by A. J. Downey
“Mm, this is only the first one,” he said, laying over me, sheltering me with his body. He reached back into the drawer and removed a condom and I laughed slightly, squirming a little beneath him with anticipation.
I listened to him tear open the foil packet as he sat on the backs of my thighs, pinning me to the bed. I listened to him roll the condom down his hard length as I writhed slightly beneath him, the anticipation driving me wild.
He grabbed one of the pillows from the head of his bed and kneeled up, pulling back on my hip gently with his hand, directing me that I should too. I went to my hands and knees, stretching like a cat and he stuffed the pillow under the front of my pelvis.
“Lie back down,” he ordered, and it was just enough to prop me up, my pussy feeling open and exposed, the feeling deliciously dirty, sexy and base. I wanted him inside me so badly, I gripped the top of the mattress as he found my opening with the crown of his sheathed cock and I hissed as he pressed his way in.
“Keep your legs together, baby. I’ll go slow.”
“Mm!” I arched low, rolling my hips back to take him deeper, and he laid a sharp, stinging slap on my ass.
“Oh, God, Sage!” I cried, my pussy throbbing around him. That felt good!
“You like that?” he asked, rubbing a hand over the print he surely left on my flesh, soothing the sting away to a nice warm glow.
“Uh-huh,” I gasped.
“You want more?” he asked.
“More of you, yeah!”
He gripped my hips and thrust in hard, and I practically yowled with pleasure. He’d been slowly but surely testing my limits and I found that so far? I had a taste for everything he’d done so far. I especially liked it when he forgot himself, and I wasn’t above begging for it harder or faster anymore.
He collapsed over me and gently bit the shell of my ear before growling into it, “You want me to make love to you, or you want me to fuck you?”
Oh, God… “Both,” I rasped. “Both is good.”
He chuckled darkly and gathered up my hair, gripping it savagely and whispered, “That’s my girl. That’s my good girl.” He levered himself up, driving himself deeper into my wet and waiting heat, his other hand going to my shoulder to give himself that last little bit of extra leverage he needed to really drive into me.
I raised my hips, thrusting them back to meet his punishing strokes, loving the sweet, exquisite agony of him bottoming out against my cervix. I wasn’t always in the mood for rowdy sex like this, but when the mood did strike me? Hello.
He fucked me, both of us panting, both of us gasping, the warm golden glow of orgasm filling my womb, threatening to spill over through the rest of my body. My nipples tightened, my pussy, too, my clit scraping maddeningly against the covers and I bit my bottom lip.
I wanted it. I wanted it so bad, but it sure took it’s sweet time to build. I felt like I was maddeningly slow to fill with that light, a slow climb into the sky, like a roller coaster, clacking to the top of a long drop, and the moment I reached the top, that agonizing realization that this was it, that I was going to take that plunge – oh how it took forever for that moment to be over. How I stayed on that precipice, gasping, inarticulately crying out in frustration, thinking it was never going to tip and how sweet the fall.
I cried out, arching up as Sage drove into me that final time, like his cock was the key to throw open the lock on the door that was shut tight on that beautiful golden light that came blasting through that newly opened portal, scorching every single one of my nerve endings with beautiful, exquisite, agony.
I heard Sage cry out above me, both of his hands at my shoulders now, pulling back on me as he thrust in as far as he could go plus that little bit more, touching off a whole new tsunami of rapture through me.
We both collapsed, panting to the bed, Sage over the top of me, pressing kisses gently to the vanilla and lavender scent riding my skin from the massage oil he’d used.
“Oh, God,” I gasped. “Oh, God, you feel so good!”
“Fuck, baby, so do you,” he growled against my skin, nipping me lightly with his teeth. I gave a throaty gasp, shivered beneath him, and died just that little bit more in his arms. His loving embrace brought me right back to life every time.
24
Sage…
We lay in bed, the evening drawing on into night, her back pressed to the front of my body as I curled around her, holding her to me. She whimpered slightly in her sleep and writhed against me, pushing her perfect round bottom into my cock and I swear it was like catnip for my dick which sprang instantly to life, ready to go.
I smiled and kissed her shoulder, working my way in, along the gentle sloping curve, climbing that mountain to the sweet spot in the side of her neck. She gasped, groggily, coming awake as my fingertips found her clit, slipping between the folds at the top of her sex, teasing that little kernel of bliss to life.
“Oh, oh wow,” she muttered breathlessly, as I dry humped her pretty little ass and continued to tease her pussy to life. I wanted her wet and wanting. I wanted her to beg me for more. I wanted her supplication, her trust, and I wanted her to want me so bad, she nearly wept with the need for me to be inside her.
I was a cruel, cruel bastard like that – relishing in her anticipation, delighting in denying her until I couldn’t deny myself any longer. I turned her onto her back and she looked up at me, eyes heavy lidded with desire, bottom lip trapped between her teeth as I went for another condom.
I rolled it on. I didn’t even remember tearing open the packet, and then I got between her thighs and stroked deep, slipping my dick up inside my woman with perfect precision until I was all the way in.
“So good,” she half gasped, crooning in my ear, and I loved beyond measure that I could please her.
I loved her slowly, intentionally, this time. Going easy on her in her sleepy, languid state. She moved with such liquid grace beneath me, and not for the first time, I wondered at her being my woman.
I teased her from the outside with the pad of my thumb at the same time I teased her from the inside with my cock. Still, I kept the pressure light and even, going easy on her, drawing this out for as long as possible.
She made me feel such things… so virile, so manly, like I could keep this up past dawn. Watching her writhe beneath me, so sexy, so organic, I felt like a god to her goddess. Something primal, something pagan, something that long predated the Christian God we both prayed to sometimes.
It didn’t feel blasphemous in the slightest to think or feel that way, though – which I found passively interesting. Not like I was about to fucking dwell on it. Not with the likes of Eden beneath me.
She was heaven. Heaven on earth.
She dragged my ass to such unearthly heights that I saw stars when I finally came. So beautiful. Such grace she showed me.
“I love you,” I panted, and was vaguely aware of both her arms and legs wrapped around me, holding me close.
“I love you,” I panted again, and though I know she murmured the sentiment back to me against the front of my shoulder, I couldn’t hear it for the blood rushing in my ears as my pulse sent my heart skyrocketing into the cage of my ribs.
I don’t think we’d meant to sleep after our first round of lovemaking, but it was hard not to with how thoroughly we wore each other out.
Still, it was approaching midnight, and thus Christmas Eve, and I had more gifts for her.
“I love what you do to me,” she said shyly, and I slipped from her, grunting at the sensation overload of the motion.
I settled on the other side of her hip and drew her close.
“You ready for your next present?” I asked, and she smiled.
“But wait, there’s more…” she quipped lightly, and we both laughed.
“You are so ridiculous sometimes,” I said as my chuckling finally died and she giggled behind her hand adorably.
I reached into the drawer and withdrew the parchment envelope.
“What�
��s this?” she asked and took it from my hands, sitting up and putting her back against the headboard. I propped my head in my hand and looked up at her.
“Open it,” I said and swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry as her eyes skated over the letter. They misted over the short missive and she sniffed, those beautiful dark eyes of hers flicking to mine as she bent and pressed her mouth to mine.
She looked in the envelope where the chain of the locket rattled and shifted against the thick parchment and she extracted the locket.
“Oh, Sage,” she whispered.
“Open it,” I said, and she did, prying it open carefully with her thumbnail, tilting the silver hearts into the light from the Christmas tree.
Her eyes welled, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. I’d put a picture of myself in the one half, in the other I’d used some resin to contain a four-leaf clover. She’d been obsessed with them when she was little, dragging me out back to pour over the clover patches looking for one.
“Is this…”
“The one you gave me before my first deployment.”
“For luck,” she whispered.
“For luck,” I murmured, poking her lightly in the center of her chest over her heart.
She gripped the locket in her palm, clicking it shut, and threw her arms around me, holding me tightly.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered and I don’t think she realized that next to her? Nothing was.
She was the embodiment of the word.
I looked over her shoulder at the clock on the bedside table, 12:03 a.m., and smiled.
“Merry Christmas Eve, beautiful,” I murmured.
“Merry Christmas Eve,” she whispered and I could hear the smile in her voice.
The letter fell open beside her hip…
Dearest Eden,
I figured it was high time I wrote you back. I’m not really sure what to write, and I’ve never really felt like I was any good at these things, but it’s high time I told you just how I feel.
I love you, baby. I’ve loved you for a long time, I just wasn’t sure how to express it. What was right and what was wrong. I lost sight of you for a while, but you never let me go and I know that now.
So here I am. Giving my heart to you. One that you can wear for all time, proudly. You’re everything to me.
Merry Christmas, Babe.
Forever,
Sage
I had hoped that this would be enough, and by her reaction? I’d knocked it out of the park. I was more than good with that.
25
Eden…
“My turn,” I said the next night after we had traded and opened everything with the club. Sage looked up from where he was putting away the brand-new chaps and cold-weather riding gear he’d been given.
“What?” he asked.
I’d wanted to wait for some reason. For actual Christmas. Our first Christmas…
I pulled out the flat square package from where I’d hidden it in the back of his closet.
“Babe, you already got me—”
I waved him off. “That was just the Christmas pre-game,” I said of the knife I’d bought him and had engraved with his initials.
“What’s this?” he asked, as I hugged the plain-wrapped brown package to my chest and stepped over to him.
“You might want to sit down,” I murmured, and he did, taking a seat on the edge of his neatly made bed.
I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly and held the gift out to him.
He took it from me and set it into his lap, eying it curiously. I kneeled on the floor across from him and waited.
“Okay, you got me curious,” he said smiling and tore the paper off from the leather binding. I bit my lips together and waited patiently as he scowled at the gilt on the cover of the book.
Our Story
Volume One
“What?” he asked, and swallowing hard, he opened the cover. His eyes immediately grew misty.
“I, uh, hope you don’t mind… I was so scared you would find I made the letters magically disappear and you would be angry.”
He turned the pages of the book – all of my letters from the first shoebox and some photos, perfectly bound. It’d cost a mint, but the magic on his face and in his eyes was everything as he choked up.
“It’s Maren, and Nox,” he said, fingers skimming the page.
I felt my own eyes mist. I had gone to a painstaking amount of effort as quickly as possible to get this done. Initially, I had gone to everyone just asking for pictures, but then when I had found the letters, it had become so much more.
“I found as many pictures as I could that went along with the same time the letters were written,” I murmured.
“You did all this? For me?”
“Of course,” I whispered. “You kept them all—”
“Fuck, baby.” He set the book aside and slipped off the bed, pulling me in tightly against him, shuddering with emotion.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” I whispered, and he sniffed, pulling back, caressing my face.
“Our first,” he said. “Of so damn many to come.”
I smiled and nodded, and that was how we greeted our first Christmas together, kneeling on his bedroom floor in front of our first Christmas tree, crying tears of joy instead of heartache, kissing one another breathless as the brotherhood out in the taproom started drunkenly singing ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ at the top of their lungs.
I laughed, Sage laughed, and through our tears, Christmas was sparkling and bright.
Also by A. J. Downey
The Sacred Hearts MC
1. Shattered & Scarred
2. Broken & Burned
3. Cracked & Crushed
3.5 Masked & Miserable (a novella)
4. Tattered & Torn
5. Fractured & Formidable
6. Damaged & Dangerous
The Virtues
1. Cutter’s Hope
2. Marlin’s Faith
3. Charity for Nothing
4. Stoker’s Serenity
The Sacred Brotherhood
1. Brother to Brother
2. Her Brother’s Keeper
3. Brother In Arms
4. Between Brothers
5. A Brother’s Secret
6. A Brother At My Back
7. A Brother’s Salvation
Indigo Knights
1. Her Thin Blue Lifeline
2. His Cold Blue Command
3. A Low Blue Flame
4. His Wild Blue Rose
5. Her Pained Blue Silence
6. A Cold Blue Call
7. Her Reluctant Blue Cavalier
8. Forged Under Fire
9. Under A Blue Moon
Sacred Hearts MC Pacific Northwest
1. Over the High Side
2. Wind Therapy
2. Apex of the Curve
Paranormal Romance (with Ryan Kells)
1. I Am The Alpha
2. Omega’s Run
3. Hunter’s End
Standalones
Synchronicity
About the Author
A.J. Downey specializes in writing real and relatable contemporary romance stories. She’s from Seattle, WA and loves the Pacific Northwest. She finds inspiration from her surroundings, through the people she meets, and likely as a byproduct of way too much caffeine. An avid reader all of her life, it’s now her turn to try and give back a little, entertaining as she has been entertained.
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