by Helena Maeve
“Or we could skip the pretense,” I drawled. He looked up and I thought I spied a touch of surprise in his gaze. He opened his mouth—perhaps to tell me I had the wrong idea—but he seemed to lose his train of thought once I tugged off my sweater and tank top.
I stood before him in my bra, my heart about to burst through my ribcage like something out of Alien, neither of us saying anything for a fraught, tenuous moment. Then I took a step forward, and Ashley met me halfway. Our lips connected in a brutal kiss.
My bad day was about to get a lot better.
Chapter Two
How we made it to the bedroom would remain a mystery. It was the furthest thing from my thoughts as I peeled off Ashley’s shirt and he fumbled to unzip my trousers. Between the two of us, he was quicker. I nearly lost my footing when he cupped me through my underwear, two long fingers wedged right between my lower lips.
I groped for purchase on the dresser, a shiver wracking through me as I gasped.
“That’s right,” Ashley purred, flicking my earlobe with his tongue. “Enjoy it…” His breath was hot on my skin. I was so used to guys thinking with their dicks that I didn’t know what to do with someone who zeroed in on my pleasure so thoroughly.
I ended up clinging to him as he steadied us both, my knees weakening with every delicate swipe of his fingertips against my pussy. He didn’t have enough room to roll my clit properly so I scrabbled to shove my pants and underwear down my hips, shimmying until I could step out of my clothes entirely. I felt wanton and keyed-up, arousal thrumming inside me like a plucked cord.
A harsh, throaty “Fuck” tore out of me like a piece of flesh.
Ashley instantly went still. “You speak English?”
I groaned, bucking against his hand. “I’m naked and dripping over your goddamn hand,” I pointed out. “That’s what you want to focus on?”
He huffed out a breath—which I took for acquiescence—and tumbled us into my bed in short order. I allowed myself a brief moment’s anxiety about my scattered clothes and the cornucopia of vials and bottles that made up the complicated chemistry of my beauty regimen, all on display on the vanity, and swiftly put it out of my mind.
Ashley was kissing his way down my throat and I doubted that he was taking the time to side-eye my slovenly bedroom.
I was the one to nudge him back.
“What?” His eyes were wild, a rosy flush staining his cheeks as he hovered above me.
“Shirt,” I bit out, too far gone to care that I was reverting to Tarzan levels of eloquence. Thankfully he deciphered my meaning and tore off his blue shirt so fast I thought the buttons might rip.
My breath caught. I’d been woefully uncharitable in my initial assessment when we’d crossed paths in the hallway. Ashley had clearly spent some time in the gym. His biceps corded beautifully as he crawled his way up my body. I tilted my head up, turned on by the gentle scrape of his chest hair against my peaked nipples to the point of an embarrassing moan.
Ashley grinned against my lips. “You like?”
Cocky bastard. “Y-yeah,” I stammered and dropped my hands to his trim hips, digging my fingers in. “But you’re still overdressed.”
“Should do something about that…”
I lost precious moments before I figured out that he wanted me to undress him. I couldn’t oblige fast enough. I wished I’d had some of that wine to steady my shaking hands. My fingers seemed too big all of a sudden, too clumsy. I was out of practice at one-night stands—my last one far predated Javier—and my thoughts were already racing ahead to what Ashley might expect.
I wasn’t averse to giving head but I also wasn’t big on receiving. Would he try to make me come while he fucked me? Anticipation morphed to anxiety as I pulled down his zipper and felt his erection against my knuckles.
My breath caught. He felt huge. I cupped him tentatively, my stomach dropping like a block of lead.
My hesitation must have showed, because Ashley pulled back fractionally, his gaze intent on mine. “Changed your mind?” There was a catch in his voice, but I didn’t hear the note of frustration I’d come to expect from men who couldn’t hide their weariness when my laundry list of issues inevitably kicked in to spoil our fun.
I shook my head and pulled Ashley to me.
I liked his mouth. He kissed like he meant it, like he was eager for my lips. I felt his cock against my pelvis as he settled over me, the hair on his legs rubbing against my waxed-bare thighs. I did it all myself, at home, which was why I stopped at my bikini line. I didn’t have enough sangfroid to go full Brazilian. Ashley either didn’t notice the trimmed thatch of hair or didn’t give a damn. He ducked his head to take my nipple between his lips and I nearly arched off the bed.
Correction, I didn’t like his mouth. I fucking loved it. Especially when he did that clever thing with his tongue, like a figure eight but not really—I tried to visualize it, but my senses were rapidly overloading with delight and I couldn’t spare the brain cells.
Ashley trailed soft bites over my ribcage, circling each freckle with his tongue before venturing ever lower. It wasn’t until he scored my hip with his teeth that understanding cleaved through the fog of my arousal. I dug my red-painted fingernails into his shoulders to get his attention and, once I had it, reversed us with as much grace as I could muster.
Which was to say, none.
He looked set to protest when I slammed our lips together.
It wasn’t my most elegant seduction, but it did the trick. Ashley couldn’t seem to get it together fast enough to stop me once I started sliding my fist up and down his thick cock. Anxiety pitched in my gut, but I had no intention of backing down from the challenge. I shuffled down the mattress and curled my tongue around the mushroomed head of his erection. A raw, helpless noise crept out of his throat. Damn straight, I’m good at this. Some people could do headstands. I was a master cocksucker.
As Ashley knotted both hands in my short hair, I set to proving it.
I wet my lips with his salty pre-cum, layering kisses down his shaft for a few tantalizing instants. I crept back up to tease my tongue into his weeping slit just to hear Ashley groan. It was delightful. He twitched in my fist when I lapped at this spot just under the ridge of the cockhead, little tremors arcing into his thighs and fingertips when I persisted.
Then I took him in—slow, no more than an inch at first, enough to give myself time to adjust to his girth and allow him a taste of what was to come. He made the sweetest noises as I stroked my fist along his length, most of them rough, throaty pleas chasing dirty curses that invoked my name like a prayer. The odd burst of French mixed in with a litany of English filth. It turned me on like his fingers between my legs.
I spread my legs a little wider and pressed two fingers into my cunt to take the edge off. A heady rush of pleasure shot through me and I wanted nothing more than to make him feel it, too. I hollowed my cheeks as I sucked him down to the back of my throat.
Fuck, he was big.
I tensed as I felt him tighten his hands in my hair. Don’t shove me down, don’t choke me. Either my prayers were answered or he’d never had any intention of following through. I felt slightly guilty for anticipating when even the small, helpless twitch of his hips was arrested. His self-control put mine to shame. I pulled off to trace the vein protruding on the underside of his cock with my tongue and our eyes locked.
“You look good down there…”
“Yeah?” I grinned, my cheeks warm. “Think you can get off from my mouth alone?”
Ashley snorted a laugh. “You have to ask?”
I rewarded his cockiness with a soft bite at his inner thigh. I heard his breath catch, guffaws giving way to stuttered exhales. He curbed his petting, too, firming the grip he had on my hair. I’d be lying if I claimed that part of me didn’t thrill at the flash of tension in his body. He looked good when he was relaxed and teasing me, but he looked even better propped up on his elbows, a wicked gleam in his eye as he guided me back d
own his turgid cock. I closed my eyes and focused on giving him what he wanted.
I chickened out on the first attempt. On the second, the silky head pressed into the back of my throat and I gagged, a vulgar sound echoing around the bare walls of my bedroom.
Ashley cupped my cheek, thumb tapping lightly at the hinge of my jaw. “Let me do it. Just relax, let it happen…”
I wanted to tell him that was the kind of bullshit that would lead to a late night trip to the ER because I’d bitten his dick off, but I checked myself. I let my lips part around his cock, I made myself relax.
Ashley rocked his hips in steady increments, using my mouth as though he was fucking me. He never pressed in deeper than I could take and his touch served to distract me. My shoulders burned from the position I was in.
Suddenly I wished we would’ve done this the other way around. It was probably best that we hadn’t. Me on my back with a man I’d only just met thrusting into my mouth? The sheer amount of ways that could backfire was too staggering to consider.
Ashley cupped the back of my neck and I relaxed instinctively. I felt him thrust into my mouth, inch by silky inch scraping my tongue, the roof of my mouth, until at last my lips sealed around the root of his cock. I’d taken all of him. Christ. I could barely believe it. Ashley groaned, tension lining his body as he pulled out. I caught a brief glimpse of his scrunched up eyes and parted lips before I felt him come all over my chest in thick, hot ropes.
I grabbed at his cock, sliding my fingers through the gaps between his digits, our joined hands tugging down his slick shaft as the last of the tremors wracked his frame.
A soft, pained noise told me when to desist.
I kissed his belly and the jut of his hip bone before I pulled away. There was no towel nearby and I didn’t trust my legs to carry me into the bathroom, so I wiped myself clean with my tank top, making a mental note to throw it in the laundry basket before I fell asleep.
Ashley traced my spine with a warm, long-fingered hand, then curled his hand around my ass cheek. “That was incredible.”
“What’s hard to believe about it?” My throat felt a little raw, but it was nothing a cup of tea wouldn’t mend.
“Let’s just say I don’t often meet women who can deep throat like that,” Ashley confessed, tilting his mouth to mine in a searing kiss.
I made a show of staying out of his reach for a beat before I gave in. I wanted to make him work for it, not deny him outright. My resolve crumbled when I felt his tongue against my lips, seeking entrance.
The total number of guys I’d been with who wanted to make out after I gave them a blow job? Zero.
Ashley was helping me break all sorts of rules tonight. Perhaps that was why I didn’t brush his hand aside when he guided me onto my back and cupped my pussy with a warm palm. “So wet,” he murmured, raking his teeth along my jaw.
I gasped, but didn’t tell him to stop. The banked coals of my need had begun to smolder again as we lay together, catching our breath, and a few strokes had them scintillating. I rolled my hips, angling my body to focus Ashley’s touch where I needed it most. He caught on quickly and slid a finger inside me easily. I was wet and eager for him, desperate to be filled. Part of me regretted getting him off first. We could have fucked if he wasn’t spent. It was a wholly selfish desire—I had trouble coming from other kinds of stimulation. Oral made me freeze up. Fingering usually devolved to brutal thrusts that did nothing for me.
Not so with Ashley’s touch. He flicked his tongue over my nipple as he rubbed my clit back and forth with just the right amount of pressure. Wet, squishy noises echoed around the room—inopportune, yes, but not enough to distract me from the slow burn of pleasure in my cunt. I was skating along the razor edge of climax when the mattress dipped and Ashley knelt between my splayed thighs.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he said, cutting me short. “Unless…you don’t?”
What kind of woman didn’t go gaga for oral? Melanie often complained about no reciprocation the morning after she took a guy home. In my own experience, guys weren’t quick to offer—or, if they did, it was only as a prelude to getting their dicks wet. But something made me shake my head and lie back. Something made me give Ashely carte blanche despite the knot of dread in my chest.
“God, look at you…”
I closed my eyes in defiance. He could look. I didn’t need to. The first rough scrape of his tongue quickly had me reconsidering that inane show of insubordination.
“Oh, fuck!”
I arched my back away from the mattress, at once trying to heighten the electric burst of sensation and get away from it.
Ashley spread me open and licked my clit into his mouth like a tiny cock. Laughter bubbled up inside me at the visual that thought conjured up, but I choked on it soon enough. It felt too good and Ashley was relentless in his ministrations, rolling his tongue over and over my most sensitive parts like he knew precisely what that did to me.
My moans rose to a pitch as I ignited around his long fingers, my orgasm swelling from the depths of my being and spilling out in crushing, breathtaking waves. I was still shaking as he pulled away with lips and chin streaked with my juices. Suddenly I understood the thrill of kissing someone who had just used their mouth to get you off.
He tasted like me. My pussy clenched as the flavor simmered on the tip of my tongue, slow to dissolve.
After a long moment, Ashley kissed my cheek and settled beside me. “I’ll move in a sec,” he promised huskily.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Stay as long as you want.”
I felt comfortable lying there beside him, at once safe and exhausted. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want him to leave. No doubt that was just my orgasm talking, but I didn’t care. If Ashley had designs on my virtue, he would’ve made his move by now.
I clung to that incredibly sparse bit of reason as I turned onto my side and pulled his arm around my waist. His body was a warm, solid wall against my spine, his breaths stirring the short hairs on my nape. I wasn’t ready to give that up.
I only intended to close my eyes for a little while. I had no intention of falling asleep with a stranger in my bed.
What’s that they say about best-laid plans?
* * * *
My neighbors were vacuuming with the window open again.
No, that wasn’t right—that was the sound of the garbage truck creaking as it shambled down the street. The gutters dribbling with the runoff of fine, misting rain.
No, that was just the racket my coffee maker usually made when it was switched on.
I jolted upright in bed, a screech lodging in my throat. Someone was in my house. Where was my phone? I needed to call the police, I needed to get help. Every bone in my body vibrated with panic as I tried to work through the five-alarm frenzy pounding between my temples.
Wait. What kind of home invasion started with the burglars making themselves an espresso?
None, that’s what.
It took me a moment to remember Ashley.
The memory of his hands on my body was no figment of an overactive imagination. I hadn’t made up the slick, maddening scrape of his tongue against my pussy, or the kisses that had stolen my breath like something out of a ridiculous pop song. That had all happened. I’d lived it.
I sat up in bed just as I heard the bedroom door swing open. An oblong of white spilled onto the hardwood floors, onto the bed and, inevitably, me. Too late to pretend I was asleep, I realized as I blinked in the glare of the living room lights. Ashley seemed limned in an unearthly glow for a moment, as if a divine halo had wreathed itself around him.
Considering how talented he was in bed, it didn’t seem likely that he was some sort of angel, and no saints I remembered were ever painted onto stained glass windows in a pair of boxers and a lopsidedly buttoned shirt. If memory served, they usually brandished staffs and holy books, swords and laurel or olive branches—never a Tetris coffee mug.
&nbs
p; Much to the detriment of the art.
“Good morning,” Ashley greeted with a broad grin. “Don’t know if you remember me. Ashley Compton, at your service.” He swept into a mock bow.
Oh, great. He’s a morning person.
For the longest time, I’d maintained that people who were chipper in the mornings only did it to make the rest of us look bad. Here was confirmation.
“What time is it?” I asked, a delaying tactic until I figured out how to ask what Ashley was still doing here.
When I’d invited him to stay as long as he pleased, I’d imagined he would be out of the door as soon as he felt able. That was the way this should’ve gone—one-night stands were ripe for awkward morning afters otherwise.
Case in point, I thought as I watched him approach.
“Seven in the morning. Ish.” Ashley held up a mug. “I hope you don’t mind, I took the liberty of helping myself to your black gold.”
“I guess that means you saw the disaster site that is my kitchen…”
Ashley nodded, the corners of his eyes crinkling when he smiled. “I’ve seen worse. Take it you live alone?” He perched on the edge of the bed at my feet, one knee tucked up to his chin.
He didn’t seem to grasp the awkwardness of the moment, which unfortunately meant that my own unease was fast falling by the wayside.
I contemplated lying, but I couldn’t make up a roommate in the absence of a second bedroom and I didn’t see the virtue in claiming infidelity when I was, to all intents and purposes, single. “Occasionally my army of housecleaning birds and rodents stops by, but not since I left the seven dwarves for Prince Charming.”
When in doubt, dodge questions with a joke. It won’t make you seem at all dubious.
Ashley grinned. “You know, I still can’t believe you speak English so well. Studied in the States?”
Now that we weren’t in the throes of passion, I couldn’t easily avoid the subject. “Only until I was twelve.”
