Chapter Seven
TRAPPED, and at the blind mercy of terrorizing toys, panic gripped Harmony with a ghostly hand. “King, I can’t see you. Talk to me.”
“I’m here.” His voice like a blessing echoed in the darkness. “Keep talking so I can find you.”
“Uh, okay . . . my shirt. You hate it, but I have snarky and suggestive ones that you’d hate more, like—”
Paxton’s searching hands found her . . . breast first. “Oh I don’t know,” he said. “This one is starting to . . . grow on me.”
A flirting brass-ass technocrat whose walls went down with the lights. What couldn’t she do with one of those? She grinned into the darkness as he lingered and found her other breast—and now that he had both hands full, and his touch could hardly be called accidental, she raised a brow. “What are you doing?”
He stopped fondling, but his hands remained where they were while her breasts peaked and swelled to better fill them.
Paxton cleared his throat. “I’m . . . reading your shirt . . . by Braille. I wanted to be sure this was really you . . . not a ghost.”
“It’s really, really me.”
He fingered a nubbin. “And you’re really, really happy to see me.” The banked amusement in his voice failed to hide his intense sexual interest. “You stopped talking,” he said, his voice soft.
The heat from his touch warmed her to her core. “I uh . . . forgot what I was saying?”
“Suggestive shirts,” he prodded.
“Right. Two come to mind: Fast Girls Finish First, and Bad Girls Finish Often.”
“I find both inspiring, but I’m glad you didn’t walk into the great hall wearing one of them. I would’ve had a mutiny. I know, because I don’t give a damn about the project right now, and I’m the freaking boss.”
“Positive words, please. You’re the aroused boss. Aroused is good, and it’s positive.”
“In that case, I’m a very good boss.” He licked her ear.
Harmony tilted her head so he could nibble at will, his warm breath and roaming lips and hands sending shivering shock waves though her system. He brought her close, as if she needed warming.
She needed cooling, but who was she to quibble?
She’d been too long without a man when Brass Ass McShaft seemed the warm and cuddly type.
Cuddly being a momentary lapse, as McShaft pinned her against the wall in a me-man/you-woman move, cupped her head in his hands, opened his mouth over hers, and silenced her good sense. One big hand sleeked from her shoulder to the small of her back, where he pressed her flat against him.
Harmony about melted when her warm and willing center met his hard, probing man brain, and the darkness became her friend. No light needed to feel, touch, taste, as he incited a series of trembling minishocks, arousing an answering need in her to return the pleasure. In addition to the gift of his firm muscles and firmer rod, he tasted of spice, cinnamon, and coffee—exotic and arousing—and he dominated the kiss with a world of experience.
This man didn’t just kiss; he made love with his mouth in the way an ice cream addict approached a fresh cone, delighting in that first lick of cool and creamy froth, wallowing in every subsequent, satisfying tongue swirl, the ultimate in sweet, sensual pleasure that ended in a burst of satisfaction. An exercise to gratify a deep, abiding hunger. And while Paxton’s tongue made a sensual dessert of her mouth, spirals of need licked along Harmony’s inner thighs, tonguing her higher, so high, she whimpered and flowered in ready welcome.
With the onslaught of desire, she worshipped his mouth in return with a zeal she’d never experienced. Paxton’s tongue should be registered as a lethal weapon. What kind of man made you wet your panties with his tongue . . . in your mouth? She nearly came at the thought.
This man. The King of Paxton Castle.
“You know what we’re doing?” he asked, his voice jarring in a world of mounting pleasure.
“Doing?” she repeated. “Oh. Losing our minds?” Our clothes, next, she hoped, our grips on reality, please.
Paxton sighed against her ear as if he heard her treacherous thoughts, which would be seriously scary.
“There is a lot of mind loss, mind bending, and mind blowing going on,” he said. “But I wanted to make sure you were with me. I’m not alone feeling this . . . this . . . instant and overwhelming . . . draw, pull—”
“Magnetic attraction?” she suggested.
“Exactly. I needed to be sure you were aware and on the same page as I am. Getting hit upside the head with an industrial-sized magnet is rarely mutual and often harmful.”
“Oh, it’s mutual.” Just to prove it, and because she wanted to, Harmony slipped her hands beneath his shirt, appreciating the increased pace of his heart and the catch in his breath. His skin and its nap of chest hair were softer than his shirt, the silkiest she’d ever run her fingers through—Egyptian-cotton soft—and so hot it should come with a warning label. Warning: Might Cause a Fiery Swell of Orgasmic Insanity.
Paxton’s sigh turned her to liquid honey as she resumed her tactile exploration and regularly scheduled sexcathalon—a gold-medal hands-and-mouth competition, fired by endurance and determination—a race they both wanted to win.
He slid both his hands down her back to cup her bottom and pull her up into his arms. Instinctively, she wound her legs around him, and he turned them so he leaned on the wall and slid them down to the floor, where she straddled him.
“I don’t care why the lights went out,” he said, “this is absolutely—”
Harmony fingered his man nips to hard little pebbles so he stopped talking. “It is amazing, but haven’t you figured Gussie out by now?”
“Gussie?”
“Every time you deny her existence, she does something to prove she’s here.”
Chuckling, Paxton slid his hands beneath her shirt and stopped. “What do you have between your breasts? It feels like a . . . pouch.”
“It’s a sachet of perfumed herbs,” she said, telling the truth.
He unhooked her bra in half a beat. “You know,” he said. “If the ghost does exist, this is the nicest thing she’s ever done for me. I’ve never been happier about anyth—”
The lights came on with a flash that half blinded them, and with the light came clarity of mind.
They couldn’t look each other in the eye, but they retrieved their hands so fast, their fingers tangled. A second later, Harmony stood to dust herself off and give Paxton time to stand and lose his boner. The locks clicked, eight in a row. “The doors are open,” she said.
“If the ghost exists,” Paxton said, turning her way, “she’s a mean old bat.” He shouted as if in pain, lurched, and knocked her on the floor.
“Hey!” she snapped.
“Sorry.” Paxton bent to give her a hand up, but straightened with a shout, before he could.
“Did you throw your back out?” Harmony rose on her own, watching Paxton turn to look behind him, and as he did, she saw the cause of his discomfort. A huge honking splinter, and not just any splinter.
One life-sized toy soldier’s rifle was missing its bayonet.
“What is it?” Paxton asked, trying without success to see his own backside.
“I really hate to tell you this, but you’ve been shot in the ass by a wooden soldier.”