by Claire Adams
His kiss lit me up, and heat spread through my body, causing my nerve endings to spark and come alive. He devoured me like I was the answer to every secret that the universe held. I held nothing back from him.
I was putty in his very capable hands. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and I pushed my chest against his. My hands tugged at his hair, and he grabbed my ass, lifting me against him. His hands moved to my thighs. He broke our kiss and ran his lips down my neck.
My hands trailed down his sculpted back until suddenly I was on mine, sinking into my mattress with his glorious weight pressing into me. He nibbled at my collarbone before tugging his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the floor. Then his lips found mine.
We were skin to skin as he crawled over me. It felt incredible. His hands traveled to my thighs, and he squeezed them with delicious pressure.
His tongue traced the shell of my ear and moved down, finding places that I didn’t even know were sensitive. He had a way of doing that. It was like he knew my body better than I did.
His head dipped to my shoulder as he slid down my body, trailing kisses over my chest, down to my bare stomach.
My hips moved of their own accord. He played my body as well as the sport that he was the star of.
My hips brushed his erection, and a soft moan escaped my lips. He groaned at the contact, kissing the underside of my breast, then clamped his warm mouth over one hardened nipple.
I sucked in a deep breath and arched into his mouth, craving more. I would never get used to that feeling.
My fingers dug into his shoulders; then it was his hips. Anything that could anchor me as the intense sensations threatened to take over. He moved to the other breast, his hands moving from my thighs to my hips to my neck.
It was the first time we could explore one another. Take our time. It was clear that he intended on doing exactly that.
The way he touched me made me feel like he was worshipping me, adoring me. I pulled at his hair, and he looked up into my eyes as he flicked his tongue over my nipple.
He crawled up and brought his lips to mine in a searing kiss. The bed, the room, and the world fell away. There was only James. Only the fire burning in his eyes and his hands on my body.
Our legs tangled together. His jeans were rough against my skin. He needed to be out of them. I needed him naked. I needed us to be truly skin to skin for the first time.
I twisted my legs, and he rolled us over, giving in to my silent demand. Our kiss didn’t break until he felt my hands at the waistline of his jeans.
His breathing was heavy as I slid down his body, tugging at his button until it popped open and unzipping his zipper.
His eyes never left mine as he lifted his hips helpfully and allowed me to slide his jeans off, along with his black briefs.
James was finally gloriously and completely naked. On my bed. My breath caught. He was beautiful.
I couldn’t wait to explore every inch of his perfect body. I planted his hips between my knees.
His hands flexed on my thighs as I explored the hard lines of his chest and his abs. His eyes darkened as I traced his hip bones and twisted my fingers into the tuft of soft hair under his belly button.
Finally, I allowed myself to move to his erection. I took hold of its base with one hand and stroked its length with the other.
“Fuck, Gabbi,” he moaned, arching his hips as his fingers tightened on my thighs.
I ran my fingers over the head of his cock. The muscles in his stomach tensed, and he groaned.
It was a heady feeling, having him losing control underneath me. Because of me. It was intoxicating.
My hands moved over him again, eliciting another groan. I was fascinated by how hard he was, yet his skin was so soft. Like steel sheathed in velvet.
I looked up to find his eyes closed. His throat worked, and his muscles tightened with restraint. Seeing him like that sent an ache shooting straight through me.
He allowed me one more stroke before his eyes snapped open, and he rolled us over so that my back was against the bed again.
“Enough,” he growled. His voice was low as he spoke against my mouth. “Can’t have you pushing me closer to the edge than that.”
“How close would that be?” My heart hammered in my ears as he pressed kisses to the tops of my breasts.
“Too close.” His hands moved on my thighs, stroking their way up slowly. Too slowly.
“What if I enjoy testing your limits?” Rational thought fled from my mind as he kissed me.
“Do you?” he asked between kisses. One of his hands tunneled into my hair.
“Do I what?” For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what he’d asked me.
He licked and sucked at the skin on my neck, and I arched my hips. The hand that stroked my thigh needed to be on me. “Enjoy testing my limits.”
“Yes,” I moaned. His erection pressed against my stomach, hot and heavy. I lost my train of thought.
“Why?” he asked. His hand danced up my side.
Why was it moving away from where I needed it to be?
My hips strained against his. I needed friction. Any friction. He drew away just enough to deny it.
“James,” I pleaded.
Suddenly, his palm pressed to my sex. “Damn, you’re soaked.”
His eyes fluttered closed. I should’ve been embarrassed, but as always when I was with James, I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but desperation. If he didn’t touch me soon, I wouldn’t be accountable for my actions.
“If you want me to touch you, you’re going to have to tell me why you enjoy testing me.” His finger grazed my clit. I nearly combusted.
I bucked my hips against his hand, but he moved with me. He wasn’t going to budge on this.
Okay, damn. If he was going to insist on an answer, I had to force myself to focus. It took everything I had. “Because a guy like you shouldn’t want a girl like me. I can’t believe that I can affect you like that.”
His hands moved swiftly to my ass, and he tugged me against him. His cock pressed right where I needed him to be. I moaned.
“You are fucking exquisite, Gabrielle. Never doubt that.” He rubbed his rock-hard shaft against me. “Feel that. That is how much you affect me. Even when I’m not around you, if I think about you, I’m hard. So hard that it fucking hurts.”
He punctuated each word with a glide of his shaft against my seam. His head hit my clit over and over again. Thoughts scattered from my mind, being flung to four corners of the globe at the sensations. Already, the tension was building, but it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
“But—” I started.
His hips kept moving as he punctuated his next words with kisses. “No, Gabrielle. This.” Kiss. “Is what you do to me.” Kiss. “You’re fucking beautiful.” Kiss. “You’re the sexiest fucking girl I’ve ever met.”
He made me feel beautiful as he worshipped my body, claiming my mouth with possessive, hungry kisses.
“Are you on birth control?” he groaned against my ear, his breathing coming in ragged pants.
What? He wants to go bare? “Yes.”
“I’m clean. We get tested all the time.” He shifted between my legs, positioning himself at my entrance.
“So am I.”
“Thank God. I need to get inside that tight pussy of yours right fucking now. You okay with that?”
“Please.” I was not beyond begging if that was what it took. There was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to feel him inside me with nothing between us.
He gripped the back of my neck with one hand and looked deeply into my eyes. Then he thrust home.
We both cried out.
He began to move with sure, steady strokes that hit exactly where I needed them. His hips kept a perfect rhythm, and his muscles locked as he kept moving. Stroking me higher and higher until I felt the edge approaching.
“Fuck, Gabbi. You’re so perfect. So fucking tight. So wet. It’s like you were mad
e for me.” His mouth pushed me closer to the edge as I rocked against him, meeting his thrusts as he reached down and pressed his thumb against my clit.
“Let me feel you come for me, Gabrielle.” His eyes begged me as he rubbed his thumb in a circle, increasing the pressure until it was so perfect that I flew over the edge in a flash of beautiful white light.
My fingers dug into his hips as I screamed his name, riding out waves of the most intense pleasure that I’d ever felt.
I felt him tense above me, in me as he let out a long, low groan and growled my name and came inside me.
He held me until our breathing calmed and our heart rates returned to normal. Then he rolled off me, taking me with him and pulling me flush against his side. My head rested on his outstretched arm as his eyes raked over me.
My eyelids felt heavy. I’d never felt so exhausted or so alive in my life.
“You okay?” Always so attentive. He tangled his hand in my hair and wrapped both arms around me.
“I’m fine.” I burrowed into his chest, tracing the lines that my fingertips found there. “I think you wore me out pretty good.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “You complaining?”
“Never, I’m just warning you that I might fall asleep.” I stifled a yawn. My limbs felt like jelly, and a feeling of deep relaxation had settled over me.
Sex with him had been explosive and delicious from day one, the best I’d ever had by leaps and bounds, but that night felt different. Better. More intense. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt like something had changed.
“I should probably get going soon, then.” His muscles flexed as if he was preparing to move.
“Or you could stay,” Please say yes.
I suddenly wanted nothing more than to fall asleep with his heart beating in my ear and his strong arms wrapped around me. I wanted to wake up to him with sleepy eyes and tousled hair.
“Yeah? I’d like that.” His hand snaked to my bedside lamp, and he flicked it off. Moonlight filtered in through the open window. I studied his profile as his chest rose and fell. He looked down at me, a small smile playing on his lips. Not his usual confident smirk.
“Goodnight, Gabrielle,” he said against my hair, his voice low and growing sleepy.
I lay there studying his profile for another long moment, memorizing every plane of his face. Then, it hit me. I knew what had changed.
I was falling for James. Hard. And I had absolutely no idea if he was going to catch me.
Chapter Nineteen
James
“No way!” Gabrielle exclaimed from the other end of the line. “We are not doing that.”
I was trying to convince her to go tandem skydiving with me later on that week. “Come on, Gabbi,” I said into the phone. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gone. No one ever wants to come with me, and it's only half as fun when there’s no one with me to experience the epic adrenaline rush. I’ll make it worth your while. I can think of at least a dozen places there where we can—”
“James Skye. Do not finish that sentence. First of all, I come with you plenty.” I couldn’t even believe that she was teasing about that. “Secondly, you can go jump out of a perfectly functioning plane by yourself and share the epic adrenaline rush with me after.”
“Don’t give that ‘perfectly functioning plane’ bullshit,” I argued, grabbing my gym bag and heading in to meet Ryder for our daily workout. “The only people who think about it that way are people who have never experienced it.”
“I haven’t, and I absolutely do not want to.” She wasn’t giving an inch on this one. She turned me down without a second’s hesitation, no matter how much I asked.
I shouldered my way through the swinging doors and turned to the locker room. “Jamie!” Ryder called from the weights section.
“Do me a favor and just think about it,” I said. “Read some blogs or something.” I made my way across the floor to Ryder.
“I have thought about it. There are so many things that I’m willing to try, as you well know. But I will not do that.”
“What if I promise to hold you tight and keep you safe?” Ryder’s eyes grew wide as he overheard the offer. Fuck.
“Oh God,” she groaned. “Do you honestly think that a cheesy line is going to get me to jump out of a plane? You have much to learn, young Padawan.”
“Nope, didn’t think it would work, but I had to give it a try. And I know plenty, I’ll have you know. I’m just desperate.” Ryder eyed me curiously. I had to get off the phone. He was never going to let it go as things were. I didn’t need to give him more ammunition.
She laughed. “Please, you’ve never been desperate for a day in your life.”
“That might have been true, until today. Look, I gotta go. We still on for tonight? We can talk about it then.” I avoided Ryder’s piercing gaze.
“Yes, we’re on for hanging out tonight. I’ll meet you at the beach at 9? But only if we don’t keep talking about it then.” A teammate had told me about a little Spanish place that I knew Gabrielle was going to love.
“We’ll see about that. Have fun studying.” I ended the call and threw my phone into my bag.
“What’s up, man?” I slapped Ryder’s palm.
He tilted his head as he studied me. “Who was that?”
“Just some chick.” I gave him my best ‘you know how it is’ shrug.
He shook his head and swapped out his weights, wiping his brow with his towel. “Didn’t fucking sound like just some chick.”
“What is this, the fucking inquisition? I gotta go change. I’ll meet you back here in two.” I stripped off in the locker room, changed into my gear, and racked my brain for a way out of the conversation that I was about to have.
“I’m having a party tonight,” Ryder grunted, curling a weight in each arm. He already dripped with sweat.
Talking to Gabrielle had distracted me. I was way behind on today’s routine.
“Okay, have fun, son. Don’t stay out too late.” I shot him a shit-eating grin. I didn’t want to have explain that the reason I was skipping one of his parties was to hang out with Gabrielle.
Ryder stopped his workout and asked his question pointedly. “What’s up with you lately?”
I studied the fading sunset painted on the wall in front of me and shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“You’re... different. You skipped the party on Saturday and the one the week before. Now you’re trying to dodge the one tonight. The one that I’m throwing. You turned down Luke for golf and Big Dave for that party cruise.” He launched into a list of a bunch of other stuff that I’d skipped out on to spend time with Gabrielle.
Have we really been spending that much time together? It didn’t feel like it. I didn’t think that I’d ever spent so much time with a woman and not gotten bored out of my mind. Why wasn’t I bored yet?
I kept my voice even, mentally trying to calculate if he was right about the amount of time we’d spent together. “I’ve just been busy. There’s nothing going on with me. I already have plans tonight. Maybe if you didn’t plan like a fifth grader and gave me a heads up in advance—”
“A fucking heads up in advance? Up until a couple of weeks ago, you were always down to party at the drop of a hat. Now you need notice? Do you really expect me to believe that?” Ryder was getting riled up.
No. “Yes. Like I said, bro. I’ve been busy.”
“Is it this girl? The one you were talking to just now?” His accusatory tone rubbed me the wrong way.
Yes. “No. Well, maybe some of it.”
Try all of it.
I wanted to come clean to him, but I wasn’t in the mood for the metaphorical pineapple he was sure to shove up my ass for getting involved with her.
Plus, the fewer people who knew about Gabbi and me, the less the chances were of it ever getting back to Richard. Ryder would keep the secret, but shit happened.
He contemplated my answer, apparently finding it uns
atisfactory. “Who is she?”
“She’s nobody. Just a girl that I’ve been hanging out with.” I lied through my teeth.
“Hanging out with?” His voice was incredulous. “Do you mean fucking?”
“Both.” There, I could give him that much.
As it turned out, it wasn’t enough. “Since when do you hang out with women for longer than it takes you to get their panties to hit the floor?”
His tone was seriously rubbing me the wrong way. I hardly ever snapped at Ryder, but I did then. “Why don’t you get your panties out of their twist? I’m just having some fun, okay?”
“Consider them untwisted, asshole. Who is she? Her pussy must be made of gold if you’re willing to hang out with her to get it.” It was, but I wasn’t only hanging out with her to get some.
I could get some from just about any straight single girl by doing little more than smiling at her. Maybe even some of the married ones if I was that kind of man, which I wasn’t.
“You do realize that I am a human being who happens to enjoy good conversation from time to time. There is a body with a brain attached to my dick.” My fuse got shorter by the second.
“Yeah, but you used to separate the two. Why won’t you just tell me who she is?” Pushy motherfucker.
I’d had enough of his shit. “Why do you want to know so fucking badly? You don’t know her. I enjoy talking to her. End of story.”
He completely ignored the venom in my tone and returned it with ice and determination in his. “It is not the end of the fucking story. There’s a lot more to this. Is it serious?”
“Fuck no,” I answered without hesitation. Ryder knew me better than that. I didn’t do serious.
Even if Gabrielle was fun to be around. Even if she did make me feel shit that I didn’t know what to do with. At worst, I had a fucking crush or something. It would pass, probably sooner rather than later.
His eyebrows raised all the way to his dark dreads. “You sure?”
“Who’re you talking to, Ry? ‘Cause I’m sure that Ryder, the guy who’s known me for years, knows that I don’t do serious.” We both thawed out a little, allowing our frustration with each other to flow to our muscles and into our workout.
