She hasn’t caught her breath yet, but she’s not sure if she has any in the house, since the last time she brought a guy back here was…she can’t even remember.
“Not that—we obviously don’t have to,” Nick’s saying, turning sheepish. “We can stop right now, if that’s what you—”
She cuts him off with a swift kiss. “What I want…is to know exactly what you sound like when you’re completely fucking losing it.”
She hovers over him, taking her time removing his boxers, kissing up and down his legs. Holding her mouth to the dimples at his hips, savoring the groan in his throat. He’s still so hard for her, must be aching for her to touch him, and yet the way he watches her with a dazed, quiet reverence…it makes her head spin.
When she finally wraps her hand around his cock, a brilliant shudder wracks his body.Yes, she silently urges.Let go.He’s hot and smooth, flexing in her palm, and yet she’s suddenly unsure what to do next.
“Tell me how to touch you,” she says. It’s been a long time since this piece of anatomy was a mystery to her, but he was so attentive with her. She wants to do the same for him.
When he laughs, it’s a choked sound that makes pleasure pool low in her belly again. “I swear I’m not just trying to flatter you, but—I don’t think there’s a single thing you could do that I wouldn’t like.”
At that she grins, gives him a few strokes before she reaches between her thighs, slicking her hand with her own wetness. Then she tightens her fist around his cock again. Slides him faster. He looks perfect like this, lashes at half-mast, wholly surrendered to her. The rapid rise and fall of his chest.
She’s caught between warring desires, determined to make this last as long as possible and dying to push him over the edge.
“Good?” she asks as she slows down, and there’s that low, bitten-off laugh again.
“Evil,” he says, right before she puts her mouth on him.
His head drops to the pillow, abdominal muscles flexing. And maybe she could get addicted to this too: the salt-earth taste of him, the way he twists his fingers in her hair, holding it back but never pushing her head down. His desperate, pleading sounds are a thing of beauty—soft at first, almost like a prayer, and then louder and less self-conscious as she sucks him deeper. Swirls her tongue over his tip.
“Oh, honey, that’s incredible.” His ragged exhale settles deep in her core. “Jesus.You’re fucking amazing—just like that.”
Sweat beads on his chest as she grips him harder, and she’s never liked when a man finishes in her mouth, or worse, on her face—her words from back in Nick’s office briefly come back to haunt her—but she wonders if it might feel different with him.
“Wherever you want me,” he rasps out, as though he’s thinking back to that encounter too.
At the last second, she releases him from her mouth, and with a few final pumps he falls apart in her hand. It’s even sexier than she imagined, his wrecked breathing and the quiver of his hips, her name in his mouth like a filthy, sacred thing.
She’s overwhelmed with the desire to keep him close. To do this again.
And it really fucking scares her.
After they clean up, she tentatively approaches the bed, where he’s tangled in her giant white duvet like he belongs there.
“Come here,” he says with a curl of his finger, as though sensing her sudden shyness.
The light from outside filters in through the blinds, finding both the natural copper highlights and the gray strands of his hair. She forgot it was still daytime; all she wants to do is stay in this bed until the sun goes down.
“That was—you’re—” A hard swallow as she slides back in bed next to him, unsure how to put what just happened into words. “I didn’t know it could feel like that.”
He drapes her across his chest, holds her tight. His skin is warm, breaths even. “I had a feeling it would. With you. I think you’ve permanently rewired my brain.”
“Is that the official psychological term?”
“Yep. It’s in all the textbooks.” His fingers play with the ends of her hair as his tone turns lighter. “I hope you know…this doesn’t mean I’m giving you an A.”
She grins, relieved that they can joke about it. “Of course you are.” She kisses the hollow of his throat. “But I’m going to earn it.”
23
The side-eye Nick’s sister giveshim when he gets home from Ramona’s late Sunday night is so intense, so all-knowing, it ought to be caught on video. Played on loop inside a museum. Studied for future generations.
“Just friends, huh,” Lexi says from where she’s folding laundry in the living room, and he lobs a clean towel at her before he disappears into the guesthouse, still grinning.
The good mood lingers in a way he hasn’t trusted goodness to do in a long time. His head and heart are so full of her—not just the sex, but falling asleep next to her, making brunch together, even if Ramona’s main contribution was operating the banana slicer, and all the ways she let him in.
