by Nicole Snow
Then there’s that torso. His shoulders and arms bunch like writhing granite as he tears the shirt away fully and drops it to the floor, leaving his upper body bared completely.
My mouth practically waters.
Is it even sane to have a need this strong?
I want to taste him. To bite him. To lick all the hell over.
And as he watches me, breathing hard, his huge chest rising and falling, I push myself up on my knees, slinking forward toward him, then grip his thighs to pull myself up his body. His legs cord and bunch underneath my palms, straining against the denim, as I find my courage.
“Ember?” he growls my name.
I press a kiss just above his navel, cheeks heating like mad when a little moan slips out my mouth.
He groans, weaving a hand into my hair. “September, fuck...”
Pausing, I look up at him from under my lashes. “Can I? I’ve never...you know, I’ve never touched a man before.”
I trace a finger over a puckered scar just above his hip. It’s not hard to tell it’s a gunshot wound, very old, maybe from his Army days. And every imperfection just makes him more gorgeous, makes me want him more – soft scars from war, the burn marks on his hands, the shape and texture of them telling me how he was hurt on the outside, when my deepest need aches to soothe the hurts on the inside.
“You’re so hot,” I whisper, pressing my mouth to his abs again.
The tortured groan he lets out as I lick my way over his stomach is enough to make me quiver and crave so much more. I never thought it would make me feel good to touch someone else like this, but every time his taste rolls over my tongue, every time I feel the texture of his skin against my lips, something silky and raw strokes my entire body from the inside out.
I’ve felt so empty for so long. Now I can’t help spreading my knees to try to ease the wet heat building between my thighs as I nibble at his skin, working my way up over his ribs to press a kiss right in the center of his pectorals.
With a low, rough noise in the back of his throat and a ragged breath, he strokes his fingers down my jaw – and I just can’t help myself.
Turning my head, I catch his fingertips between my teeth, licking at them.
He sucks in a sharp breath, exhaling a curse. “Goddamn, Firefly.”
I look up to find him watching me, eyes locked, and I don’t break my own eye contact as I part my lips and let them slide fully over one of his fingers, taking it into my mouth, exploring it with my teeth and my tongue.
Go ahead and call me insane. I don’t care. I lick his scars, worship them, working my mouth over his fingertip, and God everything in me just trembles at the way his eyes sharpen, nearly devouring me with every look.
At the clinic, he always wants to hide them. I’ve noticed he dons gloves before we really need them, and he usually has his hands in his pockets or tucked behind a clipboard.
Not today.
Not now.
With me, not ever.
I won’t let Gray hide a single glorious inch of his body, and I jealously want to show him how wonderfully sexy he is. Every last hulking bit of him.
There’s only a subtle warning, a twitch of his jaw, before I realize I’ve pushed him to the breaking point.
Before he growls, yanking his hand free from my mouth and pushing me down to my back on the bed, his weight bearing down on mine and tearing a startled little sound from my lips.
Holy hell.
I barely remember falling asleep in his arms last night, his body wrapped around me. It’s nothing like this – the full pressure of him crushing down raw and hot and hard, the sensation of him molded against me, trapping me, making me so small underneath him. It’s like a full body eclipse by a beast, as sexy as it is sinful.
I barely have a split second to gasp before his mouth crashes down on mine, kissing me in that devouring way he has, stealing my senses, my mind. When he moves against me, his entire body is an earthquake.
Tremors blast through me. Tremors. And it’s damn near seismic when his cock drags against my hips, nudges between my thighs.
He rips at my tank top and shorts with another low growl. I swear it’s like his hands are melting my clothing away, they’re that hot, that branding – and suddenly it’s just my panties and bra and my very naked skin against his, denim rubbing between my thighs.
My legs spread wide around his hips until they ache. That’s how much I have to strain to fit around him. I don’t know what’s happening, just that we’re moving together and he’s biting my throat and everything feels so hot, so hot, and he’s not even inside me yet but it feels like sex anyway.
I rock and writhe and grind with him, becoming sheer friction.
“Ember,” he gasps, his hands hard on my hips, my thighs, those soft scars leaving teasing trails of sensation all over my body.
Then I realize he’s sliding down, and every whisper of my name comes with a kiss, a nip, marking all over my shoulders, my collarbones, my chest. “Ember, Firefly...”
I’m writhing. We’re talking fingers in his hair, full body electric, nothing but sizzle pulsing everywhere. Each time he bites me, kisses me, I jolt with a tiny sound, then toss my head back as another snarly bite presses right between my breasts. His five o’clock shadow scratches against the cups of my bra, teasing downward, baring my flesh.
And then, oh God, his mouth.
Gray’s mouth sinks gently into my right breast, making me feel just how different the sensation is when nerve endings fire with hot washing fireburst pleasure. I’m moaning helplessly as he nibbles his way toward the peak of my nipple and then pulls it into his mouth.
Oh, wow!
Wow. Wow. Wow.
I’ve never felt anything like the drawing, tugging, urgent sweetness as he sucks with a growl and rolls it between his teeth, his lips, toying and teasing until it’s so hard, throbbing, and I’m whimpering and kicking and writhing and so wild with it.
It’s like somehow this phantom hand is touching my clit and reaching up inside me, guided to the rhythm of that sucking mouth, every point of my body connected and connected to him.
He’s going to kill me. I can’t even breathe. I’m just gasping wildly, fisting my fingers in his hair, but Gray doesn’t stop.
Even when he lets my nipple go, I can still feel it tingling, contracting and tightening as wetness cools in the air, and my stomach sucks in on a fierce breath as his mouth goes lower.
He traces kisses over my belly, his stubble scraping and taunting me, deliciously needling my skin, and then I realize where he’s heading.
No. He’s...he’s not going to...?
Oh, but he is.
The wicked spark in his eyes tells me everything between my legs just became fair game.
And before I can squeak a protest, the shame making me wild when my panties are this drenched and I don’t want him seeing how soaked I really am, it’s too late.
One thick finger traces over my panties, his knuckle nudging the lace against flesh so sensitive and swollen I feel like I’m made out of cream and soft things.
My hips jerk up sharply, my thighs clenching at his shoulders. “Gray!”
Hearing his name just seems to urge him on. Faster. Harder. Hungrier.
Snarling, he tugs my panties aside, baring me to him, and then he dips his head down and tastes.
His tongue is the devil. All wildfire and hot sin, and I forget everything but his name on my lips as he swirls and teases, delves and thrusts, caresses and sucks. My pussy just might never come down from this sweet insanity.
His lips close around my clit slowly, and all it takes is that one little touch to set me off, arching my back off the bed so violently I’m barely held in place. My head tosses back against the sheets, and my toes curl up in the fabric, muscles I didn’t freaking know I had tightening and quivering and screaming so hot I’m ready to fall apart.
Mindlessly, I thrust my hips toward his mouth, letting him take me higher and higher as his tongu
e slips inside me. He savors me in wet-hot caresses and raw lust and oh – I never thought a man’s tongue could make me feel this good, this dirty, this right.
And nothing stops him. Not my moans, not my whimpers, not my writhing hips.
There’s just his rough texture tracing my inner walls, touching virgin territory.
Not even my own fingers have ever felt so perfect, so sinful. He starts thrusting in and out, nearly taunting me with this pantomime but never quite giving what my body craves like a drug.
“Oh, God. Gray!” I whimper, lifting my hips, mad for release.
“Come for me again, little Firefly,” he murmurs. “Let me fucking taste you.”
I scream.
I scream as my O hits, digging my nails into his shoulders and wrapping my legs around his back as that convulsing feeling rockets through me again.
It’s like lightning and the calm after the storm all at once. It’s agony and relief. It’s a whole dizzy contradiction of hot, sweet things I don’t have time to contemplate because I’m too busy coming on Gray Caldwell’s mouth.
Mostly, it’s just pure, sweet, terrifyingly perfect pain and pleasure.
He licks every drop that spills out of me with a deep, growling sound, halfway torturing me as he drags that rough, tantalizing tongue over my steaming flesh.
Shuddering, weak, I curl forward, nearly wrapping around his head, fingers tugging helplessly at his hair. With one last deep, long lick that half probes inside me and makes my entire body jerk, Gray pushes himself up, looking like the cat that got the cream, his lips glistening with...
Me, I realize, my heart twisting up as I stare up at him breathlessly, dazed.
That’s me, slick and wet and gleaming on his mouth.
And he gives me back to myself as he leans down and presses the inferno still on his lips to mine.
This time, his kiss tastes different. It’s gentle and deliberate, him brushing our lips together so the thick, slick liquid that’s both of us combined teases against my mouth, rubs off on my skin, until I instinctively dart my tongue out to taste.
Musky-sweet with a touch of tartness, strange, and my face burns knowing that I’m tasting myself as much as I’m tasting him. Holy Toledo, it’s too much, and I break back with a gasp, looking up at him, my pulse racing.
“Gray...” I can barely find my voice, my throat aching from moaning, from gasping. “That’s really dirty...”
“Wrong, beautiful. It’s never been so pure.” His gaze softens, grazing his knuckles down my cheek. “It’s just you and me, Firefly. You’re allowed to love it as much as I do.”
Oh. My. God.
His next kiss is deeper – so deep, so intimate, it’s like he pours himself inside me. And I can finally sense what he’s talking about, this wonderful, fiery heat, this searing that’s all us. Just him and me and nothing else.
It rocks me to my core.
Another moan slips out my throat as I give myself up to it, letting my tongue twine with his until I’m so lost in him, I don’t know if I’ll ever come up for air. Drowning in Gray – there are worse ways to die, right?
But slowly he breaks back, one last nibble of my lower lip seeming to plump and prime my flesh.
“Well?” he asks softly, and I look up into those green eyes that could so easily swallow me whole. “Still feel dirty, Ember?”
“Maybe a little,” I whisper. “And...I think I like it.”
And I mean that so much about everything.
This madness, here, being with him like this when I’d thought he was Mr. Unreachable, when I’d thought I was nothing and no one, and yet he kisses me like I’m his entire world.
It’s sweeter than I ever could’ve imagined.
Then Gray does it. He gives me one of his rare smiles, genuine and warm and almost boyish, and I just know I’ve fallen hard, fallen deep.
“Now you know how hard it was for me to stop,” he teases, leaning down to brush the tip of his nose to mine. “So let me take that taste back from you.”
His kiss is tender, so tender, and filled with that mingled taste of us, and I’m so lost in it I almost don’t realize when his hands begin to stroke over my body. He shapes me and warms me and brings me into him until we fit together nice and snug.
I love the feel of his muscles moving underneath my palms, the feel of every flex and flow against my entire body, the hard, lovely width of his chest teasing against my nipples, crushing my breasts to him, the ripples of his abdomen teasing against my stomach and hips.
It’s like he’s both soothing me and guiding me gently into that molten-warm feeling of arousal all over again – and if I’d thought he’d wrung me dry, I was wrong, so wrong.
I’m soaking wet for him all over again. When he strokes his hand over my hip, down my thigh, I’m so ready. His fingers turn upward, flicking and teasing my panties again, destroying me so beautifully one little piece at a time.
Then his hand delves in, cupping hot over the mound between my thighs. He gives my pussy a gentle squeeze that lifts my hips sharply. Soft, sweet bliss envelops every nerve, makes my hips sing.
And when he dips two fingers where his touch only explored and teased before, he shows me how good it feels to be filled.
His fingers are thick. The subtle roughness of his scars leaps out in scoring, deliciously hot flames as he slides inside me slowly, twisting and plunging and searching.
It’s like he opens me up in ways I’ve never been cracked before, parting my flesh and caressing me deeper. It’s too intimate. Too wild.
It’s so raw it burns, being explored, exposed, owned from within. This is a storm, whipped up by a master and turned on my flesh.
I can only clutch at him as he starts pumping his fingers in this deep, hard, searching rhythm, a taste of what I know I’m in for when that thick cock finally takes me.
Gray’s fingers are almost too much, but I can’t stop myself from rising to meet them, throwing my hips in little shudders and lifting up into every thrusting caress.
He’s so gentle with me and yet so unforgiving, so relentless. His touch nearly punishes me with sweeping pleasure, as if teaching me the limits of what my body can endure.
It’s so good, so good, but I don’t want to come again. Not yet. Not until I have him completely, and with a keening sound I bite at his shoulder, rake my nails down his back, begging him with my touch when I’ve lost all words, lost all reason.
Gray, please. Please!
I don’t just want fingers.
I want all of him.
He slows and then stops, his fingers still buried deep inside me. One fingertip touches something that makes me quiver like the strings of my violin, deep and vibrating to the point of soul-rending pain.
“Do you want me, Firefly-girl?” he murmurs, his voice rough with amusement. But it’s so much more, this seething warmth that could burn me to pieces, soft against my ear. “Are you ready?”
I find my voice then.
I find one word.
“Yes,” I breathe, only for him to steal it from me with a kiss.
He kisses like there’s no tomorrow as he strips away the last of my clothing, teasing my bra and my panties from my flesh until I’m naked against him, underneath him. I’m ready, so ready, when he kicks his jeans and boxers off. Then we’re nothing but skin and flesh and sinew and tangled limbs, and there’s nothing else between us. No clothing. No secrets. No lies.
No fear.
Because I realize now that in his own way, this titan of a man has been afraid of having this with me.
I may be small, I may be young, I may be inexperienced...
But Doc gave me the power to touch his broken, tired heart. I get why that terrifies him so much.
If only he could understand I’d never do anything to harm him.
He’s gorgeously bronze in the afternoon light drifting through the windows over the bed as he positions himself over me. His body fits between my thighs just right. His heat warms me, sin
king deep beneath my skin.
For a second, there’s just those hunter-green eyes and a gaze that feels like forever. His hips roll, pressing into mine.
Finally, finally, I feel the firmness of his cock, the velvety-hot flesh, the thick ridges of the veins, the heavy flare of the swollen head. His entire shaft rests against my hips and stomach, dripping against my skin with this clear fluid that smells so hot and thick. It drifts into me and ignites some desperate, needy core that makes me crave him more than ever, this hunger gnawing me almost numb.
There’s a question in his eyes, as he looks down, hesitating for just a moment – only to close his eyes sharply with a small, almost shocked sound as I give in to my curiosity and touch.
His cock feels so hot against my fingers. I flush hellfire red, exploring him, watching the way tension rolls through his body in twitching, rippling shudders.
“Ember,” he growls, almost a warning, and I bite my lip and curl my fingers against his cheek.
“Please,” I breathe, and draw him down to kiss him. “You know I want this.”
He gives me one breath. One moment to feel like I’m in control, tasting him and letting myself savor everything he is.
Then the storm takes me up into its wilds again.
And this time, there’s no hope of not being swept away.
Gray consumes me with delving tongue and stroking lips, while those firm hands on my body maneuver me, guide me, spread my legs just a little wider.
Suddenly that heated cock glides between my folds, the underside of his shaft spreading me, and I shiver as I feel his heartbeat throbbing through the thick vein on the underside, burning right into me.
Deep, long strokes glide along me, dripping his heat onto my pussy, rubbing my slickness onto him until we’re a mixed mess of wet-burning flesh.
On his next stroke, his cockhead fits against me, pressing its pulsing tip right to that hot empty place inside me that’s clenching and waiting in such needy ways.
My breaths catch in the back of my throat. My moan blends between our lips as he grasps my hips, lifts me up, and sinks inside.
His fingers and tongue were nothing compared to this. To this molten feeling of being split open, like his flesh pours inside me to fill every space and reminds me with every waking breath how good he feels.