by Taryn Quinn
“That’s because it’s new. You forget I’m the queen of soured relationships.”
He looked back at her as she slipped into bed and crossed her arms over her chest. Her ample chest, attractively revealed by her low-cut nightie. “I’ve had a few too. Including a marriage, in case you’ve forgotten.” He couldn’t help his irritation any more than he could help staring at her breasts. Her disgusted exhale drew his gaze to her face, though that noise could’ve been from his focus on her cleavage as much as the reminder about his ex-wife. Not his fault she was so damn hot. “I’m just saying, I’m not new to the game, babe. I know things go bad. I also know if you start out assuming they’ll go south, you’ll usually get your wish.”
“I don’t want this to be complicated.”
He tapped the cage again and got the same reaction from the bird—nada. With a sigh, he came around to the opposite side of Sara’s bed and sat on the tangled comforter. Memories of how they’d gotten it so messy made him glance back at her, only this time she was smiling. Maybe she was thinking about the same thing. “Life’s complicated in general. You can take the easy route and be bored out of your fucking mind. I’ve done that for stretches.”
“Somehow I doubt it.”
“Don’t. Sometimes we all need to hide out for a while.” He rubbed her foot through the covers. “I know moving here was a big change for you. I also know that you value your friendship with my sister, and it means a lot that you’d rather not do anything that might make her unhappy.”
“She’s not the only one I value.” She patted the pillow beside her. “Maybe I haven’t made that clear enough.”
“If that’s a thinly veiled way of offering to show your affection through sexual favors, I heartily agree.”
She laughed and curled up on her side, extending her arm to him. “No more sexual favors tonight. I’m still recovering, remember?”
“I’m still recovering too,” he said, stroking the bed meaningfully before he rose to shut the door.
Just in case, he flipped the lock, though if Kim made it upstairs and discovered them together in Sara’s bedroom, it’d be pretty obvious they weren’t sequestered to work on the Times crossword.
Sara gave him a grateful look when he turned back to undress. He hauled his T-shirt over his head and shed his boots and jeans, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Her snort at his untidiness made him shift to give her a clear glimpse of his renewed erection, knowing that would quell her amusement.
Judging from the size of her pupils, he was right. “Low blow,” she murmured.
He grinned and crawled over the bed, caging her beneath him like a cotton burrito. She loved to bundle up right away, and now she couldn’t escape from her sheeted prison. “No, a low blow would be if I slid up this bed and fed my cock into your mouth again. And it’d be low because it would probably take me about five seconds to come.”
One of her brows winged up, and he swore his balls shouted for mercy. “You’d feed me your cock and I have no say in the matter, hmm?”
Well, now, this was interesting. “Does that intrigue you?”
“Maybe.” She flashed him an artificially innocent smile. There was nothing inexperienced about this woman, and he loved that about her. She brought her A-game to the table and challenged him at every turn, sexually and otherwise. “When I’m feeling better. I think tonight made me relapse.”
Groaning, he rolled off her and onto his side, facing away from her. After that near miss, he needed a minute. Or a frigging boatload of them. “You’re evil.”
She reached over and clicked off the light. Then she snuggled her warm, curvy body up against his back and gripped his swollen length. She pressed her thumb against the head as if he had an On button. Damn if it didn’t work too. “Still think that?”
“I will if you don’t move your hand,” he said huskily.
Chuckling softly, she swept her lips along his shoulder. Her hand, however, stayed painfully immobile. He could feel the wetness from his slit slipping out to coat her thumb. “Mmm, have I ever told you how much I love your body?”
“You could show me. With your fingers.”
Her laughter puffed across his neck and he shuddered. It took so little from her to make him crazy. “I suppose I have enough energy for a quickie. If you do all the work.” She bit one of the corded muscles in his shoulder, and he groaned. “Would that make you feel better?”
He didn’t answer her husky question. He scarcely even breathed. But his poor, ignored dick flexed in her hold, silently begging.
Apparently she decided to take pity on him, because she circled the crown of his erection, smearing the fluid there like the topping to her own personal banana split. He pressed his face against his forearm while she started to jerk him in long, even strokes, as easy as freaking Sunday morning. Except he was as hard as the frame of her bed, and his groin ached like he’d never come at all. He didn’t want easy. He wanted her to work his cock until his freaking head popped off.
“Aww, baby, you’re so tense.” Her mocking tone shouldn’t have made him thicken more, but it did. From her throaty purr of approval, she knew it. “It must be so tough for you, working all those long days bent over engines, playing with wires and valves and connections.”
He glanced back at her. Her lids dipped low over her eyes, and her pale pink lips curved. She looked playful. Even happy.
“I think you should come down to the shop and hold my pliers.” Before she could make a sound, he rolled over and pinned her beneath him, burying his face in the curve between her throat and her shoulder where her warmed vanilla scent was strongest. “You’ve never seen me work my magic under the hood.”
“Haven’t seen it,” she gasped as he rocked his cock against her covered mound, “but I’ve sure experienced it.”
“Allow me to demonstrate another facet of my technique.” He leaned over her and tugged the bedside drawer open, revealing her stash of condoms. “Thank God you had more than one. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me. You’d never be the type to take chances.”
“Really? Look where we are. What we’re doing. And at my age, it’s not as much of a chance, at least when it comes to getting pregnant.”
“You’re forty-two, not sixty-two. I’m damn tired of hearing about it, actually.” He popped one of the condoms he found between her lips and grinned as she sputtered. “Hold that one for me.”
Her forehead wrinkled, and he knew she’d let a verbal assault fly the moment he unstuffed her mouth. So he didn’t. He sat back on his haunches, sheathing his cock in latex in one smooth motion. She mumbled again, but she didn’t protest when he yanked down the covers to reveal the nightie twisted so naughtily around her waist. Below it she was bare and wet and ready for him.
And he was damn well ready for her.
“I’ll be quiet,” he promised, giving her a devilish grin. “And I’ll keep you quiet too. Now open up for me and stop busting my damn balls, woman.”
Her lips quivered around the condom between her teeth as if she were a fighting a smile. She parted her legs and tilted upward slightly, all the invitation he needed.
With one thrust he’d embedded himself inside her to the hilt. His groan was part relief and part torment, because holy Christ, her pussy was tight. A swollen, silky glove created specially for his dick. A wet haven for wayward penises everywhere—except not, since he had no intention of sharing this slice of heaven with anyone.
She didn’t make a single noise. Not a moan, a whimper, a sigh. She stared at him in wordless awe, somehow managing to still look gorgeous and ethereal despite the packet firmly wedged in her mouth.
“Yeah, baby. I get it.” And he did. She was right there with him, as breathlessly amazed as he was at how perfect this felt.
Or she would be, once he coaxed his hips into moving. They’d locked into hers as if they had a mind of their own.
Brad braced his hands next to her head and lifted his torso off her, rising slowly while he dragged
out his cock. Now she protested, a slight, hitching breath that whooshed out of her at the press of his length back inside. She canted upward to meet him, their gazes connected, their bodies sliding into a groove that should’ve been awkward and new, yet wasn’t. Slipping into her was as natural as the kisses he smoothed along her brow.
She grabbed the condom out of her mouth, but he shook his head and slipped it back between her lips. “Don’t you want to be a good girl for me?” At her eyeroll, he laughed. “Let me rephrase. Don’t you want to stay nice and quiet? At least that gives you something to…bite.”
Again she said more with her eyes than some women managed with their mouths. But she didn’t remove the packet, so small favors.
She reached up to wind her arms around his back, holding him close while he gave into the urges he couldn’t control. He pushed into her faster. Deeper. Hiking her legs up around him to make it easier for her to arch into his strokes, he drove into her over and over, determined to give her more pleasure than she could stand.
But the long night of waiting, combined with the months before that, had taken its toll. A telltale tingle shot up his spine and spiraled through his muscles. He swiveled his hips, hitting a new spot inside her that made her squeeze her eyes shut and slicken his length even more.
God, yes. Finally.
He couldn’t come first. Wouldn’t. Not when she already saw him as a boy with no self-control.
Like hell.
Boring down into her, he grasped her curvy hips, shifting until his pubic bone ground against her needy clit. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. Was this a whole new way for her to block him out? For her to pretend they weren’t lovers?
“Look at me,” he rasped. “I want you to know who’s making you come.”
She lifted her fingers to his face, tracing them along his jaw, his nose, his lips. Her walls tightened around him, undulating with her subtle squeezes around his dick. Little butterfly kisses that turned his raging erection into a damn pole of steel. Still her eyes didn’t open. Her belly rippled against his abdomen the harder he surged into her, and her nipples threatened to poke through her nightgown, but she didn’t give him the pleasure of looking into her gorgeous eyes.
Not yet anyway.
With another flex of his hips and a change of the angle, he tugged her up and burrowed ever deeper. She gasped around the condom she now bit into, likely ruining it with the imprint of her teeth. He alternated long, even thrusts with shorter, churning ones and stared at her straining features, knowing she was reaching for the same pinnacle he was.
Needing to see her eyes as they found it together.
“Sara,” he whispered. She made a sound deep in her throat and tightened even further around his shaft. His cock throbbed. “Baby, look at me.”
Her lids lifted to show him eyes cloudy with desire. For him. Even in the low light, he glimpsed the storm of her emotions. Not merely sex. Hell no. The more he saw there, the harder he pounded into her. It wasn’t so much looking for satisfaction anymore as chasing down something he craved.
And it damn sure wasn’t just an orgasm.
Their gazes fused, and he was lost to her, to the wild urgency building inside him to claim what was his.
Though she wasn’t. Goddammit.
She spasmed, drenching him in the liquid pulses of her release. Instead of going softer, yielding more, she raked her nails down his back, igniting erogenous zones he hadn’t realized he had. She reared up and scraped her fingers over his ass, pulling him into her so powerfully that her continuous ripples launched him over the edge. Half blind and totally mad, he muffled his shout against her throat, inhaling her sophisticated fragrance while she fucked him damn near into unconsciousness.
Her arms came around him. Silken bonds he had no desire to work his way free of. Ever.
Mushy asshole.
Just as he was about to drift off, she coughed and the condom she’d clamped between her teeth hit his shoulder.
He looked up and noted her grin. “See? Kept you quiet, didn’t I?”
“Yes.” She nipped the top of his ear and his cock twitched inside her. Jesus. He’d be locked and loaded again in no time. “Next time I won’t make it so easy on you.”
“Oh, that was easy, huh?”
She pushed him onto his back and propped her elbows on his chest so that her hair tumbled down around them. Despite the move, he remained lodged in her sweet pussy. “You forget I’m sickly and weak,” she teased, gyrating her hips. “But what do you know, I’m feeling better already…”
With a dramatic sigh, he tipped his head back into the pillows. “You’ll be the death of me, Doctor.”
“Only if you’re lucky, O’Halloran.”
Chapter Six
“Uhh. Come in.”
Sara rubbed the persistent itch on her nose. She’d awakened to what she was sure were cries of passion, but they weren’t hers. She patted the empty, cool spot beside her in the bed. They weren’t Brad’s either.
Brad. The smile stole across her face as she snuggled down into her pillow. Her lover. And what a lover he was.
“Ooh, come in. Come in!”
She jerked up on her elbows and stared at the bird circling his cage across the room. Had Telly really just asked her to come in? His vocabulary was expanding all the time—
“Come in, come in hard!”
“Oh, Christ,” she muttered, pressing her fingers to the dull throb in her forehead. Great. Her bird had witnessed her night of debauchery, and apparently they hadn’t been nearly as quiet as they’d hoped.
It was all Brad’s fault. What that guy could do with his hips should be illegal. And his stamina… He took go all night to new levels.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and winced. Which accounted for the burn between her thighs. Well, that and his stubble.
“Oooh, oooh, uhh!”
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” Sara rose and hobbled over to Telly’s cage. She’d used muscles last night that had gone into dormancy the last few months, and holy Toledo were they screaming today. “You trying to rat me out, Telmeister?” She’d been working with him on his vocabulary since he was a baby, and didn’t it figure he’d jumped a grade ahead in his learning overnight?
“Uhh, come in!”
The giggle spilled out of her as she leaned her face against the bars. He shuffled closer and pecked her forehead, his version of a birdy kiss.
“Nope, no more coming of any kind today.” She’d sort of made a resolution in the wee hours of the night. It involved taking a couple days to reevaluate the abrupt change in her relationship with Brad over the past week—
“Hey, gorgeous.”
His voice dripped over her spine like melted caramel, hot and sweet. Her pussy actually tingled as if it missed him. No doubt there. Of course it missed him. When needy body parts made good friends with others that fit into them so enthusiastically, why wouldn’t they swell up and get all wet in anticipation of their next meeting?
She swallowed and shut her eyes to give herself an extra moment to prepare. Maybe he’d look really bad this morning. Exhausted and bloodshot-eyed and rumpled. Not sexy at all. She’d view him in the unforgiving light of the day and tell him in her best professional voice that they should assess where they were now that they’d become intimate.
“Come in, come in, ooh, uhh!”
Brad’s laughter made her grin in spite of herself. “Sounds like the bird’s frisky.”
“He’s a terrible mimic.”
“I don’t know. Sounds pretty good to me.” Brad’s voice lowered. “Somebody gets noisy when they’re knocking on heaven’s door.”
God help her, but she giggled again. Like a teenager. Or a woman in lo—lust. Strong, deep lust.
Bracing herself, she glanced at the doorway. He leaned against the jamb, wearing pajama bottoms and a smile. His blond hair tousled instead of rumpled, his eyes bright and alert rather than bloodshot. He held a cup of coffee she assumed w
as his until he extended it to her, murmuring, “Here, kitty, kitty. Got something for you.”
She arched a brow and ignored the fragrant steam rising from the mug. He could not lure her that easily. “Why don’t you come here?”
Wrong word.
“Come in, come in, hard!”
“Jesus, Telly,” she muttered, covering her face with her hand.
Brad laughed and crossed the room to her, pushing the cup into her hand. He brushed a kiss over the top of her head. “He’s not the only one feeling frisky this morning,” he said, his breath stirring both her bangs and her so-not-languishing sex drive.
Before he could direct those damnably distracting lips at hers, she took a long sip of coffee that seared the roof of her mouth. Ouch. She choked and rubbed her eyes, praying she didn’t look as wretched as she felt. Or maybe that was a good thing. If she did her best impression of a weepy-eyed grouch, perhaps he’d give her some time to think. To make sense of all this insanity.
“How’s Kim?” she gasped between coughing fits.
“Bitching and eating corn flakes. She’s already complaining she won’t be able to wear her crazy heels with her dress at the benefit.”
“Is she hurting a lot?”
“Hard to tell. She’s grumbling too much to mention it.” Brad tipped up her chin and caressed her puffy lower lip. Yep, she’d burned that too. One stroke of his thumb and her clit pounded to get his attention. Damn her suddenly sociable body. “You gonna be weird now? Thought we’d moved past all that when you begged me to fuck you.”
Indignation rose and smothered embarrassment. In the range of inappropriate emotions, indignation was always preferable. “I didn’t beg. Exactly. I strongly suggested it early this morning.” When she’d awakened to find his fingers in her pussy and his warm tongue on her breast.
“Guess I’ll always have to gag you when we have company in the house.” She stiffened when he leaned closer and nudged her belly with his rigid cock. “Lucky for me I can think of things to put in your mouth.”
