Safe and Sound (The Safe House Series Book 3) Read online

  Chapter 9

  Max reached his hand out for Lola but made no move to leave the boat. Since the moment he had contoured her body against his beneath the blanket, he had pushed aside precise, erotic images of how he wanted to discover her body. Every damned one of them began from the moment she released her hold over his word.

  She padded back on soundless feet and stopped short of climbing in. Her posture ramrod straight, her eyes glazed on some nameless spot in the distance, she affected her best military pose.

  “Permission to come aboard, Captain.”

  Max laughed. “Permission granted.”

  Lola climbed back into the boat, her posture affording him two of the most delectable sights he could have imagined: a spray of dark hair at the zenith of her legs and the wide-necked gape of her covering that presented full view of two ripe, round, hanging fruits within reach, begging for him to pluck and devour.

  The sight sent a boatload of blood straight to his cock. For as long as the rain endured, longer, he intended to drink his fill of Lola.

  “I do my best work under orders, sweetheart. Tell me what you want.”

  “I won’t curse.”

  A ripple of laugher bubbled inside him, aching for release as much as the pressure mounting in his groin. He liberated it with a kiss against her neck. “Good luck with that.”

  Max wrapped her again in his embrace. This time, the blanket was more afterthought than necessity. He hauled her against his hardness, leveraging his angle beneath her to maximize contact with far more than the cleft of her perfectly-rounded ass. She arched her back in one magnificent lengthening of her spine, jutting the fleshy mound of her sex against the cotton fabric straining under the pressure of his erection. He nearly unzipped and plunged into her right there, but denying himself the pleasure of her scents and taste and soft flesh, denying his discovery of how Lola Reyes rode the wave of anticipation, would have been the greater crime.

  His hands entered her shirt from below, riding the crests of her hips, up, up, until the backs of his hands nudged the heavy, velvety orbs of her breasts. He lifted them in his palms, marveling at how they spilled beyond the reach of his hands. God, he had never held breasts this large before. He wanted to explore every downy inch of them, bury his face between them until he suffocated in their warmth, gorge himself on their bright pink crests, wrap them around his length and move until his head dripped with expectancy.

  Forced to make a choice between supporting them in their entirety and moving his grasp forward to give special attention to her already-hard nipples, he opted for an exhilarating combination of strokes. A sweet ghost of a sigh slipped free from Lola’s bee-stung lips that sent tight pulses of lust coursing the length of his shaft.

  He ran his palms down her hourglass curves, past her navel, and stopped at the first tangle of hair.

  “If you don’t give me an order, right now, I’ll linger here forever. You’ll never know my fingers inside you.”

  She drew in a ragged breath. Still, she wouldn’t speak. He vowed, at that moment, he would do everything in his power to extract words from Lola’s cherry lips that she would never permit herself to utter away from his touch. The thought of what those words may be when he succeeded gave his cock an impatient lurch.

  Her neck smelled like shampoo, released by the rainwater, and the first hint of confectionary ripeness from her arousal. His mouth watered, eager to sample her glossy wetness. His hands circumnavigated her pussy, opting instead to charter a course down her thighs. One at a time, he propped her calves over the side of the boat, angling her body firmer against his hard-on and spreading her knees wide enough for him to examine each and every silken fold where they joined.

  “Your orders, ma’am?”

  “Touch me.” Her words emerged, strangled with need. “There.”

  Still a first-grade teacher.

  “We’re in a boat,” he teased, smiling against the fragrant column of her neck. “I’m going to need precise nautical directions.”

  “North.”

  He inched his palms up her thigh then stopped.

  “North.”

  His fingers ran aground in moisture; his smile widened. He traced circles in her hot dampness, meandering a greater distance away from her slick opening each time she captured a breath and held it hostage. If she wanted mind-numbing sex, he intended to stretch her patience taut until her desires overpowered her lady-like tongue.

  When she wiggled her ass against him to capture his movements, he eased his digits into the contours of her sodden mound and began a slow, rhythmic stroke that provoked a firebrand moan from deep within her.

  “Inside.” More breath than order. More teacher than vixen.

  Still, progress.

  He rimmed her channel’s opening, once, twice, her flesh as soaked as the day, before plunging his first two fingers inside her. She rewarded him with simpering groans that sent his balls clamoring to join the bulk of his span, to be part of the action. Her arms lifted to vine around his neck. He cursed the fabric robbing him of the eye feast of her clustered tits.

  When her exhales lengthened and her quivering pulp pulsed her dangerously close to the edge, he rededicated his fingertips to divesting her of her coverlet. She squirmed out of it and tossed it overboard with an impatience that rocked him to his core.

  Her arms bumped the canoe’s fiberglass rim. The seat nipped at his shoulder blades. They had journeyed as far as the dingy would take them. It was past time to move ashore.

  “Be right back,” he whispered against her ear.

  He slipped free of the boat and hauled lifejackets to the floor, back side up so no Velcro or clips would nip at her skin. Atop enough preservers to float an entire platoon, he shook out the blanket and shifted the pile until it resembled something close to the comfort of a bed.

  Lola remained in the boat. Her gaze slipped from his chest to his torso to his demanding erection maximizing the stretch of his shorts. A devilish grin nipped at the corners of her luscious mouth.

  “What?”

  “I want to see you.”

  A smile played at his lips. “Is that an order?”

  Lola nodded. She bit her lower lip again, and he thought he’d fucking lose his mind if he didn’t feel her lust-inspired mouth on him soon.

  He unzipped his fly and allowed the borrowed shorts to drop to the floor. Stepping free of the material, he assumed a wide-legged stance, like a sailor attempting to revive his land legs. His dick couldn’t have stood at attention any more had it been forged of steel and soldered into place.

  Without her to fill his hands, they interlocked behind his back. Force of habit.

  Lola studied him like a commanding officer, a most thorough inspection of his privates, before she rose, stepped from the boat, and leveled a scorching gaze to connect with his. Instead of meeting him full-frontal, she detoured to his side and puckered a kiss on his shoulder.

  Slivers of pleasure burned up his thighs like artillery fire, every single one hitting the target between his legs.

  She crossed behind him, skimming his right ass cheek with one delicate finger, before laying a string of landmine kisses, top to bottom, down the center of his back. The suction of her lips, barely audible above the quieter hush of rain from above, left a trail of moisture that raced his mind forward to the moment he buried the engorged head of his cock between her parted thighs.

  He reached for a nip here, a stroke there, as she moved her body around his orbit. Each time, he was met with a gentle swat that shouldn’t have reminded him of a ruler across his hand in primary school, but it did. Max had asked for orders. Lola was now in control. His orders would come when her self-control went AWOL.

  If he made it that long.

  Fuck if she didn’t finish her tour with a sin-filled gaze and a slow visual crawl down his body. She dropped to her knees against the soft supports of synthetic orange jackets and wool blanket. He waited for her to take him in hand, but the only sensation he fel
t against his swollen member was a fiery exhale.

  So very like her. So Lola, to put others first. He almost put a stop to it—this was about her, finding her voice, her independence, her freedom from responsibility—but soon her sharp-witted tongue would be swiping his sensitive base and plying his swollen head against the roof of her mouth on its way to her throat, and he was completely powerless to call a cease fire. When she finished going down on him, Lola would know what it was like to take, as well. Even if they had to stay here all day and all night for him to pleasure her.

  His dick bobbed like a cork on high seas, the first moisture already seeping free of its head. She captured its base with a firm yet gentle touch, scooping some of his testicles right along in her grasp. She kissed away the droplet and licked her sensual lips as if she had reached the bottom of a delicacy and she intended to relish all of it, no waste.

  “Hmm.”

  Her approval vibrated through her lips, through his head, and coiled deep in his scrotum.

  Max knew that craving. He understood it as surely as he intended to lay her out on the rental desk and feast upon her juices.

  She was close, so close. Edging in, her voluptuous lips parted to take him inside her.

  At first feverish contact, his knees nearly gave out. He braced himself against the wall that once housed the life jackets and sucked in a breath, convinced he may drown in his own mindless pool of unrelenting lust before he could reciprocate such a selfless act.

  “Shit, Lola.” He wanted to tell her that he had pictured this—looking down and seeing her lips on his cock since the moment they captured his attention across the kitchen table, the moment he tended her wound. But his brain short-circuited, and all that emerged was his go-to word, an all-encompassing expletive. “Fuuuuuck!”

  Immediately, Lola went deep, eyes closed, long lashes dark against her pale, angelic skin, no playful exploring of his ridges, no encouragement from his hand at the base of her neck to push deeper. She took him fully inside her tight mouth, massaging every stiff contour with her hot, silken tongue. The inferno depths of her mouth played him in a tandem of sucking force and spiraling tongue that took him straight to the precipice in a desperate rush. He wanted to fuck her mouth into release. Instead, he cursed, hauled her to her feet, and probed the tongue that had just pleasured him with a passionate kiss.

  She tasted like frosting-drizzled lemon and him, salty and musky and the combination drove him to the brink of sanity. He lifted her by the ass, much as he had in the room, when he had been tethered to reason instead of roaming wild through the playground of her full curves. Storming her mouth with a restless dance of lips and tongue and softly-nipping teeth, he set her on the reservation counter, the perfect spot to open her wide and lick her to oblivion.

  “Lay back, Lola.”

  She accepted his orders with a crooked smile, but only lowered herself to her elbows so she could watch. He retrieved the condom packet from his damp jeans and placed it on the counter beside her. Her long, dark hair rode the crests of her heaving breasts, rising and crashing with labored exhales; her naturally-pouty lips parted slightly at the center to allow her spent lungs to take in replenishing oxygen. Oxygen she would soon need.

  He leaned forward and flicked one swipe of his tongue along her clit.

  A whimper lodged in her throat. Her body lifted then relaxed, squirming against the graffiti-carved wood, a colorful kaleidoscope of swear words and carvings of was here-s and summer love declarations wrapped in hearts. She tasted like sweet cream and honey, washed clean from the storm. His thirst for her flavor knew no boundaries. The more he massaged and probed her channel with his tongue, the more she seeped anew. He applied a steadily building pressure until he sucked her folds completely into his mouth.

  Lola nearly vaulted off the counter. She rammed her fingers through his hair, gripped his scalp, and cried out, “Max!”

  “Max, what? Say it, sweetheart. Tell me what you want.”

  “Fuck me.”

  His jaw dropped. As much as she needed to savor the moment, he, too had something to savor. He stopped consuming her heavenly perfection long enough to speak against her shiny folds.

  “I’m sorry…what was that?”

  “Max!” she pleaded.

  “Not until I hear you clearly.”

  “Fuck. me!” she cried. “That’s an order!”

  Totally immersed in her outcries of pleasure, he allowed one hiccup of laughter before he flipped her gently. One leg she lowered to the floor, the other he pinned to the counter, his hand wedged behind her knee. She leaned forward, her breasts pressed flat against the surface, so goddamned much they spilled out from her figure in tantalizing, creamy-white orbs.

  He ripped open the condom and unrolled it down his vein-mapped, turgid length. At the precise spot his tongue had occupied not a moment earlier, he aimed the head of his cock and thrust home. Her walls parted to accept him halfway, sheathing him vice-grip tight, so tight he was sure she would never let him go. Two pumps and he was balls-deep inside her.

  “Yes, Damn it, yes.” Her voice was a mixture of ache and ecstasy, confinement and liberation. Lola arched her back, all the invitation Max needed to plummet deeper and tougher and wilder, over and over, until the circulation pumping their muscles together threatened to unravel them both.

  Pressure gathered low behind his cock, damned near pain. He wasn’t going to last, but there was no way Lola wouldn’t reach her peak. Not on his watch.

  Her flushed skin rippling in tiny tremors from the force with which he hammered her from behind. He reached his free hand around her beautiful ass and thumbed the sensitive crux of her clit, encouraging a frictional bliss that sent a gratified cry of rapture, encapsulating his name, ripping from Lola’s throat. Muscles surrounding him clenched and released, severing all control he had over the moment. His gaze lifted and captured her eyes-closed, mouth wide, perspiration-drenched euphoria in the mirror. As he sank to his hilt in her pulsating warmth one final time, a knot of fire gathered in his balls, seared up his cock and exploded.

  The jagged peaks of his orgasm crashed through him, over and over, seemingly forever, until a rip current of nirvana pulled him under, beneath duty and responsibility, beneath grief and loss, beneath his never-sated need for justice, beneath who and what he had become under the command of others, to a quiet place within where he could linger and simply be.

  Max couldn’t remember much of what happened next—he was too far gone, too perilously close to the tears that come with total surrender. He remembered Lola holding his cheeks reverently and planting a tender kiss on his lips. He remembered her taking him in hand to the bed he had made for her because he had forgotten how to stand. She curled against his chest and gathered the blanket at their chins. And he remembered the nurturing reverence in Lola’s eyes before her lids grew heavy.

  He drew in a soul-shuddering breath and listened to the only thing he would allow between them, maybe ever again—the sibilance of the rain against the tin roof.

  Chapter 10

  If skydiving was anything like sex with Max Sterling, Lola was going.

  Like, three weeks ago going.

  Though her body was sated, again and again, she barely slept. Freeman’s trial had started opening arguments yesterday. Today, Baudin would testify. Max would deliver the state’s star witness to the Federal courthouse. What happened after that was anyone’s guess. She supposed Baudin would enter into another phase of his life under an assumed name, but he would no longer be Max’s burden.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  Lola curled her arm under her pillow and gently shifted to watch the curtain of morning lift at the water’s horizon, careful not to wake a slumbering Max beside her. She imagined her sleepy students stumbling around their Friday breakfasts—the ones whose parents could afford the luxury. Devon would still come to school with an aching belly; Lola would still arrive with two apples—one for Devon and one to put on her desk so the other kids wo
uld believe he had a bounty at home and just wanted to share. She imagined her co-teacher, Meg, sick with worry, doing her best to reassure parents the police—including Lola’s brother, Jack—were doing all they could. And Eugena. Who would have made sure she didn’t throw away an entire bottle of medication because she believed it to be a baby rattle she no longer needed?

  Yesterday had been one of the most magical days of her life. Not because Max had made love to her—in the boathouse, in a hot shower upon their return, in a myriad of ways on a soft, warm bed where he told her she deserved to be cherished. And not because he had gift-wrapped her a fantasy day, filled with vivid memories instead of worry and preoccupation about others, where she could reconnect with herself and the things that made her happy. Yesterday had been magical because simply having gone through it made her appreciate all the days that had come before.

  Today, she would no longer be Max Sterling’s burden. But she could not—would not—become anyone different than who she had been all along.

  Well, maybe the skydiving…

  Max stirred beside her. His strong arm wrapped around her, heavy and protective. He kissed a spot behind her ear that sent awakening shivers straight to her abdomen.

  “Got any curse words for me this morning?”

  A shiver of laughter percolated deep within, but the prevailing sadness of the day buried it before it had a chance to surface. She would miss Max’s sense of humor, the way he tugged her gently out of her comfort zone, the way he seemed to know her better than herself. She told herself it was impossible—that there was no way she could be falling for someone whom she had known less than forty-eight hours—but if Nona’s fanciful tales of a gentleman in her audience and love at first sight proved true—sixty years together wasn’t unheard of.

  Unless he was a duty-bound Max Sterling and she was Lola. Just Lola.

  “Enough to shame a truck driver.”