his voice was thicker, rougher.

"I do," she whispered through a moan.

"Gently or rough?"

She was going to turn into one huge blush at this rate. But she answered him, her breathless, "Both," filling the room with another layer of tension.

"Show me." He shrugged the shirt from his shoulders, and she wanted to lick his spots rather than touch herself. "Let me see you touch your breasts, Haley."

She stared at his body as he slowly undressed, watching avidly as her hands lifted to her breasts. She cupped the mounds and imagined his hands. She fluttered her fingers on her nipples, rubbed against them, pinched them lightly as he loosened his belt and pulled the metal buttons of his jeans loose.

She saw his cock before he shed his pants. It eased from between the flaps of his jeans, the flesh dark, thick veins raised along the shaft as the mushroomed head throbbed fiercely.

She pinched her nipples and moaned. Between her thighs she felt her moisture gathering, saturating her flesh, dampening her panties.

She wanted that. Wanted him. She could feel the ache in her sex growing now, the heat and the need almost painful as he quickly shed his jeans and socks.

Another moan slipped past her lips as his fingers wrapped around the shaft, stroked it, once, twice.

"I want to do that." She couldn't hold back the breathless words. "I want to feel you in my hands."

The need rising inside her was unlike any other she had ever felt. She had never wanted anything as she wanted to feel Noble inside her now.

"On the mattress." He nodded to the bed. "I'm not going to take you standing up, Haley. And if I touch you before you get in that bed, then that's exactly what's going to happen."

"I want to touch you." She moved to the bed, staring at him as she eased onto the mattress. "Just for a minute, Noble. I need to touch you."

She had to be kidding. Noble stared back at her, feeling the wash of white-hot arousal tearing through his system, and prayed to God she wasn't a virgin. He couldn't handle it. Right now, he wasn't a fitting lover for a virgin.

"Have you had a lover?" he asked moving closer to the bed.

She blinked back at him. "I'm not a virgin." She frowned then. "Does that matter?"

"Thank God," he muttered. "Move onto the bed. The middle of it."

"You're not just going to take me, are you?" she whispered though she did as he asked.

"Get real, Haley," he growled. "I've"waited a year for this. Do you think I'm going to do anything but take hours loving that sweet, hot little body of yours?"

"First, I get to touch." She reached out to him, her hands touching his hard abs, feeling them tighten painfully against her palms. As he knelt beside her, she ran them to his thighs and stared at the thick, heavy length of his cock.

It only made sense that the dark flesh, fully engorged and ready for her, would be so damned sexy. He was sexy all over. He just couldn't help himself.

"Haley, the edge is close," he warned her. "Trust me, you want me to love you before I do this."

"Yeah, I do," she murmured absently, sitting up, her hands moving to touch him.

"Fuck. You're not listening to me." His voice was strangled. She couldn't breathe.

She looked up at him, opened her lips and licked over the thick cock head.

His response was almost violent. A primal growl tore from his throat as his hands went to her head, fingers threading through the strands of her hair, and he leaned his head back.

She parted her lips farther, sucked him inside, and moaned again. Because his taste could be addictive. He tasted like a mountain storm. And she loved mountain storms. Like the lightning rolling over the forest and the wind picking up through the trees. Earthy and clean, natural.

"Damn you." He breathed out the curse, his voice harsh as his hips jerked. He buried the head inside her mouth as she sucked him, tasted him, and loved every second of it.

She licked and consumed, sucked and moaned around his flesh and never knew a pleasure so great. As she sucked, she felt, tasted, the drops of pre-cum that beaded on the head. She consumed them eagerly. If it felt as though each taste warmed against her tongue, then she ignored it. If after a few minutes she could feel the need inside her raging hotter, then she went with it. Whatever his touch brought her, she would accept.

"Touch yourself," he snarled above her.

Haley lifted her lashes and stared up at him. He was watching her, his gaze fierce, demanding.

"Let me watch," he groaned roughly. "Give me something to hold on to, Haley, or I'm going to lose control here."

Her hand lifted to her breast.

"No," the word snapped from between his teeth. "Not your breasts. Your pussy. Spread your legs. Let me watch you touch yourself."

She had never done that. Never allowed a lover to see her touch herself.

"Lean back."

She moaned around his cock. She didn't want to stop tasting him.

"Lean back, Haley. So I can watch you. I promise, I won't take away your pleasure."

The skin was stretched tight over his face, and as she leaned back, she realized the pillows of the bed cushioned her shoulders and head perfectly. She was elevated enough that she could still pleasure him, still touch him, and he could watch her touch herself.

The eroticism of the act was nearly too much for her. Her fingers moved over the fabric of her panties as she touched herself through the silk and lace. She stared up at him, caught by his expression, held suspended by the hard jerk of his hips as he buried the head of his cock in her mouth.

"Yeah. Stroke yourself," he snarled, lust tightening his expression further as she stroked her fingers over her panties. "I can smell how hot that makes you. You're wet, Haley. So wet and so sweet I can almost taste you on the air."

He held her head with one hand, moving against her, his eyes trained on her fingers.

She gripped the elastic that circled her thigh, pulled it to the side, and touched her flesh. The tips of her fingers eased over the narrow slit as she pulled her panties farther to the side to allow for the careful circular strokes around her clit.

It was too much. Noble nearly roared with the surge of lust that shot into his system. He pulled back from her, forcing her mouth from his cock, his other hand pulling her fingers from between her thighs and pushing those glistening tips to his lips.

And he tasted. Soft, sweet cream. Haley's cream.

He tore the pillows from beneath her head and lowered his head to her as he pushed her arms over her head. His lips covered hers, his tongue sinking into her mouth.

He heard her soft cry in a distant part of his brain. The cry of a woman who knows she has no more room to run. The cry of a woman immersing herself in the hunger feeding into her system.

Her lips closed over his tongue, as though instinct guided her. Her tongue stroked against his, rubbed against it, and then, the soft, sweet suction as the taste of the hormone began to fill her senses.

His cum nearly pumped from his body as she began to suck his tongue. He felt his balls clench, spasm, and wrapped his fingers tight around the base of his cock to hold it back.

Not yet. He wasn't coming yet. Not until he could spill inside her. Not until he could feel the barb locking him to his mate, marking her, making her his. just his. No matter what happened after tonight, she would always be his.

Haley paused as the taste of his kiss hit her tongue. A wild, lust-filled taste, dark and potent, spicy and filled with heat. And tempting. Tempting her to sate the sudden need for more that whipped through her senses.

She drew on his tongue, feeling his lips slant over hers, the hard, drawn contours of his larger body moving over her. Had he just ripped her panties off her?

He had, and she moaned at the sheer eroticism of the knowledge.

He held her hands over her head as he kissed her, refusing to allow her to touch him. But that was okay, the taste of him was making her insane. She couldn't think past the need for more of his kiss.

To say the hormone pumping into her system now was potent was an understatement. She could feel it sinking into her, digging talons of need inside her and stoking the flames of arousal past an incendiary point.

"Ah, Haley." When he finally drew back, she was writhing beneath him, her legs clamped around the hard knee pressing between her legs as she moved against it. "I can feel you burning for me now."

"I've always burned for you," she whimpered. "For too long, Noble."

And that had been the deciding factor in her decision. Noble had fascinated, drawn her, and held her attention, solely, for a year now. Each day, each time he spoke to her, each time she saw him, the fascination had only grown. She couldn't walk away, not when so much of her had already become invested in this one man.

Was it love? At this point, she suspected she had been wrong the night she told him she didn't love him. What she felt for him went so far beyond what she knew love to be that she just hadn't recognized it.

And the night she thought she had lost him? Had anything ever been more agonizing in her life? She knew it hadn't been.

But nothing could have prepared her for the hard pulse that shook her moments later. Her eyes widened, her gaze locking with Noble's as he pushed her thighs apart with his leg and moved between them.

She licked her lips slowly, a hard groan shaking her as the next pulse of need shuddered through her body. She could feel her juices spilling between her thighs. Felt her nipples aching and throbbing, her clit swelling tighter, harder.

"Oh. This is different," she moaned, arching against him as the broad contours of his chest lowered and stroked across her nipples.

"It's different?" His voice was strained, his expression tense as she stared up at him. "How's it different?"

His hips settled between hers, the thick length of his erection pressing into her sex, rubbing against her clit. His cock was hard and hot, like living iron throbbing against her.

"It's like . . ." she gasped, arched again as sensation speared through her womb. "Like pleasure and hunger all mixed up." She could feel perspiration beading on her body. "It's like being . . . like becoming, a living flame."

She arched again, gasped, and felt the sensual contractions in her vagina tightening and building into her womb as Noble gave a low, ragged groan and lowered his lips to her neck.

She shuddered at the sensation of his rough kiss there. The light nip of his teeth, she had so wondered what that would feel like. His tongue stroked over the arch of her neck, her collarbone, then his body shifted against her, moving lower as his lips caressed over the rise of a breast.

"I've been dying to suck your nipples," he groaned, his hair falling over his face to caress her skin along with his lips.

Silken, feather-soft, his hair brushed against her skin, adding to the harsh strike of pure pleasure that raced there when his mouth covered the hard tip of her breast.

He sucked her into his mouth. His tongue rasped against the ultrasensitive tip, and Haley felt herself sinking beneath a tidal wave of pure sensation. Pleasure was a haze of exquisite agony and ecstasy.

It raced over her flesh, filled her with heat and, long before his lips began to spread a path of burning kisses down her stomach, she was begging him for more.

"God how I've wanted to taste you." His voice was a growling purr, dark and rough, as he pushed her thighs wider apart, and his kisses moved closer to the burning, tight center of her body. "I've wanted my tongue inside you, Haley. Licking all your sweet cream. Loving you and tasting you."

He rubbed his cheek against her curls and she nearly orgasmed from the sensual, erotic expression on his face.

He had released her hands, but she kept them above her head and stretched against him. She couldn't touch him yet. She didn't dare. If she touched him, she was going to beg. She was going to sink completely beneath the waves.

But her body and her need had minds of their own. Within seconds, her fingers were tangled in his hair, her thighs opened wide, hips arching, and she was pressing his lips into her.

"Oh yes!" Her fractured wail filled the room as he kissed her clit. Kissed it, as though he were kissing her lips. Soft, gentle, sucking little kisses that had her head thrashing against the bed and any thought of control or restraint dissolving beneath the pleasure.

They were wild together. She could feel it, their pleasure and their need blending and merging, creating something she couldn't have imagined as he began to devour her flesh.

He licked and stroked with his amazingly adept tongue. It flickered along the tender slit, circled the entrance to her body, then plunged inside her with destructive results.

She had burned before. But now, as his tongue licked and thrust inside her, she was blazing, consumed, arching, and crying out at the exquisite agony of pleasure. It. tightened inside her, expanded, and before she could draw breath or prepare for it, the explosion of exquisite sensation tore through her.

Haley felt her shoulders jerk from the bed. Her eyes opened, widened, unseeing, her senses dazed as the most exquisite feelings tore through her. Sharp and vibrant, a race of liquid flames, white-hot destruction and dark, primal pleasure.

Noble snarled as he felt her release tearing through her. A year. He had waited a year. He couldn't wait any longer. He straightened between her spread thighs, stared into her dazed feature as he lifted her hips, bracing her rear on his thighs, and tucked the head of his cock into the tiny, spasming entrance to her pussy.

Fiery damp curls surrounded the engorged head as he watched, holding her hips still, determined to see this. To watch her body take him, open for him.

His teeth clenched as he pressed inside her. Sweat ran down his face, burned his eyes, and dampened both their bodies.

He had to hold on just a few more seconds. Just a little bit of control. He had to watch. Watch as he worked his cock into the furnace heat of her rippling pussy and felt his senses incinerate with the sensations.

She clenched around the throbbing head, so tight, so hot he wondered if he would survive taking her. Or if he could hold back his own release until he had felt hers once again.

Beneath the head of his cock he felt the ache of the barb pressing beneath the skin. It matched the ache in his balls as he pulled back, worked in farther, then in one involuntary thrust, the pleasure dimming every thought of control, he impaled himself within her to the hilt.

Her scream of pleasure rocked his soul. It was ragged, feminine, throttled. As though she could barely draw in the air to cry out.

Noble shook his head and fought. He tried logic and reasoning, he thought of fishing and cleaning his weapon, but the thoughts disintegrated even as he tried to concentrate on them.

He came over her, feeling her legs cross above his hips, and gave in to the need striking hard and heavy to the painful erection buried inside her.

Nothing mattered but this. He had to fuck her. He had to take her. Hard and deep. And he took her hard and deep. His arms slid beneath her shoulders, his lips covered hers, and his hips jacked against her, burying his cock inside her with rapid, delirious strokes as she sucked at his tongue and moaned into his kiss.

Her nails were raking his shoulders, biting in and creating an ecstatic burn. Like a cat, clawing at him, demanding more. And he gave her more. He gave her everything he had as he felt her exploding beneath him.

Burying inside her once, twice, he let his release pour from him. Pumping into her, his semen spurted hot and thick as the barb stretched from beneath the head of his cock, locked inside the fluttering muscles of her pussy, and spilled its own, tremulous release into her.

He was shuddering with the pleasure. Jerking against her as his head lifted from her kiss, his lips lowered to her shoulder, and before he could still the need, his teeth bit into her tender flesh.

He tasted blood and heard her scream. He couldn't pull back. His tongue raced over the little wound, licking and spilling the hormone into the marks, sucking at them as he felt another, shuddering orgasm tear through her.

He had marked her. He had promised himself he would hold back, that he wouldn't mar her creamy flesh, that he wouldn't leave that telltale animalistic wound on her. But even as he remembered that promise, his teeth remained in her flesh. The violence of his need rocked inside him, the primal possessiveness tearing through him until nothing mattered, nothing eased it, until he was taking her again.