The first man to ever get her off was him. God, who could forget that?
Already he was getting hard.
His grip on her hand was harder as he took her fingers in his. “Let’s go,” he said, towing her down the path, then bent his head to her ear. “This time I’m going to make you come with my cock buried deep inside you.”
Her little moan trembled in the air.
Practically running, he urged her around the next curve in the path, almost clipping another couple. Shit. Kane practically created smoke as he dug his heels into the pavement to stop. Gordon and Birdie Welch, long-time visitors to Dragonfly Beach. No way could he ignore them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Welch,” he said, trying to get his breathing under control. “It’s so good to see you again.”
“Kane!” Birdie Welch said. She was clutching her husband Gordon’s elbow, but he looked to be the one who needed support. “Dear.” As Kane leaned in, she presented her cheek for a kiss.
Then Kane held out his hand to the older man. “Mr. Welch. How are you?”
His handshake had lost a lot of vigor. “Still here,” he said, “so not complaining.” Then he turned his gaze on Audra and smiled. “Hello, young lady. Are you dating this rogue?”
“Um…”
“Gordon,” Birdie scolded. She sent an apologetic glance to Audra. “Old men are bigger gossips than old women.”
“Audra is a friend,” Kane said, then introduced her to the couple. Birdie told the younger woman with some pride that they’d been vacationing at the resort for fifty-five years and had been married for sixty.
Audra smiled. “Then I must ask—what’s your secret for a long and happy marriage?”
Birdie appeared to ponder. “Laughter. Love. Admiration. And with a big dose of grit mixed in.” She smiled. “You decide to never give up.”
After a bit more chit chat, they parted ways. Kane took Audra’s hand again.
“I liked Mr. and Mrs. Welch,” she said. “They’re very nice.”
Kane cast a look over his shoulder, frowning as he noted the older couple’s laborious pace down the path. “They’ve lived a good life. Raised a family and now have many great-grandchildren to enjoy.”
Audra’s small sigh in response didn’t surprise him. That’s what she had in mind for herself. Husband, children, family, the whole shebang. Sixty years of matrimonial bliss stretching ahead of her.
Kane glanced over his shoulder again. “But Gordon’s aged.”
“It worries you.”
He shrugged. “And maybe also makes me recall I need to live in the moment. Quiet what’s going on up here.” With his free hand he tapped his temple.
“I thought I was the only one who got stuck in my head.”
He looked her over. “We found a way to get you unstuck, didn’t we baby?”
Her gaze flew to his and that pink crawling up her throat was his favorite color in the world. “You still want—”
“I still very much want.” His grip on her hand tightened and he lengthened his strides.
But as the entrance to her bungalow came into sight, Audra pulled back on his arm, halting their progress. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “My brother’s at the door.”
“It’s all right.”
She shook her head. “We can’t get stuck talking to him.”
Kane smiled. “I like your brother.” He refused to let it worry him that he liked all the Montgomerys so very much.
Her brows lowered adorably. “He’ll end up convincing you to go out for a beer. I’ll be left watching television.”
As if he’d forgo getting inside of beautiful Audra for a brew with her big brother. But Kane swept her onto another of those side trails that ended at a stone bench where no one would spot them. “We’ll wait him out. Let’s give it five minutes.”
“Oh,” she said, a smile tipping her lips as he drew her down to his lap. “We’ll wait him out while doing what?”
Kane grinned at her, feeling sunshine buzzing all over his skin even though they sat in complete shade. “Whatever, baby, comes naturally.”
Chapter 12
Nerves attacked Audra the moment they crossed the bungalow’s threshold twenty minutes later. She slipped her suddenly sweaty hand from Kane’s and pressed it against her fluttering mid-section. Swallowing hard, she made for the mini-bar. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“There should be some bottles of Negro Modelo in there,” he said, his voice casual, though she could feel the heavy weight of his gaze on her back. “Sounds good about now.”
She plucked the beer from the fridge, grabbed a glass and glanced at him.
He shook his head and took the bottle from her outstretched hand. “Thanks.”
Turning away from him again, she poured herself a glass of chardonnay. Then she sipped at it, looking through the window at her view—the resort’s lush greenery then the ocean in the distance, all the way to the hazy horizon line. She thought of last night, when he’d turn that glass into a mirror.
Could someone have glimpsed them—but no, Kane wouldn’t put her at risk like that. Nobody could have seen in.
But the memory of their private moments made her shiver anyway and she fought back a wave of second and third thoughts. Last night had been—amazing. Why did she want to mess with success by insisting on another go, this time with the added pressure of an additional person to please? A person who’d had women without orgasm-anxiety.
Oh, God. What was the point of taking Kane Hathaway to her bed anyway?
His hand slid beneath her hair to cup her nape, sending a heated shiver down her spine.
Oh, yeah. That was the point of taking Kane Hathaway to her bed. The unforgettable, overwhelming physical pleasure of his touch.
“What you thinking about, baby?” he asked, giving her neck a little squeeze.
How it’s going to be when I’m filled up by you. “Just what a lovely spot this is,” she said in her perkiest voice.
He chuckled as if knowing she was talking to stall them beginning what they’d come here to do. Because overwhelming was the word and suddenly she wasn’t so concerned about pleasing Kane as she was worried about being engulfed by sexual passion. Devastated by what Kane Hathaway could do to her when they both found pleasure together. With each other.
When it was one-sided, there hadn’t been the danger of being consumed, she thought. Maybe she understood why he’d resisted joining her before. Because it was smart.
“Okay, those gears are really turning now,” he said.
“That nice older couple—”
“Birdie and Gordon Welch.”
“Coming to the resort all these years. That’s something, isn’t it? You Hathaways have a lot to be proud of here at Dragonfly Beach.”
“Yes.”
“A real legacy. And then to have the opportunity to pass it along to future generations…” In her babble, she’d forgotten that Kane had confided he didn’t really feel connected to the resort or the family business. That he was thinking of taking a different job out of the country.
Instead of looking at her, Kane was staring out the window too. His fingers, still curved around her neck, were relaxed and his expression was contemplative. “There’s other beautiful properties too, other Hathaway hotels and resorts, but I do think I…” His voice trailed off and he turned his head, smiled at her.
Her stomach fluttered again and her blood began to heat, speeding through her bloodstream with messages that second and third thoughts should be shut down, not surrendered to.
“But we didn’t come here to small talk, did we?” Kane asked.
“No,” she admitted.
Tilting his head back, he drained his beer and set the bottle aside. Then he pinned her with a look that made her insides quake and the place between her thighs swell. “Audie,” he said, “why don’t you take off your clothes for me?”
Pleaser Audra reached for the hem of her tunic, but then she stopped, realizing that she needed t
o take some power here. He couldn’t have it all or she for sure wouldn’t survive. “Why don’t you take off your clothes for me?” she countered.
His smile grew and his hands went to the buttons of his shirt. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Damn. Was that all it would have taken? But she had asked before and he’d walked away and—
Oh. My. God. Audra stared. He had the most perfect, chiseled chest of any man of all time. She’d been pressed against it, she’d felt the strength of him beneath her palms and measured the breadth of those shoulders with her eyes, and even caught glimpses of it in the hot tub. But now he was in her rooms, stripped from the waist up, and she had an entirely new appreciation.
Her breath backed up in her lungs and she remembered why she usually kept her distance from beautiful men like Kane. They made her feel anxious, like sitting down to an important exam in school, one for which she hadn’t studied hard enough. One that she might fail. Her insecurities sprang to life again, screaming like banshees.
Of course she knew that he could satisfy her, but what if it didn’t work the other way around?
Her damp palms slid down her thighs. She should stop this now. “Kane…”
He half-turned to toss the shirt on a nearby chair and that’s when she saw it, something as fascinating as those ridged muscles and copper nipples. When he straightened, he took one look at her face, raised a brow.
“Turn,” she said, twirling her finger.
With a smirk, he followed directions.
“What’s this?” she said, closing in on him. She lifted her hand to trace the interesting black lines that created a single figure on his shoulder.
He twitched at her touch, then he craned his neck. “That’s the reason I forbid you to get a tattoo.”
“You don’t like it?” The unfamiliar symbol fascinated her. She wanted to kiss it, lap at it with her tongue, trace it on a piece of paper so she’d never forget what it looked like on his flesh.
“My friend and I got inked on our shared eighteenth birthdays. We later found out the Chinese symbol that he bears on his back doesn’t say ‘Courage’ as he asked for, but is the character for ‘Onion.’”
She winced. “What’s yours mean?”
“I know what it’s supposed to mean. It’s a sigil—a symbol to manifest one’s desire.” He twitched again as she ran her fingertip over the long line and the shorter ones bisecting it, two creating angles and one curved like a cup. Three dots.
“What’s it supposed to mean?” She couldn’t help herself. Her lips pressed against those dots, three little kisses to remember her by.
He groaned. “‘Luck will follow me.’”
She smiled against it.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve waited years for the other shoe to drop. I’m sure someday someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and ask why I permanently inked on myself ‘I’ll be discontented all my days.’”
Audra decided to give in to desire and taste the sigil with her tongue. As she did, her hand slid around his waist and then she—boldly!—drew her palm over the ridge of flesh in his pants. “Do you feel discontented now?”
The hot length seemed to come alive in her hand. He groaned again, then spun away from her, holding out his palms as if warding her off. “You’ll make me come too soon, baby.”
Audra stepped back, smiling, feeling like she was ten feet tall and she had a million dollars in her pocket. Insecurities banished. “That’s right,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest so that her curled hands pressed against her tight, aching nipples. “You were going to take off all your clothes for me.”
Hers felt like the scratchiest of wools as she watched his hand move to unfasten the button on his jeans. Beneath his zipper she could see that fascinating bulge of heavy flesh. He stroked over the denim as she had, then found the tab and began opening the metal teeth.
She held her breath, only sucking in air when she began to see stars and because she didn’t want to miss a thing. Especially not now that he was slipping his fingers beneath the waistband of his boxers so he could shove both them and his pants down his thighs and past his knees and…
Well, she stopped looking at how that show ended to concentrate on his erection, thick and flushed, stretching upward. A drop of liquid shined on the head and the testicles at the base looked full and just as ready as the rest of him.
She thought she might be panting.
“Remember how you wanted photographs? That line item on the second list?” Kane asked, his voice amused. She didn’t know the expression on his face because she didn’t look away from that veined muscle that she wanted inside her. Madly.
“Boudoir photo shoot,” she corrected, her voice faint.
“You can take a picture of me, baby, and then maybe you won’t have to stare so hard now.”
At the very real snicker in his voice she glanced up. “Be careful, or I just might. Then who knows where your photo might end up?”
“I trust you, Audie. Go ahead if that’s what you need.”
What she needed was him. More of him.
“I…” She licked her lips. Swallowed hard. Tell him what you want.
“What’s on your mind, baby?” His voice turned deep and wicked. “Do you need to suck on your sugar Kane?”
Yes. She took a step forward before his words truly sank in. Then her gaze flew to his. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
He started laughing. “I needed to snap you out of your daze. Either that or give you a knife and fork.”
“What?” She sniffed. “No salt and pepper? Condiments?”
Before he stopped laughing he’d stepped forward and swept her up in his arms.
All that hot skin. His scent. She buried her nose against his neck and breathed him in. Then he crossed into the bedroom and tossed her onto the bed, following her down so they could roll around like puppies. All the worry she’d felt before, all the nervousness, and the sense of impending calamity vanished.
She’d never known you could have fun in bed. They nuzzled and played and nipped until she was as naked as he and then she caught his gaze and crawled down his big body. “I’m going to do it,” she said, trying not to giggle. “I’m going to suck on my big sugar Kane.”
But instead of laughing right back at her, he went still, his green eyes going dark, the bones in his face seeming to harden. Making Audra want to suck on her big sugar Kane just that much more.
So she did, even though nothing felt funny any longer. Still, she wanted to tease him and she tried, her tongue sliding down to follow the heavy vein as her hand cupped and caressed the balls below. Yet with his eyes burning into her, every move, every breath, every heartbeat felt serious.
Important.
Troublesome, because she didn’t know what it could mean.
Closing her eyes, she pulled him into her mouth, as much as she could take, tonguing and sucking, his taste and his scent, salty and masculine, making her pulse race. She was wet between her thighs, aching and swollen and she rubbed her hard nipples against the hair on his thigh, the slight abrasion delicious.
He groaned and his large hand dug into her hair, pulling a little as she bobbed up and down on his shaft.
Words poured from his mouth but she couldn’t hear them over the thundering of her heart in her ears. She supposed he liked this. She loved it. She wanted to take him all the way, and she drew on him harder, deeper, imagining—
She yelped as strong hands tucked under her arms and drew her off. “What—” she began, but then his mouth was on hers and she was being kissed as if kissing was a complete sex act in itself. His fingers threaded hers and his big, hot body lay half on her and she thought she might die of lack of air until he lifted his head to stare into her face.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, as if to himself.
She was afraid to answer anyway, because it was beginning to dawn on her what was happening here. What might have started happening the first
moment that “Mr. Jones” knocked on her door and entered with his tools.
Such glorious tools, she thought, as he moved between her thighs and rocked his hips, the tip of his erection dragging over her clit and then teasing at the entrance to her body. There was a condom covering him now and she wished they were bare to bare, like they could be if—
“Look at me, baby,” he whispered.
Her eyes opened, lashes fluttering and he filled her vision, that gorgeous face of the man who’d been her sexual making…and the one she suspected might be her undoing—in an entirely other way. His fingers tightened on hers and then he was sliding into her by torturous increments.
“Kane,” she whispered.
A muscle flexed in his jaw and he buried his head against her neck as she tilted her hips to take more of him inside. He drove in to the root, groaning against her skin. Then he began to move, pulling out and diving back inside.
His mouth moved, imprinting his words onto her flesh.
You’re so tight…I could be inside you forever…that’s right, widen your thighs…have I told you how your kiss is the sweetest taste I’ve ever experienced…oh, baby, you’re so wet…I can’t last…I can’t do forever, even though I might want to…
She was breathing hard, desire pumping in her veins. Squirming, she rubbed her nipples against his hard chest, moaning at the sweet friction.
Kane’s hips double-timed, his rhythm becoming more desperate with each thrust. Then he let go of one of her hands and his slid between their bodies to find that sensitive flesh at the top of her sex. He managed to slow his pace as he toyed there, kissing her again as he rolled and rubbed.
“Oh, God,” she said against his mouth.
“Come, baby,” he said against hers, rubbing harder. “Come so good.”
And she did, waves of pleasure rolling over her as her toes curled and goose bumps broke out everywhere. Kane groaned as her inner muscles milked him, and then he was deep in her body, his shoulders shuddering as he climaxed.
He broke the kiss and lifted his head, his gaze still dark, his focus sharp as always. The intensity of it made her melt into the mattress and if her world hadn’t already turned on its axis, it would have right then.
Me and Mr. Jones (Heartbreak Hotel Book 2) Page 17
