by Ruthie Knox
He pulled a few parcels and a paper bag from his panniers and stacked them up on one of the beds. The presents immediately tipped over on the slick surface, and Tom had to restack them before leading her to the bed by the hand. He’d wrapped them in what looked suspiciously like brown paper towels from a restroom somewhere.
“I forgot about wrapping paper when I was at the store,” he explained. “And I didn’t have any tape, so as soon as you pick them up, the wrapping’s going to fall off.”
“Duly noted.”
They took off their shoes and sat across from each other on the bed, legs folded, faces glowing orange in the red light. She was suddenly nervous, unsure what social script they were following. They’d been riding together for nine weeks, sharing a bed for more than a month, but Tom buying her presents still didn’t quite compute. “Which one should I open first?”
“This one.” He handed her a lumpy bundle, and the scratchy paper towel slipped away to reveal a small jar of Tabasco sauce. He gave her a sheepish smile. “That one’s because of Corvallis. To remind you of your victory.”
“Tabasco isn’t very hot,” she teased, touched.
“Cut me some slack, I had to shop at Walmart.”
Next up was a Bit-o-Honey bar, because he knew she liked them, and then a much larger package that contained a white plastic stake hammer. This one made her laugh. “You totally bought this for yourself,” she accused. “I never even do the stakes.”
“Yeah, but now if you let me borrow it, you won’t have to listen to me swearing and complaining about my busted knuckles anymore.”
“That is a pretty good present,” she admitted. “All right, let me have the last one,” she said, holding her hand out for the paper bag.
“Wait, this is going to take some preparation.” He turned his back on her and rustled around in the bag. Lexie heard paper tearing, the muted snick of a lighter, and then he presented her with a chocolate cupcake, lit candle and all. “Happy birthday,” he said, his expression amused, indulgent, possibly a bit nervous. “I don’t sing. But, you know, many happy returns.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she blinked them back.
“Make a wish,” he told her.
Lexie closed her eyes and wished for Tom.
15
They propped satin pillows against the headboard and shared her cupcake, getting crumbs everywhere and not caring. As Tom pointed out, they could always switch to the other bed if this one got too messy. When she finished her half and licked the frosting off her fingers, she caught him watching her with the black, predatory look he always gave her when she was turning him on.
“What, you like this?” she asked, putting her thumb back into her mouth for a smidgen of frosting she’d missed.
He ate the last bite of his cupcake and sucked frosting off his own fingers, his eyes never leaving her face. Something about the way his lips closed around his fingertips, wet and intimate, made her want to squirm, and she had to admit he was right. The frosting-sucking thing was hot.
“Come here,” he said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her down onto the slippery mattress. “I’ve got one more present for you.” He licked the sugar off her lips with a slow drag of his tongue, then moved it inside her mouth and kissed her soundly.
“What’s my present?” she asked when they finally came up for air.
“I’m going to help you get your kicks on Route 66.”
She laughed, wiggling her hips against the bedspread. “That sounds promising. What does it involve?”
He met her eyes. “What do you want it to involve?” One hand found the hem of her jersey and slid inside to curve around her waist, his fingers warm and familiar and not in any kind of hurry.
“I get to make requests?”
“It’s your birthday. We’re in the bordello room. Use your imagination.” He braced one hand against the headboard and pushed, sliding easily down the bedspread until his head was at her waist. He eased her shirt out of the way to trace a circle around her belly button with his tongue, making her shiver.
The implied challenge intrigued her. Tom was inviting her to explore her fantasies, to take her pleasure from him however she wanted it. It was too good an invitation to pass up. But what did she want from him but more of the same? Her gaze drifted over to the lamp, and inspiration struck. Lexie was never going to knock sex in an unlit tent, not after all the mind-blowing nights she’d spent with Tom, but it did leave something to be desired in terms of savoring the visual aspects of lovemaking.
Tom’s tongue dipped down into her navel, and her pelvis went molten with lust. “Mmm. All right, birthday slave. Take your clothes off.”
He kneeled on the bed and reached behind his head with both hands to grab a fistful of T-shirt.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You said, ‘Take your clothes off.’ ” He left his arms where they were, elbows above his head, chest straining against his shirt in an unintentional beefcake pose. He did something like this about a dozen times a day, something so damn sexy it made her wet, and he didn’t have the slightest idea. He thought he was just taking his shirt off.
“I want you to make a little production of it. Go stand over there,” she said, pointing to the space between the two beds. Tom pursed his lips but scooted to the edge of the mattress and sauntered over to where she’d pointed.
“Now take your clothes off. But do it slowly. I never get a chance to look at you properly.”
“You’re going to make me strip for you in front of the bordello lamp?” He was smiling now.
“Yep. Get crackin’.”
She knew better than to expect a bump-and-grind from Tom, but she was pleased when he took her request seriously, pulling his shirt over his head slowly enough to create a little suspense and a lot of tingle, then turning around to give her a view of his back as he unzipped his shorts and let them fall to the floor along with his boxer-briefs. She’d seen him naked dozens of times, but still her heart was racing, her nipples aching. She’d never seen him quite this naked.
“Turn around.”
He turned, palms spread at his sides, long eyelashes hiding the expression in his downcast eyes. The red light made his dark skin glow, and he was so vital, so magnificent. And, for the moment, entirely hers.
“You like?” he asked, a cocky little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“You know I do.”
“Are you going to join me?” His voice remained casual, but there was an edge of discomfort there, too. Tom didn’t like standing still. He was a man of action.
“Yes. Now hush.” She slid to the edge of the bed and undressed, peeling off her jersey, sports bra, and shorts without ceremony. He watched her in silence, his scrutiny making her skin prickle with awareness. Then she moved over to him and draped her arms around his neck, keeping a few inches between their naked bodies. When he brought his hands to her waist, she removed them.
“You don’t get to touch. I’m going to do the touching. You’re just going to stand there and take it.”
His smile was indulgent. “Any other rules I need to know about?”
“Not just yet, but I’ll make up more if I have to.”
She knelt at his feet and started there, smoothing her hands over one of his calves and upward. The wiry hair of his legs tickled her palms as her fingers found the channels between each muscle in his hamstrings and followed them all the way to the joint at his hip. She’d never known such a beautifully made man, and she wanted to commit him to memory, to absorb the sight and smell and taste of him so she would be able to call it up when he was gone. No doubt it would end up being a cruel gift, knowledge she’d one day use to torture herself. There would never be another man like Tom for her.
She pressed her nose into the juncture of his thigh and hip, letting her fingers slide over his butt. She kissed his hipbone. She worked her way up his body slowly, brushing her lips over the tender skin along the side of his torso, trailing
the pads of her fingers over his pecs. She licked his nipple and watched it tighten, traced the shape of his collarbones, the smooth hump of his shoulder, the circuit of his tattoo, the dip between biceps and elbow, the curve of his forearm. Taking his left hand in hers, she spread it flat and followed the outline with her fingertip. She knew these hands, had felt them glide over every inch of her skin. Planting a kiss in the middle of his palm, she lowered his arm and returned to her exploration.
With fingers curved around his neck, she tasted the skin at the base of his throat, letting her tongue rest there on the pulse point. They were skin to skin now, his hard thigh pressing between hers, and Tom sucked in a breath when his erection brushed against her hip. Intent on memorizing him, she hadn’t paid attention to his response. Now she recognized he was taut as a bowstring with the effort of holding himself in check. He looked like he had in Corvallis when he’d been trying not to show how much the hot sauce was killing him, and her body responded with the same sharp pulse of desire.
Rising to her toes and pressing her hands flat against his chest, she kissed along his jaw, his cheekbones, the tip of his nose. He closed his eyes, and she kissed between his eyebrows, where he had a frown line so deep it didn’t go away even when he smiled. Then she wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and kissed him on the mouth. His lips were soft and welcoming, but he let her be in control, parting his lips to let her inside, tangling his tongue with hers in lazy acceptance. She could feel his heart beating beneath her palm, steady and fast. They only touched at a few points, but they were bound together so completely she didn’t see how she would ever be able to disentangle herself from him. When she swayed on her toes, he put a hand to her waist to help her balance, and she sucked in a breath, shocked that his light touch could be so arousing.
“Lex?” he said against her lips. “I’m taking you to bed now.”
She nodded, expecting him to walk her back to the mattress, but he lifted her by the hips instead, urging her legs around him. When his erection landed between her thighs, she moaned and pressed into it, arching her back. Tom swore and backed her straight against the nearest wall, kissing her with enough force to tell her just how crazy she was making him. The impact knocked half a dozen pictures to the carpet, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered except the hard heat of Tom’s body, his long fingers on her bare ass where he held her up, the sweep of his tongue against hers. She was ready for him to take her on the spot.
He tore his mouth away and swore again.
“What?”
“It’s your birthday,” he said, his voice rough.
“So?”
“So I can’t screw you up against the wall on your birthday.”
She burst out laughing, and he grinned back at her, utterly gorgeous. That smile knocked her for a loop every time. There was nothing she liked better than to see Tom happy.
“It’s nice to know chivalry isn’t entirely dead,” she joked, and he shifted her weight onto the wall so he could free one hand to smack her on the butt.
“Enough of your lip. It’s my turn to be in charge.” He wheeled around and dropped her on the end of the nearest bed—the one free of cupcake crumbs—and then, climbing on top, hooked his hands beneath her arms to drag her up the mattress. She had to hand it to the satin bedspread: it sure made it easy to move around.
Tom kissed her neck, his hands lightly cupping her breasts. Already taking charge. She remembered her resolution to make the most of his invitation to use her imagination. “You can only be in charge on one condition.”
“What’s that?” He ran his tongue slowly around her nipple, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth.
“You have to talk to me while you’re … you know.” She loved it when he whispered in her ear during sex, but she’d never told him that before. And she’d certainly never been bold enough to ask him to do it.
The smile broadened into a grin. “You want me to talk dirty to you, Marshall?”
Her cheeks got hot, and she wondered how she could possibly be embarrassed with Tom after everything they’d done together. “I want you to tell me what you’re thinking. If that just happens to be dirty, well, so much the better.”
Tom chuckled. “Only you could manage to sound prim as a schoolteacher while making that request sprawled out buck naked in the bordello room.”
“I am a schoolteacher.”
“Don’t I know it. A very hot schoolteacher who’s already got me so hard, it’ll be a miracle if I can make this last longer than two minutes.”
She moved her hand between his legs and wrapped her fingers around his cock, giving him an experimental squeeze. “Gosh, you are hard. Maybe we should just put you out of your misery and try again later.” She stroked him a few times, loving the way his erection swelled and strained toward her, but he knocked her arm away and captured her wrist above her head, bringing the other arm up to meet it.
“You’re a wicked woman.”
“I didn’t used to be. I think it might be your fault. I seem to be getting wickeder all the time.”
He rocked back to sit on his heels, pinning her hands above her head, and took a long look at her, top to bottom and then back up again. “I like you wicked. With your hair all spread out on the pillow and your lips swollen like that, you look like a wanton thing.” He dipped one finger between her legs and exhaled, a sound of pure male satisfaction. “And you feel like a wanton thing.”
She smiled lazily and let her eyes drift closed as he slowly traced a finger around the lips of her sex, spreading her body’s moisture until she was slippery and swollen all over. She did feel like a wanton thing. The static electricity from the satin turned her hair into an enormous nimbus that stuck to the bed. When she shifted, strands flew up to plaster themselves against her neck and cheeks. She could probably shoot sparks from her fingertips if she wanted to. “Nobody’s ever called me wanton before.”
“We’ve already established you’ve been going out with all the wrong guys.”
Lexie tried to let that statement skim right over the surface of her mind. It didn’t bear thinking about whether Tom was another wrong guy or finally the right one or somehow both. Not now, not when he was looking at her like that, running his hands slowly from her shoulders over her breasts, letting her nipples catch between his fingers and then continuing on down her stomach until his palms framed her hips just inside his knees. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Another flush of heat rose to her cheeks, and she smiled uncertainly. “Let’s not go overboard.”
He caught her eyes. “You want to know what I’m thinking, I’m going to tell you. But if you give me a hard time about it, I’m sure I can find something to gag you with.”
He didn’t appear to be kidding. “Right. I think I can manage to keep my mouth shut.”
“Let’s try it again, then.” He leaned down to plant a kiss above the swell of her breast. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Dropping to his elbows, he slid his knees down until he was pressing full-length against her, and then he moved his hands underneath her shoulder blades to curve around her shoulders. He still carried most of his own weight, but he’d framed her with his body, his fingers bracketing her shoulders, his elbows outside her arms, his hips over hers, his knees bordering her legs. And when she looked up, all she could see was his face inches from her own, his eyes hot and liquid.
“You have a cog mark imprinted in grease on the back of your right calf,” he said. “You got it yesterday, and it didn’t come off completely in the shower. I notice it every time you ride in front of me, and I can’t decide if I want to help you clean it off or to grind the grease deeper into your skin like a tattoo.”
He lowered his mouth to kiss behind her ear. “I love to get you naked when you’re still all dirty from the ride like this. Sometimes when we’re on the road, I think about what you’re going to taste like later here”—he ran his tongue underneath her jaw—“and
down here”—he pressed his erection into her belly—“and I get myself so worked up wanting you I have to count telephone poles for a distraction. It doesn’t work, though, and I find myself thinking about those tanned legs of yours, how the color of your skin shifts from brown to white where your shorts stop at mid-thigh, and if I were to put my tongue there and trace a circle all the way around, I’d have to throw your leg over my shoulder to get the part underneath. When I made my way around to the inside, you’d gasp the way you do when I’m doing something shocking”—he plunged his tongue into her ear, and she gasped—“just like that, and I’d know you were getting wet for me.”
He paused and kissed her on the lips, then on the chin. “So I come to my senses, and I have to think about something else again, and I end up smiling about all the freckles on your arms and across the bridge of your nose and all the other places I want to kiss.”
Lexie was reeling. When she’d asked him to talk to her, she’d expected a few naughty words as he brought her to a climax, not this glimpse into his thoughts. It was almost too intimate, not to mention unbearably arousing. Closing her eyes, she dug her nails into his back, wanting him to know what he was doing to her.
Tom brushed his stubbled cheek over the sensitive skin along the side of her neck, which made her shivery. “You have to understand, this is just a typical day I’m talking about. I could fill a book with all the fantasies you’ve inspired in Missouri alone.” He removed one hand from under her shoulder to grasp behind her knee and pull her leg up until her foot rested on the bed. Then he did the same on the other side, spreading her wide open. With his hands back underneath her shoulders, he began working his way inside her with shallow, teasing thrusts.
“Christ, you feel amazing,” he said, his voice even lower now. “All swollen and wet and slippery. When I feel how much you want me, it’s like the best Christmas I ever had.” He drove a little deeper and groaned, lowering his forehead to rest against her shoulder as he moved in and out, in and out, still not giving her as much as she needed. She wrapped her legs around him and pressed her hips up hard on the next thrust, burying him to the hilt with a sharp, triumphant cry.
