With Every Heartbeat

by Linda Kage

  And speaking of hard—and under me—something had grown noticeably stiffer against my bottom. Realizing how inappropriately I was sitting on his lap, I started to move off him, but his hand snaked out and caught me high on the thigh.

  “Don’t go.”

  I fell still. Unable to help myself, I kissed his temple. “How can I help you? Tell me what to do.”

  He drew in a breath, smelling my neck and brushing his nose lightly along my pulse. Then his hand moved slowly up my thigh until he was gripping my hip. I grew moist and tensed, hoping he didn’t find out.

  “Make it go away,” he whispered against my throat. “Make me forget.”

  With a shiver, I shook my head, not understanding, or maybe I was too hopeful to really think I understood. “How?”

  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his nose that touched me next, right under my ear. It felt too wet and soft, like tongue, followed by the crisp nip of teeth. I gasped, and my head fell back as my fingers bit into his shoulders, unable to control the crackling surge of heat between my legs.

  As his thumb stroked my hip, burning through my clothes, scorching my skin, and shifting dangerously too close to where I was throbbing and wet, he pulled back to look me in the eye. “I almost had my mouth on you that night,” he slurred. His gaze fell to my lips. “Except I wasn’t free. And now that I am...I still want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you so many times. So many nights. I’d dream about you and wake up aching. Then I’d touch myself, wishing it was your hand, not my own. I’d walk through the library almost every day, just to see if you were there.”

  I drew in a sharp breath, unable to believe what I was hearing. After weeks of crushing on him, wishing I was his, and knowing I could never be, weeks of knowing he loved someone else, after helping him pick out a ring for her, it didn’t seem real that I was hearing what I was hearing.

  He leaned in as if to kiss me, but he stopped only inches away. “I want you, Zoey. I tried to stop it. I even bought Cora a fucking ring in an attempt to convince myself I didn’t want you. But in the end, she turned out to be a cheating whore…and I still want you.”

  I whimpered. “Oh God.” Was arousal always this intense? It was the first time I’d ever been so turned on, and I was nearly crippled by the lust. My skin sizzled with warmth. My breasts went tight and achy, and the heavy clenching deep in my womb made me press my thighs together. Quinn’s erection under my bottom grew hotter.

  I was more aware of him then I’d been of another human being on earth. Quinn’s presence was so large, so there, it just took control. The heat from his body scorched me as his breath tickled my cheek when he leaned in another inch. I gulped, unable to control my erratic panting, and tried to focus on his neck.

  Why I chose his neck, I have no idea. But right then, even the freckle on his pulse looked too damn sexy to calm me. I wanted to sink my teeth in it and taste him. I think I even swayed toward it.

  “Did you know,” he murmured, causing my nerves to wrench in eager, delicious contact with the sound of his voice and the wash of his warm, moist breath on me, “that when you’re sexually aroused your heart starts pumping fast to circulate the blood to all organs that’re preparing to fuck? So you start breathing harder to support the oxygen rushing through your lungs.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and bowed my head, trying desperately to slow my breathing, but instead I ended up jerking in a loud, shuddering gasp that made it overly obvious just how out of control my lungs were.

  He cupped the side of my neck just under my earlobe, his fingers skimming around to the sensitive part of my nape while his thumb just barely grazed my lower jaw. The tip of his nose brushed the rim of my ear.

  “Are you listening to me, Zoey? Do you hear me breathing just as hard as you are?”

  A relieved sob tore from my throat and my eyes flashed open when I realized he was breathing as hard as I was. I lifted my face and met his gaze. His eyes were glassy and bloodshot, but the expression was just as uncertain and hopeful as I knew mine was.

  He took my hands and laced our fingers together. More pressure tightened around my chest. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Quinn was touching me, and I was letting him. We both wanted what was coming next, and we both knew it. It was so crazy, yet amazing, a complete dream come true. I didn’t even care how wrong it was.

  He watched me as he pressed our foreheads together. My breasts swelled and pulsed with pleasure.

  I whimpered, needing something, I have no idea what, but I knew Quinn could supply it. And he did. He dipped his face until his lips glanced the very corner of my mouth. I turned my face his way, seeking more, but he shifted back, teasing me out of my mind.

  His gaze flitted from my lips to my eyes. Ever so vigilant, he read my expression, testing my response. “Is this okay?”

  That’s when I couldn’t stand it a second longer. I dove at him and kissed him for real, fitting my mouth completely against his. I had no idea what to expect, but the rush of endorphins to my head, the weightlessness in my stomach and the curling of my toes surprised me.

  Quinn groaned and abandoned my hip to catch my face in his large, warm palms. His mouth moved over mine, and the tips of his fingers felt abrasive and hard and delicious as they skimmed through my hair.

  I arched up, needing to get closer. My heart beat wonkily in my chest as he tugged me in until I was straddling him and pressing my throbbing core to his straining erection. I felt everything, the hard plane of his chest, the strength of muscle in his powerful thighs, the steel bulge of his arousal pressing into me. His mouth attacked mine as he kissed me hard and ruthlessly.

  And I wasn’t freaked out. That might’ve been the craziest part of it all. I trusted Quinn implicitly. He could do anything, absolutely anything, because I knew I’d want it and I’d like it. I was already that far gone. So when he began to rub little circles over the hinges of my jaw with his thumbs, I followed his lead and let my lips part for him.

  His tongue swooped in, and he claimed me in a whole new way. Mine slid against his, eager but hesitant. He made a sound of approval that hummed from his throat. Then he wrapped his tongue around mine and showed me how to make them dance. Even with the hint of alcohol, I loved the way he tasted, all fresh and crisp and completely Quinn. Hungry for more, I clamped my thighs around his hips and ground against him.

  He groaned and pressed right back against me.

  Yes! That was it. Right there.

  I broke free of the brutally hot kiss and gasped for breath. Quinn tucked his face into my throat and panted as he continued to ride his hips hard against me. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to wrap my legs around him and imagine him deep inside me.

  “What’s the next step after kissing?” he rasped breathlessly.

  “Wha...what?” I shook my head, my brows puckering in confusion.

  “Steps of intimacy,” he repeated. “You know...arm to shoulder, mouth to mouth. What’s next?”

  How he could remember something like that at a time like this, I’ll never know. I couldn’t even remember my own name.

  I shook my head, only wanting his mouth back on mine. “No idea.”

  “That’s okay.” He stood, picking me up by the butt, my legs still anchored around his waist, and he started to carry me down the hall. “We’ll just figure it out as we go.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening, not even as he paused at a doorway where the door was three-quarters shut and he nudged me inside a dark room. I buried my face in his neck and hugged the solid expanse of his shoulders, seeking comfort from his familiar smell. My excited, overeager senses buzzed with anticipation, even as they jerked with worry.

  What the heck was I doing? This was my best friend’s boyfriend. Or at least he had been up until two hours ago. That marked him as strictly forbidden. I shouldn’t be touching him the way I was touching him, wanting him the way I craved every inch of him, or licking my way up his neck the way my tongue was licking without my
permission.

  But he tightened his arms around me and groaned out another one of his approving hums, telling me he wanted this just as much as I did.

  He was drunk though, which probably meant I was taking advantage. It was up to me to stop this.

  Oh God. How was I going to find the will to stop this?

  Quinn set me on the mattress once he found the bed. There was a moment in the dark that we were separated, when I knew I had to act, had to say no. But then he flicked on the bedside lamp, and I looked up at him. I opened my mouth to say…something, but the hungry need in his eyes fried my resistance. No way could I tell him no, not after he was finally looking at me the way I’d been dreaming he would for weeks.

  His crystalline blue eyes glittered with a predatory awareness as he set a knee on the bed and began to crawl toward me. I had no idea why I went on retreat, maybe because he looked as if he wanted to devour me whole. I wasn’t graceful with my crablike crawl away from him while he was more than supple in his stealthy prowl forward. By the time he climbed on top of me, I had stumbled back into a supine sprawl with the back of my head flattening into one of his pillows.

  Triumph flooded his smile as he gazed at me. My lips trembled when I tried to smile back. I didn’t know what was about to happen, I didn’t know how it’d feel, or how it’d affect us afterward, I just knew I wanted it anyway. Desperately.

  Quinn must’ve sensed my nerves. He studied me with his glassy, inebriated gaze before catching a piece of my hair and whispering, “Are you scared?”

  I shook my head, though I’m sure I probably looked like a liar from how wide my eyes were and how badly my lips trembled.

  But scared? Of him? Never.

  Nervous? Yes. Definitely.

  He gently smoothed his rough fingers over my face before tucking my hair behind my ears. “Have you ever done this before?”

  I almost blurted out a laugh. But done this? I’d never even kissed anyone before he’d brushed his mouth against mine only minutes ago in the front room. So, no, I’d never lain on a bed underneath a guy, and I’d certainly never done what he was really asking.

  I settled for shaking my head a second time.

  Tenderness entered his face. I think he liked my answer. He kissed the tip of my nose. “Can I show you how?”

  I nodded, and he flashed me his dimples.

  “We have to communicate a lot,” he whispered, “let each other know what we do and don’t like.”

  I smiled, because, “I like everything so far,” I whispered back.

  When I circled his face with the tips of my fingers, hoping he liked that, his gaze met mine. “So, do I.”

  Then this expression entered his face, like awe, as if he couldn’t believe it was me under him and not someone else. It reminded me of the exact way I felt. I was here with Quinn, like this. I just could not believe this was happening.

  “What else should I know?” I asked, eager to learn.

  “Kissing,” he said right before he lowered his mouth to mine. “Kissing it important.”

  Our lips absorbed each other, exploring and moving until our tongues joined in, and it was just as powerful as our first kiss. Maybe more so.

  “I like kissing,” I gasped out, cradling his face and burying my fingers in his rich, thick hair as he nibbled his way down my neck.

  “It gets better.”

  Oh, God. I swallowed and then sucked in a hard breath when his teeth nipped at a sensitive spot on my pulse.

  Body on fire and throbbing in more places than I could count, I arched up against him. “How? Show me.”

  “Touching,” he said. “Touching and kissing both.”

  Thus began the pleasure assault of his fingers. Up my neck, into my hair, clutching my scalp as he kissed me deeper, then down again, over my shoulders, along my arms, catching my hip, curving around the swell of my bottom and digging his nails in as he canted my hips up and ground his erection into my core.

  I couldn’t take much more of this. I had to... I had to...

  “Can I touch you too?” My voice was high and desperate.

  “Yes.” He took my wrist and pressed my palm flush against the center of his chest, right over his heart. “Touch wherever you like. Learn me, Zoey.”

  Dazed that I was actually doing this, I watched my hand, entranced as I moved it down, over his shirt. Mesmerized by the power and strength I felt rippling under the cotton, I moved back up, still unable to believe I was touching him however I pleased.

  He pulled back and sat up on his haunches long enough to grasp the back of his shirt and tear it off over his head. And oh, my... My greedy hands returned to him, a little more certain, and a lot more curious.

  “You’re so warm and hard, yet soft.”

  “Not as soft as you.” He leaned down and kissed me again, petting his hand down my side until he reached the hem of my shirt. I was too busy delighting my way over his bulky, warm arms and thick shoulders, then pausing at the stubble on his jaw, before having a field day in his hair, to care what he did with my shirt. It didn’t even alarm me when his fingers swooped under the cloth and skimmed over the flesh at my waist. Heck, I arched my back to give him more access. He took it, moving his palm up and his mouth down until they met at my breasts. As he cupped the bottom half and kissed the top through layers of cloth, I reacted wildly, not expecting how strongly an electrical current would shoot right out the ends of my nipples, and definitely not ready to feel it deep in my core.

  I clutched him, my hands curling instinctively around his back to anchor him against me. When my fingers encountered scar tissue, I faltered. Crap, I’d forgotten about his wounds. Quinn jerked and made a sound in the base of his throat as if he wasn’t quite sure how to react to my discovery.

  I wanted to inspect each laceration and love them, kissing every single one of them. But now didn’t seem like the time, so I ventured south until I came to the waistband of his jeans. Needing him to know he hadn’t repulsed me in any way, I kept going, inside his jeans, under the band of his boxers and down until I cupped cool, smooth buttocks. Then I squeezed.

  He groaned and bit down a little more enthusiastically onto my breast before he was whipping my shirt over my head.

  For a brief moment, I panicked. What if he saw how skinny and puny I was and turned disgusted? What if—

  “It’s okay,” he murmured, stroking one side of my hair as he buried his nose into the other. “You’re so beautiful. I just want to see you.” He pulled back. “Just want to worship every inch of you.”

  I blew out a shuddered breath and nodded. His smile warmed. Then his gaze lowered. I held perfectly still. When he reached for the strap of my bra and slid it off my shoulder, I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing. But he stilled.

  “Zoey?”

  My lashes fluttered open.

  He shook his head, almost as if he was confused. “Don’t be scared. I’d never hurt you.”

  Tears filled my eyes. I nodded and sent him a huge, watery smile. Then I removed my bra myself. He watched, seemingly spellbound. After I unbuttoned my pants, shimmied them down my legs, and kicked them off, I hooked my fingers into the tops of my panties, but he caught my hand. “Not yet. I just...I-I don’t know if I could trust my own control if I saw all of you right now because...wow.”

  He blew out a breath.

  Feeling good, feeling bold and uninhibited, I reached for the top button of his jeans. “Can I see all of you?”

  Another strained breath escaped him, but he nodded and removed both his jeans and his boxer shorts.

  I thought I was ready for my first glimpse of his cock, but I wasn’t at all. My head went dizzy as the long column bobbed proud and free from his body. I knew the mechanics, what was supposed to happened, what went where, and I began to wonder how the heck that huge, long thing could fit anywhere inside me. He’d rip me in half.

  Oh, crap. How bad was this going to hurt?

  “Trust me,” he said, reading my mind as he
smoothed his fingers over my hair. “It’ll work. As long as you’re wet, it’ll work perfectly.”

  Well, we didn’t need to worry about that then. I was already wet. Embarrassingly wet. My panties were so damp they’d soaked through.

  I blushed hard, but he merely smiled. “After the touching and kissing comes the licking,” he instructed. He lowered his head and licked one of my nipples into his mouth.

  My back came off the bed as I shrieked, startled by the intensity of sensation that surged through me. But Quinn didn’t just lick. He commenced to suck as well, lavishing one breast, then the other until I was a panting, aroused mess.

  “Quinn,” I begged, needing him to help alleviate all this throbbing pressure he’d created.

  His lips were red and swollen when he lifted his face to grin at me, his blue eyes still glazed with alcohol but also, I think, arousal.

  “Ready for another biology lesson?”

  “What?” I gasped in disbelief, my chest heaving. How could he even think about—

  My eyes crossed when he slid his hand down and touched me through my drenched panties.

  “I want to teach you about flowers. Flower anatomy.”

  What had he just said? Nothing was computing. So I just bobbed my head and slurred, “’Kay.”

  “Like humans, flowers can have female reproductive organs, male reproductive organs, or they can have both.” His fingers curled around the band of my underwear, and he began to lower them over my abdomen, then my pubic hair.

  I sucked in my stomach, unable to catch a steady breath.

  After he peeled the cloth down my legs and tossed them over his shoulder, his gaze focused on me, right where I was wet and aching. I didn’t mean to, but I squirmed until I’d arched my hips an inch off the bed in a silent plea for attention.

  His lips spread with a masculine kind of pride. “First, you see the petals that cover the reproductive organs.” His gaze lifted to mine as one of his fingers stroked my petals. “That’s the prettiest part, I think. So pink and delicate, hiding the best things inside it.”