Текст книги "Knight and Day"
Автор книги: Kitty French
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Chapter Eight
“Working late, Sailor?”
Dylan was behind the bar, bent forward over it with a look of concentration on his face and a pen in his hand. He looked up when Kara spoke and it took a second for his expression to clear into a smile. The switch from pensive to unguarded pleasure set off an unexpected sizzle of appreciation low in her gut. She pushed it resolutely aside and slid her backside onto the nearest bar stool, dropping her oversized leather bag on the floor at her feet.
“You got me,” he said, rolling his shoulders back as if he’d been bent for quite a while. Kara flicked her eyes up to the ceiling to avoid staring at the strip of flesh that appeared beneath the hemline of his faded grey T-shirt. Not that the T-shirt did much of a job of disguising his body. Just the opposite, if anything; it clung to his body like lichen on a rock, reminding her all too clearly about the lean, tanned beach body barely hidden beneath the cotton.
“All work and no play will make you a dull boy,” she said, wishing instantly that she had chosen a different wisecrack.
Dylan tapped his pen on the bar, looking at her for a long second. “I don’t have anyone to play with tonight.”
Kara shrugged. “I’d offer, but I’d probably have a drink and then start that whole ‘I wanna rip your shirt off,’ shizzle again, and that would be bad.”
Dylan laughed softly. “I’ve never met anyone like you, English. Are you always this honest?”
“Yup. I told you. What you see is what you get.”
“Okaaaay.” He drew the word out, as if he were thinking how best to phrase something. “Well how about I be honest with you too?”
Was that the sound of a warning bell? Kara heard it chime loud and clear, yet she just raised inquisitive eyebrows at him.
“I like bourbon," he said. "And Mustangs. And sexy girls in cowboy boots.”
The sides of Kara’s mouth twitched. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
“Yeah, but that’s where old Meatloaf got it wrong. Two out of three is bad. It’s frustrating, and leaves you wanting. Three out of three is much, much better.”
“Or gluttony, depending on how you look at it.”
“So shoot me, I’m a sinner. Come by the boat later?” His clear, green gaze was direct. “I’ll cook for you.”
“You cook?”
“Sure I do.”
“This is the point where I should say I’m washing my hair.”
Dylan walked slowly around to Kara’s side of the bar and smoothed her hair behind her ear, casual yet deliberate at the same time.
“Your hair already looks pretty good to me.”
Kara found herself uncharacteristically out of smart comebacks, mostly because he’d touched her and she wanted him to do it again.
He picked up her bag and placed it in her lap.
“Come around at eight.”
Dylan watched her walk out, his hand on the bar stool still warm with her body heat.
Messing around with that girl was a mistake in just about every way possible. He was risking Lucien’s trust, his job, and his new found peace. But he knew what was worse than all of that.
He was risking Kara Brookes.
It was that goddamn honesty thing that did it. Why couldn’t she act coy, play stupid games like most other women?
Being around her was like drinking water from the clearest mountain spring. She was purity; vital, clean, life affirming. He lost his head when she came within ten feet of him. He didn’t just want to drink the spring water. He wanted to bathe in it.
Kara stamped her foot down on the Mustang’s accelerator, letting the wind blow her hair and praying it would blow away her stupidity along with it.
Dinner with Dylan Day? On The Love Tug? The fucking Love Tug?
It sounded, and looked, like the set for some cheap seventies porn flick. Who did he think he was, Hugh fucking Hefner? A disturbing image of Dylan wearing a red silk smoking jacket surrounded by topless Barbie girls came to mind. The Love Tug. The clue was in the name, and she should steer well away. She pulled along the driveway and turned the car in next to Lucien’s Ferrari.
Only a few hours back she’d assured Sophie that she wasn’t about to tumble into bed with Dylan Day, and here she was about to walk through the door and tell her the complete opposite.
‘I’ll cook for you,’ turned out to be an ambitious plan. Cooking on a boat was an entirely different prospect to rustling up dinner in a conventional kitchen. Dylan was no master chef, but he’d taken care of himself long enough to be able to sizzle a decent steak. Except there was no sizzle to be had on the Love Tug – not of the culinary kind anyway – just a tiny camping-style grill and one gas ring was all he had at his disposal. It was almost half past seven. Unless they wanted to dine at midnight, he needed a plan B.
He cast a glance out at the restaurants dotted around the beach, their evening lights starting to glow as early diners and families sat down to eat. The scent of garlic and fresh seafood reached his nose and plan B quickly assembled itself in his mind.
Ramming the uncooked steaks back inside the unfeasibly small fridge, Dylan glanced down at what he was wearing. Did he look okay?
Why the hell did he feel like a teenager on a first date? He was no kid, and Kara was very far from being his first date. She was different though; she had him on the emotional ropes in a way that he couldn’t recall being for a long time. But then life hadn’t dealt him the easiest card when it came to romance, he’d been out of the dating scene for a while.
Twenty minutes later and he was back on board after a dash, empty pan in hand, to the nearest restaurant for paella, thanking his lucky stars for the laid back attitude of the chef, who’d whipped up the meal in short order with a good-humoured wink. It wasn’t a moment too soon, because a flash of distinctive metallic red had already caught his eye winding down the hill towards the bay. She hadn’t changed her mind. He’d half expected her not to come, but then in a strange way he’d known full well that she’d show up. It didn’t fit well with her ‘what you see is what you get’ ethos not to do something she’d said that she would.
Dylan raised a hand in greeting as she made her way along the rocky path down to the boat. As she drew nearer, he had the strange sensation of regretting having asked her to come. Not because he didn’t want to see her, but because he feared that he wanted to see her too much. She was stepping into his world tonight, and he knew from bleak experience that it wasn’t always a good or safe place to be.
“Hey Sailor,” she said, reaching out her hand for him to steady her as she stepped aboard. For a second, he fought the urge to tell her to go back. Go back to shore. Back to safety. And then she stepped close, and any sensible intention left his head, because she looked and smelled like heaven.
“I bought pudding.” She hooked the handles of a paper bag over his fingers.
“This is the bit where you say thank you, and then tell me I look lovely,” she supplied, when he didn’t speak.
He hadn’t spoken because she’d taken his breath away. The girl had her own style and she sure knew how to work it. She’d somehow managed to make those cowboy boots look sexy as hell with a deep green lace dress that outlined every curve and contour of her body. With her sun-kissed skin, she looked as if someone had dipped her in gold, and hell, there was much of it on show to admire. Her dress finished mid thigh, and the curves of her breasts jiggled in greeting from her scooped neckline as she shrugged out of her tiny denim jacket. With her hair tumbling around her shoulders, the overall effect reeled him in like a fish on a line in the harbour below.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You unnerve me.”
He snapped out of it and looked inside the paper bag. “Chocolate bars?”
“It was all I could get. Short notice.” She shrugged, dropping her jacket on a stool just inside the cabin door as she moved inside. “Something smells good.”
Dylan dropped on his haunches and moved the steaks in the fridge up to make way for the chocolate.
“Yeah. About dinner…”
“You didn’t cook it, did you?”
“I wanted to,” he said, casting a hand around the paltry kitchen. “The boat let me down, man.”
“They say a bad workman blames his tools.”
He held the raw steak in its packet out as evidence. “This was dinner.”
Kara huffed. “Maybe it’s just as well then. I’m a vegetarian.”
Shit, he’d ordered mixed paella, and knew for a fact that it included chicken and chorizo.
“First rule of dating, Sailor. Check your facts.”
Dylan frowned, remembering back to the dinner party at the villa. His expression relaxed.
“So. You’re a vegetarian who eats ham?”
Kara’s face cracked into a grin. “I had you there for a second though, didn’t I?”
“Funny girl.” He pushed the steaks back into the fridge and stood up. “We’re eating up on deck. Go on, I’ll be up there in a minute.”
He handed Kara a bottle of wine, then stood back to allow her out. The Love Tug definitely encouraged close proximity, there wasn’t room to swing a kitten, let alone a cat. Did she sniff him as she squeezed by? The overwhelming urge to drop a kiss on the curve of her neck had him clenching his teeth. He wouldn’t make the first move. If his conscience was going to survive this girl, the ball had to stay entirely in Kara’s court. He badly wanted her to decide to play, but she had to be the one to make a move.
She turned to him as he leaned against the open doorway.
“You know the drill. Don’t look up my dress.”
Chapter Nine
“Paella,” Dylan said, placing the cooking pot down on the floor by his chair because the table was so small. He’d laid it earlier in the evening, or at least he’d gone as far as putting plates and cutlery out.
Kara watched him. Barefoot and beautiful in jeans and a soft, fitted white shirt with tiny, faded blue flowers on it, he was a good fit with his laid back, hippy-cool boat. To his credit he did seem at ease with the food, as he ladled delicious-looking paella onto their plates. Before he sat down to eat, he skipped down the steps again. A second later, fairy lights winked on all around the boat’s railings. The effect was impossibly pretty, adding a soft haze of romance to the evening air.
Kara said, as usual, the first thing that came to mind when Dylan reappeared.
“Ah, shoot. I’m allergic to shell-fish.”
She touched the shell of a mussel with her fork with a pained look.
“No you’re fucking not,” he said, pouring wine into their glasses. He wasn’t falling for it for a second this time.
“You’re right, I’m not,” she said, conceding with good grace as she tested the paella. “Wow, this is gorgeous. You must give me the recipe some time.”
“No can do, English. It’s top secret.”
Dylan only wished his cooking skills ran to such knowledge, because Kara was right, it was delicious. They ate the entire pot, and their relaxed conversation meandered lightly around topics loosely linked to work. When he opened a second bottle of wine she looked at him steadily.
“Are you plying me with wine in the hope that I’ll ask you to take your shirt off again?”
Dylan cleared the plates and his throat.
“I’m fast learning not to try and guess what’s going to come out of your mouth next.”
Kara knew that feeling. She dearly wished she could master the art of engaging her brain before her mouth.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No. It’s a very good thing.”
When he poured the wine, she sighed and raised a deliberate glance to his.
“I can’t drive if I have another glass of wine.”
He relaxed back and picked up his own glass. “Me neither.”
Kara reached down and rummaged in her handbag, then laid her toothbrush carefully down on the table between them. She watched Dylan’s face, scrutinising his expression. His lowered lashes hid it from her as he seemed to study the toothbrush for a few seconds, but when he lifted his eyes again, there was no mistaking the understanding that passed between them.
He reached into his jeans pocket and did a little rummaging of his own, then laid a silver-foiled condom packet down next to her toothbrush.
It was Kara’s turn to study the table for a second before she spoke.
“Just the one?”
He settled back in his chair, then shook his head and sipped his wine.
“Whole box.”
She weighed this up, then moved to kneel in front of him. Dylan was aware that a line was probably being crossed.
“I think it’s probably time I took your shirt off.”
A line had definitely been crossed.
Dylan widened his knees so she could move in between them. He closed his eyes briefly when she touched the first button of his shirt. He opened them again when she slid it free, reaching out to stroke his hand down her hair as she wordlessly finished unfastening his shirt and slipped it back off his shoulders.
She’d seen his naked torso already, but it did nothing to deaden the effect of seeing it again, here and now. He had the body of a man who paid attention to detail. But not too much. Conditioned and tanned, sure, but without vanity. Perfect.
His shirt hit the deck, and he slid forward on the chair and moved his arms around her until he had her held against his warm, naked chest.
“You nervous, English?” He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “You’re trembling.”
“Yeah.” Kara bit her bottom lip and nodded, tentative. Then, without missing a beat, she added, “I’m nervous that you’re going to be a terrible kisser.”
He laughed softly, so close she could taste him, so near she could smell him, that heady scent that seemed to short-circuit her brain.
“We’d better find out then, hadn’t we?” Dylan held her chin between his thumb and fingers and tipped her mouth up to his.
Slow. So, so slow, and agonisingly tender. He barely let his lips graze hers, once, then again. Oh God. Kara’s palms were flat against his chest, enough to feel his heartbeat pick up when she opened her mouth and touched her tongue against his.
“How’m I doing here?” he murmured, smoothing her hair back from her face with both hands.
“Not bad,” she whispered.
“Not bad, huh?” Kara felt his smile on her lips.
She realised a few seconds too late that she’d been hustled. He yanked her hard against him and lowered his head. This time he wasn’t slow, and he wasn’t tender. His mouth was hot and open over hers, and the sudden kick up from tentative to filthy had her body screaming for more. Sweet baby Jesus, his tongue. Kara heard herself whimper and couldn’t have cared less.
The man was world class. If there were kissing medals, Dylan Day would get the gold.
He hadn’t so much as touched her body yet, but she was closer to orgasm than she would care to admit. One touch. One touch, and she’d go.
“Undress me,” she breathed, desperate to feel his skin pressed against hers.
He pushed her hair away from her ear and sank his teeth into her earlobe as he lifted the hem of her dress. Kara raised her arms above her head and let him tug it up her body. It landed on the deck on top of his shirt.
“Stand up.” The raw edge in his voice made her stomach flip. “I want to see you.”
She stood for him. He moved to stand in front of her. Holding her hand, drinking her in.
Standing up there on the roof deck of Dylan’s boat, illuminated only by the pinpricks of the fairy lights, Kara knew without doubt that sex with this man was going to change her forever. There was no question in her mind about whether it was a good idea. At this moment, it was a necessity.
He lifted her arm high above her head and twirled her slowly around, a ballerina in a silent music box. Dancing without music, sultry and seductive.
“So lovely, English,” he said softly, reeling her in against his chest. “You dazzle me.”
He tipped her back over his arm and put his mouth against the hollow at the base of her throat, the heat of his denim clad crotch hard against the silk of her underwear. She gasped a little when he opened the catch of her bra. He slid his fingers beneath the straps on her shoulders, then paused to hold her close and smooch her lips a little more.
“Lost your nerve, Sailor?” she murmured, knowing full well that he hadn’t, unable to resist the challenge. Dylan grazed his teeth over her bottom lip.
“Once this comes off, we’re over the line,” he said, his mouth moving along her jaw.
Kara played her fingers across the waistband of his jeans.
“We were over the line as soon as I stepped onto this boat tonight.”
“I’ve been over the line since the first time I saw you,” he said, and then eased her bra off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
Kara’s whole body burned as he looked down at her breasts. Appreciation darkened his eyes to emerald glitter, and the low, intensely sexual catch in his breath told her all she needed to know. He was over the line.
He touched her; took the weight of her breasts in his hands, sliding his thumbs over her nipples, slipping his tongue into her mouth. His hands were hot, his mouth hotter, the skin of his back hotter still. Searing. Scorching. She stroked him everywhere, and he dipped her backwards again to lift her breasts to his waiting, hungry mouth. His hand slid inside her knickers to mould her backside as he mouthed her bullet-hard nipples, one then the other, again, and then again.
He lifted her off her feet as she straightened and she wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles together behind his back. Dylan held her easily in his arms, kissing her senseless as his fingers explored the silk between her legs. He had her desperate, unable to breathe with wanting him to push the material aside and touch her properly.
“Let’s take this inside, English.” His voice cracked, raw and unsteady. “Let me take you to my bed.” His fingers pushed the material a little deeper into her. “Let me take these off for you, and kiss you here,” he thumbed her clitoris, making her moan.
“And Kara?” he breathed, sliding just the tip of one finger under the material. “The boots stay on.”
Chapter Ten
Dylan jumped down onto the lower deck and turned to help Kara down after him, kissing her stomach as it slid past his lips, then lingering on her naked breasts because he couldn’t help himself.
“Bedroom,” she said, lifting his head to hers. “Now.”
He led her by the hand into the boat and lifted the trapdoor to the bedroom.
She eyed it sceptically. “Really?”
He looked at her, naked apart from her boots and lace knickers, her hands on her hips. The coolest cowgirl in the world. If she produced a gun from those itty-bitty lace panties and shot him right in the heart now, he’d die a happy man.
“Really.” He waved his arm in front of him towards the hatch. “You first, or me. You choose. Either way I can promise you that I won’t look up your skirt.”
“Cute, Sailor.” Kara put her head on one side, studying the options. “ You can go first and demonstrate.”
Dylan turned and lowered himself down the hatch, proficient after the benefit of a few days’ practice.
“Come down backwards, same as me. It’s easiest.”
Her boots appeared first, followed by smooth, brown calves. She stilled for a moment when he kissed the sweet spot at the back of her knee, his hands already on her thighs, halfway between steadying and stroking. She dropped a foot down onto the next step, bringing her backside level with his mouth.
He needed her to stop.
“Hold it there one second,” he said, moulding her warm curves in his hands and letting his mouth drift over the strip of lace that covered next to nothing. She had skin like the velvet petals of a rose and the kick-ass attitude of the prickliest cactus, and it was turning out to be a combination that drove him crazy.
She was turned on. The subtle movement through her hips told him so. She was offering herself, opening herself to his mouth. He pulled her panties to the side and slid his fingers into the heat between her legs, loving the way she gasped and rocked her hips a little harder. Fuck, she was wet and ready, and his every instinct was to drop his jeans and screw her there and then against the stepladder.
He pressed his whole body against her legs, his mouth a breath away from her sex.
He didn’t want to be a breath away. He wanted her spreadeagled on his bed.
He pushed a finger inside her, dipping his head between her legs to lick where he’d stroked, laughing low when she tried to open her legs further to encourage him in. She was so close to coming, but she was also close to breaking her neck. He didn’t want her to break her neck, because he wanted to screw her until she forgot her own name.
He straightened and slipped his arms around her, finding her nipples and rolling them.
“Get your ass down off this ladder and into my bed, English.”
She slithered down, a bundle of curves and flushed skin in the glow of the bedside light.
She paused for a second, her eyes flickering around the low, velvet-encased boudoir. He watched her, knowing what was going on in her head because he’d had that same reaction the first time he’d seen the place.
She turned to him, then stepped in close and ran her hand over his cock, flicking open the top button of his jeans.
She glanced at the low ceiling with a sigh of regret.
“I guess we’ll have to save reverse cowgirl until another time,” she murmured, flicking open his second button.
Dylan closed his eyes, but the image of Kara sitting astride his cock in just her cowboy boots stayed there anyway. His affection for the Love Tug waned rapidly with the realisation that it was never going to happen in this room, at least. She flicked a third button open and reached her hand inside, raising her eyebrows at the fact that he was naked beneath the denim.
“You thought I was a sure thing, Sailor?”
He shook his head. “Assumed nothing. Hoped some.” He dragged in a deep breath as she dipped down onto her haunches to push his jeans off, her face level with his cock. He could feel the heat of her breath, and he groaned out loud when she licked him from base to tip, raising her eyes to his as she opened her mouth and took him inside.
If he lived another hundred years, he knew he’d never see anything as outright fucking beautiful.
He let her slide her mouth over him once more. Twice. And then he stopped her, because if she’d got to three, he wouldn’t have had the self-control to stop her, and by four or five she’d have had him coming like a school boy.
He pulled her up to a standing position, kneading her behind as he kissed her. She tasted of him already.
“I want you underneath me the first time.” He backed her towards the bed, pushing her panties down her thighs. “And I want to see your face when I make you come.”
She sank down as the bed touched the back of her calves, and he bent to help her get the scrap of lace over her boots.
“I could just take my boots off,” she offered.
Dylan shook his head and kissed her kneecap, tossing her panties aside. She was sitting on the edge of his bed, and she was naked. He parted her knees and knelt between them, rising up until he was eye to eye with her. Her mouth opened a little when he brushed the back of his fingers lightly over her sex, and he leaned in and kissed her.
“You like that?” he murmured, doing it again, letting his fingers linger. Opening her, deliberate and slow.
Kara rested her forehead against his, her breathing short and shallow, her eyes glittering. She was waiting for more, and he had so much more he wanted to give her.
“So ready for me,” he said, sliding the tips of his fingers over her, knowing full well that she needed more.
He groaned when her fingers curled around his shaft. She wasn’t playing fair either.
“So ready for me,” she whispered, and he turned his hand over and thrust two fingers inside her, loving the erotic sound of her moan.
“Dylan…”
His cock swelled harder at the sound of his name on her lips, making him reach for a condom from the drawer beside the bed.
She nodded, breathing hard, taking the foil packet from him and opening it with her teeth.
“Let me.”
Protection had never been so sexy. She rolled it over his length with sure fingers, and he rewarded her by drawing delicate circles around her clitoris with his index finger as he traced her lips with his tongue. She kissed him back, her fingers twisting in his hair, her breath coming in short rasps.
“Lie back, English,” he breathed, moving with her until they stretched out full length on the bed. She opened her thighs when he settled his body over hers, one thrust away from home. Her hand curved around his butt cheek, the other around the back of his neck.
It had to be now. He pushed his hips down, his breath leaving his chest in a rush as his cock thrust into the warmth and beauty of her body. Blood rushed to his brain. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Her fingernails dug into his ass where she gripped him, holding him deep inside her.
She opened her eyes when he smoothed her damp hair back from her face, and the trace of a smile crossed her kiss-swollen lips.
“I know,” he said hoarsely, rocking his hips slowly over hers. “I know.”
And then she wound those cowboy boots around his thighs, and all conscious thought left his head in favour of just feeling, and fucking.
Kara wrapped her legs tight around Dylan, hardly able to breathe around the need to come. He’d built her up to this from the moment she’d stepped aboard the boat, and every thrust of his cock edged her closer.
In the end, it wasn’t his cock that made her orgasm. It was his words.
“I know.”
He fucked her slowly, hard, and delicious, and when his hand snaked between their damp bodies to finger her clitoris, he said it again.
“I know, beautiful girl. I know.”
Did he know? Did he feel it too, that this was the fuck of a lifetime? She was boneless, ready to come, wanting it to go on forever because she’d never known sex could be so all-encompassing. He touched her everywhere. Between her legs. Inside her head. Every inch of her body shimmered on the agonising, delicious edge of orgasm, then his tongue slid over hers as he started to thrust faster, spreading her wide with his knee against hers.
His fingers. His cock. His eyes. His mouth.
“Fuck, Kara, oh fuck…” His eyes locked with hers as her body bucked beneath him. He lost his control watching her face as she came beneath him, his body responding with hard slams that sent her orgasm spinning out all the way to her toes and fingertips.
She wrapped her arms around him and lifted her hips, dragging him deeper still, making him shudder with release as he came with her hips clamped tight against him. They fitted perfectly. A lock and a key.
They lay for a while afterwards, her fingers lazy over the contours of his back, his lips smooching the curve of her neck.
When she opened her eyes, the astral ceiling winked down at her. Sex-tired and content, a smile curved her lips as she smoothed a hand down the back of his head.
“You made me see stars, Sailor.”
