That was a first for me, and it was just as bizarrely, emotionally, and intensely intimate as it had been watching her wash herself. Why? I wasn’t quite sure. It just was. Combined with the fierce vulnerability we’d shared as we moved together, the moment was fraught and delicate as porcelain.
My heart hammered, clenched. My breath caught. I couldn’t look away—Mara was too beautiful, too mesmerizing. The way her hair cascaded in long sunlit waves over her shoulder, the flick and shift of her grass-green eyes, the high, full roundness of her breasts, the generous swell of her hips, the flawless ivory of her skin…
How could I ever give her up? The thought battered through my head with all the undeniable force of a Stinger missile.
I choked on the thought, froze under it, paralyzed by the ravaging intensity of it.
Holy hell, I wasn’t ready for that.
This was supposed to be a week of fun with a gorgeous, charismatic, down-to-fuck girl, with a little extra non-sexual fun on the side.
Not…this. Whatever this was.
The problem was, Mara Quinn was quickly metamorphosing from a gorgeous, DTF girl into a breathtaking goddess, into the woman of any red-blooded man’s dreams. My blood ran red, ran hot, and this woman was exactly that, the kind of woman I could see being at the center of all my dreams.
And that was scaring the piss out of me.
Chapter 9
Mara
I saw it hit him, like it had hit me. I’d been cleaning myself up—the bathroom was so small it was nearly impossible to close the door unless you got in the tub first, so I’d left the door open. I hadn’t intended to let him watch, and it had been nerve-wracking in the extreme to stand there washing his come off my skin while he watched. It had taken everything I had to act casual about it, to not hyperventilate. But his gaze while I washed up…it had been so intense. Fierce. And the moments just before I’d stopped him from coming bare inside me, those moments as we moved together had been…searing enough to flay right out of me any notions of this being casual sex anymore.
And I saw it hit him, watched the intensity hit him, watched the moment when he realized that we were creating something between each other that I know neither of us were ready for, that neither of us had expected.
I finished cleaning him, tossed the washcloth into the tub, and re-joined him in the bed. I remembered Claire’s insistence that I try post-coital snuggles…but given the intensity we’d just shared, snuggling with Zane seemed a little too much like tempting fate.
So instead of curling up against his side, my head on his chest—like I dearly, desperately wanted to, deep down—I propped myself on an elbow next to him and drank in his masculine, muscular, rugged beauty. He didn’t reach for me, either, and I suspected he was going through a similar tangle of thoughts and emotions.
“So.” He mirrored my pose, reaching out a hand to trace my figure from shoulder to hip to thigh and back up. “Dinner?”
“With Mrs. Kingsley and the others?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”
“And then a movie?”
Another nod and shrug. “The theater here only has two screens as I remember, so the selection is limited. But that’d be fun.” He let his hand rest on the swell of my hip. “It’ll be proper date, then.”
“A real date.” I wrinkled my nose. “I haven’t been on a date-date since high school.”
He chuckled. “Me either, actually.”
My hand had a mind of its own, apparently, because I watched it drift out to fondle his dick. Still slack, but under my touch it began to stir.
“Tell me about your last date,” I said.
He let out a breath. “Her name was…uh—Ashley. MacNamara? I think that’s it, Ashley MacNamara. My senior year of high school, and she was a freshman at U-A-S.”
“An older woman, huh?” I teased, toying with him still.
He flicked a thumb against my nipple. “Nah, only by, like, six months.”
“So what’d you guys do?”
“Walked the boardwalk, and then I took her to Bar Harbor, and then to a movie.” He rolled my nipple between his thumb and finger, sending little thrills fluttering through me. “Um…The Holiday, I think we saw.”
“You remember the movie?”
He grinned slyly. “Yeah, well…more because we didn’t actually see much of the movie.”
“Too busy making out, huh?”
He chuckled. “You could call it making out, I suppose.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him. “In the movie theater?”
“Way up in the very back.”
I had him at half-mast, by that point, hard enough to really begin stroking him. “You went all the way with her…in the theater?”
“Nah, not all the way. Second base, I guess you’d call it.”
“And that was the last real date you went on?”
He nodded. “I graduated not long after, and shipped out for RTC.”
“RTC?”
“The Navy’s version of boot camp—Recruit Training Command, in Great Lakes, Illinois.”
“And you and Ashley MacNamara? What happened there?”
“After that date, she informed me she’d prefer to meet at her apartment. I’d bring carryout after school and we’d watch a movie in her room, and…you know, Netflix and chill, only this was before Netflix. Real World and chill, it ended up being, most of the time.”
“So that was a long term thing?” I asked, my fist moving slowly up and down his shaft.
He circled my areola with a fingertip, his gaze on my breasts rather than me. “Um, sort of.” His voice went tight and clipped, verbal shorthand for drop it.
But I wasn’t going to.
“Meaning what?”
He sighed and glanced at me. “You really want to hear this?”
“Of course.”
“Now?”
I nodded, and he shifted closer to me, allowing me to reach him more easily, and him me.
“Well…” he said, sighing, and starting over. “That was my first and really only taste of heartbreak, if you really must know. I was into her. I’d dated a few girls up to that point, nothing serious, mainly just being a horny teenager, you know? Sleeping around, being a general douchebag. Ashley was cool, though. She was a college chick, which gave me points with the guys, but it wasn’t about that. I was genuinely into her. Like I said, though, after that date she made it obvious she wasn’t interested in dating me, just sleeping with me. Which was fine—like I was going to argue with not having to set up dates all the time? Should’ve been wiser, but I was a horny kid and she was hot. I mean it should’ve been obvious, looking back. I thought we had something, I thought she just liked being around me in private. But then one day I was out with Brock and Bax and couple other guys from school, just a bunch of dudes horsing around, whatever. And we saw Ashley with a bunch of other kids, guys, girls, a big crowd of people. And Ashley was hanging on this guy, this older guy. Like, she was nineteen and he had to have been twenty-four or five, I guess. Just hanging on him, kissing him, holding hands. Being the arrogant punk I was, I went up to her. And she was like, ‘Oh, hey, Zane. This is my boyfriend.’ She emphasized the word boyfriend and gave me this look that said don’t say a fuckin’ word. That was when I realized I was just a piece of ass for her. A side piece. So I quit going to her place, focused on finishing school, and then left for RTC.”
He was fully and magnificently hard by then.
“That sucks,” I said. “She sounds like she was a bitch.”
He shrugged. “It was a learning lesson.”
“What lesson did you learn?”
“That dating sucks, and don’t trust anyone.”
I turned my attention to my hand gliding along his length. “And now?”
He watched me touch him. “Now? I mean, nothing I’ve ever seen has convinced me otherwise.” He hesitated. “Until Bast met Dru, at least. And now…you.”
“And now me, what?”
&n
bsp; “I mean, we’re not really dating, but you…you’re starting to make me think maybe if the right person comes along, dating could be all right, and that it might not be so bad to try and trust someone.”
When he said we’re not really dating, I felt a pang of pain. But he was right. By my own suggestion, this wasn’t really dating. What we were doing had a built-in shelf life. I wasn’t sure there was a term or a box for what we had—more than a one-night stand, but less than a relationship.
“The right person, huh?” I asked, hoping to disguise the sudden flux of disappointment I was feeling, which was stupid, because he was right and there was no reason I should feel disappointed, but I did, and I couldn’t deny it, only ignore it and hope he didn’t notice and that it went away.
“The right person,” he echoed. “She’d have to be really special, though.” His hand drifted down, down, found my legs parted just enough to allow him access.
“Special?”
“Yeah. They’d have to be particularly gorgeous.”
“Obviously.”
“And I mean, I have to admit I’m partial to blondes.” His fingertip found my clit, and I wiggled, stifling a gasp.
“Go on,” I said, twisting and squeezing my fist around the broad, springy head of his cock.
“And green eyes. There’s something about that combination that just…gets me, you know?” He nudged me and I rolled to my back, spreading my thighs to let him touch me, keeping my stroking, twisting grip on his cock going slow and steady as he levered over me, murmuring down to me. “I mean, her hair has to be a very specific shade of honey and wheat and late afternoon sunlight, and her eyes have to be the green of really lush, healthy grass.”
God, my heart. What was my heart doing? His words were like bullets hitting a bull’s eye, each one thunking into my heart.
I lifted my unoccupied hand and twisted a lock of my hair, going along with his game, pretending to be unaffected by his touch or his words. “Huh. Would you look at this? My hair is kinda that color.”
He nodded. “I’ve noticed. But there are a few other stipulations.”
“Like what?” I asked, going breathless now as his touch skillfully brought heat and pressure and pleasure building up inside me.
“She has to have the body of a goddess. Her tits have to be just the right size, you know, full and round, and just…perfect. That’s very hard to find, naturally perfect breasts.” He cupped a breast as he said this, then leaned down and flicked his tongue over my nipple. “Almost as hard to find as a perfect ass. Heart-shaped, and juicy but firm. The kind of ass that you just can’t keep your hands off of.”
I rolled toward him, grabbed his wrist, and guided his hand to my butt. “Like this one?”
“Exactly like this one.” He paused to breathe and gather his thoughts, groaning low as I continued to stroke and fondle and caress him, and then continued, acting unaffected. “But she’s got to have more than just a perfect body, though.”
“Do tell.”
“She’s got to be strong; she’s got to have a personality that can match mine. I can be hard to handle, hard to deal with. She’d have to understand what it means to know that I’ve seen combat.” He had me writhing and gasping, and I knew he was feeling the urgency in my touch too, but neither of us was willing to break first. “She’s got to be funny, and smart, and easy to be around.”
“That’s a tall order, Mr. Badd,” I said, and then managed a saucy grin, giving his cock a squeeze. “You might be interested to note that I happen to find you rather pleasant to…handle.”
“That is interesting,” he mused. “There’s one other thing, though, one last requirement.” He punctuated this by slipping two fingers into me and unerringly finding my G-spot.
“What’s that?” I was going to be the one to break the game, to give away the need.
“She has to be an animal in bed. She’s got to challenge me, not just passively go along with whatever I want.” Those fingers of his…god, they were magic.
Sliding in, hooking, finding my G-spot and making me crazy, then slipping out to tease my clit.
“Get a condom,” I said, finally.
He rolled off the bed, lithe and quick despite his muscular size. He dug in the back pocket of his jeans and produced a string of three condoms, ripped one free and tossed the rest onto his jeans. Tearing open the foil, he rolled the condom down his length and then crawled onto the bed.
He hovered over me, huge and hard and muscular, cock erect and bobbing between us, his eyes fierce. “You wouldn’t know anyone like that, would you?”
I lifted up and bit his lower lip, sucked it into my mouth. “You know, I just might.” I clung to his shoulders and wrapped my heels around his back. “Although, this person I know, she might have a few requirements of her own.”
“Oh?”
I reached between us and fit the head of his cock between my nether lips, then hesitated. “Yeah. He’d have to have a body so perfect it’d put Channing Tatum to shame.”
“Don’t know who that is.”
I laughed, despite the situation. “An actor. Big muscles, lots of abs. Really sexy.”
“Betcha I could bench press him,” Zane boasted.
I laughed again. “That wouldn’t surprise me.” I moved slightly, taking an inch or so of Zane’s length into me; I was starting to wonder when he would take charge, when he would get tired of letting me be in control. “He’d have to have a huge, and I do mean huge cock. But not just big, his cock has to be shaped just right, and would have to fit in my hands just right, and my mouth, and inside me. The fit is imperative.”
Zane pressed his forehead to mine and sank into me. “Like this?”
I gasped. “Yes, god yes, just like this.”
He stilled when he was rooted fully within me. “What else?”
“He’d have to be a badass. I’ve known some badasses in my life, and this guy, he’d have to be the most badass of them all.” I found myself caressing the back of his head and gazing up at him as I spoke. “But also kind, and funny. A sharp sense of humor is really important.”
“I was voted class clown in high school,” he said.
I snickered. “You were not.”
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. But I did make the X-O crack up so bad during a briefing once that he had to leave the room.”
“X-O?”
“Executive officer.”
“Ah.”
“Any other requirements?” Zane asked.
“Um…” I pretended to think as Zane began slowly thrusting into me. “Hmmm…there was one other thing, but I’m having a hard time remembering what it was.”
He bent and claimed my mouth with his, lips scouring mine, tongue searching, demanding. It was a dominating kiss, one that reminded me who he was, what kind of man he was.
“That jog your memory at all?” he asked.
I was shaking all over from the kiss, and found it genuinely hard to think, to follow the conversation. “Oh, ummm…yeah. The last thing is kind of a two-parter. He has to be the most amazing kisser in the entire world—like he has to be able to kiss me literally stupid and breathless.”
Zane obeyed the implied suggestion, doubling down on the hot, dominating kiss, moving into me in rhythm with his probing tongue, making it no longer just a kiss but an extension of the union of our bodies, a continuation of the physical chemistry, the connection, the searing intensity I know we both felt as he thrust into me.
This was more than just the merging of our bodies; I knew it, and he knew it…and the kiss proved it.
“The other part?” Zane prompted, after breaking the kiss.
“He has to just instinctively, innately know my body. He has to be able to make me come in thirty seconds flat. And there has to be…something about the way we have sex that’s just…” I trailed off, finding it impossible to summon the right word.
“More than real?” Zane suggested.
“Yes, exactly,” I said, moving
with him, now. “More than real.”
There was just us moving in synch, then, breathing matched, eyes locked, bodies slipping and sliding and sweating together. No hurry, no tricks, no weird positions or thinly veiled suggestions, just us, just our bodies and our hearts and whatever this thing was we shared.
He was moving slowly, still, though. Holding back, maybe.
“Zane?”
“Hmmm?”
“You’re holding back.”
“A little, yeah.”
“There’s no point to everything we just said if we’re not both all in.” I lifted up and kissed him, one hand on his waist, the other wrapped around the back of his head.
His movements faltered, stopped, and he stared down at me for a moment, and then he grinned at me. “You asked for it.”
A beat of silence, in which I was about to ask what he meant, but never got the chance. He pulled out of me and gripped me by the hips, flipping me to my belly.
Oh.
I moved to my hands and knees, ready and willing to take him like this. He slid his hands over my ass, and then shifted closer to me, upright on his knees behind me. I watched over my shoulder as he gripped his shaft and guided himself into me.
“Oh god,” I murmured.
“Ready?”
“Give it to me, Zane.”
Badd Ass (Badd Brothers Book 2) Page 12
