by Lexi Ryan
“I’ll walk you up.” I pull the door shut behind us and shove my hands into my pockets, as if that might be enough to help me resist temptation.
On the stairs, I almost regret giving her my coat. If I hadn’t, I’d have a great view of her ass and the soft skin of her thighs between the tops of her boots and the hem of her skirt. Maybe it’s better that I can’t see what I know is under my coat. I don’t need any more temptation. She quotes Shakespeare, has skin like porcelain, and kisses like she was born to do it. Whoever hurt her is an idiot.
She rounds the corner on the second floor and uses the same key to unlock the door to her room. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For tonight. For lending me your coat and walking me.” Her gaze drops to my mouth and stays there. She lowers her voice and adds, “For kissing me when I needed to be kissed.”
“It’s been my pleasure.” The corner of my mouth quirks into a smile. “All of it.”
She nudges the door, and it swings open, revealing a large bedroom with a king-size bed against one wall and a couch against another. She takes my hand from my pocket and backs into the room.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m bringing you in. I don’t want you to go yet.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t want to go.”
She loops her arms behind my neck and kisses me again. It’s just as good as it was in the bathroom, but faster, greedier. This is a kiss that knows what it wants and where to find it.
I pull away with a groan and lean my forehead against hers. “This is such a bad idea.”
Nicole
This kiss doesn’t feel like a bad idea. It feels like the best idea I’ve had in months. His mouth is warm, and his big hands make me feel safe.
His coat slips off my shoulders and falls to the floor around our feet.
“Tell me to leave.” His breath is hot on my neck, his hands skimming up my sides even as he says the words.
“Why?”
“Because you’re too sweet. Because you’ve had a shit day and someone’s hurt you.” His eyes search mine, even as his hand slides under my shirt and his knuckles graze my belly. “Because I’m not what you’re looking for.”
“How do you know what I’m looking for?”
He groans and nips at my neck. “You’re telling me you’d be okay with this?” He’s breathless, as if these kisses are doing as much to him as they are to me. I know the question he’s asking is important, but all I want right now is more. More of him. His heat. His touch. His mouth. “You’d be okay with me touching you tonight and just being another guy you see at the bar tomorrow?” He flattens his palm against my stomach and his fingertips brush under the waistband of my skirt, getting him closer to where I want him, closer to where I’m aching.
I want this, and so much more. I can hardly breathe. The tequila helped me forget, but this—his hands, the quickening of my pulse, and the dangerous ache between my legs—this washes the whole day away.
“Tell me to leave,” he repeats.
I pull away and look into his eyes. I take his hand off my stomach, step back, and hold his gaze as I unbutton my shirt. It slides from my shoulders as I unzip my skirt and let it fall from my hips. Then I’m standing before him in nothing but my cowboy boots, a black lace bra, and panties.
His eyes darken as they skim over me.
“I’m not asking you to leave,” I tell him. “I’m asking you to stay.” This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m desperate to cling to this feeling. I love the way he looks at me. I’m so sick of falling short in everything, of trying and trying and never being enough. I want wild. I want crazy. I want pleasure without promises.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe tomorrow I’ll regret this and count it as a reckless mistake. But right now, I don’t care about tomorrow. The only thing I want is exactly what he’s offering: his touch, his attention, and this thrill that vibrates from low in my belly and out through my fingertips. I feel alive when he touches me. I feel daring and bold. Have I ever felt this way?
I back up to the couch and sit before crooking a finger at him. As surely as if I pulled a leash, he comes, his gaze never straying from my face. His lips are parted and his hands fisted at his sides, as if he can’t trust himself to touch. When he stands in front of me, our eyes lock as he unbuttons his shirt, pulls it off his arms, and throws it to the side. He peels his undershirt off, and then his chest is bare and he’s standing before me in his jeans, that raw hunger in his eyes. I break eye contact to take him in—to appreciate the hard planes of his stomach and the breadth of his chest. There’s a dark smattering of hair across his pecs that tapers into a soft line over his navel and disappears into the waistband of his jeans. His arms and chest are roped with lean muscle and covered in ink. The tattoos take me by surprise. He seems so put-together—he’s the clean-cut boy next door with his shirt on and the dangerous bad boy without it. I like both sides of him. I like that he has both sides—that he wants to be noble and walk away, but he also wants to take what I’m offering.
Reaching forward, I hook two fingers through a belt loop and tug him toward me.
He closes his eyes and groans, but instead of joining me on the couch, he drops to his knees in front of me. He takes my wrists in his hands and guides my arms to rest behind my head. He trails rough fingertips down my arms, over my shoulders, across my collarbone, and down between my breasts. I arch toward him instinctively, and he cups a breast in each hand and skims a thumb over each nipple. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?” Then he brings his mouth to my breast and sucks at the nipple through the lace, pulling so hard the pleasure is just this side of pain.
I cry out and grip handfuls of his hair. He pulls back to look into my eyes while he drags one hand slowly up my leg to part my thighs.
He swallows thickly. “Take off your bra.” I obey with shaking hands. I keep my eyes on his as I unhook it and slide it off. He exhales slowly. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”
“So are you.”
He slides a hand between my legs, and I moan as he scrapes his knuckles across my center. The light contact is exactly where I need it and has me coming off the couch and toward his hand, adding friction to the touch. “Shh, baby. Be patient. Let me play.”
My body is shaking—trembling at the slightest touch and begging for more. When he peels my panties from my hips, I practically whimper in gratitude, but before I can be embarrassed by the desperate sounds slipping from my lips, his eyes go hot and he watches his fingers toy with me.
I’m shaking. God, it feels good to be wanted. To be desired. To be touched. Marcus wanted to marry a virgin—just another way I fell short of the mark. Since I wasn’t the virginal bride he’d imagined for himself, he insisted we go through the process of becoming “born-again virgins” through his church. It was so important to him that we wait until our wedding night, and he hadn’t touched me intimately in any way in months. He said abstinence would make our wedding night special, so our contact was limited to chaste kisses and hand-holding.
I squeeze my eyes shut at those thoughts. I don’t want to think about Marcus or his bullshit or his lies.
My mysterious stranger circles my clit with his thumb and returns his mouth to my breast. The combined pleasure is too much, and I squeeze my legs closed, trapping his hand there.
“Are you okay?” He softens his touch then pulls away entirely. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. I . . .” I part my thighs again. “Please, don’t stop.” I meet his smoky gaze. “I need this. I need you to touch me.”
His nostrils flare. “You can’t say things like that to me, sweetness. Not if you don’t mean them.”
“I mean it,” I whisper.
“You don’t even know me.”
I shake my head. “Does it matter?” I thought I knew my fiancé. I thought I knew my sister. They both betrayed me. I just want to feel beautiful and desirable for one night. Just one night.
&n
bsp; “You’re sure?” he asks.
I nod, slide a hand behind his neck, and bring his mouth down to mine so he can’t see in my eyes how scared I am that he might say no, that he might walk away and leave me alone in this hotel room with my thoughts and my regrets. With my doubts and the loneliness that has dogged my heels my entire life.
I nip at his lips, tug at his hair, and kiss him with all the desperation I feel as his hand plays between my legs. He slips and slides over every inch of me, circling my opening before he finally slides a finger inside me and I gasp against his mouth.
“Holy shit, you’re wet,” he whispers. “So wet and tight.”
I’m worried for a minute that he might realize how long it’s been for me. I don’t know this man, but tonight I’ve seen enough about who he is to believe that any signs of vulnerability might make him back off. But he doesn’t. He kisses his way down my neck. He slides his finger out and back in, making my hips lift off the couch and a moan slip from my lips.
He adds a second finger with the first and groans against my neck. The stretch of two fingers is almost painful at first, but then it’s good, and then it’s better. His thumb teases my clit as he works his fingers inside me. “How can you be so fucking beautiful? You’re even sexier when you’re turned on, and I wanted you from the second I saw you.”
I like his words against my neck, the husky timbre vibrating through both our bodies as he strokes me.
“Do you know how hard it’s going to be for me to walk away without fucking you?” He nips at my neck, bites and sucks.
“Then don’t,” I whisper. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever wanted, but right now it seems perfect. I don’t want to be alone tonight. Can I really say I wish I was with Marcus right now? Would I have wanted to be ignorant and have learned only after our wedding what kind of man Marcus really is?
When I open my eyes, my sexy stranger is looking at me like I’m a broken piece of fine china. He must have felt me tense as my thoughts went to Marcus.
He runs his gaze over me slowly—over my face and down my body. In this moment, his inspection isn’t sexual, more an assessment of my injuries, and I can’t decide if I’m grateful that my hurt doesn’t show on my skin or if I wish it did. I don’t want pity, but for just one moment it would be nice for someone to see me as I am, not as I present myself. Someone to see the fault lines hiding under my dutiful smile. Someone to see the darkness that claws at me when I’m alone.
I don’t know what it is about this stranger that makes me want that someone to be him.
When I reach for the button on his jeans, I don’t have any idea what tomorrow holds, but I know exactly what I want tonight. I want to give myself to this man, a stranger who can make me warm from the inside out just from the way he looks at me, a tattooed mystery with sad eyes.
He places a hand over mine, stopping me before I can unzip his jeans. “We aren’t going there tonight, sweetness.”
“Don’t you want to?”
He stills and squeezes his eyes shut. He shakes his head as he opens his eyes and studies me. “I don’t want to be something you regret.”
“You won’t be.”
He sweeps his mouth over mine. “Just let me touch you.” He dips his head and nuzzles the crook of my neck. He pulls his hand from between my legs, and I whimper at the loss. “You smell good. You feel good.” He meets my eyes and his go darker. “Do you taste good too?”
I gasp—at his words, at the idea of this man putting his mouth where his hand is, and at the promise in his voice.
He slides his hands under my ass and pulls my hips to the edge of the couch, parting my thighs wider and exposing me to his greedy eyes. Every nerve ending lights on fire as I watch him lower his mouth to my breasts. He rakes his teeth over my nipples and kisses down the center of my belly.
He grazes his nose from one hipbone to the other, then places a chaste kiss right above my clit. “Can I kiss you here?”
I answer with a ragged inhale, a nod, and the jerk of my hips. I’m trembling. Shaking with a need I’m not sure I’ve felt before. His mouth trails to my inner thighs, one side, then the other, first closed lips, then a hot, open mouth. First teeth, then tongue, and suction as he works his way to my center.
His tongue slides over me, finding my clit, circling my entrance. I’ve had this done a few times before and it was never particularly memorable, but this is different. Better. Crazy. Wild.
My hands go in his hair and I fight to still my hips, but I can’t resist arching into the silky stroke of his tongue.
He groans against me and lifts me up to his mouth, his fingers curling into my flesh as he devours me. It’s raw and it’s hot, and it’s crazier than anything I’ve ever done, but it’s so good.
I hear myself whimpering, “Please.” I don’t mean to say anything, but I’m lost to this tightening inside me, this aching squeeze, this need for more.
He slides two fingers inside me and then I’m slipping. My entire day has had me at the edge of an awful precipice, and half the hurt has come from trying to hold on.
Finally.
Finally.
I let go.
Ethan
When I climb onto the couch with her and pull her into my arms, I’m sure of two things: one, Nic falling apart from my mouth is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life, and two, if I’m even a fraction as noble as she thinks I am, I’ll make sure our wild night ends here.
My heart is racing and my cock is rock-hard, but something about the way she reacted to my touch reinforced the impression of innocence I got from her earlier. Whatever happened to her today has left her vulnerable, and I can’t take advantage of that more than I already have.
She nuzzles my bare chest and releases a low, throaty moan that sounds like a purr and sends an electric shock of pleasure up my spine. She lazily follows the outline of the phoenix on my left pec, then dips her hand down to trace the line of hair beneath my navel to my waistband.
When she palms my cock through my jeans, I groan. “Jesus, Nic . . .” I press my head into the cushions, and my hips buck into her touch. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“But tomorrow . . .”
“Tomorrow, I’ll remember this as the hottest night of my life.” She licks her lips and shifts over me, slowly unzipping my fly, and despite all my better judgment, I’m helpless to stop her. When she tugs my jeans and boxer briefs down my hips, my dick springs free, and she wraps her hand around me.
I hiss at the contact. The pressure. “Fuck, that feels good.”
She strokes and squeezes, and I close my eyes, trying not to blow this like a teenager getting his first hand-job.
She puts her mouth to mine, her hand working between our bodies. “We need a condom.”
I pull in a shaky breath, and before I can decide whether a condom is a good idea or a bad one, my phone rings.
Ring one, I ignore, my mind on the condom I don’t have and shouldn’t want. But at the second ring, I come to my senses. “I have to get that.” I cup her face in my hands and kiss her hard before reaching into my pocket to take the call. I don’t want her thinking I’m blowing her off, so when she tilts her head and deepens the kiss, I slide my tongue against hers and thread my hands into her hair.
She clings to me. “Ignore it.”
Fuck. I wish I could, but I already know by the ringtone that it’s the answering service, which means it’s about a patient and I need to take it. “I can’t,” I whisper against her mouth. “It’s work. I’m sorry.”
She climbs off me. My jeans have fallen to the floor, and I pull them back on as I answer the call. “Hello?” I stand. I have to step away from Nic if I want to have any chance of hearing what the answering service has to tell me.
“Dr. Jackson, Penny Gibson was just admitted. She’s already at eight centimeters and feels like she wants to push.”
After three babies, she’ll go from eight to ten in no time. “Thank
you. I’ll be there in five minutes.” I end the call, slide the phone into my pocket, and turn to Nic. “I have to go.”
She flinches and pulls her knees to her chest, covering her naked body. “Okay. Sure.”
I shake my head. “It’s not like that. I swear to you.” I pull on my tee, then shove my arms into my dress shirt. “You have no idea how much I want to stay here, but it’s work.”
“I understand,” she says. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
I find a piece of the hotel stationery on the desk and scribble down my name and number. “If you need anything at all while you’re in Jackson Harbor . . .” God, that sounds like I’m writing her off. I take a breath. “I’d like to see you again. Maybe we could do it right next time. Dinner, a movie, something like that?” Maybe I’ll regret those words tomorrow. I don’t do dates. But with this woman . . .
She takes the paper from my fingers and swallows as she looks down at it. “Maybe.” She studies me for a beat, then climbs off the couch and loops her arms behind my neck. She lifts onto her toes and presses a kiss to my mouth. “Goodnight.”
“Call me,” I say against her mouth. I don’t remember the last time I said that and meant it. I’m not done with her.
“No regrets,” she says, and I don’t like the finality in those words.
Nicole
The shrill ring by my head makes my jaw snap shut and my eyes fly open. The sound repeats two more times before I realize it’s coming from the phone next to my bed. The hotel phone. In Michigan. Where I came after I ran from my wedding. Where I messed around with a sexy stranger without ever getting his name.
Right.
I reach for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Ms. Maddox, there’s a Teagan Chopra downstairs for you. Would you like me to put her on?”
I blink and straighten in bed. Teagan? I haven’t seen her since college. She attended the small state school in Jeffe on a track scholarship, but I thought she moved back home to Virginia after she got her nursing degree. What’s she doing in Michigan? “Yes. Please do.”
