The Complete Series Boxed Set (4 page)

“What are we wasting time talking for, then? Let’s start clicking.”

Crreak
. The telltale sign of their bedroom door opening made them both freeze.

“Shit!” Dylan hissed. Mike put a finger to his lips and stopped chewing on the energy bar. Both stood there, ears cocked. The sound of footsteps, and then the baby began to babble.

Mike looked at the eReader. “It’s been nearly two hours!”

“No way!”

Mike tapped and slid his fingers wildly, getting the machine back to the Home screen. “You order whatever we need later on from your phone. You have carte blanche. Get whatever you want.”

An evil laugh bubbled up inside Dylan as he rubbed his hands together.

This was going to be fun.

“Are you crazy? Let Josie watch the baby overnight? That woman can’t keep a houseplant alive with a growlight, fertilizer, Google, and a team of highly-trained pot farmers at her disposal.” Laura’s high, reedy voice could be heard from across the room, as Josie had the phone on speaker mode. Josie had insisted that Alex spend the night at her place—fortunately, Darla was at a gig for Trevor’s band. Joe was still in law school, though all Darla had talked about for weeks was how he’d be home soon for winter break. For Alex, it meant a nice night together away from his roommate, John, who had returned from his medical fellowship full of talk of medical genetics and one-upmanship politics as he tried to get a coveted research spot for next year.

Alex, meanwhile was on the decidedly less ambitious family physician/obstetrician track. The more surgery he performed, the less he liked it.

“I heard that!” Josie shouted at the phone. Alex winced. Even in a bad mood, Josie would still be interested in sex, but a bad mood could ruin his chances for something a bit more
risqué
. Like a romp outside.

“But she loves Jillian.” Dylan’s desperation made Alex cringe. His deep voice was a stark contrast to Laura’s nervous, high voice.

“And I’ll be here the entire time in case she drops the baby!” Alex added, followed by Josie’s marching across the room to elbow him in the gut. “Ow!” he shouted.

“Jillian will be fine, Laura,” Josie crooned. “This will give me a chance to see how I do at this whole pretending I have a maternal bone in my body thing.”

“Not the best thing to say to convince a brand-new, first time mother, Josie,” Alex hissed, taking the phone away from her unceremoniously.

“Overnight?” Alex asked. “That’s quite an honor, Laura.” He took the phone off speaker and decided to talk one-to-one. Dylan and Mike needed this night. Hell, he and Josie needed it, too. After six months of dating he was working on convincing her to consider the next step in their relationship, though he wasn’t quite sure what that was. Moving in together would displace Darla, and his own lease had another six months on it, anyway. Josie had grudgingly let him keep one set of work clothes at her place these days, while he’d cleared out half his closet for her.

If she really, truly never wanted kids, then he’d have some hard reckoning ahead of him, because he most assuredly did want children. Maybe not right now, but in a few years...and so this could reveal a lot about her. An entire day and night with a six month old.

Plus, Dylan and Mike needed this. He could practically see their eyeballs floating, they were so backed up.

“Laura, I have a medical degree. I’ve helped birth more than two hundred fifty babies, and I’m CPR certified for infants. I even have perfect pitch for singing happy songs that soothe babies. Plus, Jillian loves my hair.”

“You have perfect pitch?” Josie interjected. She looked at him with one eyebrow raised, her eyes sparkling with a look he couldn’t name, but that instantly made him fall more deeply in love with her. “Is that why your voice is so melodic when you cry out my name?”

Damn it. His body hardened in all the wrong places right this moment. His brain returned to Laura, scrambling to find the thread of discussion again. Ah, yes. Baby. Watching the baby. Overnight. Helping to see how Josie would be. Giving Dylan and Mike a chance for something after six months.

And then Josie’s hand snaked over his ass and gave him a squeeze as she began a slow hip curl down to the ground then back up, unbuttoning her shirt from the top down, one
slllloooowww
button at a time.

While licking her lips.

Brain shattered.

“Alex?” Laura’s confused voice brought what little bit of cohesive thought he had back to center. “Are you and Josie really willing to do this?” Sensing a need, a desire to give this a try, and something deeper, he put his entire being into convincing her that this was going to be alright.

“Laura, we’d love to. And,” he said conspiratorially, cupping his hand over the phone, “it would be a real favor to me.”

“To
you
?”

“You know how skittish Josie is about the idea of settling down and having kids—”

Hysterical, barking laughter filled his ear. Josie moved on to her second button and he waved her away frantically even as he hardened. If more blood went south he was going to need a transfusion.

“Josie,” Laura gasped, “have kids?”

“See?” he said darkly as Josie walked out of the room, tossing her shirt in his face. “That’s why this would help me. Give us a day with a baby, warm her up to the idea.”

Laughter halted. “You two are that serious?”

“Not yet, but...”

“But you’d like to be.”

“Yes,” he said, his breath escaping and elongating the
ssssssss
as Josie returned, now nude, carrying the biggest vibrator he’d ever seen.

It was the size of his forearm. She stuck her tongue out
à
la
Miley Cyrus and he half expected her to reach for a foam finger and—

“So Laura? Just trust us, OK? Um, I’m getting buzzed right now,” he said, nearly yelping as Josie turned the vibrator on and pressed it against his hip. That wasn’t a lie.

“Oh, a patient?”

“A future mother who is out of her mind right now,” he gasped into the phone, grabbing Josie’s wrist. With very little effort he managed to push her against the wall and pin both wrists above her head, his hip holding her pelvis in place as he struggled not to wipe that wicked grin off her face with his—

Waaaaaaaa!
A baby’s cry pierced the air and Laura said, “Gotta go—talk later!” A merciful
click
set him free.

“You are so going to pay for that,” he growled in Josie’s ear as he hit “End” on the phone with a practiced thumb, then tossed the device behind him. It landed with a soft
thud
on the couch. His wriggling, naked girlfriend, all flesh and sinew and tight body, moaned as he tightened his grip on her wrists with one hand and used the other to slide down between her legs, finding her wet for him already.

“You want to play a game, young woman, you need to be ready to play to win.”

“I’m,” Josie gasped as he slid his thumb along her clit, fingers sliding down, then up, lubing her warm folds, “not younger than you.”

“Then you cradle-robbing cougar, you,” he said as his cock pressed against her hip, clothes suddenly a hindrance, her eyes half-lidded and face pinkened with a hazy, unfocused look that told Alex more than any words could. This was not how he’d thought the next hour of their day would go; Laura’s phone call had interrupted their walk out the door to grab a lovely meal at a local Greek restaurant. A striptease and a little hand bondage, however, could replace dinner.

He could dine at the Y and have a lovely meal.

Wiggling her shoulder, Josie tried to get out of his grasp. He rather liked this, the muscled difference between his body and hers making this unanticipated encounter more masculine, more animalistic, than any they’d had before. He knew she enjoyed his dominance in the bedroom, but it had been a more genteel, modern-era dominance.

Right now he wanted to go all-out Don Draper.

After all, she had transgressed, right? Cockteasing him, interrupting his call, misbehaving and all that.

“You’ve been so bad,” he whispered, running his tongue up the side of her neck, sucking her earlobe with his wet, warm bottom lip, then biting as she groaned. His fingers were slick with her heat and response, and he used his thumb to stroke her swollen nub in soft, unyielding circles. Her grinding against his hand was all he needed to know.

If she pushed her soft, naked body against him much longer, he’d come in his pants.

Time for no pants.

As he removed his hand from her vulva, she cried out with frustration, then leaned forward to kiss him as he deftly unbuttoned and unzipped himself. There wasn’t much time—for a change their dinner plans were at a place with atmosphere, and a dinner bill that would probably equal a day’s pay—a place where tables were by reservation only. No time like the present, then—especially when your girlfriend offered herself up like something out of a Penthouse fantasy letter. If she wanted to shift the power balance by sending him off kilter with her nudity as he struggled to maintain composure on the phone with Laura, two could play at the unequal game.

Before she could react to his releasing her hands, he lifted her easily into his arms, walked to the couch to grab an afghan, then carried her to the door.

“What are you—ALEX, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she shrieked as he juggled a flailing, nude girlfriend, a front door knob, and his own sliding trousers. The blanket began to fall off his arm, and one move and the house of cards would come tumbling down.

That was fine.

As long as someone came.

“We’re having sex on the porch!” he said in the same tone one might use to say, “We’re getting a popsicle from the ice cream truck!”

“Are you crazy? I’m naked!” she squealed.

“Should have thought about that,” he answered—squeezing her ass with more force than was needed for a turn on, knowing the added pain would help bring her to the edge—“before you started that dicktease.” Six months of sleeping together had given him considerable experience in getting Josie to express her boundaries. It turned out they were as flexible as she was—in bed.

“Stop it!” she hissed.

He froze.

“If you’re going to do this, you have to be naked, too!”

A deep chuckle rose out of him as he laid her gently on the porch swing he’d helped to install a few months ago. The November chill made her nipples turn to pink peaks in seconds, a fine gooseflesh beginning on her arms and thighs. God, he could stare at her body forever.

Oh, how his erection said otherwise.
Now now now now.
 

Grabbing the afghan, Josie threw it over her naked form and a laugh burbled up. “Seriously? Now we’re air fucking on my fucking porch? You got a thing for having the mailman look at your naked ass?”

What amazed him—what made him love her—was that she wasn’t horrified, or angry, or offended that he’d just assumed she’d be fine with being poured onto a very public piece of furniture and be fucked outside, in broad daylight, where someone might find them.

She’d questioned whether
he
should be naked, too.

But hadn’t questioned the premise of danger sex one.tiny.bit.

Could he love this woman any
more
?

“Not
my
naked ass,” he murmured as he pulled his pants down so that his eager cock was laid bare for her. Sitting carefully, he pulled her into his lap, holding one of his hands to her mouth. She sucked on two fingers, taking her time as her tongue ran down the sides of his index and middle finger, the sensation making his abs tighten. Something had to go rigid—if his erection were any more taut it would slingshot off his body, hit the moon, and land somewhere in the Indian Ocean, tracked by NASA.

A shift of his hips, a nudge of her perfect, round ass and then he felt himself at the edge of her deep warmth, her body leaning into his as she straddled him, the afghan a warm, thick, knitted cover he draped over their bodies. She was on the pill and for the first time in six months of being together he felt a tug as that detail floated through the periphery of his mind, a hint of a life not yet lived. Cars lolled by and dog owners played across the street in the dewy, foggy late afternoon as the touch of sun wisped away into gray.

Sliding in her, he felt the cool air against his neck, her hot breath setting his ear on fire, his hands under the blanket caressing her breasts, each fitting perfectly in one of his palms with room to spare. With one foot braced against the porch floor be began to gently rock the hanging swing, his motion met with a throaty laugh from Josie, who lifted her hips up, then slid down, impaled by him and yet he was the one pinned in place by sheer lust and overwhelm.

And then she tightened.

If kegel muscle control were an Olympic event, Josie would be the US team captain, on the cover of Wheaties boxes every four years. For life. The feeling was brutal and glorious at once, as if he were being milked by a hot, wet cave of Josie’s love.

“I love you,” he murmured in her ear, her pants of concentration and shifting hips his only answer. When she was this close—and they both were, really—she stopped speaking, fingers digging into whatever part of him she touched. Bare breasts pressed against his clothed chest, and his pants pooled around his knees as she writhed, nude, on top of him, the curve of her shoulder under the wool blanket blending with his heated gasp, white clouds of condensation lifting away from them as if moans could take actual, tangible form.

She licked his neck, then suckled, the pull attached to a sinew and muscle trail straight to the base of his cock, like a line she discovered and played with impunity. “Oh, God,” he shuddered, her own orgasm so close he could taste it.

How he wished he could.

Something to save for later.

A shattering clamp was her response, twinning with the suck of her mouth against his jugular, and all the blood flowed to his arms and legs in a great whoosh, receding back and pounding into his core with a rhythm and crescendo that became so insistent it lost definition, growing outside him, blending with the air, the trees, the sky, and with Josie’s trembling form. Only she could bring him to this, in this way—sitting under a blanket, rocking lazily as passersby strolled on, unaware that their world imploded and transformed through a joining borne of connection and shared risk.