Australian Escape: Her Hottest Summer Yet / The Heat of the Night

Just when she thought she might melt into a puddle of tormented lust, Jonah took advantage. Completely. His tongue dipping into her sighing mouth to slide along hers, one warm hand cupping her backside pitching her closer, the other delving deep into her hair, capturing her until she was in his complete thrall.

Then his thumbs dipped into the waistband of her pants, finding a heretofore unknown sweet spot at the edge of her hipbones until she curled away from him, gasping. Leaving him all the room he needed to lick his way down her neck, her collarbone, his teeth grabbing the edge of her bra and tearing it away so that he could take her breast in his mouth.

She slipped a bare foot around his calf, keeping him hooked; she dug her hands into his hair, keeping him there, keeping him from ever leaving—ever—as his tongue and teeth and hot breath drove her wild. Until he pulled the other half of her bra away with his fingers, his rough, warm, sure fingers, and, caressing her as if she were something precious, sent the most intense pleasure looping inside her belly it near lifted her off her feet.

When his mouth once more found hers, he kissed her till she felt on the verge of drowning. And her knees finally gave way from under her and she landed on his bed with a thud and a bounce. She flung an arm over her closed eyes in an effort to find her balance.

When she opened them it was to find Jonah standing at the end of the bed, half-cocked grin on his gorgeous face. All golden-brown rippling abs. And dark whorling chest hair. Ropey muscle across his shoulders, veins slicing down his smooth brown arms. A deep tan line from his diving watch wrapping about his wrist.

“You are something else, Jonah North,” she said, shaking her head back and forth.

The grin deepened, and his eyes roved over every inch of her. “When you find a name for it, let me know. As I’m totally in the dark about you, Avery Shaw.”

And crazy as it sounded, that felt perfectly all right with her.

She hauled herself up, curled her fingers into his open fly to drag him closer only to discover the tan line at his wrist was matched by another. This one was a perfect horizon that split the dark trail of hair leading into his pants.

She kissed the demarcation, relishing his sharp intake of breath. She kissed a little lower to find his skin there scorching hot. She pulled back and licked her lips as if burnt to find they tasted like sun and salt and sharp sea air. Like him. When she went in for another lick he slid his finger to her chin, lifted it so she’d look him in his smoking-hot eyes, then bent towards her.

It seemed forever before his lips found hers. Enough time for all her compressed want to collide with what felt like years and years of unmet need and rustle up a very real shot of fear. Fear that this was about to be so good she might never recover.

Then he unhooked her bra with a practised flick, and the fear was smothered to death.

“Done that before have we, champ?”

Her hands sank into his springy curls as he smiled against her ear before taking her lobe between his teeth for a nip. “One of my many skills.”

“Many?”

He lifted his head, moonlight through the porthole window slanting shadows across his crooked nose, his hooded eyes, his beautiful mouth. “You asking me to list them?”

“You seem more like a doer than a talker to me.”

She got a grin, a slash of white teeth in his swarthy face, before he lifted an eyebrow in mercurial promise and set to it.

Avery wrapped herself about him as he kissed his way down her belly, his chest hair skimming her bare breasts, then he rid her of her pants and G-string in one smooth yank, and his mouth was on her inner thigh, his teeth grazing her hip, his tongue dipping into her navel.

“Lie still, woman,” he demanded, his deep grey, eloquent eyes boring into hers.

She bit her lip and tried, really she tried. But the deep scraping pleasure was nearly too much to bear. And then she completely lost control—her control anyway; she was clearly helpless under his—as his rough hands skimmed over her sensitised breasts, caressed her flinching waist, dug into that sweet spot at her hips, then easy as you please pressed her thighs as far apart as they would go.

As soon as he broke eye contact her eyes slammed shut, red and black swirls of light and dark beating the backs of her eyelids as his breath fanned over her a split second before his tongue dipped deep inside.

That was where thought was lost to her as her world distorted into beats of purest pleasure. Of breath, touch, taste. The near painful rasp of his stubble on her most sensitive skin, the gentle wash of his warm breath, the glorious graze of his tongue, and her own heat, collapsing in on itself until all sensation balanced on the head of a pin before exploding into shards of light to every corner of her universe.

He gave her a scant few seconds to just enjoy it, to bask in the wonderment of such a bone-melting orgasm; enough time to get naked and sheath himself in protection before he kissed and nipped his way up her belly, her overwhelmed nerves crying out, her tenderised muscles jumping at every touch.

When he positioned himself over her, she had the ambitious thought to flip him over and give him the ride of his life, but he’d rendered her so completely limp all she could do was slink her body against his, to rain a series of soft kisses along the spiky underside of his jaw, and run her hands down his back till she found two handfuls of glorious male backside.

Then, wrapping her legs about him, she nudged her sensitised centre against his remarkable erection, and kissed him long and hard and wet and deep while she took him deep inside.

Her gasp was lost as he kissed her back, taking more, taking everything as he deepened the connection. Deeper, deeper, filling her with sensation so intense, she was absorbed. Lost in him.

When her eyes caught on his, she felt herself swirling, tumbling, drowning. She held him tighter, drew him deeper, his intense gaze her only anchor. As they—

“Oh, God!” she cried as she split apart before she even felt it coming.

When Jonah pushed himself to the hilt, and again, and again, finding sweet spots the likes of which Avery had never known, every ounce of pleasure was wrung from her. Too vast, too much... She found yet another peak as Jonah’s muscles hardened beneath her touch, heat reaching a fever pitch as he came with a roar that shook the walls.

“Hell, Avery,” he said an eon later, his voice muffled in the mess of sheets at her back.

“You’re telling me.”

He laughed, the sound still muffled. While she ran a quick finger under one eye before smoothing a hand down his back, biting her lip to stop any more tears from falling. Pure emotion, exhaustion, the last threads of tension that had built over the past few weeks back home finally finding a way out.

With a manly groan, Jonah rolled away, one arm flung above his head, the other lying between them. After a long moment he moved his arm closer, close enough his pinky finger spun sweet lazy circles at her hip.

Breathing deep, Avery took his hand, lifted it, and kissed the palm till the heat of him sank into her like a brand. And then empty, like a vase just waiting to be filled, and wrapped up in layers of delicious afterglow, she fell deeply asleep.

* * *

Jonah woke slowly, dragging himself out of a deep sleep with the feeling that he’d been in the middle of a really good dream. When he shifted to find the sheets at his hips rather resembled a teepee, he knew; whatever he’d dreamt it would have been nothing on the very real delights of one Avery Shaw.

With a groan that told of muscles well used he rolled over, only to find the other side of his bed wasn’t only empty, it was cold. Meaning she’d been up for a while.

Jonah yawned, scratched his belly, then lifted onto his elbow and listened for sounds of her. Felt with his subconsciousness for a sense of her. That particular snapping heat that sizzled about her like an electric current. But there was nothing.

“Avery!” he called, his voice husky, his legs not quite ready for dry land. “Come back to bed, woman!”

When his voice echoed off the walls and he got no response, the warmth in his limbs started to dissipate.

“Avery?”

In the distance he heard a scratching. Hull at the front door. He’d locked the dog inside the night before, after the odd run for the hills that had worried Jonah something fierce. But that scratching was coming from outside.

Avery. She’d let him out. When she’d left.

Jonah lowered himself back to the bed, laid a forearm over his eyes, slid another to the aching bulge between his legs and swore.

Of course she was gone. What had he expected—to be woken with coffee and bagels? That all it would take was one night to render his flinty little American all sweetness and light?

No. He hadn’t. But he also hadn’t expected her to run for the hills.

The myriad reasons why he’d managed to keep his hands off her till now had meant that instead of going at it like rabbits, they’d got to know one another in the past couple of weeks. While he wouldn’t say they were friends—the word was a little too beige for the kinds of feelings the woman engendered—they knew enough about one another he’d have expected a little respect.

Jonah opened his eyes and stared at the first tinges of gold shifting across the ceiling. It had taken him months to realise Rach hadn’t respected him. That while he’d been imagining a future, she’d seen him as free board and great lay. A man suitable for a season, not forever.

One night together and Avery had skulked out at God knew what time without having the grace to say Thank you and good night.