A place she never wanted to revisit.
‘Don’t wait for me,’ she dismissed. ‘I may take for ever.’
Tuck grinned. ‘We’ve got all night. And I’m not going without
you, darlin’.’’
Cassie knew with sudden clarity that he was telling the truth,
and a surge of dread rose in her chest. For some strange reason she didn’t want
to appear sexually inadequate before him. But just thinking about the
impossibility of it all made her instantly tense.
Tuck groaned, dropping his head to her neck. ‘God, you feel so
tight,’ he muttered, dropping kisses on her throat.
Cassie sighed. There was only one thing for it—and she thanked
Gina and Marnie and Reese for making her watch that movie where the actress
faked an orgasm in a coffee shop, because at least she had some clue how to go
about it.
She shut her eyes and started to moan, softly at first, then
picking up, adding in some panting—and didn’t she remember seeing another film
with the Awesome Foursome where the actress dug her nails into the
actor’s
back a lot, even scratched them down? She threw that in for good measure.
Tuck felt the bite of Cassie’s nails right down to his groin,
and cried out as her moans and pants pushed him closer to the edge. He picked up
the pace, dropping his forehead against hers as their orgasms built and built.
Cassie’s cries got louder, and when she reached for his buttocks and squeezed
tight his orgasm hit warp speed.
‘Yes, Tuck, yes,’ Cassie croaked in his ear, knowing he was
close and gasping her pleasure, no matter how fake, right into his ear.
She was too busy concentrating on faking it to be in tune with
the buzz going on inside her, but that was okay. If Tuck’s big hard body
pounding into hers hadn’t satisfied her libido than nothing would.
‘Tuck,’ she cried. ‘Tuck. I’m… I’m…’
Tuck’s belly pulled taut and red-hot pleasure eddied and
swirled just out of his reach as his orgasm bubbled to the surface. ‘Yes,
Cassie, yes. Let go. I’ll come with you.’
Cassie cried out in what she hoped was a fairly accurate
rendition of an orgasming woman. It certainly seemed to convince Tuck, who
groaned her name as he thrust and thrust and thrust, causing a little more
tension to gather in her pelvis.
Cassie let her cries die down in pace with his as he collapsed
on top of her. She might not have been satisfied in the strictest sense of the
word, but there was something very primitive and sating about being possessed so
utterly.
Something carnal. Hormonal.
Tuck stirred, kissing Cassie’s neck, her collarbone. He rolled
off her onto his back with a long contented groan, his heart still pounding like
a train, his head spinning from one of the most forceful orgasms he’d ever had.
For long moments he couldn’t even move.
When he was capable of stirring he rolled up onto his elbow and
looked down into her face, needing to know that it had been as good for her. To
see that look he knew so well. That
Paper? What
paper?
look.
Instead she smiled at him and patted his biceps. ‘That was
nice,’ she chirped.
Nice?
Tuck eyed her suspiciously.
There were three things he was good at in life—football, math and sex.
And there was nothing
nice
about
his brand of sex.
He’d slept with a lot of women—which wasn’t necessarily
something to be proud of, but he knew for a damn fact not one of them had left
his bed anything other than one hundred percent satisfied. He was satisfaction
guaranteed.
And as such he knew the signs. Could
read it in their eyes.
Hell, he could pick a sated woman out of a line-up at fifty
paces.
He would not have picked Cassie out of a line-up.
‘Oh, my God,’ he murmured. ‘You faked it.’
FIVE
Tuck flopped on
to his back. No one had ever—
ever—
faked it with him. That wasn’t arrogance or conceit—it was the
damn plain truth of it.
It was ironic that he’d just had one of those
oh-my-god
moments and she was lying there all
that-was-nice.
He stared at the ceiling, trying to
decide whether he should be insulted, but he found himself laughing instead.
Somehow it seemed par for the course for this very bizarre
seduction.
Cassie felt his low laughter stroke deep inside her to muscles
and tissues that still seemed tense and excitable. She frowned. They weren’t
supposed to be like that—they were supposed to be loose, limber.
Done. Content. Over.
Gina’s warning that once might not be enough came back to haunt
her.
Well, too bad!
She’d given in to the insanity
of her libido and now she wanted her brain back!
Tuck shook his head, still contemplating the ceiling. ‘I can’t
believe you faked it.’ And he laughed again.
‘Look, it’s okay,’ Cassie assured him, eyes also firmly trained
on the ceiling as she went into the familiar patter. Len had required a lot of
reassurance in the beginning too. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s me… I’m just not
physically capable of climaxing. It has nothing to do with your technique…or
your speed—’
Tuck laughed harder, interrupting her clueless critique. He
rolled up on his elbow again. ‘Darlin’, you are hard on a man’s ego.’
Cassie blinked and her nostrils flared as a heady dose of
pheromones engulfed her. Those muscles inside her snapped to attention, pulling
taut and sizzling with tension.
No.
No, no, no.
Concentrate.
Soothe the man’s ego
and then take your libido far, far away. Take it to Cornell and bury it in a
PhD.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean… Look, it just doesn’t happen for me.
It’s a…a thing.’
Tuck saw her pupils dilating again.
Interesting.
‘Like a medical condition?’ he asked innocently as he
nuzzled her ear.
Cassie swallowed, her eyelids fluttering closed. ‘Kind of.’
He dropped a kiss on her temple. ‘Sounds awful,’ he
murmured.
‘Oh, no, it’s fine,’ Cassie said, shaking her head, trying to
clear the fog filling it as his scent wrapped her up in seductive thread. ‘I
don’t need it.’
Tuck smiled against her hair line. If anyone needed an orgasm
it was Cassiopeia. ‘Honey,’ he said as his mouth zeroed in on hers, ‘
everyone
needs a little bit of
it
sometimes.’
Cassie opened her eyes to deny his statement just as his mouth
made contact with hers, and a wave of longing for
it
crashed over her. It was impossible. How could she crave something she’d never
had? Miss something she didn’t know? Want something she didn’t need?
Where was the logic in that?
But his kiss laid her bare, plundering her mouth, flaying her
with heat and pheromones, demanding that she kiss him back with equal vigour.
And she did—clinging to him, twisting her arms around his neck, attacking his
mouth with a savagery utterly foreign to her.
A sense of falling gripped her when he finally pulled away, and
Cassie was grateful for being horizontal and anchored to him.
Tuck looked down into her flushed face. She was breathing hard.
They both were. They were going again—and this time she was coming with him.
He pulled away. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ he said.
Cassie watched him climb out of the bed in a stupor, her head
spinning from the kiss and the dizzying essence of him spinning her in its web.
She struggled against it, her brain urging her to be sensible.
She levered herself on her elbows. ‘I should go.’
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Tuck said as he strode towards the
bathroom to rid himself of the condom. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet.’
Go!
her brain screamed.
Go now!
Her brain willed her muscles to move. But her muscles said no.
Every cell in her body, drenched in sex, leadened by his command to stay, said
no. And then he was back, striding towards her, gloriously naked, stopping to
snag some foil packets from his bag and throwing them on the bedside table. And
then he was pushing her back, stroking his hands down her body, finger-painting
his pheromones all over her. Stupid took over.
Okay, she accepted as she welcomed the heat of his mouth on
hers.
Slight change of plan.
They were going again.
She could do that. Obviously another coupling was what her body was craving. She
could do it. She could go twice.
And then get back to her paper.
Tuck had no idea what Cassie was thinking as his mouth left
hers for parts further south. He was too caught up in being so rampantly hard
again, considering what had happened not even ten minutes ago, and he was
determined not to waste it. This time it would be about her. No taking.
No faking.
He’d followed the same game plan he always followed when he was
with a woman, but had let Cassie’s wild urgings and amazing aptitude for acting
distract him from his goal. She was going to be singing the
Hallelujah Chorus
tonight if it killed him.
Cassie’s head spun and she shut her eyes as Tuck’s hot tongue
traced a pathway down her throat. What was he
doing?
She was ready.
He
was most definitely ready. Why
wasn’t he inside her already? She shifted restlessly against him, spreading her
legs to accommodate him, lifting her hips.
Tuck smiled, ignoring her blatant invitation. No way—not this
time. He ran his tongue up and over the swell of a breast, and when he reached
the nipple he swiped his tongue over it, then sucked it inside, smiling as it
leapt to attention in his mouth.
Cassie’s eyes flew open as a jolt of sensation pinged along
muscle fibres and nerve-endings already at snapping point. Her nipples were
extraordinarily sensitive, and having them fondled during sex had always been
irritating. She tried to sit up, to tell him to stop, that it wasn’t necessary,
but his mouth closed over her other nipple and she fell back against the
mattress on a whimper.
Tuck was obviously determined to go where no man had ever
been—the O zone.
‘You know,’ she panted, her eyes shut, her back arching off the
bed as his teeth grazed and taunted her nipple—which strangely didn’t feel
irritating at all when he did it. ‘You really don’t have to do this. To try. I
won’t think any less of you.’
Tuck ignored her. ‘Is that so?’ He sucked on her nipple hard,
satisfied to hear a strange gurgly noise at the back of her throat.
Cassie resolutely held on to her sanity—no matter how tenuous
it suddenly appeared. ‘It’s really not going to happen, so you might as well
just…’ she swallowed as his tongue flicked back and forth over the taut peak he
was toying with ‘…get down to business.’
Tuck withdrew his mouth and looked up at her. He could see the
moist, puckered stance of her nipple in his peripheral vision, and it was deeply
satisfying to know that she was viewing him through the evidence of her own
arousal.
‘Wanna bet?’ He smiled, then returned his attention to the
nipple, hungry for the satisfying hardness of it against his palate.
Cassie shut her eyes. ‘Is not about chance,’ she said, her
breath choppy. ‘It’s statistics. You must understand that, right?’ She raised
her head to look at him and was hit by a surge of lust at the sight of his blond
head bowed over her breast. She flopped back down, pushing it ruthlessly
away.
Where was she again?
‘I know I’m statistically unlikely to achieve orgasm simply
because I never have.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Tuck said, her nipple slipping from his mouth as he
left for more southern destinations.
His hand followed, brushing light strokes down her rib-cage to
her hip, across the flat of her belly and fluttering down her thighs. His mouth
found her belly button and he lapped wet circles around it, dipping in and out
as he went.
Cassie felt every muscle fibre beneath shudder in anticipation.
She’d never felt this much tension in her belly before. It was heavy—screeching
with it.
‘It’s not you.’ She pressed on, for her sanity’s sake if
nothing else, as he caressed her inner thigh and she felt it all the way to her
centre. ‘I take this medication. It helps me sleep. But it…’ She panted as his
tongue moved lower. ‘It suppresses certain other…’ A strangled gasp rose in her
throat as she felt a finger brush over the place where everything felt slick and
wet and tingly. She gulped for air. ‘Other processes…’
Tuck raised his head to look at her. He could smell her
arousal, and his erection kicked at the thought of tasting her.
He made sure their gazes were locked when he said, ‘It just
means I have to work a little harder.’ He slipped a finger inside her. Her swift
intake of breath and the way her hands bunched in the sheet punched him hard in
the gut. ‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’
Cassie couldn’t look away from the compelling determination in
his star blue eyes. There were things inside them that she didn’t understand—and
didn’t want to either. She shut her eyes, blocked him out. Blocked out the
heaviness in her breasts, the tension in her belly, the hard probe of his finger
buried inside her.
‘Yes, but how good can it really—?’ Another finger slid inside
her and she gasped at its intrusion. It took a few moments for her to lamely
add, ‘Be?’
Sensation swamped her, momentarily drowning out the yammering
of her brain before she clawed it back.
‘I’ve seen comet trails,’ she panted as he pulled his fingers
out and pushed them in again. ‘And exploding stars.’ More pushing and pulling
and panting. ‘The birth of universes. Nothing can beat that.’
Tuck looked up from her belly, where he was doodling wet
circles with his tongue, withdrawing his fingers. ‘Oh, honey, just you lie
back,’ he murmured. ‘Let me teach you some things they don’t rate at Mensa.’
And he settled between her legs, pushing them wide with his
shoulders, feasting his eyes on the end game. Her arousal wafted towards him and
he salivated at the thought of tasting her. A surge of red-hot lust enveloped
him at seeing the thatch of dark hair reminding him she was all woman.
Cassie’s eyes widened as Tuck lowered his head and his intent
became clear. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, placing her hand over herself, barring his
way. ‘No, no,
no.
You definitely don’t have to do
that.
’
Tuck looked up. From this vantage point he could see her still
erect nipples, standing proud and puckered, and smell her musky scent. He flared
his nostrils. It filled his head and it took all his willpower not to bury his
face in her. ‘I know. But I want to.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘Nothing works,’ she reiterated. Why
wasn’t he listening to her?
Tuck’s hands slid up her body to stroke her breasts, his
fingers smoothing over the taut peaks of her nipples. ‘Trust me,’ he
murmured.
Cassie gasped as his touch bloomed and tingled at the juncture
of her thighs, just below where his face hovered. It burned and ached. ‘I’ve
never…’
‘It’s okay.’ He grinned. ‘I’m an expert.’
And then he lowered his head, nudging her hand aside, just
nuzzling her at first, brushing his closed mouth along her sex, familiarising
himself with the contours, filling his senses up with her.
Then he let his tongue do some exploring. He swiped it against
the centre of her and grunted in satisfaction when she gasped and bucked against
him. He inhaled then, deep and long, and his head roared with a surge of lust
and male possession and he opened his mouth over her, needing more, wanting all
of her.
Cassie felt a jolt of something hot and hard slam into her
belly and she shut her eyes against the urgency of it. Tuck’s tongue licked and
probed and sucked as his fingers spread their own joy, stroking and teasing and
rubbing her nipples to a state of almost painful arousal, and she gasped and
squirmed beneath the relentless attack.
She lifted her head to look at him, and the sight of his blond
head between her legs flushed like a drug through her system. When his tongue
found the hard nub that she’d never really bothered to explore for herself and
flicked it she just about lifted off the bed.
‘Tuck!’ she cried out as sensations she’d never experienced
before catapulted her into a whole new realm.
Tuck’s hand moved down from her breast to splay low and wide on
her belly, clamping her to the mattress, holding her earthbound as she bucked
and writhed beneath the onslaught of his tongue. He was holding her right where
she was, taunting her with all he had, tasting her, determined to make her so
rattled she wouldn’t know which solar system she was in.
And all the time a primal beat thrummed through his head and
streaked hot urgency through the muscles of his belly and buttocks. He was torn
between the overriding urge to drive into her, to plunge himself into all that
tight heat and feel her around him again, and the need to suck up every last
morsel of her, to feast on her, to propel her to a place she’d never been.
A place more cosmic than she’d ever seen.
Cassie didn’t know what was happening to her as heat and
pressure built everywhere, but she was suddenly terrified. She hadn’t felt
anything like this before but she knew with a disturbing clarity that she wanted
it—bad.
And that was the most frightening thing of all.
The only thing she’d ever wanted this badly was to go to
Antarctica on a research mission, and now even that seemed to pale in comparison
to the tidal force of lust and seething need consuming her body.
Her life dealt in certainties. Fact and logic and common sense
were her true north. She depended on them. She needed them. And this…whatever it
was…was making a mockery of them.