by Lissa Linden
Paul’s lips dance against my ear. “You don’t have to do that, Amy. That seduction routine. You don’t have to remind me that I want you. I want your tits, and your mouth, and your delicious little pussy, but I don’t want that mask you put on. The one where your lips open and your knees part, but your eyes look beyond me.”
I stare at the wall of forest remains standing inches from my face. Count the scratches in the bark. Try not to breathe.
His arms tighten around me. “I’d love to give you this one last stick, Amy. But only when you’re looking for me when you ask for it. Only when you drop the mask and let me see the parts of you your skin hides.”
His erection presses into my ass. Not because he’s pushing it against me. Or because he’s trying to fuck me. But because it’s there, attached to him. Part of the man who sees through my solid walls. Who wants me to see him. Whose arms are heavy like the forest.
My stomach clenches. I weave my fingers through his. “Okay.”
He doesn’t release his grip. He holds me so tightly. So gently. His chest rises and falls against my back. And last night’s lack of sleep hits hard. My body relaxes in his arms and my mind drifts away under the soft tap of raindrops on ferns.
*
Two things are painfully obvious when I wake up. One, another layer of protective leaves would have helped with the dampness left in my hair after the rain. Two, I’m full-on wet between my legs in a way that has nothing to do with the weather.
Paul’s arm hangs heavy over my body and tugs of longing radiate from my center. My thighs shift without input and Paul stirs behind me. His cock lodges in the seam of my Lycra-covered ass. Bigger and harder than before, and so warm against me. My teeth bite into my lower lip and I squeeze my eyes closed. Force out a strangled breath.
I raise my hand to brush hair out of my face and graze my nipple in the process. “Mmm.” The moan leaks from my mouth before I can contain it. Before I can even think to contain it. I didn’t expect it. To wake up so fucking horny that an accidental graze of my own clothed skin would pull so hard, so low that I couldn’t keep the need in.
“You okay?” Paul’s groggy voice tickles my ear.
“Kind of?” I wish there was more space in this shelter. And less. And none.
He pulls me closer to him and nestles his face into my hair. His breath kisses my neck. “Better?”
Our upper bodies are pressed together, fused by his grip on me. But it’s my lower parts that need help. I squeeze my eyes closed and tell my body to stay still, but my hips turn in slow figure eights, each movement sending friction where I need it. Making my blood pump faster. Making me want more. Making it clear that I’m past the point of being able to ignore the desperate nerves between my legs.
I reach for his hand, the one that’s holding me tight against him. “Touch me,” I say. “Please.”
He freezes in my grip. His hand lingers near my waist, our fingers intertwined. “Where do you want me to touch you?” I nudge his hand farther down. Press back against his erection. “I might be able to do that,” Paul says. “Slip my fingers into your panties and make you feel good. But why do you want me to?”
I take a shaky breath. Squeeze my eyes closed. Block him out. His face. His shirt. This place we built—just big enough for us both. I send my thoughts to my core. To the muscles clenching and searching for something to bring them relief. My breath catches. “Because I woke up horny as fuck and need to get off. So bad.”
His thumb brushes against the sliver of skin between my pants and the tank top that’s riding up the more I squirm. “Why do you want me to touch you?”
“I need to come.” My thighs work together, pushing me closer to him with each rise and fall of my body. “Need it.”
He trails the rough tip of his finger across my hip. “Why do you want me to touch you?”
“Because I’m fucking aching.” I grind my ass against his hardness and he groans into my ear.
“I’m going to ask you one more time, Amy.” His voice is raw, ripped over jagged rocks. His lips brush my ear with each syllable. “Why do you want me to touch you?”
I know what he wants. Me to see him. To ask for him. My hips shift faster, pressing me into him. Rubbing the seam of my pants over my clit. Erasing anything but my own need—sending my frustration with him to the parts I can’t ignore and letting it build in me. Frustration. Need. Irrepressible desire. “Because not getting off isn’t a fucking option. I need to come,” I moan. “Put your hand down my fucking pants or I’ll do it myself. Right here. Right now.”
His hand wraps around my wrist, pulling it to my waistband. “Do it.” His voice is gruff in my ear. His hand urging mine lower. “Get those fingers in your panties. Rub your clit until you scream.”
He plunges our hands into my pants, his fingers behind mine. My mouth falls open as my fingertips find my wet heat. My eyelids flicker and I catch him watching me, stroking the back of my hand while I chase pleasure, slicking hard, tight circles around my clit. I close my eyes but his face remains. My hips shift against the friction from my hand and his breath is ragged on my cheek. His dick throbs against my backside.
Then his hardness is gone, replaced by his fingers, squeezing the curve of my ass and holding me away from him. “This is all you,” he rasps. “Make yourself come. Take the edge off.”
My fingers slide over my clit. Down my slit. Spreading and circling this need I can’t control. My hips move and I rock in Paul’s grip. My free hand works its way into my shirt and my forehead presses against the damp shelter. The heavy forest scent fills my lungs as I pant and gasp, fingers frantically searching for relief, moving faster and harder as my hips meet them in time.
His hand grips my ass cheek so tightly it hurts. My fingertips up their pace and I imagine his fingers moving, kneading my ass, holding it to him instead of away.
Paul moves behind me, his body crowding mine, his breath on my cheek. “The next time I touch you, it’s going to be because you want me. My hands. My dick. My mouth. It’s going to be because you want me touching you.”
My body tenses.
“It’s going to be because you want me fucking you.”
My thighs shake and I pinch my nipple in time with my clit.
“The next time I touch you, it’s going to be because you want me.” Paul licks my neck and it sends me over the edge. My body convulses with relief, my pussy squeezing and searching for more. Paul bites my collarbone and I shove my fingers inside, but it isn’t enough. The need is still there, burning, building. My thumb rubs circles over my clit and the tightening starts again.
“The next time I touch you like you just touched yourself, it’s going to be because nothing else will do. Because it’s me you want. Just like I want you.” The words cool and dry my cheek. His body heats mine. And I explode in time with his promise.
He turns me to face him and I press my face into his chest. My breath slows even as his pulse stays fast. My hand trails downwards but he weaves his fingers through mine and brings them back up. I press my hands into the muscles of his shoulders while his erection stays as hard as his resolve. Paul wraps me in his arms and pulls me close.
I trail my fingers down his chest. His heart beats fast under my whisper touch. “These are the hugs I think of,” I say. “Not the weak ones you gave me when camp started. The ones you gave me when it ended. When you’d squeeze me until I felt small.” My fingers stroke into his hair. “I loved that hug, but I hated it, too. It meant that I was leaving. That you were going back to the city while I lingered in suburbia. That it would be another year before I felt like that again.”
He rests his chin on my head. “Until you left without even looking at me. Without letting me hug you.”
“Until then.”
Paul’s hand trails up and down my back. “I tried to find you, you know. After you took off.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I tried to break into the office to get your file. Turns out there�
�s more to picking a lock than what’s in the movies.”
I smile against his chest. “You don’t say.”
“When I got home after that next session, I tried to get your contact info from anyone I could, but nobody had it.”
“Why would they have? You didn’t even have it.”
“I had an old address for you, actually, from the summer we were nine. I wrote you, but my letter came back.”
My stomach rolls. “We moved.”
He strokes my hair. “Apparently. So I tried Myspace. I mean, I should thank you for not killing my ears with an unfortunate, auto-playing music choice, but I could never find your profile. And believe me, I tried.”
“I didn’t exactly love sharing pictures of myself. Social media wasn’t really my thing.”
“It’s still not, apparently. I don’t know how you’ve managed to get to this point in your life without a Facebook account, but seriously. It’s impressive.”
His hand combs through my strands. Grazes my cheek. I swallow hard. “I’m on Facebook. Just, you know. Under a different name.”
He sighs. “Leah.”
I nod into his shoulder. “I’d already stopped being Amy by the time Facebook took over.”
He nudges my chin up so I’m looking at him. His eyes bore into mine. “I don’t believe for a second that you’re as hardened and cynical as you want to be. You might not want to admit that you want more than my cock, but you came to the sound of my voice and the promise of what you could have if you just asked for it.” His thumb strokes my jaw. “The sounds you made when your body pulsed to the thought of having me—of me wanting all of you—was a lot of things, Amy. It was hot. Carnal. Fucking beautiful. But you know what it wasn’t?”
“What?” I whisper.
“A simple biological reaction.” His lips brush my temple. “It was one hundred percent you—body and mind—no matter what you want to tell yourself.”
Chapter Fourteen
I bolt upright in bed and reach for my air horn. Another clatter comes from inside the house and I swear under my breath. I have to have latched the front door. I probably locked it, too. Maybe. I don’t fucking know. My brain was more than a little starved of oxygen after spending so many hours squished next to Amy, blood pooled in my dick.
I haven’t had an animal breakin in years—not since my old friends used to come up on weekends during the off-season to play poker and drink beer. But this is what she does to me. What she’s always done to me. I get drunk off her. Her strong will. Her determination. Her little gasps when she hits her clit just right.
With a groan, I swing my legs out of bed and creep across the room to close the door, locking it and pressing a finger into one ear. I hold the horn as far away from me as I can and squeeze my eyes closed like that will in any way save me from what I’m about to do. Chuck raises his head and stares me down. “Sorry, buddy.”
I press the button and the honk shatters the calm of morning, quickly followed by a crash in the kitchen. I lean my forehead on the door and wait for the telltale ruckus of a wild animal running back to safety, but it doesn’t come.
The poor animal. It’s probably paralyzed in fear, or shitting itself in my kitchen. And this is my fault. I shouldn’t have crawled into that shelter with her, or held her to me, or fallen asleep with my dick snuggled against her ass. There’s no way in hell I should have forgotten to latch the door tight, but with the state I was in…
My mouth waters at the thought of how she’d made herself come, not once, but twice. How she’d moved her fingers and her hips and gotten off to the sound of my voice, and one innocent pass from my tongue. One little bite. Quick contact that didn’t even start to quench the thirst I have for her.
My muscles tense and I fire off another blast of the horn to clear my thoughts.
“Jesus, Paul! I heard you the first time.”
I tear open the door, rubbing my ringing ear, and find Amy kneeling on the kitchen floor, picking shards of ceramic from a dark brown puddle. “Is this how you wake up every morning? Because if it is—” She cradles the pieces of broken mug in a towel and sits back on her heels, words lost when she catches sight of me.
I run my hand through my sleep-styled hair, but that’s not what has her attention. My dick twitches against the thin fabric of my pajamas. I haven’t had a standing date with my morning wood since I was a teenager, but shit if I wouldn’t give anything to rewind the last few minutes—to retain this image of Amy on her knees in my kitchen, wet hair turning her pale green tank top see-through—while I lay in bed and fucked my fist. But instead, I take a fresh towel from the drawer and kneel across the puddle from her.
“I thought you were an animal,” I say. “Sometimes they’ll sneak in for food if the door’s left unlatched.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Well, obviously. And you left it unlatched?”
“Could have.” I raise my eyebrows. “Or maybe it was you. Did you come by last night, looking for a little snack, or maybe the kind of fucking your own fingers can’t provide?” It’s an asshole move, I know, reminding her of what she could have, but I can’t let her know how much I want her. How close I was to breaking yesterday. How badly I wanted to rip her pants down and bury myself inside her.
I stretch to reach the last of the coffee puddle. “I mean, you have been away for a while, and you did get scared of a mouse. So, really, if you’ve forgotten that a mouse can’t hurt you, who knows what else you’ve forgotten.”
“I’m suddenly very glad that was your coffee.” She pushes to her feet and shakes the ceramic into the garbage. “And I’m not scared of mice. I just have a deep, all-consuming dislike of them.”
I ring out the towel in the sink. “They didn’t used to bother you.”
“Yeah, well, that was before I pulled a sixteen-hour day and came home to find that a mouse had taken up residence in my pillow and used the stuffing as her labor bed.”
“Don’t even tell me…”
She takes a sip of coffee. “Oh yeah. I found out when my head hit the pillow. Piss, shit, and mice everywhere.”
“Wow, okay. You’ve earned your phobia.” I pour the dregs of coffee into another mug. Seconds tick away while I search for something to say—for some topic a little more neutral than Amy’s bed.
She nods at my mug and holds up her own. “Where did these come from, anyway? I mean, they’re not exactly from this decade. Or even the last one.”
I savor the bitter liquid before letting it slide down my throat. “I’ve never really thought about what this stuff looks like. I’ve added some things to the house here and there, travel mugs, baking dishes, that sort of thing, but a lot of stuff is from when Fred was the director.”
“Fred? The guy at the registration office?”
“They actually handle all the bookings from down there, for summer camps and the private rentals,” I say. “Not the gig I would have expected for Bobcat, but he seems to like it.”
She lowers her mug to the counter. “Wait a sec. Fred is Bobcat? The camp director from when we were kids is the guy who hired me?”
“I’ll be sure to tell him that he’s aged so much you didn’t even recognize him,” I chuckle. “He’ll like that.”
Amy shakes her head and pulls the fridge open. “Don’t be an idiot. I never saw him. He hired me over the phone.”
Her leggings hug every ridge of her thighs and my mind wanders to yesterday and the way she’d tensed and relaxed all at once when I’d pulled her close. “That explains it,” I say.
She reaches deeper into the fridge and her ass is on display, flashing me back to when she’d crawled across the bed, showing me everything I could have if I gave in—if I took only what she was used to offering. But it’s not enough to touch her body, to have her shell clinging to me and begging for more, when more is exactly what I want. I grip the coffee mug tighter and press my back against the countertop.
“What explains what?” she asks, her head still in the fridge.
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“Why he didn’t warn me that it was you.”
Amy pulls herself upright, eggs and bacon in her hands, and hip-checks the fridge closed. “You needed a warning that he’d hired me?”
“He would have thought so.” And he would have been right. I pull a hand down my face and make no attempt to covertly change the subject. “So, breakfast?”
Her forehead creases, but she tosses a loaf of bread onto the counter next to me and sets to work putting strips of bacon on a baking sheet.
“You don’t fry it?” I take the toaster from its shelf.
“Healthier this way,” she says.
I load bread into the machine, ready to be toasted when the time comes. “Hate to break it to you, but I don’t think bacon is healthy.”
She tosses a smile my way. “Healthier. But whatever. We’re still down calories after the last couple of days. Well, I am, anyway. And we need fuel for the day I have planned for us.”
I blink away images of all the ways we could burn calories and concentrate on forming each syllable. “What do you have planned?”
“Well, we have two options.”
Oral or full contact? On top or from behind? My fingers are thick and clumsy and I drop the bread tag to the floor. “Yeah?”
She slides between me and the counter, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. My eyes drift to the translucent fabric, where a nipple strains against its confines. She pulls her shoulders back and rests her palms on her hips. The bread tag snags on the fleshy pad of my finger, but the throbbing is nothing compared to the pulsing in my massively motivated morning wood.
“Indeed,” she says. “Option number one, we go over how you do camper intake these days, then you show me the HR files and tell me everything you know about this summer’s camp staff.”
Disengaging my finger from the vice and closing the bread bag is a victory. “And option two?”
