His large shoulders blotted out the light of the fire as he moved to kneel between my legs, gently running his hand up the sides up my legs and taking the hem of my skirt with me. Gently, he urged me to arch my back so he could pull the dress over my head and toss it to the side. I lay naked beneath him in nothing but black silk panties and the sheer, thigh-high stockings. He loomed over me, surveying my body with eyes blazing as his hands moved of their own accord to remove his vest and shirt.
The warm light cast shadows in the hard lines of his body, making the squared edges of his pectoral muscles and the v-shaped lines of his abdomen that much more apparent as they moved. I watched with appreciation as he tossed his clothes to the side, unveiling his raw beauty. He trailed both hands lazily over my shoulders, traced his fingertips over the delicate edges of my clavicles, and continued lower, stopped for a moment to cup both breasts and run his thumbs over the tops of my nipples.
“Gorgeous,” Brandon murmured, face alight with desire. He bent down to worship one breast, then the other with his mouth, flicking each nipple lightly with his tongue before seizing it in between his teeth. He bit down, just hard enough to make me lurch. His hands continued their trek down my body as he sucked, pressing a bit more forcefully as he felt around the curves of my waist, the indentations at my hips. There was a sharp, coarse breath when his fingers reached the edges of my stockings.
He stopped his ministrations at my breast, which by that point had me gyrating slightly against his form, and sat back up to admire the thin material on my legs. Large fingers slipped lightly under the lace edges, playing with the fabric with appreciation.
“These,” he said hoarsely. “I like these a lot.”
I smiled in response, my hips arching slightly toward him. Brandon had an agenda; that much was clear. It was all I could do not to push myself up and force him to his back so I could engulf him with the desire I felt raging through me. His fingers tugged on the edges of my stockings and he took his time, sliding each one off and then allowing me to wrap my bare legs around his waist. His hands gripped just a touch more roughly into my thighs, and his breathing drew increasingly uneven.
“I want to be gentle with you, Skylar,” he spoke gruffly, kneading the muscles of my backside as he spoke. “But I’m not sure I can tonight.”
I pulled my legs from his grasp, ignoring his grunt disapproval, and sat up so I was perched on my knees in front of him. I ran my fingers over hard lines of his torso with a sigh, just as I had been longing to do since he’d removed his shirt, then trailed my fingers down to unfasten his pants.
“Take these off,” I commanded quietly. With a quick, blue glance, he followed my order without a word, stripping off his pants, boxer shorts, and socks quickly and efficiently until he sat in front of me, as naked as I was, arms resting over bent knees.
He really was beautiful. He had the taut grace of an athlete, but without the bulk of a bodybuilder. His fitness was naturally made from exercise and genetics, nothing forced, rendering him completely comfortable with his body. Light blond fuzz covered most of his skin, curly and slightly thicker over his chest, legs, and around the base of where his cock stood out, long and stiff. In the firelight he looked like he had been dipped in gold; a Viking ready to plunder.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked softly.
Although I didn’t normally want to take charge when it came to sex, tonight felt different. I wanted to know I could give him the same kind of pleasure, the same kind of release he gave me. After baring such a vulnerable part of myself, now I wanted the control.
So I remained silent, just pushed him gently so that he was now the one his back and I could hover over his big body. I ran my nose lightly across the lines of his stomach, down the muscular angles of his abdomen, and into the hollows of his hipbones, making him jerk slightly. As I started to drift farther down, his hands clasped my shoulders and stopped me.
“Skylar, you don’t have to do that,” he said, looking at me down the long, muscular expanse of his body.
I pushed up on my hands so I could see his face. “Don’t you like it?”
“I, well, yeah, of course I do. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to.”
Quickly, I leaned down and took him whole in my mouth, causing his entire body to jerk in surprise. Just as quickly, I released him, sat back up, and smiled.
“I want to,” I assured him, and bent back down to savor him more carefully, wrapping my hand around the thick base of his cock while I worked.
“Oh, thank Christ,” he breathed. I could feel his body relax beneath my touch while his breathing became increasingly erratic.
I savored him, nipped slightly at the head for a moment before taking him as far back into my throat as I could manage. I didn’t usually like doing this, but it was different with Brandon. The control I had, the subtle changes I could feel with each different movement, the newly rising tension pulsing though his corded muscles: all of these made me even more aroused than I already was.
With my other hand, I grazed a few fingers over his scrotum and trailed below them, past the soft skin of his perineum before trailing even further and tickling the tight edges of his anus. Brandon jerked again, this time in surprise.
“Wha?” he breathed, clearly overcome with what I was doing with my mouth. “Ah!” he cried as I slipped my finger in to massage the back of his prostate. “Jesus…fuck! Skylar, what are you doing?”
I stopped my ministrations to look at him. “You did it to me. Haven’t you ever done that before?”
“What? No!” Despite his indignation, he couldn’t control the slight gyrating his hips were beginning to do of their own accord.
“Doesn’t it feel good, though?” I asked.
Quickly, I slipped my finger in and out of my mouth before leaning down to take the tip of his cock back into my mouth. My finger returned to tease at his backside. At the same moment that I fully slipped my digit into his orifice, I sucked. Hard.
“Shit!” he yelled, his hips jumping beneath my mouth. “Yes, oh my fuck, YES, it does!”
“Good,” I murmured against his swollen head.
I quickened the movement of my finger just a bit more before taking the head in mouth once more. He was close already; I could feel it by the tremors building in his thighs and the now-constant stream of profanity. Just when I thought he was about to lose it, I felt my shoulders roughly seized, and I was yanked up to cover his body with my own, his hard cock sliding easily between the slickness between my thighs. It was all I could do not to open myself up and let him in, completely bare.
“Quick,” he muttered hoarsely, his breath ragged and uneven as he shoved a condom he’d somehow retrieved from the pockets of his crumpled pants into my hands. Equally desperate, I tore it open and rolled it over his thick length, just in time for him to grab my thighs, force himself in, and start pumping wildly from below.
“Oh…fuck!” I cried out, swinging crazily at the sheer depth of his impact.
He drilled upward, his fingers clawing so deeply into my thighs that I was sure I would have bruises in the morning. I couldn’t have cared less. The anticipation combined with the sudden friction caused my reserve to topple over sooner than expected as within a few more harsh thrusts, a sudden orgasm ripped through my entire body with the force of a tidal wave.
“Yes, Skylar, FUCK!” Brandon cried beneath me, joining me as we crested the massive wave of ecstasy together. I collapsed over his chest, our bodies shaking roughly together as he pumped through the last of his orgasm along with mine. His hands finally released their unforgiving grasp on my legs and drifted up my back, feeling the edges of my vertebrae as we slowly, slowly came down from our high.
“Holy shit,” he breathed a few minutes later. His chest rose and fell deeply underneath my cheek.
“I know,” I murmured into the soft smattering of curls.
“That was…Christ. Where did you learn to do that?”
I somehow foun
d the energy to lift myself long enough to look down at his handsome face.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked with a raised brow.
He furrowed his brow, reconsidering the question. “No,” he said definitely. “I do not.”
“Didn’t think so,” I replied as I settled back comfortably onto his chest. His fingers resumed their gentle grazing over my back, and I succumbed to their rhythm, feeling myself being lulled closer and closer to sleep.
“Red?” His voice, small and quiet, interrupted me from drifting off to sleep.
“Yeah?” I whispered hazily.
“You won’t go anywhere, will you?”
I rubbed my nose into the warm hollow in his chest and breathed a sigh of pure contentment. “Where would I go?”
“Nowhere,” he said, and kissed me gently on the top of my head.
Just as gently, he lifted my hips so he could pull out of me. He got rid of the condom and grabbed a blanket from the couch above us. I burrowed into his side and sighed deeply at the feel of the soft knit wool covering our bodies. The last thing I saw before falling into a deep sleep was the reflection of the firelight flickering at the base of the sofa, and the glint of his eyelashes shining bright gold.
~
Chapter 28
Sometime in the middle of the night I was carried up the stairs to Brandon’s bedroom, where I enjoyed another round of drowsy sex before surrendering to sleep again in cloudlike linens of his bed. In the morning, after taking a quick shower together that, of course, resulted in yet another round of decidedly less gentle sex, Brandon lent me a pair of boxer briefs and an undershirt that fell almost to my knees. We ended up in the kitchen sometime after ten, companionably eating a breakfast at the kitchen island that Ana had prepared.
“I want to do something you want to do today,” I said after I swallowed a bite of my brioche toast with homemade raspberry jam.
Brandon cocked his head to the right, fork full of eggs suspended in mid-air en route to his mouth. He looked down at the plate, which was loaded with all of Ana’s fixings, and then looked up at me.
“Um, I’m pretty happy at the moment,” he said. “I’d like to finish my breakfast. Spend some time with my girl. That’s…about it. I’m not that hard to please.”
“Come on, all we’ve done is stuff I like to do,” I protested despite the warmth in my belly caused by his words. “The symphony—”
“I’m pretty sure I picked that one, Red,” he interrupted as he slathered another piece of toast with jam.
“Don’t be coy, you goon. You have about the same knowledge of classical music that I do of astrophysics,” I said. “And you took me for pizza because I explicitly wanted something not-fancy. And, of course, there was New York.”
He grinned. “I liked New York. I found out a lot about you there.”
“Exactly!” I cried with exasperation, flinging a piece of egg across the counter.
Brandon watched its progress with an amused expression, then turned back to me. “Your point?”
I set my fork on my plate with some unnecessary force. “You’re impossible, you know that? What do you do for fun? Like, in your spare time?”
He took a bite of his toast and chewed contemplatively, as if my questions created some kind of intense philosophical quandary. He swallowed, opened his mouth as if to speak, and then took another bite. I wanted to strangle him.
“Well, first of all, fun is relative,” he said after he swallowed again. “I like my job, and it’s what I spend most of my time doing. On the rare occasion I have an extra moment, I’m usually up in my shop. Otherwise, my spare time is mostly taken up by a host of other things that aren’t particularly fun.”
“Such as?” When his only answer was a raised eyebrow, I elaborated. “Okay. Run me through the average day for Brandon Sterling.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he said with a wink as he used two fingers to drag his phone across the counter. He opened the screen to his calendar and slid it to me.
Colored coded and filled to capacity, the page was an elaborate, rainbow-colored mosaic. I gawked at the sheer enormity of multi-tasking someone like Brandon had to take on: conference call meetings while en route to London, contract negotiations over dinner, playing squash with a prospective client. Just about seven days a week, the chaos started with a five-thirty AM workout with his trainer and often didn’t end until ten at night or later. The only exceptions I saw were the places where a small white box had been carved into the schedule every Friday and Saturday evening bearing just one word: Red.
I handed his phone back. “Didn’t you think to ask me first?” I chastised him, though I couldn’t keep the silly grin off my face. “Maybe I’m busy on the weekends. I have a schedule too, you know.”
He just gave me that delicious half-smile again that made me want to jump him all over again. “I’m being optimistic. Okay, my turn.”
I opened up my own calendar and passed it to him. I was almost as disciplined about keeping it up as he—or Margie—was, but it wasn’t nearly as full. During the week, my days were a combination of classes, allotted study/reading times, clinic hours, and at least four or five swims a week. I had a separate setting for major test and paper due dates. Brandon thumbed through a few different pages and tapped in something before handing the phone back to me.
“There,” he said, returning to his breakfast. “Now you’ve got me in there too. Hope you don’t mind, but I shared your calendar with my assistant too.”
“Does Margie really care about my class schedule?” I asked, to which I received another sly wink.
“Margie cares about anything that makes her job easier,” Brandon replied. “And that includes the schedule for the most important person in my life.” He grinned and shoved another big bite of eggs in his mouth.
Woah. Most important person? Was is weird that he was saying something like that so quickly? Was it even weirder that I liked it so much? Unable to hide the blush of pleasure that immediately infused my entire body at the intensity of his words, I looked down at my phone instead of at him.
He’d scheduled a repeating event on the same days and times he’d put “Red” on his calendar. The green boxes were marked “BS.” Immediately distracted, I laughed out loud.
“I guess you get your Fridays after all, huh?” I said as I set my phone back on the counter. I leaned in to kiss him on his wrinkled nose before standing up to clear my empty dishes.
“So you’re probably behind schedule then,” I said as I walked the plate and cup to the sink.
Brandon frowned as he watched me. “Red, just leave it. Ana will take care of that.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Babe, it’s what I pay her for. I didn’t take the weekend off so I could watch you do dishes.”
I left the dishes in the sink and turned to stare at him. “You what?” Images of the mosaic calendar flashed through my mind—I must have swiped right past this weekend’s blank spaces. I knew now what a major undertaking a day off work likely was for him, and how frustrating it probably was for his assistant.
He just grinned. “I’m the boss,” he said, as if it didn’t matter that he’d canceled several appointments with undoubtedly important business partners—people who had probably been waiting weeks or even months for his time. “I haven’t seen you in a week. Yesterday was Valetine’s Day. Sue me.”
“They might,” I joked, but obediently returned to where he sat and allowed myself to be pulled into the shelter of his arms as he nuzzled my hair.
“One night,” he said, “is not enough. Can you take today and tomorrow off too?”
Although the delicious scratch of his nibbles around my jaw made it hard to concentrate, mentally I went over the different work I needed to accomplish over the weekend. I was already ahead on most of my reading, and I didn’t have anything written due until Thursday.
“I think so,” I said between a few increasingly shallow breaths. “I o
nly have a few things to take care of for the clinic, but they can wait until tomorrow.”
“Are they are your place?” he asked, although his words were a bit muddled against the skin below my ear.
I nodded, unable to answer properly as he took my earlobe between his teeth and tugged.
“Great,” he replied, releasing me suddenly from his arms so he could stand up with a wicked grin.
“Hey!” I opened my eyes, ready to complain, only to find him stretching his arms up toward the crown molding overhead, causing his shirt to rise up above a few tantalizing abdominal muscles. I ogled openly.
“We can swing by there and pick up whatever you need for the weekend,” he said with a wicked grin when he noticed my expression. “So you’ll stay?”
I blinked, brought out of my ab-induced daze. “What? Oh. Um, sure, I guess. Are you sure you want me to?” His house was so pristine, so perfect—as much as I liked it, I was scared to muss anything up.
He scoffed, shaking his head. “Of course. I’d be upset if you didn’t.”
And with a firm but brief kiss, he brought his own plate to the sink, then grabbed his phone to text David to bring the car around.
“Five minutes, gorgeous,” he said with another stamp to my mouth. “Let’s get dressed. And put your coat on. I don’t want anyone else seeing you in that dress but me.”
~
It ended up being a day where I found out more about Brandon’s interests than he’d initially wanted. After stopping by my apartment for a change of clothes and some odds and ends, we ended up messing around Cambridge for the better part of the morning simply because of Brandon’s stubborn resolve not to choose any activity we did, claiming the day was for me, despite the fact that all I wanted to do was something of interest to him. In revenge, I decided to take him puttering around Harvard Square.
Brandon, as I fully suspected, didn’t putter.
“Oh, good,” he said sarcastically as I stopped outside one of my favorite shops. “Another used bookstore. I wonder what’s inside.”
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 29
