Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(34)
Author: Bella Andre

Cold air slapped against her cheeks and she started coughing and choking.

Oh God, she finally realized, I was drowning.

Sam had saved her life.

He cradled her against his chest on the riverbank, and as she gasped in air, trying to refill her empty lungs with oxygen, he removed her helmet and gently ran his fingers lightly over the goose egg on her forehead.

“You hit your head pretty hard on a rock,” he said, his voice warm and soothing as its low tones swam through her. “It’s probably going to bruise.”

As she got her bearings back in Sam’s arms and the initial shock of being thrown out of the raft receded, it suddenly hit her that there could be far bigger problems ahead than healing from a bruise.

“Did we lose the raft?”

“Fortunately, no. It’s up ahead, jammed between a couple of tree trunks. It’ll stay there until we get it out.”

Relief flooded her that all was not lost and she knew she needed to push past the throbbing in her head and sit up. But even though remaining this close to her biggest temptation was a very bad idea, she couldn’t bring herself to move out of his arms.

For the first time in a very long time she felt safe.

Comforted.

With gentle fingers, he massaged her sore shoulder muscles, grown tight from endless paddling.

Did he know that his touch made her heart race?

That even without touching an erogenous zone, she was getting hopelessly aroused?

“I shouldn’t have let you leave the hospital so soon after your accident.” His voice was husky. “Jesus, Dianna. How the hell did you manage to walk away from the crash?”

His question echoed the same one swimming around in her head since waking up in the hospital with only a smattering of cuts and scrapes: Why had she been saved?

And now, after being spared for the second time in a matter of days, instead of dying when anyone else would have, she couldn’t hide from the fact that she’d been given a second, and now a third, chance to get things right.

But what was she supposed to change this time around?

The big change couldn’t have something to do with Sam, could it? Especially now that they’d cleared the air after their motel room blowout and could actually talk without biting each other’s heads off.

The dangerous bend of her thoughts sent her stumbling out of Sam’s arms to her feet.

She needed some space, some breathing room, needed to get away from his dangerous pull over her so that she could behave rationally, rather than reacting to a base physical urge.

Sam was at her side in a heartbeat, one hand on her elbow, the other on the small of her back. “Easy now.”

“I’m okay,” she told him.

It was a lie. She wasn’t okay, and not just because of her fall.

Being close to him like this, feeling his bare hands on her skin, made her burn up inside, with a fever that only he could quench.

She swayed into him and his words were barely louder than a whisper. “God help me, Dianna, I still want you. More than ever. More than I should.”

Her tongue came out to uncertainly lick her lower lip, and then, suddenly, his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers, almost hard enough to hurt.

And yet his rough kiss was exactly what she needed.

Exactly what she craved.

He slid his hands over the wet fabric covering her collarbone, then over her shoulders and down the length of her spine to the small of her back. Grabbing her hips, he pulled her in tight against him.

She was standing on just enough of a rise that the hollow between her thighs fit perfectly around his erection.

“I want you, too,” she whispered against his lips when they pulled apart an inch. “So much I can’t stand it.”

He backed her up against a smooth rock face, and as he ran kisses down her neck, from her earlobe to the hollow of her shoulder, she shuddered in his arms. His hands found the gap between her shirt and pants, and as he brushed his fingers over her belly, she moaned softly.

And then he kissed her mouth again and she slid her tongue against his. His fingers went higher and higher, and when he finally found the edge of her bra, she heard herself begging, “Please touch me.”

Slipping his fingers under the thin fabric, he curved his palm over her breast, her nipple hard against his hand.

She cried out and he covered her sound of pleasure with his mouth as he gently squeezed her tingling flesh. With painstaking slowness, he slid her shirt up over her skin, his lips nipping at hers, drawing out a low moan from her throat. And then he was pulling his mouth away and going to his knees and she could feel his warm breath on the exposed skin of her stomach. He pressed his lips to her belly once, twice, and then he was moving up the center of her rib cage, finally sucking one hard nipple into his mouth, then the other, cupping both br**sts with his hands, rubbing his lightly stubbled chin against her skin.

Another moan escaped her, this time around his name, and then he was undoing the button at the top of her pants and sliding down the zipper, pulling the fabric down her hips to pool at her ankles.

He stopped laving her br**sts with his tongue and lifted his head to watch her face as he slipped a finger into her panties. She pushed her pelvis into his hand, more aroused than she could ever remember being.

Knowing he wanted her as badly as she wanted him made her even wetter, even more aroused.

Circling the spot she so desperately wanted him to touch, he finally made contact—oh yes, right there!—and she gasped as exquisite sensations moved through her, from her core outward. Again and again his fingers slid between her slick folds. Up, then down, they moved between her labia, bumping over the hard nub of her arousal. His mouth found her next, his warm breath and soft lips covering her mound, his tongue probing, tasting as she cried out with pleasure.

She’d never felt so ripe, so ready to explode. She’d waited ten long years to feel this good again, and now that she was here with Sam, and his hands and mouth were on her, she wanted to make the incredible sensations last forever.

But she was so ready, too ready, and she couldn’t stop herself from grasping the back of his head and pushing her pelvis into his tongue and teeth. And then his fingers joined his mouth, stretching her open.

Even this wet, it had been so long since she’d been with a man that his touch felt brand-new and she panted, “Oh God, Sam,” against his shoulder as he kept the rhythm of his fingers and tongue steady.

“You feel so good,” she groaned as she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, sucking in a hard breath in the same moment that her inner muscles clamped down hard on his fingers.