Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  Full steam ahead for a kiss?

  She was staring at his lips.

  Affirmative. Cradling her cheeks, he drew her near and set his mouth on hers. The contact jolted his loins awake and—

  Wow.

  He had no idea that bringing a woman into fuller discovery of her sexuality could be such a huge turn-on. But as Farrin’s lips flowered to life under his mouth, their kiss moving from soft caresses, to parted hunger, to something more forceful and slanting, then tongues coming into play with passionate exploration, ratcheting up to intense dueling…there was no denying it. THE AMAZING THREE-LEGGED MAN AND HIS ERECTILE MARVELS was back in the house tonight. Hoo-yah! Give him a warm welcome, folks! It was all he could do not to growl into her open mouth—but instinct told him she wasn’t quite ready for growling.

  Every nerve crackling with anticipation, he slid a hand beneath the hem of her oversized shirt and moved his fingers idly up her back, discovering soft, resilient flesh and womanly curves and hollows. He mapped over the warm planes of her shoulder blades, then dipped down and around her ribcage toward the front of her. He swooped in from underneath one of her breasts, letting the voluptuous weight of her settle in the stretch of his thumb and first couple of fingers. Here he paused, lips barely touching hers, breathing roughly. Are we still good?

  Her answer was an impatient hip-rock squirm that slackened his lips around his next kiss and pushed a ragged growl straight out of his mouth. Oops. But, hell. She’d just rolled his hard dick against her belly, and now his unit was throbbing on the verge of doing something uncharacteristic—like push him beyond control. Air burned in his lungs.

  She arched a little, going up on her tiptoes, a wordless plea that tore more oxygen from his body…and got him busy scooping her breast fully into his hand—as much as he could; damn, she was hefty. He squeezed, massaged, and molded it, wholly discovering her luscious flesh. Muscles all over his body knotted up. With his thumb and fingers, he teased her lusty nipple into an erect, quivering point, and she did more squirming, sexy, writhing undulations that pushed testosterone into parts of his body in no need of help revving up. Ah, hell.

  Trouble.

  His three-year-deprived dick was demanding an immediate end be brought to its moratorium—a bunch of yakking protests that a recent beat-off session could’ve easily shut up. But, you know, during this last week, when?

  He stepped back a bit, swallowing tautly, and checked gazes with her.

  Her dark chocolate eyes had deepened into a velvety rich dessert.

  It was a solid green deck to continue if he ever saw one, and his dick exhaled a huge sigh of relief. Time for her to lose some clothes. He took her shirt by the hem and smoothly tugged it over her head.

  Her nipples crinkled up tighter from the brush of air…maybe from his gaze. Because he was staring at her. Hard. Hungrily. He was even suddenly dealing with a mouthful of saliva. Because her nipples were a delicious burgundy, and he’d never seen a pair so darkly colored.

  It fumbled up his fingers when he moved to unbutton her pants. He grappled, grunted, then shoved them down her hips. Not a lot of subtlety to it—just off. She stepped out of her pants, and he…

  He then…

  He goggled at her.

  She wasn’t wearing any underwear—of course, yeah, they were laid out on the footlocker—so her naked lower region was bared immediately to his view, and—

  Surprise!

  Out had popped a substantial patch of black pubic hair. Well-groomed, but…still. He hadn’t seen a bush this lush since high school. Today’s woman denuded herself down to anything from barely nothing to nothing at all. His opinion about such grooming standards had never been fully yay or nay, but now that he was seeing all the exquisite softness in the area between Farrin’s thighs, coupled with the real feminine curves of her ripe figure, he was converted all the way to au natural.

  This was a woman.

  With all the suavity of a fuzz-faced adolescent, he clapped her tightly to his body and wheeled her backward. “Bed,” he said hoarsely, dipping his head to suckle her throat along the way.

  She came along compliantly, her fingers running the length of his shoulders as if to test his strength. There was something so awestruck about the dainty way she touched him, it was like she’d never felt anything quite as amazing as he was.

  Okay. Seriously. He wasn’t going to make it very much longer.

  Where the hell is Jason, and what have you done with his award-winning control?

  When they arrived at the bed, he prepared to sweep her into his arms—fighting the urge just to dump her on her back—but no fancy maneuvering was necessary. She climbed right up onto the mattress and lay down.

  On her back.

  Knees bent.

  Legs slightly parted.

  Pink lips peeking out from her rich thatch.

  His saliva evaporated, his heart punched him in the chest, and his boner strained painfully against the front of his pants, yelling, get me the fuck out of here! Jason came down on top of her, his dog tags tangling up between them, and found his way between her thighs, uttering a guttural sound at the way her soft breasts took his weight. He kissed her once on the mouth, twice on the nipples, ducked briefly to her belly—yes, he was racing, thoroughly obsessed with getting down to her bush—swirled his tongue in her navel, then—Nirvana!—buried his nose in her sweet-smelling locks. Oh, ho, ho, now this was soft hair. She—

  —yelped!

  Next thing he knew, she disappeared from beneath his face.

  He looked up in time to see her scuttling backward on all fours like a crab. She flew off the opposite side of the mattress and stood up, gawping at him, her breasts heaving.

  Ah, SHIT!

  He’d moved too fast. Damned three-year-deprived dick. Made me do it, you fucker.

  “What,” she gulped out, “are you doing?”

  He scrambled for his wits, luckily found them, then propped himself up on an elbow. “I was…” Huh? She didn’t know? He inched his eyebrows together. Beyond the obvious error of him moving too fast, had he also unintentionally been treading into uncharted territory? “I was going to…” He stalled. How to put this…? Eat your pussy? Munch your carpet? Sample your Egg McMuff? He caught back a grimace. No way could he use the usual euphemisms on her, not with the way she was gawking at him. “Er…make love to you with my mouth.” Oh, good. He should just punch himself in the dick right now.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “Do you mean cunnilingus?” she demanded.

  He winced. Yeah, okay, he’d go with, “Cunnilingus, yes. Has no man ever done that to you before?”

  Her expression rounded. “Of course not! Yuck.”

  Shock. Yuck?

  “A woman’s vagina is…is…” Clearly beyond her ability to describe. She left it at making a face at him.

  He was floored. He’d definitely figured her old fart of an ex didn’t know even the rudiments of foreplay—Raham and I had perfectly legal, marital relations. Translation: blah. But hadn’t at least some of the men from her past known what they were doing?

  Farrin’s body suddenly sagged. “I’m sorry.” She dragged a hand over her brow. “I overstated things when I told you I have very little experience. The truth is I have none. Raham is the only man I’ve ever been with.”

  Whoa. That upped his shock. Not some men from her past, just one.

  Her throat worked. “I haven’t had sex in eighteen years.”

  Eighteen years. Jason stayed motionless, his breathing struggling through the contracted air pockets in his lungs. If he moved, he’d punch a hole through a plywood wall. Her fucking perve of an ex-husband had done such a number on her, she hadn’t been able to cope with sex again.

  Yeah, dammit, remember how upset she’d been in the cave?

  I wanted to scream and cry and tear at Raham with my nails…

  “In the last eighteen years,” she continued to confess, “I’ve avoided everything to do with sex. I’ve ne
ver watched sex on TV or at the movies; I’ve never read a romantic novel; I’ve never even…touched myself. So I really don’t know anything at all. The medical aspects, yes, of course. I can recite Masters and Johnson’s four stages of sexual arousal to you easily.” She ticked off the stages on her fingers. “Excitement, when the pelvic area starts to feel full. Plateau, where feelings intensify from continuous stimulation. Orgasm, tension releases in a series of involuntary, muscular contractions. And Resolution, when the body relaxes back to its normal state.”

  He nodded slowly. Her naiveté was now totally obvious to him. First was that full bush of hers, running contrary to pop cultural sexual norms, and second was her standing before him in full frontal nudity, not making a single effort to cover herself. She was distracted by their argument, sure, but he’d also never known a full-figured woman not to scurry to hide herself the instant she went vertical—something Farrin would’ve done if she’d been thoroughly indoctrinated into America’s obsession with youth and thinness as the be-all-end-all definition of “sexy.” And what fun was sex if a woman hid her best parts: a slightly rounded belly, full, shapely thighs, curvy hips, and heavy breasts? Everything Farrin was advertising that made her so essentially female.

  She threw her arms out from her sides. “I warned you I was going to be disappointing.”

  He snapped to attention. “What? No.” He sat up all the way and shook his head adamantly. “God, no. You’re not disappointing at all.” And he meant it. For a moment, all of these discoveries had thrown him off his stride, but he was fully back on board with being her memory-maker.

  Some remedial work just needed to be done first.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Come here.”

  Farrin warily eyed the hand Jason patted on the white bedsheets.

  “Lie down on your stomach right here,” he instructed. “I have an idea.”

  “For what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She still didn’t move. She was discovering that sexual intercourse and mystery didn’t go together for her. She said as much to Jason, adding, “Especially seeing as your last idea didn’t work out well for me.”

  One of his eyebrows flashed into a wicked slant. “That remains to be seen.”

  Remains to be…? Nerves pulled taut in her chest. He wasn’t still considering performing cunnilingus on her, was he? What if she’d failed to clean herself thoroughly enough in that Navy shower? And second…second… She gestured haltingly. “What if you ulcerate the lingual frenulum on your tongue from…you know, doing…?” She cut herself off so quickly, her teeth clicked. Please tell me I didn’t just blurt that out.

  He stared at her blankly, a long, dumbfounded stare.

  She groaned internally. Oh, she loved how she defaulted to saying stupid, clinical things whenever she was nervous.

  “I appreciate your concern.” He now appeared to be nearly choking on the smile he was fighting to swallow. “But—”

  “Never mind,” she cut in, her cheeks prickly. She snatched up a pillow and slapped it over her front, abruptly very aware of how naked she was. Why couldn’t she be anywhere else in the world but here, standing in front of this one-man tribunal, confronting all the hang-ups she evidently had?

  He glanced at her shielding pillow, and his mouth tucked in at the corners.

  “Can’t we just have straightforward sex?” she asked, hearing—hating—the note of desperation in her voice. “Nothing fancy?”

  “We’re not going to have sex.”

  She made a grating noise. She knew she was going to mess this up! “You agreed not to stop!”

  “Farrin.” He shook his head. “We can’t be together like this. Let’s find out about each other’s bodies a bit more first. I’m guessing you don’t know what you like. Not yet.”

  She inhaled a breath, then sighed it out. He did have a point. She really couldn’t say what she liked, only what she didn’t.

  “You’re still in charge,” he assured her. “You can stop us at any time. We called it quits with that last thing you didn’t want, right? If you’re not into this, we’ll move onto something else again.”

  Again. How many times could she bear looking like an artless and unsophisticated nincompoop?

  “It’s the journey that’s important,” he persisted in a patient tone, “not the destination.” His strong hand stroked across the sheet once more in invitation. “C’mon, trust me and lie down.”

  Trust me. How could she deny him when he put it like that? She did trust him; he’d earned it. “All right.” She set her shielding pillow aside and climbed onto the mattress, belly down, taking a moment on her elbows to adjust her breasts into a comfy position before settling all the way onto her stomach.

  He draped the bedsheet over her hips. “So this is what we’re going to do,” he explained. “I’m going to draw a picture on your back, and you have to guess what it is.”

  He’s going to do what? She craned around to peer at him. “Is that foreplay?”

  “It’s a game.” He gave her shoulder a small push. “You have to stay flat and relax, though, not ask a bunch of questions.”

  She huffed as she lay back down.

  “This is supposed to be fun, not a chore. Ready?” He swept her hair out of the way. “Here goes.” His forefinger traced down her back.

  She wriggled and gasped. “Oh! That tickles.”

  “Sorry. I’ll press harder.”

  He didn’t by much. His fingertip was still a gentle caress, leaving tingling sensations in its wake as he stroked over the sensitive skin on her back. He sketched this way and that, and warmth fluttered through her limbs. She lightly closed her eyes, and before long she found herself relaxing into the simplicity of his touch; there was still something alluring about it, but in a subtle way. Her earlier tension melted away. She felt herself floating, responding, her blood growing sluggish. Then…

  It ended. His finger lifted off her, and he asked her something.

  She made a languid sound in her throat. “Mmm?”

  “What’s the picture I drew on your back?”

  She peeled open her eyes. “Oh.” She chuckled. That’s right… “I forgot to pay attention.”

  He snorted. “I’ll do it again.”

  More light, tingling touches streaked across her back. She moaned.

  “Are you concentrating?”

  “I am.” He was drawing a series of rectangles, a big one, smaller ones, a large triangle.

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “Um…” She giggled. “I have no idea.”

  “Sheesh, woman.” He shifted closer, one of his knees nudging her ribs. “All right, I’ll draw an easier picture.”

  “What was that last thing?”

  “A house.”

  A house. How nice…

  His finger worked its magic again on her back. She sank deeper into the mattress. He drew a circle, two dots near the top of it, a dot in the middle, then near the bottom, an arc like a crescent moon on its back.

  “Done,” he announced.

  She popped her eyes open. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  She peered sideways at him. “A happy face?”

  “You got it.”

  She lifted her head a little more and arched both brows at him. “You didn’t think I could guess anything more complicated than a happy face?”

  “Hey.” He spread his hands. “Not my fault if you can’t handle this game.”

  “I beg your pardon.” She angled onto her side. “I can handle it just fine.”

  The white of his teeth gleamed at her.

  She gazed at the teasing arc of his lips and caught back a smile of her own. He was playing with her… This is supposed to be fun. Tilting her chin, she considered him. She liked this side of Jason. “Have you taken into account,” she tossed back, “that maybe it’s the artist who needs improvement?”

  His answering laugh was a deep, barrel sound. “If you think y
ou can do better,” he challenged, a glimmer in his eyes, “have at it.”

  Now she considered his bare chest. What would it be like to touch those muscles? A spot tugged in her belly. “Very well.” She sat up. “I’ll take a turn.” She gestured at the mattress in front of her. “Lie down.”

  He did, his face aimed away from her, his arms crooked above his head. She paused a luxurious moment to study his back. He was a work of structural poetry, the muscles both solid and elegant where they arched out from the channel of his spine. No surprise to discover that his back was as magnificent as his front. And… She transferred her focus down to his camouflage-covered buttocks. Below? The tug in her belly shifted into her womb, becoming a strong pull. “Aren’t you going to undress all the way first?”

  He swiveled his head to look at her, a trace of surprise in his expression. She’d caught him off guard.

  She’d caught herself off guard, too, but she went with it. “You said we’re getting to know each other’s bodies, didn’t you?”

  “True. I did.” He performed a push-up with his arms, dog tags swaying forward, then pivoted, swinging his legs over the side of the bed opposite her.

  He bent to untie his boots, and she watched the molded bands of trim muscle beneath his flesh flex along his shoulders and in his back. Magnificent might not be a strong enough adjective for his body. He yanked off one boot and another, then unbuckled his belt. With the barest lift of his hips, he scooted his pants off. She caught only a brief glimpse of his bare buttocks and saw nothing of his genitals when he moved discreetly to lie back down, flinging the sheet over his lower half.

  Tenderness welled in her. He wasn’t keeping himself hidden for his modesty, but hers, so concerned with making sure she felt comfortable. And he was succeeding. He’d transformed their time together into something playful and relaxed, and, lo and behold, she was enjoying herself. Anxieties about disappointing him were rapidly departing. Worries about being artless and unsophisticated were likewise fading. His declaration about not having a preconceived notion was gaining traction. Moreover, she got the honest sense that if they didn’t end up making love after all, he would be completely okay with it.