by Loren, Roni
“Sorry?”
“Don’t be.” With that, he grabbed her and lifted her off her feet.
She gasped and wrapped her legs around his waist. “You’re going to drop me.”
“Not gonna happen.” He carried her toward the condo, leaving all their supplies behind. “I swear I didn’t bring you here for this.”
“I know.”
“But damn,” he said, holding her tighter, “I’m glad it’s now.”
She laughed and kissed him. “Me too. Now is awesome.”
In fact, now was her new favorite thing. This morning she’d melted down onstage and had a flashback, wrestled with an emotional vampire that had sucked every ounce of good feeling out of her. She’d planned to spend the rest of the day burying herself in busywork to block all of it out, to go back to that place where she could hide. But somehow this man had thwarted her plan and had her laughing and turned on only a few hours later.
Everything inside her felt buoyed. As if this morning had tied bricks to her feet and dropped her in the ocean, and Wes had somehow cut the chains loose and not only thrown her a life vest, but plunked her on a speedboat and put the wind in her hair.
She felt…light.
She’d forgotten how that felt.
He’d called her a sorceress, but he was looking pretty damn magical himself. She knew she needed to be careful about having any of those kinds of feelings. She knew that trap. This was how people ended up in her office. They trusted these moments as something more meaningful than they actually were. This was just fun. Attraction and infatuation. Novelty. She couldn’t overthink it and mistake it for anything more than that.
So she was turning that analytical switch in her brain off for a little while. She would enjoy this man, this moment, and the fluttery feeling coursing through her. This was what Kincaid had been talking about. Find a guy you like. Be a little wild. Don’t make it a big thing. Enjoy the ride.
She’d never done that before with a guy—or in any part of her life, really. Even in her previous experiences with guys, she had stayed grounded and practical. But this thing with Wes could never be mistaken for practical. He was risk wrapped in rebellion and laced with temptation. There was an intensity to her attraction to him that felt dangerous.
God. She had a crush.
She hadn’t had one since Finn, which should probably worry her. But there was no way she was walking away from Wes yet.
This feeling was too good to let go of. Wes was her new drug and, goddammit, she had earned a bender.
“You’ve got your thinking face on.” Wes said as he balanced her and unlocked his door. “What’s on that mind of yours, lawyer girl?”
A slow smile touched her lips. “Just you. Lots and lots of you.”
“Good. I’ve always liked being the center of attention.”
She laughed. And when he set her down in his bathroom, turned on the shower, and kissed down her neck, her answer was the God’s honest truth. This man didn’t leave room in her mind for anything else.
That was all she could think about right now.
Not the brunch. Not the future. Not anything at all.
Just Wes.
chapter
EIGHTEEN
Wes was half convinced he’d passed out from heat exhaustion and was really lying out in the parking lot having some sort of fever dream. Because he couldn’t possibly be in his bathroom kissing down Rebecca’s throat, cupping her ass, and about to strip her naked.
They’d agreed not to rush. They’d agreed to be smart. To continue getting to know each other. He wasn’t going to be old Wes who did everything on a whim without considering the fallout. But then the lawyer who had once dressed him down with one shrewd, derisive look in court had given him the sexiest, most come-hither gaze he’d ever encountered. I want you. And it hadn’t been put on. No guile at all.
It had annihilated any good sense he had.
That was one of the things that he couldn’t get enough of with Rebecca. She didn’t play games like the other women he’d been with. Confident in the courtroom and confident in her decisions. Outside, when she’d put her hands on him, rubbed the lotion into his skin, he’d been in physical pain with the need that had coursed through him. His mind couldn’t help imagining her hands sliding lower, dipping into his shorts, taking his cock in her slick hand. His own hands roaming over her body and thumbing the hard points of her nipples beneath that borrowed T-shirt. But he’d forced himself to keep it in check, to not act like some hard-up guy who couldn’t control himself.
But when he’d given her a chance to back away, she’d made the move instead. Feeling her lips on his chest had been more erotic than he could’ve imagined such a simple move being. What it represented had flipped every one of his switches.
She wanted him, and she wasn’t afraid to tell him that. No gray areas. No coy games.
Bold and honest.
She wanted to feel good. To have fun.
He wasn’t going to let her down.
He lifted his head and pulled the elastic band from her hair, letting it fall loose around her shoulders. The humidity outside had made it curl. He wrapped a lock around his finger and smiled. “You have curls.”
She smirked. “Don’t tell anyone my secret. I straighten it every morning. I had enough Little Orphan Annie references in kindergarten to last me a lifetime.”
He slid his hand over the curve of her ass and pulled her close. “You don’t look like Annie. You look like some secret, wild version of the buttoned-up lawyer everyone else knows. I like it.”
“There is no wild version of me.”
“Liar,” he said against her ear, then kissed the hollow behind it, liking the way she shivered against him. “Kissing some guy on the first night just to see what it was like? A little wild.”
She tipped her head back with a sigh.
He slid a hand beneath the wet T-shirt, pushing her bra up and cupping her breast, the feel of all that soft, warm flesh making him go painfully hard. He dragged his thumb over her nipple, and she made a needy sound in the back of her throat that made him lose his words for a second. He licked his lips. “Buying a food truck on a whim to help a charity? Pretty wild, lawyer girl.”
She scoffed, but there was no real oomph behind it.
“Getting naked with someone you used to hate on a Sunday afternoon? Definitely wild,” he declared. “I think you’ve just been fooling everyone else with the uptight routine.”
She gave a lazy smile, eyes still closed. “Never. I’m the good girl, Wes. The straight-A student. I’m the girl next door.”
The mocking in her voice was hard to miss.
“That’s what people say, huh?” He pinched her nipple, eliciting a sharp gasp from her. “Well, they’re not looking hard enough. Because I felt it when you kissed me that first night. You’re all fire, Bec. You’ve just figured out clever ways to bank it. But you can’t hide it from me.”
He pulled the T-shirt up and over her head, taking her bra with it, and cursed under his breath as a sharp kick of need almost rocked him onto his heels. Some of her faint freckles had made a path down her chest, a path that he could imagine tracing with his tongue. But what really did him in was the sight of the tight, rosy points of her breasts, announcing just how turned on she was.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous I can barely stand it,” he said, the words tumbling out of him.
Her eyes blinked open, that deep-blue gaze capturing him. She looked…surprised. He hated that. Hated that being told she was gorgeous was what threw her. Whatever guys she’d had in her life had apparently been idiots who didn’t know how to state the obvious.
He tossed the shirt aside and took her wrists, lifting her arms over her head and pinning them to the shower door. “You keep these here for me. I’m gonna need a minute.”
Her throat worked and she held his gaze, but when he released her wrists, she turned them to grab the shower door and kept them there. “Wes, the water…”
He pres
sed his fingers over her lips and smiled. “Patience. A chef likes to savor.”
*
Savor.
Rebecca was going to implode—just turn into nothing and disappear. No way her body could sustain this level of arousal for any extended period of time. But Wes gave her a look that said he was one hundred percent serious. He wanted her to stand there and let him have his fill.
He reached for the waistband of the shorts she’d borrowed and dragged them down her hips, along with her panties, until they dropped to the floor and she stepped out of them. She had a dart of panic at the thought of being so exposed, but then his hand cupped her breast, and he bent to take it in his mouth.
The wet heat of his tongue grazed across her sensitive flesh and her sex clenched, a soft cry escaping her. The steamy air spilling out of the shower moved over her bare skin, but she was already on fire. Wes sucked and teased, his other hand reaching up to stroke her other breast. Her back arched, and she wondered if it was possible to come just from this. Every nip of his teeth and swipe of his tongue felt like it was between her legs and not just at her breast.
But when he pulled away and looked down her body, the nerves resurfaced like a thousand butterfly wings beating inside her chest.
She took a deep breath. She was no virgin, but for her, sex had always taken a fairly prescribed route. It involved a dark room and sheets and the horizontal position. Being so exposed in the lights of the bathroom had her feeling more than a little vulnerable—and not just because of her scars. But when she caught the look on Wes’s face as his focus slid over her, the worry morphed into something else.
Wes looked like a man who’d just been served the most delicious meal of his life. When he’d told her she was gorgeous, she’d at first been taken aback. Men didn’t call her that. Pretty, at times. Elegant, once or twice. But nothing more emphatic than that. So when Wes had said it, she’d chalked it up to him making her feel good. But seeing how he was looking at her now, she realized she’d been wrong. His attraction was so visceral she could almost feel the desire in his eyes like a touch.
It made her feel wholly…present. Completely in her skin in a way she’d never felt before with a man. Something tightly knotted unwound inside her. “I think it’s exceptionally unfair that I’m the only one naked.”
Wes gave her a sly smile and a look full of heat. “Still bossy even with her hands above her head.”
“You expected that to change?”
“Nope.” He reached for his shorts and pushed them down and off. Rebecca let her gaze travel from the floor upward, taking in the long legs, strong thighs, and then finally the smooth, hard length of him. Her thighs pressed together, the sight of him sending a fresh wave of need through her and reminding her how damn long it’d been since she’d slept with anyone.
Wes took his cock in his hand and gave it an easy stroke as he stepped close again. “Better? All’s fair now, Bec?”
“Only if I can use my hands now.”
He smiled. “Not yet. I’ve got places to go.” He slid hot palms onto her waist and lowered his knees to the rug. “Things to savor.”
Before she could begin to process Wes at her feet, he bent down and pressed a kiss to her bad knee, right over the thickest scar. Her belly flip-flopped, but before she could freak out, he moved up her thigh, kissing over the other ugly places and the smooth ones, and slipped his hand between her legs, stroking over the slick, sensitive skin.
The panic that had been trying to take over evaporated like mist on a hot day. Wes took his time, easing a finger inside her, giving her slow-building pleasure as he kissed his way up. But when he reached the apex of her thighs and dragged his tongue over her clit, all sense of slow-building disappeared. Her head tapped back against the shower door, and she hissed out a breath at the shock of need that zipped through her.
The flat of his tongue rolled over her, and her hands went to his hair. She couldn’t keep them above her any longer, couldn’t not touch him. He grunted at her grip but didn’t back away. He just kept tasting her, his lips and tongue and finger working in a slow, sensual dance, as if he really was savoring her and enjoying the tease.
“Wes…if you keep…I’m gonna…”
He eased back for a minute, pressing a kiss to her inner thigh and then peered up at her, promise in his eyes. “That’s the point, gorgeous. We’ve got all the time in the world. Let me make you feel good. The supply of these is not limited.”
“But…” The protest died on her lips as he lifted her bad knee to rest over his shoulder and opened her body to him. He kissed her long and deep right where she ached the most, and her vision blurred as everything sparked like static along her skin.
She closed her eyes and held on to his head as if she were hanging off a cliff and he was all she had to keep from falling. She’d wanted to tell him that if she came now, she wouldn’t be able to do that again for a long while. But the words wouldn’t form and then the orgasm was washing over her, steamrolling any resistance she could’ve mustered.
She cried out, her head tapping the shower door, and arched into him, letting herself get swallowed up by all the pleasure. It’d been so long since she’d come by anyone else’s touch that she’d forgotten how different it was, how that out-of-control feeling of knowing she was completely at someone else’s mercy amplified each sensation. They would give, and she would take. And boy, was Wes giving. He pushed her past the point where she would’ve stopped herself and called it good, sending her to a more intense, breath-stealing place that had her writhing and cursing and calling his name—all at the same time.
Not until Wes eased her leg back down and she was panting her way through the aftershocks did she realize she was still clutching fistfuls of his hair and had slid halfway down the shower door. She quickly released him and steadied herself. “Wow, that was…”
But Wes didn’t let her finish. He stood, his attention hot on her, and cupped her jaw, giving her a crushing kiss.
There was so much in that kiss—need, desire, appreciation, not to mention the illicit flavor of sex—that her body, which had been fully satisfied, revved up again. The heat of his erection pressed against her belly as he kissed her like she’d never been kissed before.
She reached between them and wrapped her hand around him. He moaned into her mouth. “I’m gonna break land speed records if you do that. It’s been so long.”
The heat of him against her palm and the slick head were enough to have her inner muscles pulsing, her heartbeat relocating to that space between her thighs. “We’ve got all day, remember?”
He braced his hands on either side of her, his breath rasping against her neck. “Condoms are in my bedroom. I hope to God they’re not expired.”
“I have some in my purse in the living room. But…” An odd urge hit her as she stroked him, a deep, aching desire to feel him just like this, skin to skin. “It’s been over a year since I’ve been with anyone, and I’m on the pill. Have you been tested?”
“Yes. I’m good, but I can go get—”
She kissed him, swallowing the words and following her gut. She pulled back and met his eyes. “I’m okay with it if you are.”
Something dark and dangerous flared in his gaze. “I’ve never been more okay with anything ever. This will be slower the next time, I promise. But right now…” He guided her into the steamy space of the shower, the warm water cascading over her skin. “Right now I need you to hold on.”
He turned her around and she reached out, automatically grabbing the towel bar fastened to the tile wall. He pressed his body against her back, rubbing all that maleness against her slick skin—rough hair and hard muscle, the thick, hot need of his erection branding her and making the water feel cool in comparison. She nearly purred as she rocked back against him.
He sucked the water off the curve of her neck and then nipped at her ear. “You are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Spread your legs for me. I need to be inside you.”
A
hard shudder went through her, and she did as he asked. He wrapped an arm around her waist, keeping her steady as she gripped the bar, and then he was pressing against her entrance, making her stomach flutter and her knuckles go white. When he slid inside, stretching and filling her, she let out a sound of relief, the emptiness finally abating.
He growled against her ear and rocked into her, deep and slower than she’d expected, as if he was still savoring, though she knew he had to be pushing his edge.
“Wes,” she whispered, hearing the begging note in her voice over the hard patter of the water.
The arm he had around her slid down, finding her sensitive clit as he sank deep again and picked up a little speed. She tensed, expecting the stimulation to be too much too soon, but the feel of his calloused finger along her tender flesh made an edgy need bloom. She was right there again. She could feel the demand of her body, the pulsing potential. It was just out of reach.
“Please.” The word slipped out, unbidden. “I need…”
“What?” he asked hoarsely as he continued pumping into her. “Tell me.”
Her hands tightened on the bar. “Fuck me, Wes. I need…fast.”
Wes made a sound deep in his throat and his hips rocked faster, thrusting into her while his fingers worked her to the point of being rough.
But that edge was apparently just what she needed because colored dots of light appeared behind her eyes, and an orgasm she didn’t think she had in her exploded through her. She cried out, the sound echoing off the tile walls and tightening her throat.
Wes made the sexiest grinding grunts—as if he was mad at her for making him feel so good—and thrust into her fast and deep. Then he went dead still, buried to the hilt, his muscles tensing against her. He made a pained sound and called her Bec and then was moving again, riding out the rest of his pleasure and stretching out hers.
When they finally slowed, sated and spent, he planted his hands next to hers, caging her in. They breathed hard together as they came down from the high, hot water tracking over them like some weird baptism into a new phase in their arrangement.
