She had to glance away in the end, just to hold on to her few remaining brain cells.
“Stop. I already need to climb down off this incredible cloud of total romance. If you do one more thing I’m going to end up on the romantic moon. NASA is going to have to send people to come get me.”
“For real? You like it?”
“I like it.”
“It’s not too weird?”
She had no idea why he would think it was. What would make him bite one thumbnail like that and seem so awkward about it. But then she remembered what he had said before he brought her up here:
He had never done this before.
He had never done it for anyone, except her.
“Tate, weird is spending your whole life dreaming of blankets in barns and candlelight and looking at the stars with the guy you like, and never thinking you’re worthy of it. Actually getting it is amazing. I don’t know what to say. I should probably stop talking altogether before I make a fool of myself.”
“No, no, keep making a fool of yourself. It actually reads a lot more like something awesome.”
“Now I know you’re just full of it,” she said.
But her cheeks were tugging at the corners of her mouth anyway.
One more good pull and she would be grinning wildly.
“You only say that because you can’t see how cute you look. Blushing and trying not to look too excited.”
“I’m not blushing. It’s just super warm in here.”
“It’s fucking freezing and you know it. But don’t worry—I came prepared.”
He had, too. Behind the picnic basket was a battery-powered space heater, of the sort that was probably going to set them on fire. Damn though, did it feel good. He switched it on as she made herself comfy on the blanket, and seconds later she was taking off her jacket and he was taking off his hat.
Though she protested the latter.
“Seriously, the hat does it for you?”
“It makes me really appreciate all your features.”
“Guessing that means you didn’t appreciate them before.”
“Not like this. Not like I can’t stop staring at every little part. I feel like I’m eating you with my eyes. I feel like being six inches from your face isn’t actually enough.”
“Come closer, then,” he said.
Because he was a tricky fucker. He beckoned, and she was helpless to do anything but. She leaned and he leaned back and then his mouth was on hers. Gentle, at first. Soft, like at the door to her dorm room. But then she put a hand on his face, tentative but clearly greedy to feel all the things she’d only just accepted as handsome, and something shifted almost immediately. It was like flicking a switch.
One second things were polite and romantic.
The next he had a leg between her thighs and a hand on her ass.
Not that she minded—her other hand appeared to be on his ass. Though she wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. Or at what point she had decided that pushing under his waistband was a cool idea. In fact, there were a lot of things she seemed to be doing that she hadn’t planned. Nor did she have full control over any of them. One second she was kidding him like a normal person. The next she was pressing her mouth to his so forcefully she could feel him pulling away. She could hear his muffled protests echoing inside her.
“I wasn’t intending to…I didn’t mean for this to be…”
“Oh. Sorry. I just…”
“Just what?”
“Really need to.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Seriously?”
She wasn’t sure what she liked best.
The spat curse words, or the breathless incredulity.
Both were impossible to fight, at any rate. Her hands were on him before he got to the question mark at the end of his sentence. No hesitating, no trembling, no trying to navigate around an imaginary force field. Just a lot of yanking at his sweater and shoving aside of things, while he did his best not to seem shocked.
And failed, pretty badly, on all fronts.
The sound he made when she smothered his face in his own lifted sweater was almost baffled, and several times it dissolved into laughter. She even heard him say from behind the woolen mask she’d made: oh so everything is just coming off right here, I guess. Though it wasn’t meant in a reluctant, outraged sort of way. There was this gorgeous note of pleasure shining through his words. Just sheer, goofy pleasure, to have her wrestling him so eagerly out of his clothes.
Like in the room, when she’d ask to see.
Only a million times more intense.
He was almost shaking with it, by the time she started running her hands all over him. Face a picture of bliss and wonder and wanting, hands hovering over a million different parts of her.
Though she didn’t get why they were hovering, until she went one step further. She assumed it was a force field of his own, for some ungodly reason, and then she leaned forward and kissed where her fingers had just been, and got a short, sharp, and very arousing lesson. Almost the second her lips closed around one of his tiny, tight little nipples, he gasped out a bunch of words.
“Oh my god, so you’re really just choosing to do that. This is actually what you’re doing right now,” he said, the meaning behind them clear as a bell. He wasn’t touching her because he wanted her to do it on her own. No encouragement from him, no prompting, no hands pushing her in the right direction.
Just her own lust for him driving her to lick and suck.
And maybe leave a few marks. God, he seemed to love the marks. He made that cut-off ah sound every time she sucked some of his delicious skin between her teeth—and all the while those hands never touched her. Once or twice she thought she felt them brush the back of her head, and his thumb occasionally grazed her jawline. But then he’d back off, as though afraid of blundering in before she could make a decision herself.
Then each time she made one, she heard his sharp intake of breath.
She got to his belt and he groaned so loudly it echoed around the place—and even louder when she started unfastening it. “Fuck,” he spat, but still he didn’t try to encourage her. He just waited until his thighs were actually trembling and his face was flushed all the way up to his hairline and his hands were clenched fists at his sides. By the time she finally eased his cock free he was almost beside himself.
But still she couldn’t stop going slow.
She couldn’t give up the teasing—not when it made her feel like this. Her pussy was a hot, thick fist between her legs; her nipples two stiff, aching points. Whenever she moved she could feel her own slipperiness sliding over her tingling clit and the puffy lips of her sex, so intense she thought she might be able to come like this. Just a little rolling of her hips and some more teasing of his cock, and she would probably be there. And especially after he started talking.
He’d been pretty much silent up to now, but when she starting rubbing her thumb around the slick tip of his cock he found his voice. His strained, breathless, beautiful voice.
“Oh Jesus Christ, Letty. I can feel that in my fucking teeth.”
“That sounds bad. Maybe I should go a little slower.”
She eased back on the circles she was making with her thumb—and on the pressure she was applying, too. Now she was barely skimming the glossy tip of his cock, in a way that made him pound the side of his thigh with his fist. It made him clench his jaw, so that when words came out they were as tight as a drum.
“Holy fuck that’s even worse. I feel like I’m gonna burst.”
“Then I should definitely slow down.”
“You should if you’re trying to kill me. Are you trying to kill me?” he asked, then seemed to realize all on a rush. “Oh good god you are, that’s what you’re doing, you’re teasing me to fucking death on purpose. You’re doing this on purpose, and you’re liking it. No, scratch that, you’re fucking loving it, aren’t you? You getting off on playing with me like this?”
“That really depends on how you feel about t
hat.”
“I feel like I’m going to blow my load just watching you get all excited over my body and my dick and what all this fucking teasing does to me. Look at you. Jesus, look at you. Look at those fucking devil eyes and that flush all over you and those spiky little nipples. God, you look like such a horny fucking slut.”
He spat the last word, the way people did when they meant it as an insult. Only he didn’t mean it that way at all. She knew he didn’t, because the second the word was out his head went back. A long, low keening moan wavered out of him, followed by what could only be described as a seizure. His whole body seemed to clench, to the point where she could actually see it. She saw his abdominal muscles tighten and the cords stand out in his neck, and then that big, fat cock was swelling in her hand.
He was coming, she realized.
She had made him come, just by teasing him and wanting him.
A second later the first thick streamer of come shot over her hand and arm, so violently that some made it much further. She felt it spatter her T-shirt and almost came herself right then and there, and again when his hand went around hers. No more letting her do it on her own now. He wanted every last drop of this orgasm, and that meant urging her to stroke him. To pump his still-jerking cock until his shudders died down and that slippery liquid slowed to a weak trickle.
Though even then he kept it going.
He squeezed her hand around the solid shaft, gasping and moaning in a way that made her want to moan, too. She took in his flushed, slack face and his lust-fogged eyes and his heaving chest, and just needed to do something, anything, to relieve the ache thrumming through her.
Except for the thing he then suggested.
“Okay. My turn.”
“What do you mean, your turn?”
“I mean it’s my turn now to kiss and lick and tease you all over.”
He reached for the hem of her T-shirt, with all the serious intent he could muster. Though she knew the second he did it that he didn’t really mean it. He wasn’t actually going to just reach over and yank her top off.
It was obvious he just wanted to see her reaction.
And she cursed herself for immediately giving it to him. As soon as his fingertips grazed that hem, she jerked back. She just couldn’t help it. It was like some kind of primal instinct—one that he was well aware of, apparently. He sat back on his heels at the sight, already stuffing himself back into his jeans. And the expression on his face…
She wanted to call it pained ruefulness.
A description that was backed up by the tone of his voice.
“I knew it. I knew it. You’re nervous about taking your clothes off.”
“In an abandoned barn, sure.”
She sat back, too, as she told the lie. Folded her arms, to make it seem more certain.
Of course, it only had the opposite effect. Now she’d built an extra barrier between him and her body.
“You didn’t want to do it in your dorm room, either.”
“I didn’t not not want to do it.”
“I think that was a triple negative.”
“Which makes it a positive again.”
“That’s not…I don’t think that’s how that…” He paused, half frustrated and half amused. Shook a playful fist at her. “Stop using grammar against me!”
“You started it with your triple-negative jibe.”
“I did not. You backed me into—” he started, but he didn’t finish. Instead he took a calming breath, and restarted with a clearer purpose. “Okay, this is completely irrelevant to the point, which is: you obviously don’t want me to see or feel too much of you. And that’s ridiculous, considering how aroused I got over your bare leg like we live in nineteenth-century New Zealand and I stole your piano.”
She had to drop her folded arms a little for that.
And maybe put a bit of a moan into her voice when she replied.
“Ohhhhh, did you seriously just reference The Piano? Oh my god I just came.”
“Hell yeah I did, because I’m not a jerk who refuses to like movies that aren’t manly enough. I told you already I liked Dirty Dancing. The Piano is, like, a hundred times less embarrassing than that.”
“I dunno. Dirty Dancing doesn’t have Harvey Keitel’s penis in it.”
“Hey, I love Harvey Keitel’s peni—wait, let me back that up.”
“No, don’t. Keep going. I might get turned on enough to just strip.”
“In that case, I regularly fantasize about being mounted by him.”
She laughed at that. Loud and long and so good that her arms were no longer folded by the time she was done. Somewhere in the middle of it she had leaned back on her elbows, in an almost relaxed sort of way.
And when he slid across the blanket and lay down beside her, she didn’t flinch.
“This was your evil plan all along, right? Get me laughing until I feel totally comfortable about being nude up here in front of you.”
“You bust me so hard, babe. So hard.”
“But you love it right?”
“I do love it.”
God he sounded sure about that.
And he looked sure, too.
That little half smile, the hint of a raised eyebrow, the softness in his gaze.
“Okay, I’m going to give you just one boob. I’m warning you though, they’re nowhere near as great as my clothes might make them seem.”
“By clothes do you mean the seventeen layers that disguise your boobs as a woolen shelf?”
“No, by clothes I mean shut up being a smart-ass if you want me to continue.”
Of course the second she’d said it she wanted to take it back.
Now there was just the sound of her own breathing.
And the sound of his breathing, as it got steadily heavier.
“You’ve gone all quiet.”
“I’m trying not to be a smart-ass. You need me to talk?”
“Yes, please. Say words. Fill this eerie silence.”
“Felt kind of less eerie and more intense and sexual to me.”
“To me, too, but I’m trying not to think about that while my elbow is caught in my sweater.”
“Would it help if I did this?”
He leaned over, careful not to disturb the delicate undressing she was still in the middle of. One hand on the side of her face, most of his body still in its own separate space.
And then he just touched his lips to hers.
Soft, achingly soft.
“Yeah. Oh yeah, that helps.”
“And if I were to just…give you a hand…”
“I guess that might be…that might be…” she tried to say, but her sentence just wouldn’t come together. It ran into trouble when he stroked over her bare back to help her slide her sweater off, and failed altogether the moment his gaze roamed over what she had revealed. She was just in her bra now—one that was fraying around the edges and had long since lost most of its pretty pale blue color. In fact, the kindest thing anyone could say about it was that it looked comfortable.
Though that wouldn’t have described his reaction the same way.
It seemed more like the bottom had fallen out of his ability to restrain himself. He said “Oh man” around seventeen times, eyes everywhere all at once. Tongue curled out to lick his upper lip, as though just imagining what her skin would taste like. Hands flexing and unflexing in a way that suggested he really wanted to cup something or stroke something or maybe squeeze.
She didn’t expect him to actually do it, however.
Or for it to feel as good as it did. He stroked down the slope of her breasts and ended in this almost rough sort of grope—rough enough that it should have bothered her. But it didn’t. Instead she got an intense reminder of how turned on she had been only a few minutes before. Her clit pulsed once, twice, nipples hardening under his desperate touch.
Then again when he moaned some words.
“Fuck, look at how you fill my hand, look at how I can hardly hold you. S
o fucking beautiful, man, just so sweet—can I take this off? Can I just get this off you?”
She didn’t even know why he was asking by that point. Most of her concerns flew out the window as soon as that pleasure hit, and his desire just did the rest. It turned her limbs to syrup and left her practically lying in his arms, skin so flushed and body so restless he couldn’t fail to know what he was doing to her. He had to know how good it was to hear the hoarseness of his voice and the shake in his hands as he worked on the catch between her breasts.
But he seemed to need her nod anyway before he spread the material. Reverently, she thought—and that was the way he looked at her, too. Like she was something rare that he wasn’t supposed to see, something beautiful that he couldn’t get enough of. His eyes almost devoured her, following each line and curve in such a way that she felt caressed before he even used his hands.
And then he did, and she wondered what on earth she’d been thinking. The difference between looking and touching was enormous. It stole her breath. He cupped one of her breasts—without making contact with her nipple or any other sensitive part—and she had to dig her nails into the arm she didn’t know she’d been holding on to. He actually winced in response.
Though he didn’t stop.
No, he just kept touching and staring until she thought it was possible she might lose her mind. Everything had shifted from something that made her nervous, to a gigantic tease—or was it some kind of mix of the two? She didn’t know. All she knew was that when he traced the shape of her left breast with one finger, barely making contact, she had to say something.
The words just seemed to burst out of her.
“Will you…can you just…can you touch me while you do this? Please?”
“I thought I was touching you. Feels like I’m touching you too much.”
“Not between my legs, though, not between them.”
“Are you actually asking me to get you off?”
The shock in his voice and his eyes should have embarrassed her.
But it didn’t. If anything, it only made her more desperate.
“I might well be, yeah.”
“While I fondle and kiss your bare breasts.”
“That sounds like you got the right idea.”
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Page 18
