Before he laid her out on the bed and took what she wanted him to have, he wrapped his arms around her and held her. “If something doesn’t work, you tell me. Okay?”
She felt so damn good against his chest, her head resting almost on his shoulder. She fit against him. With him. Then she said, “I can do that?”
It broke his heart a little bit, that she would even question her right to have a say in her own pleasure.
Then he realized that he’d been questioning that very thing a matter of moments earlier. She knew what she wanted. She’d been brave enough to ask for it.
And he had told her all she had to do was ask—the answer would be yes.
“Yup.” He backed her up to the bed and laid her out on it. “Something not working, something you want to try—just ask, babe.”
She scooted farther back onto the bed, giving him plenty of room—and a hell of a view of her luscious body. “All right.”
“Do you want me to do to you what you did to me?” He’d been with a few women who weren’t comfortable with oral sex. As much as he wanted to taste her—all of her—he felt it was only right to ask.
Her sensual smile stiffened. “I think...maybe it would be better to...you know...first.”
Yeah, he’d guessed right on that one. She may have convinced him, but she was still nervous. “Maybe later?”
That got him a wicked grin. “Perhaps.”
He leaned over and snagged a condom from the bedside table. She watched as he rolled it on. Then he covered her body with his. She tensed, as if she expected him to plunge into the gap, but he didn’t. He focused on relaxing her—he ran his tongue over her dark nipples, blowing on them to make them tighten up. And to listen to her gasp in surprise.
“Good?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good.” He worked his way up her chest to her neck, where he kissed and sucked while fondling her breasts until she was right where she’d been in the backseat of the car—bucking against him, her body begging for his. The whole time, her hands moved over his back—testing the muscles, digging into his skin when he did something she particularly liked.
He reached down between her legs and skimmed his hand over the glossy hair that covered her there. Untrimmed, untamed—just her in her natural state. He stroked her sex, feeling the tremors that shook her. “Good?”
“Ah, Chance,” was the response he got, low and throaty in his ear.
He slipped one finger inside her. When her muscles clamped down on him, he about lost it then and there. But he focused on her, kissing her as she moaned at his touch.
He couldn’t take it anymore. He was doing his damnedest to put her first, but he needed the release that was pounding in his blood. He needed her more than he’d ever needed any other woman.
He had to do this right.
Thirteen
Gabriella was having trouble breathing. Chance was doing things to her—things that she’d read about, dreamed about—but nothing had prepared her for the way his touch affected her.
She’d touched herself. She was only human, after all. She’d been about fifteen when she’d discovered that rubbing herself felt good and, if she kept doing it, it then felt great. Chance was rubbing her in that manner and it did feel good.
But he was inside her, too—and that was so much more than she’d expected. What was she supposed to be feeling? What if she wasn’t doing this right? She’d basically thrown herself at his feet in such a scandalous way that she still couldn’t believe she’d taken him into her mouth.
Then he pulled back. “You’re so beautiful,” he said in a voice that set her shaking again. Then, leaning back on one hand, he fitted himself against her and began to push.
Again, she wasn’t sure what to expect. In books, a man often sank himself into his woman, an action that was quick and decisive and always painted as being very manly, even if it did mean that the woman hurt more because of it.
Chance did not do that. He moved slowly and paused often. All the while, he kept kissing her lips, her neck, her shoulders. Then he would push forward again.
It didn’t hurt. Thank heavens. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but she’d read about the pain of the quick tearing that went with this. No pain, no tearing.
Finally, Chance was fully inside her. “Doing okay?” he asked.
None of this was what she’d thought. She didn’t even know the right way to respond to that thoughtful question. “I...um...yes?” She hadn’t meant for it to come out as a question. She was sure there was nothing appealing about a woman who didn’t have the first clue what she was doing in bed.
But instead of laughing or mocking her, Chance took a deep breath. As he did so, his hips moved—not a big gesture, but enough that she felt it deep inside. “You feel so good,” he said, his voice little better than a whisper.
“Do I?”
“Oh, yeah.” Then he flashed the crooked grin at her that made her forget all about what she may or may not supposed to be doing. All she could think of was being here, right now, with Chance. “Now for the fun part.”
Oh, thank goodness—this hadn’t been the fun part. Well, some of it had been fun, but she didn’t yet see what everyone always made such a fuss about.
Then he moved. He pulled back and thrust forward, and then he did it again. Not the frenzied pace or hip-slamming often seen in movies—not that. This was slow, as he’d promised. It didn’t hurt. His body covered hers, her body covered his and then—
Then he shifted a little and thrust in again and her world changed.
“Oh!” she gasped as the sensation went from more to not enough in a heartbeat. His body tapped hers with exquisite precision—a craftsman hammering a fine piece of gold—and suddenly her body rang with sensation.
It was as if he was the artist and she was the medium. He lifted her arms over her head and caught one of her nipples in his mouth as he rotated his hips into hers. Then he slid his hands under her bottom and guided her to wrap her legs around his waist. She moved the way he wanted her to, trusting that he would make this everything she’d hoped for. Better than she’d hoped for.
“You feel amazing,” he said in that low voice that made her want to melt.
“Yes.” Her body seemed to have developed a mind of its own. Instead of him moving her legs or arms, she was moving them herself—touching him however she could. Instead of him rotating his hips against her, she was swaying against him, testing the ways he filled her.
“Yeah, like that,” he grunted in approval. “Does that feel good?”
“Yes.” And it did. But... “I need more.”
“All you had to do was ask.” Chance pushed back onto his heels and pulled her bottom against him at a new angle. Then, as he began to thrust with a renewed vigor, he licked his fingertips and pressed them against her sex.
“Oh. Oh!” Overwhelmed with the pleasure that was both outside and inside her, she struggled to find something to hold on to. He was sitting too far back for her to reach him, let alone kiss him. She had to content herself with grabbing his forearm. But even that wasn’t enough. As the pleasure built to heights she’d never dreamed of reaching by herself, she realized she was thrashing in the bed. It didn’t seem dignified. But she was powerless to stop as long as he held her captive with his touch.
“Come on, babe.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “So. Beautiful. Come for me.”
She wanted to—oh, how she wanted to—but instead of pushing her over the edge, his words called her back to herself. What if she couldn’t come? Would he be insulted that he hadn’t succeeded?
As these thoughts swirled around her desire, he leaned forward—without taking his fingers off her sex—and pried one of her hands from his arm. “Show me what you need.”
Was he serious?
Oh, yes—he was quite serious. With his gaze locked onto hers, he ran his tongue over the tips of her fingers. Then he guided her hand down. “Show me,” he said, half begging and half ordering.
So she did. She pressed against her most sensitive spot—his fingertips covering hers—and rubbed in the way that had always worked before.
Heat flooded her body as he held the eye contact. “So beautiful,” he groaned before his body crashed into hers. He roared, a deep sound that did something to her—something she couldn’t explain. He wasn’t holding back, wasn’t being calm and all-knowing—none of that.
She was doing that to him.
She didn’t know if she pressed harder or if it was him or if they both did—but her body seized up and unleashed a climax upon her unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Her body curled up on his, her back coming all the way off the bed as she shook around him—a work of art they’d made together.
The next thing she knew, Chance’s arms were wrapped around her as he lowered her back onto the bed. “Did it hurt?” he asked, his voice concerned as he pulled free—but didn’t let her go.
“What? No—it was—it was—” That was when she realized she was crying.
Oh, no. She was crying. In his bed.
This was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to her.
She ducked her head against his shoulder, too ashamed to look him in the eye. Chance chuckled and for the life of her, she couldn’t tell if he was laughing at her or not. “It was...good?”
She nodded against his chest, thankful he couldn’t see her stupid tears. Why was she crying? It had been the most wonderful thing that she’d ever felt! It was exactly what she’d wanted, exactly what she’d saved herself for all these years! Chance had put her needs first—he hadn’t treated her like some fragile thing he was afraid to touch, nor had he treated her as a disposable woman like some girls on staff sometimes complained about.
“Was that the first time that happened?”
She nodded, trying in vain to get her emotions under control. Oh, this was not a sexy, sophisticated response. She was a blubbering idiot.
This realization only made things worse.
Chance pulled back and lifted her chin until she had no choice but to look at him. “You were amazing, you know? I’m so glad you came. I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you were. As you are.”
“But...I’m a mess.”
He grinned at her, but it wasn’t the cocky grin that made her blood run hot. This grin made her feel safe in his arms, as if it were okay if she was sobbing in his bed. “You’re not a mess. You’re a woman. The one I’m in love with.”
“Oh.” And just like that, she no longer felt like an idiot, blubbering or otherwise.
She felt like she’d come home.
* * *
“I wish you could stay the night.”
Gabriella had climbed back into his bed after they’d both taken a moment to clean up. She was curled into him underneath the covers, her body pressed against his. Part of him wanted her to fall asleep because if she fell asleep, she’d stay.
He knew that wasn’t going to happen. This moment was just that—a moment. One that would be too short.
“I wish I could, as well.” As she spoke, she traced a path on his chest. Dang if her touch—light and sweet and hot all at the same time—didn’t make him want to break out in goose bumps.
“We don’t have much time, do we?”
She’d been a virgin who’d given herself to him. And it’d either been really bad or... He’d made her cry. That was a first for him. He’d been terrified that he’d hurt her but he didn’t think she could lie about something like that. Instead, her emotions had been laid bare for him. As she’d been.
He still couldn’t wrap his head around the whole thing, so he wrapped his arms around her instead.
Gabriella sighed against his chest, holding tighter to him. “No, we do not have much time.” She sounded so sad about it.
He realized she was answering a different question—one that had nothing to do with tonight and everything to do with tomorrow. Or the next day. Or—if he were lucky—next month.
Suddenly he was talking without being entirely sure of what he was saying. “Whatever you want—that’s what I’ll do, babe. We can find a way to make this work. My door is always open to you or I’ll come see you—all you have to do is ask and I’ll be there.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Instead she pressed her hand flat against his chest, right over his heart. “I want...” She trailed off, as though she didn’t know how to actually say the words.
He leaned over to kiss her forehead, but he didn’t rush into the gap. She could ask him for anything. He had to make sure she knew that.
“I want to be with you as long as I can.” Her voice was barely a whisper against his skin.
Because there’d come a time when she couldn’t—when her path and his would stop crossing. When she’d stop defying Joaquin and, by extension, her father.
“Let’s start with tomorrow. One day at a time. What do you want to do?”
She went back to tracing his skin again. It took a heck of a lot of effort to not roll into her, to not feel her body moving beneath his again.
“It might be...suspicious if we spent another evening together.”
He ran through his schedule. The time between Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day was pretty slow for him. He had a meeting with an ad firm in Houston to talk about commercials, but that was next week. Not tomorrow. “Luckily, I’ve got all day. Can you come out to work in the shop?”
“I believe so.”
That was not the confidence-inspiring answer he was looking for, but he knew it was as good as it got. “You come out to work in the shop and I’ll have lunch here for us.” Franny would pack him up some sandwiches. If he was lucky, she might even do it without commentary.
“Just lunch?” He didn’t have to look at her to know that she was smiling in that sly way of hers.
“I’ve got all afternoon, babe.”
“Yes.” She hummed against him. “That is what I want.”
“Good.” Even as he said it, he heard the sounds of heavy footsteps pacing downstairs. Joaquin was getting impatient, no doubt. They didn’t have very long at all.
So he kissed her again, praying he’d see her right back here again tomorrow. “Because that’s what I want, too.”
* * *
For three days—three of the best days in Chance’s memory—they got what they wanted. He met Gabriella at the barn in the morning where, after some not-so-quick kissing in the tack room, they’d mount up and race out to the shop. He’d kiss her goodbye for the morning and tend to the business of the ranch before he picked up lunch. They’d ride back to his house, have the kind of sex that got better every single time and eventually get around to reheating Franny’s lunch.
Eventually.
The more time they spent together, the more comfortable Gabriella seemed to get about asking for what she wanted. She may have been a virgin, but she’d thought about sex a great deal. True, she couldn’t meet his eyes when she asked if they could make love with him behind, but she’d asked. That was the important point. That and the explosive sex.
She also asked if they could have another picnic—and do it outside. Chance’s first reaction was that it wasn’t warm enough—they should wait for the weather to turn—but then he remembered their time was short. So he packed a couple of blankets and they kept most of their clothes on.
The more love they made, the more Chance wanted to make love with her. Even though they had sex every day, he still went to sleep with a hard-on that led to crazy dreams—dreams where Gabriella was sometimes older, sometimes with a baby on her hip, sometimes holding a red-hot spike and wearing
a welder’s mask. Every time, though, she’d look up at him through those thick lashes and say, “I want...” Even in his dreams, he did whatever he could to give her what she wanted.
Man, he was so gone. So damn gone.
Of course, he still had to deal with Joaquin, damn him. Franny always packed a double helping of the day’s special for the big man. Joaquin stayed downstairs when Chance and Gabriella were upstairs and the day they had the picnic sex, he mounted up on Beast and rode a perimeter around them—far enough away that he couldn’t hear moans, but close enough that he could hear the screams of terror he seemed to be expecting constantly.
Saturday rolled around. Slim didn’t work on the weekends, so there was no good reason to justify Gabriella coming out to the ranch bright and early. Plus, she’d said she’d thought Alex might be feeling a little better and she wanted to spend some time with him. How was he supposed to begrudge her that?
They were going to give Claire’s another go tonight to see if they could make it through a meal before he started peeling her clothes off her. The plan was that Gabriella would come out around five.
That didn’t explain why Chance was showered and shaved by three-thirty, which left him an hour and a half of staring at the clock. Great.
He emailed a couple of clients about their upcoming events at McDaniel’s Acres, thought about how he wanted his commercials to go—and kept staring at the clock. The minutes refused to tick by at any normal speed, damn them.
Finally he heard a car door slam outside. Thank God. He hurried to get the front door open for her. They had some time before their dinner reservations. Maybe she’d tell him something else she wanted, something they could do right now. Yeah, that’d be—
“Chance?”
As he swung the door open, he pulled up short. It wasn’t Gabriella rushing to throw her arms around him—it was his old flame, Cara Windsor. And she was crying.
Aw, hell.
“Cara?” he asked as she clung to him. “What’s wrong, honey?” She’d been coming to him a lot, complaining about how Alex didn’t remember her. It was hard to be sympathetic. Part of him didn’t want to know. Part of him—a small part, but it was still there—wanted to let her twist in the wind for choosing a lying, cheating bastard over him.
What a Rancher Wants Page 14
