Male arrogance hung from his voice. “You like looking at my cock that much, huh?”
“God, yes.” She swallowed. “I wish I was as good at dirty talk as you. I’d tell you all the naughty things I want to do to you, how hot you make me, how badly I want you.”
“Damn, that’s something I definitely want to hear. Come on, baby, talk dirty to me.”
Ribbons of heat uncurled inside her, spreading to every erogenous zone in her body. “I want to lick you,” she choked out. “I want to suck on the head of your cock and feel you pulsing against my tongue.”
He made a growling noise. “Do it then.”
As her heart pounded at triple speed, she lowered her head and licked his shaft from root to tip. The heady, musky taste of him suffused her senses and made her head spin. She encircled him with her fingers and pumped slowly, continuing to lavish him with long swipes of her tongue before closing her lips around him and sucking hard. Sure enough, she felt the blood pooled in his engorged head pulsing on her tongue.
“What else?” he said in a raspy voice that made her shiver. “What else do you want to do to me?”
“Ride you. I want to ride you.”
A strangled noise left his lips. “Do it.”
Trembling wildly, she released his cock and climbed onto the couch. Rather than straddle him, she scrambled up his body and positioned her knees at either side of his head so that her aching core hovered over his face. “I want your tongue on me,” she said huskily.
Cash didn’t hesitate. His tongue swiftly connected with her clit, spearing that swollen bud with absolute precision.
Jen cried out in delight and grabbed onto the arm of the couch to steady herself. The satisfied growling sounds Cash made as he licked her teased her hypersensitive nerve endings. He feasted on her like a starving man, his strong hands digging into her ass, and she ground into his face with complete abandon. She should’ve been embarrassed by her obvious excitement, the all-consuming desperation, but her brain became a black hole void of all thought, any sense of decency forgotten. All she knew was that she had to come.
Needed
it, the way she needed oxygen and sustenance.
But just as the orgasm rose to the surface, just as her muscles turned to limp noodles and her pulse grew erratic, she managed to wrench herself away from that talented tongue and stave off the release.
Breathing hard, she clambered off him and flung an arm in the direction of the coffee table. They’d formed a habit of leaving condoms all over the apartment in the event that a crazy case of lust overtook them, which seemed to happen often. She’d tucked a condom underneath the
Sports Illustrated
magazine on the table and her fingers shook as she grabbed the square packet. Somehow she managed to tear it open and roll the latex onto his erection, and then she sat astride him, her breaths coming out shallow.
“I should warn you, I’m going to explode the second you’re in me.”
“I look forward to it,” he said solemnly.
Sucking in a burst of air, Jen sank onto that thick, hard cock.
She hadn’t been kidding. Pleasure blasted through her the moment he filled her, her inner muscles clenching even as they stretched to accommodate him. The orgasm sent her soaring into sheer oblivion. Gasping, she collapsed on his chest, her hips moving in a frantic rhythm as she rode out the release.
When she crashed down from the orgasmic high, she felt Cash shuddering beneath her. His upward thrusts contained no finesse, just short, erratic strokes emphasized by his hoarse grunts as he came hard and fast.
Sometime later, when their breathing steadied and their pulses regulated, Cash gently moved her off him so he could ditch the condom, then brought her body back to his and cuddled her close. She rested her cheek on his chest, sighing in sweet contentment.
God, this felt good.
It felt
right
.
Apprehension gnawed on her insides when she realized where her thoughts had drifted. She tried to wiggle out of Cash’s embrace, but he held her tighter, his husky laughter tickling her forehead. “You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart. I haven’t gotten my cuddling fill yet.”
An unwitting smile tugged on Jen’s lips, and she forced herself to relax, trying not to overthink this. Snuggling together after sex was perfectly acceptable fling behavior.
But…yeah, she definitely needed to work a little harder on the not-falling-in-love-with-him part.
Chapter Eleven
Four days later, Jen’s confidence in her ability to control her emotions began to crumble. Keeping an emotional distance from Cash was proving to be harder than she’d thought, especially when the man seemed intent on being so wonderfully
wonderful
. He cooked for her, offered encouragement while she worked on putting together a portfolio, made her breathless with his kisses and dizzy with desire.
They’d spent nearly every waking moment together, except for the night Dylan came over to watch football, but a follow-up to their threesome hadn’t happened—as incredible as it had been, Jen wanted only Cash in her bed. Thankfully, Dylan hadn’t seemed to mind that sex wasn’t on the table. Which didn’t particularly surprise her—she got the feeling nothing fazed that guy.
“I get it, Mom. She’s unhappy.”
Cash’s mumbled voice drifted into the room, breaking Jen’s concentration. She lifted her gaze from the laptop screen and spotted him pacing the hallway in front of the open bedroom door.
“I’ll do it now, okay? Uh-huh…uh-huh…got it. I’ll email you later. Uh-huh… Love you too… Say hi to Dad.”
Silence ensued, finally broken by a soft expletive from Cash, who entered the bedroom, sank on the edge of the bed and dragged a hand through his hair.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What was that phone call about?”
He set his jaw. “That was my mother.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah.”
Jen waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she rolled her eyes. “Come on, cowboy, spit it out.”
“I…” He was gritting his teeth now. “I need a favor.”
“Okay…”
“I wouldn’t ask you this if it wasn’t important.”
A million possibilities ran through her head. “Let me guess—you need me to serve as the getaway driver for the bank robbery you’re orchestrating.” She paused. “Wait, that makes no sense. Your parents are loaded.”
“Right,
that’s
why it makes no sense.”
“Fine, then you need me to…kill someone for you? Wait, no. You could easily kill someone all by yourse—”
“I need you to take my picture,” he interrupted in aggravation.
She gawked at him. “Seriously? That’s what’s getting your panties in a knot? Don’t tell me you’ve never had your picture taken.”
Misery clung to his voice. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“My birthday was last month.”
“Uh, happy belated birthday?”
Cash scowled. “I wasn’t done. Anyway, the team was OCONUS so I didn’t get to spend my birthday with my family, but my parents flew in for a visit a few weeks ago, and they brought a present my grandmother made me. Now she keeps harassing them, wanting to know if I liked it.”
“What was it?”
“A sweater.” He didn’t elaborate. “I called to thank her, but apparently she doesn’t believe that I like it. She’s demanding I send photographic evidence of me wearing the sweater so she knows I’m not lying.”
“That seems a little…strange.”
“She’s a strange woman,” he muttered. “Scratch that, she’s absolutely nuts. That’s one of the reasons my mom left home when she was a teenager. My grandmother has some issues. Serious case of OCD, gets hysterical at the drop of a hat, disapproves of anything she doesn’t understand. I’m not looking forward to spending the holidays with her this year, that’s for sure.”
Jen smiled. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll deal with this picture problem for now.” She closed her laptop and climbed off the bed. “I left my camera in the living room. Why don’t you put on the sweater and meet me out there?”
As she headed for the doorway, she noticed Cash hadn’t budged. “What now?” she asked with a sigh.
His cheeks hollowed and she could practically hear his molars grinding. “Before we do this, you have to promise me something.”
She waited.
“You can’t laugh,” he said in a deadly voice.
“I won’t laugh. What’s the promise?”
“No,
that’s
the promise. You have to promise not to laugh.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “Oh. Okay. I promise.”
She slid out the door, hearing Cash’s low curses as he rummaged around in the closet. In the living room, she grabbed her camera and peered through the lens, snapping a couple of test shots to assess the lighting in the room. She adjusted the shutter speed and aperture, then fiddled around with the focus until she was pleased with the results.
Five minutes passed and Cash still didn’t make an appearance.
“You coming?” Jen called.
Heavy footsteps thudded from the hall, then ceased.
“I promised I wouldn’t laugh,” she told the empty doorway. “Now get that sexy ass out here and let’s start this photo shoot before I change my—”
Her words died in her throat when he stepped out.
And God help her, but even though she’d promised not to laugh, she couldn’t help herself. Doubling over, Jen laughed so hard she thought her ribs would crack open from the force of her convulsions. When she started wheezing, she clutched her side and dropped her gaze to her feet.
“God, I’m going to pee my pants,” she choked out between giggles. “I can’t look at you.”
She spun around, hoping that if he wasn’t in her field of vision, she could regain some semblance of control, but the image of Cash in that sweater had been burned into her mind, and the laughter continued to roll out in waves.
“Thanks, thanks a lot,” she heard him mutter. “I’ll just go hang myself now.”
“No, don’t. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” She wiped the corners of her eyes and turned to face him. “I’ll be good now, I swear.”
He tilted his head in the most adorable way. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.”
She gave the sweater another long once-over, trying to fathom what the hell she was seeing. The sweater had been knitted out of pink and green wool, clearly handmade judging by the uneven stitching and lopsided neckline, and as if the pink and green stripes weren’t distracting enough, Cash’s grandmother had stitched an image in the center of the sweater. Jen suspected it was supposed to be Cash, since the disproportioned male figure wore a uniform. A red uniform. With a black helmet. And she didn’t even want to know what he was holding in his hands.
She started to get slightly dizzy from all the colors flashing at her. Pink, green, red, black. She swallowed another gust of laughter. “Is that you?”
His jaw was tighter than a drum. “Yes.”
“Why are you holding a dildo?”
Cash briefly closed his eyes, as if trying to talk himself out of murdering her. “It’s a shotgun.”
“Why would a Navy SEAL carry a shotgun?”
“Because she couldn’t find a pattern for an assault rifle.”
“Oh.” Jen clamped her lips together to stifle another giggle. “And why is the uniform red? Are you supposed to be a guard at Buckingham Palace?”
“Can you just take the fucking picture?”
She was still chuckling to herself as she picked up the camera and aimed it at Cash. She took a candid shot, then glanced at the digital display and laughed at the stony expression on his face.
“You have to smile for the next one. Otherwise your grandmother will know exactly what you think of her sweater.”
For the next twenty minutes, Jen had an absolute blast ordering him around. She snapped far more shots than necessary, but she couldn’t help herself. The sight of tough guy Cash in that pink and green sweater was too tempting an opportunity to ignore. She made him pose by the window, in the living room, in the kitchen. Sitting, standing, striking a thoughtful finger-on-the-chin pose.
But all bets were off when she tried to persuade him to lie on the couch in the ultimate male pin-up pose—that’s when he promptly grabbed the camera from her hands and announced he’d had enough.
“We’re done,” he declared, then proceeded to strip off his sweater as if it was covered in ants. “And I’m officially
never
wearing this thing again.” To punctuate the declaration, he whipped the sweater on the couch. “Now, do you want to grab some lunch at the grill on 4th? I’m in the mood for a steak.”
“At three o’clock in the afternoon?”
“After what you just put me through, I feel like a juicy T-bone is the only thing that will reaffirm my masculinity.”
Shooting him a sassy smile, Jen stalked over and cupped his package over his cargo pants. “Mmm. I could go for a juicy T-bone myself.”
He rewarded her with a wicked grin. “Baby, I like the way your mind works.”
“How about my mouth? Do you like the way that works too?” She dropped to her knees and unzipped his pants. He’d gone commando and his erection sprang out with an excited bob.