“I want you.” She tugged again. “Now.”
“I want to make you come again.”
“You will—and you would if you kept going. But I want all of you. Please.”
He sat back on his heels, breathing heavily, and met her gaze.
“What?” she asked. His hands were still on her hips, and she stroked the backs of them with her fingertips. The touch seemed to knock his thoughts free.
“I like it kind of...rough.”
“Okay. How rough?”
“Nothing crazy...and it’s not that I only like it that way. I need that to...you know.”
“Sure.” Good, yes. Amazing. She’d give anything to see this closed-up man turned frantic and desperate with excitement.
He cleared his throat. “I want to make sure I get you there again first. In case what I need doesn’t...work for you.”
She smiled. “I’m pretty sure it will. Unless you’re leaving something out?”
He shook his head, clearly uncertain.
He didn’t trust himself. In exactly what way, she couldn’t guess. “You’re not going to hurt me or anything,” she prompted.
“No, of course not. I mean, not on purpose. I just need it fast. And kind of selfish.”
God, please. “If it means you’ll be excited, then I guarantee you it’ll work for me.”
He might have nodded. It was hard to tell, the gesture was so subtle. He took in her sex from where he knelt, his gaze so loaded she swore she could feel it against her swollen lips and clit. Then, out of nowhere, he smiled up at her.
Surprised, she laughed, and squeezed his hands. “What?”
“It’s nice down here.”
“Oh?”
A sheepish sort of smile. “Being on my knees, for you.” Except then he was standing, urging her back on the mattress and climbing on above her, his legs knocking hers wide. “It’s nice with you in general.” His eyes surveyed her body beneath his, and she returned the admiration. He was still stiff, hovering thick and ready above her belly. She reached between them to clasp him, giving a long, slow pull. He dropped his head with a groan, shoulder blades jutting.
“Better than nice,” she said softly and reveled in his reactions for a few more strokes.
His face came up, his look so intense that her hand froze. For a long breath they merely held each other’s gazes, Daniel’s hazel eyes nearly black in the dim room.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said.
Carrie blushed. “It’s high up there on my list, too.”
He moved her hand from his erection. Dropping down on his forearms, he linked his fingers with hers, holding her hands against the mattress, framing her face. “No,” he said. “This is the actual best thing that’s ever happened to me. No moment of my life is ever going to be as perfect as this one. Here. With you.”
Nothing she could think to say deserved to follow that, so she only regarded him. Memorized those words and his face and this suspended second shared by only the two of them. He swallowed and let go of her hands, sitting up to kneel between her thighs. Grazing her legs, he seemed calm but for the quick breaths flexing his belly. She drew her calves along his sides.
“You know what?” she asked.
“No, what?”
“This really is an awesome honeymoon.”
His smile was broad and open, but then his expression darkened as his gaze went to the nightstand and the condom. She remembered what he’d said about needing it rough, and a hot wave of nervous excitement got her blood pumping.
“I’m ready if you are,” she said.
“I imagined this for years, but I don’t think I could ever be ready for it.”
“Too bad for you,” she said. “Because it’s happening.”
Daniel nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
8
CARRIE MOVED, GRABBING the condom and then settling against the pillows. Her fingers were clumsy as she opened the wrapper, but she saw that same anticipation mirrored in Daniel. She’d imagined being with him a million times when she’d been younger, but never felt able to guess how he’d be. He’d been so prickly, roughness had usually factored into her hypotheses—even rudeness—but she’d never imagined what sweeter intimacies he might offer. She never would have imagined him saying the heartbreaking things he just had.
“Here,” she said, tugging him close. His knees were braced wide beneath her legs. She rolled the latex down his length, savoring the moment. Savoring the view—Daniel’s strong masculine body looming, backlit and seeming dangerous. He dropped down, planting his palms beside her waist. She held his erection, angling as his hips guided him close. She swept his head along her lips, rocked by a surge of pleasure as it stroked her clit.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
She did. Her hand went still, and she let his gaze hold her in thrall as the pressure came. Pressure but no resistance. She was lush and ready, welcoming his slow, measured intrusion. She let go to hold his sides, feeling his muscles flex as he gave her more. Just a tiny pang, a small adjustment of her angle, and when he next slid home he was gliding.
How a man could feel so familiar and so new, she didn’t understand. And that was Daniel, essentially. A boy she’d grown up with, yet had never really known, who’d shared her exact secret—an off-limits and confounding infatuation, one neither of them had ever expected would lead to this moment.
“You feel so good,” she whispered. To speak any louder might scare reality away.
“So do you.” He eased back, slid deep. “Even better than I’d ever guessed.”
She reached between them to touch herself, but he stopped her, pinning her hand against the bed. She shivered, the coolness chased by heat to feel that bossy grip on her wrist, that little taste of restraint.
I like it kind of rough.
“Let me,” he said. He released her and slipped his hand low, thumb seeking her clit. All his weight was on one arm, the tendons and muscles locked and thrilling.
“I want to see what you like,” she said, nudging his hand out of the way. If this was the only night they ever got together, she wanted to know exactly who this man was.
Again, he grabbed her wrist and held her hand down. “What I want,” he said slowly, “is to be doing everything.”
“Oh.” Controlling. “Sure.”
He shoved his legs even deeper beneath hers, sharpening the angle. His weight was off his arms now, and he took both of her wrists, pinning them above her head. Not so tight that it alarmed her. Not at all. She was physical. She craved the edgy sensation of her body being challenged, especially like this. His hold was everything dark that she’d tried to project onto him in her bygone fantasies. Rough and pushy but sensual, too. His hips moved with an unexpected grace, strokes smooth and lengthening by the second. He worked his strong body with a sureness she hadn’t anticipated.
“You want me to do anything special?” she asked.
“No.” He swallowed, eyes closing, hips speeding. “No, I just want to feel like you’re mine.”
Those words spread fever through her body, and she told him, “I am yours.”
His eyes opened. For a glorious minute the world was his hands wrapped around her wrists, his muscles pumping, his hard length owning her. Then he let her go. A rough palm cupped her breast as the other slid low. One thumb strummed her clit, the other her nipple. The pleasure met and melded in her belly, urgency sparking.
She reached for him, but he said, “No,” the word dark and hard. Exciting. “Keep them above your head.”
His cock was surging, the slick motions caressing her lips as that rough thumb circled and rubbed. His racing breaths had become labored moans now, rhythmic and guttural, utterly male. The dynamic he’d set didn’t welcome instruction
, but if it had, she’d have told him, “Talk to me.” She settled instead for these dark sounds, let them stoke her excitement as surely as his hands, or the sight of his laboring muscles.
“I’m close,” she panted. She moved the only part of her body she dared, flexing her hips to heighten the penetration. Talk to me. “Don’t stop. Please.”
He controlled her pleasure, and although this wasn’t what she’d have given herself—rougher, slower—the fact that he was giving it to her made the mechanics moot. And then he did the thing that trumped any touch. He spoke.
“You gonna come for me?” His eyes were hard and hot, same as that circling thumb.
“Yes.”
His hips sped, and Carrie felt the promise of release becoming an inevitability. The pressure he spurred was blazing, tight, almost painful, and she groaned.
“Good. Come on.”
And she was there, this orgasm so much more intense than the first, multiplied by his rough voice, his firm touch and his dark eyes burning down at hers. It roared through her, forcing her back off the sheets and making her nails bite into the pillow above her head. As the onslaught eased, Daniel’s hips relented. His erection slid slow and luxurious and then stopped all together.
She broke his rule, reaching up to touch his face and neck. His pulse thumped below his ear, echoed by the stiff heat of him inside of her. He looked disbelieving. And electrified. And beautiful.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice thick. She cleared her throat and held his hard arms. She let her hips tell him that his turn had come.
He began to move, building gradually until he was speeding again, pounding hard. His eyes were wild, skin surely flushed.
He groaned. “Turn over. Please.”
She made it to her hands and knees—more by his urging than by her own volition. She felt the weight of his hard body pushing into her, his length sliding deep once more. The show was over, Daniel chasing his release with an animal ferocity. His hips hammered and his grip was rough at her waist. One palm slid between her shoulder blades, fingers splaying. She felt held in place, exploited even—and, goddamn, it felt amazing.
She’d been with dominating guys before, and those experiences had run the gamut from exciting to a touch degrading. But with Daniel she felt nothing she had before. She felt a man turned wild from desire. She felt wanted in the most primitive, intoxicating way. She felt high and powerful to have done this to him.
“Oh.” His moan was deep and ragged, full of wonder. His hands grew slick against her skin, and those masterful hips were frenetic. She could picture them—picture the entire length of his body in profile, gorgeous and rough.
She reached one arm back, found his fingers with her own. He seemed to rattle apart at the contact, his breathing coming in a string of tight gasps and his motions jerky. The pressure built until she had to steal her hand back, bracing against the impact. Then all at once he went perfectly still.
In that quiet space she listened to his panting breaths and memorized the pulse of his length, held tight inside her. His damp palm slid down her back, and he eased himself out with a breathy groan. Carrie turned onto her back as he collapsed across the covers. He drew his legs in, rubbing his knees.
“All right?” she asked.
“I think I got rug burn. Or sheet burn.”
“Poor baby.” She flopped her arm against his chest.
“I’ll sue the motel for my injuries.”
She gasped dramatically and thumped his ribs with her knuckles. “Never. I love this horrible motel. And this horrible room.”
His fingertips teased the sensitive skin of her inner forearm. “I’m forgiving them for the spider in light of the free condoms.”
“Oh, my God, yes. That alone must be worth a five-star Yelp review.”
Once her body had cooled some, Carrie rolled onto her side and tucked her knees against Daniel’s hip. “That was awesome.”
He nodded, gaze on the ceiling. “Yeah, it was.”
“I can’t figure out if you’re exactly how I’d expected or totally different. Either way, you were exactly how you should be. All gruff and fast and...Daniel Barber-y.”
“Not too much, I hope.”
“No way.”
“That stuff’s a preference, really. I don’t always have to be like that—pushy, I guess. I got smacked around some, when I was a kid.” He said it without angst, like it was a flat and faded scar to him now rather than a wound. “I think it’s made me kind of...weird. About feeling like I’m having physical stuff directed at me. Stuff I can’t predict.”
“Oh.” Made sense. “You liked when I stroked you, though.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I did. Though I wanted like hell to grab your hand and control what you were doing, too.”
“I wouldn’t have minded that.” She kissed his shoulder.
“I like what you had me do, though. I liked kneeling on the floor for you, and feeling how you held my head. I wouldn’t, usually. Usually I’d get annoyed, feeling like somebody was trying to direct me.”
“I just wanted to feel connected to you.”
He seemed to consider that. “It was nice. Made it feel like...like it excited you, touching me. That you weren’t just excited by what I was doing to you.”
She stroked his hair and held his gaze. “There’s never been anyone I was more thrilled to be with. It could have been the worst sex of my life, and it still would have been amazing, because I was getting to know you that way.”
“But it wasn’t the worst sex of your life, right?” He’d made his expression so grave she had to laugh.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that.”
“Good. Because it was the best sex of mine. I mean, I know I don’t really know you anymore. And I know I never really knew you that well when we were kids, despite us being in school together for twelve years.”
“Plus kindergarten—thirteen years. Like cicadas,” she whispered in a spooky voice, drumming her fingers along his forearm.
“I didn’t let you know me well enough for that to happen. But if there’s some version of love where you don’t have to actually know the other person all that deeply...I feel that for you.”
She blinked. “Wow.”
“And it feels amazing.”
She squeezed his hand. “So the next time you play Never Have I Ever and somebody says ‘I’ve never had sex with someone I love’...?”
“Totally not drinking.”
She smiled and stroked his knuckles, hummed a happy noise. “Daniel Barber...making love.”
“Must be a Christmas miracle.”
“Very Dickensian. I think that makes me the Ghost of Infatuation Past or something to your Ebenezer.”
“We really ought to get some sleep,” Daniel murmured, lips teasing her cheek. “Much as I never want this night to end.”
“Yeah.” She craned her neck, the clock on the nightstand telling her it was pushing four. “Oh, Jesus. We might want to rethink that six a.m. wake-up call.”
“I’ll get up when it’s light out,” he said through a yawn. “See what the road’s looking like. We’ll take it slow, and we’ll probably make it home by dinnertime, if not in time for you to meet your brother at the station. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. And as bummed as that makes me, the stupid weather got us together. I can’t be mad at that.”
His laugh was a warm little hum. “No, me neither.”
She turned over, spooning her back to his chest, smiling as his strong arm wrapped her up tight. “I’d say, ‘See you in the morning,’ but it’s already morning.”
“Say Merry Christmas instead.”
“Indeed.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for my gift.”
“Both of them.”
Sh
e laughed, but he had that wrong. “Not the orgasms. Just you. Just us, getting to be this way. Thanks for being brave enough to come out and say what you did.”
“Drunk enough, you mean.”
“Semantics.” Carrie yawned.
“Thank you,” he whispered, sounding uncharacteristically earnest. “For...for all of this.”
“My literal pleasure.”
“Now I get to wake up next to you.”
She smiled. “If we ever fall asleep.”
“Night,” he said, and kissed her hair.
“Morning,” she returned, and settled her buzzing body against the calming heat of his strong one. “And Merry Christmas.”
9
THEY GOT ON the road around eight in the morning, finding the asphalt blessedly—if inadequately—dusted with sand. It was still slick and the going slow. Daniel’s knuckles were white, reflexes alert for the faintest tug of the wheel, the briefest slip of the tiny Fiat’s tires. By the time they climbed back in after a quick lunch stop outside Eugene, he at least felt confident they’d survive to see their respective families.
The morning had been nice. He’d fought every self-defeating script programmed into his personality and forced himself not to shut down in the wake of all that soul bearing. It felt awkward and hurt a little in his chest, but he wouldn’t trade it for the cold comfort of his usual armor.
He took a deep drink of the coffee they were sharing. Normally, he drank it black, but he had deferred to Carrie, and the creamy, sugary result was pretty disgusting. Yet he had to wonder if the memory of this trip just might change his preferences. There was something to be said for this sweetness.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Another five hours, with these roads?”
He set the cup back in the holder. “Maybe four if the ice eases up the farther north we get.”
“Fingers crossed.” After a pause, she amended that. “Not that this road trip isn’t pretty nice in itself.”
Nice? Try the best gift I could have asked for.
Though they made terrible time, the nearer they got to Grafton the better the roads became. The world seemed to thaw, just as Daniel had en route to finding himself so at home in easy small talk. He felt calm, for the first time in ages—and right at the moment he’d been anticipating dread and anxiety, as their hometown drew closer under a darkening sky.
Wild Holiday Nights: Holiday RushPlaying GamesAll Night Long Page 13
