by JC Harroway
‘No.’ I scrub a hand through my hair, tempted to tear it out at the words formulating in my head. ‘But I don’t want to hurt you, either.’ Hurt you any more than I already have. ‘You’ve been through enough. And I...I made him a promise.’
Her eyelids lower, taking her eyes from wide to sultry, heavy with want, as if she needed to hear confirmation I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But that can’t be what she’s saying, can it? Because we agreed, only this morning... A mere thirteen hours, ten minutes and forty-three seconds ago.
I can’t look away, even though I should. I can’t speak, because what I’d feel compelled to say is ‘go back to bed’ and, right now, I’d rather cut out my tongue.
When she speaks again her voice is breathy, but with a firm enough tone that speaks of her sincerity. Her certainty. Her need. ‘You can keep your promise to him.’ Her breath shudders out and then back in. ‘But don’t make me a promise you can’t keep, Drake.’
My name on her lips, husky, uttered on a breathy sigh, punches me in the chest and makes my blood sing through my veins and pool in my groin. How does she know me so well? Better than I know myself? Because right now, with her scent in my head and her eyes on mine, I couldn’t swear on the life of my brothers which way this will go. Which way I’ll go.
She’s temptation personified.
But I’m strong. Practised at self-denial and tolerating discomfort.
The friends mantra loops through my head.
‘You wanted friends—I can keep that promise.’ The words tear at my throat. Her hand is still in mine. One lunge, one tumble and she’d be under me. Where I want her, her mouth on mine, her wet heat clamped around my cock while I drive us both to oblivion, drive away the memory she was ever anyone else’s but mine.
Her eyes glow, their depths full of things I must be dreaming, or concocting in my mind.
‘Don’t,’ she says.
One word.
One meaning.
All it takes to seal my doom.
She slides the blanket from her shoulders and I tug her under me in one move, as I imagined. A move so perfect, there’s a fanfare sounding in my head. My mouth covers hers, my hand sliding under her shirt, up her smooth belly to her breast, and I succumb, my weakness for her obliterating every resolution and mocking the friend, the disciplined soldier and the man for a liar.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kenzie
JUST LIKE THE first time, his touch rains down liquid lightning on my skin. I gasp into his kiss as he rolls my nipple between his fingers with the perfect degree of pressure to leave me panting. His erection, hot and bare, digs into my thigh and I spread my legs, angling the hard length where any shift of my hips will rub him over my clit.
‘Drake.’ He swallows my ragged cry and then rears back, his hips rocking into mine, reproducing the exquisite friction I crave, over and over.
‘Say it again.’ His stare glitters, the bite of command telling me how close he is to the edge.
Thrust. Grind. Rock.
He’s braced on his arms, looking down at me, and I want to chant his name until I’m hoarse.
‘Drake... Drake...’ I want my underwear gone. I want to feel the head of his cock sliding through my wetness, waking my hungry clit with every glide. I bite my lip on the urge to voice my desires in case their ferocity scares him off.
How could I convince myself I only wanted friendship? That one time with him would end this yearning?
His mouth silences my thoughts, his tongue surging against mine as a growl vibrates from his throat. His hand is back under my top and I writhe and wriggle until I’ve scraped the fabric overhead and tossed it to the floor, breaking our deep, drugging kiss in the process.
I slide my hands over Drake’s naked chest, his sculpted shoulders and up into his hair, while he grinds against my centre, his chest working hard and his eyes locked to mine with twice the passion of last night.
No matter what we said, this isn’t over, for either of us.
His skin scorches me. He’s big and solid, surrounding and engulfing me in the best way. Holding me like he’s held me all day with his actions and his encouragement and his thoughtfulness.
‘Tell me you want this.’ He barks out the command as if he’s as close as I am to totally losing control. How can this be better than the first time? How is this need nowhere near diminished?
I nod, too pleasure-drunk for words, but then I pull myself together. ‘Yes, oh, fuck, yes.’ My desire breaks free, starkly honest. Seizing this moment with Drake feels as important as seizing the chance at my dream job. More important. Because with him I feel powerful, capable, strong.
But I shut out the growing emotional attachment we’ve developed today, telling myself I can enjoy and control the sexual storm he’s awoken in me. Telling myself I want nothing from him beyond incredible sex.
Because more than that hurts.
More than that is a temporary illusion.
He leans over me, yanking open the drawer beside the bed. I’m distracted with all that yummy chest I didn’t get to explore the way I wanted to last time. This time, even though I’m aching and empty and my underwear is soaked, I lift my head from the bed and indulge, my open mouth sliding over his hot skin. He moves out of reach, so I latch my arms around his back and clamp my mouth over his nipple, before sliding my kisses down the bumps of his ribs.
He rolls to the side and I follow, straddling him and taking the condom from his hand. ‘Not so fast.’
He cups my breasts, his hips restless under me as I work my mouth lower, guided by the happy trail of dark hair leading to his proud cock.
‘Kenzie... Kenz...’
I ignore the hint of warning in his tone and wrap my lips around the fat head, sucking and breathing him in at the same time.
‘Fuck, woman.’ His fingers tangle in my hair, his hips rising up to meet my mouth. His thighs are steel under me, his hands so big they practically cup my entire face as he holds on.
Triumph soars inside me. I glance up, the look on his face turning me on more than the last five minutes of frantic kissing and dry-humping combined. His mouth hangs open as he drags air into his lungs, his heavy-lidded stare is glued to the place where he disappears into my mouth and, as I take him deeper, breath hisses from between his teeth and his strong abs contract, shoving him a little further down my throat. Even lost to his pleasure, he can’t stop touching me, one hand leaving my hair to roam across my shoulder, my breast, even tracing my lips where they’re stretched around him as if he’s fascinated by the sight and feel of me giving him head.
This big, sexy, controlled man wants me. He can’t stop himself, despite his reservations and honour. Just like I want him. My sex clenches, empty, a new gush of arousal coating my soaked underwear. Then, with a low cry, he yanks me up from my position between his legs and rolls me under him once more. ‘Need to come...inside you.’
‘Yes! Hurry.’ I wriggle free of my underwear at last.
In seconds he’s sheathed and then he pushes my knees back up onto my chest and guides himself inside with one hand. We groan together, breath mingling. Drake’s eyes roll closed and then slam back open as he lowers his head to my breast, his hot, possessive mouth covering my nipple. I cry out, my internal muscles clamping on him as jolts of pleasure snake down my belly.
He’s worked his way inside me, as deep as I think he can go, but then he rears back, his eyes locked to mine, and rolls his hips, pushing in the last delicious inch. He holds still, his hips pressing mine into the mattress.
Our chests work in unison to drag in air.
We lie face to face, joined, as open and physically vulnerable as two people can be.
Neither of us speaks.
I hold my breath, lost in the newness of him—his eyes, his strength, his possession—lost to possibility. Because only now am I really
discovering Drake Faulkner. And the more I know, the more I want to know.
Slowly, and without moving his hips, he balances on one arm over me and with the other hand traces an almost reverent path from my cheek, down my neck, pausing to cup my breast and then across my belly to my hip. My breath stalls. I feel claimed. Marked somehow.
A dangerous feeling.
Lifting my leg, he curves my thigh over his hip and his abs contract, providing the barest hint of friction.
It’s so good I want to weep.
When he’s positioned me just how he wants me, he entwines his fingers with mine and presses our clasped hands into the bed beside my head. ‘Fuck, if I’d known it would be this good...’ he bites out, his jaw muscles bunched.
My lust-fogged brain scrambles. What does that mean?
Then he starts to move in earnest and I tremble, too overcome by my desire and the battle against my own feelings to dissect his words.
‘Don’t stop.’ I don’t care that I’m begging. I don’t care that I shouldn’t want him this way. I don’t care that I’m betraying our past connection and potentially jeopardising my future by blurring the lines. All that matters is this. How he makes me feel.
Reborn. Whole. Freed.
It’s slow, torturous and thorough enough to make me want to close my eyes, but the almost reverent look on Drake’s face is worth committing to my long-term memory, and I can’t look away.
‘Kiss me, Drake.’ His eyes flare.
‘Ask me again,’ he grits out, eyes feral with what looks like longing.
Hearing his name does something to him. I want to say it over and over until I’ve cracked him open to see inside. Until everything he’s holding on to spills free.
‘Kiss me, Drake. Kiss me and don’t stop.’ Ever.
He growls, his face twisted with agony, and then he cups my face, fiercely lifting my mouth to his kiss. He starts to buck into me, putting us both out of our misery. I want to pull him down so his weight presses me into the mattress, every bit of his skin against every bit of mine. But my hands cling to his, our fingers locked together, a connection I couldn’t break if I tried.
I pull back from his ferocious kisses for air. The look on his face, as haunted as just after his nightmare but burning with urgency, shows me what he’s held back and how deluded I was to think we could walk away from this physical bond.
I knew he would be an attentive lover, but if he’s subjected all those other women to this intense intimacy there should be queues of broken-hearted rejects lining the street outside the Faulkner.
A jab of pain disrupts the pleasure, the sharp slice of possession.
‘Kenz... I can’t hold on much longer...’ There’s sweat on his brow, his nostrils flare as he delivers deep, pounding thrust after thrust.
I shake my head and raise it from the bed to kiss his decadent mouth, chasing off my demons and searching for a return of the all-consuming rush. ‘Don’t worry about me...’ I whisper against his lips. I want to witness his release. He gave me so much the first time and I’ve allowed my head, my pointless jealousy of some fantasy woman in his future, to get into my head.
‘Fuck that.’ He pulls away and I cry out. But I have no time to lament, because he encourages me to roll over onto all fours, plunges back inside and then scoops one arm around my waist and tugs me up so my back is plastered to his sweaty chest.
‘Grip the headboard,’ he growls against the side of my neck, his facial hair scraping my nerve endings awake.
I obey. Kind of. Needing to touch him, I hold on with one hand and raise the other over my shoulder to tangle in his hair. The minute he’s no longer supporting all my weight, he slips one hand between my legs and strums my clit through my own arousal.
My head lolls back onto his shoulder and he kisses the side of my neck, sucking down on my skin while his hand works me in front and his cock shuttles inside from behind.
‘Drake...’ I’m losing myself. Too turned on to do anything but cling on tight and accept the free fall when it comes.
He’s ruthless, his pants gusting as he drags me back to the edge of bliss.
His growl buzzes against my ear as he slams home time after time, his words incendiary. ‘I don’t want to be your fucking friend, McKenzie.’
I turn my face to try to capture his mouth, his fingers sliding over my clit and the possessive way he growls my full name dragging a strangled whimper from me.
‘Good.’ I cry out, twist my fingers through his hair and hold on tight.
His thrusts grow in power, bumping me up and down on his lap. ‘I want this—’ his arm leaves my waist and he toys with my nipple so I’m a mass of writhing delirium, stimulated from all directions ‘—you. For as long as you need me. For as long as you’ll let me inside you. That’s what I want.’
It’s a stretch to reach his mouth, but as he pushes his tongue against mine I can just see the fierce need on his face from the corner of my eye.
His need for me. Desire for me.
The feeling rushes in, filling parts of me I didn’t know were empty.
I drag my mouth free as my orgasm crests. ‘Yes... I want that, too...’ And then speech is impossible because I’m coming and I don’t know how he manages to hold me up in this position, but he grunts behind me, his free hand a vice on my hip as he slams into me and follows me over the edge into new territory.
CHAPTER NINE
Drake
I FIND HER in my living room. The panic thrumming in my throat tells me I’m in deeper than is wise, but my morning hard-on offers a distraction. I adjust myself inside the jogging bottoms I threw on when I found her gone.
She’s wearing one of my shirts, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the hem skimming the tops of her thighs. Just like I fantasised. Only better. Because it’s real. She’s real.
Her hips sway to the music she’s switched on as she walks around my space, her hand trailing the spines of the books in my bookcase. I watch the sensual way she moves with my elbow resting on the door frame and my head propped on my hand—may as well get comfortable for the show.
I’m loath to interrupt her curiosity. After last night, my declaration still fresh in my head, finding her gone amplified the rawness inside.
But now we’ve dispensed with friends we can focus on the sex.
I drag in a shuddering breath and give free rein to my grin. That I get a chance, even of something physical and temporary, with this wonderful woman makes child’s play of the years of denial. And now what I want from her is out there I’m not going back to the friend zone, even if all it can be is fucking fantastic sex.
Kenzie comes to a standstill, her attention caught on something of interest. My gut twists as I figure out what it is she’s seen.
It’s a picture of Sam and me.
My body veers forward to intercept her before I freeze.
Too late.
She lifts the frame from the shelf.
My smile dies, my happiness draining. The past will never abate. It can never be just us—Kenzie and Drake. The time for that dream was the sliver of possibility just after I first spotted Kenzie and before she spotted Sam.
Fresh regret sours what little progress we made last night in bed.
‘Basic training,’ I say.
Kenzie spins, the photo still in her hand.
‘We’d just thrown up moments before that photo, after a ten-mile run.’ We’d bonded over our lack of fitness.
Sam was a great mate and an even better soldier. Would he have continued to be her husband, had he lived? Would she have forgiven him?
A flush creeps up her chest and neck. From being caught snooping or because the last words we said to each other were ones that propelled our relationship in a new, uncharted direction? ‘You’re both so young.’ She smiles down at the photo, a faraway look on her f
ace.
‘He ribbed me all day for being older and less fit than him.’ Oppressive restlessness propels me to the kitchen, where I flick on the kettle. ‘Tea or coffee?’ I ram some bread into the toaster, regretting the fact I didn’t go straight to her and kiss her good morning—perhaps then she’d never have spotted the photo.
‘Tea, please,’ she says, her voice distracted.
I don’t decry that I’ve lost her again to memories of Sam. No matter where we go or what we do, we can’t ever outrun our past, our connection through Sam.
My appetite vanishes.
I busy myself with breakfast, but I’m so attuned to the woman whose presence seems to brighten every corner of my home that when she sidles up beside me my muscles tense.
Her hand slips to my hip, just above the waistband of my joggers, her fingers warm, the tips flexing. I turn, automatically slipping an arm around her waist, and tug her up onto her tiptoes until my mouth reaches hers in that good-morning kiss.
Our mouths part, foreheads touching, my voice a husky croak that has nothing to do with the early hour. ‘I thought you’d left.’ Changed your mind, regretted what you said...
‘No. But the shift work is messing with my sleep rhythms and I didn’t want to wake you.’
I disguise my vulnerability by pressing my erection into her soft belly and slipping my hand over the curve of her hip to the cheek of her arse. She’s naked under my shirt. Breakfast, work, meetings all slip from my mind as she wraps her arms around my neck and gusts a soft sigh over my lips.
I hoist her up onto the kitchen bench and slot myself between her thighs, which part readily as she accommodates me, despite her underwear-less state. I kiss her again, silently berating myself for falling asleep at all. I could have gorged on her all night, tried to sate this hunger, or at least died giving it a shot, because something tells me I’ll never get enough, not now that we’ve dispensed with the ‘friends’ label.
‘Do we have time?’ she whispers against my ear, making my fingers flex against her arse cheeks, which fill my hands as I grind her onto my hard length.
