Sweet Return

by Anna Jeffrey

  “Yeah?” He squatted in front of her and pulled off her boots and socks. “I’m tough. I can probably stand it.”

  He stood up, his fly at her eye level. Her gaze froze on the bulge in the wash-worn denim fabric and reality lunged through the fuzziness that surrounded her. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry.

  He sat down beside her on the bed. She bit down on her lower lip, watching him pry off his own boots and socks. “Dalton, really. We—we shouldn’t do this.”

  “I know.”

  “What if Clova found out?”

  “You think I’m gonna tell my mother?”

  “It doesn’t…it doesn’t have any meaning.”

  He turned toward her, his hand braced behind her on the bed, his face only inches away. His eyes locked on hers. Light as a feather, his finger trailed along the arm that covered her breasts. “What makes you think it doesn’t have any meaning? There’s damn near nothing that happens that has no meaning.”

  She gripped her own shoulders tighter. “I don’t know. I mean, how could it? I just think—”

  “Don’t think.” He reached for her hands, uncrossed her arms and gazed at her breasts. She closed her eyes and held her breath.

  “Your body’s all I thought it’d be,” he said.

  He had been thinking about her body? She opened her eyes and saw him smiling. “Well, I, uh, get a lot of exercise and—”

  “Just stop talking”—he clasped her wrists and placed her arms around his neck, and his arms came around her—“and kiss me.”

  Taking her mouth in another devastating kiss, he eased them backward on the bed as if they were one unit. His knee slipped between hers and all she could manage was a pathetic whimper.

  Amid more sensual kissing, she felt her pants zipper slide open, felt his hand slip inside her fly, felt it close over her sex. “Oh, man, you’re wet,” he whispered, rubbing her slowly through her panties. “And hot.”

  He sat up and too easily peeled off her Dockers and panties. As his palm came back up the inside of her leg, he leaned and kissed her stomach. “You’ve got goose bumps,” he said.

  “Uh, I’m cold.”

  He chuckled softly. “Thanks a lot.”

  “I mean, I’m not cold that way, but—”

  “Shh.” He stood up, grasped her arm with one hand and pulled her to her feet. He held her against him as if he thought she might bolt as he pulled back the covers with his free hand. “Scoot in,” he ordered.

  She obeyed and shuddered as the cold sheets enveloped her….

  Oh, my God! This was the worst bed she had ever lain on. She couldn’t drink enough liquor to be comfortable on this mattress. Clutching the hem of the sheet under her chin, she said, “What—what kind of ma-mattress is this?”

  Unbuttoning his shirt cuffs, he looked down at her. “You’re really into mattresses, aren’t you?”

  She watched him methodically unbuttoning his shirt front, her body heat gradually warming the chilly bed. “We—we spend a third of our lives sleeping. A good place to do it is important.”

  “It’s brand-new. I just bought it Saturday. Compared to what was here before, I thought it felt pretty good.” He shrugged out of his shirt, wadded it into a ball and threw it across the room, his tanned shoulders and biceps bunching and rippling with the action.

  Seeing him without his shirt instantly diverted her attention from the uncomfortable mattress. Her imagination had already conjured up a picture of him without clothes, but those images were pitifully deficient. He was the most beautiful shirtless man she had ever seen. Abs. He had abs, for crying out loud. She tried to think if she had ever seen an adult male in real life with abs.

  He dug into his pocket, pulled out several condom packets and dropped them onto the bedside table. Seeing them brought another hard swallow, but she lay still and stiff as a corpse. Did he carry those all the time? Or had he bought them today, planning for this to happen? After he fed her enough liquor?

  Her eyes followed his hands to his belt. Before she could blink, he had shed his jeans and shorts in one quick motion and his erection filled her line of sight. Like a marble column, it rose from a thatch of curly black hair. It was long and thick, and the tip, engorged with blood to a deep red, looked as luscious as a plum. Muscles deep inside her sex flexed.

  She fought to keep her eyes from bulging. Of course she had seen a penis in full arousal before, but not often and not in a really long time. And at the moment, she didn’t think she had ever seen one quite so perfect.

  As if in your vast experience you’re a qualified judge, a sarcastic voice said in her head.

  Experienced or not, she knew quality when she saw it.

  He opened the covers, slid between them and pulled her against him as if he owned her. And she felt owned, in a way she never had. His arms were so strong, his body so big and solid, and she felt protected and wanted and even, God forbid, loved?

  Then his mouth was everywhere, kissing her neck and murmuring sexy, dirty words no man had ever said to her, suckling her breasts again and teasing her nipples with his tongue. His fingers were down there, combing through her pubic hair and stroking her inside her sex, and she was warm and her whole body had become a vessel of an exquisite pleasure. A few beats later, he stopped, stretched over to the bedside table and grabbed a condom, opened the package and reached down under the covers.

  He could do this blind?

  This is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your life! her Good Girl voice screeched.

  He moved over her and somehow, beneath the thick covers, in spite of her clumsiness, they fumbled their way to joining. In one thrust, he pushed all the way into her. He was big and she wasn’t ready. A yelp burst from her throat.

  “Shit,” he growled. “Did I hurt you?”

  She felt everything but pain, including her own pulse steadily beating against his penis. He was so hard. There was so much of him and he was buried so deeply inside her. “N-no.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered. “Ever.”

  Ever? What did that mean?

  While she attempted to think about it, he took her mouth in a long kiss, then rose above her, braced his weight on his hands and began to rock with steady, powerful thrusts and maddening friction. She tried to coordinate to the rhythm of his pumping hips, but keeping up with him was impossible, and this was the worst bed she had ever lain on in her life. A cramp gripped her left hip joint and a demanding voice screamed inside her head: Joanna, he has someone. She calls him all the time on his cell phone. This is just fun and games for him.

  “Come, baby,” he gasped as if he were in pain. His chest heaved and his breath bellowed.

  But she had too many other things on her mind. “I can’t…I don’t…I can’t,” she managed between panting breaths. But even as she said it, something was beginning to work down there and if she could just shift into the right position or if he would just find the right place…She squirmed and tried to adjust herself. “Dalton, can—”

  “Oh, Jesus, I can’t…”

  His body went rigid, he heaved a great groan, then a deep grunt and collapsed on top of her.

  Crap! Was it over?

  She lay beneath him, his breath gusting in her ear, staring past the lift and fall of his shoulder at the still blades of the fan attached to the ceiling. Oh, Joanna, Joanna, Joanna, her Good Girl voice scolded. Now you’ve gone and done it.

  He pushed himself to her side and flopped onto his back, his breath still coming in gasps. “My fault…you didn’t…make it.” His head turned toward her, his hair standing in little peaks. “Did you?”

  She winced mentally and grabbed for the covers, dragging the quilt to her chin. She cut him a glance from the corner of her eye. “I, uh, I don’t think so.”

  His eyes grew wide and round. “You don’t know?”

  Now she was upset over the whole thing. Hot tears rushed to her eyes. “I told you I wasn’t lucky at this.”

 
And she was tired. All she wanted to do was sleep, even if this was the worst damned bed she had ever seen. “I just want to go to sleep.”

  A growl came from his side of the bed. He sat up and threw back the covers, got to his feet and left the room. To deal with the condom, she presumed. Maybe he wouldn’t come back. Maybe he would go to one of the other beds.

  Dalton stamped up the hall to the bathroom. Five goddamn bedrooms in this fuckin’ house and only one fuckin’ bathroom clear at the end of the fuckin’ hall. After the low light in the bedroom, the bright light over the sink in the bathroom nearly blinded him. He tossed the rubber, then turned on the tap water. It came out in a weak, cloudy stream. Shit. The water in the fuckin’ Arabian Desert had been better than the goddamn hard water in West Texas. He waited for the warm water that had to travel all the way from the water heater on the porch off the kitchen, then began to wash himself.

  Fuck a running bear. What a freakin’ disaster. He felt like a chickenshit. He had gone off like a goddamn teenager. Was that because of his age? Was it the booze? Earlier, something had told him he should have laid off the liquor tonight. He should have listened.

  Stone sober, he probably wouldn’t have even tried to get Joanna Walsh into bed. All of the sane and sensible reasons he should have kept his dick in his pants crept in, including a decent streak that didn’t always raise its head when it came to women. He couldn’t keep from thinking that most of the women he fucked knew the score, but Joanna Walsh, he now realized, hadn’t even been to the ball game. He glanced up at his reflection in the vanity mirror and saw guilt.

  He stared at himself a few beats, then gave up. Hell, it was too late now. He couldn’t undo anything. On a sigh, he dried himself with a towel that felt like sandpaper. The hard water did that to towels.

  He quickstepped back down the hall, freezing his naked ass off. Entering the bedroom, he saw Joanna buried up to her eyebrows by covers. He slid between the sheets, reached up and clicked off the lamp, plunging the room into stygian darkness. “You want to go to sleep? Tell you what. Let’s just do that.” With any luck, he could get a couple of hours of shut-eye before daylight.

  “It’s so dark,” she said softly. “Do, uh, you always keep the shades closed?”

  Out of habit, he had drawn the shades when he got up this morning. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  “No,” she mumbled. “But what if I have to get up?”

  “We’ll turn on the light.”

  “Okay.” She sighed and gave him her back, her butt pressed against his hip.

  In a double bed, such closeness to her body couldn’t be avoided. She felt warm and soft and comfortable, one of the things he loved most about sleeping with a woman. He couldn’t resist turning to his side, sliding his arm around her midsection and pulling her close. “Go to sleep,” he said, molding their bodies together, spoonlike.

  In no time he heard her steady breathing. Jesus Christ, had she passed out?

  He remembered her words from out on the patio. What I am mostly is a tired girl. I got up at four this morning. He didn’t doubt either statement. He had seen that she was a dedicated hard worker, willing to hold up her end of a task. A good helpmate and companion.

  Whatever.

  He, too, closed his eyes and left the world.

  Joanna came to semiconsciousness in a pit of darkness. She was naked and freezing. Hissing snakes squirmed and coiled around her ankles, their eyes red as blood. Their black tongues flicked like tiny sharp pitchforks. And she was alone and defenseless. Her own outcry awakened her.

  Then, through the dark fog in her brain, gentle hands touched her body. A whispery male voice murmured into her ear, soothing and calming. “Joanna…. Hey, it’s okay, baby…. You’re okay. I’m here.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open for a few seconds. She saw nothing in the darkness, but she recognized the voice. Dalton.

  She only vaguely remembered all that had happened between them in the previous hours, but in the here and now, even in her muzzy-headed state, she wanted…no, needed this contact. On a whimper, she turned to the voice and pressed herself against warm, furry flesh. “I’m cold,” she said.

  “You’re uncovered, darlin’.” She felt him and the whole bed shift, then as his legs tangled with hers, her chilled shoulders were wrapped in the warmth of thick covers, and strong arms embraced her and held her in a cocoon of heat. And all the while, his soft, raspy voice cooed to her.

  He was hard again. And hot. As if it were alive, his erection pushed against her belly. As dark and intimate as the sanctum in which she lay, an arcane craving came over her. No one had made love to her in so long. Giving in to the desire, making no attempt to understand it, she pressed her face into that hot, pungent crevice where his arm joined his shoulder, deeply inhaled his intimate scent undiluted by cologne. And on that primal level, she found what she had forever unwittingly sought, however awkward and stumbling her quest had been. Floating in half sleep, disoriented, she began to stroke with her hand and place open-mouth kisses on his chest and nipples.

  His hands and body stilled. “Joanna?” His voice came as a husky rumble in the darkness. “You’re not still dreaming, are you?”

  “No,” she mumbled and continued to press her mouth and body to his warm skin.

  Whoa! Confusion zigzagged through Dalton’s brain. He had already written this night off as a mistake and a royal FUBAR. Hell, she had rejected him. He hadn’t even been able to make her come. Now he couldn’t believe what was going on. Now she had to be almost sober.

  And now she wanted him?

  He damn sure wanted her, evidenced by his dick being hard as a crowbar again.

  She wanted him. That realization stuck unerasable in his mind and heart. He could find no reason strong enough to make him resist the urges charging through him, not even her friendship with his mother. With no further argument with himself, he burrowed his fingers into her hair and covered her mouth with his.

  She kissed back, her tongue probing tentatively, but that was all the encouragement he needed. He drew her tongue into his mouth and it played with his while he skimmed his hands over her firm breasts, brushed her taut nipples with his thumbs, slid his palm down her slender rib cage and over her honed hip. Jesus, her body was fine. And it was all real. A joy for his hands to touch.

  Her hands were busy, too. They were all over him—his chest and torso, his butt. They even ventured low on his belly. When they stopped short of where he wanted them, he took charge and molded her fingers around his screaming cock. “Just hold me for a minute,” he whispered, his breath ragged in his own ears. And when she did, then followed with trailing her finger up the back side and around the rim, heat and need surged through his veins. He barely kept from pumping within her grip. He couldn’t keep from groaning.

  Then they were kissing again, wild and desperate, their mouths melded as if they were glued. And their hands were moving again, traveling without discretion, where they would under the thick covers. To gently push her knees apart seemed only natural. When they opened wider with no help from him, that, too, seemed natural. He trailed his fingers up the soft skin of her inner thigh and found paradise, all wet and hot, swollen and waiting. And, thank you, Jesus, unwaxed.

  “Push up to me,” he whispered against her ear, and she complied. “That’s it,” he said, sliding two fingers into her.

  “Oh…”

  He recognized a gasp of pleasure when he heard one. Oh, yeah, she liked it. “Good?”

  She answered with a little mew.

  He dragged her moisture from inside and rubbed her layers in slow, sensuous sweeps, took her breast into his mouth and sucked until her nipple became like a little pebble in his mouth. When she began to whimper his name and clutch at him, he threw back the covers and moved over her. He hung there, kneeling between her thighs, supporting his weight on his hands, able to see her only in silhouette. But he could hear her shuddery breath, feel her soft hands on his ribs and ass. This time, he
could last a while. And he intended to. After the disaster of earlier, this was about her, not him. This time, the outcome would be different.

  He bent to her mouth, but she came up and met him halfway. “So sweet,” he murmured, and meant it. He willed himself to take his time, brushing her cheek, her nose, her eyelids with his lips, then kissing her again and giving her his tongue and taking hers. And all the while her breath came in urgent little pants and whimpers, and he reveled in the sounds of pleasure and need.

  He gently urged her back and trailed his mouth and tongue over the slope of her breasts, suckling and teasing. Her whole body responded. Her belly lifted to him and more little sighs and moans filled his ears. “You like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It gets better.”

  On a hum, he moved on down, sucking little bits of the supple skin of her midriff into his mouth, lapping her silky belly with his tongue.

  Then his mouth was within an inch of his destination. Her musky scent came up to him. Her pubic hair tickled his nose. He blew softly into the silky nest, then pressed his face to it and nuzzled. He breathed in her smell, drifting blindly in a dark, ethereal world of touch and smell. Unadulterated bliss curled through him like smoke.

  Her hips shifted, her hands gripped his shoulders. “Dalton, you shouldn’t…” She tried to scuttle away, but he slid his hands beneath her buttocks, lifted her and pushed his tongue into her slick flesh. She sobbed out and her fingers dug into his shoulders. He draped her leg over his shoulder, gripped her bottom and held her fast while he feasted wildly in a delicious tongue-fuck.

  Jesus God, she was sweet. And hot. And eager. And he was turned on like he hadn’t been in a helluva long time.

  She thrashed and whined like a puppy, sounds that traveled to his core. “Dalton…I need—please…”

  He knew. But he wasn’t ready to bring this to its inevitable conclusion. He wanted to hear her scream, and she was almost there. She began to pant and say his name over and over. Her hands grabbed his head and her sweet pussy pushed hard against his face. She was primed. He swept his tongue up and sucked her clit into his mouth.