He anchored his hands at the small of her back, then pulled her down and buried his face in her pussy. There was no holding back the moan that escaped her lips with the first swipe of his tongue across her sensitive bud, and with the second she purred.
She gently rolled his balls in her hand. They were high and tight, indicators of he was getting close. When she lightly squeezed, his entire body went rigid showing her she had him right where she wanted him. On the edge.
As she massaged the base of his cock with her hand, he rewarded her with a bead of his salty essence. She worked his length deeper into her mouth. He continued licking and lapping at her clit, drawing out the tingles and shivers that had her fighting the urge to let him take over. The rapid heaving of his chest had her resisting the aching need for her release. Each pass of his tongue brought her closer and closer to the edge she wasn't ready to go over. Not yet. Not without him going with her.
Somehow this had become a challenge for her-bringing Jake to his knees while she resisted being brought to hers. A challenge she could handle, anything more was out of the question. And, figuratively speaking, she already was on her knees, just not in a way that would ruin her plans. So, she forced herself to ignore the pleasure he was giving her and instead she concentrated fully on his.
She swallowed his cock past the resistance at the back of her throat, nudging him that final inch up and over the brink to ecstasy, into the same swirling mist that threatened to claim her. He came and let out a long, deep groan as she greedily swallowed up spurt after spurt of his semen. She triumphed at the knowledge that she, Elizabeth Anne Thomason, could still make Jake Kramer lose control.
His body went lax as he dropped back onto the bed while hers still hummed like a top. "Damn, you're amazing."
"Hmm. Good to know." With a quick kiss on his softening penis, she let it fall against his stomach. She maneuvered to lay down beside him, resting her head on the pillow next to his.
"You wrecked me."
She snuggled deeper into the pillow and closed her eyes, feigning sleep, even though her body was throbbing with unfulfillment. "My work here is done."
"What? Are you going to sleep?"
She popped open one eye. "I was thinking about it." Well, faking it. At least until her body cooled down.
"Well, that's going to have to wait just a little while longer," he said as he flipped her on her back and shifted to lie between her thighs. He looked up at her, his mouth hovering over her still-throbbing femininity. "You didn't really think I was going to let you cheat me out of the pleasure of watching you lose control, did you?"
"Well, I—" She was cut off when Jake scraped his teeth gently along her sweet spot.
"Because I love listening to you moan," he said as he swiped his tongue along her slit drawing forth that very sound, "and hearing your breath catch," with flick of his tongue against her budding arousal she eagerly complied.
"Darlin', those sexy little sounds do crazy things to my heart." Her body bucked against his mouth when his tongue replaced his teeth. As he inserted first one finger, then two into her pussy she let out a moan of relief.
"And to your ego," she said breathlessly, "but I'm always happy to accommodate you." She barely got the words out before he thrust his fingers inside her and sucked the engorged nub between his lips. And that was all the accommodating she would be doing. She was only going to be in Chance Creek for six months, so anything other than pleasuring one another was out of the question. The tingling sensation of her impending climax flowed like molten lava. And, oh, the man was magnificent at giving her pleasure.
With a few more strokes of his fingers and tongue, the need built in a growing frenzy, and she lifted her hips, searching for what she desperately needed. When he scraped her clit with his teeth, she cried out, and then he pressed against the hard nub with his smooth tongue, leaving her hanging precariously close to the edge that she was now frantically trying to go over. He blew a heated breath against her, then lapped at her with his tongue and slowly thrust his fingers inside her, then sent her hurdling up and over.
A tidal wave of sensation burst through her, startling a near scream past her lips. Lizzie's inner walls spasmed greedily around his thrusting fingers as wave after wave of mind-numbing pleasure assailed her. When the sensations ebbed, leaving her a quivering mess, he moved to lie beside her, watching her as he rested his head next to hers on the pillow.
"Now that's what I like to see. My lady breathless and satisfied." She could hear the smugness in his voice, but right now she couldn't seem to care. Her body had just exploded into a million tiny shards of ecstasy and she was nowhere near close to recovering.
She flopped onto her stomach, breathing heavily. "No lady here," Lizzie panted. "Just a big puddle of goo."
He chucked and playfully patted her ass. "Always happy to oblige."
She loved the deep, rough timbre of his laugh. It had always made her smile.
"Wait." She wiggled her toes as she looked at him. "I think I'm starting to get the feeling back below my waist."
"Already? I must be losing my touch."
"I so don't think so," she murmured while turning to her side and snuggling closer to him, resting her head on his chest and running her fingers through the small tuft of dark chest hair.
Contentment filled her as his fingertips moved lazily up and down her arm. She could get used to lying here in his arms, listening to his heartbeat in the twilight of night. Waking up to that gorgeous face every morning would be well worth a few muffled snores that she knew from their past together he would undoubtedly begin to emit shortly. From the sounds of his breathing, he was half asleep already. He always could fall asleep much faster than she. Her mind seemed to shut down more slowly while he had the ability to turn everything off as if on command. If he was going to be sticking around for a while, she really needed to find that off switch.
And those were seriously dangerous thoughts to have for a woman who was supposed to be engaged in a no-strings affair. She wasn't going to be sticking around, she couldn't.
When his breathing dropped to the shallowness signaling sleep, then and only then did she pull away, giving herself the physical distance she needed to regain the control she had so easily lost. Damn it. After seven years away, she was already back to where she started.
She was weak when it came to him, and she hated it, but still she wanted. She'd been trying to fool herself that her stupid heart wouldn't get involved and kept right on until now. She should have known better.
She needed to end things before she got in any deeper. She sighed.
As hot as Jake was, as nice a man as he was, there couldn't be anything more than what they already had between them. He loved every screw and nail that kept him in this backwater town, while she, well, she just wanted to fly. And the few minutes she did fly in Jake's arms were just not enough to satisfy her deeper craving to move onto a bigger world. A place where no one knew who she was or where she came from, where she either made it on her own or failed. Where no one felt the need to know any more than she wanted to divulge. Period.
It was definitely time to back off a bit and put some space between them before things got any more out of control. Because the heart of the matter was—she wasn't staying, and he wasn't leaving.
4
Lizzie
Three Days Later…
The ringing phone jolted her out of a restless sleep.
"Hello?" No one was there. Again. This was seriously getting old.
"Hello?" She'd give whoever it was one last chance.
"Look. I don't know who this is, and frankly I don’t care, but if you were hoping your heavy breathing would turn me on, I have to tell you that it's having the opposite effect. So, give it up!"
She slammed the phone down then flopped back against the pillows. She just had her phone turned on and with the way things were going, she was going to have to have it changed. Maybe she'd just have it turned off. Not many people needed l
andlines anymore, but then again out here, landlines were a guarantee whereas cell phones weren't. Ten prank calls in three days was ridiculous.
But that wasn't all that was bothering her. Lately all she'd been able to do was toss and turn in a restless sleep, the nap she had just taken hadn't been an exception.
She tore off the sweaty sheets and padded naked toward the bathroom. Why not walk around as bare as the day she was born? There was no one here to see, just her yellow Lab, Bailey, and he was still in doggie dreamland on the braided rug next to the bed.
And wasn't that just what she wanted? Three days ago she'd told Jake she needed space, and now she had it. When she had explained her need for time and space he acquiesced so easily, as if nothing that they'd shared mattered, as if she were just another one of his hussies that he could discard without a second thought. The bastard.
In spite of her determination to have hot, emotionally-detached sex, it turned out to be an unattainable goal. Jake Kramer had always been the one man to get Lizzie to lose control, and this time around wasn't any different. The sex had breathed life into emotions Lizzie'd hoped to keep quiescent. And the contentment she had felt while lying next to him was what had Lizzie back-peddling and needing a break.
But did the man have to agree so readily? Without a single protest? And all after they'd spent two days in bed, pleasuring one another in ways that still made her blush. Had she just been another way for him to scratch his itch?
No. She hadn't been. Couldn't have been. He'd called her a couple times in the last two days. The first day he'd given her silence. One day. Not just an itch.
She turned on the shower, then pinned up her hair while the water heated. She didn't have an hour post-shower to tame the mass of curls into magazine flowing waves which meant she'd just go slightly frizzed. She stepped under the heated spray. She was edgy and irritable and had the insatiable urge to hit something. Or someone.
She lathered her face with soap. It wasn't PMS. She was just…bitchy. Which wasn't at all like her. She stuck her face under the water and rinsed. Sarcastic, yes, but bite-your-head-off crabby? Not so much. What the heck was wrong with her?
She began soaping up her arms. It had to be Jake causing the mood. This taking-a-step-back thing seemed like a good idea at the time, but it just wasn't working. Not when she remembered what it felt like to have his hands caress her body, to have him inside her, pleasuring her beyond reason.
He'd said he give her a reprieve for one day and no more. Then the phone calls started, and the messages on her answering machine. Only a few, but enough to have her longing. Just hearing his voice was making her edgy and horny. How pathetic was that?
As she finished washing her traitorous body, presently humming with unfulfilled desire, she wondered if he'd had her cell number if he'd have texted too. Probably.
She stood under the warm water and imagined Jake's hands sliding slowly and silkily over her body, pausing at her breasts to rub those calloused fingertips across the tips, then pinching and tugging on her nipples just enough that she would feel the pull in her womb. Oh God, she desperately needed good sex with no relief in sight. Damn him and the fact that he made her feel more than what she was prepared for.
She turned the water to ice cold and stepped back beneath the spray to rinse off. Wouldn't you know it, even a cold shower couldn't take care of the throb between her thighs.
The battle between thinking about what they'd shared those two days and not wanting to see him drove her insane. Lizzie needed to make up her mind, one way or another.
She turned off the water with a little more force than necessary, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her body. She slowly padded back to the bedroom, pulled panties and a bra from the dresser before going to the closet for a pair of jeans and a black knit shirt. She so wasn't in the mood for color. She yanked on her clothes, then stalked to the vanity where she sat and began to pull the pins out of her hair. Obviously, her brain had to have been on vacation when she'd decided to give in to desire. She'd been a fool thinking she could start up a simple affair with Jake. Nothing was ever that simple when it came to him.
The truth was, she hadn't been thinking, and therein **lay? Laid? Lie? Lied? ** the problem. She had been feeling, and whenever she went with her emotions rather than her head, she ran into trouble. Her current sleepless, snarling, I-want-what-I-can't-have mood was case in point.
She sighed and pulled out her makeup case. A glance in the mirror proved what she'd already guessed. She was a mess. She applied concealer to hide the dark circles under her eyes, added a little blush to her cheeks and a few swipes of mascara. Then she studied her reflection again. Oh man, she should have gone with the shower cap. Her hair was a lost cause, curling whichever way it wanted. She tried three more squirts of the spray hair gel and a few scrunches with her hands but that set the auburn curls springing out every which way rather than bouncing back into shape. Screw it. The hair could win this time. She didn't have the patience to fight the frizz.
Lizzie checked her watch. Twenty minutes to spare before one of her mother's traditional Sunday dinners. That was time enough to take a walk and clear her head. Maybe get a little perspective and quit being so wishy-washy. Either she wanted him, or she didn't. Either she was strong enough to keep her emotions in check, or she wasn't. It all seemed so damn simple. So, why wasn't it?
As she opened the door of the guesthouse and stepped onto the porch, she slapped her thigh and whistled. "C'mon Bailey. Let's take a walk."
"Walk" was the magic word for Bailey as he came out running, tail wagging, tongue lolling, before darting off to grab his ball. Lizzie smiled at Bailey's habitual ploy to get a game of catch going. He pranced around her and barked as she stepped aside for him to have a clear shot out.
Lizzie followed as Bailey bounded down the stairs and bounced into the lead. Lizzie noted the blooming daisies lining the drive-in pinks and whites, behind which the tulips and daffodils were gently fading to memory until next spring. She and her mother planted the daisies when she was a little girl, and they always reminded her of happy faces as they blew gently in the breeze.
Lizzie took in the flower beds kitty corner to the house containing budding rose bushes which, when in bloom, would vary from pale white, glittery red, intense pinks, vivid purple, and deep yellow.
Lizzie detoured through the barn, calling Bailey to follow her new course, and when she exited the back of the barn, she came upon two smaller structures. Lizzie took in the new buildings and knew without a doubt her brother had an incredible hand at ranching and was making the Bar T a success. To the left, the large grain silo stood in the distance, a lone structure amidst a mass of trees. Walking between the two outbuildings, Lizzie met the open fields that stretched out ahead of her with a deep breath of the fresh air, and to the left of that the tree line continued on, stretching into the distance. White wooden fences lined all thirty acres of the Bar T, bordering all that the Thomason's held sacred. As a child she had had a tree house in one of the larger maples just a few feet into the woods. She strained her gaze into the distance and, with a smile, saw it was still there.
As Lizzie reached the pasture fence, she watched her brother Brand's new Palomino, Breeze, grazing along with quite a few other horses, some of which she didn't recognize. More changes. It didn't surprise her Brand had built up the family business while she'd been away at college. He loved ranching—working the animals and the land—and he always did have great ideas on how to improve things on the ranch. Now that he was in charge, the Bar T seemed to be thriving again.
She wished she could say the same thing about herself. The plan had been to come home to Chance Creek to partner up with her best friend Katie on a business venture. Together, they would start All About ME, a little storefront in Jackson Hole where they would market hand-made clothing, apothecaries, and toiletries. They'd been planning this for years, setting up contacts, saving money, and the time was finally right to implement their plan. It was
both scary and exciting, but the perfect shop front had come up, both she and Katie were at a good point in their lives to make the jump, and, well, she took a deep breath of the crisp air and thought with a shrug, they jumped.
All they needed were six months for the lease to go into effect, build inventory, and establish their web. Using Chance Creek as her base while she and Katie planned their physical and virtual grand openings would not only save money, but also allowed Lizzie to computerize her folk's ranch records. Lizzie counted on working every moment. She had not counted on falling into Jake, and now it seemed as if she were caught in a time warp. She was, once again, mooning over the one man she couldn't have, yet continued to want with a longing that she just couldn't shake.
Nothing changed. He was still the man who broke her heart seven years ago, and until they got to the bottom of that… Lizzie did a mental shake. No. There would be no moving forward even then forward. There couldn't be because she was only here temporarily, and he was here forever. She needed free and easy. Jake did neither.
An uneasy feeling pulled her from her reverie. She glanced over her shoulder. No one was there. Hair prickled on the back of her neck. She glanced at Bailey. He was running along unconcerned, sniffing the grass at the edge of the woods. Another odd chill washed over her. She rubbed her arms before stopping and turning around only to find, once again, nothing more than an open field edged with trees behind her, the corral off to her left, the barn off in the distance.
Still she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching her.
She was not alone.
Lizzie looked into the distance, turning in a circle. The field was empty but all she could see within the tree line to the right were twilight shadows and pockets of darkness that left just enough to the imagination to have the air backing up in her lungs and her heart jackhammering in her chest. A bird flew off, startling a near scream out of her. She released the sound as a hiss and laughed at herself. Good grief. Seven years in the city had wimped her out instead of toughening her up.
When Petals Fall: A Cowboy, Second Chance Romantic Suspense (Chance Creek Book 1) Page 3