by Maya Banks
straight to her bathroom, fix the problem, flirt, then leave. This was same old shit, different day.
But tonight, he touched his palm to the small of her back, his big body hovering behind her, his chest brushing her back. His scent, like earth and pine, wrapped around her. Kelsey got weak-kneed all over again.
“Kelsey? The problem?”
Right. “I need it hot.”
“I’d love to give it to you as hot as you can stand it,” he murmured in her ear.
Oh God. His words shivered down her spine. “I meant the water.”
His expression said that he didn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure she did either.
As they rounded the corner to her bedroom, Kelsey drew in a nervous breath. Ten minutes. If he was coming on to her, she could be strong and resist him that long.
“I turned on the water a few minutes ago and . . .” Kelsey risked a glance at him over her shoulder.
He was staring at her bed, at the rabbit and vibrator she’d accidentally left there.
Mortification rushed over her in a hot, sickening wave. Oh, please don’t let him guess that I’ve masturbated to thoughts of him . . .
“Fix the water temperature. Please.” She pushed him toward the bathroom.
Rhys didn’t budge an inch. Instead, he pulled her closer and braced his hands on her hips. She couldn’t possibly miss his erection against her belly, hot and pressing. She trembled again.
“Kelsey, baby ...”
She closed her eyes to avoid his probing stare. “Don’t say a word.”
“It’s all right. You have needs. I want to fulfill them.”
Right now, she wanted that too, so badly, she could nearly taste him. He’d be salty and musky and so damn male . . .
“It’s complicated.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I’d never hurt you. I just want to take care of you every way you’ll let me.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. She had to stop this now, and she knew one way to scare Rhys off in a heartbeat. He hated clingy women. Three had attached themselves to him at last month’s community barbecue. He’d cut them all off cold.
“It wouldn’t be right for either of us. I’m twenty-eight, Rhys. I want to get married, start having children. You’re a few years younger and—”
“Let’s do it.”
Kelsey’s jaw dropped. “Y-you want to get married?”
“To you? Absolutely. I think about you . . . Damn. It’s constant. So is my desire.” He caressed her cheek. “And my love.”
She blinked, drew in a shaking breath, clutched his thick biceps for support. Was he trying to say that he didn’t just want her, but . . . loved her. “Truly?”
A smile crept up his lips as his hand drifted to her shoulder. “I know we usually share laughs. But I’m serious. If I thought for a second that you’d marry me, I’d be on one knee with ring in hand, begging you.”
Her shaky breathing nearly became hyperventilating. Oh my God. “We’re friends, Rhys.”
“We could be a whole lot more.”
“I had no idea you felt that strongly.”
“You’re it for me, Kelsey.”
“How can you know that? I mean, we’ve never—um ...” His revelations were so startling, she couldn’t form a coherent sentence.
“Kissed? Had sex?” He arched a golden brow. “We can solve that right now.”
The bed was in her peripheral vision. They could be on it—together—in the next few minutes. She could have Rhys as her lover, have one of her fantasies fulfilled.
Temptation crashed through her. Her stomach knotted tight. Even the thought made her wet. In the past, he’d subtly suggested that he’d like to sleep with her, wrapped it in a flirtatious joke or double entendre. She’d blown him off. Nothing veiled about his words tonight.
If she turned him down now, would she be doing the right thing? Or would she regret it?
“You’re thinking too hard. I want you; you want me. I love you.”
He looked at her expectantly, those green eyes shining with honesty. He loved her. Really, truly loved her. Kelsey couldn’t lie to him. The moment was too sincere, too raw, for anything else. “I love you too.”
“Ah, baby…” He beamed and wrapped his arms around her. “Let’s start there. The rest we’ll worry about later.”
She shouldn’t. Kelsey knew that. This would change her relationship with Rhys—and Tucker and Jeremy.
But when Rhys leaned in and settled his mouth over hers in a hungry press, she was gone.
He was like embracing a mountain, big, fresh, powerful, undeniable—a force all his own. At the insistent urging of his lips, she opened to let him inside. The sweep of him against her tongue was a big burst of taste and sensation. Crisp and clean, he filled her with a flash of sensation that swept her with heat and want.
Kelsey threw her arms around his shoulders and lost herself in his touch. He cupped the back of her head, lavishing one heart-stopping kiss after another on her until she was breathless and achy.
Toys had nothing compared to this man, and Kelsey feared that, after tonight, she’d never be satisfied with them again.
“Baby,” he breathed against her lips. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted . . . waited.”
“Yes, I do.” More than he could possibly imagine.
“Do you think about me when you touch yourself?”
His low voice rasped in her ear, then he pressed his mouth to her throat, her collarbone, the swell of her breast above the cover-up. One of his hands made its way up the back of her thigh to cup her bare ass. Under that kind of assault, Kelsey couldn’t be anything but honest.
“I have.”
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. “You don’t do for yourself anymore. You come to me. Understand?”
It wasn’t that simple, and she tried to find the words to explain, but he yanked the zipper of her cover-up down to her abdomen and pushed it away from her breasts.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “You’re gorgeous, baby.”
Kelsey had to resist an instinctive urge to cover her breasts. “They’re big.”
“Yeah,” he said, as if that were the most wonderful fact ever.
Then he cupped one, his thumb brushing her nipple. It was already hard, but his touch pinged reckless pleasure all through her body. She gasped at the electric sensation and felt her sex gush again.
Rhys’s mouth covered hers once more, now devouring, heat-seeking, yearning. She melted like a wax on a long-lit candle as he cupped her other breast, rolling the nipple, pinching. Her sex clenched with need.
A long moment later, he tore his mouth away. “When I kiss you, you taste amazing. But I have to taste you everywhere.”
Anticipation leapt in her belly, and before she could blink, Rhys bent to her breast, cradling her nipple against his tongue, between the clamp of his teeth. He stung her, then soothed with a suction that made her cry out and clasp him even tighter.
As he moved his head to her other breast and repeated the process, he shoved his foot between hers and nudged her legs apart. A heartbeat later, his fingers stole across her clit, and she mewled at the sweet friction of his touch.
“That’s it, baby. You’re so wet for me. I’m going to make you feel so good,” he said thickly against her nipple before he sucked it in again.
As she stood, trembling, needing, he dropped to his knees and fit his mouth over her. Eureka! She’d thought a hundred times about Rhys or Tucker or Jeremy orally pleasuring her. Fantasies had nothing on reality.
At her cry, he sucked her clit into his mouth, toyed with it using his tongue, and plunged two fingers into her slick, clinging entrance.
It was as if the orgasm she’d given herself twenty minutes ago had never happened. Kelsey couldn’t ever remember an ache so sharp and unrelenting. And still he didn’t let up. He merely lifted her thigh over his shoulder as he swiped his tongue over her again in a wicked caress. She fisted her hands in his thick hair. When he
added a third finger inside her and rubbed a sensitive spot that only her little wand had ever touched, all the blood left her head. Kelsey swore she was going to fall to the floor and beg.
She’d missed a man’s touch, that hard passion—but Rhys’s need stunned her. Desire crashed down on her as he licked her little bud again, teasing her one second, eating her alive the next.
“I-I’m going to come.” Please . . . She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, clinging to the edge of sanity where she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe—and didn’t care.
“I’ll look forward to that.” His fingers hit her sweet spot again. “Very soon. How long has it been for you, baby? You’re tight, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
Kelsey couldn’t remember that long ago. “Since David.”
Rhys stilled. “Five fucking years?”
She nodded. Robbed of his touch, every nerve ending in her body ached ever more. “Rhys!”
“You’ll never have to ask again, baby. You’ll be lucky to go five hours without from now on.”
Kelsey had barely raised her brows at that statement before Rhys stood and unfastened his jeans. She caught a mere glimpse of his jutting cock, thick and blunt-headed, before he lifted her in his arms, legs spread. A second later, he impaled her, stretching her impossibly wide. Her flesh stung and burned as he burrowed deeper, thrust harder. Euphoria smoldered just under beyond her reach.
Amazement followed. This was happening. Rhys was naked and deep inside her. It wasn’t a fantasy or anything in her head. They were making love, and it was finally real.
“Damn, you’re mind-blowing. Tight. Warm,” he muttered against her throat. “I love you.”
In two steps, he reached the bed and lowered her to it, then slammed deep inside her.
The head of his cock flared against her most nerve-drenched spot. She moaned as orgasm pressed close and clamped down on him.
She’d always imagined that sex with any of her men would be incredible—it had fueled her fantasies for months—but this was way beyond anything she’d dreamed up. As he moved against her, their skin grew damp, clung. Breaths synched up as he shoved into her deeply, fiercely, cupping her ass, chanting her name. He plundered her mouth with abandon. As each second passed, he grew harder, his breathing rougher, her pleasure headier.
“Rhys!” She clawed at his back and kissed her way across his corded shoulders, bucking up to meet him.
“I need to see you come for me, baby.”
The burn behind her clit swelled, accelerated. Her muscles tightened. Her world stopped.
Then exploded.
She screamed as pleasure detonated through her body. Rhys tensed, his cock swelling as he groaned in her ear. Deep inside, she felt him thick and heavy and hot as he came.
She soared, weightless, timeless. Treasured. And so in love. No way could she live without having Rhys like this again.
As his strokes slowed, he rained kisses on her face. Flinging her arms around his neck, she rubbed her cheek against his, then nuzzled his neck. She felt released, reborn in his arms. To her shock, tears wet her cheeks.
As reality slowly hit her, they became wrenching sobs.
Being with Rhys had been earth-shattering, beyond her every fantasy. What would happen next time they saw Tucker and Jeremy? Rhys would touch her, assume it was now his right. Tucker would be shocked, possibly hurt. Jeremy would be enraged.
She’d lose them both.
And if she pushed Rhys away right now, she’d lose him, too.
Why had she given in to temptation?
“Hey, baby, no tears.” Still buried inside her, Rhys brushed her hair from her face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“N-no.”
But he’d made her life beyond difficult. Scratch that. She’d made it difficult. Rhys had merely given her what they’d both wanted. Now, she had to deal with the consequences.
CHAPTER | THREE
“I didn’t give you permission to leave, Kelsey.”
She gripped her purse a bit tighter and cursed under her breath. Jeremy Beck, at his delicious demanding best, stood behind her. Usually, he was the consummate professional, the sexual command in his tone so subtle she often wondered if she’d imagined it because she wanted it so bad. Submitting to any man had never occurred to her . . . until Jeremy. She fantasized about it constantly, though he never actually tried to dominate her.
Until this week.
After her Monday night mistake with Rhys, she’d dragged into work Tuesday morning early, hoping to escape the memories by diving into work. Thank God Rhys was scheduled to be at the fire station for the next forty-eight hours. Until his next shift ended, Kelsey hoped that the office would be her refuge from the tangled sheets on her bed that still smelled like sex.
Jeremy made peace impossible. He addressed her with a new edge in his voice. He stood closer, stared more intently, making her tremble with need.
Tuesday, she’d gone to work, brimming with a thousand recriminations, drowning in a ton of guilt. By the time she’d gone home, her panties had been damp with the desire Jeremy inspired. Today, they were soaking wet, and if she didn’t get away from her boss . . . Well, not much escaped his notice. As raw and confused as she felt now, she didn’t know what would happen.
After five years of abstinence, she’d taken one lover. Now she wanted another. What was wrong with her?
“It’s after six, sir.” She closed her eyes, praying he’d have mercy.
She had to get it together or Jeremy would guess how badly she ached for him.
“I can tell time. I’m not finished with you. Set your things down and come to my office.” Jeremy turned and crossed the room, entering his private domain.
His words were pure asshole . . . but the tone was so honey-rough. Still, she had to resist—for her sanity and her future.
“Sir, I’m due for a dress fitting for my cousin’s wedding. I’m one of her bridesmaids.”
“The fitting doesn’t start for an hour and a half.” He raised a dark brow. “I need you now.”
A direct order, boss to subordinate. With a sigh, Kelsey set her things on her desk and followed.
The office was quiet now. Everyone had gone. Lights were darkening in other parts of the building. The air conditioner clicked off. With every step, Kelsey heard her shuddered breaths, the sound of her footfalls on the carpet . . . Jeremy tapping his fingers on the open door.
Her eyes glued to his dark, polished face, she stepped past him. And bit her lip. His gaze burned her. Kelsey’s heart stuttered at the sight. He wanted her. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t hiding it. God, why now, when she was feeling so weak?
He shut the door. The subtle click enclosing them in total privacy made her stomach clench.
“Was that Garrison I heard you on the phone with a minute ago?”
Relief rolled through her. This she could talk about. “Yes, sir.”
Jeremy crossed his arms over his wide chest. “He offer you a job again?”
She nodded. “In Miami.”
“And you told him . . . ?”
The same thing she always told Garrison; she enjoyed working for Jeremy and felt far too loyal to jump ship. Even if he was offering more money, it wasn’t worth leaving her home, her parents . . . and her men. “No.”
Jeremy released a breath, and some of the tenseness left his shoulders. Every day, in little ways like this, he showed that he wanted her with him. That he cared. It had messed with her head. And her heart.
“Very good,” he praised. “Now I want to ask you about your behavior this week.”
