Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel)

by Novak, Brenda

  “Shit,” she squeaked out.

  ***

  Trish had never thought much about the sport of soccer one way or the other. She knew David Beckam was a soccer player, and she’d gladly watch that man do anything, but she never considered that he might not be the only man to look hot while kicking a spotted ball.

  Turned out, she thought a lot of the guys who played in tonight’s game were hot. Not necessarily because of what they looked like, but because of how they moved on the field. Quick, agile, and unbelievable control over the ball using their entire bodies except their hands. Watching how they worked together as a team until one of them took the shot was a thing of beauty.

  Not that she’d tell any of them that. They’d probably feign heart failure for suggesting what they did was anything less than manly and aggressive. Men were such babies.

  Regardless, she’d loved watching the game, despite that it started to sprinkle somewhere around halfway through. The air was warm so it didn’t bother her enough to seek shelter or spring an umbrella like the few people did who stayed to stick it out till the end of the game. Not that she had an umbrella to spring, but she wouldn’t have used it even if she did.

  The cool raindrops felt good on her heated skin, plus it masked the signs of her wetness between her legs that had nothing to do with the damn weather. Tony, the sexy devil, made good on his promise to keep her aware of his intentions for her after the game, and those thoughts made her pussy instantly wet long before the first drops fell.

  Whenever the action stopped--a timeout, the ball crossing out of bounds, a ref blew his whistle, or a goal was scored--his gaze immediately sought her out on the sidelines, holding her down as effectively as his body stretched over hers, as he stalked across the muddy grass. During one of those moments, he’d actually reached down with one large hand to palm his cock and balls, then he dragged his bottom lip from his teeth as he adjusted himself before joining the rest of his team in the huddle. The whole thing had happened in a couple of seconds, but felt like a scene played in super slo-mo. Trish thought she’d die of embarrassment, but no one seemed to catch his lascivious stunt but her. Probably because she was the only one watching him like a horny hawk. Once she realized that, she breathed a little easier and let herself enjoy the things he made her feel.

  Holy shit. She didn’t think it was possible for him to look any hotter than normal--how had she never noticed his sex appeal before?--but right now he was like one big wet dream. Water dripped from the ends of his hair and gathered his dark lashes into spikes around those fiery golden brown eyes. The hollows of his cheeks appeared sharper, the dusting of stubble across his face more prominent. The man was wholly animalistic and the expression on his face when he stared at her promised carnal pleasures hot enough to singe the panties right off her body.

  By the time the game ended, the men were covered in mud and completely soaked. They celebrated their win in the same manner as Tony’s five-year olds. Bouncing around, yelling, and jumping on top of each other, until at last they lined up to “good game” the other team.

  Trish waited by the bleachers for Tony, antsy and more sexed up than an ex-con in a whorehouse. Okay, that was proof she was on the brink of “crazy” because she had no idea where an analogy like that could have come from. On the other hand, it was a damn good analogy for how she felt. Tony could probably blow on her clit and she’d shatter.

  Then she saw him reach back between his shoulder blades with one hand and yank his jersey off and all thoughts skidded to a halt. Tan muscles gleaming with sweat shifted and contracted with every move, every breath. Mud streaked across his shins and the cut planes of his calves, whereas his arms, neck, and face sported splatters from it getting kicked up when they ran.

  Sweet Baby Jesus, I’m a fucking goner. Tony was finishing up with his teammates, smiles, laughter, and friendly punches all around from the men as the group slowly broke up. Trish stood on the sidewalk, waiting anxiously to see his face so she could gauge what happened next. Crossing her arms across her stomach, she wished she’d found shelter from the rain after all. She probably looked like a drowned rat. Her shorts and baby tee were soaked through and her long hair hung in stringy chunks around her face.

  Then all thoughts of her appearance or anything else dissolved as Tony turned and strode toward her, red shirt tossed over his large shoulder and cleats dangling from the fingers of one hand, with that same look he’d pinned on her all night. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure of her ability to handle him in his worked up state. Glancing over her shoulder in the direction of his house, Trish took note that no one milled around behind her to witness her imminent sexual demise at the hands of Anthony DiAngelo.

  “You thinking of making a run for it, gorgeous?”

  Her head spun back to him, strands of her hair whipping her face. Now that he mentioned it, she definitely had a fight-or-flight thing going on. “That depends,” she said, lifting her chin in a haughty gesture of absent confidence. “Do you plan on behaving like a civil human being and wait until we’re behind closed doors before you attack me?”

  “Attack you?” He laughed, his abs tightening and rippling, and then her knees almost buckled when he stopped several feet away and repeated his earlier practice of grabbing himself. Except this time he smoothed the shiny black athletic shorts over his impressive length that angled up and to the right, unable to point due north without exposing several inches above his elastic waistband. “Look what thinking of you does to me. You have no idea how difficult it is to run and move like I did for hours with a fucking billy club in my shorts.”

  Trish barked out a laugh at his description, but clapped a hand over her mouth when he dipped his head and leered at her with a deliciously evil grin. Heat vibrated deep in her center and she felt more warmth coat her panties. She thought she’d have run out of moisture by now, but it was now obvious her body would always welcome him, and she had no problems with that whatsoever.

  “Glad you’re having a good time, T, because I’m sure as hell about to.” He pulled his shirt down and wrapped his cleats in it, then secured the bundle under one arm like a football. “Hell, yes, I’m going to attack you. And then I’m going to devour you. I’ll give you a five second head start.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Four...three...”

  Trish yelped, snatched her flip flops off, and took off at a dead run in the opposite direction toward his house, unable to stop the laughter spilling out from her even as she heard him call out “one” to signal the start of his pursuit.

  The sun had set about an hour earlier and the only light illuminating the puddles and squares of concrete under her bare feet were the house lights on people’s front porches. Her arms pumped hard with a sandal in each hand, and her eyes flicked between her final destination and the sidewalk in front of her so she wouldn’t trip on a buckled section or step on a kid’s toy left behind from the day’s activities.

  He was gaining on her. She heard him splash through a puddle she’d displaced only two seconds earlier. Almost there! Finally, she reached his driveway and cut a sharp right around his parked car on her way to his unlocked back door. But just as she started tossing mental confetti and handing herself a great big trophy, a deep chuckle slid into her ear andmuscled arms banded around her waist. She squealed as he lifted her easily and swung her around to the push her back against the side of his house, pinning her with his massive body.

  There was no gloating, no preamble. Tony’s hands held her head steady as he did as promised and quite thoroughly attacked her.

  She opened to him instantly and wrapped her arms around him to hold him down by the backs of his shoulders. Or maybe it was to help lift herself up to align their bodies just right. She’d gladly climb him like a tree if it meant fitting his cock where she needed it.

  “Shit, I’ve never been so hard and ready to fuck in my life,” he growled as she licked the words from his mouth. With a firm yank, Tony pulled the fly of
her shorts apart and buried his hand in the front, plunging his fingers up to the knuckles in one smooth motion. “Jesus, baby, your pussy’s so wet you took all three fingers on the first try.”

  Trish couldn’t respond. Words failed her. Thoughts failed her. He’d reduced her to a quivering mass of nerves he stroked, sucked, and fucked, letting her float in the space where nothing existed but her pleasure. She didn’t have the experience to compare him to, but she knew instinctively that Tony was an amazing lover. He did things to her that gave her whole-body orgasms that rode the sharp line between needing him to stop and threatening his life if he ever fucking stopped.

  “Please,” she begged as he moved his fingers in and out, “I n-need you.”

  He took her hand and shoved it in the waistband of his shorts. “Stroke me while fuck you with my fingers. Get me ready to take you so hard you’ll feel me deep inside you for a week.”

  Wrapping around his sizeable girth, she pumped up and down as best she could while he drove her insane with those magical fingers of his. When he cursed and followed it up with a sigh, Trish opened her eyes to find him definitely unhappy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Condoms are inside. I wanted you right here, but looks like I’ll have to plan our public trysts a little more next time.”

  The thought of doing things while hiding in plain sight gave her delicious shivers that rode her spine down to her sex. “Okay, let’s go in then.”

  “I’m going to make you come first. Then we’ll get nice and dirty in the shower together.”

  “You mean clean,” she said on a gasp as he changed his position to hit her G-spot with the tips of two fingers.

  He nipped her earlobe and rasped, “No I don’t,” then started moving his entire hand up and down as fast as he could, keeping his middle two fingers tucked inside. She felt herself get impossibly wet and heard her inner walls sucking on his thick digits in the stillness of the night.

  In seconds, her body raced toward her orgasm like a runaway train at top speed. “OhGodohGodohGod, yeah, right there right there...” Her breaths were coming so short and fast that her vision was hazy on the edges and the only sounds she could hear were those of her beats of simpering she was helpless to quiet.

  Tony knew she was getting close. Her body spoke to him as clearly as if English was its native tongue. The imaginary band deep in her belly twisted more and more, ratcheting the tension inside higher and higher. He clapped his free hand over her mouth to muffle her cries as she teetered on the razor’s edge.

  “Fuck, you’re squeezing me tight.” His voice was strained like he had to hold himself back from his own release just from watching her take hers. It didn’t matter that he controlled the sex most of the time, because she’d learned early on that she had the power to bring this big man to his knees without even trying. And that was a heady feeling.

  Trish was no longer coherent as she started to tip over that edge. She’d been rambling a string of oh-fuck-oh-shit seconds before, but speech and breathing were no longer possible as her chest clamped down on her lungs and her body bowed hard against him.

  “That’s it, baby, let it go,” he said, his staccato pants of breath hitting her ear. “Come for me.”

  At last, the twisting band snapped, releasing the air in her lungs and the scream in her throat. She bucked against the hand that held her pelvis and screamed against the palm that covered her mouth as white-hot pricks of sensation rippled through her from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.

  Her pussy clamped down so hard that it pushed his fingers from her channel with a warm rush of fluid that ran down her legs with the water still dripping from her soaked clothes. “Fuck, that’s hot,” Tony whispered as he dragged out her orgasm with the flat of his hand, rubbing fast and light over her swollen lips. “Yeah, keep going. Good girl.”

  When he finally stilled his movements to cup her sex with his strong hand, Trish started floating back to herself as the storm of sensations calmed inside her. Her scream had died down to a keening moan, enough that he took his hand away and replaced it with his lips, kissing her slowly and thoroughly. Her entire body trembled in aftershocks and she didn’t know how much longer her legs could stand.

  She sighed in relief as he bent and swept her up in his arms to hold her tight. Her post-orgasm brain didn’t remember much on how they made it into his house and then his shower, but she enjoyed his silent pampering beneath the spray of hot water sluicing over her skin like silk. He cleaned them both and took extra care shampooing and conditioning her long hair. Trish briefly thought about taking over--she knew what a pain that much hair could be--but she couldn’t bring herself lift her arms or voice the offer.

  After towel drying them off, he scooped her up again and stepped into the hallway, turning left to head toward the living room and the couch that had probably seen more action than a bed in a honeymoon suite.

  “Wait,” she said, halting his progress. With her arms looped around his neck, she peered up at him through her lashes and took a chance at altering their dynamic. “Let’s go to your room.”

  Dark eyebrows disappeared under the wet hair hanging over his forehead. “You want me to take you to bed?” She nodded, then shivered as his look of surprise turned heated with determination. “If I put you in my bed tonight, or any night, you’re staying there until morning. I don’t want any lame excuses about having to leave or waking up in the middle of the night to find you on the couch.”

  “It’s okay, I understand. I want to be with you like that. We already spend the night together on the couch, Tony. I’m not running from being in your arms all night. I’m just removing the no-beds rule.”

  “It’s about damn time,” he snarled. “Hated that fucking rule.” Then he pulled a one-eighty and stalked to his bedroom.

  ***

  Tony had never been so happy to take a woman to bed. He supposed there was something to be said for waiting.

  When he thought they were going to end up on the couch, he’d had wild and dirty ideas running through his mind on what he wanted to do to Trish. Making her come so hard that she’d bathed his hand in her juices had him so worked up he could barely think straight.

  But as soon as he laid her in the middle of his king bed, all of his kinky plans changed into one immense need: to make love to her. So that’s exactly what he did.

  All night, Tony touched and tasted in slow motion. He left no inch of her beautiful body unkissed. The soundtrack of their love making was a mix of sharp gasps, hitches of breath, and soft moans with intermittent begging. He wished he’d set his phone to record audio because it was the most erotic thing he’d ever heard.

  After hours of exploring each other and both of them coming more times than he could count, they fell into a sweat-slicked heap with her tucked back against him and their hearts beating in time together. Something big shifted in Tony’s chest, and the relief he felt was so strong, he slipped into unconsciousness with a smile on his face.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A five-star midnight picnic. Only Tony could come up with something so perfect as to bring both the beauty of the country and some of the finer things she’d acquired a taste for over the years together in one amazing evening.

  Earlier in the day, she’d cheered like crazy for the Shark Bytes as they shut out the Crazy Carp 1-0. Then Trish invited the whole team out to Fort’s favorite place for cheap ice cream, Frosty Freeze, and bought the kids—and their handsome coach and tag-a-long referee, Jason—a celebratory ice cream treat. The utter chaos that came from controlling twenty kindergarteners with sloppy faces and sticky fingers had been totally worth it to see their smiles.

  As the last player left with his parents and the stern promise of a very long bath, Tony told her he had something special planned for them at night. He said to wear something Sunday casual, which meant nice enough to go to church, yet comfortable enough to enjoy the church picnic the rest of the day. She’d opted for a simple sundress and
had brought a light sweater wrap to keep her arms warm if the air got chilly when the sun went down.

  He’d picked her up around nine, just before dusk, and they drove out to a secluded area along Lake Koshkonong where nothing surrounded them but the sky above and the grass below. They laid out a thick blanket on the grass and watched the sunset melt into the water’s horizon as they enjoyed their late meal. He’d brought several kinds of sushi for her, which she’d grown to love in New York, and some dry rub chicken wings for himself, along with an amazing fruit salad for dessert with their sparkling wine.

  Trish smiled from a high dose of contentment as she sipped from a plastic flute, reveling in the tiny bubbles bursting with flavor on her tongue before sliding down her throat and warming her insides. “Mmm, this tastes so good,” she said, handing him her empty glass, “but if I have any more you’ll have to carry me into bed later.”

  Chuckling, he said, “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Touché.” She often fell asleep on his couch while they chilled in front of the television at night, and since the “no beds” rule had gone out the window several weeks back, he always texted Rhi to let her know Trish would be spending the night so she didn’t worry, and then tucked her into bed next to him. She’d been concerned at first, but nothing had ever been the least bit awkward. On the contrary, it allowed them the opportunity to wake each other up in new and creative ways, and now she stayed at his place more often than not.

  On a sigh of satisfaction, she lowered herself to her back on the picnic quilt and gazed up at the blanket of stars, wondering idly how lucky she was to have the best summer of her life when she’d thought a few short months ago that it would surely be her worst.

  Tony set everything off to the side and lay next to her, his body turned in and his head resting on his hand so he could look down on her. With his free hand, he drew lazy designs on the multitude of skin left exposed by her dress, causing her to shiver.