by EC Sheedy
Cal shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it on a chair. She saw him roll his head, as if to ease tight muscles.
Instead of throwing her on the bed and himself with her, he looked around. She followed his gaze, saw again the riot of green, blue, and gold—the wild mix of prints that made up her bed. Cal was suddenly anything but wild.
"Nice," he said and nodded toward the glowing nightlight on her dresser. "You sleep with a light on?"
"Only when I have sex," she said, determined to ruffle Mr. Cool's male feathers.
His face held sin and mischief, and his smile was slow. "Which hasn't been too often of late, I understand." He closed the distance between them. Ginger kept her hands behind her and gripped the doorknob as if it were all that stood between her and an eighty-foot wave. The smell of him clawed her, his clean scent mingling with the lavender potpourri she kept on her dresser.
He gripped her shoulders. "Have you ever made love in that bed?"
Ginger was caught off guard by the question. "No," she said, and frowned, for the first time wondering why she'd never brought anyone home. She could have, but she never did.
He lifted her chin with his knuckles. "Ever fucked in that bed?"
A breathy gasp escaped her mouth, and it was a second or two before she got the word out. "No."
"Good." His gaze went from her face to her hair, and he ran his index finger along her hairline, down and across her cheek, then kissed her. "That makes this a first," he murmured, and kissed her again. A kiss with butterfly wings and dark wishes.
"First what?" she asked. "Lovemaking or fuck?"
He gave her a direct gaze. "If we're lucky... both." His eyes, rich with desire, settled on her face. He tilted his head to watch when he asked, "You have a preference?"
Ginger's breath grew quiet in her throat. She released her viselike grip on the doorknob, brought her hands around and rested her palms on his chest. His white shirt was cotton soft, under it his muscles were warm, straight, and firm. "No." She slid a hand to his heart, felt its deep thud under her palm. "I just want"—the words honest potential came to mind. She replaced them with, "Sex... good sex. No. Make that great sex." Defined as a series of flame-out, body-numbing orgasms that will make me shift in my chair when I'm ninety. Add to that she'd be okay with the outside chance of something other than hello-that-was-great-sex-good-bye. Her life so far. In the same instant she reminded herself, Cal was just another handsome face, a fabled womanizer. She would not allow herself expectations. Other than fun.
He tilted his head, and the lazy confident look he gave her made her elbows sweat. "It's been a while for me, too. Truth is, I've been living like a goddamn monk for months now."
"And this is what? An apology in advance for bad sex?"
He laughed. "Nope. Just preparing you for my first rush of enthusiasm."
Ginger ran her hands over his chest. "I've got more than a little of that myself."
He picked her up with the ease of an Olympic weightlifting medalist and carried her to the bed. "You know there was a second or two when you first walked into my office that I thought you might be shy." He placed her in the middle of the bed, stepped back, and started unbuttoning his shirt.
Ginger got to her knees and replaced his fingers with her own. "I am." She undid the final button. "Until I make up my mind what I want." She rested her hands on his taut, narrow waist and looked up at him. "And I've decided"—she tugged his shirt from his jeans and undid his belt—"I want you."
She pressed a hand against the bulge in his jeans, boldly traced it with a finger, then looked up at him. "You're hard," she stroked him again. "And big." Very big. Maybe those rumors in the tabloids were true. Lucky girl, she was going to find out.
"I get by."
She smiled up at him. "I bet you do." She unzipped him and caressed him through his briefs: marble, long, thick, perfectly carved. "And you should know"—she ran her finger from his base to his tip—"that my swearing off sex for two years doesn't mean I don't like it. I do. A lot. And this"—she parted his unzipped jeans, leaned forward, and kissed his cotton-shrouded erection—"is the stuff of my dreams."
"Fuck!" He raised his chin, closed his eyes. She felt tension jack through his body, heard him swallow when he dug his fingers into her shoulders.
"Okay," she mumbled. "We'll start there." She inched closer, braced herself by putting both her hands on his chest. His skin was hot. Burning. She made circles on his chest with her open palms, grazed his flat nipples, then played with one, twitching it with a nail until it stiffened. When she took it between her teeth, stroked it with her tongue, Cal growled and shuddered.
His heart pumped rapidly against the hand she held against his chest, and he brought his head down. "You're hot, Cameron." His low voice rumbled over her lips and his eyes narrowed to meet hers. "I like that. I like you."
He took her mouth, fast and hard. No more butterfly kisses, soft brushings, or whispers. Ginger felt his muscles clench and harden, heard the clamor behind his rib cage. "So let's get you out of whatever the hell it is you're wearing and get started." He lifted her, and she came off the bed to stand facing him, her heart crazy, her lungs straining for air. "Take it off, Cameron. Take it all off." A smile hovered briefly over his lips before he added. "I've been wanting to say that since the day we met."
She grabbed the bottom of her sweater, pulled it over her head, and started to undo the zipper on her slacks.
"Stop," Cal said. "Stop right there." He cupped her breasts, ran a finger along the fine lace of her scarlet demi bra. "Have you been wearing this kind of stuff under those clothes of yours all along?"
"Uh-huh."
He pulled the bra down to expose her nipples, took each of them between thumb and forefinger and tugged gently. When he looked at her, his expression was half annoyed, half amused. "Damn good thing I didn't know that, or we'd have been here long before this." He bent to take one aching, needy tip into his mouth. "Definitely sugar," he murmured, licking her with long slow strokes of his tongue before pulling back. He nodded at her wool slacks. "Off."
She stripped to her G-string panties.
Cal, his shirt off, his zipper lying open, the ridge of him jutting high and heavy from between his thighs, didn't move. His tone was deep, rough, and low when he said, "Hell, I could come just looking at you."
She shivered, not with the chill of the cool air hitting newly exposed skin, but because of the way he looked at her. Appreciation, desire—and raw, stomach-churning hunger.
"Turn around. I want a tour of Wyoming. And take it slow. Real slow."
"What's next? A lap dance?" She tilted her head, lowered her lashes, and gave him a quizzical look.
He grinned, shucked out of his jeans, and peeled off his briefs.
She stared, licked her lips. Clean, lean, hard, and waiting. For her. He was beyond magnificent. The last thing she wanted was to turn her back to him. But when he smiled at her and made a circle with his hand, she raised her hands, joined them above her head, and began a slow rotation.
When her back was to him, he came up behind her and put his hands on her waist. He kissed her nape, her shoulder, his breath hot and steamy against her sensitized skin.
He slipped down her panties, placed his hand over her pubis, cupped her, and pressed his stone-hard length against her buttocks.
"Perfect," he whispered into her hair, his voice low and ragged. "You're perfect." He held her for a long moment, his mouth wild and heated against her skin, his chest burning against her back.
He drew circles around a nipple with one hand and ran the index finger of the other through the slick folds between her thighs. She gasped, rapt by the dual assault, burned into place, her body stiff with anticipation.
"Spread your legs, sweetheart. Let me touch you. Feel you. Inside."
Ginger's stomach clenched, the shock and promise of his words sizzling along her nerves to the apex of her thighs. She raised her arms, clasped him behind the neck, and gave him open acce
ss to her. He shifted the hand playing with her breasts to her tummy, pressed her back against him. He held her there, while his other hand slid a warm path down, first to simply enfold her, then to boldly explore her cleaved sex.
Deeply.
Then to find her clitoris, its peak a hard, anxious nub, shuddering and moist.
Ginger, her breathing nothing more than gasps and pants, moved her hips in the tempo set by his hand, let her body make love to his probing touch, every bone and muscle coming meltingly alive under the slip and glide of his deft fingers.
"I want to taste you," he whispered. "I want my mouth on these lips"—he stroked her labia with one finger... richly, languorously, then used two to separate her, enter and tease—"this drenched flesh. Can't even describe it." His voice was midnight dark, uneven when he added, "You want that, too, don't you?"
Ginger's body arched and her mind leaped to the vision of Cal's fingers spreading her wide for his mouth to take and taste. She shuddered, desire a torch on her skin. But...
No. No. Not yet.
If Cal Beaumann gave her that, she'd die from it. Then he'd be gone.
Cal nipped her shoulder, spun her to face him, and took her face in his hands. He kissed, devoured her, his hot mouth and tongue taking her to a place the fierce, often too-rash-for-her-own-good Ginger Cameron had never been, and as close to sexual paradise as she'd ever be.
They fell on the bed in a tangle of need and overheated limbs, and Cal claimed a nipple to suckle with surprising gentleness.
When he started to move down, Ginger grasped his taut buttocks, slipped a hand under him and clasped his powerful erection. He was rock hard and ready. "I want this," she demanded and made a sheath of her hand, fitting it to his engorged width, then alternately tightening and easing the pressure.
Cal lifted himself above her, his breathing stopped, and he went stone still. He closed his eyes, his whole body plank hard, his neck muscles corded tight to his shoulder blades. She stroked him. He opened his eyes to look down at her, his gaze opaque, ebony black. "Ginger, I need to fuck you. Now."
She tightened her fingers around him, the delicate skin over his rock-hard penis petal-soft in her hand, its tip oozing life into her palm.
She squeezed and pumped him, her own hunger shifting to critical. She opened her mouth. No words. He took a nipple into his mouth, sucked, rasped it with his tongue. The sensation knifed down, down; moisture seeped between her thighs. He lifted his head, and his dark eyes settled on hers even as his sex thrust and bucked, painfully deterred, in her hand.
She drew him to her, rubbed the slick head of his penis along her labia. Released him. He quickly replaced the sheath of her hand with a condom.
She opened her legs wide—in the invitation women have given a heated male from time's beginning—and offered herself. All of herself.
Cal loomed over her, centered himself, and plunged deep, his moan, as he entered her, pure male satisfaction.
She lifted her hips, rocked into him, her mind drugged by the fullness of him, the burn of him. The absolute rightness of him inside her.
"You're like velvet," he murmured, his voice husky. "Crazy beautiful." He groaned, pulled out, came back to go deeper. Again.
And again. His slow easy moves, the weight and length of him, broke her apart. Her breath shortened, then stopped when her body clenched around his, desperate to hold him, claim him.
"And you feel amaz—oh, no..." The orgasm, sudden and tumultuous, blindsided her. Her body folded into itself, flaming hot. She struggled to breathe, bring air to her lungs.
Cal thrust again, pounding his hard shaft, slick with her moisture, to her deepest inner reaches.
And taking her on another wild, nerve-spiking, heart-stopping ride to a place where breathing was the last thing on her mind.
Chapter 5
Cal shook his head in an effort to rattle his brains back in place.
What the hell had just happened?
He heard Ginger moan, and a couple of his synapses fired, strong enough to make him realize he was crushing her. Taking his weight on his elbows, he looked at the woman beneath him. Her eyes were closed, and damp hair lay across her forehead, across her cheek. He shoved it back, then blew a stray curl from her ear. His chest was so constricted, he could barely draw in breath enough to replace the air it took to do that. Blood roared through his veins, but he shivered, the sheen of sweat over his shoulders and down his back icing up under the cool night air. Or was he just trembling like a goddamn adolescent after his first mind-bending fuck?
He rolled off to his side and tucked Ginger close to his shoulder. He waited for his body to return to something resembling normal, concentrated on figuring out how he and Ginger had gotten from her front door to a riptide climax in a time he was pretty sure would beat any and all world records. For him, a new, and damned dubious, distinction.
Ginger propped her forearms on his chest, met him eye to eye. "Not bad, Beaumann. On the recreational sex scale, damn near a ten." Her tone was light, but Cal saw something darker in her eyes. Sadness? Regret? He'd hate that.
"You make it sound like a game of touch football."
"Isn't that the idea?" She pulled her eyes from his, as if it were hard for her to meet his gaze. She rested her cheek on his chest, and her hair, catching the light from the low wattage bedside lamp, looked as if it were streaked with fire.
He cradled her head in one hand, ran the other down to the sensual curve where butt and back dipped to form her waist. Her hair was soft and springy to the touch, and her skin, still dewy from their lovemaking, was warm gold. "Want to know what I thought?" Hell, he didn't know what he thought, but he figured it had something to do with life-altering coitus, bone-deep curiosity, and wanting a lot more of what they'd just had.
"Uh-huh, but only if it's good. Otherwise I'd prefer a nap."
Cal decided to take a second or two to get his thoughts in order. For him, post-fuck conversation was uncharted territory.
Her head popped up; she looked spooked. "You're not saying anything."
"No."
"Not as good for you as it was for me?" she asked, her tone flat, one eyebrow raised in question—or threat.
Not that there was a chance of it, but he wondered briefly what she'd do if he said no; tear his face off, castrate him? He decided this was not the time to tease. "Ginger, sex with you is spectacular"—he kissed her—"and I plan to launch a secondary assault on your delicious body the second I'm operational again. But—" He rolled, positioned her under him. He liked her there. A lot.
"But? You've got a but?" She ran her hand over his ass, squeezed it before slipping those taunting fingers of hers between their bodies to test his current status. A little more of that, and being operational—real fast—wouldn't be a problem.
He closed his eyes when she cupped his balls, played with them. "Uh-huh. And I'll remember what it is any second now." He had to hand it to her, Ginger sure knew how to avoid conversation. He stopped her hand from wringing out his thoughts completely. "Not a but exactly, more one of those 'aha' things."
"'Aha' things?" She shimmied out from under him and sat up on the bed, a blanket jumbled around her midsection. She didn't bother to cover her breasts, for which he was sincerely grateful. Her breasts were definitely A-list, and he loved the way her nipples jutted, small and fierce, into the cool room. "And what exactly is an aha?" she asked, looking curious but wary.
"An insight, a revelation." He pulled on the blanket, and it came away from her to expose her diamond studded navel. "This was one." He touched the glittering stone, circled it with an exploratory finger. She gasped and yanked up the blanket, and Cal couldn't tell if she was annoyed at him or herself for that giveaway intake of breath. "I felt that—on the way down." He pulled the blanket away again and leaned over to kiss her navel. "Pretty."
This time she let the blanket lie pooled and rumpled across her knees. "Thank you," she said, sounding oddly prim. "Now, can we get back to that aha t
hing of yours?"
He sat up, rested his back against the headboard. "You're definitely afraid of me."
Her eyes flashed. "You think so."
"You took the lead from the get-go and you hung on—literally—until the end." He organized the pillow more comfortably behind his back. "Not that I'm complaining, but you did seduce me, Cameron."
"I seduced—"
"You did. And while I loved every minute of it, a man knows that when a woman commandeers his brainless best friend, she's after control, which usually means she's afraid of losing it herself"—he watched her face—"with him."
"Dear goddess, I've just slept with Dr. Ruth."
He laughed, lifted her chin so their eyes could meet. "Admit it. You're scared."
She started to say something, he guessed a denial, then stopped and looked away for a minute before turning her gaze back to his. "All right, I'm scared. Okay?" She still looked defiant, but she also looked as if she might cry.
Cal's gut clenched. "I'm not in this bed to hurt you."
"Men." She shook her head, looked at him as if he were the village idiot. "You just don't get it, do you?"
"Get what? And drop the 'men' thing, okay. You make us sound like a box of cheap panty hose."
"Not a bad analogy, considering they all run—sooner or later."
"Yeah? Well I'm not going anywhere. Not until you tell me why you're so determined not to ease up around me."
"I don't want to 'ease up' around you"—she stopped, looked away, then back at him—"because I do not want to fall for another guy who won't be bringing me flowers on our golden anniversary."
"Which takes us back to your virginity promise, aluminum suits, leather underwear, and crepe shoes."
"I never wore crepe shoes!" That denial out, she hesitated, scrunched up her brow. "I dressed like that because I didn't want to lead anybody on, attract the wrong kind of attention."
"Epic fail." He smiled at her discomfort. "You've been attracting my attention twenty-four-seven since you walked into Cinema Neo."
