Rob changed. She felt it in the contact, the way those rigid fingers grew pliable,
his strokes fluid. She saw it in his face, as the line between his brows smoothed
and his lips parted. His quickening breaths mimicked her own. With every soft stroke
of his fingers, another scrap of her self-consciousness fell away, until all that
existed was this place, this room, this man, spoiling her.
“Rob.”
He met her eyes, hand slowing.
“That feels great,” she said.
He came closer, slipping his arm under her neck and locking his body flush to her
side. He lowered his face, nuzzling and kissing her throat, thrilling her with those
hot exhalations.
His fingers grew bolder, parting her lips, dipping inside. She clutched his hair and
raised her leg, eager for more. As two fingers teased her folds, the pad of his thumb
rubbed her clit. Her hips bucked anew, too eager for the friction.
“That feels so good.” She shifted, interrupting the pleasure but needing to see him
face to face. He did as her eyes asked, turning his talented lips to hers.
He mastered the contact and the kisses. All his failings as a warm and gracious host
were forgiven and forgotten, so long as he never stopped making her feel this. She
reached between them, seeking the erection pressed to her thigh. It hampered his caresses,
but no matter. As she closed her fingers around the stiff ridge of his cock, they
became teenagers—frantic innocents rushing gracelessly forward to discover what came
next.
Bolder still, he slipped two fingers inside her with a soft gasp.
The sound and the penetration together . . . She fumbled with the heavy buckle of
his belt, but his laboring hand abandoned her sex to stop her.
“I want to feel you.”
“No.”
“I want to,” she repeated, practically pleading. “And I trust you. You don’t have
to be a gentleman.”
“It’s not that. I just want to please you.”
“You are.”
His smile seemed suspended between dopiness and frustration, and he caught his breath,
holding their hands still. “I am now, but I’m not much good at multitasking. Not after
three years.”
Ah.
Okay, that was fair. They could take turns, as much as she wanted all this heated
fumbling to be mutual. The poor man was surely on a hair-trigger. She softened her
hand, and when Rob released it, she laid it obediently on his chest.
He returned to his task. Three fingers slid between her lips, the muscular pad at
the base of his thumb stroking her clit each time he pushed inside. Her excitement
grew as his pace quickened, and she imagined this rhythm dictated by his hips as he
drove his cock into her. As he surrendered to their most animal natures, and quenched
himself on sensations he thought he’d forfeited.
I’ll show you what you’re missing,
she imagined telling him.
I’ll show you what you were foolish enough to think you could live without.
That face, disbelieving as he entered her . . . stern as he found a driving beat,
frantic as she urged him closer and closer to surrender. She moved her hips, exaggerating
the thrust of his hand.
“Good. That’s good. Don’t stop, please.” To even say these words was intoxicating,
to invite so much attention, to make demands.
“You feel so . . .” Rob couldn’t seem to find an adequate word, and abandoned the
search. “Tell me what you like.” He swallowed again, eyes glassy and drunk. “Tell
me what to do.”
There was something more to that final request. She could taste it on her tongue,
simply watching his lips form those words.
Tell me.
“Just what you’re doing.” She shut her eyes, luxuriating in the slippery friction.
“Whatever you’ve been missing.”
His hand slowed. Was he thinking, or did he already know what he missed most, but
was too shy to name it?
Tell me,
he’d said. Perhaps he wanted a command, not an invitation. There was one thing Merry
missed nearly as much as watching a man come undone. The thing her ex-fuck buddy had
been lousy at—and, she suspected, lousy at on purpose, so as not to be asked to bother.
“I haven’t . . .” She trailed off, and Rob’s hand slowed, his eyes meeting hers expectantly.
She whispered, “I haven’t felt a man’s mouth for a long time. Not there. Not for ages.”
“No?”
“Would you . . . Do you like that, or . . . ?”
He nodded. “I do. And it’s been ages for me, as well.”
He missed ice cream, he’d said. And she saw in his hot, focused gaze—he missed what
she was offering far more.
“I’d like that,” she murmured. “Please.”
Rob slid his fingers from her and sat up. His chest was flushed and tense, his entire
body strained. “It’s a small bed,” he said. “Come to the edge.” He left the mattress
entirely, relocating to the wood floor.
Merry scooted close. “Do you want some covers, for your knees?”
His cheeks darkened unmistakably. “No. Thank you.”
Oh ho.
Was it her imagination, or might this man be just a bit kinky?
“As you wish,” she said with sly smile, dropping her feet to the ground, legs spread.
Rob stroked her inner thighs, attention locked on her sex.
“Lay back.”
She did, and he slid a forearm beneath each of her thighs, tilting her hips up. She
held her breath. Broad palms warmed her ribs, and she felt cradled, like a goblet
tipped to a man’s mouth. He was going to taste her—sample her. Consume her. Make a
banquet of her.
She felt his exhalation as surely as she heard it, the heat of it taunting her swollen,
sensitized lips. Then, just barely a whisper—
“Merry.”
His name lodged in her throat, the will to utter it gone as his tongue touched her
clit—the barest flick, yet the pleasure sizzled. She caught her breath, found her
voice.
“Rob.”
His tongue again, and bolder. He lapped her clit, again, again, slippery strokes growing
longer and hungrier. Lower. As he tasted her folds, his nose brushed that tight little
bundle of nerves, the contact sweet and intimate, unexpected. Eager fingers kneaded
her waist. They were restless, but nothing compared to the need she felt as his lips
and tongue and nose caressed her. She covered his hands with hers, rubbing his knuckles.
She held his head, traced his ears. He feasted deeply, that cautious man from earlier
gone, long gone.
He said he was a bad person.
He’d told her so himself, but she couldn’t believe it, not now. He’d deferred his
own pleasure, and this . . . No man could be rotten, not if he knew how to please
a woman this way. There was practice in this act—mastery. This man knew what he was
doing, and he prized the labor of it.
“That’s amazing,” she whispered.
He replied with his tongue, lapping with taut, eager strokes. She fisted his hair
and felt the hot rush of his breath as he lost the rhythm—but only for a moment, then
his possession returned, more relentless than ever.
His palms trembled, hot and damp against her skin. He shook the way a man might when
teetering on the edge of his own release. These desperate hands, this ravenous mouth . . .
this man who embodied so many contradictions and secrets. If nothing else, she’d solve
one mystery tonight, and discover his body. Every inch of skin—she’d wander it with
her hands and eyes and mouth, roam it like an uncharted wilderness. She’d
know
this man, as he’d surely never intended to be known again when he’d chosen this lonely
life.
He slid one hand from beneath hers, eased his arm from under her thigh.
Yes, please—let it be that . . .
He granted her unspoken wish, knuckles tracing her lips, tongue concentrating its
efforts on her clit. His nose tickled her curls.
Please, please . . .
He merely teased her with the promise, drawing his fingers along her slick seam.
“Please, Rob.”
She felt him shiver, that talented mouth faltering. His fingers stiffened, three uniting
as one to ease inside slowly, so slowly. She scraped her nails through his hair, back
arching.
Show me how you might feel.
A pale facsimile, a shadow of the excitement his cock would surely offer, but still
so sweet. He drove inside, slow and deep, drew back out. Again. Again, a bit faster,
all the while teasing with his tongue. The pleasure gathered inside her, that delicious,
fiery need.
She pictured him above her, this wondrous pleasure the product of his cock disappearing
inside her, again and again. His body would be extraordinary—all those muscles stark
and laboring, hips flexing, abs clenching. And those eyes. Wide with wonder or narrowed
in concentration. However they’d look, she didn’t care. She imagined it all, and it
was his gaze, his face, that brought her to the brink.
“Rob.”
A grunt heated her clit, his tongue fluttering. His stiff fingers nearly pounding
now. Her own fingers slipped from his hair, trembling, tracing his ears, touching
his temples, his face. He held her tight, that hand at her waist hot and possessive.
The pleasure built, layer upon layer, thicker, harder, more inevitable with every
flick of his tongue and intrusion of his fingers, tighter, tighter, rising higher,
higher.
“Rob.” More a huff than a name. A plea. Her heels rubbed his back of their own accord.
His hair was in her fist. The pleasure crested and finally broke, a furious sea crashing
under her skin, rattling her bones, erupting from her lips in an ugly, mewling, primal
sound.
He eased, fingers and tongue slowing to the beat of her pleasure, soft caresses soothing
in time with her throbbing pulse. He went still exactly as her body did, touching
her only with his exhalations—fevered, frenzied breaths.
“Oh God.” She let his hair go, resting her fingertips on her belly, hands shaking,
mouth dry. Her head rush triggered a mean ache in her bruised temple, but it registered
as little more than a theory, drowned in the receding tide of the orgasm.
She propped herself up on straight arms, and Rob took her calves in his hands. She
could see wetness glistening in his beard, and he traced his lower lip with his tongue.
His lids were heavy, eyes bright.
Like the sea,
she thought again, adrift in green-blue. Was that what he tasted, now? The salty-sweet
flavor of sex. Of her.
She drew her legs onto the bed, scooting to the far side to make room. The heat of
the stove breached the stone, softening her spine. “Come here.” She patted the covers.
Rob lay with her, his expression lit equally with awe and lust. She’d never been looked
at like that before. Not even close. And it was the best thing she’d ever felt.
She drew his face to hers, then cupped his neck. A glancing of noses, then lips. She
could taste herself there, she imagined. But she tasted him as well. She
knew
him. Enough to recognize the flavor of his mouth, the rhythm of his racing pulse
beneath her fingers. She caught his lower lip for a moment, then let him go.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
He answered with a kiss—a soft, chaste thing. He was cooling himself, she realized,
preparing to follow her away from the sex and back toward a gentler intimacy. A safe
one, no threat to her vulnerable circumstances.
Fat fucking chance.
She snaked her hand between them, knuckles grazing his chest, ribs, belly. She went
for his belt again, and he didn’t stop her when she slid the leather from its buckle.
The only sound he made was a deep, curt moan, and it was no protest. She freed the
button and lowered the zipper slowly, letting her knuckles caress his cock through
his fly.
“You spoiled me rotten,” she murmured, tugging his pants open to frame his straining
erection.
He swallowed. “I wanted to.”
“Let me do the spoiling now.” As she slipped her hand under the waistband of his shorts,
he shook against her, quaking when she stroked her palm down his smooth, hot, bare
skin.
“M-Merry.”
Sweet Jesus, she’d made the man stammer.
“You feel good,” she told him, letting her touch whisper along his length.
He took her wrist, but didn’t hold her tight enough to stop the motions. “You don’t
have to.”
“I know. I want to.”
He answered with a groan, the hand on her cheek trembling. She reveled in him—his
size, his heat, how hard and ready he was. She felt power in this flesh, pulsing with
every heartbeat. And she’d done this to him. She squeezed him tightly, drawing another
groan, one that rattled with need.
He slipped his hand between them as well, seeking her sex. Their knuckles rubbed and
his touch impeded hers, but he wanted this, she could tell. She tugged his waistband
down to free his cock, and his crown brushed her belly each time her fist slid to
his base. With every second the exchange intensified, their caresses turning sloppy,
but all the more exciting for it.
When their hands grew more burdensome than stimulating, they abandoned them. Rob urged
her onto her back and pushed away his jeans, kneeling in his shorts between her legs.
Yes.
“I’m not . . .” He trailed off, lowering onto braced arms. “I won’t go any farther
than this,” he promised, resting his cock along her lips. She felt its pulse through
the cotton that had ridden back up to bind him. With her palm at his hips, she followed
the flex of muscle as he stroked his excitement against hers.
She could imagine them fucking, so easily. And she could grant the permission to make
it happen just as readily.
He let her hear him, a flurry of groans and grunts and whimpers, animal sounds. As
surely as he withheld his words outside this room, here on this bed he denied her
nothing. These dark noises told her everything he felt, if not the thoughts running
through that guarded mind. His eyes were shut, brows drawn.
“Rob?”
His eyes opened. “Yes.”
“I have condoms, if you want to . . .”
He slowed and ultimately stopped, catching his breath. “Is that what you want?”