by Alison Kent
“Mmm. That’s sooo good,” she assured him, digging the heels of her palms into his pecs and massaging him. He growled his pleasure, moved his mouth to her other breast, moved the hand still at her hip down between her legs.
Eyes still closed, she let her head fall back and tried to breathe. Impossible, what with his hand pulling aside her panties, his thumb slipping between the lips of her sex to find the bud of her clit, his palm cupping her, one finger pushing inside to stroke her.
She was a mess, wet and aroused and so very ready to come. She just didn’t want to, not quite yet. Not until she’d felt that first breach of his cock’s head as he entered her, that long slide as she swallowed the length of his shaft, that grinding pressure against her.
And so she wiggled on his lap and reached for his money clip, bracing her forearms on his shoulders as she tore a condom packet from the strip. Quentin let her go and sat back, slumping further into the chair’s plush cushions, his grin speaking volumes.
She handed him the condom and went to work lifting him out of his shorts. He was gorgeous, the head of his cock full and ripe, an extralarge strawberry she wanted to feel on her tongue. His balls were heavy in her hand when she held them, rolled them, used an index finger to separate them.
He hissed in a breath. “I promise…we’ll take our time later and do this right.”
Legs spread, she settled her hands on his knees and watched as he rolled the protection into place, her skin tingling. “There’s nothing wrong about doing it here and now. But, yeah, I like the idea of going back for seconds. Maybe even thirds.”
“Greedy wench,” he said, shoving her skirt above her hips, pulling the crotch of her panties aside. A shudder ran the length of his body, and he stroked a finger over the bare lips of her sex. “You’re beautiful, do you know that?”
She sat still while he touched her, while he studied her the way he would a work of art. The thrill that ran through her was impossible to ignore. She tried. Truly, she tried; weren’t all men reduced to mush by a little pink flesh?
But his appreciation seemed much more than that of a savage rutting beast and was hard not to take to heart. “You’re just horny. You’d say anything to get your way.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers. “If you didn’t want this, then I’d chalk it up as a good time and kiss you good-night.”
“But since I do…” She took hold of his erection and guided him into place.
Raising up on her knees, she pulled nothing but the head inside, not moving but to flex around him, holding his gaze as she did, as her thighs quivered, as her belly clenched, as her entire body started to shake.
She slid down slowly until he filled her, until she thought she wouldn’t be able to move. Her hands on his knees again, she dropped her gaze when he did to that place where their bodies were joined.
He stretched her open where he’d entered her; so tight was the fit that she felt the throbbing of his blood as it pulsed through his veins. He dropped his head against the chair, closed his eyes as if seeking control.
When he looked back, she knew he’d lost the battle. His eyes flashed with an inner fire to match her own.
“Are you ready?” he asked, his voice low and throaty, his words only audible because of how close she sat.
She wanted to tell him she’d been ready for a lifetime, that she’d been waiting to feel this way more years than she could count. Instead she pushed forward, braced her forearms on his shoulders and opened her mouth over his.
She kissed him. Not long, wet thrusts of her tongue but a desperate connection of her lips with his. They breathed in tandem, his ragged exhalations moist against her cheek.
Their bodies moved, his up, hers down, hers up, his down, until the thrusting, driving force was the only thing that mattered. He was everywhere she needed him to be, touching places she hadn’t known existed. Places in her body, but others, too…pushing her toward tears she refused to shed.
It was all too much, overwhelming, a spiraling of sensation that quickly took her apart. She pulled her mouth from his and cried out, shuddering as her orgasm swept through her in wave after wave.
His own release followed. She felt the warmth through the layer of protection between them, felt the contraction of his muscles beneath her legs as he pulsed and pushed upward, felt the vibrating echo as he grunted, emptying himself fully, coming back down and bringing her along.
She collapsed against his chest and he held her close, his chest heaving beneath her, his skin damp against her own. His hair there tickled her breasts where she rested. His breath fluttered flyaway strands at her temple.
When she sighed, he held her tighter. When he sighed, she cuddled close.
And when he softly kissed her forehead, she knew what they’d done here had gone way beyond the simple notching of bedposts. Or the pleasurable mating of bodies. This was deeply complicated. It confused her, puzzled her.
Not to mention scared her half to death.
5
EVAN HARCOURT STOOD FACING the floor-to-ceiling windows in the sixth-floor apartment he shared with Shandi, wondering what the hell about it she found so riveting that she could sit here for hours and stare at the sky.
He saw nothing special. The tops of buildings. Satellite dishes. The last rays of the setting sun. He sure didn’t see the meaning of life, the way Shandi seemed to. Maybe growing up here was the difference. He’d been looking at this same sky for twenty-six years.
If he wanted to get more out of the exercise, he might need to take up stargazing from the back porch of Shandi’s family home in Round-Up. Yeah. Getting away from New York sounded like a plan. Except the family home he wanted to visit wasn’t in Oklahoma.
It was in Connecticut.
He was getting tired of April putting him off. About meeting her family. About making things permanent. About sex, yeah. But that wasn’t the biggest part. He’d been honest when he’d admitted to Shandi that he didn’t mind waiting, that he didn’t want to mess up what he was building with April.
The biggest part was the way he was beginning to wonder what he was doing making all the compromises. April was calling the shots, and like a putz, he was letting her. And the worst part was how long it had taken him to realize they’d reached that point.
His grandmother would kick his ass if she got wind of his situation. Ellen Harcourt had been the one to raise him after his parents had split and both proved unfit. She’d taught him the value and rewards of hard work, the importance of autonomy—financial as well as emotional.
Then again, his grandmother had been a widow and real estate mogul for forty of her sixty-eight years. And he was pretty damn sure her marriage had not been a match made from anything resembling love, lust or even like.
She’d passed her harsh outlook on to his father, who’d chosen an equally unsatisfying mate in his mother. It was a miracle, considering, that Evan had turned out as well-adjusted as he had. Wanting a real relationship. Wanting that relationship to be free of family interference. Wanting his woman to build her life with him—not a state away.
Leaning his butt against the back of the sofa, he pulled his phone from his hip and dialed April’s cell. He didn’t care what supposed family emergency her father had cooked up to get her to Connecticut. He needed to talk to her, to hear her voice.
When she picked up, he heard the chatter of a large gathering and his stomach clenched with the desire to be fully involved in April’s life. If they were going to be together, then they needed to be together, damn it.
“Hold on a minute, Evan,” she said, and he heard her making excuses in the background to her family.
He pushed off the sofa, walked across the decklike platform separating the sunken living area from the windows and the balcony. He was standing inches from the glass when she came back on the line.
“Okay, I’m here. Sorry. It’s too loud at the table to hear anyone else when my father is talking, which he
has been doing a lot of tonight. What’s up?”
“When are you coming home?” he asked, though they’d discussed her plans earlier in the day. Problem now was that her plans were interfering with his needing to be with her, to get this crap he was feeling settled.
“In the morning. I told you. I don’t have a class until ten, so I’ll catch an early train.” She paused, added, “Is that all you called for?”
He shoved his free hand into the pocket of his khaki Dockers. “Is there any way you can get back tonight?”
“Evan, what’s wrong?” Her voice came out breathless, panicked. “Has something happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He should hang up now. He’d been stupid to call. “It’s just weird not having you here when I have the night off from work.”
“I know. I wish I was there. I’d told Shandi I’d see a movie with her, but I’d much rather cuddle up and watch bad reruns with you.”
“Then come home tonight.”
“I can’t. Daddy wants—”
“I don’t care what your daddy wants, April.” Goddamn. He was not going to be a second fiddle in her life. “I care about you and me.”
“Evan! What is wrong with you?”
He sighed, rubbed a hand over his forehead, listened to April breathe, heard her block the mouthpiece to respond to a question.
This wasn’t the time to be having this conversation. Not when she was distracted and when he was being a shit. “Never mind. We can talk tomorrow.”
“If you’re going to be like that about Daddy, I don’t know if I want to talk.”
He jerked his hand from his pocket, slammed the heel of his palm into one of the window’s wooden frames. “And if you’re going to spend your life at his beck and call, then we don’t have anything to talk about.”
He ended the call before she could answer, turned off his phone and holstered it. She’d call back. And then she’d try the house phone. That was how she was, needing to have the last word, wanting to leave him hanging. She’d hate getting his voice mail. But not as much as he hated getting involved in her mind games.
Even though he thought Shandi’s reasons weird, he’d always liked that she was making her way on her own. For the most part, he was doing the same. The only living relative he had was his grandmother, and the idea of one day being a part of April’s family meant a lot to him.
Thing was, she didn’t seem to understand that. She thought she could continue to string him along while doing her daddy’s bidding. He shook his head, pushed away from the window, grabbed his keys off the bar separating the kitchen and the entryway and headed out.
He wasn’t having any of it. April’s divided loyalties had been weighing heavily for a while, but seeing Shandi’s excitement earlier over this guy she didn’t even know…. He hit the elevator button, hung his head while he waited.
He wanted that from April. He wanted her to be that excited about seeing him, talking to him, being with him whether they stayed in or went out. Hell, he got that excited about her. She was the sweetest thing he’d ever known. Being with her made everything about his life work.
He couldn’t think of a better time than when they were together, even if they were doing nothing but watching TV or studying silently. He loved her, she loved him. He knew that—even if she jumped whenever her father snapped his fingers.
And it wasn’t that he wanted her to jump for him. All he wanted was to be the number-one man in her life the same way she was the number-one woman in his.
QUENTIN WASN’T A STRANGER to women giving him anything he wanted when he took them to bed. Rarely did they demand their due. Rarely did they demand much of anything.
They faked their way through their orgasms, choked their way through his, pretended they couldn’t get enough when it wasn’t him they wanted to buy. They were in the market for his contacts, his secrets, his insight, his clout.
Not so Shandi.
She wanted his body, the pleasure he could give her. She took it with enthusiasm. She gave him back the same. She wasn’t shy, and he doubted she understood what it meant to be inhibited.
If he’d thought her a breath of fresh air earlier, now he was blown away.
They’d made it from the library back to the elevator without being seen, adjusting what clothing they’d missed the first time they’d laughingly pulled themselves together before the doors opened onto the sixteenth floor. Not that the state of their dress or undress mattered.
No one who saw them gave them a second look. It was the nature of Hush not to stare. It was also the nature of Hush to provide amenities beyond complimentary brandy. In the bathroom, next to the vanity jars of cotton balls and Q-tips, he’d found one containing condoms.
Once he’d locked the door behind them, turned off his cell phone, unplugged the room’s land line from the connection on the wall, opened the balcony doors and let in the night sky she told him she loved…after all of that, he undressed her.
He stood her at the foot of his bed, placed a silencing finger to her lips and bent to slip her feet out of her shoes and socks. Her toenails were painted to match the mask on her face. An iridescent blue-green that reminded him of a mermaid’s tail.
He lifted her foot, kissed her arch, her ankle, the curve of her calf, finding himself moments later nuzzling her knees and inhaling the scent of sex. He hardened immediately, dropped his forehead to her belly and groaned. “I can’t believe what you do to me.”
“It’s the outfit,” she teased. “Takes you back to being a schoolboy.”
If only that wasn’t the humiliating truth. Not the outfit but the fact that he’d lost anything that resembled control, that he had no more finesse than a randy teen. And that he wasn’t sure he cared.
Sex hadn’t been this mind-blowing, this spontaneous, this much fun in more years than he wanted to remember. He kissed her thighs there beneath the hem of her skirt while he eased down the zipper.
“Speaking of you as a schoolboy—”
“Which I was trying not to do,” he interrupted to add.
Laughing, she shimmied out of the skirt; it pooled around her ankles and she kicked it away. “You never did tell me that story.”
“What story?” He responded without thinking. At the first sight of her panties all twisted and damp and revealing, his blood had rushed from his brain to his cock.
“The one all about Quentin Marks.”
He stood, went to work on the buttons of her blouse. “No story there. I told you. Boring years of a lot of work and very little sleep.”
“Is that why you’re going back to Austin? To catch up on your sleep?” she asked as he pushed her sleeves down her arms, trapping her in the fabric at her elbows.
He thought of her bound and at his mercy, and got harder. He turned her, twisted the shirt’s dangling tails into a cloth rope and tied her wrists together at the small of her back. Then he pulled off her panties and stood back to observe his handiwork.
He stared at her beautifully rounded and naked ass, her legs he wanted to feel wrapped around him. When she turned back to face him, he took in the thrust of her breasts, the tips that were pink and pebbled and matched the bare lips of her pussy beneath the narrow strip of hair left above.
“I guess what they say is true,” she said, the comment finally bringing his gaze up to meet hers. “That men can only use one head at a time. Since you seem to have forgotten I asked you a question.”
He couldn’t even think of what she’d said when the way she looked, naked and hindered and his, consumed him. “Remind me. I’ve got a one-track mind at the moment.”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead she strummed him with her gaze until he vibrated under her attention, until it itched unbearably to be wearing his clothes. He kicked off his shoes and pulled his shirt over his head, losing several buttons in the process.
He went to work next on his belt and pants, skinning them off until he wore only the second skin of his boxers and his socks—the l
atter of which he lost at the questioning lift of her brow. He would have peeled off the former had he not needed to feel that he hadn’t lost all his control.
And then he stood there, feeling like the one held captive when she was the one all tied up. The past two evenings he’d spent sitting at the bar, he’d fantasized about having her naked beneath him. He’d just never expected the anticipation to knot him up this fiercely.
“About that question,” she finally said, her lashes fluttering down as she closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “Why don’t I remind you later?”
When had a woman ever looked at him the way Shandi did? Or had he been too wrapped up in his own world to have seen? No. Of that much he was certain. She was a new experience when he thought he’d seen it all.
Hands at his hips, he swallowed once before he was able to speak. “Later works for me.”
She tugged playfully at her bonds, her smile an enticing combination of dimples and mischief. “I mean, I’ve never been a bondage kind of girl. And I think I’m liking it.
Her voice, her words…he took both as an invitation and approached, dropping to his knees at her feet. When he slid his palms from her knees up her thighs, she sucked in a quick breath and exhaled slowly, her legs trembling.
Smiling to himself, he kissed her belly. Her skin was softly scented and smooth, cooled by the room’s air. He warmed her with his mouth and made his way lower, leaving a trail of tiny bite marks to remind her of where he’d been. She giggled and whimpered; the sounds were nervous echoes of his own impatience.
And when he finally settled his lips over the sweet bud of her clit, used his thumbs to spread open her folds and slipped his tongue inside her, he wasn’t sure which of their sighs was the louder.
She took a step back, made contact with the bed and sat, pulling her heels to hips. She said nothing, simply urged him closer with the bold lift of one brow and the bolder way she parted her knees.
He couldn’t resist and bent to taste her, sipping at her moisture and loving how ready she already was, how salty-sweet, how tart. He sucked her into his mouth and eased a finger inside.
