“So we are.”
She folded the knife back into its red case, but he was massaging the back of her head and . . .
It was like a burner had been turned on under her, huffing a sharp flame through her core, splitting her in half.
She dropped the knife to the floorboard and, in spite of everything she’d told herself about getting back to the hotel and ending this night, she gave in to those trembles.
No control.
No use for it anymore . . .
On a blast of hormonal insanity, she surged toward him, crushing her mouth against his.
For a white-flash second, he didn’t respond, and the taste of him—beer and man and tobacco—permeated her, lighting the fire inside her even higher. Who even cared if he smoked? She was too wound up.
Pressing her thighs together to assuage the ache between them, she wondered when he’d kiss her back, wondered why he wasn’t doing it already. Was he all done with the games now that the bargaining was over?
Humiliation roared over her skin, and she disconnected from him, backing away. “Sorry. I thought . . .”
Her words caught in her throat as she saw the ravenous gleam in his eyes, and the next thing she knew, he’d dug both hands into her hair, pulling her to him, kissing her with such hard yearning that she thought maybe he’d been looking for her a long time and had just found her.
She tumbled into a giddy, spinning vortex, unable to breathe, holding back a moan low in her throat. His stubble burned her face, his hands gripping her hair so tightly that it almost hurt, her body crashing into itself with a lust so powerful that it scared her . . .
Where was this going? No idea, but, damn, she knew where she wanted it to end up. She’d always lived in her head, never outside of it, and there’d been no one—no one ever—who’d made her this crazy with heat.
As if reading what she was thinking, Cash broke off the kiss, nipping at the corner of her lips, her jaw.
“What’s next, Molly?” he said. Even though it sounded like a question, it was more of a demand. “Tell me where you want to go.”
Not back to her room. She was here, and she was ecstatic about it. In the moment. In intoxicating, one-night-only, who’ll-ever-know-back-home lust.
But something still restrained her. Her Molly-ness. It helped that he’d found the sensitive spot just below her ear, and she curved her back, cozying into him. She mewled, surprised that she was capable of a kitty-cat noise like that.
And she damned well knew what she wanted next. Her breasts. The bare tips were scratching against her blouse, and as he sucked on her earlobe, she grabbed his hand, bringing it up to her, leading his thumb to her nipple.
He eased it round and round, so slowly it killed her, then back and forth, gentle yet rough enough to make her strain against his touch.
“I knew I’d find your wild streak,” he whispered against her ear.
He deftly unbuttoned her blouse until it parted, then smoothed his hands up from her waist to her breasts, palming them.
“Shit, you’re beautiful, Molly, just like I knew you’d be.”
As she leaned back against the car door, giving him a better view, she watched his face. His gaze was passion-glowed in the dashboard light, and she knew that she didn’t need the kind of breasts those other women in the Rough & Tumble had—the type of women who’d been with him in the saloon this afternoon . . .
Other women, she thought. Holy crap, she was becoming one of the many on Cash Campbell’s very long list.
But as he worked her nipples with his thumbs, she couldn’t really bring herself to care.
No one back home will ever know. Not after tonight . . .
When he started to pull up her skirt, she sucked in a breath between her teeth.
He stopped, the linen bunched right below the danger zone.
They both panted, gasping for oxygen. She realized that the windows had steamed and she’d brought one leg up on the seat to hang over the top of it, her other heeled shoe still planted on the floor, and air was tickling her most vulnerable spot.
Exposed, she thought. It made her pound even more, raw and plumped and dying for him to touch her there.
With an unreadable look on his face, he skimmed a hand over her hair, almost like he was thinking about something other than sex, then began to back away.
“Cash?” she whispered, the word ripped out of her. She clasped her skirt, and it wasn’t out of embarrassment now. It was out of mounting frustration. Her voice took on an edge because she still didn’t know if he was playing a game. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“To fuck you until the ice melted off the snow queen? Yeah, I did.”
His blunt words were like sparklers fizzing against her skin, like a flicker of popping fireworks against her clitoris.
Molly had never known that she liked a man to talk like this to her. Not until now.
Turned on beyond comprehension, she used her fingers to inch up her skirt. Her legs weren’t wide-open—her raised leg was bent inward, pushing against his side—so she wasn’t giving him the full view. But he had to be getting a glimpse, and his body tensed as his fingers clamped her waist.
She tugged her skirt higher, until it was just over her . . .
Cash would’ve called it a pussy. She wanted to call it that, too.
Pussy.
“Is this what you wanted?” she asked on a breath.
“A million times since I first saw you.”
He ran one hand from her waist down her hip, to her thigh, where he rested his fingers on the outside and his thumb on the inside. Her muscles jumped just before he urged open her leg for him.
She resisted, but only because she was getting off on his expression—an obvious appetite that was becoming more famished by the second.
Who had the power now?
But he was an expert at giving as good as he got, and he coaxed his thumb down her inner thigh. The sensation trilled through her and, instinctively, she parted all the way for him.
And there she was, open to God and country and Cash.
“Pink and pretty,” he said. “You don’t disappoint.”
She didn’t know what got into her, but she raised her arm, resting it over her head against the door. Her breast flattened, and he smiled like a predator.
When he bent down to her, taking her nipple into his mouth, desire jerked her so forcefully that she arched and fully hooked her leg over the back of the seat, baring herself even more.
A laugh bubbled in her. Free. So this was what it was like . . .
He sucked on her, then used his tongue, his teeth, his fingers, and she wiggled under him, ready.
But he didn’t seem to think so, because as he tasted her and loved her, he slid his fingers between her folds, up, down, pressing her clitoris, making her hold back a squeak of rising fervor.
“When’s the last time you came for someone?” he whispered against her breast.
She didn’t want to tell him. There’d been a chance—a slim one—that she’d orgasmed in college once. But it’d never happened since, except with her vibrating rabbit.
“Don’t ask me stuff like that,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it makes you sound like you were raised in a whorehouse.”
He laughed against her chest, and that felt good, too, just like everything else he did. Then he paused, and a second of expectancy hung between him right before . . .
When he thrust a finger into her, she rocked against him, gasping.
“What does it take to get you to come?” He was ruthless, wouldn’t stop. “One finger?”
Her hips shifted as he pushed in and out.
“Or maybe,” he said, “more than that.”
He pushed two into her, and she stifled the cry that kept threatening to
spill out of her lungs.
“Yeah,” he said, nuzzling her ear, biting it again, sending a nasty bolt of need through her. “Two’s more like it.”
Then he did something no one had ever done to her—he began to move his fingers like he was gesturing for someone to come over to him. As he hit a spot Molly hadn’t known she’d had, she lost it, letting that repressed cry out, grabbing at his shirt until she heard seams strain.
She was in another world now, one that was part dark and part light. They wove in and out of each other like wispy ghosts, dodging, joining, separating, getting thicker and more entangled every time Cash stroked her.
They pressed against her eyes, stealing her breath, blanking her mind, growing bigger and bigger, taking her over until—
She bit into her arm to keep from yelling or screaming or showing him how inexperienced she was. But the sounds escaped her anyway, filling the car, echoing in her head and throughout her body.
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” he said. “You screaming my name.”
A sheen of sweat coated her, nipping at her skin. She was buzzing, his fingers still inside her, intimate and carnal.
“I didn’t scream your name,” she said.
“You did.” He had that smug look again.
She gave it right back to him. “Bullshit.”
Her dirty mouth seemed to stoke him, and he put pressure on her clitoris with his thumb, massaging her. She groaned.
“Say my name now,” he murmured.
He wasn’t going to win everything tonight.
She reached down, coasting her fingers over his penis. He cursed, so she rubbed him harder.
“Say my name,” she said.
“Fuck you, Molly.” He laughed until she cupped him, squeezing gently.
“Can you say it nicer?”
“Damn you, Molly.”
A softer growl, playful and needful, and that worked just fine for her.
She didn’t know where this Molly had come from, but she liked her, and when Cash reached into one of those back pockets, he fumbled out the Bettie Page lighter. It hit the floor as he reached in again and came out with a condom, unwrapping it as quickly as she was undoing his button fly.
This was surreal: her in a car, having sex with a guy she barely knew. A guy who wasn’t even remotely her type. But it wasn’t like she was ever going to see him again. So why not?
Why not once in her lifetime before she got back to normal?
He wasn’t wearing underwear, so she brought him all the way out, his length long and pulsing in her hand. Pre-ejaculate beaded his tip, and she knew they didn’t have long until he climaxed.
After slipping the rubber onto himself, he grabbed her by the hips and, in one smooth move, maneuvered so he was sitting on the car seat and bringing her onto his lap at the same time. He pulled her toward him, impaling her, and she leaned back with a shocked breath. But then, in the next one, she fell forward, grasping the back of the seat, straddling him as he moved her hips with his hands, helping her to churn and grind. He filled her up, putting her into a feverish void that echoed with her gasps and the wet sounds of him going in and out of her.
“Dammit,” he groaned.
“Damn what?” she asked.
But he was getting close, out of control, and she had no doubt that Cash didn’t like it that way.
She was going to make him come this fast? An experienced guy like him?
The thought built upon all the other steamy thoughts she’d been piling up within her all night, and they rose up and up, wobbling like a stack that wouldn’t hold.
When he climaxed, digging his fingers into her hips and surrendering with one last rough, hard string of curses, she kept going, going, piling heated bliss upon heated bliss, wobbling inside, unbalanced. As she began to fall apart, she laughed, happier than she’d ever been—
An explosion pulled her open, a pillar of fire seething into every corner of her, even into places she hadn’t known existed before now. Charred pieces of her floated, still burning as they brushed her, leaving scars of heat.
Leaving her slumped against Cash, her face in his hair.
He was sweating, too. At some point during her orgasm, he’d gotten his hands under the back of her skirt, and he was palming her rear end. His fingers danced awfully close to her folds, and she waited for him to touch her again.
But he didn’t.
Suddenly, she started to get the uh-ohs. Was this where he’d act all badass and tell her to get the hell out of his car now that he’d screwed her? Would he call her a slut and brag to his friends about nailing her?
Worst of all, would he tell them that she wasn’t half as good as his more experienced women?
When her phone rang from somewhere on the floor, muffled in her purse, she rolled off of him. Her hair was so finger-molested that it slumped to the side of her face, hiding her from view.
She grabbed her phone as he started to put himself back together.
“Hello?”
“Molly? Where are you?” It was Sofia. “You should’ve been back here by now!”
Dammit. “I’m sorry, Sof, I—”
“I’ve been calling for the last fifteen minutes. Why didn’t you answer?”
She’d gotten so carried away she hadn’t even heard the ringtone. “I . . . misplaced my phone, but here it is. We took a little longer getting out of the saloon than I thought.”
A chuckle came from the other side of the car, where Cash had gotten back behind the wheel. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw that he’d undone an empty sports drink bottle, probably putting the used condom in there. He capped it, tossed it in back, then started the engine. They didn’t go anywhere.
She realized that was because he might’ve been waiting for her to put her own self back together, buttoning her blouse and adjusting her skirt. She was still slick, and the only thing that seemed to be in normal shape were the strappy heels she’d never taken off.
Embarrassment flushed her. Regret.
What now?
“I swear, Sof,” she said, taking care of this particular issue first, “I’ll be back in less than twenty-five.”
“We’ll be in the room, worried sick.”
Molly hung up, then quickly took care of her clothing. All the while, she couldn’t take her gaze off the lock of hair she’d given to Cash. It seemed so innocent on the dashboard, so out of place, just like she had been under an hour ago.
But, after what she’d just done, she wasn’t that Molly anymore.
Was she?
10
Cash had never gone through an afterglow like this—a postsex epilogue that could only be described as “efficient.”
After Molly’s friends had put an effective end to the date, she had buttoned up, got back to business, and asked him to drive her to the hotel. She’d even turned on the CD player without asking, drowning out the car with music instead of pillow talk as they took to the interstate.
Had he done something to make her act so distant? The sex had been good, boisterous, explosive even, and he wouldn’t have objected if it’d lasted longer. But Molly had some kind of magic touch that’d turned him into a seventeen-year-old kid who couldn’t hold his rocket in check. And when her friends had called to get her back to the hotel?
Game over. No more chance of extra innings.
He’d gotten what he’d wanted, though, and that should’ve been enough.
Soon, he had them on the Strip, and he pulled up to the stoplight in front of Caesars Palace, still trying to figure out what he should say to her now that the day was done and their time was up. He snuck a glance at her, and she was still quiet, even kind of dignified, accepting of what’d happened between them. But what had he been expecting from a woman like her? That she would bitch about him “putting pressure on her for sex” or that sh
e would repeat over and over again that she never did things like this and she couldn’t believe she’d let him seduce her?
In the shaded neon, he thought he caught a hint of a smile on her face, but it vanished when he looked closer.
Shit, Molly confused him, mostly because of the way he reacted to her. Sure, his dick was more than happy, but for some reason the old cock wasn’t happy enough. Maybe it was the way Molly smelled. He couldn’t get enough of her skin, especially after she’d been sweating and rubbing against him. Pheromones, they called them, right? Chemicals the body produced that signaled attraction. But why didn’t anyone else’s pheromones ever make him want to drive off with her in his car, taking her to a place where he could fuck her until he was finally tired of her?
The light turned green, and he drove into the entrance. The white majesty of the casino’s coliseum-like walls and the fancy statues greeted them, and he realized that, once Molly was out his door, he was never going to see this woman again.
As he came to a stop in back of a line of cars, he glanced at the lock of blond hair on top of his dashboard. He also had her bra and panties if he got too sentimental, which was bullshit. His cock just wanted another go, that’s all.
She turned to him, a smile plastered on her face. She’d smoothed down her hair and checked her makeup on the way back, but he’d kind of liked her messy.
Moaning.
Coming for him.
He tamped down his continuing greed for her as a valet approached from down the car line.
Molly cleared her throat. “Well, it was interesting.”
Cool and official.
“Yeah, it was.” Should he say anything else, like, How about one more for the road?
But he’d never needed to work for a woman, and he wasn’t about to start doing it. “You have yourself a good vacation, Molly P. Preston. Don’t get into any more trouble.”
“Aw. You say that as if I was planning on completely ruining my reputation.” She put her fingers on the door handle.
He realized that he knew next to nothing about her, and it was a shame, really, because he’d never met a woman like Molly. What other surprises did she have in store for someone?
Rough and Tumble Page 11
