Every Dog Has His Day

by Jenn McKinlay

  She took the condom from Zach’s hand that he’d fished out of his jeans and she helped him lose his underwear while she shimmied out of hers. She went to put the condom on him, but Zach slowed her down.

  “Hold up there, Speedy,” he said. “You’re not even completely undressed yet.”

  He reached for the front fastening of her bra and Jessie grabbed his hand, stopping him. He pulled back to look at her. She bit her lip.

  “I’m not . . . I nursed both of the girls,” she said.

  He lifted an eyebrow, clearly not understanding that the rigors of nursing had taken a toll on her breasts.

  “I’m not perky like I used to be,” she explained. Her ex had been very clear that he never wanted to see her without a bra.

  “So?” he asked. He unsnapped her bra and it fell open. He let out a hum of male satisfaction as he lowered his head to the nipple of one breast while he expertly thumbed the other.

  Jessie had no idea what to make of this. He didn’t mind that her breasts sagged a bit? When his teeth bit down on one nipple in a razor-sharp tug, she gasped as she felt a bolt of heat rocket from her breast right into her vagina. Holy wow.

  “You are a beautiful woman, Jessie,” he said. “So fucking beautiful.”

  He moved his mouth to the other breast and gave it the same treatment. Jessie grunted and arched her back. She wanted to be consumed by him, wholly and completely.

  She ran her hands down his sides, moving them to his front so she could grasp his shaft in her hand. Now it was his turn to grunt and swear. Turnabout was fair play, however, and Zach moved his hand in between her legs and stroked her expertly until Jessie thrashed beneath him.

  “I don’t think I can wait any longer,” Zach said. “How about you?”

  “Now, I need you now,” Jessie cried. And she meant it.

  She’d never felt this scorching want before. It was maddening and she knew there would be no relief until Zach pushed into her.

  Zach slid on the condom and moved over her. He laced the fingers of his hand with one of hers and held their clasped hands over her head. Then he used his other hand to guide himself into her.

  Jessie opened her legs wide to accommodate him and dug her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him close so she could kiss him as he eased into her. He was large—the parrot snowflake really wasn’t actual size—and he stretched her wide and he felt amazing.

  “You feel incredible,” Zach said—exactly what she was thinking. “So hot, so tight, so perfect.”

  Jessie sighed as he slid into her. It was perfect. It was magical. It was amazing. She let out a groan that sounded like a hippopotamus having a hard bowel movement. She tried to cover it up with a cough, but there was no pretending she hadn’t just made a noise that sounded like a blooper from a wild animal documentary.

  Seth had hated it when she’d made noises, so much so that he’d frequently kept his hand over her mouth, making it difficult for her to breathe. Abruptly, the surging erotic ride she’d been on with Zach suddenly pitched her off and she had no idea how to get back on.

  She was suddenly aware of the light sheen of sweat covering her skin, and was that . . . yes, it was. She felt the back of her thighs jiggle. Horrifying. There was no recovering. She was consumed with self-consciousness and an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy that doused her desire like a direct blast from a fire extinguisher.

  Zach seemed oblivious to her sudden bout of nerves. He put his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “So good.”

  Not wanting to disappoint him, Jessie made a sound of agreement. She closed her eyes, willing him not to notice that she’d lost the mood. She reached around and grabbed his backside, guiding him in and out of her in the way that had always managed to get her ex off, while she muttered encouraging words of feigned passion, hoping to coax him along.

  Caught up in her mission, it took Jessie a moment to realize that Zach had stopped moving. When she opened her eyes, it was to find him, resting on his elbows above her, looking at her in consternation.

  “Jessica Margaret,” he said. That got her attention. She hadn’t realized he knew her middle name. “Are you faking an orgasm with me?”

  Busted!

  Chapter 14

  Zach stared down at the woman below him. Her blue eyes were wide, but not with innocence—more like guilt—and her two-tone hair was spread out across the pillow, her lips a deep plum color and swollen from being kissed, thoroughly, and a flush marked her skin. From passion or embarrassment, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t much care. He did care, however, that she was faking her response with him. And doing it really badly, too.

  “Uh . . .”

  “Yeah, no,” he said. “You are so busted.”

  “But I . . .” She looked panicked and Zach felt his heart soften. He didn’t have it in him to torture her.

  “Hey,” he said. He eased out of her slowly, wincing a little as he slid free, missing her warmth immediately. “If you changed your mind, you should have told me. We didn’t have to do this tonight or at all if you decided you didn’t want to.”

  Tears filled her pretty blue eyes and they wrecked him. He ignored his raging hard-on and pulled her close. He pressed her head against his chest and stroked his fingers up and down her spine in what he hoped was a soothing gesture for her, because the feel of her velvety soft skin certainly wasn’t doing him any favors.

  “It’s not that,” she said on a small cry that rent his heart the littlest bit. “I want to be with you, I do, it’s just that I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to make love.”

  Zach rested his chin on her hair. “Jess, you have two daughters, so you must have some idea—”

  “I know how to procreate,” she said into his chest. “I don’t know how to enjoy sex. Oh, god, I’m a freak. You should probably run from me as fast and as far as you can.”

  She sounded so genuinely distraught that Zach couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not a freak. Sometimes with a new partner it just takes a little—”

  “Zach, I’ve never had an orgasm,” she interrupted. She pushed away from him and rose up on one elbow so she was looking down at him. “Not once, not ever. No rockets. No waterfalls.”

  Zach blinked at her. This information simply did not compute. Finally, when he could move his mouth, he managed one single word, and asked, “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “Not even by yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Not even in a wet dream? I’ve heard girls have those, too.”

  “I did come really close once,” she said. “No pun intended, but then one of the girls called for me and I woke up. I get so close but I just can’t seem to get there. I get distracted or anxious or worried. I feel like I’m a bird with perfectly functional wings who’s afraid to fly.”

  “Wow.”

  “See? Total freak. Frigid. Repressed.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “But I wish you’d told me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never should have put you in this position.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he asked. He rose up on his elbow so that they were eye to eye. “This position is awesome.”

  She stared at him. She looked equal parts suspicious and hopeful. Zach knew she didn’t get it but that was all right; she would eventually.

  “How do you figure that?” she asked.

  He wagged his eyebrows at her. “Because now we have a project. We’re going to teach you how to have a Big O.”

  She fell back onto the bed and dropped her arm over her eyes. “Oh, god, I’m a project. This is mortifying.”

  Zach nudged her arm out of the way so that he could see her face. She looked embarrassed, which was actually a pretty cute look on her.

  “So, is there any issue in your past that I need to know about?” h
e asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To be blunt”—he paused, making sure she was looking him in the eye before he said—“if your inability to orgasm is because of a trauma from your past, I don’t want to do anything that would make it worse. So, if you were assaulted or—”

  “I wasn’t,” Jessie said. “It would be easier to understand if I had something like that in my past but I don’t.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. He squeezed her close. “I would have hated for anything like that to have happened to you. I’d have had to go out and punch somebody or something.”

  Jessie laughed, which had been his intention, even though if anyone had hurt her, he’d likely do everything he could to hunt them down and pummel them into the dirt. There was something about Jessie that made him feel fiercely protective of her.

  The candles continued to burn on the nightstand. The room was still freezing but their combined body heat under the heavy covers made it more than toasty. Zach still wanted her—man, did he ever—but not enough to push her when she obviously had some kind of block. He’d seen how ready she was. She’d been right there with him but somehow he’d lost her.

  It was an absolute tragedy that she’d never experienced the best part of sex. Dang, what the hell had that ex-husband of hers been doing? He got her pregnant but without her getting off in the process? That wasn’t right. Zach hadn’t had anything other than casual relationships in a long time but even so, he made sure his partners enjoyed it as much as he did.

  “So, did you want to try again?” Jessie asked.

  “Uh . . . no,” he said.

  She stilled against him; when she spoke her voice was small but held a forced brightness to it as if she was trying to gloss over the hurt.

  “Oh, I understand,” she said.

  “No, you don’t. This isn’t a rejection.”

  “Really? Cause it kind of feels that way, not that I blame you.”

  He shifted her in his arms, turning her so that her back was to him and he curled up around her. This was one of Zach’s favorite positions to hold a woman because his hands had full access to all of her oh-so-tempting girl parts, but also because he could kiss the back of her neck, a spot that never failed to get a woman’s attention.

  “Here’s how I see this playing out,” he said.

  He paused to let his hands roam over her dead sexy curves while he pressed his lips to the sensitive spot just beneath her hair on the back of her neck. She pressed back against him with a moan. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to regroup. Perhaps he should have put his pants back on before he let her push into his throbbing shaft with her bare bottom. Damn it.

  “We’re going to start over,” he said. “We’re going to move super slow. We’re going to figure out what you do like and what you don’t like and while we’re doing that, we’re going to make sure that you become so crazy an orgasm is an inevitability.”

  He finished talking with his mouth pressed against the curve of her ear, with his voice little more than a growled whisper. His hands were busy touching her everywhere while he cataloged her responses like a scientist studying a slide under a microscope. Nipples, big time responsive; the rest of her breasts, not so much. Inner thighs, a stroke or two there and her breath stuttered, but a touch to the back of her legs made her clench up. Interesting.

  “Oh . . . okay,” she said. Her breath was coming in delicious little pants as if she couldn’t quite manage a full inhale.

  Zach smiled into her skin. He’d moved his hand in between her legs and was drawing small circles with his fingers on her most sensitive parts. Not really touching her core, just sliding along the edge. When she began to move her hips as if trying to shift toward his hand, he knew he was getting to her. Too bad it was going to become so much worse for her.

  He figured she had so many years of flirting with satisfaction and then failing that he had to ratchet up the desire in her until she was almost crazed. That was the only way she was going to be able to punch through her own barrier to release.

  She shifted against him, the cleft in her ass cupping him so perfectly it was all he could do not to fall on top of her and take her up on her idea to give it another go. He didn’t. Instead, he winced as he inched away from her. If she didn’t get to orgasm, neither did he. He figured it was only fair, although he was half afraid it might kill him.

  When she turned in his arms to face him, her eyes were bright blue, sparking with desire. He gave her one long, thorough, wet kiss and then he tucked her head under his chin and loosely looped his arms about her.

  Jessie lay still against him for a moment. Then she cleared her throat. “Is that it then?”

  “For now,” he said.

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he said. “We’re rewriting your sexual history and we’re going to go take our time and savor every second.”

  “But I feel so restless,” she said. She pressed her lips to the base of his throat. “Like I just need more of you.”

  “Good,” he said. The huskiness in her voice made his blood run thick while the feel of her lips on his skin made his pulse flutter as if looking to take flight. She was killing him but he stayed resolved. He tucked her head back under his chin and said, “Behave yourself.”

  He felt her lips curve against his skin and he hid his own smile in her hair.

  “I don’t think I can sleep like this,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you a bedtime story,” he said. “We can use it to determine whether dirty talk gets you hot or not.”

  Jessie burst out laughing. “What’s it called, Jack and His Beanstalk?”

  Zach laughed. Oh, he liked her quick wit. “I was thinking more along the lines of Goldilocks and the Three Bartenders.”

  “Three?” she cried. “At one time?”

  “Dunno, does that work for you?” he asked.

  Now she was snort-laughing and Zach found it ridiculously charming. It occurred to him that while he always enjoyed his time with women, he rarely spent time like this, naked and laughing. Usually, there was a mission to be accomplished and then he was out of there.

  With Jessie, he didn’t feel like there was a job to be done. It felt like he was supposed to be here with her, laughing or loving or whatever else she needed. He liked Jessie, he liked her girls, and while he knew she was thinking of them in terms of a fling, he was beginning to hope for something entirely different.

  When Jessie let out a jaw-popping yawn and burrowed against him, Zach felt his own body relax. He was surprised because he’d been so sure that having her close would keep him awake and unsatisfied, but the activity of the day, the hours spent in the snow, had tuckered him out. When he heard a soft snore escape her lips, he leaned back to study her face.

  She was a pretty thing with prominent cheekbones and a very stubborn chin. She had no makeup on but he liked that. There was a fresh clean scent about her, like lemon cake, and it made him want to devour her. He shook his head. That was not going to help him keep his libido in check.

  He shifted a bit, trying to ease the ache in his crotch. In a weird way, he welcomed the discomfort. Since the woman he had considered the love of his life had walked out of his life, Zach hadn’t gotten attached to anyone he hooked up with, keeping it casual in part out of self-preservation but also because he’d become a bit of a workaholic.

  It was different with Jessie. Maybe it was because they’d become friends first or because of his affection for the girls—he wasn’t sure—but he didn’t want this to be a satisfaction grab, where they had a good time and then went their separate ways. He wanted to be the guy who taught her how to make the most of her own sexuality and then he wanted to be the guy who enjoyed the discovery with her.

  He thought about her friendship with Cooper and realized that it was likely that she could end up dating the handsome chief of po
lice. The idea of Jessie and Cooper together made Zach want to smash something. This was not an urge he’d felt over any woman in a very long time.

  He studied the woman in his arms a bit more closely. Did he trust her? Could he trust her? If they moved forward with whatever this was between them, his potential to be hurt was huge. And it wasn’t just losing Jessie. The idea of having the girls out of his life made his heart hurt in a way he hadn’t expected.

  Feisty Maddie who feared nothing and no one needed someone to watch out for her, someone to hold out their arms so that when she took to the air, he could catch her when she came back down. And Gracie, so quiet and restrained—she needed someone to lace their fingers together and give her a boost to help her climb up to the heights he knew she could reach if she had a strong someone at her ground zero. Yes, Jessie could be those things for her daughters no question, but Zach wanted to be there, too.

  As he thought about the girls and their mother, he felt a peace slide over him, lulling him to sleep, like the warmest, thickest blanket. It was a comforting feeling of belonging and he welcomed it. Zach felt as if his world had been locked in winter, something he’d never realized, but now he had the potential of spring and he embraced it.

  • • •

  Zach wasn’t sure what woke him first, the delicious scent of the woman in his arms, or the feel of her hands running over his chest and then his abs, pausing lower but only for a moment before she ran her hand over the length of him, which had woken up like a good little soldier ready to be deployed.

  He shifted, unable to resist pressing against her warmth while he lowered his face into her hair and took a deep inhale. He wanted to wake up like this every day. He ran his hand down her spine and she arched her back, pushing her hips into his and making him hiss from the contact.

  He lowered his head and leaned in to kiss her. She met him halfway. The kiss was tentative in the way the sun tiptoes over the horizon, nudging the world into wakefulness. Her lips were soft, they parted for his, his hand moved up into her hair so he could pull her closer and kiss her more thoroughly. It was like a direct blast of sunlight.