by Marie Force
“What is this one simple thing you want from me?”
“Your brother’s wedding, the holidays, the night in Boston. Let me be your boyfriend for the next couple of weeks. If we do all that and you decide this relationship business isn’t for you, I’ll respect your wishes.”
“By respect my wishes, you mean . . .”
“I’ll leave you alone. But between now and then, though, you’re all mine.”
Charley swallowed hard at the implications behind his forcefully stated words. “Between now and when?”
“You want like an expiration date?”
“That’s the only way you’ll get me to agree to this harebrained plan of yours.”
“Harebrained,” he said with a laugh. “Ouch.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
“Brilliant? Inspired?”
Charley rolled her eyes but had to hold back a smile that was bursting to get out. He was awfully cute when he negotiated a deal.
“You tell me. How long do I have?”
“Until the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day when you turn into a pumpkin.”
Glancing up at the ceiling, he did the math. “Seventeen days. And in that time, I’m all yours and you’re all mine. No restrictions, no limits.”
“Why do I feel like I’m making a deal with the devil?”
His grin was positively devilish. “Baby, you have no idea what you’re getting into.”
Though his tone was teasing, her stomach knotted with nerves and a tiny bit of fear. In the years since Michael deceived her, she’d never come close to anything like what Tyler was proposing. But she was only potentially agreeing to a short-term arrangement with an expiration date and a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“If I go along with this harebrained scheme of yours, do you promise that you’ll step aside on New Year’s Day as promised?”
“If that’s what you want, you’ll never hear from me again.”
“And when we run into each other around town?”
“I’ll say, ‘Hello, Charley, how are you?’ And go on with my life.”
“And you won’t act all hurt and disappointed?”
“I’ll be disappointed for sure, but you’ll never see any sign of that.”
“And I won’t hear about your disappointment—or your hurt—from anyone?”
“I’ll never speak of it to anyone. You have my word on that.”
“What about the running club?”
“When you feel up to rejoining the club, I’ll step aside. I’ve run marathons before. I know how to train for them. The club was about companionship during the training. You won’t have to see me every week if you don’t want to.”
“I already feel like a jerk, and I haven’t even dumped you yet.”
Laughing, he said, “Has it occurred to you, even for a second, that maybe you won’t want to dump me?”
“No, it hasn’t.”
Groaning, he flattened a hand over his chest and gasped from pretend agony. “You wound me, Charlotte.”
“That’s what I’m trying to avoid!”
“I know what I’m getting into, and I accept the possibility that you may dump me despite my very best efforts. Is that what you need to hear?”
“Seventeen days, and Tyler, I will dump you when our time is up.”
“We’ll see about that, Charlotte. We’ll just see about that.” He slid the tank top strap back down her arm. “Now where were we before we were rudely interrupted?” His lips encircled her nipple, stifling any protest she might’ve formed.
Charley buried her fingers in his hair and closed her eyes. When he touched her this way, he made her think anything was possible, even things she didn’t want. Those frightening thoughts faded with the insistent tug of his lips on her nipple.
“Charley,” he whispered. “Let’s go to bed. Let me show you how much I care about you.”
It had been a very long time—hell, it had been forever—since any man had made her crave the way this one did. As he lifted her off the sofa to carry her to bed, she realized she was going to have to be very careful not to give him more than she intended to.
In the past, she’d never had any problem keeping the emotion separate from the act. She was an expert at compartmentalizing, and those skills would come in handy now.
He set her on the bed, careful as always to ensure her injured leg was properly supported. Then he began helping her out of her clothes, starting with the tank top that left her bared to him from the waist up after it cleared her head. His greedy gaze took in every inch of skin as he removed the brace on her leg so he could help her out of the jeans she’d worn to the shower. He moved slowly and patiently to ease the denim down over her knee.
“Let’s put this back on,” he said of the brace.
“It’s okay. Debbie said I can leave it off to sleep as long as I’m careful.”
He laid his hands flat on her ribs and then slid them to the waistband of her panties.
Charley panicked, putting her hand down to stop him.
Pausing, he eyed her deliberately. “We’ll leave them on,” he said. “For now.” He stood to pull the sweater over his head and then the thermal shirt he’d worn under it.
Charley watched him reveal himself to her, her mouth watering at the sight of well-defined pecs and ripped abs, covered by a nice bit of dark chest hair. A needy feeling overtook her at the sight of him reaching for the button on worn denim. He unzipped carefully, working around the huge bulge, and kicked off his jeans impatiently. While he undressed, he never took his eyes off her.
She had to fight the urge to squirm from the intense way he looked at her, as if he wanted to chain her to the bed and have his wicked way with her.
“Why did your whole body just turn a lovely shade of pink?” he asked as he crawled onto the bed next to her, placing his hand flat against her belly. He’d left his boxer briefs on for the time being, which was a relief. It gave her a minute to catch her breath. “What’s going on inside that pretty head of yours?”
“All sorts of dirty stuff.”
“Oh please. Do tell.”
“I was thinking about how you look at me like you want to chain me to the bed and have your wicked way with me.”
“That’s exactly what I want. And you say we don’t belong together. You’re already reading my mind.”
“You’re a shameless opportunist.”
“I have to take the openings where I can get them.” His hand slid down the front of her, sliding over her panties and coming to a rest between her legs. “Mmm, it’s getting warm down here.”
There he went again, derailing her thoughts and making her tremble with desire.
His fingers delved deeper, finding the knot of nerves that tightened as he stroked her. “I want to taste you here, Charley.” With his lips against her thigh, his words sparked an outbreak of goose bumps. “Let me taste you.” He tugged at her panties, and this time she let him remove them.
She’d never been more acutely aware of her body than she was as he settled between her legs. He lifted her good leg and propped it on his shoulder.
“Tyler.” His name sounded like a gasp. “Wait.”
“Don’t want to wait,” he said as he nuzzled her most sensitive area.
“I don’t really like . . . Ahhh, God.”
CHAPTER 14
If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
—Erica Jong
Tyler sucked her clit into his mouth and rubbed his tongue back and forth, which took her right out of her head and into the pleasure. She’d been about to say she didn’t like receiving oral. Well, that was going to change. He would change her mind about every goddamned thing in the next seventeen days.
How it was possible that beautiful, sexy, contrary Charley Abbott had never had a real bo
yfriend was beyond him. She was the hottest woman he’d ever met, and he was determined to make her his forever. But it wouldn’t be easy. He would have to overwhelm her on every level so there was no chance she would walk away from him.
And there was no time like the present to get started with the overwhelming, he thought as he slid two fingers into her, curling them forward until he found the spot that made her detonate. There was simply no other word for the way her body exploded under his lips, tightening around the fingers he drove into her repeatedly, riding the wave of her orgasm.
Hottest. Fucking. Thing. Ever.
“Do we need protection?” he asked as he withdrew from her to remove his boxer briefs, kicking them off impatiently. Her eyes opened, and he saw a curious mix of desire and fear in them that put him immediately on alert. “Charley.”
She blinked him into focus.
“Talk to me.”
“I . . . I’m on long-term birth control.” She pointed to a bump in her arm he hadn’t noticed before. “And I’m clean. I’ve never had sex without a condom.”
“Neither have I.” He leaned toward the bedside table.
“Tyler.”
The tone of her voice had him turning toward her, curious to hear what was on her mind.
“First time for everything?” she asked with a small smile that filled him with an unreasonable amount of hope. Not to mention what her words did to his already hard-as-a-rock dick.
“Are you sure?”
“We’re in a committed seventeen-day relationship, right?”
“We are.”
She reached for him. “Then I’m sure.”
“Ah, Christ, Charley. First time with you and first time without a condom, too? You’re not going to get my best work here.”
She snorted with laughter that went straight to his overly committed heart. Dear God, he loved her. He loved every freaking thing about her, and he was determined to prove to her that she could count on him to be there for her long after their seventeen days were up.
“Your leg . . .”
“Is fine. Just be careful.”
“I’ll always be so careful with you.” He started all over again with deep, desperate kisses that had her clinging to him. And when she sucked hard on his tongue, he saw stars and had to remind himself he wasn’t allowed to come yet. Not until he’d blown her mind a few more times. His heart beat fast and hard, the way it did when he ran uphill. The metaphor wasn’t lost on him. He was running an uphill race with her as the prize, and he was determined to win.
If he could focus on the things that worked particularly well between them, he could gain an edge. The physical connection between them was nothing short of incendiary, so he used every tool in his arsenal to his advantage—lips and tongue and teeth and hands and fingers and hard cock rocking against soft, wet woman.
Her fingers dug into the dense muscles on his back, letting him know his efforts were having the desired effect. “Tyler . . . Please. Please.”
Nothing in his life had ever been sexier than the sound of Charley Abbott begging him to make love to her.
He lifted her good leg around his hips, opening her. Giving her just the head of his cock, he watched her face. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes.” Her eyes widened when he pushed in deeper, her lips parting and her face flushing from the arousal that eased the way for him.
“God, Charley, you’re so tight. You’re on fire.”
“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
Since that was the last thing he ever wanted to do, he continued to push into her in small increments until she’d taken all of him. Her internal muscles fluttered around him, milking him. To be surrounded by her tight heat with nothing between them but desire . . . Tyler couldn’t begin to process it all in the moment, not when she was squirming beneath him and making mewling noises that had him wanting to hammer into her. Since he couldn’t do that and keep his promise not to hurt her, he slid his hands beneath her to grasp her gorgeous ass, squeezing her cheeks as he began to move, slowly at first and then faster as her hips met his every thrust.
“Charley,” he said on a long, tortured groan.
Just when he thought she couldn’t turn him on any more than he already was, she reached down to where they were joined to finish herself off. “Fucking hell,” he muttered the second before he joined her in the most explosive release of his life. It took every ounce of self-control he could muster not to tell her—right then and there—that he loved her, that he would always love her, no matter what happened at the end of their time together.
Thankfully, he managed to contain the rush of words that wanted out. She wasn’t ready to hear them. Not even as her body quaked with the aftershocks of multiple orgasms. Not yet. He would save that for when he really needed it, and he had no doubt at all that at some point, he would really need it.
Her hands caressed his back, soothing trembling muscles.
Tyler raised his head so he could see her face, and the sight of her closed eyes, flushed cheeks and small, satisfied smile left him dumbstruck. He touched a soft kiss to kiss-swollen lips. “That was incredible.”
“Mmm. Yeah.”
“Charley.”
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
Her eyes opened slowly and looked up at him.
“Just making sure you remember who you’re doing this with.”
“How could I forget when you’d never let me?”
The husky tone of her voice had him hardening again, as if he hadn’t just come so hard he saw stars. For a second, he thought she might stop him, but she didn’t. Instead she began to move with him, showing him the second benefit to bareback sex—no time out between sessions. He could get used to this very quickly.
—
Okay, so sex with Tyler had been amazing. Or she should say it is amazing because apparently it wasn’t over yet. She’d never been with a guy as big as he was, and had to give props to the person who coined the phrase bigger is better. But it was more than his size. It was everything about the way he absolutely possessed her, touching her heart as well as her body. It was his sweetness, his tenderness and the careful way he touched her, as if he were afraid to hurt her in more ways than one.
He was weakening her defenses, and seventeen more days with him weren’t going to make anything easier. It would only make it harder to walk away. She’d been walking away for most of her adult life. Old habits died hard, but as Tyler made sweet love to her again, she began to wonder if it wasn’t time for new habits.
For the first time since Michael crushed her heart and destroyed her belief in love, she felt a kernel of hope blossoming inside her. And as quickly as the hope appeared, her protective impulse kicked in to quash it before it could take root. She’d made promises to herself years ago—promises she intended to keep, no matter how wonderful Tyler might be.
As he moved above her, beautifully sexy and strong and intense in his devotion to her, Charley wished she were someone different, someone who could accept the things he wanted to give her. But that woman had died on a cold February night as she sat in the university library and overheard a sobbing woman tell her consoling friend that her boyfriend Michael Devlin was a cheating scumbag.
This was not the time for those memories, but they intruded despite her fierce desire to keep them in the past where they belonged. Charley’s past was never far behind her, and she’d learned a long time ago that it was pointless to try to outrun it. The painful memories always caught up to her, no matter how far or how fast she ran.
“Where are you right now?” Tyler asked, jarring her out of her thoughts with his gruffly spoken words and the scrape of his whiskers on her neck.
“I’m here,” she said, tightening her arms around him.
“You went somewhere else for a minute there, which makes me think
I’m not doing this right.”
“You’re doing it right.”
He raised himself up on his arms and picked up the pace, hammering into her with much more abandon than he’d shown her the first time, making it impossible for her to think of anything—or anyone—but him.
She lifted her good leg and curled it around his hips, wishing she could fully participate. It would be a while before she could do that, but in the meantime, he was more than compensating.
His fingers pressed against her core, and Charley arched her back, seeking the release that grew with every deep stroke of his hard cock. “Tyler . . .”
“I’m here, honey. Let it happen.”
She came with a broken cry that was ripped from her chest. The powerful sensations brought tears to her eyes and took her breath away. He was right there with her, pressing into her and finding his own release.
“Charley . . . God.”
The wonder she heard in his voice was matched by the wonder she felt after having the best sex of her life. Didn’t it figure that she’d held him at arm’s length for so long when they could’ve been doing that all this time?
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m great. You?”
“Never better. That was . . . I can’t think of the right word.”
“Fantastic.”
“That’s a good word, but not quite what I had in mind.” He withdrew and moved to her left side, away from her injured leg, but kept his arm around her. “Life changing is more like it.”
“That’s two words.”
“They seem to fit the occasion.”
“Tyler . . .”
“I know, I know. You told me I’m not allowed to change your life, but you can’t blame a guy for trying, can you?”
She forced herself to look at his handsome face, which was even more so when flushed from exertion. “If I were going to make changes for anyone, I’d do it for you.”
“I wish you’d tell me who hurt you and why you feel like you’re not capable of being with me this way long term.”
“I’m just not. It’s not how I’m wired.”
“Wiring can be upgraded, fixed, changed.”
