by Vonnie Davis
Sweat beaded on his forehead. Dear God, he would die.
Her tongue circled his areola and his cock hardened more—if that were possible. She bit his nipple before taking it into her mouth and sucking it. Her fingertips fondled the ring in his other nipple and tugged the piercing, sending the combined shocks of pain and pleasure he so enjoyed to his nerve endings. His hands fisted in her hair. Another tug on his nipple ring and he groaned. Sweet mother of God. He’d gone to nirvana with the girl of his dreams.
While her frantic kisses covered his body, her busy hands traveled to his jeans to pull the button through the denim and unzip his fly. His cock sprung free, and she dropped to her knees.
“Oh, hot lips, I love a man who goes commando.”
Jealous rage rudely snatched him from his state of bliss, and he jerked her head back. “How many damn men have you seen who go commando?” His voice was harsh, his breathing ragged. “How many, Cassie?”
The tip of her pink tongue touched the head of his pecker and swirled around it once. Her emerald gaze remained locked on his and the corners of her mouth lifted. “Guess.” Her hand wrapped around his cock, stroking him from balls to crown while her tongue circled the head.
His aroused nerve endings warred with his male ego. She was his angel. His, dammit. How many men had there been before him? Did it matter? He’d certainly had more than his fair share of women. Okay, so he wouldn’t be her first, but he damn sure would be the one she remembered. The one she measured all others against from this point forward.
But, dear God, she sure as hell knew how to give fantastic head. Shivers skied down his spine and his balls ached for release. All the while she tortured him with licking and sucking designed to send any man to the edge of sexual madness.
“Enough.” Quinn bent and scooped her into his arms. “Let’s move this to the bed.” He kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. The last thing he needed was Furball watching and pouncing.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and bit his earlobe. “How many?”
“How many what?” He laid her on his rumpled sheets and toed off his sneakers before removing his tattered shirt.
“How many positions are we going to do? Four? Six?” She burrowed into his pillow and bedclothes, her face flushed with excitement and her eyes shadowed with something. Was it fear? Surely not.
He shucked his jeans, opened the drawer of his nightstand and grabbed a fistful of condoms, shaking them at her. “Guess.”
Her eyes widened for a beat. “What do you do? Buy them by the box?”
The bed dipped when he pressed his knee into the mattress, spreading her legs so he could settle between her hips. Her question seemed a little naïve, but then maybe her other lovers were the type to tuck a singular rubber in their wallets. Damn fools.
Visions of young, horny guys stretched over her, in her, forming the double-backed beast, twisted into an unfamiliar bitter rage of jealous possessiveness. He wanted to kill every male who had ever touched her—and he knew more than fifty ways to do the deed.
“Quinn, what happened to your closet door?”
“Temper tantrum.” I was mentally killing the bastard who dared threaten you.
A smile brightened her features and orneriness twinkled in her green eyes. “I’m glad I never have temper tantrums.”
He laughed. “Me, too, angel.” Kissing a trail from her temple to her ear, he struggled for control. He had no right to such emotions. Once he left the boundaries of Clearwater, he’d lose contact with her. His life would be sterile again, cold and damn lonely. But for now, with her arms draped around his neck, her breasts against his pecs and the backs of her calves restlessly moving over his, she belonged to him.
“How many?” He bit her neck and she gasped. “How many lovers have you had?” His male ego had put forth the question before his mind had a chance to censor it.
“We’re not doing this, Quinn. I’m not telling you how many men I’ve had and I sure as hell don’t want to know how many women you’ve been with.” She kissed his jaw and nuzzled closer. “Let’s just enjoy the moment.”
His lips feathered kisses down her neck and met the delicate gold chain. Pleasure rippled through him. “You’re wearing my necklace.”
“I’ll wear it forever. Thank you. It means more to me than you can ever imagine. It’s the most beautiful necklace I’ve ever seen.”
Her sentiments touched him deeper than he wanted to acknowledge. “Another guy will replace it with something better.’
She made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat. “I can’t imagine who. Not when my heart will always belong to you.” Her sweet lips made contact and his mouth opened to touch her tongue with his. For several seconds, as the kiss deepened, the world faded. There was no botched mission, no dead comrades, no Renata with her devious feminine ruses—only his sweet angel. And in her arms, he was pure again. He was worthy.
Be honest with yourself, man.
He wrapped his hands around her head and pressed his forehead to hers. “Are you going to be okay with this? I never took you for a one-time only type of woman. I’m leaving, Cassie. This is sex. Nothing more. Sex between friends.”
Tears pooled, and she blinked rapidly as if she were willing them away. “I don’t want you to leave. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t understand why…”
He kissed her with just the barest joining of lips. “I feel the same about you, but sometimes…” Sometimes what? How could he possibly explain to her why he had to leave when, right now, with her naked beneath him, his thinking made zero motherfucking-sense?
****
Cassie waited for Quinn to finish his sentence. His forehead was furrowed as if he were deep in thought; he shook his head a couple of times and forced out a ragged sigh, saying nothing. Something had him in turmoil. Should she ask?
Hillary, her steady Friday shampoo and style, always insisted the best time to worm information out of a man was after sex. Which was why Cassie was where she was, damn near naked, lying beneath a totally naked and aroused Quinn Gallagher. Once they did the deed, she planned on getting some answers, like why he was suddenly intent on leaving Clearwater.
After all, Hillary had been right about the jealousy thing. “Mention the possibility of other men and the guy will go all possessive on you,” or so Hillary claimed as she doled out advice on how to snare and keep a man. As for how to give oral, Cassie had absorbed the graphic lesson Eva Mae, her Saturday morning regular, demonstrated using a bottle of conditioner as a cock prop.
Ninety percent of what Cassie knew about sex, she’d learned from her customers. And, as a virgin waiting three years for the man she loved to come on to her, she had no qualms about asking questions. So, here she was, beneath the man she adored, armed with second-hand knowledge, waiting for him to take her virginity and hoping she didn’t make a complete fool of herself in the process.
For if he laughed at her inexperience, she didn’t think she’d ever recover.
“Raise your arms over your head, angel.” Quinn wrapped his large hand around both of her wrists and held them in place even as he shifted off her onto his side. The warm fingertips of his other hand trailed down the side of her face. “You are so beautiful, even with that patch of red hair I dislike. What color was it the other week? Silver?”
“Yes. Something sparkly for New Year’s Eve.” She almost told him she’d dye her hair any color he wanted if he’d stay, but she’d not do that for any man. Even him. If he couldn’t accept her as she was, as much as it would destroy her, they really had no chance for a future. Hadn’t both of her brothers preached the importance of respect and acceptance between a man and a woman?
Quinn’s fingertips moved down her neck and slowly, almost reverently, continued over her collarbone, his gaze intent on where he was touching. “Your skin is so soft.” He leaned in, his nose brushing across her neck and chest, inhaling deeply. “And your perpetual smell of peaches and cream is so embedded in my
male psyche. God, I love it.” The sweeping trace of his fingertips on her breasts was so light she quivered and arched into his hand.
“Like that, do you?” He leaned over her and covered the mounds of her breasts with feather-light kisses, moving ever closer to her nipples. His woodsy cologne and male musk smelled like her heart’s home, for this hunky man was indeed her heart and had been since she laid eyes on him at her eighteenth birthday party.
So often in the past, she’d watched his sensual lips while he talked or laughed, and fanaticized about the sensations his mouth would evoke when it drew one of her nipples inside to suck. In mere seconds, she’d find out. Her toes curled in anticipation.
His tongue circled her beaded nipple before he claimed it.
The pull of his mouth spiraled an arrow of need directly to her core and wetness pooled between the folds. Oh. My. God. More. I need more.
“Quinn!” She squirmed and trembled as he sucked harder. A deep throbbing she’d never experienced threatened to toss her over some precipice.
He stopped and gazed at her. “You really like it when I do that.” His fabulous lips upturned at the corners. “Can you climax when a man does this to you? Hmm?” His mouth sought her other breast and she was swept once more into a miasma of novel sensations.
“Let go of my hands. I need to touch you.” She tugged against the hold he had on her.
He released her wrists, his eyes darkened with what she hoped was passion. Slipping his arm under her shoulders and turning her slightly toward him, their legs tangled even as his hand slid down her back where he slipped his fingers under the elastic of her thong. “I want this off. I plan on biting and kissing every inch of your beautiful body.” He squeezed one of her ass cheeks. “When you go back to your other lovers, you’re going to find them lacking. Because no man will ever love you the way I do.” He bit the tender flesh where her neck joined her shoulder and she trembled. “No one, baby.”
He enveloped her in his arms and kissed her as if he had all the time in the world to break her heart, which was what he was doing—loving her and breaking her heart at the same time.
The man was hell-bent on leaving and this was his goodbye. If his crass remarks to her at the station yesterday were hurtful, they held little power compared to this excruciating sweetly sensual parting.
Her chest constricted, trapping her breath in a body too aching to operate in a normal pattern. It was as if her heartbeat morphed from lub-dub…lub-dub to Quinn’s leaving…Quinn’s leaving. Tears burned the back of her throat, and she fought to keep her mind on his kiss.
Passionate, yet painful.
Tender, yet torturous.
Seducing, yet sad.
Finally, he released her lips and kissed a slow journey down her torso. To hide her tears, she laid her arm across her eyes and sighed, hoping he’d take her action as someone lost in the moment, instead of a woman falling apart and dying in his arms.
Focus, dammit. You will never have this again. You will never feel his lips and hands on you if he leaves. And he’s right, every other man will pale in comparison.
“Feel how I touch you. Remember this, baby.” He pushed her thighs farther apart, holding them as he dipped his head and swiped his tongue along her slit.
Her eyes crossed beneath her forearm.
“Damn, you taste so sweet.” His tongue played a slow pattern over her as if she were a violin and he a virtuoso, plucking music from sensitive areas she’d only heard other women mention during their sex talks in her beauty shop. Now she understood the fascination. The yearning for more. The sexual addiction.
Quinn Gallagher could so quickly become her drug of choice.
The muscles low in her stomach tensed as if preparing for some magical leap. A quivering began deep within, and her thighs trembled under his hands. His tongue danced around her button of need, closer yet never touching it. She squirmed, raising her hips to entice him to pay attention to the aching spot.
“Patience, angel.” Finally, Quinn covered that button with his lips and sucked.
Her eyes popped open as waves of desire undulated from every nerve ending in her body. The world spun and flipped before she pinched her eyes shut to concentrate on each nuance of pleasure surging through her system. The moan that started low in her chest quickly developed into a screaming chant of his name. Tears flowed, and she gasped for air.
He pressed kisses to her abdomen. “God, you’re breathtaking when you come. I will never forget how you cried my name over and over.”
Cassie kept her arm over her eyes, hoping to hide the tears that flowed freely. Dear God, how would she ever get over the beauty of his lovemaking and her body’s reaction to it?
She sensed movement when he reached toward the nightstand, followed by the tearing of a foil packet. “Hold on.” Latex snapped, and Quinn’s body covered hers again. His hand positioned the head of his cock at her entrance. “We’ll do missionary first. Mainly because I can’t wait to get inside of you.”
Desire blended with apprehension urged her forward in her quest to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her, to bring him satisfaction too. Her arms floated over his shoulders and she wrapped her legs around his hips. He pushed in and she took a deep breath, preparing for the pain.
He stilled, his wide eyes searching her face. “Cassie, what the hell?”
“Don’t stop!” She used the strength of her thighs to force him in. The tearing sensation burned, but only for an instant. Getting accustomed to the fullness of him inside her would take a little longer. Instinct had her needing to push him back out, but love made her want to keep him there forever.
His hands cradled her head and his lips brushed hers. “Angel, why didn’t you tell me this was your first time? I’d have made it better for you.”
“And I’d have died.”
He kissed her again, his hips moving in a slow rhythm. “You made me believe there’d been others.”
“Did I?” Her palms swept up his muscular back as she recalled how he’d looked earlier when she’d alluded to other guys. The anger and passion that darkened his features were priceless.
He slowly pulled out until just the head of his cock remained. “Hell, yes. I nearly went insane with jealousy.” His hips angled and he slid in to the hilt.
This stroke didn’t hurt as much as the first one. Pleasure sparked along her nerve endings now that her body recognized and accepted the fullness of his size, the totality of his possession. “Why, Quinn? Why do you care when you’re leaving?” She had to get him to come to grips with how his fear of what might grow between them was in direct opposition to his actions.
“Don’t.” He settled into a slow, sensual rhythm that caused her pelvic muscles to undulate and coil again. “Don’t question. Just feel. Enjoy.” He trembled in her arms. “You are so damn tight, baby. I’ve never felt anything like this. Like you.” His strokes grew stronger, faster. “Only you.”
“I love you.” He needed to hear this, whether he wanted to or not. There’d been times in the past when she’d felt unworthy of love and yet her siblings had told her repeatedly, if she stood a chance at helping him, she had to bare her heart to him, regardless of whether or not he handed it back to her in tattered pieces.
“Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear it.” Pain etched his features. His dark eyebrows dipped and his blue-grey eyes turned steely. Those sensual lips thinned in determination.
“And you care for me.” She fingered her necklace. “This proves it.”
His forehead touched hers and their eyes locked. “Yes, I care, but I still have to leave. There’s too much in my past. Things I can’t tell you. I’m not worthy of your love.”
“No one’s ever worthy, Quinn. Love is freely given because it hurts too much to hold it inside. Love me. Love me and let out some of the pain.”
They melded, folded into each other as if they were magnetic halves of each other’s souls. Their breaths mingled as their muscles moved in unison t
oward the release they both sought.
“I have to go,” he whispered as if it pained him to hear his own words.
“No, Quinn. I won’t allow it. I can’t live without you.” She held him tighter.
“I can’t live without you either, love. I’ll only exist. My heart will beat, but it won’t feel.” His movement intensified and his grasp on her grew stronger.
“Stay, Quinn. Stay with me and learn how to love again.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. Her climax approached, a sharp knife that would surely cleave her soul in two. “Please, love me.”
He entwined his fingers with hers and pushed their hands into the pillow, his movements growing faster. Sweat beaded on his forehead and moisture grew in his eyes. “Baby, don’t you know? Can’t you tell?”
Her climax hit and, for an instant, she couldn’t breathe. The bittersweet beauty of it turned her tears to sobs. She had to convince him to give up this insane idea of leaving, because she needed him more than her next breath.
Quinn tensed and his head reared back, the muscles in his neck corded and bulging. He cried her name as he convulsed in climax. Tucking his head against her neck, he struggled for air and his finger twirled around a curl. “Angel, I would rather have had one breath of your hair, one taste of your lips, one touch of your silky skin than a lifetime of never knowing it.” Then, forehead to forehead, lips to lips, they shed their tears of farewell.
CHAPTER NINE
Quinn’s palms were planted against the white tiles in the shower, his chin touching his chest and hot water sluicing over his fatigued muscles. His mind trudged and stumbled on the damn-me-to-hell treadmill. He was a bastard. A cold-hearted motha. The ass-wipe of Florida. Hell, the entire world. He’d taken Cassie’s virginity and then sent her on her way, her heart obviously shattered. The edge of his fist hit the tile. He was one self-centered son of a bitch. How could he do that to her?
