by Leah Braemel
* * *
Allie let her eyes flutter closed with each lap of his tongue over her clit. Two fingers thrust into her and began a slow, steady pump. The onslaught of sensation sent her body to a crest, and then just as quickly he withdrew. A shudder rolled over her and she tried to raise her hips but he held her in place.
He thrust back in, stretching her even more. His eyes gleamed in triumph at her whimper.
“Please. Stop teasing me. Just fuck me,” she begged.
That was all it was, fucking. Not making love. Because if she let herself fall for him, she’d lose herself all over again.
“Fuck me, Ben. Please.”
Instead he buried his head once more and continued the relentless assault on her senses. Each lap of his tongue was a torment. Then he started murmuring, his voice vibrating deep in her tissues, making her crazy. Sparkles of light flared behind her eyelids as her orgasm surged over her.
Sunlight slanted in through the windows, turning the sprinkling of chest hair to pure gold, the hair on his arms almost white.
“Come here, cowboy.” She reached for him, loving how his biceps and forearms rippled with strength as he ripped open a condom and sheathed himself.
“There’s something sexy about a guy with a farmer’s tan,” she murmured and pressed her lips to the dividing line on his biceps. His muscles went rigid when she traced her tongue lightly up his shoulder and down to one nipple. She reveled in how his breath roughened with each stroke of her tongue, that she had such power to make him shudder.
“Enough playing.” Lowering himself over her, with a single flex of Ben’s hips, he positioned himself at her entrance and drove inside her in one hard thrust. “Holy fuck.”
If sex could be a religious experience, this was it, Allie agreed. She groaned at the delicious burn as her body stretched around him. He pulled back, only to thrust into her again, and repeated the motion in slow, steady strokes.
“Pull your knees up, hang on to them.”
Her nipples ached at the roughness in Ben’s command. The shift in angle let him sink deeper. He slipped a hand between them and pressed on her clit, which had her writhing beneath him. Too good, too fast. She wanted this to last.
“Stop thinking so hard.”
Thinking? Who was thinking? It was all she could do to breathe. His cock massaged deep inside, his finger stimulated her throbbing clit outside. The two pressures stimulating her until she rode to a crest she’d never reached before. This was what sex was supposed to be. Two bodies working together, each reaching for that ultimate pleasure.
Another press of his thumb had her rocking against him, the sounds coming from her throat more like that of an animal in need.
“Let go.”
Her body responded to his murmured order, her orgasm vibrating through every inch of her body. His mouth pressed to hers, capturing her cries as her body clamped around him, pleasure, need, lust drowning her.
Her body still quivering from her climax, Allie stared muzzily at Ben as he continued to fuck her. There was a satisfaction in his expression. Determination. She reached up and touched his face, loving the look in his eyes. Loving how they worked together so well. Loving... Oh shit. Oh, holy shit! No, she couldn’t be falling in love with him again.
What if to him she was merely a pleasant fuck, nothing more? What if he saw fucking her as a way to control the outcome of his claim? Or worse, what if he didn’t believe her about the video, about how they had split?
Sure they had a truce, but at the time she’d held on to her hurt for so long, she didn’t know if she could ever see him without the painful memories besieging her. What if he felt the same way? What if he was deliberately trying to get her to fall in love with him again as payback for the pain he’d felt at their separation?
* * *
What the hell had just happened? Allie had frozen up, got this panicked look about her. Had he hurt her? Ben held himself still. “Allie? Where’d you go? What’s the matter?”
“What am I doing?” she whispered. “What are we doing?”
Ah fuck, she was thinking again. She’d climaxed, he was certain of it, and then click, just like that her brain had started churning again. How the hell did a woman’s brain function? Because as far as he was concerned, a good, hard bout of sex meant no thoughts at all other than how to draw his next breath.
“It’s called makin’ love.” He eased down to his elbows. There was no way he could continue now. Goddamn it, he was so fucking close to coming himself. “Having sex, or if you want me to be crude—” which normally he wouldn’t be, but Allie enjoyed dirty talk, “—fucking.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean why are we here? What are we doing having sex?”
With a groan he felt down to his aching balls, he pulled out of her and rolled beside her. “Is it something I did or...?”
She waved a hand in this little fluttery motion. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then what’s going on?” Confusion mingled with suspicion that he’d fucked up somehow, though he didn’t have a clue how.
She rested her chin on her knees and stared at him. If he was reading her right, she was afraid. “Where are we going with this, Ben?”
“You’re having second thoughts? About us?” Panic roiled his stomach at the thought she might pull away now. End things. Not that either of them had made any commitment yet but...shoot, was he falling for her again?
“I don’t know.” She’d scooted to sit up, hugging her knees. Not a good sign in his experience. “I just...I need a minute, okay?”
She scooted to the side of the bed and hurried to the bathroom. Which reminded him—he rolled on his side and removed the condom.
He gave himself a quick clean up in the smaller bathroom and returned to the bed to wait. Running water echoed in the bathroom, for a shower or a bath. Guess she wasn’t returning any time soon. Wow, you really screwed up this time, Grady. He pulled his clothes back on and walked out to the patio to stare unseeing over the city skyline.
Where are we going with this? she’d asked. Were they going anywhere? The quickie session out in the field had been impulse, with no thought as to any future. Same thing when he’d taken her up against the tree. That night, when she’d been waiting for him on his porch. Something more had happened, even before they’d made it to the bedroom.
What had happened just now, he wasn’t quite sure. Was it a memory of when they’d been in love before? Or was he falling in love with her again?
What was he thinking falling in love with her again, opening himself to another world of hurt when she left—knowing she would leave? She was a lawyer, working in the big city, used to fancy things, a fancy life. She didn’t fit in his world any more. Any more than he fit into hers.
Yet, as he fought the ache growing at the realization, if there’d been any question of whether he was falling in love, the urge to cuddle her, to make her laugh and wipe that damned forlorn look off her face, told him the love meter arrow had already tipped to the Hell Yes side.
Shit, maybe she was right to question them right then. Before he took that big leap off the relationship cliff.
Chapter Eleven
If any woman ever confessed to her they’d stopped a guy mid-sex and demanded they have the relationship talk and then fled like a screaming schoolgirl who’d found a big hairy spider in her shoe. Allie would have thumped her over the head and called her an idiot.
Except Ben wasn’t a big, hairy spider. He was a guy. A really nice guy.
What was it about falling in love with him that scared the bejesus out of her?
Allie sunk beneath the water of the bath she’d drawn in her desperation not to face Ben until she’d figured this out. Was it one of those once bitten, twice shy scenarios? God, she hated that expression. Even if it was true.
So she’d gotten burned during her marriage to Lewis. He hadn’t asked her to change, had simply told her what he was looking for, yet she’d quietly acquiesced
and changed in order to please him, to have someone care about her. She could have just as easily walked away; no guy had control of her, never had.
No guy had control of her.
Ben was the one man who might have the power over her. The power to change her mind, to make her want to give up her job. To make her want things, do things, grown up Allie had decided not to do. Never to want.
The thought of falling in love with him again scared her on too many levels. If Ben wasn’t as committed to the relationship as her, if whatever they had fell apart between them like had with her and Lewis, she wasn’t sure she would be able to pull herself together again. No, worse. In comparison to how she was falling for Ben, her relationship with Lewis was more of a comfortable friends-with-benefits agreement.
When she’d first met Ben, she’d thought him funny and smart, and he’d respected her brains too, unlike some other guys in their class. She’d been jealous too. Of his family and his roots. If they did end up together, the Gradys might not welcome her in and Ben would always choose his family over her. Or maybe they would welcome her with open arms, trusting in Ben’s choice, and she’d have a family again. People to laugh and joke with over Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving. Birthdays. Anniversaries.
And he still had the family she’d always dreamed of. But he hadn’t let them define him. When he’d fought with his grandfather he’d walked away, seeking his dreams, the same way she’d sought hers. And now he fought to keep his brother and his mother and his family’s legacy safe.
He respected her career choices, encouraging her in a way no one else did. He even believed her about the video—and was searching for it to put her at ease that it would never see the light of day to anyone else.
So why was she so scared of taking their relationship to the next level?
Because of Lewis? Because of...doubting herself?
Damn it. Enough of this waffling.
She sat up, sloshing the water over the edge of the tub.
She had a college degree. She’d passed the bar in New York and Texas. She’d survived being shunned by her father, survived being publicly humiliated by Lewis when he’d cheated on her. She could survive anything else life threw at her.
Her head swivelled at a sound on the other side of the door, followed by Ben’s voice. He wasn’t speaking to her. From the low, murmured masculine response, someone else was in the room too.
“Allie?” he called through the door. “I’ve ordered dinner. If you want to come out now, we can just talk. No pressure.”
Poor guy. She’d left him in the middle of sex, with a hard-on that probably left him with a really bad case of blue balls. She owed him more than just conversation. Especially since Ben, like most guys, wasn’t big on talking. He was more the “let me fix it” type of guy.
Trouble was she had no idea how he could fix it. If he could. She had to be the one to take the leap. And right now, her fear of heights was kicking into hyperdrive.
Still, he deserved better than to be left alone out there. He at least deserved an apology, if not an explanation.
She rose from the tub, dried herself off and pulled on the hotel robe hanging on the back of the door. She padded from the bathroom into the bedroom to find it empty. So was the living area. Someone—probably the wait staff—had set the table, placing the dining cart in the corner. She smiled at the thick slab of steak he’d wanted for lunch, along with his favorite baked sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. He’d also ordered a Waldorf salad, some pickled beet dish, arugula, baby kale and...she lifted a lid and found a serving of the most decadent macaroni and cheese she’d ever seen. And sitting in a bucket of ice, an assortment of sorbets. But no trace of Ben.
She found him on the patio, fully dressed, his back to the door, a black silhouette against a splendid red evening sky.
He turned as she padded toward him, concern filling his face. “Are you all right?”
Relief flooded through her, letting the shoulders she’d drawn up relax. “I’m sorry. I know my timing really sucked donkey balls.”
“You’re scared of getting hurt again. I get it.” He closed the distance between them, pulling her into his arms. “I don’t want you to regret anything about us. And I’d rather you get whatever was bothering out of you now than you have panic and be filled with regret when I’m not around.”
“Are we an us?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if we weren’t. I’ve even turned off my phone so we can’t be interrupted with ranch business. I don’t do that for just anyone, you know.”
Good answer. And shit, that she hadn’t even noticed.
“I’m not out to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I don’t know what to do or say to convince you I’m in it for the long haul. Short of getting on my knee, and I don’t think either of us are ready for that. Yet.”
“Oh Lord.” She rested her forehead on his chest. “I am not ready to consider a marriage proposal.”
“Then how about a proposal that we eat.” He pulled back and cupped her chin, lifting it to meet his gaze, which was twinkling with laughter and anticipation. “And then you march back to that bedroom and do whatever I tell you do. So I can remind you how good we are together in the bedroom again.”
She squeaked. Actually squeaked. What the hell was with her turning into this girly girl? She’d never been a girly girl.
* * *
Once they’d helped themselves to the various dishes, Ben attacked his steak, but he slowed eating when he noticed the gap in Allie’s bathrobe getting lower and lower, giving him a tantalizing view of her cleavage, the soft mounds of her breasts rising and falling with each breath. Hot damn, she was totally naked underneath the robe.
His unsatisfied cock punched against his jeans again, urging him to forget eating steak and lay Allie out on the table as the most delectable dish of the evening. To spread her thighs and feast on her breasts and her pussy. To hook her knees over his shoulders and ram his cock into her. To take her like a barbarian.
Yeah, right. Like that wouldn’t send her screaming back into the bathroom.
Ben stretched out his legs and hooked an arm over the back of his chair. Where he’d cleaned the food off his plate, she’d organized her food into neat little sections. Steak in one quarter of the plate, not quite touching the Waldorf salad, which was carefully kept away from that weird beet-mix thing she’d helped herself to. From what he could tell, she’d barely eaten a bite of any of it. Granted, she’d helped him polish off some of the ribs down at the Stockyards earlier, and she’d eaten more of her lunch at the restaurant than he had—though the servings there weren’t enough to feed a sparrow. But he got the feeling she wasn’t eating because she was thinking again. Overthinking, more like it. “You done?”
She frowned at the plate then let her fork drop. “Yes.”
“Good. Because it’s time for dessert.”
“I really can’t eat another bite.”
“I’m not talking about food. Not for you anyway. Tonight, you’re gonna be my dessert.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Take off the bathrobe, Al.”
Her tongue darted out to lick her upper lip, and her pupils dilated. She slowly stood and untied the belt, and then with a shrug of her shoulders let the robe fall to the floor.
“Come here.” His voice had dropped at least an octave. His dick hardened even more when she stopped between his outstretched knees, her breasts tantalizingly at eye level. He reached over and dipped his fingers in the sorbet. He’d originally intended to spread it over his cock and order her to suck him off but changed his mind. She had too talented a mouth for him to last very long, and he wanted to enjoy the night. All night. Instead he spread the softened ice over her hardened nipples until they were coated then scooped up another handful and smeared it over her belly.
He drew a finger in lazy circles around her nipples, loving the shivers and trembles ea
ch touch elicited. When he pulled one cream-coated nipple into his mouth, Allie gasped and clung to his shoulders. With tongue and teeth, he cleaned both breasts.
Soft pleas spilled from her lips, cursing him, begging him. He slipped his clean hand between her thighs. “Christ, you’re wet.”
She squirmed against his hand, rocking her clit against his palm, which made licking the rest of the cream off her belly a messy endeavor. By the time he’d cleaned her off, she was about ready to come, and he had cream smeared all over his cheeks, forehead and chin.
He grabbed one of the linen napkins and wiped off his face. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Worked great for me,” Allie gasped. She dropped to her knees and reached for his fly.
“Not so fast. I’m in charge tonight.” He couldn’t stop his grin at her raised eyebrows. “You owe me for that skedaddling act earlier, remember? You’re all mine tonight.”
Something flared in the back of her eyes, heat and excitement and maybe just a little contrariness. Bring it on.
Grasping her hips, he turned her to face the bedroom. “Go lie down on the bed, face down, but leave your ass up.”
When she hesitated, he swatted her behind. Not hard, but enough that she jumped. “Hey!”
“Then get movin’, darlin’. You’re wasting time.”
“Fine.” Despite that landmine of a word, she sauntered out of the dining area, her ass flexing with each step. Taunting him. Oh man, he was going to have so much fun teasing her tonight.
Only once she was in place did he rouse from his seat and wander into the bedroom. His cock was rock hard, and his balls ached at the sight of that fine pink ass lifted just for his pleasure. He reached down for the box of goodies he’d ordered online and pulled out his pocket knife, slicing through the tape with ease.
“What are you doing?” Allie had turned her head to watch him.
“You’ll see.” Without removing any of the items, he carried the box into the bathroom and cleaned off the items that would touch her skin. Once he was satisfied they were completely sanitized, he returned to find her still in place, her hand between her legs. “Uh-uh-uh, no touching the goods tonight. That’s only for me to do.”
