by Lisa N. Paul
“Lick me, baby, suck my cock. Fuck… oh, God…”
His pleasure became her aphrodisiac as her clit pulsed, begging for relief. The hand that wasn’t working him slid to her needy place, and as she licked and sucked with enthusiasm she never thought possible, her fingers rubbed small circles on the sensitive nerves at her core. An unchecked moan slid from her mouth as Danny’s dick hit the back of her throat.
“Fuck me”—his gaze cloaked her—“you touching yourself, honey? Sucking me off turning you on?”
She nodded, her eyes heavy with arousal. Her mouth full of him, words weren’t an option.
“Fuck.” The word was drawn out in an erotic sigh. “Do not come, Julie. Leave you for me. Understood?”
Understanding filled her over-stimulated brain as she pulled away, letting him drop from her mouth but not from her hand. The water at her back was losing heat, but she refused to have this thing between them based on anything but truth. “Then you do something for me.”
“Go on.”
“Don’t hold back. I can tell you are…don’t. If I’m not doing it the way you like, tell me. But otherwise, do not hold back.”
Danny closed his eyes, and she hoped she hadn’t read him wrong. “Open your mouth, Julie, and suck me down. You don’t want me to come in your mouth, I’ll give you warning. You stay on me, you swallow what I give.”
Arousal slid from her core as his words tingled every part of her body. She leaned forward and took him in again, starting with her tongue and working her way down. As Danny’s body started to shake, he wrapped her hair around his fist and pumped, fucking her mouth and calling her name.
“Gonna come, honey,” he warned as his thrusts slowed in order to give her a second to detach.
There was no way she was leaving him unfinished. She wanted everything he had, everything he offered. So instead of peeling her lips from his shaft, she took him deeper and hummed.
“Jesus Christ,” he grunted.
He thrust in and out of her mouth until warm liquid burst on her tongue and down her throat. Delicious it was not, but it was Danny’s. Therefore, she would take it any time he wanted to give it to her.
“Holy shit, Jules,” he rasped. “That was…holy fucking shit.”
The water was turned off, and she was lifted into his arms and carried out of the shower, out of the bathroom, and onto the bed. “Danny, we’re soaking wet.”
“Ummhmm.” He disappeared back into the bathroom and returned with the bath towels she’d left on the counter. Two fluffy towels—yes, she’d been hopeful.
Once the cotton was wrapped around him, hugging low on his defined hips, he strolled over to the bed. Up on her elbows, she watched him sit beside her and move the soft towel up and down her body.
“Curious,” he muttered, the cloth on her shoulder. “I think I’m drying you off, but goose bumps keep covering your skin. Can you explain that one?” His flirty tone had her every nerve alert and ready to be touched by him. “Wonder what would happen if I dry you here…”
His gaze moved to the wet skin of her chest, and her breath labored in her lungs. He dabbed the soft cotton over her sensitive peaks. A sigh left her lips like a song as fire burned inside her belly.
“Hmmm,” Danny said, “doesn’t seem like your body wants to be dry, honey.” A devilish grin sent her pulse racing and her insides thrumming. “Guess I’ll just need to keep you wet.”
Without a second’s delay, his tongue darted out in sweeping circles over her pointed nipple while his hands explored her body. Calloused palms ran over her skin, setting off sparks that turned to blazes. She was burning beneath him and had no desire to put out the flames.
“Oh God, oh…God…”
His teeth grazed her nipple, then the other, inflicting pain, something she’d never known to ask for. Then the moist heat of his tongue lapped the sting and, like a balm, only pleasure remained.
“So good, Danny,” she panted.
Following his hands, his lips traveled slowly, inch by inch, over her ribs, her belly, the ticklish spot at her hips, and when his fingers entered her tight channel, she squeezed her eyes closed and mewled at the indescribable feeling. Holy shit, how does he know how to do that? His wrist turned, and the pads of his fingers made contact with her g-spot—or as she referred to it, her “me-spot,” because she’d been the only person who could find it. Lost in the knowledge that he had found her hidden treasure, she nearly shot off the bed when Danny’s warm tongue slicked between her fold and across her clit.
“Your mind stays with me.”
“Oh, believe me, it’s only with you.”
“Mmm, so sweet, Julie. Your pussy’s damn sweet.”
Thick fingers plunged in and out, fucking her brilliantly as he lapped at her clit. He brought her higher, her body tighter, as release coiled in her gut, waiting for just the right moment, the right touch to go off.
“Give it to me,” he rasped, her juices glistening on his lips. His fingers stilled inside her before he lightly tapped her g-spot. “I wanna watch you come.”
The tapping turned to pressure on the special spot—no thrusting, no movement, just pressure as he sucked on her clit—and the foreign sensation set her off like nothing she’d ever experienced, nothing she’d ever heard of, nothing she’d ever forget.She lost all sense of time and self. It stole her breath and left her wondering how she had ever settled for less. Amazing.
Tremors rippled through her body in small waves of bliss as Danny’s mouth moved from her core to her hips. Ever so slowly, he traveled up her body, putting out the fires he’d stoked on the way down. Boneless and sated, Julie reached for his silken hair, running her fingers through the still-damp strands. Her breaths slowed as her muscles, sore from work and relaxed from the scrumptious orgasm, melted into the mattress. Her lids became heavier with each gentle lick and sensual suck. And then…she was gone.
***
HE KNEW THE minute he lost her, yet he couldn’t stop himself from finishing the tour he’d started. Every inch of her skin was silk, each measured breath she took was precious. What the ever-loving fuck, Marcus? Precious breaths? He looked at his hard cock. Nope, haven’t grown a pussy…yet. Sure, Julie Bell had fallen asleep on him—how’s that for payback? The devil on his shoulder teased—but Christ, the woman had rocked his world in the shower. Truth be told, she’d been shaking his foundation since the day they’d met.
Danny’s eyes raked over the naked form sleeping next to him. From her long strawberry-blonde hair, to the faint dusting of freckles that kissed the bridge of her nose, to the plump kissable lips that had been wrapped around his cock like a goddamn dream, down to the most perfect set of tits he’d ever had his hands on, the woman could have been created specifically for him. And that was based solely on the superficial. But there was more. She was more. Sex or not, he intended to get inside Julie’s mind, because she was already burrowing her way into his heart.
###
“MY PARENTS WERE amazing people.” Julie’s tight words hung in the dark room.
Danny was a light sleeper—something he’d learned in the army—so as soon as he realized that she was speaking to him and not in her sleep, he rubbed his eyes with one hand while pushing himself up to a sitting position with the other. He could make out the outline of Julie’s body, the white blankets tucked beneath her arms, but he couldn’t see her face, her eyes, or her mouth. A purposeful act, he assumed.
“They loved me like crazy, and they loved each other even more. I grew up knowing what it felt like to be surrounded by happiness,” she said. “Life wasn’t always perfect. We had our fair share of heartaches, and my parents dealt with issues that they thought I knew nothing about. But even when things were tough, they were…God, they were strong.”
Danny reached out. He wanted to touch her, wanted to offer an anchor for the pain he knew was sure to come.
“No.” The sheets rustled as she moved farther from him. “You can’t touch me. Not yet. I only go
t through what I did because I had no one else to lean on.”
He heard her swallow, and the pit of his stomach felt as though it filled with lead. He reluctantly placed his clenched fist on his lap and listened.
“Because I was an only child and we didn’t have extended family on either side, they never traveled unless we went together. The one time they did leave me with a family friend, I was four and I got a horrible ear infection and ended up in the emergency room. Needless to say, after that, we were a package deal traveling the country.” Her giggle sounded like it held years of good memories. “I turned eighteen in late fall of my senior year of high school, and we joked that my parents could finally travel without me because I was officially an adult. However, they still had an arm’s length of reasons why they couldn’t leave. They didn’t want to miss seeing me off to prom, they wanted to be around in case I stressed out during finals, and of course, they had to see me walk for graduation.”
Danny’s desire to comfort Julie was bordering on obsessive, but he reminded himself that her needs were important at the moment, not his own. So his fists stayed clamped in the sheets and his mind stayed focused on her story.
“I assured them that if they went in the spring, they would be back for all of the milestones they wanted to see and they’d be well-rested and ready to keep me calm and focused. That seemed to be the incentive that finally pushed them forward and led them to booking a two-week dream trip to Mexico.
“Their preparation became a running joke at the dinner table over the weeks leading up to their departure. It wasn’t the packing or their itinerary that kept them busy, but their concerns for my meals and my laundry in their absence. The whole thing was silly because they’d taught me to do those things years before, claiming it was a parent’s job to raise independent children. But my dad begged me to suck it up and allow my mom to worry about me. He said it would make her feel better about leaving, so I did as he asked and nodded a lot and smiled each night until we all broke out into laughter.” Julie took a deep breath. “The morning they left, Mom handed me pages of instructions, including numbers to the electric company, the gas company, old friends of my father’s from his time in the Marines, the family dentist just in case I somehow managed to lose a tooth—all bases were covered if there was an emergency and I didn’t know what to do.” Brittleness infused Julie’s voice. “She hugged me as if she’d never hugged me before and she never would again, and they left for their Mexican paradise.”
Quickly, Danny scrolled through his memories for what events had happened in the past couple of years, and within seconds, Mexico City blazed like a red flashing sign. “Shit, Jules, they were in Mexico City, weren’t they?” He wheezed as if the air had been knocked from his chest. The 1985 Mexico City earthquake was so huge, so completely devastating, it came with a foreshock in May 1985. The main event happened on September 19, 1985, and it had two major aftershocks, one on September 20, 1985 and the second seven months later on April 30, 1986. The magnitude of the final aftershock was 7.0, even though the event occurred more than two hundred twenty miles away. It caused major damage to Mexico City, and many more lives were lost.
The mattress trembled beneath him as her soft sobs filled the otherwise quiet room. His heart ached and his gut churned as he thought about the two devoted parents who’d reluctantly left their child but did so in the most strategic way in order to be back in time to witness the life events they’d coveted so deeply. In the end, they’d missed them all.
“All of that preparation,” she croaked, “all of those instructions, and none of them helped me during the emergency. Because I wasn’t the one who needed help. They were.”
He stared in her direction, silently begging his vision to sharpen in the darkness. Ultimately, he remained impaired to anything more than the muted image of her body twisted around itself.
She continued, urgency lacing her tone as her sentences came out in rushed huffs. “They were supposed to arrive home on May first. I waited for them. I knew they weren’t coming, but I waited anyway. I quickly learned how parents felt when they stayed up at night, waiting for their children to arrive home after missing curfew. That…that feeling of anger that gets swallowed up by prayers, prayers to any god who will listen, to please deliver your loved ones home safely. You promise you’ll bank the anger and just give hugs if only you see your loves again.” She hiccupped. “They didn’t come, and my anger swelled. After five days, when I got confirmation that amongst the tour of one hundred people my parents had been with that day, only three had survived and my parents weren’t in that tiny, lucky group, I had no prayers left. None.
“I went numb, completely anesthetized, but I needed to keep myself together and finish school—not for me but for them. Prom didn’t happen—there was no way I could have stomached that without Mom and Dad by my side—and I didn’t walk in the graduation procession, but I did graduate with honors. Finals were cake. I’d been granted immunity from taking them due to the tragedy I’d suffered, and since my grades were fantastic, not sitting for the exams wouldn’t have lowered my GPA too drastically, but I chose to take them. I needed to focus on my studies. I had to concentrate on the tests that were marked in green on my calendar, and I couldn’t let myself look past those dates because my whole life had changed. My plans for after graduation were gone, and after those circled green dates, I had…nothing.”
Dizzy with information overload, Danny sat up, pulled in deep breaths, and tried to process how someone so grounded, so light-hearted, so sweet could have possibly gone through that brand of hell. He’d seen a shit-ton of bad in his years—he’d walked through fire and nursed the blistered skin left in its wake—but he had his father, his brother, and his squad to support him. Julie had…no one. NO ONE.
The silence fell heavy around them. With no more than her shallow breaths and soft sniffles, Danny was left with more questions than answers. However, he only had one pressing thing he had to know in that moment. “Julie, how? How in the hell have you made it this far?” His gut churned. She’d been the one to open up the book of her life, and he needed to turn a couple of pages. Just a few. “This house, it’s the home you grew up in, right?”
“Yes.”
Carefully, he continued. “You said you had no family?” He rubbed at his jaw, grateful for the darkness, that she couldn’t see the tears stinging his eyes.
“No, my parents were a bit older when they got married, so I was their only child, and their parents were deceased.”
Danny swallowed the lump in his throat. “Did you have anyone?”
The mattress beneath him shifted just before the room lit with the soft glow from a side table lamp. It was a move he hadn’t seen coming and one that surprised the hell out of him. After being stuck in the dark as she described her nightmare, the light made him feel uneasy, disoriented, as if the present was the dream and the darkness the reality. With her legs still pulled tightly to her chest, Julie draped the arm she used to turn on the lamp back around her calves and tilted her head. Paths had been made down the flawless skin of her cheeks, ones she clearly hadn’t bothered to wipe away. While her gray eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in red, they were no longer filled with the tears of a victim, but with the strength of a survivor.
“I didn’t have family, no.” She pulled her top lip between her teeth and released it. “But I wasn’t completely alone. My mom”—she snorted—“with all of her obsessive list-making, had put together a pretty impressive list of friends that she and my dad kept in touch with over the years. Some I knew, most I didn’t, but they all knew about me. While I was rolling my eyes, shaking my head, and making fun of my mom, she was contacting their friends and mailing them copies of their vacation itinerary and information about me. They must have thought she was crazy. But within hours of finding out about my parents, I had people at my door, offering help and support. My parents”—she brought her eyes to his—“they left for something amazing and beautiful, something they were suppos
ed to enjoy. It was supposed to be selfish and carefree, but even in doing something for themselves, they made sure I was completely protected and surrounded by as much love as they could give me.”
Danny watched Julie swallow, her body still pulled tight, a protective barrier of sorts to keep her safe. His fingers knotted together and clenched to keep from reaching for her when she had clearly expressed her need for physical solitude.
“It took me quite a while to realize it, but even with them gone, I’ve never been completely alone.”
How could that be? He felt lonely for her. “I just”—he shook his head—“I can’t imagine how you got through all of that pain and still shine with so much brightness. Not to sound like a wuss, but you radiate with it.”
A small grin lifted the side of Julie’s mouth. “I think that’s the reason why I flipped on the lamp. I couldn’t tell you my story face to face. It’s still too fresh, too painful. But I need you to remember the woman you’ve seen, the woman you’ve kissed, the one that had you jealous”—he raised an amused brow, and she smiled—“yes, jealous when another man had her attention. I’m still that woman. You wanted to get to know me, but my past isn’t a slow over-dinner-and-drinks kind of story. It’s a trial-by-fire sorta tale.”
“Not that it affects the outcome, but how have other men reacted?”
Julie’s eyes narrowed. “No other man has ever had the opportunity to react.”
Indescribable amounts of something akin to possessiveness and pride washed through him as he stared at what had to be the strongest woman he’d ever met. His own mother hadn’t had the will to live, even though she had two children and a husband who loved her beyond reason, and this young woman stood like a tree in a hurricane, bending with the winds, moving with the rains but never breaking under the pressure.
