Page 32 of The Hacker
She lifted and fell. He thrust and withdrew. Their rhythm synchronized and accelerated until she could do no more than hang on to his shoulders and feel the coil of her desire tighten into a scorching pinpoint of wanting. His grip on her turned to steel as he held her just above him so that he could drive in deeply and hit her clit at the same time.
Her climax exploded so that she arched back and shouted his name, her fingers digging into the swell of his deltoids. Her muscles clenched around him so hard that she felt tears squeeze out of the corner of her eyes at the intensity of the release.
“Oh, yes, Dawn, darlin’!” he shouted as her orgasm triggered his.
She felt him pumping through the cadence of her own grip and release, saw his head thrown back against the sofa cushion, his eyes glittering beneath half-closed lids. His hips bucked up from the couch, seating his cock even deeper and setting off another shudder of pleasure within her.
They stayed locked together until both had wrung every ounce of satisfaction from their joining. Then he lowered his hips and slipped out of her while she sagged forward to rest her forehead against the back of the couch. Her sensitized breasts brushed against the soft silk knit of his T-shirt so that another warm shiver rippled through her.
“Are you cold?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her bare back.
She gave a weak chuckle. “Are you kidding me? After that? I’m just coming down from the high.”
In more ways than he knew. Triumph shimmered through her. She’d had sex with Leland and enjoyed it. Relief and maybe even joy tumbled in her chest along with pure physical satisfaction.
“Yeah,” he said. “That got intense.”
She couldn’t see his face and couldn’t read his tone so she sat up. His eyes were closed, his face slack with satiation. “Is intense good?” she asked.
His eyes stayed shut but his lips curled in a way that made her relax. “Intense is real good, darlin’.”
She slumped forward again, savoring the afterglow while he held her. Her skin cooled and she felt goose bumps rise on it. Still, she didn’t want to move.
“I need to get rid of this condom,” he said into the contented silence. “And maybe we could move to your bed for comfort’s sake. Not that I won’t always have fond memories of this sofa.”
Tension tiptoed down her spine. Lying down on the bed with him might be a problem. She mentally squared her shoulders and reminded herself that this was Leland. They’d already had sex and it was fine. More than fine. Fantastic.
She sat up on his lap and realized that she was naked while he was fully clothed. Another tremor of nerves hit her. “There’s a bathroom through there. First door on the right.” She pointed toward the hallway. “When you’re done, my bedroom is farther down the hall to the left.”
He kissed her shoulder, his lips warm against her chilled skin, before he gently shifted her off his lap and onto the cushion beside him. She grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it to cover herself as he stood, his height suddenly intimidating.
He bent to lay his palm against her cheek, his gaze soft. “I’ll meet you in bed.”
Most of her worries dissolved under his gentle touch.This was Leland.
Leland stood in the bathroom and frowned down at the alarm app on his cell phone. He wanted to spend the rest of the night in Dawn’s bed but the Fincher RFP hung over his head. He tried to calculate how long he could allow himself to stay with her before he would need to get back to work.
But his brain refused to do the math because all it could think of was the sight and sound and feel of her moving over him and with him and around him. His cock stirred as the images replayed through his mind.
He groaned and typed in 12:00 a.m., the first time that shoved through the haze of desire. Maybe it was the wrong hour but he couldn’t afford to sleep all the way until morning. Especially since he wanted to make love to her again, this time slowly and thoroughly.
Not that he had any problem with fast and intense, but he looked forward to exploring her beautiful body, to learning where she most enjoyed being touched, to tasting her fully.
He shoved his phone back into his jeans pocket and headed for Dawn’s bedroom, doing a quick once-over of the photos she’d hung on the walls of the hallway as he passed them. They were clearly her family through the years. One made him stop to take a closer look because it was a younger Dawn—maybe fifteen or sixteen years old—with her siblings. They wore matching red T-shirts from a bar and had their arms slung around one another’s shoulders while they laughed into the camera. He examined Dawn’s face, trying to figure out what made her look so different in the photo than she did now. She was beautiful then too, with her sleek dark hair, smooth olive skin, and generous mouth, but her eyes held a different expression somehow.
He puzzled over it as he walked into her bedroom, a surprisingly large space done in serene shades of green. She sat up in the bed, the moss-green quilt tucked up under her arms to cover every part of her except her head and shoulders.
The difference struck him then. In the photo, her eyes were unshadowed. Now they held a watchfulness that reminded him of Tully when he was in full FBI mode, constantly scanning the surroundings. That was part of what gave the impression that Dawn held herself under tightly coiled control.
He had wanted to break through that control and she had certainly been passionate in their lovemaking. But he’d still sensed that she hadn’t let go entirely. Something held her back from giving herself wholeheartedly to the moment.
Yet he felt he hadn’t earned the right to ask her why. That bothered him. He didn’t believe in purely sexual encounters and this didn’t feel like one. He liked her, respected her, and trusted her, but he had all those feelings without really knowing her.
“You look like you’re thinking about work,” she said, tucking the quilt more securely under her arms.
Her utterly false interpretation of his thoughts surprised a laugh out of him. “I can assure you that all I was thinking about is how beautiful you look with your hair loose over your bare shoulders.”
Her smile was shy, an expression he wasn’t accustomed to from her. “Thank you.” The shyness disappeared. “I was thinking that you have too many clothes on.”
