Page 35 of Ace
She lifted one shoulder. “Simple. Gran Mere. I helped her and she helped me.”
Who really cared? Keller didn’t. By then he’d lost track of where and when, so focused on the exquisite who in his hands. Somehow, she had his zipper down by then. She was still dressed; he was still undecided. He’d never treated a woman like this before, not with his pants slipping over his thighs and her fingers gripping him, steering him toward heaven. Or...
Holy. Hell. No.
He ground to a complete stop, sweating like a beast and close to being out of his damned mind with lust. His legs were shaking. Things were moving too fast. He hadn’t been with a woman in years, much less one this enticing. His body demanded release, the quicker. the dirtier, the better. Yet he knew the second his hand slipped down her belly to her core, the instant his fingers breached her most intimate secrets.Aw, shit.She was too small. Too tight. Was it even possible—?
Knowledge hit him like a bucket of ice water thrown in his face. Quick and dirty wouldn’t be good enough. Not for her. Savannah Church was one of the rarest treasures in the world. She was beautiful, yes, but unsophisticated. How could she be untouched?
He gulped back a hearty dose of WTF. “Are you…?” But how could she be—that? Savannah seemed to know precisely how things worked. She certainly hadn’t minded touching him. Fondling him. Leading him into temptation. “Have you ever done this before?” he asked the woman who, even now rubbed her nose up his neck and growled like a sexy feline in heat.
“No, have you?” she asked, the innocence in her question the final breaking point.
Shewasa virgin. Damn it. She was pure.
“Ah, yeah,” Keller replied, oddly more aroused by her quick, unabashed reply. But ever honorable. Always the perfect gentleman. He couldn’t do it, not like this. Not to her. He was everything she wasn’t. His ardor shrank in her hand.
Breathing hard, she leaned back far enough to bump his forehead with hers, still fondling his manhood with the gentleness of a saint while panting like a wanton woman. Still as enticing as hell whether she knew what she was doing to him or not. “Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Please. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve wanted to—with you—since the moment you…” She swallowed hard enough he heard it. “…since the moment back at the houseboat when you…”
“When I what?” he asked evenly, peering into the deepest, darkest, sexiest eyes he’d ever been caught by. This was Mother Nature’s oldest, truest snare—the heart of a pure and honest woman.
Tilting her chin, she blinked at him, her lashes thick and glistening with tiny teardrops. Drawing him back to the flame. Filling his view with the only thing in the world that mattered. “When you didn’t think I was watching you. When you wouldn’t.”
“When I wouldn’t what?”
“Leave me,” Savannah whispered, the tips of her fingernails scraping over the top of his head, soothing him. Possibly, enthralling him, too. But you can’t enthrall the willing, and Keller was no fool. Since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d been drawn to her, also. And it wasn’t just her long legs and taut backside.
“You were about to explode, remember?” she breathed. “Pain hung over you like an anvil the moment you stepped onto Gran Mere’s porch. I knew then. You’re an empath with unique, almost otherworldly skills. But you were ready to crash, and you would’ve suffered for days if I hadn’t touched you when I did. I didn’t touch you until later, yet still you stayed. You would’ve suffered for me. Why’d you do that?”
“You needed me,” he corrected, uncertain if Savannah knew how desperate he’d been then. He’d only planned to shake her hand for the release he’d needed. But now he needed an entirely different kind of release. “I could see it in your eyes. You were in worse pain than me. You’d just lost the woman who’d raised you. Gran Mere was everything to you.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know me. I was a stranger. You didn’t have to stay. You could’ve walked away.” Her fingertip caressed the curl of his ear, melting the last of his resistance. Keller’s hips automatically jutted back toward her heat. “You could’ve left while the leaving was good. It would’ve been easy.”
“But it wouldn’t have been right.” Yes, he wanted her. Just one taste. One more kiss. Yet even as hewelcomed the thought of spending the night with Savannah, Keller knew one kiss wouldn’t be enough to quench the hunger crackling to life inside. He’d never felt more alive, yet still so hollow. Was any of this real or was he simply bewitched?
She traced the tiny star-shaped scar at the corner of his eye, the one Queen Elaine had given him the morning he’d caught her with Carol Marie. The moment he’d nearly killed his mother.
“I’m ready now, Secret Agent Man,” Savannah murmured huskily against his lips. Licking him. Tasting him. “My house isn’t the only thing on fire.”
Chapter Sixteen
Never did a man look so torn. So conflicted. Broad in the shoulders. Long in the waist. Long where it counted, too. Yet she was still mostly dressed, and Keller had slowed things down as if he carried the weight of the world on those broad, tense shoulders. Savannah could now feel him springing back to life in her hand. Pulsing. Thick and ready. Hard and silky soft at the same time. So hot that her eyes watered. Yet she wouldn’t ask again. He had to want this, too.
Instead she whispered coyly, “The supply room locks from the inside. There’s a kennel release switch beside that door. Carry me so I can let the dogs out?”
That seemed all he needed to hear. Savannah found herself straddling his hips after he pulled his pants up, then hurried past the kennels to the far side of the barn, his zipper still open. Giggling, because this was the most delightfully daring thing she’d ever done, Savannahleaned out of his arms and smacked the release pad as he walked into the supply room with one hand while still holding onto his manhood with her other.
Thrilled for the hunt, every last one of her dogs launched out of their kennels.
“There,” she sighed at the first baying of her precious, one and only coon hound. “Let’s see how smart that guy with the shotgun thinks he is now.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll shoot one of them?”
Savannah shook her head. “My dogs are smart, and they know the lay of the land. Lots of swamp and scrub brush to keep them hidden. You’ll see.”
“If you say so,” Keller grumbled as he set her on the nearest stack of grain-free kibble before he locked the door and secured their privacy. Keller turned, his shoulders wide as he shrugged out of his jacket and stripped the tie off his neck. He hung them off to the side on a stack of cat food. His holster went next, but he laid it carefully nearby, within reach.
Savannah’s heart melted at the sight of her Secret Agent Man. This was insane. It was foolish. She’d just lost her home and there was a killer on the loose, but were those things stopping her? Uh-uh. Until her sight included what had once been a white shirt, now tinted swamp-water tan and splotched with red streaks. Holy Mother, what was she thinking? Mugging an injured man? This man had sheltered her. He’d taken the brunt of her home exploding. Those wounds needed to be cleaned and dressed before infection set in.
