Nova (The Renegades Book 2)

Papua New Guinea

I kissed him with a hunger I hadn’t known I was capable of. There was no sweet preamble or soft intro. No, there was tongue, heat, and the sweetest groan I’d ever heard out of him.

“Rachel, baby,” he said against my mouth.

“Touch me.”

His hands ran up and down the back of my tank top, like he was relearning the line of my spine. Then he filled his hands with my ass and squeezed. “I am touching you.”

My tongue traced the line of his ear. “I want more. Don’t make me beg.”

Faster than I could blink, Landon spun us, moving so I was on my back in the middle of the bed. God, yes.

I’d almost forgotten what he looked like above me, his hair falling rakishly near his eyes, the need in him palpable. “You’re beautiful,” I told him.

He grinned. “Nothing compared to you.” He ran his finger across my collarbone. “This skin, so soft.” His hands traced the outsides of my breasts. “This body, so fucking perfect.”

Both of his hands skimmed my curves until he cupped my face. “But this face…the stuff of dreams. I would know, since you’ve haunted mine.” His mouth crashed into mine, and I met him, kissing him back with everything I had.

To think I’d almost never had this again.

I was going to enjoy every second of him, because even as I lay there beneath him, I knew my allure would fade the moment he’d caught what he’d been so diligent in chasing. In that moment, I didn’t care. I was doing this for me, and if this was the only time I’d hold him, then I was going to relish it.

He abandoned my mouth, raining kisses down my jaw to my neck, where he licked and sucked his way toward my collarbone. I moved restlessly beneath him, running my hands down the smooth, inked skin of his back.

He looked up at me and reached for the bottom of my tank top.

I nodded, and he took it off, slipping it over my head before throwing it somewhere. His breath left in a quiet hiss, and then he set his mouth to my stomach, kissing every curve and hollow with a soft nip or soothing stroke of his tongue.

His hands ran up my back, and I arched to accommodate him so he could get his fingers to the strap of my bra. I nodded again when he wordlessly asked permission, and with a snap of his fingers, my bra disappeared.

“Damn. You’re just as exquisite as I remembered,” he said as he carefully cupped both of my breasts. “You fill my hands exactly, like they were made only for holding you.”

I looked down at the erotic contrast between my pale skin and the colorful tattoos that decorated his, and a wave of desire washed over me, warming me from head to toe.

How had I almost forgotten the way my body called for him? I hadn’t been abstinent. I’d had two lovers since Landon, but neither of them made me feel this primal, screaming need. Only Landon.

His lips replaced his hand, licking and finally drawing my nipple into his mouth. My back arched off the bed as every nerve begged for more. Pleasure swept over me at the feel of his tongue, the caresses of his fingers, the scratchy material of his shorts on my freshly shaved thighs. Even his weight on top of me was inflaming me.

I wanted to flip him over, to run my mouth along the carved lines of his chest, to worship him as I’d dreamed for an embarrassingly long time now. But I could do that later. For now, I’d let him do whatever he wanted to with me.

He knew I loved everything he did.

I whimpered when he ran his tongue over my nipple, the feeling good, but I needed so much more. Every wave of desire he brought was washing over me, crashing and pooling right between my thighs. “Landon,” I pleaded.

“What do you need?” he asked as one hand stroked the skin of my stomach to the button of my shorts. “Here?”

“Yes,” I said when he flicked open the button.

“This?” He unzipped the fly.

“Yes,” I said through a gasp of breath as he rolled my nipple with his other hand.

“What about here?” he asked as he braced his weight and slid his hand into my shorts, running his finger along the edge of my panties.

“Yes!” I cried, my hips rocking up.

His breath caught, and I looked into his eyes. If I wasn’t already aching for him, the open, ravenous look of need on his face would have gotten me there. As it was, the way he ran his tongue over his lower lip had me squirming.

Eyes still locked, his fingers finally slipped under the silk fabric and found my center. He groaned at the same time I did.

“Fuck…Rachel. You’re…God, you’re so wet.”

My hips bucked as he swirled his fingers over my clit. Sparks raced through me, pleasure spinning my senses until there was only Landon above me, his fingers on me…inside me.

“Take them off,” I ordered. I needed him—needed to feel him inside me, filling the emptiness that no one else could.

His jaw locked, like he was steeling himself. For what? And did…? Yeah, his hands shook as he drew both my shorts and my underwear down my legs. Seeing him so lost for me only revved me up another notch, until my body was humming, need coiling in my stomach.

He closed his eyes for a second, and two deep breaths later, he opened them, looking over me like I was everything he needed—like I was the ridgeline he was desperate to ride, the trick he’d spent every minute prepping for.

In one simple look, he made me feel like I was beautiful, precious, and so very desired.

He rose over me and then kissed me, his movements leisurely. He only pulled back when his hand stroked down my body, watching my every expression as he returned to my core.

Then his fingers… Oh. My. God. His fingers found me.

“Yes,” I whimpered. “Landon!”

He pressed kisses to my jaw, my cheeks, my lips as he stroked me, pressing and swirling in rhythm. My hips rose for his touch, and my hands threaded through his hair to hold his mouth to mine.

My breaths stuttered, gasping as my heart pounded. He groaned as he sank one finger inside me. “So. Fucking. Perfect.”

The pressure in my belly wound tighter and tighter as he worked me over, using his fingers to stroke just right inside me as he rubbed over my clit with his thumb. He played me like an instrument, knowing every note he could wring from me, exactly how I liked it.

“I can’t wait to taste you again,” he said against my lips, and I began to quiver. “Not this time, because I’m saving it. But soon. I can’t wait to feel you shuddering around me, coming apart under my tongue.”

His words pushed me over the edge and I flew, the tension within me bursting into radiant stars with an intense orgasm. He covered my mouth with his when I screamed his name, then kissed me back down until I was shuddering with aftershocks beneath him.

“That was…I don’t…there’s no words.” I couldn’t even string a sentence together as I floated inside my own body.

I ran my hands down his torso toward where he strained against the material of his shorts, and he caught my hand. “God, no.”

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“That’s it. Only you.” His voice was strained, his breathing labored with mine.

“You want me,” I said defensively, feeling the sting of rejection.

“More than I want to breathe right now. Yes. I’m dying to bury myself inside you.”

“Then why?” I asked, wrapping one of my legs over his hips.

He groaned, his hand running along the curve of my thigh. “Do you love me?”

“What?” I dropped my leg and sat up, scurrying back until I reached his headboard and drawing my knees to my chest. He did not just say that.

“Do. You. Love. Me?”

“Why? What does any of that matter?”

“It matters.” He sat back on his heels, the delicious lines of his abs tightening with each breath as his erection distorted his shorts in a way that firmly disagreed with what he was saying.

“What? It never matters to you. Why should it now?” He would sleep with every girl he came into contact with but me? What the hell was this?

He closed his eyes as his jaw flexed—the classic Landon getting his shit under control look. His eyes were just as fierce when he opened them. “You’re it for me, Rachel. You are the only woman who matters to me. No one mattered before you, and no one has mattered since. Only you.”

“But you won’t sleep with me.” God, I wanted to believe him. But he’d said it all before, and that hadn’t exactly gone well for me.

He shook his head. “No. Because I want to make love to you, not sleep with you. I want to look into your eyes and tell you that I love you with my words, not just my body.”

The orgasm had made me boneless, but his words melted me. “Landon…”

“You can’t say them yet. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with waiting, because the first time I slide inside you, you’ll love me. You’ll know that I’m not going anywhere, that you’re my choice and my first priority. And until you know that, I’m not doing this, no matter how badly I want to.”

“Seriously?”

“Very seriously. Besides, I know our pull—our chemistry—but you can’t tell me that part of this wasn’t to see if I’d lose interest after I got you back under me, and that’s not how this is going to happen.”

My mouth snapped shut. “How…?”

His smile made him even more beautiful, even as pained as it was. “I think I know you pretty well by now. I tell you I’m done fucking around, you spook and take off your clothes to test me.”

“You took off my clothes,” I grumbled.

“Semantics.”

“It wasn’t all a test,” I admitted.

“I know that, too, which is what makes it that much harder to tell you no.”

“So you’re not going to touch me until I can say…that?” God, I couldn’t even think those words. Those words—whether or not they lurked in my heart—opened the door and handed him the match to burn me down.

His grin turned wicked. “I’ll touch you whenever you like. I’ll make you come thirteen different ways every single day if that’s what you want. But I’m not making love to you until it’s that. I’ve waited too long to get you back in my bed to just have sex with you, Rach.”

I looped my arms around my knees, simultaneously frustrated, turned on, and stupidly moved by his words. The Landon I knew would have taken me any way he could get me. Nova would have done it without blinking and walked away in the morning. This patient, determined guy…hell if I knew what to do with him.

“So what now?” I asked.

“Now we sleep,” he said, pulling back the covers and sliding underneath. “Unless you want a second round?”

My mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water. Of course I wanted a second round. But I wanted him inside me, with me, not just orchestrating my pleasure. I wanted his, too.

I had two possible courses of action.

I could crawl in next to him, curl into his arms, and sleep…

Or I could slide on top of him and test just how firm his resolve was.

But that slight pleading in his eye told me more than his words. So did the tiny dots of perspiration on his forehead. If he was willing to put himself through this in order to prove himself to me, then I could at least not make it hell on him.

I cursed as I found my panties, then slid them and my tank top on before sliding under the covers with him.

“Sleep,” I said.

“Sleep,” he repeated, pulling me into the curve of his body.

For every inch I gave him, every part of me that relaxed into him, there was a part of me banging even harder against the bars to flee.

I just wish I knew which one would be stronger.