“The French do have a way with words.”
“And with kisses.” He pulled her toward him for another kiss as his hand reached down and slipped beneath her panties to stroke her.
“Oh, Brady. More.”
“With pleasure,” he said, adding another finger as she paused from rubbing against him to enjoy the feeling of his fingers playing with her.
Finally, she pressed down against his cock again, gyrating against him. The sensation, coupled with Brady’s fingers on her, became overwhelming and she shouted “I’m coming!” as her body convulsed and she flooded his hands with her juices.
After a minute she looked down at him, realizing she’d left him hanging yet again. “I’m sorry, this was supposed to be your turn.”
He grinned. “Trust me, I’m enjoying every minute of this.”
“Then let me double your pleasure.” She reached down and pulled aside her panties, and took hold of his cock and began to stroke it along her wet center.
“Fuck, Daphne, that is impossibly amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a greater sensation than the tip of my cock gliding along your swollen pussy. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“There’s more where that came from. But I want you to be honest with me. How long since you’ve been with anyone? I need to know you’re clean. ’Cause I haven’t been with anyone in literally years, so I can assure you I am.”
“I’m good, D. As a matter of habit, I get tested regularly and I’ve not been with anyone in at least six months and I’ve been tested more recently than that.”
“You swear?”
He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“In that case...” She reached between them and pressed the head of his cock to her opening and gradually slid down onto him.
“Can you experience la petite mort before you actually come?” he said. “’Cause I feel like I’m dead already with pleasure.”
Daphne rocked on top of Brady, riding him like her life depended on it, clutching his cock inside her pussy and grinding into him. Lifting up, she slammed down on him again, pushing him deep inside her. She didn’t know if it was from not having had sex in a long while or because this sex was that much more spiritual, but holy shit, her body was on fire with sensation.
“Oh shit, Brady, I’m going to come again,” she whimpered as her body trembled and she once again felt spasms erupt in her pelvis and spread through her body. While she continued to thrust against him, Brady returned the favor and plunged in deeper, groaning loudly, filling her with his seed in pulsating wave after wave.
Daphne collapsed on top of him and they both promptly fell asleep, sated and spent. La petite mort, indeed.
Chapter Thirteen
BY THE END OF THE WEEK, Daphne relented and they ordered a dumpster, which now stood in front of the house. Like or not, she had to admit that Violet owned a whole lot of stuff that was of no value to anyone but Violet. And she was no longer here to treasure it.
“I get it, Daph,” Brady said. “When I first started clearing out my parents’ home, I was trying so hard to salvage anything that might have some sort of meaning. Like did my mother’s punch bowl matter to her? I couldn’t have given a shit about a big old punch bowl, but maybe it was some family treasure. I learned pretty quickly that there weren’t a whole lot of things worth keeping. That’s when I started taking pictures of things to make myself feel better—to create some visual representation of the ‘stuff’ without allowing it to weigh me down. My whole way of life has always been about not being anchored down with stuff—”
“Or people?”
He pressed his lips together. They were taking a break from the Big Purge, eating lunch on the back deck, which had become an excuse for an afternoon quickie every day this past week. Brady was perfectly happy with that. He didn’t like getting into deeper conversations about himself, though, and wanted to keep it light and easy.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be bogged down with people.” He chose his words carefully. “It’s just that there is a simplicity to life when you carry your world on your back. Adding people into that mix makes things more complicated.”
“Is that why you dumped me?”
“I didn’t dump you, per se.” He frowned. “More like I chickened out from trying to make you understand where I was coming from.”
“But where you were coming from was ridiculous—wanting to leave and not come back?”
“It’s what I needed to do. It wasn’t anything about you, really. It was all about me. And my shortcomings, or my idiosyncrasies, or maybe because all I knew growing up was about being on my own, so I needed to find me again.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Find you. You said you needed to find you again.”
He shrugged. “I guess I grew to understand myself a bit better. I learned to appreciate the world, different cultures, the fragility of our globe. I got to be a vagrant on my terms, rather than being uprooted right after getting started again. Unlike my entire childhood, when being uprooted was out of my control.”
“And that was important to you?”
“More than I could have imagined. So maybe that was what I meant by finding me. Actually empowering me to make my own decisions, be my own person, not live my life at the whims of others.”
“Wow, that military brat thing sure did rattle you, didn’t it?”
“I guess more than I realized. I needed to break free of that world.”
“So where are you now?”
He smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’m right here, with you.”
She rolled her eyes and smacked him playfully. “I know that, silly. But where are you in terms of coming or going or disappearing in the middle of the night again?”
He fixed his gaze on hers. “You know I’d never do that again, don’t you? I was a boy then. I’m a man now. I honor my commitments and I own up to my intentions.”
She nodded. “I’ll give you a mulligan. I think that’s fair and reasonable. But I still don’t know what your intentions are for Violet’s house—at least the part that belongs to you. I think I’ve made it clear to you that I want to remain here. But it’s going to take cooperation from you for that to happen. I loved Violet with all my heart, but she clearly didn’t think through the complications of house sharing.”
“You know, in a way, I think she did,” he said.
Daphne furrowed her brow. “How so?”
“Well, you and Violet shared this house in a way for many years, right?”
She nodded. “Of course. I mean, I paid her for my rent, and she had her side and I had mine. And we shared our deck.”
“The deck’s my favorite part.”
“I bet it is.” She grinned.
“I never knew what a fan I was of making love al fresco.”
She cocked her head. “What’d you just say?”
“I said I am a big fan of making love al fresco.”
She nodded. “Getting back to what you were saying, why do you think Violet had a plan here?”
“I think Violet had planned that you and I would share the house.”
“You mean like you could rent your side out with Airbnb while you travel? And I’d stay in my side and own it straight out? And I could help maintain the property and such?”
He laughed and scratched her scalp the way she liked it. “Sounds like you’ve got a plan all worked out in your head there.”
“Well, I was hoping you didn’t need the money from the sale of Violet’s home. And maybe you’d take pity on an ex-girlfriend, who kind of has her heart set on this place, both for sentimental reasons and because it’s home.”
“I’ve never put much value in the concept of home before,” he said. “Home is where I put my head on my pillow at night.”
“But in your case, it’s not even your pillow. How can that feel like home?”
He took a bite of his sandwich. “I’m
starting to understand that a bit more,” he said. “Hanging out at Violet’s place, I have started to appreciate things like a guaranteed warm shower. Air conditioning on a hot day. A flushing toilet.”
“That’s an absolute must.”
“A big comfy sofa where I can cuddle up and watch TV. Basic cable, for that matter.”
“Or at least streaming services,” she added.
“Yup. How about a spacious kitchen counter to prepare dinners you’ll share with your family and friends?”
“Now you’re sounding awfully committal when you start talking about that stuff.”
“Fine, how about a spacious kitchen counter you can set your lover on while you eat her instead of dinner.”
Daphne blushed and tossed her napkin at him.
“What? That was the best use of a kitchen counter I could think of.” He grinned. “Though I would not at all mind using it to cook a real meal, once I learn how to cook.”
“And bake.”
“Don’t get cocky on me. One step at a time.”
“One step at a time, indeed.”
Chapter Fourteen
“YOU KNOW, THERE’S A full moon outside tonight,” Daphne said. “You want to come take a look at it with me?”
“I’d love to.” Brady picked up their wineglasses and the bottle and took them out back, setting them on the coffee table.
They stood side by side, looking off to where the moon was rising full and orange through the trees.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Daphne said. “I love looking at full moons. So mysterious and breathtaking.”
“I love looking at a full moon as well, Brady said, stepping back and admiring Daphne from behind.
“You little pervert,” she said, giggling. She was joking though; she loved that he stared at her body often. She loved feeling desired.
Brady came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her, flattening his hands over her tits, and nuzzled her neck.
“I didn’t know a full moon could get you so horny, Mr. McGovern.” She reached around and squeezed his butt, pulling him closer to her behind. She could feel his cock hardening in his pants.
“This full moon might give me a permanent erection,” he said, lifting her dress and pulling her panties down to her ankles. Unbuttoning his pants, he unzipped them and lowered them and his boxer briefs enough to pull his cock out. “Now bend over and spread your legs for me.”
“Don’t you even say please?”
“Please, bend over now before I come all over your pretty ass.”
“I aim to please.” She lifted her dress to give him a perfect view of her butt. He rubbed his fingers along her seam, dipping inside to spread the juices that had already seeped out of her.
“Fuck, you get so wet.”
“You make me that way.”
“Good, ’cause I need to fill you with my cock.”
He spread her lips and guided his cock inside her channel, and they gasped as he plunged as deep as he could go.
“Fuck me, Brady.”
“I aim to please as well.” With that, he slipped his cock most of the way out then thrust it back in again. He reached around and played with her clit, making her breath come at a rapid clip. Pounding deep inside her, he slipped a hand up the front of her dress to play with her nipples. “God, I want to be everywhere on you, in you. I just can’t get enough of you D.”
He pinched her nipple and slicked his fingers across her lips, rubbing faster as he pumped his cock in rhythm with his fingers.
“Right there, Brady, right there—” She came hard, her pussy spasming around his cock and sending him over the edge only seconds later as he filled her with his semen.
Life didn’t get any better than this.
“SO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU mentioned earlier about how much you love the back deck—our back deck? Something about how much you love making love al fresco?”
They were in Daphne’s house, curled up together in bed, drifting off to sleep.
He nodded, nuzzling her neck. “I really do, you know?”
“Me too, though we’re going to have to be a little more circumspect when the neighbors return from holiday.”
“But what about your exhibitionist tendencies?”
She laughed. “You are insane, you know that?”
“What was it you wanted to know about my comment, D?”
“It’s just that, well, any time I ever thought about you and me from back then, I could never refer to us as having made love. It was always ‘we had sex.’ But now it feels different to me. I guess back then we were so young, we weren’t mature enough to view it quite that way. But now that we’ve got some years under our belts, I think we recognize that what we are developing here is more than that.”
He reached for her hands and wove his fingers in between hers. “I agree. What we have now, what we’re in the early stages of, is something much, much more than that young lust. Don’t get me wrong, nothing bad about lust. But you can’t build a long-term relationship with lust alone. And speaking of building.” He reached for the nightstand and took a swig of water. “Here’s what I can envision. Bear with me, though, because some of this might be a little premature. I’m going with my gut, and I don’t want to scare you off.”
Daphne leaned forward and swirled her fingers through Brady’s chest hair as he gathered his thoughts. She still could not get over the fact that she had spent the past week making love—there, she said it—with Brady McGovern of all people. It was like a dream.
“When my parents passed away, they left me financially set for life,” he said. “Which was one of the reasons I kept on traveling. I could afford to. I had nowhere I had to be. And traveling afforded me the chance to keep running from my demons.”
“Fair enough.”
“And when I learned that Violet had left me this property, I didn’t know what to make of it. My knee-jerk reaction was to sell and get out. No point in being burdened down with property, right? That went against all my beliefs.”
“Yep, that’s you all right.”
“But it wasn’t because I needed the money out of the place. I could buy it or sell it or give it outright to you.”
Daphne stared at him. Would he do that? But then would that mean he’d be leaving town too?
“But the more I stick around here—”
“Do you mean the more time you spend with a certain someone?”
“That’s implicit. The more time I spend here, the more I can see undertaking something a little more permanent. Like knocking down walls, making Violet’s duplex a single-family home.”
“So, you could rent it out as an Airbnb?” She was joking but she hoped he didn’t plan to do that. Obviously, that would be over her dead body anyhow. But that wasn’t worth pointing out.
“So that maybe, eventually, if things go in the direction I’d like to think they’re going, you and I could live there together.”
Daphne’s eyes grew large. “For real? You aren’t just kidding with me? And we’d make a big kitchen—with a huge island—”
“Large enough so that I can dine on you, preferably.”
A little jolt ran through her. “And can we keep the back deck just as it is?”
“I was thinking maybe fortifying the privacy screening on it a bit,” he said. “Maybe figure out a way to make it soundproof while we’re at it.”
Daphne pointed upward. “You know that tricky Violet. She was always trying to matchmake me, and one was worse than the next. She sure did get the last laugh.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’s laughing up there, I think she’s grinning from ear to ear.”
“Me too.”
Thank you!
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Read on for a teaser of the next book in the Hard to Get series – Hard to Get By, available for pre-order now!
About Hard to Get By:
Hard up...
Sunshine Ferguson had finally gotten her Zen on. After years of being an uptight staffer for a hotheaded senator, she’d been forced to switch careers, changed her name to something more cheerful and less evocative of the implosion from her last job, and became a yoga instructor. It was the furthest thing, career-wise, from what she’d been doing. She really needed to nourish her soul upon being fired when she got caught accidentally making out in a dark bar with a staffer of the candidate trying to take the senator’s job. The loud-mouthed press secretary proved once again that men were never to be trusted, though at least his blabbering their secret finally forced her out of the job that had been toxic for a long time. Life was finally good for Sunny. She was calm. She was imperturbable.
Until the very man who blew up her career—and ultimately absconded with her job—shows up in her class, seeking to find his own nirvana.
Hard to Get By
Chapter One
Two Years Earlier
MEGHAN FERGUSON HAD had it with work. As cool as the job sounded on paper, in reality, being a press secretary to a U.S. senator was all-consuming, and when it came time for re-election, it went from bad to worse. Only the dirty truth was, it was always re-election season. There wasn’t a politician to be found in the Washington, D.C. area who wasn’t campaigning for a job or appointment or another cushy six years with great government benefits and freebies out the wazoo twenty-four/seven. All they did was jockey for more, more, more. The DC gravy train kept them fat and happy. And it was lowly staffers like Meghan who suffered for it. Cause it meant that Meghan spent her waking hours churning out steaming heaps of bullshit trying to make her high-maintenance boss look good. And when they were legit in the battle for re-election, it was that much worse, because then she constantly had to deal with the bombardment of slurs hurled at her boss from his opponent—make that more often his opponent’s press secretary—and it all just got quite exhausting. It used to be sort of exhilarating, but now it was just hellish, and a bit depressing.
Hard to Get Over Page 6
