Muffin Top

by Avery Flynn

  “And sliding your cock up and down a wet slit,” she said as she leaned closer, the move brushing her bare shoulder against his fingertips and shooting a bolt of electricity straight to his balls. “Does that count as sex as long as there’s no penetration?”

  Sweet fucking mercy.

  He was going to die—right here, right now—with pre-come on the tip of his raging hard-on.

  “No.” The word came out rough and desperate, sort of like how he felt at the moment.

  Yep. He was going to die and then go straight to hell for uttering such idiotic lies. Some might say he was going to H. E. double hockey sticks because of the dirty thoughts he was having about what exactly he wanted to do to and with Lucy, but he had a feeling God would forgive him. Frankie was only human, after all, and she could tempt a saint, which he very definitely was not. He was just an asshole who decided to go on a sex break to prove something—he couldn’t remember at the moment what—to himself and get his big head straight.

  “And what,” she asked, pausing long enough to tug her plump bottom lip between her teeth, “is it that the lesbians of the world are having without a man’s dick?”

  Yep. He was going to hell for lying. “Oral.”

  “Oh my God,” she said with an astonished laugh, pressing her hand against his chest and shoving. He, of course, didn’t go anywhere, and she didn’t drop her hand. “For a man who’s seen more vagina than some gynecologists, your ignorance is astounding.”

  “Careful, you might dent my ego.” Not possible, since it was made out of titanium, but his zipper was definitely in trouble.

  “Your definition of sex is asinine.”

  “Why?” He agreed, but the way Lucy’s brain worked was a total turn-on, and he liked getting a peek at that almost as much as checking out her tits.

  This was a new one for him. He didn’t usually spend this much time talking to the women he spent time with, and their discussions didn’t have a lot to do with their definition of sex so much as the demand for what to do sexually.

  The thing was, he was having fun, even with the zipper biting into his hard dick.

  Lucy dropped her hand from his chest to his thigh as they sat there facing each other on the love seat in her dad’s darkened living room while the movie played on, forgotten on the big-screen TV. Moving away from her was the last thing he wanted to do, but he shifted farther back anyway as the last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable because she’d accidentally touched his junk.

  Every nerve was attuned to Lucy as she seemed to think out her response. The way she fiddled with her hair with her free hand. The way she wet her bottom lip with her tongue. The way her breathing hitched and her pulse picked up at the base of her throat each time her gaze moved from his face to her hand on his thigh and back again.

  “Because all of those things mean making yourself vulnerable to another human being, and that’s the importance of sex,” she said, her voice soft but confident. “The orgasms are great, but what makes sex amazing is the personal connection.”

  It wasn’t that she lost him with that argument so much it seemed old-fashioned for her to say.

  “Isn’t that a stereotype?” he asked. “The good old days called, and they want their catchphrase back. You know the one: men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t try to deflect because you know that’s not what I’m saying at all. Love and intimacy are not the same things, and lust is definitely something different altogether. How you have sex, or define it, is not important. The emotional connection you have, however you’re having sex, is what makes it go from good to amazing—and that includes everything from holding hands to kissing to orgasms galore.”

  He’d had a lot of sex in his life, with a lot of different women, and in a lot of different ways, but that emotional connection BS? He wasn’t getting it. Sex was fun. It was easy. It felt good. All of the rest of it was just shit that marketers used to sell greeting cards and expensive jewelry—even if it did sound good coming from her.

  “When was the last time you had sex?” Yeah, it was a rude question to ask in most contexts, but in this conversation? It seemed prudent to find out. Okay, he needed to know because… He had no frickin’ clue why, but he did.

  “Going by your definition?” she asked, her tone teasing as if she knew he’d just been talking shit before. “Six months.”

  “Holy shit.” The words came out in a rush. “That’s a long time.”

  She screwed up her mouth and narrowed her eyes at him. “Thanks for reminding me, you jerk.”

  Shit. He was usually smoother with women than this. Lucy threw him so far off his game, like he was suddenly the guy who showed up for an Ice Knights hockey game in a baseball jersey. “That’s not what I meant.”

  She chuckled. “Yes it is, and it’s longer than I like.”

  “So, what do you do?” Really, this woman should be getting laid regularly. She was smart, funny, and hot. There had to be something he could do to help her put herself out there more.

  “I masturbate,” she said with a shrug.

  Okay, that was not what he meant, but now he had another unforgettable image implanted in his brain.

  “But it’s not the same,” she said, pulling her hand away from his thigh with a little sigh. “Sex, orgasms, hooking up, whatever you want to call it can be better when you’re with someone else, and are fucking amazing when you actually give a shit about that person.”

  He hated the loss of her touch. He hated the sad acceptance lurking in her eyes as if she had at least partially resigned herself to those orgasms with others being few and far between.

  “I care about the women I’ve been with.” It was true. He liked them. It wasn’t love, but he never told them it would be.

  “Yeah.” She looked him dead in the eyes. “But did you ever give any of them the chance to care about the real you?”

  How in the hell was he supposed to answer that? Even the idea of unpacking everything that went along with that question made his gut clench. This was why he liked his job. He was a man of action, not someone who was going to sit on his ass and think about things until the end of time.

  So, he got up and walked away from Lucy and did what he’d do at a fire scene. He took a big-picture look and assessed the situation—then he got ready to make his move.

  Chapter Eleven

  Frankie thought he was so clever, but Lucy saw right through him. He might like to make people think that he was all surface and old-fashioned ideas, but he’d given himself away. She didn’t believe he actually agreed with what he’d said earlier about the definition of sex for a second. How? Because she spent every working moment surrounded by real-life egomaniacs, sharks, and assholes. She could spot such a foul specimen at one hundred paces. He wasn’t that. He just liked pressing her buttons.

  The truth was, Frankie Hartigan was a softie—all six feet, six inches of him. Well, maybe not all of him. Even by the glow of the TV screen there was no missing the hard lines of him as he stood just inside the doorway.

  She was about to tell him just that—not the part about noticing his impressive endowments, but the fact that he was full of shit—when he started toward her like a man on a mission. With those long legs of his, he was next to her before she unwound what was happening. Then, he took her by surprise, leaning down and cupping her face with his hands before putting those talented lips of his to work. After that? There wasn’t a whole lot of anything going on above her eyebrows, because every other part of her had taken command of the ship.

  She opened her mouth on a sigh—okay, a moan—and his tongue swept inside, sending electric jolts throughout her body that tightened her nipples into hard peaks that pressed against the unlined lace of her bra. He teased and tempted with every stroke of his tongue against hers, every press of his lips. The old song was wrong. A kiss wasn’t just a kiss—at least not when Frankie Hartigan did it. It was so intense that it was like b
eing at the center of a hurricane with the world swirling around them.

  She didn’t recline on the love seat so much as she melted back into the cushions. Frankie followed her down, his weight solid against her. His position anchored her to him and this moment, if not reality, because there was no way this type of thing should be happening, not between them, not in the real world. Except that didn’t make it right, because she wasn’t about to let him break his word to himself, nor did she want to be with him because she was conveniently the only one handy.

  She broke the kiss with a desperate groan against the column of his throat. “Frankie, we can’t.”

  “You don’t want to?” he asked, drawing back.

  “It’s not that, it’s…” She couldn’t find the words, not when he was looking down at her as if she was the only woman in the world, the only one he really wanted. She almost believed him.

  “You’re trying to save me from myself?” He pressed against her, his hard length fitting against her so perfectly. “Lucy, I’m already lost, but I feel found any time I’m with you.”

  They were just words, pretty words, but she wanted to believe. That should scare her, but just as the reality started to scrape against the edges of her consciousness, one hand glided down to her hip and he ground his hard length against her.

  “But don’t worry, this is just a kiss between friends, right?”

  If she’d had words in her head at that moment, she would have answered the desperate need in his tone. Instead, she gave into it and swiveled her hips against him in a desperate search for relief from the throbbing need between her legs. This wasn’t right. He was on the sexual bench, and she was trying to escalate a scorching kiss to something that would leave them both naked and happy. However, it wasn’t to be, because she wasn’t going to take advantage of him like that.

  Laying her head back against the love seat’s arm rest, she kept her eyes shut tight as she tried to regain her breath.

  “That was…” She tried to come up with something, but her brain needed a total reboot at this point.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  Breathing hard, mental facilities on emergency power, and so turned on she worried about spontaneous combustion, she cracked her eyelids open and halfheartedly prayed for the strength to slide out from underneath him. Seeing his face from this position, close enough that she could drown in the want she saw in his blue eyes, sent a shiver of anticipation through her. Averting her gaze in an effort not to raise her head the few inches needed to start the kiss up again, she looked down the length of their bodies.

  Most of his body weight was supported by how he was propped up on his left forearm as he lay on the couch, keeping him above her and not on her. His right hand rested against the rise of her hip—and whoa. His hands were big, and strong, and she just wanted to experience all the fabulous things he could do with them. She bit down on her bottom lip, needing the pain to surface to keep from giving in to the amazing feeling of having his hands on her body.

  “Frankie,” she said, too turned on to know what to say after that beyond the fact that she needed to say something to put a stop to this.

  He brushed his thumb over her hip, following the paisley print on her skirt, as he looked down at her face from his position above her. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”

  “We shouldn’t.” It wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t right. He deserved better than that. Better than a convenient fuck.

  “You say that a lot for a woman who kisses me like she wants me.”

  Wants him? It seemed like such pedestrian words for how she was feeling right now—needy to the point of being desperate for the brush of his lips or the stroke of his touch.

  “I do,” she said, her voice breathy. Was it wrong to use him to relieve her aching need if he was using her, too? Yes, it was, the rational part of her brain inserted. “But I don’t want to push you into doing something you don’t really want to do.”

  “You don’t think I want to touch you?” He emphasized just how much he seemed to want to by lowering his hips forward so his hard cock rubbed against her core, tugging her skirt higher. “Or kiss you?” His mouth was on the column of her neck as he kissed and nipped his way up to her ear. “Or make you come repeatedly until your whole body is wrung out?” He followed that not by rocking against her, but by going completely still. “You can imagine that, can’t you? Clenching around me as the whole world breaks apart over and over and over again?”

  She nodded because her ability to form words had disappeared. Again. This was all too much and not enough, and bad decisions were about to be made—the absolute best kind of bad decisions.

  “Good, because I know I’ve imagined it. I’ve wanted it. I still do.” His fingers glided down from her hip to the hem of her skirt, an intense, hungry look on his face. “So I’m asking you to let me come off the bench with you.”

  She cupped his face and turned his head so he had to look right at her. There could be no mistakes in this. “Are you sure?”

  “My idea to stop having sex until I got my head straight was about as stupid as that bullshit definition of sex that I used earlier to get a rise out of you.”

  “I knew you were full of it about that.” She added pot-stirrer to total flirt under her mental list of Frankie’s attributes.

  “Couldn’t help it. You’re fucking hot when you’re riled up.” He toyed with the hem of her skirt and dipped his head low for another kiss that was as mind melting as it was quick. “And speaking of hot, I want to slide my hand underneath here and feel how slick you are right now because you are so wet, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” It was moaned more than spoken, but it was so very, very true.

  “Spread your legs.”

  She did without even thinking about it. That time was so far past. All she could do was feel and want. Tomorrow, she’d probably be embarrassed about this, once she had time to think about how all of Frankie’s words were probably born of a collective pent-up desperation, not an individual desire for her. Tonight, however, she was going to give in to the lust streaming through her and find relief for the ache building in her core.

  “Fuck, I love the feel of you.” His hand spanned the expanse of her thigh as he slid his palm upward under her skirt until his thumb grazed the damp center of her panties.

  She arched her hips, needing more than just the soft brush of his touch, and he let out a strangled groan. It wasn’t enough. She needed to feel more, to feel him. Instead, he was circling her clit with his thumb over her panties. Unwinding her hands from around his neck, she reached under her skirt to get rid of the damn things.

  He stopped with his thumb the moment her hands went under her skirt. “Be patient.”

  “I don’t want to be.” Her, whine? In this situation? Oh fuck yes. She was half a breath away from begging.

  “What do you want?” he asked, his voice as rough as his touch was gentle.

  Everything. Now. “To come.”

  “Now? This second?” He nipped her bottom lip, drawing it taut before kissing it better. “Or do you want to go slow.” He circled her panty-covered clit with a butterfly-soft touch. “Build it up.” He picked up the pace but kept his touch agonizingly light. “Stoke the flames until you can’t take it for another moment and you come so hard you can’t see.”

  God. When he put it like that, what choice did she have? Especially when he was looking at her with barely checked control and heat. It was almost as if he really did want her and not just any woman. It was in that moment she decided that Frankie Hartigan deserved every single bit of his reputation as the best sex in Waterbury, and she hadn’t even seen his dick. But oh, she would.

  She brought her hand out from under her skirt, cupped his jaw, the bristles of his day’s growth of beard tickling her palm, and kissed him.

  It was so much sensation, the feel of his lips on her mouth, the sweep of his tongue across her lips before he deepened the kiss. Then he moved his thumb again in
agonizing, slow turns about her clit, stopping every time she got close. That’s when he’d talk as he kissed his way across her exposed cleavage. Over and over the cycle repeated. He’d bring her right to the edge, so close the tingling sensations were shooting up her thighs, and then he’d pull back. The world could have exploded outside of the living room and she wouldn’t have been able to notice.

  Everything had narrowed until it was just the two of them—both still fully dressed—on the love seat, his hand up her skirt, his thumb rubbing her through her wet panties as she went higher and higher and—

  He stopped. “So close, wasn’t that?”

  “You’re killing me.” And she just might kill him.

  His all-too-knowing chuckle tickled her skin as they lay on the couch, totally wrapped up in each other. “But you’re so wet now. You’ve soaked through all that lace and cotton. You want to come so bad, don’t you?”

  “Please.” Oh yes, she was begging and she didn’t care.

  He started again, deliberate circles that made her entire body ache for release. “What do you think about when you touch yourself?”

  “Lately?” She arched her hips, trying to increase the pressure of his touch. “You.”

  He rewarded her by pressing harder against her clit, not enough to come, but enough to make her body rejoice.

  He shifted so he was lower on the couch and dipped his head to kiss along the V-neckline of her tank top before moving down to her nipple pressing against the thin material. Offering up a silent thank-you to the universe that she thought to put on the one sexy bra she’d packed after her shower. It was crap for actual support, and the straps bit down into her shoulders, but it was made of the prettiest unlined lace, which meant the heat of his mouth and the rough feel of his teeth went straight through the thin cotton of her tank top and the lace of her bra to her sensitive nipple. She shivered against the onslaught. It was absolute, blissful torture, and she wanted more—something Frankie must have sensed, because the evil man stopped. The wet cotton and lace only seemed to highlight the absence of his touch more.