He pulled back, his breath short and sharp. "Fuck. I don't know if I can be gentle." His voice was unsteady. "Are you sure you--"
"Duh," she said sharply. "Don't ask me again. It's pissing me off. You think you can blow my mind with psychic lust waves, and then walk off and leave me? Fuck that, Kev Larsen." She wound her fingers into the spiky hair on his scalp, and yanked it, hard. "Fuck that."
He shook with silent laughter. She felt strange, almost possessed. She had no idea where this uncharacteristic sexual boldness came from, but she'd do anything to keep him from vanishing. Even throw her body at him. Thank God, the boobs had hooked him.
Or she was the one who was hooked, helpless, mindless. Strung out on the way his lips were moving on her skin, the tender way his hands cupped her breasts, the way his tongue swirled, turning her chest into a liquid glow, inflaming her nipples into bright, shimmering points.
She couldn't breathe. Her skin felt like it was too small for her body, hot and fevered. Her breasts felt swollen, taut with longing.
He pulled her closer, and pulled her leg around until she straddled his thighs, and pulled her down on his lap. Settling her crotch across that throbbing club of his penis, still trapped in his jeans, so its hot bulk pressed against her most sensitive places, making her tingle, melt. Wow. So big. And not just down there. His whole body was huge. Her relatively tall five-foot-eight was nothing compared to him. He had to be six-four, minimum.
Her nipples tingled where they brushed him. She moved, rubbing hungrily against his erection, staring into his eyes. He pressed his hand against the small of her back, intensifying the contact. Making her rock and squirm and writhe against his hardness.
"You are so beautiful," he whispered.
Something rejected the words. They broke the spell, propelling her out of herself. "Don't," she said. "Please. You don't have to say that."
His face was incredulous. "You don't think that you're beautiful?"
She was intensely uncomfortable at this turn of subject. "Its not that I think I'm bad looking. But I've been lectured all my life about the tragedy of unrealized potential, and I'm sick of it. I've moved on, see? It's too late to learn to dress, do my makeup, and blow-dry my hair properly, blah blah blah. What you see is what you get."
He shook his head, his eyes intent on her face. "Who gives a fuck about the clothes, or the makeup?" He sounded genuinely curious.
"Um, the rest of the world, maybe?" Damn. She wished she hadn't opened the subject. It sounded like she was fishing for reassurance. Like a cheesy women's magazine article, she'd blurted out Number One on the list of Ten Things Not To Say To A Guy Who's Seducing You.
But Kev didn't seem put off. He studied her face, touching it with his fingertips. His touch felt reverent. "Your lips are hot pink," he said, stroking them. "Puffy and soft, like a satin pillow with a crease down the middle. They shine when you lick them. They don't need paint. And your eyes, Jesus. I can't even describe it, how they reflect light. More silver than gray, like there's crumpled metal foil behind to catch light and refract it in every direction, and that ring of dark slate gray around the outside sets off the bright part in the middle. And your breath. It's amazing. So sweet and fresh and spicy. Mint, cinnamon, and ginger?"
Oh, man. Oh, not fair. She was utterly flustered by his catalog of her charms. She tried to suppress the girly giggles, but they bubbled up anyway. "Oh, that's just the chai," she informed him. "I made you some. You were too distracted to drink it. You, too, could have mint, cinnamon, and ginger breath."
He grabbed his mug from the table, and took a deep swallow of his cooled tea. "Mmm," he said. "Good. And your teeth, too. Wow. So white and straight. You have great teeth."
She grinned, showing off her admittedly nice teeth. "Years of orthodontia," she said. "I suffered the fires of hell for these teeth."
"Your suffering was not in vain," he said solemnly. "And I haven't gotten going about your skin yet. We're still above the chin. I could go on for hours about your eyes alone. And eye accessories."
"Accessories?"
"You know. Eyelashes, eyebrows, eyelids. The purple smudges, right here..." He touched the hollow below her brow. "And the way your eyelashes curl at the tips. And your eyebrow hairs. I love how they sweep up at the edges. Its all just so...perfect. It blows my mind."
"Thank you," she replied. Her face was so hot, she felt feverish. "The compliments are just super-nice, and I appreciate you being so sweet, but the buildup is driving me crazy. If you don't kiss me now, I will grab a fork and stab you with it. Or else faint from lack of oxygen."
His laugh rang out, loud and happy. Then he seized her.
The kiss sprang into being, fully formed. No lead in, no awkward fumbling, no slow, graceful merging. Just all of a sudden, they were twined together as if they had always been, locked into a greedy, devouring clinch like they were starving to get inside each other.
His big body vibrated. The stroke of his lips was sure and perfect, the bold flick of his tongue made her melt and squirm, but it wasn't his technique that got her. What undid her was the raw need, his desperate intensity, licking through her like flames. Making her glow and sparkle and hum. Making her wet and slick and ready. Her thighs tightened around his. He was a sweet oasis after an eternity of choking dust. She wanted to give him everything. All she had. All she was.
So far in her life, the best sex had ever gotten for her was when she'd been relaxed enough so that it didn't actually hurt. The hugging and talking afterward was the part she craved. She'd always tried too hard, been hoping too much, to actually get off during the sex itself.
Not with Kev. Her mind was wiped blank. All the cataclysmic power of millions of years of reproductive evolution was clawing its way through her body, trying to get into the guy's pants. Right now would be a good time, thanks very much, and please, please, fuck me now.
She dragged her mouth away from his, gasped for oxygen, and scrambled off his lap, legs wobbling. "Take off your shoes," she ordered.
He looked perplexed. "My shoes? What about my shoes?"
"Just get them off," she said impatiently. "So that when I pull your jeans off and drag you to my bed, you won't be lurching around with denim shackles on your ankles. Trust me on this."
"OK." His beautiful grin made her heart bump and skip.
He kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks. Even his feet were perfect. Graceful, long toes, square nails, elegant bones. Who ever imagined she would get off on a guy's feet? Even the tuft of glinting blond hair on the joint of his big toe charmed her. How sweet.
His smile made something swell in her chest. She turned away before he could see the tears. The doubt that she could see this thing through without disgracing herself. That she was capable of living up to her bold moves, her big talk. She let her hair swing down to hide her face, stared at the glittering crystals, wishing she could hypnotize herself out of these stupid fears.
Screw it. A girl had to start somewhere. Frantic enthusiasm had to count for something, in the absence of experience, or technique. Or whatever the hell else the mysterious secret to great sex might be.
He touched her gently from behind, making her jump. Brushed her hair off her back, and over her shoulder. "I didn't mean to startle you," he murmured. "I just wanted to see your back. So graceful."
She nodded, trying to silently sniff the tears back, and squeezed her eyes shut as he stroked her spine, ribs, shoulder blades with his fingertips. He bent, to kiss the nape of her neck, moving down her spine with his warm lips, a kiss for each vertebra. Turning each one into a shining, glowing pearl on a string. His breath was a hot, soft caress, like silk, like fur. More tears sneaked out of her squeezed-shut eyes.
His hands circled her, a caress that made her nerve endings go nuts with bright, dazzling bursts. His lips moved against her shoulder. One hand slid low while the other crept up. She quaked in his arms, making tiny, breathless sounds as his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her low-rise jeans
...and stopped, tracing the waistband of her panties. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Not venturing inside. Just making her think about it. And wait. And wait.
Until she thought she would...just...die.
She made a growling hiss in the back of her throat, and jerked his hand inside her jeans. "You're a tease," she complained.
He laughed, his hand sliding into the front of her panties. She almost screamed when they curled around her mound, his fingertip caressing the damp seam through the veil of stretchy fabric, stroking, pressing, circling...and oh--oh God...
She came apart, shaking to pieces in a shivering string of lovely little firecracker orgasms. Her chest swelled, bloomed open. Her face quivered. If he hadn't held her against him, she would have keeled over. As it was, she dangled limply over the strength of his forearm.
"Oh, man," he whispered. "That was beautiful. Do it again."
She wanted to laugh, but she would cry if she let the sound out. As if it were up to her. This never happened to her. Never.
He swung her around so that they faced the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. The sun had emerged from the clouds right before going down, and the last rays slanted fitfully through the blinds, painting pagan stripes of reddish light onto her naked torso, his face, his sinewy arms. His wrist disappeared into her jeans. She could hardly believe the way she looked, the blush of heat on her face, brimming eyes, wet cheeks, her parted lips, her helpless squirming. His hand, shoved deep in her pants, petting and working her. Driving her mad.
He kissed the side of her neck, tonguing and licking, and tugged the gusset of her panties aside. Teased her tight furled folds apart, found her slick and melting. Her thighs squeezed his hand, clenching around him as he slid his finger into her hot well, finding some sweet magic place that had bloomed into being just for him. Nudging her unexpectely right over a cliff she never saw coming until she was already in a screaming free fall of shocking sensation.
Each driving, explosive pulse of pleasure knocked her further from what she thought of as herself, into someplace new, someplace soft and wild. And wonderfully real.
When she surfaced from the aftershocks, he still held her, his arm rock hard against her belly, his erection pressed against her backside.
Her jeans had slid almost off her ass. His gold skin deepened in tone to the darker brown on his forearm, startling against the pallor of her naked belly. The stripes from the sunlight were fading, almost gone, and the swirling rainbows along with them. The warm tiger stripes of sunset color that had painted them had been fleeting.
Like everything beautiful, this would be fleeting, too. She knew it for a fact. She had to seize it, get what she could get from it.
Her love affairs were invariably short-lived. Either the guy got scared off by the doomsaying radio receiver in her head, or freaked out by the financial and personal background checks, or intimidated by the relentless shadowing of the Parrish bodyguards. Or whatever. There was always something. Usually several somethings.
If she wanted some of this, she had to grab it. Full on, before problems had a chance to start. This guy walked straight out of her fantasy, and she was going to jump on him, and enjoy the hell out of him. Before the fantasy had to end. Because it would. Oh, yes, it would.
The anger that accompanied that thought set her spinning around, yanking for his belt buckle.
"Hey," he said gently. "No hurry."
"I say there is." Her voice was low, shaking. She wrenched his pants down over his hips. His penis sprang up like it was spring loaded.
Whoa. She stared down at him, taken aback. He was so big. Thick, long, blunt, red. Ready for action. She hadn't bargained for...well, this. Whew. Her dreams tended to focus on crashing waves of emotion, fountaining sensations. They didn't specify the blunt details.
And this, oh, man. This was a blunt detail if there ever was one.
She wasn't even sure if he would work, for her. In a purely mechanical sense. He certainly worked in every other way. She was so excited, she was on the verge of coming spontaneously.
She reached to touch his big, hot phallus, gasping at the contact. So solid, pulsing. He gasped and shuddered as she squeezed, the hot, velvety skin sliding, moving over the firmness of his throbbing shaft.
"Oh, God. Wait. I'll lose it," he muttered.
"That would be OK," she assured him. "I've lost it. Now it's your turn." She sank to her knees. Never let it be said that she wasn't ready to do her part.
He caught her under the armpits, and yanked her up again. "No."
She was nonplussed. "No? You don't like...that?"
He looked at her from hooded eyes as he pushed her into the tiny monk's cell of a bedroom. "Of course I do, but I can't let my head explode yet. Later for that. You, first. And we haven't had the talk yet."
"The talk? What talk?"
"I haven't been with anyone since well before the waterfall accident, and they did bloodwork up the wazoo while I was in the hospital, so I know I'm clean. But I don't have condoms with me. That's not an item that I carry on my person."
Oh. That talk. She shook herself, internally. It had been a nonissue so long, she'd forgotten the drill. "I'm fine, STD wise," she said. "And I might have some condoms. It's been so long, I can't be sure, but let me just...hold on." She yanked open her top drawer, rummaging in her underwear, and found the unopened three pack, left over from her affair with Eric. She brandished them. "They're ancient, though."
"If they haven't been exposed to light or heat, they should be OK."
"They've been languishing in the dark with only my panties for company," she said, ripping the foil. "Let me get one of these on you."
He slid his arms around her, nuzzling her ear. "Hey. Slow down."
He was trying to soothe her, but she wasn't soothable. "I don't want to slow down," she snapped. "I want to get on with it."
"I don't want to rush it," he replied. "I want to do it right."
Too bad, buddy. She was helpless to communicate her urgency to him without seeming crazy and desperate. She was probably well into crazy and desperate territory already. But if she didn't push this, it would slip away from her, fizzle out, or just vanish into thin air.
And she had to have this. Had. To.
She shook the condom out, relieved to see that it looked normal. She grasped his cock again, loving the way her fingers barely closed around that broad shaft, and tried to apply the condom, but the rolled latex ring wouldn't stretch around the bulb of his penis. Damn slippery thing kept snapping off, rolling back up. Finally, he pinched the condom out of her hand, and rolled it on himself, with casual grace. He lifted her hands to his lips, kissing the backs of her fingers.
She thudded her butt down onto the low single futon bed, yanking him toward her. "Get over here." Her voice shook. On the verge of tears. Crap. Guys hated that. It could be a deal breaker, too.
She fought it, tried to keep it together, but her breath hitched, sharp and audible. She dug in her nails and dragged him closer.
He sank obediently to his knees in front of the bed, pulling her so her bottom was perched on the edge of the futon, and embraced her.
They were forehead to forehead, her thighs splayed wide. He held his cock in his fist and petted her with it, tender strokes up and down her slick divide, each brush of contact as sweet and specific as a kiss.
The tension built, a maddening roar in her ears. She dug her fingers into his muscular ass and pulled him closer, wiggling for the angle that would lodge him inside her. Definitively. No escape for him.
"Please," she whispered, almost incoherently. "Please."
"Oh, yeah." His voice shook, too. She wasn't the only one who was falling apart. He began to press inside--
Her lungs stopped working. Oh. Sweet. God. He was huge.
She gripped his upper arms, clamped down on the sounds about to escape from her throat. She didn't want to scare him away.
He shifted back, pulling out of her. "No," he muttered.
He grabbed her clutching hands, kissed one. "I mean, not yet."
"I'm ready now," she informed him. "I'm falling to pieces. Now!"
He slid his finger inside her, caressing her where his cock had been, his lips moving against her forehead. "You're small," he said. "Too tight. Wait. I'll make it better for you."
Like hell! Wait? No! She was sick to death of waiting. She'd been waiting her whole damn life. She didn't know what for, or if she'd even know it when she saw it. "It's good now!" she insisted. "It's fine! It's never been this good for me! It'll kill me if it's better than this!"
He pried the clenched claws of her hands off his upper arms, and kissed them tenderly, held her wrists as she wrenched at them.
"I'll make it better," he said. "And it won't kill you. Trust me."
Arrogant bastard. The command in his voice made something inside her snap. She wrenched her arms free. "Trust you? How dare you jerk me around like this? I am sick of it!" She shoved at his chest.
He swayed backward. "I'm sorry you feel that way," he said.
"You think because you're the one with the dick, that means you're in charge? Just because you're the man?" She swatted at him, flailing wildly. "You think that makes you boss? Fuck you, Kev!"
"Oh, yes. I will fuck you. Count on it." He grabbed her arms again, held them fast. "And yeah, I am the one with the dick. I decide what to do with it, and when. And I say that you...will...wait."
His forceful words punched through her frantic anger and made her flinch. "Who died and made you God?" she yelled. "What was all that bullshit you talked about throwing me down on the nearest horizontal surface and fucking me hard? Brave words, huh?"
"I meant it," he said. "But that was before I felt you come all over my hand. I got off on that. That was excellent."
She was startled into speechlessness. She licked her lips, hypnotized by his eyes, his delving hand. Fingerfucking her, with skilful, demanding strokes that made her hips jerk against him.
Fade to Midnight Page 15
