by Alison Kent
She supposed that should have frightened her a bit. Had she not lived the life she had, that might well have been her reaction. But she was beyond being intimidated by a man who denied his own suffering.
She pulled her hands away from their tactile enjoyment of the bulge behind denim and soft cotton and pressed her palms to his sides, to his rib cage, just above the slack waistband of his jeans.
The smoothness of his skin never failed to amaze her. With all that he’d lived through, she always expected to find him as hard and coarse as his outlook. But he was a beautiful male specimen, and she slid her hands from his ribs to his armpits, enjoying the shudder that rattled through him.
When she moved her fingertips to his chest, circling his flat nipples embedded in the hard muscles of his pecs, and tugging on the one silver ring, his shudder grew stronger. This time she shuddered, too, and released him just long enough to skim off her silk sweater and bra.
Oh, yes. So much better, feeling his skin with her own, on her own. He stiffened and then slowly relaxed, as if easing into the contact and knowing she was in no hurry to complete what they’d begun.
That was one thing she enjoyed most about this man. She was seven years older, and she saw the age difference in his cocky playfulness, yet never in bed. He was mature as a lover, patient, taking care of her pleasure, savoring their time and allowing nothing to intrude.
With her breasts pressed to the center of his back, she turned her head and placed her lips on his spine, kissing him softly, tasting his skin while making circles with the tip of her tongue. She moved her hands ever so slowly down his abdomen, teasing him by never reaching beneath his clothing, though he lifted his hips and urged her to do so.
She couldn’t wait to take his penis into her hands, to stroke the thick shaft, to marvel over the softness of the mushroomed head, to absorb the warmth that always seemed on the verge of burning her hands. But there was so much more of his body to be cherished first.
“Take off your boots,” she ordered, and he bent to unlace and remove them. She kicked off her own pumps, losing two inches to him.
“Now your pants,” she added, once he’d straightened. She swore she heard a dangerous chuckle as he stripped. The sound served to tighten her tautly strung nerves even further, to heighten the room’s tension until the air became hard to breathe.
He stood, braced his hands on the window frame again as if needing the solid hold to keep from falling. Or to keep from letting go all the truths and emotions he kept bound tightly inside.
Determined to break through before letting him go, she shimmied out of her pants and kicked the black linen across the floor along with her black lace panties, tickled at her ability to mistreat her expensive clothes.
Patrick Coffey was a very bad influence, and she wouldn’t have him any other way.
Starting at his shoulders, she drew her fingertips down his back to his buttocks, and then down farther, skimming her palms over the backs of his thighs as far as her reach allowed. Her own skin prickled with gooseflesh; the room was cool, but the reaction was strictly due to Patrick’s heat. The temperature contrast added an extreme dimension to the sensory stimulation that consumed her.
Slipping her hands around to the front of his thighs, she tickled and teased her way back up his body, brushing her fingers only briefly through the thicket of hair at his crotch. He growled, thrusting his hips forward and keeping his hands where they were on the windowsill, accepting her challenge to wait.
This was what she enjoyed most about sex with Patrick. His patience outlasted even hers, as did his endurance, making for a wicked combination in bed. She played across the ripples of his abdomen, tugging at the hair that grew beneath his navel, drawing ever-expanding circles out toward his hipbones.
And then she dropped to her knees. While her hands ran down his thighs, she bit at the firm flesh of his backside, healing the light nips with tender kisses and wet swirls of her tongue. He clenched his buttocks, relaxed again once he realized she’d stopped.
“I hate it when you do that,” he whispered gruffly, even as he spread his legs wider to give her better access.
She slipped a hand between his legs and cupped his tight balls from behind. “You’re lying to both of us, Patrick.”
“Yeah,” he admitted with a shudder. “I know. It’s just a guy thing. You’re getting too close to the goods.”
“And you love it.” She pulled her hand from his balls and ran it along the ridge of hard flesh behind, skimming over the “goods,” as he put it, until his shiver reached his knees.
Nothing gave her greater satisfaction than knowing she affected him so. A heady thing, this power, and she was wet with it, wet with wanting him, wet with the thrill of the wait.
Nipping again at the curve of his ass, she wrapped one arm around his thigh, slipped the other back between his spread legs and closed both hands around his engorged shaft. She held him tight and he stood still, his muscles rigid, his skin so hot it grew damp.
She held him until she thought his body might snap, until a bead of sweat dropped from his forehead to her wrist. Only then did she begin to stroke, using the release of moisture from the slit in the tip of his cock to ease the slide of her hands. He thrust into her grip, and she pushed her forearm up between his legs, spreading him open the way he so often spread her.
The motion of his body, the low panting growl that rumbled up from his throat, the slickness he continued to release all served to heighten her desire. When she couldn’t take it anymore and the scent of her own arousal grew strong, she released him, crawling around him on hands and knees to open her mouth over his cock.
He groaned as she took him to the back of her throat, groaned again as she pulled away, leaving her lips wrapped around his swollen head and casting her gaze up to his. His eyes appeared to burn with a blue flame. His skin glistened with sweat. She took his erection in her hand and swirled her tongue around the tip, never breaking eye contact as she sucked him back into her mouth.
This time she watched as his eyes rolled and his jaw clenched so firmly she imagined the pop of the bone. Her enjoyment of his taste and his texture was interrupted when he pulled free from her mouth, grabbed her upper arms and lifted her to her feet.
He shoved his erection between her legs, his tongue into her mouth. The bruising crush of his fingers held her still, and she simply placed her palms over his heart. The beat of his blood thudded through her. His kiss consumed her until dizziness swept her into a place between cognizance and unconscious thought. His mouth was hard and demanding, his tongue a rough source of amazing pleasure.
But it was the driving thrust of his cock between her thighs making her crazy with want.
“I hate tasting myself in your mouth,” he growled, having torn his lips free and moved to nuzzle her neck.
“Well, I can’t get enough,” she admitted with a whisper, knowing she was speaking of much more than he was. She couldn’t get enough of his ability to take her to a place where thought ceased to exist and pleasure became the center of her world.
He took her there now, making his way to her breasts, sucking on one nipple, then the other, while his hands kneaded and squeezed. She braced her hands on the window ledge; her head fell back and her legs opened. Patrick took the hint and continued down her body, his tongue circling and dipping into her navel before he licked a straight line down her belly to her clit.
When he sucked her into his mouth, she gasped, biting down on the begging cry that he take her now, take her roughly, take her until her legs lacked the strength to hold her upright. She bit down because she refused to reveal to him any of her weaknesses, knowing that made her a hypocrite for deriding him when he did the same.
Right now, she hardly cared what her actions said about her character. All she cared about was Patrick’s exceptional mouth. She curled her fingers around the sill, boosted her butt onto the edge and moved the soles of her feet to his thighs.
He took hold of her
ankles, imprisoning her with his hands while his tongue swept down her slit and entered her. He thrust in, pulled out, using his skillful tongue as he would his cock, before returning his attention to the hard knot of nerves ready to burst.
A whimper escaped her mouth before she could stop it, and Patrick hummed his appreciation of her reaction into the center of her sex. She loved what he did to her, even while she hated him knowing the power he wielded. She didn’t want him to think she would ever give up so much of herself outside of the bedroom.
When his hands began a slow slide from her ankles to her calves to the tender skin of her inner thighs, she trembled with a needy anticipation. And then his thumbs were there—yes, oh, yes, there, right there—opening the lips of her sex to expose her slick inner flesh.
He slid two fingers through her folds and into her core as deeply as she could take him, pushing in, pulling out, just as he’d done with his tongue. He knew exactly what to do every time, all the time, to bring her to the edge without letting her plunge over. He always made her wait. Just as he waited. Sex between them was a battle of wills as much as physical bliss.
He fingered her so deftly, finding her G-spot and caressing the swollen pillow even as he sucked on her clitoris, lightly tonguing his way around the hard bud. He stroked and licked and suckled, and she dug her heels into his thighs, pressed her palms to the window ledge until she thought her arms would break.
But she knew he wouldn’t stop. Not when he had her so close, when she was the one shuddering and he was the one in charge.
She clenched her inner muscles and pulled her hips farther back on the window ledge. Patrick glanced up, frowning, giving her a long moment to catch her breath and to slip the toes of one foot down beneath his balls.
His frown deepened, just before his eyes closed and his hands moved down between his own legs to take hold of his cock. He stroked himself, as if he was the only one who understood what he needed, the relief he sought and where he’d find it.
She slid from the window ledge into his lap, straddling his thighs with her own. The tip of his cock settled into the cleft of her sex, and she desperately wanted to take him inside. But not yet. Her hesitation wasn’t about the lack of a condom. Birth control wasn’t an issue, and the sex they engaged in was safe. No, she waited for him to return to the moment. She wanted him with her all the way.
He opened his eyes, and she swore they glistened with unshed tears. Either that or a redness born of unbearable frustration and a sadness he rarely released. Wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him close was suddenly more important than joining their bodies.
She soothed him with tiny kisses, with strokes of her palm over the back of his head. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and inhaled, waiting, resting, finding whatever strength of will he needed to fight the demons that raged within him.
When he looked up again, when this time he met her gaze, his eyes seemed to burn with an inner fire, a dangerous fire that sent her heart racing. And then he drew the tip of his cock through her sex, finding her entrance and plunging deep.
She cried out, but he caught and swallowed the sound with his kiss. He surrounded her, consumed her; he burned her inside and out, and she thought she might die.
His cock remained still but for the throbbing pulse she could feel all the way to her womb. His tongue, however, swept madly through her mouth. He held her head so she couldn’t move, trapping her between both of his large hands, and kissing her feverishly, as if his life depended on what she offered.
She moved her hands to his cheeks and kissed him back, giving him all that she was capable of giving without opening up her own stores of hidden needs. Right now, at this moment, nothing mattered more than saving Patrick’s soul.
It was when his urgency lessened, his kiss softened and his hold relaxed that her body began to ache. The muscles in her widespread thighs burned from straddling him so awkwardly.
Yet every time she adjusted her position, she was reminded how completely he possessed her. Her sex had never felt so full, and even the tiny shifts of her hips increased the friction of his thick shaft against her swollen clit.
She couldn’t take any more of the pressure urging her toward orgasm, the sensation of coming undone. And so she pulled her mouth free and stared into his beautifully sad eyes.
“Let’s go to bed.”
5
PATRICK WONDERED if he’d ever again be able to enjoy a woman the way he did Annabel.
He lay above her, his upper body braced on his elbows, his lower body tucked soundly between her spread legs. Legs, in fact, wrapped tightly around the backs of his thighs as if keeping him from pulling away.
That wasn’t going to happen. He was buried exactly where he wanted to be, and could see himself growing old like this. Well, not exactly like this. Eventually, he’d shrivel up and then he’d have to move. But, yeah. The concept of staying around indefinitely was worth thinking about.
Annabel didn’t agree. She wanted him to go. She had this bug up her butt about him getting in her way, being a distraction, keeping her from taking her life forward. As if he were some sort of detour or something.
He thrust forward, thrust deeper. She gasped, her head arched back, her eyelids fluttered. His gut clenched hard. He got off majorly on making her crazy. Making her want him.
Want him.
She reminded him that he was alive, and that counted for more than the way her body turned his inside out. She knew exactly who she was, and she didn’t need him for anything. But, God help him, he needed her. To make him remember that it was time to do more than simply survive. To make him feel safe and sane and whole.
When she raised up on her elbows, he shifted his weight to his hands, suspended above her, his breathing as unsteady as the tremors in his legs, which came from holding completion at bay. He pushed into her even harder, not caring that he was as deep as physically possible.
He needed to own her, to make her aware of what she’d be missing once he was gone. To imprint on the both of them the reality that what they had together was rare.
The corner of her mouth quirked, and he gritted his teeth, feeling her inner muscles tense around his cock. His balls drew close to his body, yet still he held on, playing her game of endurance, easing back until only the head of his erection teased her.
Her expression grew desperate. Score one point for him. A point she matched when she slid her feet down his thighs to his calves and locked her legs over his. She held him there, using her feet to spread him apart when he much preferred the leverage of holding his legs together.
He reared back, pulled out and made his way south, settling his mouth over her beautiful sex and breathing in her unique scent of salty warmth. She tasted way too much of him, but he could deal, what with the way she writhed and enjoyed.
He swirled his tongue through her folds, pushed into her opening, pulled out and went at her again. He loved how wet she grew when he concentrated his efforts. Though this sort of effort required no concentration at all. It was a purely erotic pleasure.
When her hips arched urgently and her breathing was no more than frantic panting, he crawled back up her body, driving his cock back into her willing warmth, his tongue into her mouth in a mirror of their mating.
They came within seconds and together, Patrick moving his mouth from hers to bury his face in her pillow. He shuddered, feeling the center of his body surge with a release that was powerful and primal, and took him apart. The base of his spine tingled. The base of his cock pulsed. And beneath him Annabel’s skin dampened with sweat.
He waited until she’d stopped quivering before he rolled off and collapsed. He was going to die. No, he was already dead. Moving any part of his body ever again was not going to happen, though getting his hands on a cigarette sounded damn fine. Of course, with Annabel bouncing around the way she was, a busy little bee stacking pillows behind her, his postcoital-man disease was curing rapidly.
She settled back an
d sighed. “You are amazing.”
Lying on his back, Patrick tossed one arm across her lap and squeezed her thigh. “Is that a compliment or an invitation for a second helping?”
“Both, I suppose,” she answered, twining her fingers through his. “But, actually, it’s a question.”
Groan. “Let me guess. Who taught me what I know, right?” Eyes closed, he shook his head. “Why is that what women always ask?”
She seemed hesitant before replying. “Maybe because we like to think your talents are individually inspired.”
“You do inspire me.” There had never been a more certain truth.
But she kept on. Pick, pick, pick. “As did obviously so many others.”
Patrick groaned audibly this time, rolled out of bed and to his feet. “I’m not going to talk about this.”
She didn’t even argue, but came right back with a quick and almost apologetic reply. “You’re right. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t pry.”
Then she followed him out of bed, pulling the bed-clothes with her and balling them up to wash, changing the subject with a rapidity that had his head spinning. “We should make a run out to Central Market. We’re almost out of coffee.”
Cocking her head and holding the sheets to her midsection, she stood there naked and gorgeous and rumpled, and more than his dick began to stir. Especially since she hadn’t even seemed to think twice when including him in their shared coffee dilemma. He liked that, liked feeling as if she considered him a part of her life, even if only a temporary one.
Yes, she deserved more details about his captivity than he’d been comfortable sharing so far. He’d tell her—he would, and soon. Just not right now. “Good idea. I want to make a practice run at a few of your menu’s recipes, so I’ll put together a quick shopping list.”
“Do you think you can pull this off with only two weeks to prepare?”
Standing there as naked as the day he was born, he grinned. “With you nagging me every step of the way?”
She narrowed her eyes, obviously trying to keep him from seeing the glint of amusement, the same one tugging up the side of her mouth. “A woman must do what a woman must do. Just answer the question.”
