by Ruthie Knox
She didn’t know why, but it was all suddenly unbelievably funny. The giggle turned into a belly laugh, and then she couldn’t stop. Clutching her stomach, she bent over, trying to get a grip. City started chuckling, too, low and sexy, and she lost it completely. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but the laughter just kept coming. She gasped, wiped her eyes, and bent over again with a helpless, breathless scream.
When she finally managed to sit up, gulping air like a walleye on land, City had moved closer, and he was watching her with a bemused smile.
“My name—” She took a gaspy breath and sat up straight in the chair, putting out her hand so he could shake it. In her very best posh accent, she said, “My name is Mary Catherine Talarico. Of the Chicago Talaricos.”
He took her hand, sending an electric pulse straight to her crotch as his strong fingers engulfed hers. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary Catherine Talarico.”
“Likewise, I’m sure.”
City pulled her to her feet and stepped closer. She moved away, but he kept coming until she was backed up against the countertop and he loomed over her. He was big. Everyone was big when you were five feet tall, but City was big big. Six feet, maybe, and built. He had biceps and triceps to spare, and she knew from the park that under those jeans his quadriceps were a thing of beauty. Bad Cath demanded a closer look.
The indulgence had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a predatory heat that made her heartbeat stutter.
New Cath couldn’t seem to do anything but whimper.
“Is your head feeling better, Mary Catherine?” Bracing his hands on the countertop behind her, he lowered his own head and touched his lips to her neck. She closed her eyes.
“Yes, thank you.” He worked his way to the base of her throat, every kiss sending out its own little shock wave. They radiated down her torso, pooling between her legs.
“No trace of a hangover, then, Mary Catherine?” His voice. She had no defenses against his voice. Low and hungry, that haughty accent such a delicious contrast to his naughty mouth.
“Much better, thanks.” He licked her collarbone, kissed behind her ear, nibbled her lower lip. She had to lean against the countertop, having gone knock-kneed. “Call me Cath.”
“No, I don’t think I shall.” He grasped her by the waist and lifted her, and she locked her ankles behind his back. “I’m taking you to bed now, Mary Catherine.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’d like that.”
Chapter Five
He set her down on the edge of the mattress, then crossed to the window and raised the sash, bringing in fresh air to dispel the heat. The room had grown stuffy since she’d left it.
The bed had changed, too. Before, it had been a stranger’s bed, and she’d been in a hurry to escape it. Now it was this stranger’s bed, and she liked the thought of spending the next few hours giving it a workout.
He drew gauzy white curtains across the open window, affording them privacy from anyone who happened to have binoculars or a telescope trained on the second story of his building. “Aren’t you considerate?” she commented.
“I am,” he said with a smile.
Did a considerate man make a considerate lover? It stood to reason, but she’d never tested the proposition. City was the first considerate man she’d ever wanted to sleep with.
He returned, pulled the T-shirt off over her head, and pushed her gently back onto the mattress. No hesitation. No playing around. He behaved like a guy who was used to getting what he wanted. It was heady, being what he wanted and letting him get her.
He looked her over for a while, scanning her head to toe as she lay back on his white comforter. Normally this would be her cue to go into sexpot mode—arch her back, get on her hands and knees and stick out her butt, anything to turn her small self into a more desirable being than nature had made her. But she didn’t. She could see City’s appreciation in his eyes, and it made all her nerve endings tingle. He didn’t want her in sexpot mode. He just wanted her.
“Second thoughts?” he asked.
“Nope.” She’d save those for later.
“Good.” With a half smile that showcased his dimple, he stripped out of his own shirt and shucked his jeans, losing whatever he wore underneath right along with them. Or maybe he hadn’t worn anything underneath at all.
Blimey. He had the most flawless body she’d ever seen, tall and rangy, roped with muscle. The body of a runner who rowed and played rugby—lean, but broad through the shoulders, with strong arms and lats. Hard all over. Tasty.
His movements were casual and unhurried, as if he were still washing dishes in the kitchen rather than getting ready to … well. But he was ready, she could see that. If he hadn’t closed the curtains, they could probably see that on the next block. She was definitely beginning to see bankers in a new light.
When he climbed onto the bed and straddled her, she ran her fingers lightly up his thighs and closed one hand around him for confirmation, making him groan low in his throat. Yep. Hard all over.
Lowering himself onto his elbows, he hovered over her, but he didn’t kiss her yet. Instead he stared down at her, cataloging her features. Breathing inside her personal space, brushing his raspy cheek against her soft one. He touched the tip of his nose to hers, his lips to her chin. And all the while she stroked him, slow and easy, enjoying the play of soft skin over steel, the way he hardened against her palm and his eyes lost focus when she squeezed.
It had been so long since she’d been close to another person. Her solitary life lacked any physical contact but the occasional handshake, the social air kiss. She wanted to press every inch of herself against him, to rub her skin against his and exult in the connection.
He smelled like his soap, spicy and exotic, bringing to mind peppercorns and trade voyages and the mysteries of the East. But beneath all that, he smelled like a man, like himself, and she buried her nose in the crook of his neck and inhaled, wanting to taste him on the back of her tongue. Wanting to memorize this indelible marker of who he was.
He nudged her cheek with the back of his fingers, urging her to lift her face. “Come here, darling,” he said, letting the endearment trip off his tongue the way only an Englishman could. “I want to kiss you.”
Unaccustomed to sweetness, she melted a little at that.
The kiss started out light, gentle, but his mouth got hungry fast, and soon his tongue was plunging between her teeth, keeping rhythm with each thrust against her hand that nudged her stomach and heightened the hollow ache at her center. They seemed to have skipped the getting-to-know-you caresses and the long talks over dinner. She didn’t mind. For all its novelty, his body felt familiar, their explorations lacking the standard first-time awkwardness. She simply absorbed him, every second of being close to him making her want him more. It had been so long, and he was so sexy, so beautiful and intense. And yet there was an effortlessness in the way he moved and the way he kissed that made him easy to be with.
City broke off the kiss and guided her hand off him, interlacing their fingers. “I’ll be hopeless if you carry on like that. Let’s make this last, shall we?”
She didn’t answer. His mouth began to travel down her body at a leisurely pace, and she tried to remember a time when another man, any other man, had taken her hand off his dick so he could kiss her neck and make her shivery. She drew a blank. Considerate, indeed.
He took his time to figure out what she liked as he explored the terrain of her torso. Throat, collarbones, sternum, ribs, and finally—finally—her breasts. He spent an eternity playing around with her bra, teasing her with his lips at the edge of the lace. His teeth. His tongue. Finally she yanked one satin cup down and practically shoved her nipple into his mouth, holding him in place with her fingers in his hair. She felt the vibration of his laughter through her whole body, but it was worth it, because he didn’t require a speck of help to work out what to do with that nipple in order to make her toes curl and her hips buck.
And then
her bra was gone and he kept moving southward, slowly and patiently, and she became increasingly convinced patience was not a virtue.
His free hand trailed behind, stroking with long, capable fingers where he had kissed and licked, fondling her breasts and teasing her wet nipples as his lips kissed a path along her rib cage. She squeezed his hand tight whenever he found a good spot, gasped and moaned, urging him on. Urging him downward. But it was City who ran the show, compelling her response as if her body were his to command.
Funny thing. It was.
Cath was accustomed to taking charge in the bedroom. She liked sex—hell, she loved it, always had—but she’d learned over the years that most men required a firm guiding hand and plenty of encouragement if she wanted to walk away satisfied.
City, though. Here was a man who didn’t need to take dictation in order to make her body hum. He was doing a fine job of figuring things out all by himself—such a fine job that she was breathless and achy, her pelvis rising off the bed again and again in a silent plea he completely ignored.
He made a study of the tattoo on her stomach, releasing her hand so that he could grip her hip as he traced the intricate markings with one finger. Then with his tongue. A tangled tracery of lines and swirls in every possible style, the tattoo was meant to be a labyrinth, which maybe explained why she got so hopelessly lost and disoriented under the light, warm, wet pressure of his mouth. His thumb held hard at her hipbone, fingers sinking into the flesh of her butt, until every flick of his tongue brought an answering throb between her legs, every stroke getting her wetter and closer to begging.
The tattoo continued around her back, and eventually so did he, flipping her over easily and pulling her up onto her hands and knees, his lips tracing her tailbone. Her arms trembled, but she didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t ever want him to stop. He knelt behind her and removed her panties, then ran his huge, warm hands over every inch of her body in long strokes, shoulder to hip, over her breasts, sternum, stomach, knees and thighs, curving his fingers around her waist, between her legs, around her ass. Everywhere. He was claiming her, marking her with his touch, but she didn’t feel possessed so much as she felt protected. Cherished. Wanted. The unaccustomed intimacy of it rendered her fragile, vulnerable as a robin’s egg. Somehow with him it was all right. He wouldn’t take advantage. City was one of the good guys.
When he spread her thighs and brought his hand between them, she dropped to her elbows, pressing her face into the comforter. She was feverish, overwhelmed, and he made it so much worse and so much better. He dragged the pad of one finger over her swollen flesh, exploring her folds, arousing her with light pressure and her own slick moisture. Half draped over her back, he breathed against her neck as he pushed two fingers inside her, deep and rough. With a strangled squeak, Cath arched into his hand, wanting more. Much more. “You like that?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You want me, Mary Catherine?”
“God, yes. Please.”
But if asking nicely made any difference to his slow, thorough, tender assault, she was too far gone to notice. He teased her clit with glancing touches, light pressure, then firm, perfect, yes, right there, just like that—and then his fingers would skate away to sink back inside her. Over and over again, his mouth at her nape and behind her ear as tension began to build and her stomach tightened in anticipation.
“You’re going to make me come,” she said, shocked and excited at how easily he’d brought her to this point. How easy he made everything, as if the two of them had done this together a thousand times before, so of course he knew precisely what she needed, and of course he wanted to give it to her.
“Not yet,” he growled. “I want to be inside you.”
Her inner muscles spasmed around his fingers and she moaned, but he withdrew his hand, shoving a pillow beneath her stomach as he moved away. She heard a foil packet tearing open, and then he hooked one thumb behind her knee and eased it up, flattening her onto the pillow. Opening her body wide for him.
He entered her from behind, inch by inch, stroke by shallow stroke. Taking his time, waiting for her to adjust to his size, to the glorious feeling of stretching to receive him. Amazing. Just mind-blowingly amazing, the sensation of City buried deep inside her, the stiff, hot length of his cock and his sweat-slick stomach against her back. His weight. His scent. His everything. She thought she might die from it. Every part of her was tense and throbbing, ready to shatter.
He rocked a little, in and out, hips against her ass, and then slipped his hand beneath her and pressed one finger to her clit. That was all it took—two or three pulses of his fingertip and she came, suddenly and hard. Her entire body contracted around him, tearing a cry from her throat, some combination of incoherent language and helpless bliss.
She heard a sexy, rumbling groan from behind her, but he didn’t move. When the sensations finally subsided and she relaxed, he leaned forward to kiss the back of her neck. The tender gesture combined with the sensation of him still inside her was unbearably erotic.
He withdrew and rolled her onto her back. Resting on one elbow beside her, he ran a hand slowly from her shoulder to her knee, watching her with those green-brown eyes, keen and hot. “All right, love?”
“Yeah.” Her voice came out weak. She was more than all right. She was stripped down, naked and reborn. She was rippling with pleasure from her baby toes to the roots of her hair. Holy mother of God, City had just blown her mind.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said, smoothing one hand over her breast and leaving it there, a warm, comfortable weight.
Oh, he was perfect. An orgasm—just for her—and a compliment. She would bottle him and sell him and make her fortune.
“And you’re one sexy banker, City.” His hair had gone dark at the temples, and sweat gleamed in the hollow at the base of his throat. On an impulse, she sat up and licked it. Salty and wet, his pulse pounding slow and steady beneath her tongue. She could just eat him.
A breeze blew in the open window as she raked her nails lightly across his stomach, making the muscles tighten. “Have mercy,” he said, and he smiled, but there was a desperate edge to it.
“Give me, like, thirty seconds to recover, and then I’ll take care of you, okay?” She didn’t mind the prospect one bit. She’d enjoy getting her mouth on him, giving him as much pleasure as he’d given her.
He caught her wrist and brought her arm above her head, raising the other to join it. Throwing a thigh across her hips, he centered himself between her legs and smiled. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather take care of both of us.”
Damn if her heart didn’t skip a beat or two at the sight of him above her, the feel of him hard against her most sensitive of places. And, yeah, at the idea he’d just turned down a blow job because he wanted to get her off again. That was pretty arrhythmia-inducing, too.
It was hopeless, though. She always needed hours to recover from an orgasm. Not that she minded. It had been one hell of an orgasm. “I’m all tapped out. Sorry.”
“Mmm.” He ran one hand down her thigh to curve his fingers behind her knee. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“No, just one of those tragic facts of life. I’m a one-orgasm gal. What can you do?”
“Try harder,” he said, and then he kissed her and moved inside her with one smooth thrust, and she had to close her eyes and tear her mouth away to gasp, because he felt exactly right. Astonishingly perfect. When she opened her eyes, he was looking down at her, and she stopped breathing for a moment, her throat tightening with some emotion she couldn’t understand. As if they’d pressed a PAUSE button on reality, she and this man, so they could stop and just … be together. More together than people ever were. Together together.
She couldn’t make sense of what she felt. This was sex. Hot sex with an almost-stranger. Except when she met his eyes, it wasn’t. It was the two of them. It was bigger.
“What’s your name?” she asked. The question came out a
breathless whisper.
He laughed. “Nev.”
It was a nice name, unusual. A nickname, she supposed. A nickname for—
She sat up suddenly, bracing her elbows on the bed. “Short for Neville?”
The dimple appeared. “Only my mother calls me that.”
Dismayed, she dropped back onto the mattress and covered her eyes with the back of her hand. It was the world’s dorkiest name. Nearly as bad as Rupert. No, maybe a little worse than Rupert. Neville. For goodness’ sake. “I never thought I’d be penetrated by a Neville,” she said wonderingly. “Maybe a Colin, or a Simon, but—”
“Shut up.” He drew her other knee up and ground into her with a groan.
She’d have said something more, something witty, but she got distracted by the full-body shudder that racked her when City got serious about making her pay for teasing him, and by the sudden knowledge that she might not actually be a one-orgasm gal after all. Maybe it had just been a matter of finding the right guy.
Holy hell. That felt— Wow. “Okay.”
Then he kissed her again, hard and deep, and his fingers found her nipple and proceeded to do something cruel and terribly electrically pleasurable to it. Before she knew quite how it had happened, the rest of the world had slid away, and there was nothing else but the exquisite way they moved together, the pressure building at her core, the sound of their stomachs slapping as he gradually increased his speed and force. In the end, she had to dig her fingers into his back and bite his shoulder to keep a handle on something, anything, and even that didn’t keep her from tipping over the edge. But at least this time he went over with her.
When he came to his senses, Nev rolled onto his back straightaway, fearing he’d crush her. She was so small, no more than seven stone to his thirteen. Though it had been easy to forget when he was inside her. Then, she’d fit him perfectly.
