by Peggy Jaeger
She leaned in to take his mouth with hers. His heart was hammering under her hands as she leisurely began skimming them down his chest to his waist. He hadn’t belted his pants after his shower, for which she was thankful. Her hands trembled so fiercely she knew she’d have trouble undoing a buckle. She slipped her fingers inside the waistband and pulled open the button, trailing the zipper all the way down, feeling how hard he was pushing against her, demanding freedom. When her hands touched the soft, smooth line of his boxers, she smiled into his lips.
“Well, that solves one mystery,” she said, pulling back and glancing down.
When his eyes squinted, she laughed and told him, “Boxers. I love boxers. They’re ridiculously sexy.”
“Do you usually wonder about the underwear of men you’re with?” he asked, the tips of his fingers circling around her nipples, now swollen and pink from his loving.
Moira sighed and pushed into him, running her hands along his back and down through her favored boxers to grab his butt. She gently squeezed both firm mounds in her hands and said on a sigh, “You’re the only man I’ve ever wondered about, Q. The only one I’ve ever wanted to know. No one else.”
She saw the understanding bloom on his face as his eyes widened and became a color she couldn’t begin to name. She melted under the heat of his stare and when his mouth dropped open, and then quickly shut again, she knew she had to say something.
He beat her to it. Taking her in his arms, he laid them both down on the bed, facing one another. Cupping her cheek with one hand, he rubbed her lips with his thumb. “How is it possible, in this day and age, you’ve gotten to twenty-eight and have never made love? How is it even remotely possible with the way you look? With the woman you are?”
She heard the wonder in his voice, and something more, something she hadn’t expected: pride. “I guess I was waiting for the right man,” she said simply.
The sound that burst from within him Moira likened to a stallion when it senses its mate, deep and guttural, primal and nascent. Quickly he rose and shook out of his pants and the glorious boxers Moira loved. He knelt back down next to her and nudged her shoulders so she lay on her back. Moira was dumbstruck by the size of him. Fleetingly, she felt nervous he would fit inside of her, but the moment his mouth nuzzled between her thighs, parting them, and his tongue flicked across her own heat, she lost any nerves swimming within her. His movements, first slow and languid, escalated as her hips began to rock back and forth against him. This was a desire she’d never known. So intense, so demanding, she was powerless to fight against it. Her body became his to do with as he wanted. And she let him, never thinking of it as surrender or submission. This is what it meant to love so totally, to trust so completely, nothing else mattered.
Quentin’s fingers trailed down to her heat, dipping into the moisture her desire had birthed. A second finger followed, stretching her, moving rhythmically in and out of her, driving her wild.
As his mouth and fingers moved within her, Moira sensed something was about to happen, something new and intoxicatingly wild. Her toes began to tingle and her thighs started quaking. She fisted the smooth sheets beneath her fingers, hanging on for dear life.
“Quentin—”
“Let go, Baby,” he said, replacing his tongue with his fingers. “Just let go. I’m right here and I love you.”
A burst of white-hot light flashed before her eyes, blinding her to everything in the room but the feel of his fingers rubbing against her most sensitive part. She bucked against his hand, her hips rising, instinctively trying to find the source of the heat and knowing it was him; all him. Spasms of pleasure quaked through her, engulfing her entire system, filling her with such joy she cried out, never knowing it was his name she called. When the quailing inside her subsided, her breathing noticeably slowing, Quentin pulled her into his arms, and lying side by side, rubbed her back.
“I love you,” he whispered into her hair.
Moira unconsciously threw one of her legs over his, putting her in direct contact with his own bulging passion. Her hand found its way to him and circled around the shaft. His unconscious and quick gasp made her feel more powerful than she’d ever felt before. “I want you inside me,” she told him, kissing his mouth while her hand stroked along his length, feeling him grow even larger, pulsing in her hand.
He required no other request. He reached into the bedside table and took a condom from the drawer. She fell to her back and watched him put it on and then he was on top of her, his knee pushing her legs apart. Taking all his weight on his elbows, he looked down into her face.
Slowly, languidly, as if they had all the time in the world at their beck, he entered her. She was so wet and so ready for him. A feral groan pushed through his lips. “God, you feel like heaven, Moira. So good. So damn good.”
His lips came to hers, tugged at them, and his tongue wove its way into her mouth. He began rocking within her, in and out, not leaving her, but forging further with each thrust.
Moira stopped breathing. It took too much effort while she was trying to concentrate on the glorious feeling of him inside her body. The absolute rightness and beauty of what it felt like to have Quentin Stapleton make love to her. She’d never imagined, in any dream or scenario, just how wonderful it would feel to be here with him. How alive she felt, how electrified.
Suddenly, the rhythm between them changed. Moira could feel the damp sweat erupt on his shoulders as he struggled to hold back. Instinctively, she knew it was because he wanted to give her the most pleasure he could. Loving him with every ounce in her being, she looked up into his face, lifted her knees as high as she could to give him even greater access, greater depth, and repeated his own words back to him. “Let go, Q. Let go. I’m right here and I love you with all my heart.”
“Moira—”
He emptied into her, the sound ripping from his lips, once again reminding Moira of a stallion in the throes of release. She could feel his heart hammering against hers. Lying on top of her, his face nuzzled into her neck, he kissed the hollow beneath her ear. Minutes later when both their pulses had calmed, he asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“As if,” she said with a smile.
He pulled up and caught the smile in his lips. “I can’t believe you’re finally here with me. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve thought about this, about how it would be between us.” He laid his forehead against hers and sighed. Moira reached a hand up to his cheek. “Nothing I ever fantasized about is as good as the reality.”
“How come you never said anything?” she asked.
With an effort he rolled to his back and took her with him, settling her in the crook of his arm. As he traced small circles back and forth along her upper arm he said, “Couple of reasons, really. First, we were both young and hadn’t explored life yet. I knew down deep we both needed to go out on our own, see life outside of Carvan. You especially. Become the people we needed to be.”
“That’s amazingly mature,” she said, rising on an elbow and staring across at him. “Who are you and what have you done with my Q?”
He smiled and yanked her head down onto his chest. “Next,” he said, ignoring her banter, “I knew how much you wanted to tour the world. You talked about nothing else from the time we were kids. I thought you needed to go, to get it out of your system―”
“You make it sound like I had the flu.”
“-before you’d realized here is where you were meant to be. Home. With your folks and hopefully, with me. I needed to make a way for myself, too. Like I said, we needed to be the people we were meant to be.”
“And now we are?” she asked, her chin tucked into one of her hands.
“Now we are,” he said, nodding. “And now,” he added, rolling her beneath him in one fluid motion, “now we can be the people we were meant to be. But together.”
This time his kiss was demanding and insistent, telling her what he wanted without words.
And what he wanted
was her.
Again.
This time, when he came inside her, there was no hesitation, no waiting to make sure she was ready, because she was. Totally and completely. Moira couldn’t believe the swell of passion that drove up within her, how quickly she wanted him again, and how natural it was to feel him inside her now, loving her, cherishing her, pleasuring her.
There were no doubts left in her mind or her heart when he began pulsing within her. She matched his desire, measure for measure, thrust for thrust.
Nothing else mattered but being with him, like this, right now.
Chapter Sixteen
“How decadent is it to have dessert for dinner?” Moira asked much later.
They were seated together on the couch in his man cave, a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream in each of their hands, his laden with whipped cream and nuts, hers plain, as they watched Slasher 1 on his huge, flat screen television.
Quentin looked over at her and just stared. Her bare legs were tucked up underneath her, ebony hair was billowing around her face, dancing down to her waist, free and unsecured, and she was wearing his shirt. He was back in his boxers, with the memory of Moira telling him, “Don’t ever wear anything but those, or else nothing at all,” floating in his head.
“We’re grown ups, M. We can have dessert in place of dinner. We’ve already gone out of the natural order of things tonight.” He placed his empty bowl on the table in front of them.
Spoon in her mouth, Moira threw him a slanty-eyed glance and slowly pulled the spoon from her mouth licking it, and swiping her tongue at her lips.
In a heartbeat Quentin was across the couch, his tongue replacing hers. “I love Rocky Road,” he said, watching her eyes widen and darken. “It’s my absolute favorite.”
The scream of a sex-starved teenaged boy being hacked with an axe bounded into the room from the sound system above them. Both of them ignored it. Moira straddled his lap, and he felt her shudder at the feel of him, hard and hot again, pushing through his boxers against her naked skin. The shirt covered her to her knees, so there’d been no need to put her panties back on when they went downstairs for their “dinner date and movie.”
“I’ll share,” she told him, placing the ice cream laden spoon just outside his mouth.
“I don’t want any more ice cream,” he told her, his hands resting under the shirt on her bare waist.
“Oh? What do you want, then?”
“Just this,” he told her, putting his mouth on hers again. “And this,” he added, trailing his lips down her throat. “And maybe some of this.” His hands pushed open the shirt and pulled it down her shoulders to reveal her breasts. When his mouth closed on one already swollen nipple, his tongue ice cold from the recent confection, Moira almost dropped the bowl into their laps. Without missing a beat, Quentin moved to the other breast and took the bowl from her at the same time, placing it out of reach. “And I want all of this,” he said, his hips pushing up against her.
Moira shifted slightly to the side and neatly took him from his shorts into her hand. With innate and adroit skill, she positioned her body over him, and in one swift motion, impaled herself.
Who was more surprised by this sudden show of sexual assertiveness they would debate later, but immediately, Quentin called out her name through tight lips and they both began rocking, fiercely, against the other. Moira’s hands ground into his shoulders for support, as his hands gripped into her waist with each thrust they made.
Their eyes never left the other’s face as they each watched the excitement of their act play across them.
He’d known it would be like this with her. The absolute glaze of passion floating in her beautiful blue eyes told him so. He couldn’t conceivably love her more if he tried, and yet he knew everyday he spent with her he felt more for her, fell more in love with her, than he’d been the day before. This is what had been destined for both of them. To know the other, to love the other beyond all reason.
Moira’s eyes changed from azure blue to cobalt as he felt her pulsating around his sex. He thrust harder, pushed deeper and she took every inch of him, reeling her head backwards, her eyes focused on him, her hair cascading down her back, undulating like ocean waves. He pulled her back, took her lips with his. His tongue wove and danced with hers, matching the rhythm of their bodies riding one another. This time, when Moira began to buck and tighten, the crest of her passion swelling, making her fall, Quentin went over the edge with her.
When she collapsed against his heaving chest, he was still embedded inside of her. Moira’s breath caught as she said, “I love Rocky Road, too.”
His laughter rumbled from deep within him.
Another ear-splitting scream came from the television.
“I guess we’ll need to watch this again some time from the beginning,” she said, leaning back, her hands once again on his shoulders. “I missed too much to know what’s going on.”
“I own the DVD. Both of them.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Her head cocked to one side.
“You can watch them anytime you want.”
When she laid her head against his shoulder, with him buried still deep inside her, Quentin realized he’d never known nor felt such peace flow within him. He put his head back against the couch and held on to her as their bodies settled.
Nothing could have prepared him for how much stronger his feelings for her had grown in the past week. He’d loved her forever, had been in love with her for years. But having her back in his life, with him as he’d always dreamed she would be, had brought him an inner sense of harmony he didn’t even know he needed. Moira was, simply, the best part of his life. He would do anything for her, grant any wish she asked. All he wanted was for her to stay with him, now, and for the rest of their lives.
She was getting more comfortable every day being home, being with her family, and with him. Soon, he promised himself, soon he would make his desires for their future together known.
Moira was the first to stir. “It’s getting late,” she said, placing a kiss along the underside of his ear. “I need to get home.”
After a few moments, he rose, lifting her with him, her legs wrapped around his waist.
“I can’t believe how strong you are,” she said, cuddling against his neck as he walked her back up to the kitchen.
“You don’t weigh spit. It’s easy to carry you. And a pleasure,” he added when she nipped at his earlobe.
Back in the kitchen, he set her down and hugged her. “I want you to stay. All night. I want to wake up with you next to me and make love to you in the morning.”
“Q, you know I can’t. My parents—”
“I know.” His finger smoothed across her mouth. “Just thinking what Seamus would do to me is enough to know you can’t. Not now, anyway.” He bent and kissed her tenderly where his finger had just caressed. When he pulled back, he smiled. “We’re twenty-eight years old and we still care what our parents think. Although I imagine your mother would be thrilled.”
“You’d be right,” she said, wryly, “but I still can’t stay. Not while I’m living with them.”
Nodding, he pulled her in for a hug. Rubbing his hands up and down her back, he said, “Go on upstairs and get dressed.”
“You’re not coming up?”
With a huge reluctant sigh, he said, “If I do, Moira, and I watch you get dressed, I’m not gonna be able to let you leave. I’m not that strong.”
“That’s just sweet.” She kissed his lips and went up to his bedroom.
Ten minutes later, he walked her out to her car.
Barefoot and clad just in his boxers, he looked at her through the open car window and knew in his heart he never wanted her to leave him again.
“Are you coming into the clinic in the morning?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and leaned in, capturing her lips with his. “Good. Text me when you get home.”
“Quentin, the house is five miles from here. Nothing
is going to happen to me during the three minute drive.”
“Text me when you get in. Please.”
“I was going to anyway,” she admitted, grinning. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you.” He pulled back and watched her drive away.
True to her word, not five minutes later she texted, ‘Home safe.’
His immediate reply told her, ‘Good. Dream abt me. I love you.’
When he got a text back saying, ‘I couldn’t dream of anyone else. I love you, too,’ Quentin sighed.
Next time, he told himself while he took a quick shower, she stays.
For good.
****
“Stop staring at me like that,” Moira said, her voice low and threatening.
“Like what?” He looked at her over the horse’s hind end, all innocence, as he injected the mare.
“You know like what, Quentin Stapleton. I can’t concentrate when you do.”
He pressed the cylinder, injecting the medicine, and then removed the syringe. With a quick rub to the area with an antiseptic pad, he put the syringe into the sharps container and came around to where she was mixing up a batch of liquid nourishment for the horse. He stood behind her and asked quietly, “When I look at you like what, Moira? Like all I want to do right now is plunge into you until you scream for me to stop?”
He heard her small gasp and saw her hands start to shake. With a smile, he added, “Or to keep going until we both die of pleasure?”
“Stop,” she whispered. “Someone will hear you and get the wrong idea.”
“You’re afraid the horses are going to get the wrong idea about you and me?”
“You know what I mean.” She turned around to him, the feeding bag still clutched in her hands.
His lazy smile took its time crossing his face. While it did, he reached out and pulled her into his arms, the full bag wedged between them. “You mean, they might think I can’t keep my eyes or my hands off you? Or are you worried they’ll think I might take you right here in a stall for all of them to gawk and gaze over?”
