Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits

by Felicia Watson

  I discovered that wasn’t really an issue, of course.

  I fumbled with the key of the building to get in. When the lock first clicked open, even before we’d taken a step through the doorway, that was the first time he touched me properly. Suddenly there was one of his strong, steady hands on my shoulder, turning me to face him, then the other one running slowly around the line of my jaw. I stared into his eyes, and they looked darker than ever. Maybe hungry; still wary. I didn’t know his expressions well enough then. My own eyelids felt heavy with seductive delight, and my lips parted very slowly as if to release a silent groan. Swear to God, I nuzzled up against his palm like some needy cat.

  He whispered very gently into my ear, and I could feel the brush of his hair against my cheek. “Tell me now, Tanner, if you’d rather I didn’t come in. I don’t know you well enough. Don’t know if this is okay. Shit, I don’t know anything, really.”

  I didn’t answer with such mundane things as words. Couldn’t even be bothered with a nod. Just let my chin tilt up so that our lips were millimeters away from each other’s, and I could breathe in the warmth of his tentative whisper. Then I opened my mouth and took in his darting tongue.

  We were going to bump heads that night, for sure.

  Tuesday 01.25

  I STIRRED on the cushions, uncomfortable and restless on the floor of my trailer, with only memories to entertain me. A cool breeze on the street and a good meal nudging my stomach; that was partly what I remembered from that evening, all those months ago. But clearest of all was the precious memory of how fantastic Niall tasted!

  I’d been in some kind of sensual heaven. He kissed like a demon, but a very sweet, very sincere demon. His tongue was hot and fast and fucking gorgeous. He tasted of the wine, the pasta sauce, and the mints that came with the check. He pressed fiercely against me, like he’d been holding himself back for the last hour or so but was now released from whatever inhibitions he’d had, and his hands twisted sharply into my hair at the back of my neck. I could feel strands working loose from the tie and his fingertips pressing on the thin skin at my nape. His eyes were open, watching my reactions, and his hands never strayed past my shoulders. He was waiting, I think, to double check I was okay with it all.

  I may have been an acting coach at work, but no one had ever accused me of being difficult to read when it came to sex, in all its forms. I slid both my arms around his waist and pulled him in even closer, tight against my body. My lips pressed back hard against his and I gasped my willingness into his mouth. I felt his body tighten and the muscles slide against my own, all the way from torso to knee. The door eased open behind us and we half-fell into the hallway, laughing, groaning, still nipping at each other’s lips.

  “Which floor?” he gasped.

  “Fifth.” I’d never cursed the broken elevator as soundly as I did that night. We stumbled up all five flights, bumping our hipbones on the banister, scuffing our shoes against the wall. From the way we clung to each other, we were like a single melded body with two sets of limbs. I nudged him around each landing, taking every chance to run my hands inside his jacket and down his sides, his warm torso tantalizing me from underneath his shirt. As I groped for the keys to my apartment, he seemed to be the only thing holding me upright, clutching my shoulders and gasping into my neck, his fingertips tracing the pulse in my throat, caressing my skin with the damp heat of his palms.

  We tumbled again through a doorway, panting from our exertions and from a barely contained passion. But this time when I kicked the door closed behind us, I knew it was just us now; just the two of us, blessed privacy, and a mounting excitement that had consumed any shred of sense left in my brain.

  The music playing in my apartment? It was pure soul… a low, slow beat and a voice rich with sensuous humor in every syllable and tone. I barely registered, except to feel the familiar comfort of it around me. Kind of my favorite music, coincidence or not.

  And all those worries I had about the state of my place? Thankfully, we never went anywhere near the kitchen to check up on my housekeeping abilities. We also bypassed the lounge where, in fact, there were several piles of my laundry on the couch, some clean and some embarrassingly crumpled. As we staggered down my narrow hallway, he shrugged off his jacket and I dropped my keys someplace I didn’t see and, frankly, didn’t care. I toed off my boots and socks in a trail of laughter and hot breathy kisses. When I mumbled something about the coffee I’d promised him, he laughed directly into my face and kissed me again, so soundly that my eyes closed against his forehead and I felt his taste seep into my very veins. I felt him kicking off his own shoes and fumbling at my buttons. I’d wanted to take some time, to savor the suspense of peeling his clothes off of him—to tease him, perhaps, with my own unwrapping. Then his hands came up underneath the cool fabric of my shirt, running fingertips across my exposed nipples, and suddenly instantaneous nakedness would have been way too slow for me.

  The bedroom wasn’t hard to find, mainly because I pushed him bodily through the door, and we fell onto the bed, entwined again as that four-limbed beast. By now, my shirt was hanging from my body by nothing more than a single sleeve, but in return I’d managed to open his without ripping off any buttons in my impatience, and also tug down the zipper of his pants. He palmed my groin, molding his hand around the swollen excitement under my jeans, but I had a hand inside the cloth of his underwear, and I had a hold of flesh—damp, hot, and tangled in amongst curls of hair already sticky with excitement—and I was making him groan aloud in a very satisfying way.

  He felt exquisite. Precious. I couldn’t understand my reverence, but there was no mistaking it. I’d never felt like that before—nor since, for that matter.

  I took the advantage then. I rolled myself around and scrambled up to kneel beside him, tugging at the fabric of his pants and pulling them down from his hips. His soft black jersey briefs were a fabulous contrast against his flushed skin, and they peeled off just as easily under my determined touch. I wanted him naked, and I wanted it now!

  He lay on his back underneath me, with none of that coyness that some guys have when you strip them. No, he lay there with his shirt wide open and his chest heaving, his long, bare legs stretched out along the length of my bed. He looked both confident and comfortable, like a wet dream come to reality. His eager eyes glittered like flints, and they were locked on me. His arms lay by his side, and his fists clenched gently. When I reached down to pull his shirt off properly, he shifted his upper body to help me out. Then he reached up for my hand and drew it down to his mouth. I watched, fascinated, as his tongue slipped out and licked the valleys between my fingers.

  “Tanner.” It was just a breath; just a murmur. No instruction, no demand.

  I gazed at him, drinking in the sight of his body laid out on my bed, the sheet creased up under his hip, shadows playing along the white cotton folds as he clenched the muscles of his slim ass. The front of his thighs curved sweetly. Soft hairs on his skin, dark curls around his groin. He sucked softly on my fingers and shifted, getting more comfortable. What can I say? The movement made his cock bob gently against his belly, the flesh thick and swollen. It made the skin of his balls crinkle and the shape of the globes inside roll against the base of his groin.

  I’d always thought unadulterated joy an unattainable urban myth, but I felt it then.

  I leaned further over and pressed my mouth to his, trying to regain the taste of hot need in him and succeeding. He was saturated with it; his kiss in return was even greedier than mine.

  My hands slid down his body, his hips straining up toward me, as I took his cock back into my grasp, and I started to stroke him. Both hands rolling around him, up and down, spreading the warm pre-come around the shaft. He gasped and bit at my lip so that I pulled my kiss away, laughing softly. And still I caressed him. He cursed a few times, like he couldn’t find the right words. Once, his hand crawled up to his own hair, gripping it like an anchor to reality. I’d never enjoyed pumping a g
uy so much in all my life; he was a prize in my hands. I felt his desire flooding up through my fingertips and into my own body.

  I was grinning like a fool by this time, and wriggled out of my own loosened jeans until I was naked too. My hands were trying to keep the contact with his arousal, but his seed leaked out onto my palms, glistening and making them slippery. I felt the shiver of disappointment in his body every time I had to loosen my grip. His eyes were fixed on mine, widening with every stroke. His face was very flushed, his chest was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and he was panting. Seems he was trying to tell me something; ask for something, maybe. I thought I could guess what it was. I was pretty smug by then.

  I licked my lips. “Niall,” I said, trying out the sound of his voice in the acoustics of my bedroom. No music had ever sounded so good, and I grinned from pure pleasure. “So what now?”

  His pupils were hugely dilated, but he smiled back as if he were savoring the anticipation just as deeply. “Whatever you want, Tanner.” His groan was husky, very sexy. “It’s your place, your room. Your call. I just want you.”

  And with that deeply sensual sound in my ears, I nearly lost it. Any bantering reply I had in my throat turned tail and ran. I leaned down over his hips instead and took him into my mouth. I knew what I wanted; I wanted to taste him, to possess him, to draw him into me wherever and however I could. He cried out loudly, and his hand snatched fiercely at my hair. I didn’t care. I licked and sucked, and his cock nudged at the back of my mouth with barely controlled passion. It was better than any damned meal I could ever have ordered.

  I think he was close to climax when he pushed me off. I didn’t take it as any kind of a rejection, just that he wanted it to last longer. He still grasped at me; I could still hear his harsh panting and the soft whimpers of need in the back of his throat. His hands ran over my flesh, and he rolled my erect nipples between his fingertips. Then he shifted his body so that he lay beside me, but with his head now at my hips and his groin achingly close to my chin. I had saliva glands at full productivity and a tongue caressed by trails of his pre-come, so I was more than happy to go back down on him. But I also didn’t complain when he returned the favor.

  His tongue was soft at the tip, with a pleasing roughness along its length; it swiped hungrily along my shaft, and I gasped with delight. It was a shock when he took almost all of me into his mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not boasting, but I’ve been told in the past that I’m not small. But his nose nudged at my groin, and my balls swung helplessly at his bared throat. I started to slide down that slippery slope of ecstasy right about then, and, fuck, I was loath to resist it.

  I tried to hold back; I tried to keep my mind on pleasing him, and I was thrilled when I felt the familiar throb of his cock against my lips and the strangled sob from his throat that meant, in my experience, that surrender was imminent.

  “Tanner!” He pulled his mouth back up to the tip of my cock, gasping for breath, struggling for words. I didn’t know why he bothered. I wanted to throw myself off that damned slope and let the tidal wave of orgasm wash over me as well. But what did I know of him and his thoughts, back then?

  “Is it…? I’m going to….” Yes, yes, get on with it…. “Tanner,” he groaned. “In your mouth? I mean, if you’ll take my word that I’m okay….”

  He wanted to know if I’d prefer not to swallow, I realized. If I’d be disgusted or nervous of it. I couldn’t remember the last guy who’d bothered to ask at this stage, not that I wouldn’t have made my own preferences clear enough if things were going the wrong way. But I was intrigued, despite myself. Even if I hadn’t needed any more evidence that Niall Sutherland was a different kind of guy—which, had I been honest, I didn’t—his concern for me, even as he shuddered with a climax approaching in the fast lane of his nervous system, was very revealing.

  I shook my head gently and tensed my lips around his cock to emphasize my eagerness. He groaned then, no more words available, and I was filled with the sudden burst of warm, viscous liquid from its tip. An eager burst, then another. Hot, thick flesh, shooting its delicious load, spattering on my tongue. I licked and swallowed gratefully. His thighs thrust up against my chin, his muscles clenched and strained, and I smelled the sweat and passion that suffused his skin.

  It was all I needed to take me there too. I lifted my head from his groin and bared my neck, my eyes sliding half-closed. Then I stretched an arm down behind me to grab however much of him I could reach. My palm rested on his thick, damp hair, and I pressed his head further down on my own arousal.

  “Me too,” I grunted. “Trust me.” And he obviously did. Two more thrusts of my hips and I groaned aloud with my climax, my cock throbbing with delight at being bedded in the warmest, softest place it had been for a hell of a long time. Niall’s mouth tightened around me, like mine had around him, and I swear I felt the vibration of a laugh run the length of my shaft. I don’t know for sure; I was rather occupied at the time with keeping my body on the planet and my voice below mega-decibels.

  I came like the walls of Jericho must have tumbled.

  THAT WAS never going to be enough.

  Believe it or not, I don’t fuck on a first “date” as a matter of habit. But that night, as Niall shifted back up on the bed to come face to face with me, my whole body still shook with desire. I was like the string of a guitar, pulled tight and then released, but still thrumming with the note. I turned unfocused eyes on to his dark, laughing gaze, and my mouth just opened for his tongue, all over again.

  “I want you,” he murmured thickly, deep into my mouth. I think he’d said it a few times already, or maybe I heard it echoing in my head, which was far from clear. I was hardening again at the mere sound of his voice. From the harsh nudging against my hip, it seemed he was as eager himself.

  We rolled almost instinctively into a position where I was bottom, lying on my back. Guess I didn’t care how, and I could do both, of course, with equal enthusiasm. His hands were very sure, parting my legs, stroking at my belly. He was looking down at me with those sinfully gorgeous eyes, smiling that ridiculously fascinating smile.

  God, I had it bad.

  “Do you have condoms?” He looked sheepish, as if the whole thing had him bemused, and also very tense, as if he were struggling to hang on to some shred of sense. Hell, I could show some responsibility, too, couldn’t I? If I could just tear my eyes from him for a few seconds….

  There was stuff in my bedside drawer, though I knew I’d have to search under a pile of books and receipts and various coins to find it. It’d been a while since I’d found anyone that attracted me enough to bother. I fumbled around for condoms and lube, one arm stretched out to the drawer while I tried with the other one to keep him close. He lay on me, murmuring nonsense into my shoulder, running his tongue along the line of my muscle, deep into the armpit and down along the sinews on the inside of my arm. It all reduced me to a mess of needy, nauseous hunger.

  He took pity on me eventually and took charge of the lube, popping the top of the bottle and letting the cool gel drip on to his hand. I bent my legs up and pulled my knees further apart so he could reach more easily. When his finger slipped slowly into me, I groaned aloud. He paused for a second, maybe afraid that he’d hurt me or something.

  “Tanner?”

  “Don’t stop,” I gasped. “More.” I only just held myself back from a weeping “Please.”

  He probed me gently but firmly. He certainly knew what he was doing, reaching inside me with care and determination. Three smooth thrusts, and he was hitting the spot. I heard myself yelping with delight like a devoted puppy. He laughed softly, his breath quickening. Giving pleasure seemed to delight him as much the receiving thrilled me. He didn’t withdraw his fingers until the last minute, continuing to stretch me, tantalizing me with strokes to my prostate while he slid on the condom with his other hand, slicking himself up. When his cock finally nudged up between my legs, pressing tentatively at an opening that hadn’t seen
much third-party penetrative action for a while, I was more than ready for him. I arched up, pressing my body against his, and I pulled his head down to nip at his lips. My thighs tightened around him and my ass lifted inches off the bed with my own eagerness.

  He sank into me steadily, carefully, deeply.

  I know I groaned; I daresay I cursed as well. I’m not the quietest of guys regarding pillow talk. But before he could worry again he’d hurt me or I was reluctant in any way, I slid my hands around his body, under his tight, lean buttocks, and I gripped him to me. He thrust fiercely and greedily, as if the desperation overcame him; I heard his low groan in reply to mine. His cock sank in to the root, his balls slapping softly against my ass. We rocked together, skin slick with sweat, muscles keen and strong and clenching on to each other like we were afraid to let go. We both scrabbled for my cock, crushed as it was between our bodies, rubbed mercilessly against my belly. He pushed away my flailing hand, and I knew it wouldn’t take much to tip me over the edge again; and yes, a few strokes from Niall’s broad hand and I was moaning his name along with a lot of other stuff that didn’t make any coherent sense. My back arched again, and my head swam, and then the flesh between us was damp with my sticky seed, bursting free as we thrust together. I felt its warmth as it pooled in my navel and then trickled down on to the sheets beneath us.