“I’d forgotten how pretty the moon can be.” The longing in her voice started an ache somewhere around his heart.
He glanced up at the nearly full moon ringed in clouds and back at her. Her face was tipped to the sky, the shadows hiding her extraordinary eyes. He’d forgotten what it was like to lose control with a woman, yet he felt his slipping away. She graced him with another of her organ-rearranging smiles before leading them to the front door.
Once inside, he made a quick reconnaissance of the first floor, verifying the windows and back door were closed and locked and nothing seemed out of place. When he was done, she was waiting in the den, the moon filling the room with diffused light and deep shadows.
“Everything looks fine. Safe.” He stood in the threshold of the den; his usual decisiveness disappeared.
“You make me feel safe, Thad.” She took slow steps toward him as if she were afraid he might bolt. Part of him did feel like bolting. The part that was pounding furiously against his ribs. Sex with Sadie would be incredible, and his body clamored for it, for her. But he wanted more. He wanted everything.
“Is that all I make you feel?” The rumble of his voice stopped her a few feet away.
“No. You make me feel like taking a chance for the first time in a really long time.”
“There’s something you should know then. I haven’t… I mean, it’s been since—” He blew out a breath. This was hard. Maybe he shouldn’t tell her.
She closed the distance between them and circled her hands around his forearms as if taking his measure. She’d shucked her boots, leaving her that much shorter than him. Even though he was bigger, he wasn’t worried about hurting her. She was tough. Strong. A survivor. He was the one worried about getting hurt.
His years of celibacy hadn’t only been about lack of physical intimacy. He’d kept himself apart in every way. What was the saying about man being an island? That was him. His life could be symbolized by a single, barren rocky outcropping in the middle of a vast, lonely ocean.
But now Clayton was back, and circumstances had brought Sadie into his life. Walls he’d thought impenetrable had collapsed like Lincoln Logs, and he had no interest in rebuilding.
“I haven’t been with a woman since Clayton was locked up. Didn’t seem right. Or fair.” The confession came out in a rush of words.
Her hands loosened on his arms, but she didn’t let go and back away as if he were an unexploded bomb.
“Are you a… a virgin?” Her voice was breathless.
“Not exactly, but it’s been a long time,” he said on a sigh.
“Your brother’s out now.”
“Yep.” The silence stretched, and he tensed waiting for her to say something. Anything.
“I’m pretty sure it’s like riding a bike. Do you want to find out?” She trailed her hands into his, weaving their fingers, binding them closer. He tried to swallow down his amusement, not wanting to kill the moment, but he failed.
Her giggles joined his laughter. Granted, his experience had been that of a horny teenager, but sex had never involved teasing or laughter or soft touches.
She popped up on her tiptoes, and he leaned down. With their hands still entwined, they kissed. Not their first kiss, but almost. It was gentle and sweet, and he didn’t want it to end, but his neck started to ache from having to bow over.
With a grumble, he disentangled their hands, lifted her, and pressed her up against the wall with his body, their faces level, leaving her to wrap her legs around his thighs.
“That’s better,” he whispered, his lips coasting along her cheek to nuzzle at her ear. She shivered against him, tightening her arms around his shoulders.
He’d forgotten how soft and delicate and goddamn desirable a woman’s body felt, but he was acclimating quickly. Memories or instincts flooded him. Just like riding a bike. He smiled against the fluttering pulse of her neck.
She squirmed her hips against his belly, not quite low enough to satisfy the erection that had been aching for her since their kiss in his truck. He needed her in a bed. Preferably with fewer clothes on.
“I want you in bed. Naked. Tell me now if that’s a no-go.” Sexual frustration clipped his words. Now that his body had been given a green light, it was impatient. Ready to lay the hammer down. But he’d walk out the door if she wasn’t ready. By almost anyone’s standards, it was too soon for them to have sex.
By answer, she tightened her legs around his thighs and whispered against his lips, “Go, Chief, let’s ride.”
He cupped his hands under her butt and pulled back from the wall. She squealed and buried her face in his neck. He didn’t want to lose contact with her body even for the short amount of time it took to get to her bedroom.
“Oh my God, we’re going to Notebook-it up the stairs, aren’t we?”
“What are you talking about? Trust me, you’re going to be too busy to take notes.” Ignoring her laughter, he tackled the stairs, the going more precarious than he anticipated since he couldn’t see his feet. The farther he climbed, the darker it grew. Jesus, he was going to kill them both. He stumbled at the top and crashed into the wall, unintentionally resuming their position from downstairs.
“We made it,” she said.
He wasn’t sure if her breathlessness was from excitement or the fact he had squashed her. A second later it didn’t matter. She mashed her mouth against his and pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans. Her nails scraped against his skin, sending knee-weakening pleasure through his body. Was he going to last, or was he going to embarrass himself in his pants?
Bed. He needed to slow things down before he ripped his clothes off à la The Incredible Hulk and took her against the wall. Beds were found in bedrooms. His brain seemed to be giving an ironic handclap to his sexually addled thought process.
With her still doing things to his mouth that made his heart play hopscotch in his chest, he opened his eyes and got his bearings. The darkened maw of a room beckoned. That was it. He remembered from his search earlier.
She weighed next to nothing in his arms, and damn, her ass felt perfect in his hands, but it was hard to see with her peppering kisses all over his face. He sideswiped the doorjamb. A sound of pain or protest came from her throat.
“Sorry, babe, I can’t see.”
“’S all right,” she murmured between kisses.
The bed was a dark shadow in the middle of the room, a sliver of moonlight cutting a line down the middle from the curtains. He leaned over the bed and pressed her back into the mattress, yet her arms and legs didn’t loosen around him.
This new position was even more dangerous to his sanity and self-control. She had shifted so his erection pressed between her legs. He rotated his hips against her. Knowing that only a few fragile layers of cloth separated them nearly did him in. He didn’t want a dry hump. He wanted everything. Everything that he’d been denying himself because of Clayton and his own guilt.
He pulled her arms and legs from around him and straightened. All he could see was sprawled limbs. He couldn’t see the teasing sparkle in her eyes or the way one corner of her mouth lifted at the start of her smile, but that’s how he imagined her.
He backed away, and she half sat up. “Where are you going?”
The mild panic in her voice set him at ease. She wanted him. Maybe not as desperately as he wanted her, but she did. He circled the bed to the window. “I don’t want this to be a quick fuck in the dark, do you?”
The hands that reached for the edges of the curtains trembled slightly. If he got this nervous on the job, they’d call him Barney Fife. He threw the curtains open. A combination of the moon and the street light was almost blinding after the total darkness.
He turned to find that she’d shifted on the bed to face him. Now he could see the way her hair tumbled around her shoulders, chaotic and wild. Her lips were parted and plumped from their kisses. Her breaths came fast and shallow and drew his gaze down to her chest. Her hardened nipples were vi
sible against her shirt. Perfect, she was perfect.
He couldn’t stand it any longer and fumbled with the button and zipper of his jeans, shoving the denim down enough to give his erection some room. As he made his way back to the bed, he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside.
She scooted to the edge of the bed, her feet propped on the bed rail. She grabbed the open flaps of his waistband and pulled him between her spread knees.
“Tell me I’m not dreaming this,” she murmured, moving one hand to his length and the other to the waistband of his boxer brief.
His answer to her question would have gotten him struck by lightning in his customary back pew of Cottonbloom Church of Christ.
She pulled his underwear down to join his pants low on his hips. A few more blasphemous litanies followed, this time from her lips as she grasped him with one hand. “I should have guessed you’d be big all over. I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this all to yourself.”
He had a second to worry that his size would be a deterrent before her tongue made a slow catlike twirly swipe over the head of his erection. His head grew swimmy, and his knees trembled. If he passed out and Sadie called 911, he’d never live it down. He’d have to move towns, states, maybe even change professions.
Control. As good as it felt to have her hands and mouth on him, he needed to be the one in charge. He canted his hips away and said in his best police chief take-no-prisoners voice, “Get your pants off.”
Her eagerness showed in her quick scramble to obey him, and it sent a strange zing through him. Even though he wanted to smile, he hardened his voice. “Shirt too. Now.”
He’d never seen a shirt get tossed so quickly.
“Underwear?”
“Not yet. Lay down in the middle of the bed.”
Again she was quick to obey, and he had to squeeze himself and take a deep breath. Truth was, if she took her underwear off, he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop from burying himself straight away.
He shed the rest of his clothes, aware her gaze was following his every movement, and crawled to kneel between her legs. Her underwear was pink. The same bra he’d tried hard not to stare at while searching her house. The lace cupped her breasts, showcased them. Reaching up, he slipped the straps off her shoulders. The thin lace sagged.
Hoping she wouldn’t notice his shaking hand, he trailed a finger inside one of the cups, brushing over her peaked nipple. She gasped and arched into his touch.
“Take it off.” His voice was hoarse and more begging than commanding, but she reached behind her, and they drew the bra off together. He ran his hands up her torso and cupped her breasts. They filled his hands perfectly. Dropping over her, he flicked one nipple with his tongue while he played with the other.
She bucked against him, reminding him there were other places to play. He needed her to climax before he did. That was a lesson he remembered. Together they shimmied her out the final barrier, and he lay next to her, his hand keeping her on her back as he pressed his erection against her hip.
He glided a finger through her core, and her hips bucked. Even before his self-imposed celibacy, he hadn’t exactly been a Casanova. Clayton had inherited all the charm. What if he didn’t remember how to get a woman off?
Insecurities didn’t have time to take root. She pressed his hand closer, and his middle finger slid inside her. She shattered and pulsed around him, her hips writhing, her hands trying to pull him on top of her, but he was stronger, tangling his leg with hers.
Their kiss was a frantic wild thing that unleashed everything he had spent years trying to tame. Before the beast could completely take over, his brain inserted one last piece of logic.
“Condom. I don’t have one. Wasn’t expecting…”
“Pill. Pill. I’m on the pill. And I know you’re clean. For God’s sake, get inside me before I die.”
Even now, in the most desperate, intense moment of his life, she made him smile. It wasn’t like him to be impetuous, but as he positioned himself at her entrance, her hips rising to meet him, he couldn’t have stopped even if a tornado was bearing down on them.
He held her thighs wide and pushed inside her. The feel, the sight, the sounds they made—her gasps and little throaty sounds of encouragement, his chest-deep groans—turned the moment primal. It had been a long time, but his body knew exactly what to do.
Finally he was buried deep, his hips grinding. One long, slow stroke followed another. His gaze drifted from the hypnotizing sight of their joining up her body to lock on her eyes. They were open and wide and wanting. But what did she want? Something as simple as another orgasm or something more complicated?
In that moment, he would have given her his soul.
He pumped harder and faster, his vision narrowing. Her orgasm took him by surprise, and he surrendered to his own pleasure with a roar that bordered on cavemanlike. His bones liquefied, and he collapsed on top of her, rolling enough to the side that he wouldn’t smother her. Another 911 call he would have a hard time explaining.
After a few minutes or hours, she slipped out from under him, and he face-planted into her pillow. It smelled good. Like the shampoo she used on her hair, feminine but not cloying. The sound of water running came from her bathroom. Stray thoughts inserted themselves.
What was the protocol? Yes, technically, they’d only known each other for a day, but she knew more about him than anyone in Cottonbloom, minus his brother. And he’d hazard a guess that she hadn’t told anyone else of her attack and fears of the night.
The bathroom door opened, bringing his head up. Light limned her body before she switched it off. All her curves imprinted on his brain in that brief flash. He flipped over to give her room in the bed, tensing for her move.
She slipped next to him, settling her head on his shoulder, and he curled his arm down her back, his fingertips reaching the top curve of her bottom. That bottom. Next time he would take her from behind. His dick twitched, and he raised his head to look down his body. God, it really did have its own tiny, one-track mind.
“Are you going to stay awhile?” There was a tentativeness that hadn’t been in her voice when she’d begged him to save her life by getting inside her.
“You want me to?”
“Sure. You know, in case my lurker comes calling.”
“Okay.” He drew the word out, unsure what she meant. Was he only a bodyguard with benefits? He trailed his hand up the arch of her spine. She was so slight and delicate that another worry inserted itself. Something that hadn’t bothered him as he’d pounded into her. “Sadie… was I too rough?”
“I might be a little sore in the morning but in a good way.” She yawned, her body going slack, her nuzzle against his jaw sending prepare-to-fire signals south.
He was afraid to move. Afraid she’d come to her senses and kick him out of her bed. He should go home, but the complications of staying were preferable to dealing with the complications of Clayton.
He closed his eyes and gave in to the comfort he’d found in her arms and bed.
Chapter Six
Sadie came awake the instant she recognized the warm hairy object her foot was lodged against was a man’s leg. Not just any man’s leg. It was Thaddeus Preston’s leg. His hairy, heavily muscled leg.
She considered herself liberated and all that. She’d studied the human mind and what motivated people. She had a right to sexual agency and pleasure. Yet none of that empowered, forward thinking could combat the adolescent lectures from her mother about girls who “gave it up” to a man so easily.
She had known Thaddeus Preston less than forty-eight hours. She may have been slightly buzzed from the beers, but she’d been drunk on something else. Someone else. Thad and the way he looked at her. Like there was no one else in the crowded bar. Like he would protect her from any and all comers.
Her plan after getting him inside her house had been to get to second base, maybe halfway to third before the coach—her brain—waved him off, but once he’d con
fessed he hadn’t been with a woman in years… Well, what woman could resist? Not her, that’s for sure.
What if that was his thing? His way of luring women into bed? Maybe there was a dedicated pew at Cottonbloom Church of Christ for the women who’d fallen for his confession. This was why she needed to go to church. She checked the clock. Early service was already in progress.
Nerves and embarrassment were an explosive combination in her body. He’d sure as hell known what he was doing last night. No hesitation. No fumbling around. He’d even lasted long enough for her to orgasm—twice.
Although she hadn’t made things difficult. In fact, if Guinness officials had been present, she might qualify for a world record in fastest orgasm. Even that was embarrassing. She was the one acting like a born-again virgin.
Hiding under the covers was not an option considering the man who’d rocked her world was softly snoring in her bed under said covers. Sunlight illuminated his body. He was on his back, one arm thrown over his head—the definition of man-spreading over three-quarters of her bed.
The sheet was riding halfway down his chest. The contrast between his tanned skin and dark chest hair with the white sheet was sexy as hell. As was his messy hair and the stubble along his jaw. Her body tingled. God, she wanted him again.
The arousal-embarrassment-shame marinade she was wallowing in made her uncomfortably hot. The heat radiating off his big body added a few more degrees. She made a move to slip out of bed, but when she shifted her hips toward the edge, his eyes opened and she froze. He blinked at the ceiling a few times before turning his head toward her.
“Morning.” Her fake chipper voice was accompanied by a pasted-on smile. “I thought I’d go make us some coffee.”
“What time is it?” He sat up and rubbed a big hand over his stubbled jaw. She followed its movement, her temperature edging up even more remembering the wicked, wonderful things that hand had done last night.
She grabbed the corner of the sheet and covered her breasts. “Quarter after eight.”
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