Touch Me

by Christie Ridgway

  “Oh, I was honest about that.” She gave a little shrug. “I’m a faker.”

  Payne spun, stalked to the sink and then back again. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I’ve been pretty upfront, I think.”

  Narrowing his eyes, he came to stand toe-to-toe with her, towering over her smaller body. Trying to intimidate her with his size. This situation was careening out of control and he had to get a tight grip on it. “You want me.”

  “Yep,” she said breezily.

  “I wouldn’t let you fake anything,” he said on a sneer, a last ditch effort to have her reconsider. “It makes me mad even thinking you’d try that shit.”

  “I know,” she whispered. Her pulse started speeding in her throat, he could see it thrumming against her tender skin, and her gaze fixated on his mouth. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  He paced away again. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

  “Oh, please, Payne.” One fist propped on a sassy hip. “I’m not fifteen. I’m not a virgin.”

  “You’ve never had an orgasm.”

  “With a man,” she shot back. “I can do fine on my own.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same with me, cupcake.”

  He saw her swallow, and he wanted to follow the movements with his lips. “So you say,” she said, with an airy wave of her hand. “Big talk.”

  His temper kindled. Maybe she meant it to, but that didn’t stop him from setting the beer aside and once more prowling in her direction. “Are you sure about this?”

  She shuffled backward until her shoulders met one of the glass doors that led to the back yard. He put both his hands on the cool surface, fingers spread wide on either side of her head. “I don’t do this politely, cupcake. It won’t be flowers and candy and me trying to woo your climax out of you.”

  “Maybe that’s what I need,” she whispered. “An absence of wooing.”

  His cock, half-hard, went to its full length. Shit. Sweet Rose just might end up with a few tattered petals tonight and it didn’t seem to faze her. She seemed to think she wanted it like that.

  The idea brought him up short.

  This was Rose. Rose. Whom he’d saved from himself a dozen fucking years ago. Rose, who’d been the catalyst for him keeping clear of the kind of woman that she was, the kind that expected rainbow ponies and ice cream sundaes around every corner. Because of Rose, he’d stayed away from women who thought Payne Colson was a man who could be trusted with their heart.

  He’d kept his distance from women who wouldn’t understand he’d ultimately break it through the unfaithfulness that was bred in his muscle, bone, and blood.

  Perhaps she saw some of that on his face. “For goodness sake,” she said now. “It’s just sex.”

  That really fired up his mad. Resisting her was the only noble thing he’d ever done in his life. The only time he’d leashed himself from having something he truly wanted. He’d done that so Rose Dailey would never utter those fucking words. So for Rose Dailey it would never be “just sex.”

  Fine, then. Fine. Screwing her might screw her up but if she didn’t care then neither did Payne.

  He leaned into her, pressing his face against her throat. As he drew up his leg, forcing her thighs to part, he licked her skin, shaping that box she’d traced on him earlier. With the tip of his tongue he wrote his name in the center.

  Her fingers went into his hair and she arched, her body melting against his. “What if…what if getting me there takes a kiss?” she asked, panting a little. “Mouth on mouth?”

  His knee was against her hot pussy and he could feel the dampness already seeping through her swimsuit into his jeans. He’d show her the wet spot if that didn’t mean he’d have to take the pressure away that was priming her to blow—exactly when he wanted her to blow.

  “Payne?” she asked, her voice breathy. “What if I need that kiss?”

  He lifted his head to look into her flushed face and her dilated eyes, changed from that sun-brightened gray. They were darker now, with just a rim of silver around the edges like a lunar eclipse. “You won’t,” he promised them both. He had to hold onto his one last decency.

  Rose watched Payne cock his head now, and the corners of his mouth quirked. “Multiplication tables?”

  She nodded, without the breath to talk. The wetness where he’d kissed her neck was evaporating in the air, making her hyper-aware of her drying skin. It tingled when she swallowed. Then there was the place between her legs, already swollen and throbbing.

  His knee pressed higher, bringing her to her toes. She took her hands from his hair and grabbed his shoulders to keep her balance.

  His gaze settled on the mouth he wouldn’t kiss. Her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip.

  She felt his muscles go more rigid. “Where have you had sex, Rose?”

  “Uh…”

  “I want to know.” His fingertips, cold from the glass, traced her hot cheek. “Tell me, Rose.”

  Shivering at the contrast, she stared at him helplessly. “In a bed?”

  “Poor Rose,” he murmured. “We’re going to be much more adventurous than that.”

  She shivered again, the heat in his blue eyes and the darkness in his voice setting off a primitive warning in her brain. This was the man with the ridiculous shirt collection, she reminded herself, trying to calm. The man who’d given his favorite—he’d said it was Cilla’s, but Rose didn’t believe him—for a wedding quilt. He’d bought her ice cream sundaes and saved her from bullies.

  “I think I should make you come for the first time right here, your bare ass against the cold glass while I eat out your sweet pussy with my hot mouth.”

  Rose’s knees went to mush. Oh, God. This was also the guy who drove too fast and who’d had sex with a billion women and who said he wasn’t going to woo an orgasm from her. He wouldn’t need to, she realized. Just a little dirty talk and the pressure of his knee had her three-quarters of the way there.

  “What do you think of that, Rose?” Payne withdrew his knee and she fell to her heels, already missing that firm touch on her cleft.

  “I think, um, fine?” Grrr. She sounded uncertain and squeaky-voiced and she decided to keep her mouth shut from this moment on. He might be the experienced partner here, but she didn’t have to sound completely green.

  “Good,” he said, then reached for the hem of her cover-up. When it was bunched at her waist, he issued an order. “Hold here. Both hands.”

  Clutching the roll of fabric just below her breasts, she watched him strip his shirt away. He looked even bigger to her bared, the light bronzing his wide shoulders and revealing his scar and the dragon-headed, double-helix tattoo on the side of his ribs.

  Tossing the garment away, he stared down at her, as if he was deciding what item on the menu to sample first.

  The wait ratcheted her growing need. Her nipples had bunched into hard, aching points and more wetness trickled between her legs. She pressed back against the glass, using the support to hold herself steady.

  Payne licked his thumb and used it to draw a circle around her belly button. A moan worked itself up her throat, but she swallowed it down, determined to appear composed.

  His gaze flicked from her body to her face. “Is this what you do?” he murmured. “Hold back?”

  Afraid to speak, she shrugged.

  “You gotta feel it, Rose,” he said. His thumb moved to her mouth. “Open up.”

  A whimper escaped as it slid between her lips.

  Touching his forehead to hers, he whispered his next command. “Now suck.”

  She did, desperate for his taste. Prickles spread over her body at the carnality of the action and the way he surrounded her, caged her, his big body so close, his other forearm braced on the glass over her head. Breathing in through her nose, she smelled him, the fragrance of fresh water and warm, golden skin.

  His thumb pulled free with a pop and then he brushed it across her lips, wetting them. It w
as as good as any kiss, Rose decided, swiping out her tongue to taste him again.

  He touched his mouth to her temple, then slid it toward her ear. “Fucking’s a state of mind, Rose,” he said. “I’m gonna find my way into yours.”

  Alarms went off again. She was supposed to be uprooting him from her head, not giving him access there! But then he swirled his tongue around her ear and the worry was drowned in another wave of heat. One hand released the fabric at her waist to touch his chest, and he instantly moved away.

  “Back to position, Rose.” He looked stern, but then he bent to kiss the tip of her nose. “I know it’s hard, baby, but this is what you asked for.”

  Closing her eyes, she fisted both hands in the cover-up again.

  “Good,” he whispered, then hunkered down so his widespread knees brushed the outside of her legs. His mouth found the skin below her belly-button, tracing from hipbone to hipbone.

  Then two fingers of each hand curled around the elastic of her bathing suit bottoms. He swirled his tongue inside her navel as he inched them down. Rose shuddered, her fingers clenching the cover-up just as her inner muscles tightened, trying to hold onto the sweet spasms of building pleasure.

  The spandex bottoms rolled into a tight band as he pushed them toward her knees. Halfway there, he paused, and pressed his hot hands against the inside of her thighs, widening her stance as far as the constricting fabric would allow.

  He stared at her exposed cleft and more moisture gathered there, a drop of it sliding down her inner thigh. Embarrassed, aroused, and shivering inside and out, Rose could only stare as he swiped it up with one thumb.

  Her stomach muscles tightened, unable to look away as he worked the now-wet pad along the groove of her lips, opening her folds to his gaze. Reaching her swollen clit, he gave it the merest graze. Still, she twitched at the touch, biting her lip to hold back the rising tide of need.

  With another man she would have been riding the wave, ecstatic about the promise of nearing satisfaction and desperate to grab for it, but with Payne, she didn’t want to peak too soon.

  He had so much to show her.

  Her breath stuttering into her lungs, she watched as he plied her with his thumbs, peeling her like juicy fruit so that her more sensitive inner tissues were exposed. She felt air against there, and his burning gaze, and then his mouth neared her clit.

  Her heart pounded hard against her breastbone and her palms dampened, the moisture absorbed by the bunched material of her cover-up.

  “Ass to the glass,” he said. “We don’t want you falling.”

  She jerked back, eager for his next move, and the cold against her heated rump sent another round of goose bumps racing over her skin. Holding her breath, she watched his golden head draw nearer.

  A breath away, he glanced up, his eyes meeting hers. He frowned.

  Rose froze. Please, she whispered in her head. Please.

  “I think I want this to be a private show,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Palms to the glass too.”

  So eager was she for him to begin, she slammed her hands against the door behind her, causing it to quiver like she was. The hem of her cover-up dropped—over Payne’s head, screening his next actions from her eyes.

  But not from her nervous system.

  It didn’t begin with a gentle lick. There was no tentative first taste.

  Beneath the cover-up’s fabric, he tongued her, exploring her pulsing flesh from the hard, swollen knot of nerves at the top to the weeping channel. Her hips tilted to allow him access and her fingernails scraped against the surface behind her.

  He was a devil, she thought. No golden idol, but a burning-hot, devious demon.

  Fucking’s a state of mind, he’d said, and because she couldn’t see what he was doing to her, her imagination was etching every second of it on her brain, tattooing it onto her gray matter one delicious scrape of tongue against private flesh at a time. I’m gonna find my way into yours.

  She wanted to call a halt; to beg for it never to end. She wanted mercy; she wanted the continued cruelty of this exquisite torture.

  The tip of his tongue was flicking against her clit, then lashing it, and she was afraid she’d speak and say something that might never be taken back as raw, scalding pleasure shuddered up her thighs to swirl at her center. She was pulsing her hips toward his mouth, unable to hold back any longer, and then he pushed his face into her wet, open flesh and sucked her clitoris into his mouth.

  Hard.

  The firestorm of pleasure shattered, shards of it shooting to her fingertips, her toes. Then they were flung back, like filings to a magnet, to her center, to the man who’d wreaked such havoc. To the man who wrung every drop of bliss from her.

  She was still dazed by it when he rose to stand over her.

  Her gaze took him in, noting his wet lips and the burning blue of his eyes. Her inner core still pulsed with receding pleasure even as it felt too empty.

  “This way,” he said, and tugged her from the wall.

  Her bathing suit bottoms fell to her ankles as she moved. Stepping out of them, she wondered what was next. Were they going to the bedroom?

  But of course they weren’t, because that wasn’t “adventurous.”

  Or maybe it was just too far, because he impatiently kicked a kitchen chair away from the table and bent her, belly-first, over the wooden surface.

  The man probably had condoms in the kitchen—actually she knew he did, she’d seen a box of them in his junk drawer—and she heard the telltale rip of a foil packet as she placed her burning cheek against the table.

  He curled over her back, his mouth close to hers. She could smell her arousal on his face and the thought made her shudder. “Okay, Rose?”

  For answer, she bucked back into his body. His laugh was low and dirty and the sound made her skin shiver and her sex clench.

  His fingertips brushed the back of her thighs as he lifted the cover-up to bare her. Another wave of heady desire surged in her, fevering her skin. Instead of doing times tables, she was making pictures in her head again, imagining what he saw when he looked down at her: open thighs, wet, puffy sex, the crumpled disarray of the cover-up, her disheveled hair.

  She longed to be penetrated by him, possessed by him, and she’d take whatever shameless pose necessary to make that happen.

  Her fingers curled into fists as she sensed him stepping closer, and then one of his hands braced against her hip. She felt the knuckles of the other brush her inner thighs as he brought his cock to her opening. Then he was feeding that column of flesh to her, in tiny, breath-stealing increments.

  It filled her, a burning, delirious intrusion, and she tightened on him.

  He curled over her again, groaning. “Ease up, Rose. You gotta let me in.”

  It was all she wanted and all she didn’t want. But her body obeyed, muscles relaxing so his next thrust took him to the hilt. Rose brought one of her fists to her mouth and she bit on the back of her hand to smother her moan.

  Don’t talk, she reminded herself. Don’t give your mouth an opportunity to betray you.

  Then Payne was moving, shuttling in and out of her. With each drive, she felt the scrape of denim against her thighs and her bottom and the fact that they were both half-dressed was an even bigger turn-on. She went on her toes to upturn her hips and take every inch of him. He groaned, the hand on her hip moving down to caress her butt. The rough skin of his palm was an aphrodisiac, and she felt pleasure rushing in again, heat and heaviness gathering at her center.

  The slap of skin against skin was an erotic soundtrack to the sex act, and she squeezed shut her eyes, allowing herself to revel in the carnality of it all. Their bodies were hungry, eager, yin and yang gyrating with need, seeking out a purely physical sensation. Release didn’t require commitment or a relationship or even thought.

  Fucking’s a state of mind.

  She pushed those words away and shoved back into his next thrust. Payne grunted, his fingers digging int
o her butt cheek, the small pain making her even wetter. Maybe he sensed it, because he kept that tight hold on her as he quickened the driving action of his hips.

  Biting harder on her hand, Rose felt the sharp pleasure jump like the needle on a seismograph. Her heart jolted in her chest, and Payne slammed into her with a heavy grunt. He ground deep and his hand slid around her thigh and found her clit. The first tweak of his fingers set her off, and as he stayed tight against her, pulsing with his climax, she found hers.

  In the aftermath, she lay still, panting.

  He didn’t move either, his breath loud in her ear, his chest heaving against her back.

  “Rose,” he whispered, as if it was an entire conversation.

  That was fine with her. In this vulnerable state, she remained leery of talk.

  Then he found her fist on the tabletop, and he loosened it, spreading her fingers so he could interlace theirs together. Without her volition, her digits squeezed down on him, a tight, almost desperate hold.

  Her eyes squeezed too, as in despair she realized just how easy it could be to give herself away without saying a single word.

  Chapter Ten

  Payne padded into the kitchen, bare feet quiet. The first thing he noticed was Rose’s bikini bottoms, discarded in a slanted square of morning light coming through the glass-paneled door. The sight tugged at his dick, making that little brain suggest a fast trip to the guest bedroom where they could wake her for an a.m. round.

  Last night, he hadn’t let her sleep with him, of course. Christ, he didn’t kiss on the mouth, so he certainly wouldn’t let someone crash between his sheets. But when he’d helped her up from the kitchen table, she’d look so thoroughly sex-wrecked, that he’d guided her into the guest room and tucked her into the bed.

  She hadn’t made a sound, just stared at him through sleepy, half-mast lids, her lips curved.

  Who the hell knew what she’d been thinking then?

  With her mission accomplished—orgasm by man—would she want another go?