by Amy Andrews
Tucker laughed. He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but her voice had gone all high at the very end, like she’d been sucking on helium. And it was less distracting to focus on how she’d said it than the content of her little speech. Knowing she was in a constant state of sexual awareness because of him was going to seriously fuck with his concentration going forward.
“Trust me, I know how you feel,” he said, keeping his voice gentle as he walked slowly in her direction, stopping a few feet away. Betty’s tail gave two thumps. “I want you so much I shake with it sometimes.”
“No, you don’t.” She tossed her head, her voice husky. “Not really. Not like that time in Denver when you pushed me against the glass and kissed me. Your body shook so hard that night I could practically feel it rattling my bones.”
Yeah. Tucker remembered that incident with startling regularity. How quickly it had escalated. It was what he reminded himself of every night on his walk from Jack’s—how easy it was to give in to the dark pull of desire he felt for Della. “I shouldn’t have let it get out of hand like that.”
“Oh my God! Tucker.” She gave a frustrated growl and marched to the other side of the room. “I wanted you to kiss me like that.” Her eyes practically bugged from her head, in case her exasperation wasn’t clear enough. “I told you that on the night, and I meant it. I want you to kiss me like that now. Not so damned steady and controlled all the time.”
Tucker’s balls tightened at her heartfelt plea. Her frustration was a palpable force he could feel clear across the distance separating them. If he’d been an insecure kind of guy, he’d be worried he was boring her, but he was confident enough as a man, as a lover, to know Della was extremely physically satisfied.
He was melting her brain, for fuck’s sake.
What she was asking for was more, and hell if he didn’t want to give it to her. But he only had two speeds where she was concerned, and he didn’t think she understood the firestorm that was speed two.
“And I want to be an equal partner,” she continued, her eyes flashing. “I want to…pleasure you, too.” She took a deep breath. “I want to give you a blow job.”
Her blatantly direct statement slugged him right in the middle of his chest, and his dick voted with an instantaneous booyah. But the easily led did not get a say.
And Tucker had read enough about triggering these past weeks to be wary about going there.
“Are you…sure you can handle that?”
It didn’t matter how serious she was, it would give him zero pleasure to be the cause of a flashback or any kind of psychological distress. Turning the light out that night had been harrowing enough to witness.
“Yes. I want to give you the kind of pleasure with my mouth that you’ve been giving me with yours.”
Jesus. His balls throbbed at the steely determination in her voice, and he dragged in a breath as heavy as lead. He really, really wanted her to suck his dick, too.
“Just let me try.” She took a step forward and, dropping to her knees as she’d done before, reached for his fly.
It took all of Tucker’s willpower to shield himself once more. Never had he been so conflicted over a blow job. Christ. Tucker shoved his other hand through his hair. “What if you have a flashback?”
“Then I’ll stop.” Her fingers curled over the top of his and pulled gently at his hand. Tucker resisted. “And you can hold me.” Another tug at his hand. “And we can talk about it.”
When she pulled at his hand this time, Tucker’s resistance, which had been pretty much at breaking point, snapped so loudly he was surprised they hadn’t heard the crack in Kansas.
Damn it. Why was he fighting this so hard? He’d asked her to be sure about wanting to progress things, and the woman was kneeling in front of him being as sure and as clear as was possible.
Dragging in an unsteady breath, he removed his hand from his crotch, sliding it straight onto her face, cupping her cheek as his fingers slid into her hair. His thumb stroked over her cheekbone, his heart beating loud and fast, his chest tight. “If you need to stop…”
She rubbed her cheek into his palm. “I’ll stop.”
Tucker swallowed as her fingers slid to his fly, and she slowly drew the little tab all the way down, the release of each zipper tooth loud as a gunshot in the dead-of-night silence typical of Credence. Mrs. Doyle’s bat ears were probably already twitching.
His heart thumped in his chest, and the air in his lungs was thick as soup as he waited, belt and fly hanging open, his erection straining against the confines of cotton boxer briefs and thick denim. It bucked almost violently when her index finger finally touched down. The touch was featherlight, but he felt it deep inside his buttocks. He tightened his hand in her hair as a low groan was pulled from his throat.
She ran her fingers along his shaft—or the part of it that was exposed through his open fly, anyway—and damn if her concentration, the way her gaze followed the action, the way her teeth dug into her bottom lip, wasn’t a serious fucking turn-on. Her index finger traveled north a little, hooking into the waistband of his briefs and tugging, dragging the fabric down.
All the way down.
Tucker groaned, his eyes squeezing shut as his erection sprang out, the sudden sensation of freedom walking that fine line between pleasure and pain.
“Mmm,” she hummed. Tucker opened his eyes in time to see her staring intently at his dick. “It’s so beautiful.” Her voice was hushed as she glanced up at him, reverent, almost, like she was looking upon a magnificent work of art.
Nobody had ever called his cock beautiful before, and he’d certainly never thought of it as such. Most women just went with huge. Some had even been a little intimidated. But he was a big guy, so it was hardly surprising that he was anatomically proportionate.
To him, it was just…functional. Ugly functional in the way all genitals were but functional nonetheless. Not to Della, though, clearly. She was staring at it like it was a beribboned maypole, and for excruciating moments he wondered if she was just going to keep looking at it until he came. Which, right now, was an absolute possibility.
She didn’t, though. Her fingers slid onto his engorged flesh. Tucker’s pulse spiked, the muscles in his belly jumped, and he sucked in a harsh breath. Her touch was both balm and stimulus as she wrapped her fingers around him mid-shaft. Tucker’s quads went weak, and he groaned again as she fisted him all the way down to his root and all the way up to his crown before returning to the middle again.
Her eyes flicked to his. “I don’t want you holding back from me.”
If she thought he’d be able to hold back once she wrapped her lips around him, then she totally misunderstood the depth of his desire. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible,” Tucker said, a strangled kind of grunt sliding from his throat as he fought the primal urge to pump into her hand. “I should warn you, I don’t think I’ll last very long, though.”
“Good,” she said with a smile. “I want to watch you lose control.”
She returned her attention to his dick, buzzing her lips against the engorged crown, and Tucker grunted as forks of lightning lit up the nerve endings from the base of his cock all the way through to the base of his spine like tiny little tributaries of white-hot pleasure. And then her tongue slicked across, too, and Tucker thanked God the wall was nearby as he reached for it, extending his arm and flattening his palm for purchase.
Which was timely, given her next move was parting her lips and slipping them over the taut, flushed crown, taking it into her mouth. “Oh fuuuuuck.”
Tucker groaned long and low on a rush of exhaled air, leaning heavily into his hand as his knees threatened to buckle. His eyes clamped shut as her tongue swirled tentatively around and around the dome, and every nerve ending in his body pulsed with pleasure. She withdrew for a second before sliding her lips around him again, going farther this time,
her tongue exploring the dimensions of his girth. Her lips formed a seal as she withdrew, creating a suction he felt right down to his toes.
“Like this?”
Tucker dragged in a breath as he forced his eyes to open. The sight that greeted him almost had his knees buckling again. Della looking up at him, her hand wrapped firmly around him, her lips wet against the flushed, glistening crown of his cock.
Her blue eyes were unsure, though, looking for his approval, searching for signs of his pleasure. “Yes.” Tucker nodded.
After that, she didn’t ask any more questions, she just opened her mouth and took him back inside, sliding on and off him with excruciating thoroughness, her head bobbing as she grew bolder with each pass, taking him a little deeper each time until Tucker was panting hard and so very, very close.
“Della.” He shut his eyes, his hand involuntarily tightening in her hair, grunting as the taut fibers holding him in check started to ping lose. “I’m so close.”
Suddenly, she was gone. The hot, wet suction of her mouth no more.
Tucker’s eyes flew open, the pulse at his temple throbbing as his body frantically tried to put on the brakes. “Della?”
Her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Tucker shook his head, as much to clear it as to assure. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I just…don’t think I want to…” She paused, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip, wet and full and so damn sexy from all that suction. “Go all the way. Not…this time.”
A cool wash of relief flooded Tucker’s chest. She didn’t want to swallow? He didn’t give one single fuck about that. “Christ, Della, I don’t care.” He reached down for her then, hauling her up his body, urging her legs apart as he lifted. “I’d rather be inside you when I come anyway.”
And he wanted that now. Right now.
Turning her, he pushed her against the wall and kissed her hard, his hands breeching the hem of her skirt like he’d been wanting to do ever since he’d knelt to pat Betty. “Oh Christ,” he muttered against his mouth as his palms encountered bare skin. “You’re commando.”
That was the moment any notion of being gentlemanly, of holding back even just a little, fled. Maybe he might have been capable of slowing things down had she been wearing underwear, but no panties was like a gallon of gas being tossed onto a bonfire.
His dick notched against her entrance as his hands moved to her shirt. Grasping down low, one hand on either side of the central row of buttons, he ripped. Hard plastic discs pinged everywhere as the shirt fell open and the sound of her gasp filled his ears. Her breasts were bare as well, and Tucker was suddenly ravenous.
He devoured them—licking and sucking her nipples—encouraged by the arch of her back and the hard twist of her hands in his hair. “Yes,” she gasped, “yes. Inside me, Tucker. Now.”
Tucker didn’t bother to lift his mouth from her breasts. He didn’t stop to think about his lack of protection or them being against the wall or Betty being two feet from their position and maybe licking his ankle in the middle of it all. He just thrust inside her, in one quick decisive snap of his hips.
Della gasped and called his name, and Tucker released her nipple to claim her mouth, kissing her deep and long and hard as he thrust deep and long and hard, her slick heat like a velvet glove around him, picking up his climax where he’d left off, crying out as he tipped over the edge, the walls of her sex clenching tight around him as she cried out, too, joining him in the rapture.
Chapter Nineteen
Two weeks later, on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in early May, Della pushed open the heavy door to The Lumberjack. She was in a T-shirt and a light fluttery skirt that came to just above her knee, because the sun was shining but also because she loved the way Tucker’s eyes heated when he looked at the hem of any skirt she was wearing, as if he was calculating how easily he could slide his hand under.
She hadn’t come to the bar since starting her…tryst with Tucker because she hadn’t yet perfected a way to interact with him that didn’t betray how much she wanted to tear the clothes from his body. Especially since the night she’d gone down on him.
And what a night.
She’d asked him not to hold back, and he’d given her everything. He’d unleashed. Like he had that night in Denver. No propriety, not boundaries. Only it had been better because this time he hadn’t stopped abruptly. He’d let her feel the full force of his arousal. When he’d ripped her top and entered her with one hard, decisive thrust, even his lack of protection hadn’t mattered. She had an implant, and the way he’d hammered her had been exactly what she’d wanted.
And the sex they’d had since then… Lordy! She’d learned so much.
About the act itself but about Tucker most of all. She’d learned all his sensitive spots—what made his breath hitch, what made him groan, and what made him say fuuuuuck.
But it wasn’t just sex she’d learned about since getting involved with Tucker. She’d learned that he liked cilantro but didn’t like carrots, that he loved audio and electronic books but preferred to get his news in printed format. She’d learned about his travels before he came back to Credence a decade ago, that he was a closet The Bachelorette junkie, and that the only thing he’d run back into a burning house to save was his hot pot.
And that he hogged the bed.
He’d spent every night with her since they’d first gone all the way and had even left a small backpack in her room with some basic changes of clothes. His toothbrush sat next to hers in the cup on top of the vanity. They were practically living together.
In secret.
Della knew it couldn’t last. That sooner or later he’d remind her this was meant to only be a temporary thing and call it a day. Just a few nights ago, she’d mentioned she was going to delete the Tinder app from her phone, and Tucker had been adamant she didn’t.
Keep it for after, he’d suggested, and she’d acquiesced so he’d stop insisting, but she hadn’t looked at it in weeks and she wasn’t planning on looking at it ever again.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to.
Maybe the longer they were together, he’d forget about after.
As if he knew she was thinking about him, Tucker glanced up from behind the bar, giving her a thorough once-over. Jack’s was about half full, but suddenly Della felt like the only person in the room as his eyes lingered on the hem of her skirt. His nostrils flared, and her heart skipped a beat.
How did he do that? Set her on fire from so far away?
“Della. There you are.”
Dragging her eyes off the hunk of man who had eaten some of Annie’s peach cobbler off her stomach last night—he’d brought two: one for them, one for Mrs. Doyle—she turned to find Rosemary sitting in a booth opposite two men who appeared to be in their fifties. She’d asked Della to come to Jack’s today to meet her sons, and Della had agreed readily.
That was before she realized just how transparent she really was around Tucker. Too many more incendiary stares like that and their cover would be blown.
Rosemary waved her over. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
Della smiled as she slipped in beside Rosemary. The two men opposite were tall and handsome like their mama, with gray wings in their hair and tanned, craggy faces. A couple of Stetsons sat on the table in front of them next to their empty beer glasses.
“This is Jethro and Clay,” Rosemary said, indicating who was who. Clay seemed younger than his brother by a few years.
“Nice to meet you,” Della said, shaking hands with both men, who smiled in greeting.
It was hard not to reflect in this moment on how far she’d come in the last three years. In the last year, really, since Arlo had set up the job at the old folks’ home. She’d have shrunk from any man offering his hand when she’d first moved to Credence. But with therapy and Arlo giving her a gentl
e push, she’d come a long way.
She owed Arlo a lot.
“Can I get you anything from the bar?” Clay asked politely, collecting his and his brother’s glasses.
Della glanced up to find Tucker’s eyes on her. He was talking to a customer, but his eyes were fixed firmly in her direction. “Yes please, Clay.” I’ll have the hot dude behind the bar. She returned her attention to Rosemary’s son. “A piña colada.” Her blue eyes flicked to the bar again, clashing with the heat and intensity of whiskey. “Tucker knows how I like it.”
“Ooh. I’ll have one of those, too.” Rosemary drained her half glass of white wine in three swallows and passed it to her son. “Tell Tucker I’ll have what she’s having.”
Jethro blinked. “You want a cocktail? At two in the afternoon?”
Rosemary did not blink. “Yes.”
Clay seemed as nonplussed as his brother by the obviously out-of-character request but departed without further comment. The three made small talk while they waited for Clay to return. He was back five minutes later with two frothy concoctions, handing one to his mom and the other to Della. “Tucker says this one is yours.”
Rosemary’s glass was garnished with a wedge of pineapple and three maraschino cherries. Della’s was also decorated, with three cherries and a big fat juicy slice of peach. Trying to keep her blush in check, Della raised her glass in his direction. He dipped his head in acknowledgment, and the air hummed and arced between them, hot as an electrical current.
Rosemary was too busy sipping her cocktail to take notice. “Mmm-mm.” She placed her drink down after several healthy swallows. “Gotta hand it to that man—he knows a thing or two about cocktails.”
Della’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t the only thing that man knew a thing or two about.
“Now Della,” Rosemary said, suddenly all business. “I wanted you to come here today and meet my boys so you can assure them I’m fine and tell them to stop being jackasses.”
