Pulling back, I nodded, whispering, “Me, too. I love you a scary amount.”
“Then seriously, Mrs. Ryan,” he said. “Put my dick in your mouth.”
Acknowledgments
It’s surreal to be done writing the Beautiful series less than a year after we sold it to Gallery. We’re excited to move on to something new, but it’s bittersweet because we’ve really had the time of our lives writing these saucy books. We’re going to miss these crazy characters.
We want to begin by thanking everyone who has made the journey with us in these books—from Beautiful Bastard to Beautiful Beginning—we have had the most fun doing this with you. Thank you, truly, for buying and reading our books. We’re still writing with just as much silliness and passion as when we started this adventure. We sincerely hope you love what comes next.
Our agent, Holly Root, had a sixth sense about Gallery’s Adam Wilson; we think she just knew that he would be a perfect fit for these books, and for us. We’ve said it in every book, and we’ll say it again: thanks to both of you for being exactly who you are, because you’re exactly what we needed. Holly, you’re hands-on whenever we need you, and hands-off when you trust us to do our thing. Adam, you’ve made these books so much better and distracted us from your plethora of margin notes by making them hilarious (and spot-on). Look for the petal cupcakes heading your way. We like you. We like you
a lot.
What Jen Bergstrom said to us in Orlando is true: Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint works like a big family, and we’ve felt that from day one. Thanks to Adam for bringing us to the table. And to Carolyn Reidy, Louise Burke, Jen Bergstrom: thank you for taking us on with such investment and enthusiasm. Thank you, Kristin Dwyer and Mary McCue in publicity, for your tireless work on these six novels in only ten months (and also for just being badass and irresistibly adorable and our preciouses). Thank you, Liz Psaltis and Ellen Chan, for the amazing work on the marketing side. Thank you, Carly Sommerstein, our production editor, who we’ve sent into the trenches with our quick turnarounds. We’ve loved every single cover—thank you, Lisa Litwack and John Vairo!—the Gallery art department really hit it out of the park designing them. Thank you to our first copy editor for the joke that will never stop being funny. And a preemptive thanks to whoever volunteers to always ensure Adam eats the cupcake with the candy bone on it. Yes, we’re twelve.
Lauren Suero, you’ve been so good to us and to Team Beautiful from day one. Thank you for running our social media, following every bit of Beautiful news, and keeping us buoyed in our text box. Jennifer Grant, thank you for help on the promo side and with the website. What you’ve done for us is seriously amazing. Thank you to every blogger who has reviewed us, recced us, tweeted us, and talked about us. Your support means so much!!
To our Beautiful pre-readers—Erin, Martha, Tonya, Myra, Tawna, Anne, Kellie, Katy, and Gretchen—thank you for giving us your eyes, your time, your thoughts. These books have been ridiculously fun for us to write, and we hope they’ve been even a fraction as fun to read. We really do love it when you fill our box with happy reactions and constructive criticism. Hopefully your eyes aren’t tired, because we have lots more books to
come.
Of course, we want to thank the fandom, because it’s where we met and where we remain. In the past nearly five years, you’ve become more than a community we joined to read and write fanfic. Collectively, you have become some of our closest friends and a group of women about whom we care very deeply. Thanks for being excited for us and for sharing your own victories with us along the way. We hope you feel pride in our happiest moments the way we feel it in each of yours. We adore you all.
Our families and friends have listened to us speak about almost nothing else for the past year, and not once have you been anything other than excited and supportive. We’re grateful, and we’re lucky. Thanks for being proud of us, and seeming to enjoy the ride as much as we have. You’re either completely adorable in your excitement, or very good actors.
Husbands: we love you. We’ll do a better job telling you in person. Hell, maybe we’ll even show you. (On that note, thanks for giving us such cute and wonderful kiddos.)
To Christina, {insert sentimental quote here, really just an excuse to smell your hair}
To Lo, {insert sappy, adoring thoughts here, including how I could watch you make tabbed and color-coded spreadsheets all day}
Turn the page for a sneak peek of
Sweet Filthy Boy
Book One in the new
Wild Seasons series
from Christina Lauren
Coming June 3, 2014
Sweet Filthy Boy
Book One of the Wild Seasons series
© 2013 Lauren Billings and Christina Hobbs
Ansel pulls the door open and breaks into an enormous smile, which slowly fades as he sees I’ve come empty-handed, no suitcase. Nothing but a tiny crossbody bag slung over my chest.
“I can’t come to France with you,” I start, looking up at him with wide eyes. My pulse feels like a heavy drum in my throat. “But I didn’t want to go home, either.”
He steps to the side to let me in and I drop my bag on the floor and turn to watch him. There’s really only one reason I’m here, in this hotel room, and I think we both know it. It’s easy to pretend to be the lover in a movie, coming to the hotel for one last night together. I don’t have to work to be brave when it’s safe like this: he’s leaving. It becomes almost like a game. A play. A role.
I don’t know which Mia is taking over my body, but I’m shutting out everything but how it feels to be so close to this boy. I only have to take one step closer and he meets me halfway, sliding both hands into my hair and covering my mouth with his. Ocean and green and still the lingering scent of me on his clothes.
His taste, oh. I want to feel so full of him that every other thought dissolves under the heat of it. I want his mouth everywhere, sucking at me like he does. I love how he loves my lips, how—after only one night together—his hands already know my skin.
He walks me back to the bed, lips and tongue and teeth all over my cheeks and mouth and jaw. I fall backward when my knees hit the bed.
He pulls at the hem of my dress and unsheathes me in a single determined tug, then reaches behind me, ridding me of my bra with a tiny slip of his fingers. He makes me feel like I’m something to reveal, something in which to revel. I’m the reward at the end of his magic trick, exposed beneath the velvet cape. His eyes rake across my skin and I can see his own impatience: shirt flung across the room, fingers tugging at his belt, tongue flicking at the air, searching for the taste of me.
Ansel gives up on undressing, instead kneeling on the floor between my thighs, spreading me, kissing me over the fabric of my underwear. He nibbles and tugs, sucking and licking impatiently before he slides my last remaining article of clothing down my legs.
I gasp when he leans forward, covering my most sensitive skin in a long, slow lick. His breath feels like tiny bursts of fire where he kisses my clit, my pubic bone, my hip. I push up, leaning back on my hands to watch him.
"Tell me what you need," he says, his voice raspy against my hip.
With this, I remember weakly that he made me come with his hands and body last night, but not his mouth. I can sense the need to conquer this, and wonder how long he tried before I grew impatient, pulling him up and into me.
The truth is I'm not sure what I need. Oral sex has always been a stop on the way somewhere else. A way to get me wet, to make the circuit of my body activate. Never something done until I shook and sweated and swore.
"S-suck," I say, guessing.
He opens his mouth, sucking perfectly for a breath of time and then too much. "Not so hard.” I close my eyes, finding the bravery to tell him, “Like you suck on my lip."
It's exactly the direction he needed and I fall back against the mattress without thinking, my legs spreading wider and with this he grows
wild. Palms firmly planted on my inner thighs to keep my legs open, sounds pressed into me, vibrating throughme.
One of his hands leaves me and I can feel him moving, can sense the shifting of his arm. Propping myself on an elbow I look down and realize he's touching himself, eyes on me, fevered.
"Let me," I tell him. "I want to taste you, too."
I don't know where these words are coming from; I’m not myself right now. He nods but doesn't stop moving his hand. I love it. I love that it’s not weird or taboo. He's lost in me, he's hard, he’s giving into the need for his own pleasure while he gives me mine.
As he kisses and sucks and licks with such uninhibited hunger, I'm afraid I won't be able to come and his enthusiasm and effort will be wasted. But then I feel the tight pull, the edge of something that grows bigger and bigger with every breath across my skin. I thread my hands in his hair, rock up into him.
"Oh, God."
He groans, mouth eager, eyes on me wide and thrilled.
I relish the tight swell of my tendons, my muscles, the blood rushing so heated and urgent in my veins. I can feel it build, spread out and race through my limbs, exploding between my legs. I’m gasping, hoarse and senseless, offering no words, just sharp sounds. The echo of my orgasm rings around us as I fall back onto the pillow.
I feel drugged, and with effort I push him away from where his lips press to my thigh so I can sit up. He stumbles to his feet, pants undone and slung low over his hips. I look up at him, and from the light coming out of the bathroom I can see how wet his mouth is, from me—as if he was hunting, as if I was caught and devoured.
He wipes a forearm across his entire face, and steps closer to the bed just as I lean forward and take him in my mouth.
He cries out, desperate. "Already close."
It’s a warning. I can feel it in the jutting thrusts of his hips, the tense swelling of the head of his cock, the way he grips my head like he wants to pull back, make this last longer, but can’t. He fucks my mouth, seeming to know already that it’s okay, and after only six sharp jabs across my tongue and teeth and lips, he’s holding steady, deep inside and coming with a low, rasping groan.
I pull my mouth away from him and he runs a shaking finger across my lip as I swallow.
“So good,” he exhales.
I fall back on the pillow and feel like my muscles have been completely silenced after the frenzy of my entry into the room. I’m leaden and numb, and other than the heavy echo of pleasure between my legs, the only thing I can feel is my smile.
The room has turned pink in the sunset pouring through the window, and Ansel hovers over me on rigid arms, breathing heavily. I feel the rake of his gaze move across my skin, come to settle on my breasts, and he smiles at the same time I feel my nipples grow tight.
"I left marks all over you last night." He bends, blowing air across one peak. "I'm sorry."
I laugh and tug his hair playfully. “You don’t sound sorry.”
He grins up at me, and when he pulls back to admire his handiwork again, I give in to the unfamiliar instinct to cross my arms over my chest. In dance, my small frame was a benefit; my small breasts were an ideal non-hindrance. But in the bare skin world of sex, I can't imagine my 32Bs cut it.
"What are you doing?" he asks, tugging on my forearm as he kicks off his pants. "It's too late to be shy with me now."
"I feel tiny."
He laughs. "You are tiny, cerise. But I like every tiny inch of you. I haven’t seen your skin in hours." Bending, he circles my nipple with his tongue. "You have sensitive breasts, I discovered."
I suspect I have sensitive everything when he's the one touching me.
His palm spreads across one breast while he sucks at the other and his tongue begins to move in small, flat, pressing circles. It revives the delicious throb between my legs.
I think he knows it, too, because the hand cupping my breast slides down over my ribs, across my stomach, down my navel and between my legs, but he never stops circling with his tongue.
And then his fingers are there, two of them pressed flat, and he's making the same circles in the same rhythm, and it’s as if a tight band connects between where his tongue and fingers are, pulling tighter and tighter, warmer and warmer. I'm bowing up off the bed and gripping his head, begging him in a hoarse voice to please please please.
The same rhythm, both places, and I’m worried I’ll fall apart, melt into the bed or simply dissolve into nothing when he hums over my nipple, his fingers pressing harder, and then he lets up only long enough to ask me, “Won’t you let me hear you one more time?”
I don’t know if I could survive it. I can’t survive without it.
With him, my sounds are hoarse and free, I don’t seem to hold back words of pleasure and it’s completely without thought. I offer up everything and my sounds spur him on until he’s sucking frantically and I’m arching into his hand crying out—
Coming
Coming
Three fingers plunge into me, the heel of his hand taking over outside. It’s pleasure so intense it hurts. Or maybe it’s knowing how easy this is and how good, and that I have to either give him up or do something crazy to keep him. My orgasm lasts so long I run through both of these scenarios multiple times during the most intense pleasure of it. It lasts long enough for him to unlatch his lips from my breast and move to my face and kiss me, sucking all of my sounds into his mouth. It lasts long enough for him to tell me I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
My body quiets and his kisses slow until it’s just the small slide of his lips over mine. I taste like him and he tastes like me.
Ansel leans over the side of the bed to pull a condom from the pocket of his jeans. “Are you too sore?” he asks, holding it up in question.
I’m sore, but I don’t think I could ever be too worn-out to feel him. I need to remember exactly what it’s like. The scattered shrapnel of my memory won’t suffice if I have to let him go tonight. I don’t answer aloud, but I pull him over me, bending my knees at his sides.
He kneels, brows drawn as he rolls the condom down his length. I want to pull out my phone, take pictures of his body and his serious, focused expression. I need the pictures so I can say,See, Mia? You were right about his skin. It’s as smooth and perfect as you remember. I want to somehow capture the way his hands are shaking with urgency.
When he’s done he places a hand by my head and uses the other to guide himself to me. The moment I can feel the heavy press of him, it occurs to me that I’ve never felt so impatient in my life. My body wants to devour his.
"Come back with me," he says, moving barely in, and back out again. A torture. “Please, Mia. Just for the summer.”
I shake my head no, unable to find words, and he groans in frustration and pleasure as he slowly pushes inside. I lose my breath, lose my ability to breathe or even care that I need to, and pull my legs up high, wanting him deeper, wanting to feel him entering me forever. He’s heavy, thick, so hard that when his hips meet my thighs I hover at the edge of discomfort. He’s the one making me lose my breath, making me feel like there’s not enough room in my body for him and air at the same time, but nothing has ever felt so good.
I'd tell him I changed my mind, I'll come with him, if I could find words, but with his arms braced beside my head he starts to move and it's unlike anything else. It's unlike everything else. The slow, solid drag of him inside me builds an ache so good it’s enough to make me feel a little unhinged at the thought that the feeling will end at some point.
He’s giving me a gentle warm-up, his eyes on mine as he pulls out slowly and then even more slowly pushes back in, occasionally ducking down to slide his mouth over mine. But when I drag my tongue over his teeth, and he jerks forward, sharp and unexpected, I hear my own tight gasp, and it unleashes something in him. He starts to move, hard and smooth over me, perfect curling thrusts of his hips.
I don't really know how many times we had sex last night, but he must have fi
gured out what I need, and he seems to love to watch giving it to me. He pushes up on his hands, kneeling between my spread legs, and already I know that when I come it will be unlike anything I've felt before. I can hear his grunting breaths and my own sharp exhales. I can hear the slap of the front of his thighs against the inside of mine and the slick, smooth strokes of him moving in and out of me.
I won’t need his fingers or mine or a toy. We fit. His skin slides across my clit again and again and again.
Lola was right last night when she teased about how it would be with Ansel and me: it ismissionary, and there's eye contact, but it isn't precious or soft-focus the way she meant. I can’t imagine not looking at him. It would be like trying to have sex without touching.
The pleasure climbs up my legs like a vine, building into a flush I can feel spreading across my cheeks, across my chest. I’m terrified I’ll lose this sensation, that I’m chasing something that doesn’t really exist, but he’s moving faster, and harder, so hard he has to hold my hips with his hands so he doesn’t push me off the bed. His eyes rake over my gasping lips and my breasts that bounce with his thrusts. The way he fucks me makes my slight body feel voluptuous for the first time in my life.
I open my mouth to tell him I’m falling and nothing comes out but a cry for more and yes and this and yes and yes. Sweat drops from his forehead onto my breast and rolls onto my neck. He’s working so hard, holding so much back, waiting waiting waiting for me. I love the restraint and hunger and determination in his beautiful face and I’m at the edge, right there.
Warmth rushes throughout my body a split second before I fall.
He sees it happen. He watches, mouth parting in relief, eyes blazing in victory. My orgasm crashes over me so hard, so consuming, I’m not myself anymore. I’m the savage pulling him down onto me, rutting up into him and gripping his ass to pull him in deeper. I’m pure desperation beneath him, begging, biting his shoulder, spreading my legs as wide as they’ll go.
Beautiful Beginning Page 15
