by Lucy Score
See? His inner conscience blared at him. He wasn’t cut out for flings or one-night stands. He was a boring, monogamous guy who just wanted to settle down and build a boring, stable, predictable life around himself.
Definitely an idiot. He needed to leave. Thank God he hadn’t humiliated himself by knocking. Noah wasn’t exactly sure what he’d planned to do once she’d answered. Demand to know why she got weird at the dinner? Start taking his clothes off in hopes that she’d follow his lead? Break into a dissertation on all the reasons they would be better off not having sex?
He hated that he went stone hard the second he thought “sex” and “Cat” in the same sentence. He was no better than a teenager.
Yeah, he was going home to take a cold shower and let this thing die a natural, uncomplicated death.
“You’re wearing a ditch in the asphalt.” Cat’s calm observation came from where she leaned against the doorway of her trailer.
“Oh, I was just uh…” What? Inspecting the parking lot? Looking for permits?
“You might as well come in, Noah, before you freeze to death trying to come up with a lie.”
Cat stepped back from the door, and Noah felt that he had no choice but to follow her inside. He shut the door behind him with a bang and was relieved to note that it was the TV he’d heard and not the dulcet tones of some Latin lover Cat had flown in to satisfy her needs. She was watching a Christmas movie.
A tiny fiber optic tree was plugged in in the corner shifting from pink to blue to green.
“Why do you look sick and mad?” Cat asked, flopping down on the small couch.
She was wearing a tight white tank with nothing, zip, zero underneath it. The thin straps looked like they might break under the strain of her very visible, very full breasts. He’d never wanted to touch anything so much in his entire life. He’d slide his palms up over her stomach to the lower curve—
He was instantly harder than he could ever remember being.
She wore cropped sweatpants that ended just below the knee. There was an inch of skin visible between the waistband of her pants and the hem of her tank top. And Noah wanted to run his tongue around it.
Her face was bare, hair piled on top of her head, and she was surrounded by papers, a laptop, and a tablet.
“Yoo-hoo?” Cat snapped her fingers, and Noah woke from his breast-induced trance.
“Sorry. What?”
She looked amused. A woman like Cat would be used to having men slobber over her. It was part of the job, wasn’t it? Being attractive, being a brand. He hated that he was just one more man lusting after her. He wanted more than that for them both.
“I was asking what you’re doing here,” Cat reminded him.
“Why did you close up at the fire hall?” He blurted the question out forgetting each and every carefully crafted segue he’d worked on in his head since she walked away from him.
“Noah, you can’t be serious.”
“We were flirting, talking. And then you just clam up and walk away,” he argued.
“Yes, we were flirting, and I was thinking about inviting you over tonight so I could run my tongue over every inch of your body.”
Noah’s knees buckled, and he slid bonelessly into one of the chairs around her miniscule dining table.
“W-what?”
“Oh, but that was before you confessed to still being in love with your ex-wife.”
Noah blinked. He wasn’t sure if he’d been struck dumb by Cat’s breasts or her announcement about her intended plans regarding her tongue. But either way, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m in love with Mellody?” he asked.
“Yeah. You already told me,” Cat said, leveling those pretty hazel eyes at him.
“That’s—that is not what I meant or said. You asked…” He brought his fingertips to his eyeballs behind the lenses of his glasses. If he kept his eyes closed, he wouldn’t be hypnotized by those breasts that seemed to be begging for his hands, his mouth. “You asked if I still loved Mellody.”
“Yep,” Cat said, clearly not thrilled with the outcome.
“I said yes.”
“Oh, I remember very clearly,” Cat said picking up the remote and flipping through the channels as if she didn’t have any stake in the conversation.
“You didn’t ask if I was in love with her,” Noah pointed out, rising out of the chair.
Cat’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the difference?”
Could the woman really know so little about love? he wondered. “You love your nonni, right?”
“Uh, duh.” Cat rolled her eyes at the stupidity of his question.
“But you’re not in love with her… although I could see why anyone would be. She’s a firecracker.” He was digressing and forced himself to reel it in. “What I’m saying is, I love my ex-wife as the co-parent of my daughter and within the awkward friendship we’ve been cobbling together since the divorce.”
Cat blinked, frowned. “Well, why in the hell didn’t you say it that way in the first place?” she demanded.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you get me a little tongue-tied when you look directly at me,” Noah pointed out.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious, Cat. You’re the color in a gray day. I don’t know how else to describe it. I look at you, and I see all this passion and joy and fun and excitement. I’ve never met anyone like you. Including my ex-wife, who I care for and respect but have no desire to be married to anymore,” he clarified.
Noah didn’t know how he’d expected Cat to respond, but it certainly wasn’t jumping into his arms and locking her legs around his waist.
“Let’s try less talking,” Cat suggested, a millimeter away from his mouth. “Less room for misunderstanding.”
He gave his assent by gripping her sweatpant-clad ass and squeezing.
She brought her mouth crashing into his in a tangle of teeth and tongue and want. Blindly, Noah stumbled forward, pressing her against the entertainment center cabinet.
She tasted like danger. And for once in his life, Noah wanted to slide a toe over the line onto the wild side. He squeezed her hips, her ass, yanking her tight against him. She responded with a muffled moan against his mouth.
Noah whirled and pressed her hard against the closed door, losing himself in a ravenous kiss. The way she moved against him, writhing and sliding. The sexy noises that clawed their way up from the back of her throat. He wasn’t going home tonight. Unless she wasn’t sure…
“Are you sure about this, Cat?” he murmured, his lips dancing over hers.
“Stop. Overthinking. And have sex with me.” She shoved her fingers into his hair and gripped hard.
He felt the shock of pain, saw stars behind his eyes. And then lost his damn mind.
He spun them, desperate to lose the layers that separated them. He stumbled against the dining table and spread Cat on it as if she were a feast ready for the sampling. She wouldn’t let him pull back, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her thighs holding him in a death grip.
Noah shoved a hand under her tank, reveling in the smooth flat of her stomach. The warmth, the silky texture of her bare skin finally beneath his. It was an exquisite torture being so close to her yet still not close enough.
“Lose your shirt, Noah,” Cat commanded.
Happy to oblige, he reached behind his head and dragged the pullover off.
“So much better.” She reared up to rain kisses and bites across his chest. “So built,” she murmured.
“Back at you,” Noah said, sliding both hands under her shirt and yanking it up and over. “Fuck. I don’t know if I can survive this.” Reverently, he trailed his hands higher over the ridges of ribs to the swell of her perfect breasts.
“They’re not going to break,” Cat said breathlessly as Noah splayed his fingers over the heavy bottom curve of each breast.
“No, but the
y deserve to be savored,” he promised.
“I don’t know if I can handle savoring,” Cat warned him, a hitch in her voice as his palms blazed a trail to her pebbled nipples.
She dropped her head back onto the table with a thunk. “Oh, God.”
Noah took his time lowering his mouth to her. He dropped a circle of kisses around one pink, aching point.
“Killing me,” Cat groaned.
Finally, Noah gave in to the desire to taste. He lapped at her nipple with the flat of his tongue. Her hips bucked against him, lining his throbbing cock with the wet that seeped through the cotton of her pants. He flexed, testing.
“Noah!”
“I’ve barely touched you, tasted you, yet,” Noah teased.
“Touch and taste faster, or I’ll make you,” she threatened.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ignoring her warning, Noah leisurely sucked her other nipple into his mouth. Cat bowed off the table and used her nails to carve shallow trenches into his shoulders. She wanted to take and take and shove him off that precipice of control so Noah would free fall with her. She couldn’t handle the measured worship of her body by his.
It was doing things to her heart, her head. Confusing her.
Sex in Cat’s world was simple, physical, enjoyable. But this? What Noah was doing to her with just his mouth? It was something that walked the razor’s edge of pleasure and torture.
There was a power struggle happening right here on her dining room table, and she was losing. She was melting under his soft kisses and gentle hands.
His erection was evident under the zipper of his pants. The fabric strained around the demanding column of steel.
His mouth was working its way across her ribs and over her stomach. He slipped his fingers into the waistband of her pants, and she heard the murmur of approval when those fingertips didn’t find any barriers underneath.
He slid the pants down her thighs, taking his time to enjoy the skin to skin contact. His fingers blazed hot, bright paths down the backs of her thighs, her knees, her calves. He knelt before her and Cat felt the anticipation that ached inside her echo hollowly.
With the finesse of a man who had all the time in the world, Noah brought his lips to the inside of her knee. The shock of it, the neediness that bloomed within her, heightened every sensation. She was beyond sensitive, beyond primed.
Gently, he pressed her legs open wider until they hooked on opposite corners of the table. Vulnerable, spread bare before him, Cat watched him.
He was studying her body as if it were a fine work of art. Something to be appreciated, admired. The touch of his fingers stroking inside her thighs was driving her to madness. She needed him inside her, filling her, stretching her.
And just when she thought she might die from need on the table, she felt the tip of his tongue trace its way around her smooth folds. Still, he wasn’t touching her where she needed it most. But he couldn’t possibly hold out much longer, and then he’d give her what she craved.
“Noah!” His name was a strangled gasp forced from her throat. One stroke of his tongue from her aching center through her sex and over her clit delivered a creeping blackness at the edges of her vision.
Reflexively she tried to close her legs. But Noah’s big hands closed over her thighs spreading her open. He stroked her again with his magical, glorious mouth. Lapping at her, tasting, teasing. Cat’s legs quivered at the knife’s edge of pleasure that was cutting her to ribbons.
“So beautiful. So perfect,” he whispered against her as his mouth worked her closer and closer to release.
Noah was destroying her cell by cell. Cat couldn’t move, much less participate, dragging him over the edge for a fast fuck that she so enjoyed. She couldn’t do anything but lay there and take layer after layer of silky pleasure that his mouth dealt her.
She could feel the tightening, the drawing in of her muscles as they begged for an orgasm she knew she’d never forget. The tingling began in the soles of her feet and sparked all the way up her spine.
“N-Noah,” she gasped.
Knowing her body with an impossibly intimate knowledge, Noah drove two fingers into her tight sheath. The invasion of his flesh against hers, the skillful stroke of his tongue, sent Cat spiraling into the abyss. Colors, pinks and reds and golds, danced before her eyes as her muscles pulled him deeper and deeper. She went blind and deaf. Cat could only feel as each explosion traveled the entire length of her body and back again to her throbbing core.
She gasped, words failing her as Noah gentled his mouth against her tiny bud of nerves.
Thoughts, wild and terrifying, careened through her mind. She pushed them aside and focused on the only one that mattered. More.
She levered up off the table and pushed Noah all the way to the floor.
“Cat, let me—”
She wasn’t letting Noah anything at this point. Her legs were so weak her thighs were trembling.
“My turn,” she argued, her throat raw from her cries.
She undid his belt and zipper in record time, even with the post-orgasmic tremors in her fingers. The fabric of his pants smooth and soft beneath her hands.
She felt Noah’s reluctance at her haste, but she wanted him out of his comfort zone just as he’d dragged her out of hers. She wanted to show him the mind-clearing elation of fast and hard.
She worked his pants down his thighs to his ankles, and leaving his boots on, she crawled up his body, pausing to bite his inner thigh hard.
His cock jerked before her eyes, and his guttural groan was fucking music to her ears. She hadn’t even touched him yet, and precum was leaking from the crown of his—as predicted—impressive cock.
She fisted a hand around the root, and Noah’s feet scrambled for purchase on the wood paneled floor as if he were trying to escape.
“Uh-uh,” Cat tutted, brushing a feather-like kiss over the swollen head.
The cords of his neck stood out as he fought back the urges she was desperate to free.
“My turn now,” she said, her confidence returning with the control she’d wrestled back.
“Cat—” Her name sounded like a warning, but he knew Cat didn’t think much of the rules. Or he should have known.
She made sure Noah was looking at her when she wet her lips. His erection jerked in response against her hand. She gave him no time to anticipate before drawing her lips around his crown and sliding down the length. There was too much of him to go far, but when she hit the back of her throat, Noah’s hips flexed up before he could fight the urge.
This was where Cat liked to be: in charge.
She lost herself in the rhythm, the slick slide of her mouth over and around the thick column of aching arousal. He was pulling at her hair, oblivious to the pain he caused, and she liked it. Faster, pushing him closer and closer to that razor thin edge of control and wild. Of principled and primitive.
She needed him like that. Shredded control, driven by desire.
He was fucking her mouth now with shallow pumps of his hips, and she let him draw himself closer to the line. Brazenly, she reached down and cupped his balls.
He growled, a rumble that wrenched its way free from his chest. This time, when he pulled her hair, it was to drag her off his cock and up his body. He rolled them across the floor. The metal seams between the wood of the kitchen floor and the rug of the living room bit into Cat’s back and shoulders. But she didn’t care. Not with Noah ranging himself over her. Not with the head of his penis prodding at her begging entrance.
She was lightheaded with want. But somewhere inside, a tiny shred of logic lived. “Condom,” she breathed.
He swore and wrestled with one of the pockets of his pants.
Cat was barely breathing now, but the sound of foil tearing made her open her eyes. She watched him roll it down his thick length. Their gazes met as he fisted his erection, pumping it. His free hand closed over one of her breasts.
; Cat used her legs to draw him back into position. “Now, Noah,” she demanded. There was no time for teasing games. Just a desperate drive for release. He lined himself up, pressed gently, and Cat opened for him.
“Jesus, Noah. Now!”
And then he was pushing his way into her body, stretching and sliding until he was fully surrounded by her.
Cat cried out. The shock of the pleasure, of the edge of pain from being so full. Roughly, Noah clapped a hand over her mouth.
This. This is how Cat wanted it. Wild and fast, unthinking. Hand in place, Noah withdrew too slowly. She could feel every ridge, every vein of his dick as he left her body. She hooked her heels around his back and begged him to come back.
He slammed into her, hitting bottom. Cat felt her shoulders bite into the carpet.
“Yes,” she hissed against his hand.
“Open your eyes, Cat,” Noah commanded. No hint of the good-natured man now. Just a beast ready to lose himself in an ancient rhythm.
She did as she was told, fighting against the intimacy that connected them. He withdrew again, and just as Cat’s breath hitched he pushed back in, harder, faster. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face. His jaw was set with tension, the hollows of his cheeks stood out. And the guttural grunts he released every time he bottomed out inside her had her tender muscles gripping his erection harder.
She was supposed to be in control here, setting the speed, demanding the wild. But she felt her tethers on him snapping, her control dissolving every time he slammed into her.
He pushed off with his feet, digging into the floor. She heard a crack, a thump, and couldn’t have cared less what had just smashed to the floor because Noah was fucking her hard enough that they were moving across the floor from kitchen to living room on the power of his thrusts alone.
“I want to feel you come on my cock, Cat,” he told her. “I want to feel every squeeze of your tight, hot pussy until you make me come inside you.”
Cat couldn’t answer him. Couldn’t process the filthy promises her mild-mannered, tightly wound Noah was making as he raked himself in and out of her. She was already near another release when he leaned down between their bodies and lapped at her breast.
