All the Way Read online

  Layla welcomed the arousing notion. She hoped Blake would, too, because within the swell of her newfound inspiration, she imagined getting lost in his eyes, relaxing in his arms, delivering each other fierce pleasure…slick and sweaty, tangled sheets and tongues, entwined naked bodies, moving cries…all night long.

  He strode forward. “Want to lie out under the stars with me for awhile?”

  “Sounds romantic.” Her shy smile turned coy. “But I had something else in mind.”

  “Really?” He stepped closer. “Now I’m intrigued.”

  Following her sensual instincts, nervous but determined, she slid her hand over his chest, trailing her fingertips up the side of his neck as she walked into his arms. “I think we should follow up on that idea you had earlier.”

  His voice pitched to a husky tone. “My idea?”

  “That we should make up for lost time.” Rising onto her toes, she breathed against his lips, “I want you, Blake.”

  “Then I guess there’s one thing left to do.” He cupped her face with both hands. “I’ll meet you halfway.”

  “Halfway to—?” Her gaze dropped to his mouth. “Oh. Yes.” Oh, yes.

  They met in the middle, mouths half-open and hungry.

  Within seconds of feeling her tongue dance with his, a sound of longing escaped Blake. His clothes became too tight, his body demanding freedom. It felt like a match head was scraping across every nerve until he burst into flame, body and soul flaring with desire.

  Nothing came close to this. Only with Layla did he see fireworks, white-hot flashes, and hear thunder rocking the heavens as the earth trembled around him. This chemistry, whatever this was that he found with her, took hold of him and made him crazy with yearning. This need. This burning.

  She pulled him down to the hammock and he followed willingly. It swayed to the rocking of his hips against hers. His tongue couldn’t dive deep enough, couldn’t sweep thoroughly enough or get close enough to everything she was to him.

  Inside. He needed to be inside her. But he hadn’t waited all this time just to lose himself in lust. He wanted to lose himself in her.

  “Not here,” he managed, pulling his lips away from hers. He dragged his mouth over her throat. “Upstairs. Now.”

  “Blake, I want you,” she murmured.

  “I know, baby. God, I know.” He couldn’t keep away from her luscious mouth. Their tongues tangled. They set a rhythm that made his cock throb. His hold tightened. Feeling her nipples harden against his chest, he instantly craved the taste of her skin, imagined filling his mouth with her breasts, the peaks hard and aching, like he was.

  He couldn’t begin to think of everything he wanted to make her feel. With his mouth, his tongue, his hands. So long…this had been building inside him for so long. But not here. Not where he had to contain himself, without a closed door to conceal his groans and the creak of bedsprings and her cries of ecstasy. And without a condom.

  “Damn.”

  “What?” she whispered, her breath scorching the side of his neck as she explored him with her lips.

  “We need to get off this hammock. Before I explode.”

  “Mmm. Isn’t that the goal?”

  “The goal is, the night we make love I want to be able to touch you and not have to stop and think about anything else. I want to wake up in the middle of the night with my arms around you, turn you over and slide inside you.”

  “Who says we have to wait until the middle of the night?”

  “The protection I have stashed in an overnight bag upstairs.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes flared. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  “I’ll throw a leg over to keep this thing steady, and you climb out. On the count of three. One…two…”

  Layla leaped when he said three and they ran through the front door of the house and up the stairs like teenagers whose parents just pulled out of the drive for a night out.

  He left her only long enough to scrape his duffel off the floor and launch it onto the nightstand, so protection was in easy reach. It landed with a thump on the antique wood surface. Their heavy breathing restocked the air with sound.

  Turning, he practically dove for her where she knelt near the edge of the mattress. His fingers sank into her hair, scraping it back from her face as his mouth crashed down on hers, a heavenly crush. A possessive claim.

  Frantic, sizzling promises tangled in their kiss. The heat of his mouth branded her. He wanted her molded to him, every part of her naked, for him alone.

  Damn it, Desanto. Slow down. You’ve waited forever for this. A lifetime.

  But his mouth continued to consume her. Feeding off her kisses, his tongue delved deep. He wanted to explore the deepest places inside her, body and soul, where no one else had been. A place only he could reach and then claim as his own.

  He wanted to conquer every long hour of every night of the past year he’d been without her. Yet he couldn’t bring her close enough.

  He tasted her moans, swallowing the first cries of accumulating passion.

  Insatiable longing sent his blood barreling through his veins, pooling in his groin. His tongue surged inside her mouth as he crushed her against him.

  He felt out of control, fighting the irresistible force roaring through him to surrender to the drives of nature and sex and the hunger for release.

  Painful need. Consuming desire. Both too powerful to contain.

  He broke away just before giving into the raw, animalistic greed to take her under him and pound into her with relentless drives.

  Chest heaving, he reduced his ravaging kisses to light sips of her lips. Then he pressed his mouth to her forehead and fought the slight trembling in his hands.

  The deep ache for her that he’d carried so long inside him would never be assuaged with a single rush of savage passion.

  Clasping her face in his hands, he grasped for the slim threads of sanity remaining. They pulled him back from the brink of his lust-crazed abandon. “Damn, baby,” he murmured against her hairline. “I want to do this right. Not rush through.”

  “I like you in a hurry.” She tipped her head back, the weight cradled by his palm. Their gazes held. The spark of inflamed passion lit her eyes. “Don’t stop, Blake.”

  He groaned as a battle for control waged inside him. “Layla, I’ve waited too damn long for this. I can’t get carried away.” He smiled slightly. “Or you’ll find yourself pressed up against the wall, your legs clamped around my waist as I grind into you.”

  Her violet gaze stilled with frozen fire. “Next time, then?”

  “Hell, yes.” He groaned again. “Anything you want. But not the first time. I want to be the best thing you ever had.”

  “You already are.”

  Blake stopped breathing.

  Something unexpected shimmered deep in her eyes. It wrapped around his heart. Could he stay forever bathed in the emotion he saw there? He wanted to, almost as much as he wanted to feel himself enclosed within the wet sheath of her body.

  At last Blake felt the burden of their attraction—the weight he’d carried for the past year—finally ease as his hands sifted through the glossy strands of her hair. His eyes didn’t leave hers. The volcanic heat of their chemistry simmered between them, controlled only by his intention to make this last. Otherwise, who knew what sparks and explosions would erupt when they came together for the first time.

  The quiet collected. Shadows moved over them, sliding alongside the orange glow of candlelight he realized was flickering beside them. A sensual touch he appreciated, wishing he’d thought of that. The silence thickened with waiting, lust tugging deep in his gut, suspense hovering on his tongue. He was so ready learn her taste, to savor her. “I’m going to kiss every inch of you.”

  Why that sounded like a warning, he couldn’t explain, but the abrasive edge to his tone caused her nipples to tighten. They beaded and strained against her tight shirt, taunting him. She coaxed, “Then what are you waiting for?”


  “This.”

  Framing her face with his hands, he lowered his head by slow degrees, until his lips melted with hers. Blake kissed her.

  He kissed her with light brushes as soft as the wings that seemed to lift his heart until it soared in the beauty of this moment. The only first time they would ever have. He wanted to remember every second. Savor every touch, memorize each sensation.

  Starting with her mouth surrendering to his.

  His lips lightly grazed across hers, tender sweeps, open-mouthed and coaxing. His mouth courted her. The tip of his tongue licked at the seam that barred his entrance. She inhaled. Her soft lips yielded to the slick probe of his tongue.

  Using only his fingertips, he tilted her head to give him the perfect access to her mouth. He drew his touch lightly over her temples, cheeks, under her chin and jaw where her pulse throbbed chaotically.

  “Do you know what you do to me?” she whispered, her words like tiny bursts of steam against his face.

  “Whatever it is, it can’t come close how you affect me. I don’t even have to touch you or look at you. Blindfolded, I could still pick you out of a crowd. The second you came near me I’d know it was you.”

  “How?”

  “I—” Blake chocked on his breath as she separated his shirt from the waist of his jeans. “I’d know your scent instantly.”

  “You’d recognize the way I smell?”

  “Sure.” Under the tickle of her exploring fingers, the muscles of his stomach tightened and rippled. Soon his belt hung loose, quickly yanked free of its loops. “Maybe it’s because of your eyes,” he continued, swallowing hard, “but you smell like violets to me—fresh, as if they’ve just been picked after a misty rain. Wet and thick with scent. You smell dark, velvety, touchable…purple.”

  Her hands paused. “Purple? How can someone smell like a color?”

  The corners of his eyes winced. “I can’t explain how . You just do.”

  He desperately wanted her to keep exploring, touching, undressing him. He soaked up the tension, the slight trembling of her fingers. Those tremors revealed that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. But her attempt at control told him they would ease into this together.

  The top button of his fly slid free as Layla encouraged him to continue. “Okay, so I smell like purple .” She muffled a sound, resembling a giggle. “What else?”

  He frowned. “Never mind. I sound stupid.”

  “No.” Her voice lowered to a sacred hush. “I’m listening, Blake. Tell me how you would know me apart from any other woman.”

  “If I could only touch one part of you to make sure it was you, I’d touch your hair.” Lifting his fingers, he sifted through the thick fall. It saturated his hand with silky warmth, heavy in its inky dark weight. Yet how light the individual strands were as they drifted through the spaces between his fingers. “Warm, thick, your hair is midnight in summer. I’d know you the moment I felt your hair across my palm.”

  “Not my lips or my hands?” she asked as she pressed both to the plane of his stomach. His fingers clenched around her hair, trying to get a grip before he lost control and took her down to the sheets. Her breath turned into a blazing torture against his navel. The thin trail of hair leading down, disappearing beneath his half-open fly, became a conductor, the heat of her breath traveling from his belly to his cock. He hardened painfully. “Not my mouth or my tongue?” she persisted.

  Her exploratory taste left him gasping. “Uh-uh,” he managed. Then added quickly, “But I’m not complaining.”

  A strange flutter, like the sensation before panic, quivered beneath the place where he felt her smile against his taut skin. “Good,” she said. “Because I’m not stopping. I don’t want you to, either. What else would you know, besides my scent and my hair?”

  “I’d know you because of what happens inside me when you come close.” His stomach tightened again as she drew her mouth down, incrementally. His last three buttons were freed. He ground his teeth at the unholy temptation of her mouth so close to where he throbbed with unspent need. “My body responds to you.”

  “So I see.”

  Reaching inside his jeans, her hand closed around his hard length. Breath seethed through clenched teeth as he insisted, “But it’s more than that.”

  “Show me how much more.”

  Before he could reply her mouth was on him, moving, bathing him in moist heat. Drenched in luxury he moaned as her tongue swirled around his head and her lips wrapped around his shaft, a tight circle of pressure that made him dizzy, insane with need. God, he wanted to explode.

  Air gushed from his lungs. Three words trailed behind. “Not. Like. This.”

  “Blake—”

  Within seconds he’d pulled away from her, shed his shirt, shucked his boots, and returned to taste his name on her tongue.

  His kissed her down to the mattress, exploring every facet of her mouth, all the places he’d been denied, his tongue sweeping with thorough possession. He devoured her unspoken secrets.

  His hair fell like a curtain to shield their faces. She’d released his ponytail. Her nails made sexy tracks across his scalp as she combed through his free-flowing strands. He felt an urgent pressure, her fingers at the back of his skull, and almost lost it.

  Blake’s tongue delved as deep as he could thrust. His body covered her. His face tilted over hers in an all-consuming angle, letting her know exactly who she belonged to. Possessiveness spiked his blood and drugged him with its erotic power.

  His—she was finally his .

  To touch and taste and make love to until they collapsed in the haze of sated lust. Though Blake doubted he’d ever get his fill of Layla. Not even after a lifetime.

  Yet this first time…it meant everything to him.

  Something that would live inside him for the rest of his life. One moment at a time, touch upon touch, building to bliss.

  With Layla he would create heaven. Right here, holding her in his arms. No place left to go but into each other.

  Chapter 20

  Something about the way Blake’s kisses delved deep enough to touch her essence, or the way his hands caressed her as he removed all her clothes, followed by his tongue mapping every inch of her skin as though he could taste the claim his hands had laid to her—the drawn-out pleasure of it all made tears ache behind Layla’s eyes.

  His mouth roamed over her slowly, tongue swirling around the peak of each breast, nipping, tugging until she dug her hands into his hair and squirmed with pleasure. The softly worn fabric of his jeans rubbed against her as he slid one leg between hers and nudged her thighs apart. Then he shifted his body, settling in the cradle of her thighs.

  Against her naked inner thigh she felt the cool metal buttons of his fly contrast with his hard, hot length jutting from the opening. His silky hair slipped through her fingers as he took his mouth away from her breasts and kissed a scorching path down the center of her body.

  Gliding her hand along his shadowed jaw, she tried to tip his chin up. He didn’t budge. His mouth remained pressed to her belly. Only his gaze lifted. Their eyes met. A sultry look of seduction engulfed her.

  She swallowed. “Blake.”

  “Yes, baby?” Hot drifts of air slid across her stomach. His mouth continued to slide lower.

  She tried to urge him up toward her. “Come back. I don’t want to stop kissing you.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.” A warm current of air stirred the trimmed, triangular shadow covering her mound. “First, there’s something I need to know.”

  The light rasp of his callused palms smoothed along her thighs as he spread her open. His hair hung forward, framing his handsome face and glowing green eyes that stared at her with a teasing, wicked glint.

  “Wh-what is it?” she struggled to ask as his head dropped between her thighs.

  “I need to know if you taste as good as I remember from last time.”

  “Oh… oh ,” she moaned as the tip of his tongue teased her swollen
folds just above her opening. Then with one bold stroke he swept up to her clit and flicked. Once.

  “Mmm—you do. Now I’m going to taste you over and over.” He licked twice. “Until you’re too weak and satisfied to tell me to stop.”

  “Blake… yes …”

  Layla threw her head back and surrendered to pleasure. All her focus narrowed on the place where his mouth moved on her. His tongue began with slow, patient glides that made her hips rock, a gathering rhythm. Steadily he increased his pace until she shivered uncontrollably. Tossing, thrashing, she was helpless against the exquisite pressure building inside her.

  “ Yes . Don’t stop,” she cried.

  “That’s it, baby. Come for me.”

  While his tongue swirled in swift circular motions, his mouth closed and captured the sensitive peak. Persistent suction urged her higher, where the air thinned and she gasped for breath. Layla soared as he drove her toward her fast-approaching climax. His mouth worked. Pressure built, bliss just out of reach. Fever mounted, his tongue dancing her nearer to the edge, closer, lighter, faster.

  Almost there… “Yes, right there!” Her body arched, tightened, narrowed on the brink of bliss. “Blake…God—yes!”

  Then pleasure burst. Layla shook apart until she came completely undone. Her sex throbbed against his tongue with a prolonged release. Her hips rocked involuntarily as his mouth coaxed every last ripple of sensation from her.

  A half-moan, half-sigh escaped through the wistful smile curving her lips. After dropping kisses to her thighs, abdomen and breasts, Blake lifted the warm weight of his body from her, then the mattress.

  The scent of carnal excitement saturated the air. Her blood drifted sluggishly through her veins.

  Blinking heavy lids, she focused on the shadow-darkened room and found Blake’s profile stunning in candlelight. He’d shucked his jeans and boxer-briefs, and now he stood naked, tanned skin gleaming in the flickering orange light as he reached into his duffel. He set a small box on the edge of the nightstand, tearing off one square from the contents. Then he turned to her.