by Rie Warren
He placed the ingredients on the counter beside the stove, and released me from his thrall to grab a thick iron skillet.
“Omelet?” I asked, shutting the fridge door.
He started dicing an onion he retrieved from the pantry while I discovered hot sauce in another cupboard.
He grinned when I placed the bottle on the table. “You do the pepper, and I’ll whisk the eggs.”
“I’m going shopping tomorrow. You need more protein.”
He put slabs of thick bacon in the skillet, the sizzle and scent immediate. “You calling me scrawny?”
I snorted. Hardly. He knew the answer to that but the male ego somehow always won out. “I’m not even touching that with a ten-foot pole.”
“Sorry to disappoint. I’m not that well-endowed.”
Then, as if he realized he’d crossed a line like never before, he turned stiffly back to the eggs. He whisked them like the devil himself controlled his hand, and I thought the fork was going to crack the bowl in half.
Roaming to his side, I drew a hand around his back.
He hissed in a harsh breath. His hand stopped moving.
Daringly, my fingers dipped beneath the shirt and around the bare skin of his waist.
“Reggie . . .” His neck craned back.
I knew exactly where the lean line was—that indent of muscle every woman wanted to track with her tongue to the end-point of a hard, hot, heavy cock. My fingers barely trailed into the cliff edge of flesh just above low-lying jeans before I pulled back.
Calder jerked, grunted. After I moved away, he concentrated even harder on the eggs, flipped the bacon.
I’d never touched another man like that in my life. Never allowed myself to look at Calder that way. Ever. I couldn’t deny the simple, zinging pleasure of touching a man again, knowing I affected him. That it was Calder perhaps made everything more complicated, but we shared a deeper stronger bond I hoped would eclipse the darkness of our pasts.
I wouldn’t taunt the tiger too much. Not tonight. He was still possessed by demons I couldn’t exorcise.
I set the table while Calder finished up the meal, crumbling cheese and crispy bacon before flipping the eggs handily.
“I’m impressed,” I said when he set the fluffy golden omelet in front of me.
“Hey, I’ve got more skills than you know about.” He took the seat across from me with a bold wink.
“Oh yeah? Maybe I’ll need more demonstrations in the future.” Tucking into the simple but tasty fare after a good dousing of hot sauce, I realized how hungry I was.
“Are you flirting with me, Reggie?”
“Would you mind if I was?”
He slowly shook his head. “It’s just . . . you never . . .”
“Why don’t we talk about something else?”
He scooped up a giant forkful, chewed and swallowed. “Like what?”
“How about that time we all went fishing, and you and Chris threw me in the river?”
Chortling a huge laugh—the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and lifted his face to the ceiling—he mesmerized me. “Well, I think he and I both wanted to see you in that wet T-shirt.”
I tossed my napkin at him. “I knew it.”
“What?” He shrugged, still laughing. “We were teenagers, and you had a nice rack.”
“Calder!” My mouth dropped open.
His eyes twinkled more as he waggled his eyebrows. “You still got a great rack though.”
“Oh my God.” I blushed right up to my ears. “I’ve created a monster.”
“You’re one to talk. I saw you checking me out in all my muscle-rippling glory earlier,” he playfully teased some more.
After the months of hardship, his addiction, the worry, I had no choice but to laugh right along with him, the lighthearted banter so welcome.
“Right.” I shifted my chair back after finishing my omelet. “I’m full, and you—sir—are full of yourself.”
He grabbed my wrist as I swept past, full-on grinning at me. “You brought it up.”
I glanced at his lap then swiftly away, dancing from his grasp. “No, you brought it up.”
He smirked again before wiping his lips with a napkin. “Oh no. You definitely brought it up.”
I made it a point not to stare at the soft-looking old jeans conformed to the defined bulge at his groin when he joined me at the sink.
He still smirked, I could see that in my peripheral vision.
We cleared the table together, rinsed the dishes together. Calder loaded the dishwasher, and every time he bent over I definitely trained my eyes on his perfect backside . . . when he wasn’t looking. I was a woman, after all, and more attuned to him than any other.
I knew he had an early practice tomorrow, a very torturous regimen to keep up as Carolina Crush clawed their way to Super Bowl fame, so as soon as the last plate was loaded, I grabbed a glass of water, saying, “I’ll hit the sack now.”
He gazed at me with silvery eyes. “Want me to check out that tendon first?”
A hot frisson went through me, thinking about his hands—those long, tough fingers—on my body. “Okay. Sure. Still got that massage table?”
“No.” He snorted, rubbing a hand over his neck, his expression sharp on me. “Chicks thought I was gay when I brought it up.”
“Poor baby.”
“I’ll poor baby you.” He snapped the damp dishtowel at my ass as I leaped away.
I changed into shorts so he could get to that tendon. Then I joined him in the living room and lay down on the huge couch. He’d spread soft towels and had a bottle nearby.
Another button on his shirt was undone, enough to show the tight musculature of his sternum and the black hair I wanted to rub all up against.
“I hope that’s not your lube.” I spared a glance at the bottle.
“Nah. I go old school. Vaseline. I like it thick.” He winked.
“Huh. So do I.” Oh, I definitely got him that time as he colored slightly.
But there it was again. The frisson. The move from companionship to a low simmer between us. What had been hidden in the background coming to the forefront now.
If I imagined him jerking his cock with slick hands I wouldn’t last this therapy sesh.
After oiling and warming his hands, he started at my feet. I had callouses even though I got regular pedis. The fallout from dancing for a living. His thumbs stroked into both arches at the same time, and my belly quivered.
“That’s not my tendon.” My voice quivered, too.
“Hmmm. Just being thorough.”
If I was so turned on by his thumbs on my feet, I’d probably spasm the moment he touched my damn ankles.
He warmed more oil in his palms and moved higher. My ankles and calves met the same soft pressure. I’d always known Calder was talented with his hands, one reason he was incredible as an athlete, as a center, but now I knew that touch firsthand.
I melted. Like wax dripping from a slow-burning candle. Every feather-soft caress and deeper harder stroke at once relaxing me and pushing me higher.
“Left thigh?” he murmured, his breath warm against my knee.
“Uh huh.”
And Oh, God. He opened me more, spreading my legs. I was limp but taut, nearly arching toward him.
Skimming from the backs of my knees—I shivered—to the insides of my thighs, he licked his suckable lips as I lifted my head to watch.
Then I leaned back, every cell in my body awash with yes, yes, yes, finally. Calder’s slick strong hands moved higher and higher, and my hips lifted in counterpoint.
In the back of my mind I saw his five o’clock shadow, short-cropped hair, the icy eyes all focused on me.
Arrowing in on me.
I felt a twinge of pain when he kneaded the tendon in question. It wasn’t a career-ending injury, just a mishap. Mostly an excuse.
But he immediately eased off. “There? Hurts there?”
“Not the way you touch me.”
<
br /> His eyes flickered up, gray and heavy and charged like a storm at flashpoint.
Calder’s fingers started straying up to the juncture of my thighs. I knew I was getting wet, hot. I wondered how long it would be before he smelled me. A woman on fire.
He was so strong, but he switched up the tight kneading motions with lighter flutterings. My hips kicked up, pushed down. My nipples pebbled. Heat engulfed me, spreading from the points of his fingertips to my pussy, quivering.
When he swept long fingers up inside my shorts, I couldn’t bite back the increasingly sexual moans. I didn’t want to. I’d always figured he was a brute in the bed, but now he was gentle, tender . . . and possibly teasing me. I wanted him to know what he was doing to me.
It had been so . . . damn . . . long.
So I spread my thighs farther and asked in a husky tone, “Should I take off the shorts?”
“What?” His fingers convulsed on my warm skin.
I tugged at the drawstring. “Would it be better if I took these off?”
A flood of expressions crossed his face. Then the outright erotic sternness won out—jaw clamped, eyes hot, lips licked. “Would it be better for you?”
“Yes,” I answered.
Line crossed.
“Are you wearing panties?”
“Do you care?” I arched and undulated, heat boiling in my body, a stinging string tightened from my legs he’d handled like a sexual god to the sensitive flesh of my tits to my wet slit.
His hands clasped my hips—rough and raw. “Answer me.”
“Yes. I’m wearing panties.”
He eased my shorts down, careful not to hook the lacy strings of the undergarment at my hips. Such sweet care, such a gentleman, even when undressing a woman. Calder. The man who bore every weight on his shoulders and took nothing for himself. Expected nothing for himself.
After pulling the shorts free, he angled his head back down. I knew there was a damp spot, slick and shiny and unmistakable.
“Jesus God.” He groaned, fingers curling around my knees.
I’d only lied a little. I wore a sheer thong. And I’d known it’d crawled between my labia—plump and swollen.
Lines crossed.
His thumbs swept over me, the skimming sexual touch no longer resembling a therapeutic massage.
I bracketed his wide shoulders between my thighs, my back arching, nipples hard.
His breath grew harsher as he touched the outer lips, traced the material, and ducked beneath to find the engorged wet need of me.
I dipped my fingers into the lacy sides, lowering one band from my hip.
Every muscle in his body tensed and stayed taut, leaving him motionless.
“Do you want to taste me, Calder?”
Primal gaze roving up my open body, his resistance faded. The animal I knew inside him almost unleashed. “Do you want me to?”
“God, yes,” I gasped, dipping a fingertip between his lips and pulling it back out through hot suction.
In that one second, his sensual fury would’ve eclipsed a hurricane. All the hurt and self-denial tossed to the wind. He didn’t take my thong off delicately.
Calder ripped the strings from my hips and jerked the fabric from my sex in two vicious moves.
His fingers returned to my widespread thighs. He visibly shuddered, every muscle on his torso so hard the seams of his shirt stretched. I was hot, wet, pulsing, orbiting for the anchor of his mouth, his lips, his fingers, but he halted.
His head lifted. “If you just need to scratch the itch, plenty of men would line up.” His hands pulled me toward him, his head bending, tight restraint rolling the muscles of his shoulders. “Hell, Tom would jump on you in a minute.”
I pumped up my hips, dragged my hands to his face. “This is for you. All about you and me. I want you to go down on me.” Speaking those intimate words . . . I was breathless, caught in a tripwire.
Releasing Calder, I laid back. Open, waiting, ready. Wanting. “And Tom?” A gentle snort turned into a gasp at the pressure from Calder’s fingers and his breath washing over my slick slit. “He’s like a brother to me.”
Nostrils flaring. Tongue sliding across his lips. He pulled in a deep breath and held it.
And then Calder asked the most definitive question of all. “What am I to you then?”
“Mine.”
Chapter Seven
Courting Disaster
Calder
Email. January 8, 2015. Undisclosed location. Afghanistan.
Hey bro.
Heading out. Air support to provide.
Insurgents, that’s all I can say.
I don’t think I’m getting out of this one alive. Just a gut feeling. Maybe you get the same thing during a game when you’re gonna lose, not that you do that too fucking often, right?
You’re in my heart, brother. Don’t let Reggie down. Whatever she needs. Fuck knows she’s needed more than I could give for a long damn time.
Love you
Fuck off all the way
Chris
CHRISTOPHER J. MALONE, Capt. USAF
Present day
“MINE.”
My brain almost exploded as well as my cock. The cock, which had been hurtin’—big and hard—since I’d set my hands on Reggie’s silken flesh.
The smell of her pussy had drawn my fingers closer and closer to her heat. Fuck the massage. I wanted to root dick-deep inside her. And when she’d basically given me permission to rip off that thong? No force in this world could’ve kept me from doing just that.
Goddammit, but she had just the thinnest line of soft hair pointing right to a fully aroused cunt. Shimmering. Swollen. The lips juicy and pink.
Reggie saying she saw me as hers—not as a brother or her old buddy—changed everything between us in an instant.
I released a growl, released all my control, and bound her thighs in my hard hands.
“Calder,” she gasped out just before I brushed the tip of my tongue against a clit that quivered with reaction.
“This what you want?” I pursed my lips over the engorged bud.
She strained up, back bowed. All that emerged from her throat was a hot whimper.
I pulled my tongue back, probably made bruises on her legs as my thumbs dug into the crease between cunt and thigh. “Tell me now.”
“Your mouth. Calder, yes. That’s what I need.”
A ferocious snarl broke out of me then. I went at her recklessly. Every audible reaction from her goaded me on as much as her taste, her scent. God, so many years I’d waited. Hard flicks and soft bites and she swelled even brighter. Hips climbing. Wetness spilling into my mouth.
I would never stop wanting her there, right there, a feast all for me.
My lips nuzzling, pulling on her labia. My tongue trailing right into the tight hot rim of her pussy, that rosy little hole where more and more liquid dripped out. I circled her, rotating my tongue left then right before plunging deep. Her lusty moan joined my rough grunt.
“Fuck, you taste so good, Reggie.” My voice vibrated from the depths of my chest.
Her hips hitched higher, and my hard-fucking desire for her almost had me spraying off inside my pants.
I palmed her ass, mashed my mouth against her. I used a thumb to press into the slick hole where my tongue drove in and out.
She reached down to grab my head, but I lifted my face. I bet my eyes were wild. My face wet. I stared at her for a sexual beat of tension before my thick voice shuddered out.
“No hands, baby.” Pushing my thumb into her, my face contorted when her inner muscles—that massaging tissue—grasped it. “Not until I say you can grab me.”
Reggie’s glossy brown eyes ran as hot as her cunt bearing down on my thumb, and my gaze strayed to what was open before me.
A sexy pussy, labia spread, pearly fluid covering each frill of flesh.
Then I stared at her eyes again. “Gonna eat you until I feel you come all over my fucking face.”
; All the harsh-voiced commands I’d wanted to drill into her for years came directly to the surface as I pinned her still and open.
My cock convulsed, spitting a hot pulse of precome inside my jeans.
“Fuck,” I muttered when—with a slight retraction of my thumb—another drop of cunt juice dripped from her hole. “Fuck.”
Reggie balled her hands beside her head then jerked and moaned when I ate at her more slowly, more hotly, like a fire building inside and out.
I had two fingers inside her—thick and tunneling deep, not nearly as deep as my cock would stretch.
She was soft, wet, gripping.
I eased my mouth over her in waves of motion, and her stomach drew in, almost rigid with the need to come. But everything below was liquid, woman, melting then constricting.
“Oh. Oh, Jesus. Calder!” Her legs drew up, and her toes pointed, placed on my shoulder blades.
Her hips canted and her hands reached.
“Grab my head because I’m about to make you come.” That lusty command made her cry out.
She immediately thrust her fingers onto the back of my head and kicked her pelvis up.
I had one second to ponder the positions I could put her flexible body in before I swore as her cunt bloomed like a flower around my roaming tongue then cinched like a vise onto my pumping fingers.
She shrieked savagely, an echo of the growl I transferred right into her spasming pussy.
I took her down slowly, my fingers swirling in and out once she released. I kissed her clit so softly the press of my lips was just a whisper of breath.
I stroked her quivering thighs, laying them back down on the couch, and her hand rested over her eyes. Face flushed, nipples hard beneath her shirt, mouth parted, glistening, panting.
Fighting against the raging monster of a cock straining in my jeans, I grabbed up her shorts. Breaths beating harshly in and out of my chest because I could come with one plunge inside the body bare and open beneath me, I slipped the shorts over her ankles.
“What?” Her eyes fluttered open, so dazed I would’ve smiled with satisfied male pride if every muscle on my body wasn’t poised to pounce on her. “I thought . . .”
Reggie’s slumberous gaze shifted to the front of my jeans where the beast roared to be let loose.
