Star of His Heart - Brenda Jackson [27]
Netherland opened her eyes out of a deep sleep. Her bedroom had somehow gotten warm. It didn’t take long for her to realize that it wasn’t the room that had gotten warm but her body. She had awakened from amidst a dream she’d been having of Ashton.
Kicking her bedcovers aside she flipped to her side to find another comfortable position and suddenly, unerringly, became joltingly aware that someone else was in the room with her. She took a deep breath, telling herself that couldn’t be possible. She had an alarm system. Her alarm would have sounded had anyone entered her home uninvited. But she still pulled herself up in the bed, and fighting against the darkness surrounding her, glanced around the room as fear coursed through her.
She then detected movement and moments later a figure moved into the dim lighting that came through the bedroom window from one of the streetlights.
Ashton!
He stood at the foot of her bed, looking at her and wearing nothing but a loincloth. The look in his eyes was dark and sensual. She blinked, wondering how he’d known where she lived and how he had gotten inside past her alarm system, but at the moment not caring about either of those things as he continued to watch her without saying anything.
Netherland’s breath lodged in her throat. Her breathing became irregular, and the heat in the center of her began to flame. He wore a band around his head and his hair, which had been pulled back in a ponytail the last few times she had seen him, was now undone and flowing wildly about his shoulders.
He looked savage. Untamed. Primitive.
Then slowly, he climbed onto the bed with her. When they came close, almost face-to-face, he paused and met her gaze. “I came to you, Netherland.”
She reached out, and his body felt hot to her touch. She made a sound of a moan deep within her throat just moments before he captured her lips with his. Her body melted, any resistance dissolved as their mouths mated and at the same time aroused every part of her body. She didn’t understand why he had come to her tonight but he was here, holding her in his arms and kissing her as if there would be no tomorrow.
And then he began touching her, letting his hands roam all over her body, eliciting a moan from deep within her throat. His hands were working their magic on her, touching her everywhere.
“Ashton!”
“Shhh, it’s okay, baby, I’m right here. Please let me love you this way.”
And she did.
He made love to her with his fingers and mouth, touching her gently, tasting her and driving her over the edge. Netherland’s breathing came faster as tension and sensations built within her. When she came apart in his arms—when the waves of fulfillment raced through her body, he continued to kiss her, tasting each one of her moans, tremors.
Afterward, he held her tight in his arms and, pulling her down beside him, he held her tenderly as they slept.
The next morning, Netherland came awake and glanced around the room. She blinked once, twice, wondering if perhaps she had dreamed the entire thing. But then she glanced at the nightstand next to the bed, which provided proof of Ashton’s midnight visit.
He had left his headband so that she wouldn’t have any doubt that what she shared last night with him had been real. He hadn’t made love to her, at least not in the traditional sense, but love her he had. Her body was still tingling from the aftereffects.
She took a deep inhaling breath. She had no defenses against Ashton. He was determined to breech through any wall she erected. She wasn’t safe from him even in her own home. But then, last night, she hadn’t wanted to be safe from him. She had wanted everything he had given her and then some.
Netherland knew he would not give up until he had her just where he wanted her, and she couldn’t help wondering what his next move would be.
“Did you get the information I asked you to get, Billy?”
Billy Roberts looked at his cousin through the glass partition. Anthony Roberts, known to family and friends as Tony, was not in a