Storm Front (The Charistown Series) (Volume 2) (4 page)

As Ryan ran one hand through her hair and the other down the
column of her neck, she could feel the flames of desire licking her skin. The
feel of his thick erection between her thighs was foreign, but intriguing as
Ashley pressed her body even closer to Ryan’s.

When a soft moan escaped her, she felt Ryan’s body stiffen.
He slowly withdrew his tongue from the confines of her mouth and gave her
bottom lip a small nip before inhaling deeply and breaking their intimate
connection completely. He held her close to him as he looked into her
expressive eyes. Ashley felt dazed, confused, and slightly embarrassed. She ran
her fingers over her lips, feeling almost uncertain if that heavenly kiss even
happened.

“Ryan, did I do something wrong?”

His eyes were filled with desire as he slowly perused her
beautiful face, her long neck, her smooth shoulders, her firm breasts, and her
taught belly while the water from the pool covered the rest of her body from
his easy gaze. But his silence was unnerving. What was he thinking?

“Ashley,” she hardly recognized the husky sound of his
voice. With his forehead pressed gently to hers he said, “Ash, we need to
talk.” She looked up at him with a confused but hungry gaze.

“Ok, Ryan, let’s talk.” Ashley wasn’t certain as to what was
going on in this beautiful man’s mind, but by the steamy look in his golden
flecked eyes, she knew, if for some reason she had banged her head when she
dove into the pool earlier and she was drowning…she didn’t ever want to be
rescued.

I Know You Do

Two
months later…

“I’M SO GLAD you came to your senses
and quit your job before school started, Princess,” Ryan murmured in her ear.
The tip of his tongue traced the edges of Ashley’s ear causing chills to run
down her spine. The sensations ran through her body like electricity through
her veins. The goose bumps on her arms were a giveaway and she heard Ryan’s
deep chuckle. He knew exactly the effect that particular action had on her, and
consequently he did it as often as possible.

“I didn’t quit, I took a leave of absence for the month.
Mmm, Ryan, you know I can’t think straight when you’re doing that to me,”
Ashley purred. Shallow breaths and a racing pulse had her words choppy and
hoarse. Her eyes hooded as her long lashes splayed gently across her skin each
time she blinked. The couple was in her bedroom writing lyrics for the band’s
up and coming album and East coast tour. Ashley loved writing the songs for
Storm
Front
. While she had no aspirations for stardom, getting her thoughts and
feelings down on paper had always been somewhat therapeutic for her. Ashley
still rolled her eyes every time Leo tried to use his lame excuse as to how
he’d discovered her writing talent.

When she was fifteen, Leo had “mistakenly” found her
journal. According to him he had then “accidently” dropped it on the floor,
opening to give him access to her secret thoughts. He claimed he couldn’t help
but to read them, citing his captivation as a half-hearted excuse for his
blatant prying. That was when Leo started begging his little sister to write
the songs for his new band.

The guys in
Storm Front
thought her lyrics were
fantastic and said her hooks were contagious. But Ashley knew that when she and
Ryan collaborated the songs they created were unbelievable. So, while she still
wrote the majority of the bands lyrics, she and Ryan would get together once or
twice a week to work on new material. Since they’d started dating they’d spent
a whole lot more time
writing
than they ever had in the past.

That afternoon, they really had started out writing, but as
the lyrics became more intense, so did their gazes. With each second that
passed, the atmosphere between them became more and more charged until keeping
things professional was no longer an option. One glance reassured her that she
wasn’t the only one having difficulty maintaining concentration.

She still couldn’t believe that Ryan Baker was hers. She
wanted to lick his smooth tan skin. To graze the tips of her fingers over the
shadow of the dark scruff that covered his jaw line. So that’s what she did.

At her touch his eyes went molten. “It’s hard enough to
concentrate when you look at me the way you do, Princess, but when you touch
me…” A deep growl sounded at the back of Ryan’s throat and he lifted Ashley’s
face to his, consuming her lips with a deep hungry kiss. The moment he touched
her, time stood still. Once his body pressed against hers everything else just
evaporated, as it always did when they were together. The outside world ceased
to exist. She reveled in the feel of his guitar calloused fingers on her smooth
skin.

The expert way his velvety tongue caressed her lips. His
hand traveled from her jaw to her neck and continued its descent down to her
breasts. It was no secret how responsive she was to his touch. Her nipples were
hardened points, straining against the material of her sheer bra and tank top.

“You’re wearing too many clothes, Princess,” he said in a
husky voice. Reaching down, he took the hem of her tank between his fingers and
swiftly whisked it off. The sun-kissed flesh and blonde hair highlighted with
spun golden locks had her gleaming like a goddess, a goddess that was all his.
He had planned to tell her that he loved her this weekend, but seeing her
draped across her bed with the honeyed rays of the sun streaming in from the
window, he couldn’t hold it in another second.

Even at nineteen, Ryan knew his love for her was more than
puppy love. He had known it for a while. The only reason he had held off
sharing his feelings with Ashley was because of her age. He was scared that at
seventeen she wasn’t yet ready to hear his admission.
No, you coward,
his
inner voice chided,
you haven’t told her because you’re scared that she
doesn’t feel the same way. Man up Baker! Tell her!

“Ry?” Ashley’s eyes questioning his. She knew him so well,
she always knew when his mind was off somewhere else. Just one more thing he
loved about her.

“Ashley, baby, I need you to know something.” It was in that
moment he realized he wasn’t nervous to say the three words he had never
uttered to another girl in his life. In his heart, he knew she was the one for
him…he had no doubts. “Ashley, I love you.”

Tears filled her eyes as she nodded her head and smiled. “I
know you do.” Ryan smiled back relief washing over his body and then it was
quickly replaced by tension. His shoulders pulled up tight, his back went
straight, and his lungs lost the ability to breathe… She didn’t say it back.

“Ash?” His heart was beating frantically. Had he read her
wrong? Did she not feel the same way? He could have sworn….

“Ryan,” Ashley placed her small hands on his jaw, turning
his face so their eyes met. He dropped his chin, unwilling to meet her gaze.
She inhaled, quieted her voice and called to him. “Ryan, love.” At the term of
endearment his heart began to race. He lifted his gaze to see her cheeks were
wet with tears, and her eyes filled with the tears still waiting to fall.

“Tell me what you see when you look at me. Tell me what
you’ve always seen since I was fifteen years old.” Ryan just stared at the
beautiful woman in front of him.

“Every time you’ve come into our house to see Leo, every
time you’ve looked at me, every time we’ve written a song…what have you seen?”
She didn’t give him time to answer. “Ryan, I have loved you from the start. I
have fallen in love with you over the years and I can’t imagine my life without
you in it. Leo always says I’m stubborn and I guess he’s right. I’ve never
given up on you, Ryan. I’m just glad you’ve finally caught up.” The tears
rolled down her cheeks, “It took you long enough!” She laughed through the
tension but she was interrupted as Ryan took her mouth in the most passionate
kiss they had ever shared.

She tugged at the hem of Ryan’s t-shirt, swiping it up and
over his head. The sight of his beautifully sculpted chest took her breath
away. Exhaling, she ran her hands up his chest and over his pectorals. As her
thumbs drew circles over his sensitive nipples, she allowed herself to bask in
the way they tightened in response to her touch. Quickly, she repositioned
herself.

She sat up with her hands supporting her from behind and
inched forward, lowering her lips to the flat discs on his hard chest. With
just the right combination of tongue and teeth, she was rewarded with a low
groan coming from deep in Ryan’s chest. “Oh, Princess, when you put your mouth
on me it makes me want to bow down to you…cherish you.”

In one swift movement her shorts and panties were stripped
from her body and discarded somewhere on the floor. Ryan started his worship at
her pierced navel. He tongued the ring and kissed the skin below the
indentation. His hands stroked her slim hips as his fingers set off waves of
tiny sparks shooting across her skin. He continued to move down her torso until
he hit the juncture at her inner thighs. Ashley was still a virgin. She and
Ryan had decided to wait until her eighteenth birthday to have sex for the
first time. She always complained that having her birthday on Christmas Day
meant never having special birthday gifts.

People always assumed that Christmas is a great time for a
birthday but in truth her birthday was usually either overlooked or forgotten.
This year she wanted to celebrate her birthday by giving
him
a gift. The
most intimate gift she could…herself. She knew Ryan wasn’t a virgin by any
means. He’d had sex before, but he had never made love, so her first time would
also be a kind of first for him. Even though they never had intercourse they
had done a lot of what they liked to call, “the other stuff.”

Ashley’s eyelids became heavy as Ryan’s lips met her inner
thighs. God, the things that boy could do with his lips. “Open your eyes, Ash.
Watch me love on you.” She looked down at him between her legs and found his
milk chocolate eyes staring back at her. Golden flecks of passion swirled as he
dipped his head and took his first taste. It was all she could do not to pass
out from that first touch of pleasure… She held tight to the sheets and threw
her head back. Her body thrummed from the inside out.

“Princess, you taste like the sweetest honey and finest
wine.” Ashley loved when Ryan waxed poetic about her body. He sounded far older
than his nineteen years. All coherent thoughts left her mind when he slipped a
finger into her core and licked her swollen clit.

“Oh God, Ryan, you make me feel so good.” He continued to
pleasure her as he slid a second finger into her. A low moan penetrated the air
and he closed his mouth around her sensitive nub and gently bit her. Ashley’s
gasp at the subtle pain was immediately followed with a mew of pleasure as Ryan
laved her clit with long strokes of his strong tongue.

A heady mix of pleasure and pain coursed through her body.
She felt her inner walls molding around his fingers as he slid them in just a
fraction deeper massaging the magic spot that made her insides melt. Her body
shook as her breathing became shallow. “Ryan, I’m gonna come…Oh…”

His voice was rough as he told her, “Let go, Ashley. I’m
here to catch you. Let go, baby.”

So she did.

And he did.