by Nicola Marsh
She bit off the rest of what she’d been saying as he fastened his mouth on her and licked her pussy in a long, slow swipe that had her thrusting upward for more.
He gave it to her. Nipping her clit while sliding his tongue inside her, mimicking what his cock yearned to do. Lapping at her. Circling her clit with his tongue while pumping his fingers into her.
She moaned and panted, writhing beneath his mouth as if she couldn’t get enough. He knew the feeling, and when she urged him on with escalating squirming, he sucked her clit into his mouth and gave it another flick with his tongue, savouring when she fell apart on a scream that pierced his eardrums.
He waited until her breathing returned to normal before raising his head to stare her straight in the eye.
‘Ready for some more teasing?’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I NEVER PULLED an all-nighter at uni but if I knew I’d feel this good I would’ve done it more often.’ Brock shot her a cheeky grin before refocussing on the road.
He handled his sleek sports car as well as he did her: confident, smooth, masterful. Heat crept into her cheeks at the memory of exactly how masterful he’d been with her all night.
‘Trust me, the all-nighters I pulled at uni to study were never like the one we just had.’
He chuckled. ‘Confession time. I did stay up some nights fantasising about you and me having the kind of night we just did.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah.’ He indicated, checked his blind spot and pulled into the other lane. ‘I had the hots for you in uni. Big time. Permanent hard-on. Totally embarrassing.’
Jayda’s jaw dropped. ‘But you always looked at me like you couldn’t stand me. And you avoided me, unless we were forced to work together.’
‘Haven’t you had a guy pelt you with erasers in primary school because he secretly liked you?’
She shook her head. ‘I went to an all-girls private school from the age of four.’
Which explained a lot. She’d never been any good at getting a read on men. The only guys she’d mixed with socially growing up had been sons of her parents’ rich friends, then she’d hit uni at eighteen and been thrust into a social scene far removed from what she’d been used to. The guys in her IT classes had been divided into two groups: the popular jocks that were so confident in their own skins they charmed everybody, and the reserved geeks like Brock who chose discerningly who they hung out with.
She’d been thrilled to be one of the girls the jocks fawned over—due to her wealth, she wasn’t a complete idiot—and had flexed her newly discovered flirting muscles. Guys like Brock had intimidated her with their high IQs and ability to see through any bullshit, which was why she’d avoided them.
To learn now that Brock had lusted after her...damn, she could’ve had four years of incredible sex if she’d known. Then again, if Brock’s adamant stance that they were over in two weeks was anything to go by, four years would’ve been out of the question.
‘Well, I wanted you back then.’ He reached over and squeezed her thigh. ‘And in case you were wondering, nothing’s changed.’
‘Sex maniac.’ She swatted his hand away and he laughed. ‘Seriously, why didn’t I have a clue?’
‘Because you were too busy being Miss Popularity.’
She crinkled her nose. ‘I wasted a lot of time trying to project an image back then, when I could’ve been having amazing sex with you.’
The faintest pink stained his cheeks. ‘If you’d actually made a move on me back then I probably would’ve hidden out in the library.’
The corners of his mouth quirked. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I was a real dork back then.’
‘A dork with a hard-on, apparently.’
Their laughter mingled, eliciting a warmth in her chest she’d never experienced. A comfortable, serene warmth that made her wish she could capture it for whenever she needed to feel good.
‘This is really nice.’ The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them and rather than recoil in horror as she expected him to, he nodded.
‘Yeah, it is.’
He pulled over out the front of the hotel where she’d left her car last night and they eyeballed each other, as if silently daring the other to say out loud what was really going on here—they’d bonded beyond sex—but typically they remained mute. Her, because she’d never been any good at articulating how she was feeling, him, because he’d made it more than clear all they were having was expiration-date sex.
‘Hey, want to do something completely outrageous?’ She tugged on her seat belt to ease the tension so she could swivel to face him.
‘If it involves whips and chains, that’s too outrageous for me.’
She laughed at his deadpan response. ‘If we had hooked up in uni and pulled all-nighters, we would’ve probably had breakfast together in the quadrangle at dawn.’
Understanding lit his eyes. ‘You want to do that now?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She held up her hand before he could say anything else. ‘It’s not because I’m some tragic romantic who laments the fact we weren’t closer at uni, I just think it could be fun.’
‘I don’t do fun as a rule.’ He tried a mock frown and failed. ‘But considering you kept me up all night and made me come four times I’ll make an exception in this case.’
‘You made me come six times,’ she flung back, her wide grin telling him exactly how much she’d enjoyed each and every one of those times.
‘Care to make it seven?’
His gaze roved over her from head to foot like a physical caress and her nipples hardened in response. As he leaned over her, she placed a hand on his chest.
‘As much as I’d like to head back to your place and hit the jackpot with lucky seven, I really want to do this.’ She slid her hand up to rest it against his cheek. ‘It’ll be dawn soon and just this once I want to see what it would’ve been like if we’d hooked up back at uni.’
His exaggerated sigh made her smile. ‘You are a tragic romantic.’
‘Maybe a little?’ She brushed a kiss across his lips, soft, lingering. ‘So we’re doing this?’
He nodded, the glint in his eyes sending goosebumps rippling across her skin. ‘Yeah, we’re doing this, if I get to do you later.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN HIS UNI days Brock had avoided the quadrangle. A large open space almost the size of a city block bordered by the university’s old sandstone buildings and flanked by an alley of bustling cafés, it housed two things guaranteed to keep him away: cool kids and couples.
He would walk an extra kilometre to a smaller student hangout to have his dry ham and cheese sandwiches every lunchtime rather than sit in that quadrangle and watch happy people who only accentuated that he wasn’t.
He’d been a brooding, grumpy introvert. If truth be told still was, though he hid it well for his business. Being the number one go-to guy for IT in Melbourne was a far cry from that dirt-poor kid surviving on scholarships to get ahead. But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that a small part of him still looked over his shoulder every goddamn day because he thought the life he’d worked so hard to build could be ripped away in a second.
Stupid, because he’d invested his growing fortune wisely to prevent that very scenario happening but being back here triggered every frigging insecurity he’d ever had.
‘I’ve never seen this place so quiet,’ Jayda said, her hand warm in his.
‘That’s because it’s the ass-crack of dawn and we’re idiots for being here.’
His dry response garnered an elbow to the ribs. ‘Listen, Loverboy, shelve your inner cynic for five seconds so I can enjoy this, okay?’
‘Loverboy?’
‘And don’t you know it,’ she said, her coy smile sending a jolt straight to his cock.
‘Fine, you win. I’ll make the most of my first time h
ere—’
Damn, why did he have to go and say that? Predictably, she pounced on it.
‘You never ate in the quadrangle?’
She made it sound as if he’d never set foot in the entire university and had got a fake degree online.
‘No.’
Her disbelief didn’t waver as she stared at him in open-mouthed shock. ‘How could you spend four years here and not—?’
‘Because I was a geek, okay? And only cool kids hung out here,’ he said through gritted teeth, hating that she’d dragged it out of him. Not that it was the entire truth but it would appease her for now. It had to. No way in hell would he ever tell anyone, let alone a short-term fling, what had driven him to stay away from the sickening PDAs on show here every day.
Short-term fling...
Jayda had the potential to be more than that and he knew it, which was exactly why he’d keep the truth from her.
‘Sexiest geek I ever saw,’ she said, bumping him with her hip. ‘I’m glad your first time is with me.’
Trust her to know when to back down, but he saw the speculation in her sideways glance as they strolled towards the pop-up truck situated on the outskirts of the grassed area.
‘Let’s eat,’ he said, not surprised when Merv of Merv’s Mobile Meals recognised Jayda and his eyes lit up.
‘I remember you, girly.’ The beefy sixty-something with bulging biceps leaned out of his window to stare down at them. ‘Egg white omelette, grilled tomato, with a side of spinach, hold the butter.’
Jayda gaped and Merv laughed. ‘I never forget a pretty face.’
‘Or the order of a pretty face, apparently.’
Merv chuckled at Brock’s response. ‘Didn’t you know, big guy, if I wasn’t cooking in a truck for the last forty years I would’ve been studying rocket science in one of those fancy buildings behind you?’
Jayda smiled at his self-deprecation and Brock found himself doing the same.
‘So what’ll it be, folks?’ Merv raised a brow at Jayda. ‘Same for you as the old days?’
Considering Jayda had eaten barely anything since they’d met up in the hotel bar last night, Brock wondered if she’d break with the habit of a lifetime and order a decent meal.
He knew why she’d ordered the low-fat breakfast Merv had divulged; the same reason she’d only drunken diet sodas and hidden behind dark clothing. Even if she hadn’t revealed her body issues to him the night they’d hooked up six years ago, he would’ve understood. Curvy girls were bombarded with skinny girl images everywhere. He hated it. Give him a lush handful of woman any day over a thin bamboo.
‘Actually, I think I’ll have one of your famous breakfast burgers, please,’ she said.
Surprised, Brock added, ‘Make that two. Along with two large lattes.’
‘Coming right up, folks.’
While Merv set about whipping up their breakfast, Brock squeezed Jayda’s hand. ‘You okay?’
A hidden fire smouldered in her eyes. ‘Why? Because he remembered I used to starve myself most days to get through uni?’
Her bitter comeback left Brock speechless. It had never entered his head she might have had an eating disorder and it wasn’t his place to ask about it now.
She must’ve seen some of the shock on his face, because she shook her head. ‘I wasn’t anorexic or bulimic, if that’s what you’re thinking. But by the time I reached here I’d spent enough years calorie-counting to know I couldn’t binge on junk food like the rest of my cohorts.’
‘You have a beautiful body—’
‘Thanks for the validation but I don’t need it any more,’ she said, easing her hand out of his to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m five kilos lighter now than I was back then and I’m happy with how I look.’
A small part of him had wondered if that was why she’d left his bed the first time last night, because she’d felt vulnerable lying naked under the covers. But he’d dismissed that notion pretty damn quick when she’d bared herself to him in the kitchen before happily being ensconced in his bed for the rest of the night.
He hoped she understood by the way he’d caressed and licked and touched her all over repeatedly last night how much he desired her. He loved how confident she sounded now and that she’d admitted to being happy with how she looked. Someone as gorgeous as her should be shouting it from the goddamn rooftops.
‘You’ve always been beautiful to me,’ he said softly, clasping her face between his hands and kissing the lips he’d dreamed of for four long years before he’d had a chance to sample them.
When he eased away she had tears in her eyes and he inwardly cursed for being a doofus when it came to women. This was why he didn’t do relationships or anything longer than a night or two. He had no frigging clue how women worked. If he did he would’ve dragged his mum away from a dead-end marriage and a bullying loser years ago.
‘Burgers are ready, folks.’
Glad for the distraction, Brock said, ‘I’ve got this,’ giving her time to compose herself as he paid for their breakfast.
Juggling the cardboard coffee tray and the surprisingly heavy burger bag in one hand, he draped his free arm over Jayda’s shoulders and guided her to a wrought-iron bench under a towering oak.
When the silence stretched between them, he placed their breakfast on the bench, dropped another kiss on her lips, and said, ‘Sit. I’m ravenous.’
She blinked several times and did as she was told, reaching for the bag. ‘I always envied those freaks with fast metabolisms who ate these every damn day.’ She opened the bag and inhaled, an expression of pure bliss on her face.
He’d seen that expression before and the thought of him eating her out made his cock surge to life in a big way.
‘They smell good,’ he said, sitting beside her and waiting until she handed him one of the brown-paper-wrapped burgers.
‘Toasted roll, fried eggs, onions, bacon and Merv’s special BBQ sauce. I think I’m in heaven,’ she said, a second before biting into hers.
He could’ve sworn her eyes almost rolled back in her head. ‘That good, huh?’
‘Oh. My. God.’ She’d barely got the words out before she took another bite and if the aroma assailing his nostrils was half as good as the taste he’d have to agree with her.
Brock had never had a big appetite, existing on coffee and energy drinks for long nights at the office, but one bite of Merv’s breakfast burger converted him.
‘This is fucking amazing,’ he said, wiping BBQ sauce off his chin with a napkin. ‘Best thing I’ve ever tasted.’
‘Mmm...’ she mumbled, her mouth full, her eyes sparkling and in that moment Brock felt an uncharacteristic pinch in the vicinity of his heart. He’d been right. Jayda was beautiful and never more so than right now with genuine enjoyment lighting her eyes.
He stuffed the burger into his mouth to prevent blurting exactly how she made him feel and stared straight ahead, in time to see pale pink and mauve streak the Melbourne skyline. She must’ve glimpsed the sunrise at the same time because she glanced at him, her eyes wide with wonder.
He knew the feeling. He’d never seen anything so special and he wasn’t referring to the sun cresting the horizon.
They finished their burgers in silence, watching the glowing golden ball rise. When they were done, he bundled their rubbish and lobbed it into the nearby bin, before handing her a coffee.
‘So what do you think?’
He heard the uncertainty in her voice, as if she couldn’t get a read on his mood. ‘I think I should’ve braved the cool quadrangle years ago if this is what happened every morning.’
She didn’t look at him so, in an effort to reassure her, he placed a fingertip under her chin and gently swivelled her face towards him. ‘And I’m not talking about those incredible burgers, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
/> He took a breath and blew it out. ‘It’s being here with you.’
There. He’d said it and the quadrangle hadn’t caved and the centuries-old stone building still stood. But he knew he’d made a mistake being honest the second her gaze met his, because what he saw there sent a tremor of terror through him.
Expectation.
Hope.
A yearning for more than he could ever give.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JAYDA HAD MADE a mistake bringing Brock to the quadrangle and she knew it when he made a grand show of patting his pocket where his mobile was, fishing it out to glance at the screen, before blurting, ‘I have to go. Urgent job.’
She knew the second he admitted he liked being here with her that he’d use some lame excuse to bolt. The moment the words tripped from his lips she glimpsed wariness warring with fear in his eyes. He’d said too much. He’d admitted to enjoying her company. Flings didn’t do that.
She’d been an idiot. Because after spending an amazing twelve hours together she’d done what she’d always done her entire life.
Put too much faith in people.
‘Of course you have to go,’ she said, keeping her tone deliberately cool. ‘Go do what you have to do.’
He hesitated, sliding the phone back into his pocket but unable to meet her eyes. ‘Breakfast was great. Thanks.’
‘It was your shout.’ She shrugged, as if it meant little, when wanting to have breakfast here at dawn had been a silly, whimsical notion from a well-sated woman. A woman so bamboozled by Brock that she would’ve done or said anything to prolong their time together.
Silly, considering they’d already agreed to hook up for sex regularly over the next two weeks, but making a decision to keep things casual and staying awake all damn night because he was insatiable and incredibly skilled...well, she’d been understandably flustered.
He ducked down to whisper in her ear, ‘Seemed only fair, considering I made you shout all night.’
Heat flushed her skin and she gritted her teeth against the urge to lean into him. If she did that, she’d never let him go.
