Puppy Love

by Lucy Gilmore

  “I’m not such a bad person once you get to know me, I swear,” she said. “I smell like dogs and I’m not much good at this wilderness stuff, but I can make up for it with other things. Want to know how? Most of them involve my legs.”

  Harrison groaned. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “No,” she said and lifted her mouth to his. “I’m trying to kiss you. And I’m going to do it too.”

  He would have liked to have resisted the pull of her kiss, especially while so much between them remained up in the air, but he wasn’t that strong.

  No mortal man was. All he needed was the sound of his name on her lips, a laugh issuing from between them, and he was done for.

  “I like kissing you, Harrison,” she said the moment she pulled away, proving his point to perfection. That Harrison almost slayed him. “And I think you like kissing me too, but you’re a chicken.”

  He stiffened. “I’m not a chicken.”

  “Yes, you are, but only where I’m concerned. You think I’m sexy and you think I’m scary, but you refuse to admit that you like those two things together. You like them a lot.”

  It was true. He did appreciate the combination of those two things, especially where Sophie was concerned. She was quite literally the most desirable woman he’d ever laid eyes on, and the fact that he cared less about that than he did for the fact that he’d fallen hard for her scared the shit out of him.

  But he liked it. He liked it a lot.

  “I’m never going to be a good boyfriend, Sophie,” he said, groaning again. It was much less effective this time, since her lips pressed against his, capturing most of his words. “I’m never going to be cheerful or pleasant or even all that likable.”

  “I know.” Her mouth brushed his—softly at first at, then with increasing urgency. As was always the case when this woman started pushing, he let her in.

  “And there’s a good chance I’ll say something wrong—maybe even make you cry.”

  “I know,” she said again, her lips moving down his neck. She ran her palms flat against his stomach and lifted his jacket, exposing his abdomen as well as the two ports—one attached to the insulin pump via a small cord, the other attached only digitally. He wasn’t squeamish about very many things and had no problems testing his blood sugar in front of others, but he’d always made it a point to remove the pump and put on a patch before things got too far with a woman.

  Whirring mechanical devices weren’t exactly sexy, but he needed to keep them on while his body regulated itself. Which meant they’d have to slow down. They’d have to wait. He’d have to sit here with a cock so hard it could crack ice…

  Sophie, however, didn’t so much as blink. Nor did she stop what she was doing.

  He barely had a chance to get over the shock of it, of Sophie tugging off his clothes with an urgency that bordered on the frantic, before she started working her way inexorably down his body. No part of him was left untouched, her lips pressing against his pecs and his abs and—oh God—farther still, until she reached the line where his jeans hung low his hips.

  “Sophie, stop. Wait.” It was an agony to stop her as her hands reached for his belt buckle, but he had to do it. “My pump… I can’t …”

  She peeked up at him, a playful dance in her eyes as she continued her assault on his senses. Before he knew what was happening, she had his fly undone and was greedily tugging at his jeans.

  “You think you’re the first guy I’ve been with who’s hooked up to medical equipment?” she said. “For that matter, you think I’ve never gotten down and dirty with my own IV in? Oh, Harrison, you sweet innocent. I came of age in a hospital, remember?”

  He stilled again, but this time out of incredulity. “Wait, what? Are you talking about your leukemia?”

  “Of course. What else would I be talking about?”

  “But you were a kid.” The words came out as an accusation—mostly because they were. “You were sick. What the devil were they doing to you there?”

  There was so much laughter in her eyes it was like looking into another world. “They weren’t doing anything to me. Well, not unless the they in question were the other kids on the ward. Oh, man. There was this boy with Hodgkin’s who could do the most amazing things with his—”

  Harrison held up a hand, his whole body rigid. “I don’t want to hear it. I thought hospitals were supposed to be a place of healing, of convalescence. Not dens of juvenile vice.”

  Sophie tilted her head and blinked up at him, looking the picture of virtue. “That shows how little you know about the real world, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t believe some of the parties we used to have. It’d be all fun and games and Methotrexate, but the second the nurses turned their backs…”

  “You wicked little monster. Don’t say it.”

  “…orgy time.”

  His whole body shook with laughter. There was nothing funny about the things she was telling him. The idea of a young, fragile Sophie lying in a bed somewhere, struggling to make it through each day, was a thing that made his chest grow tight. She’d suffered and suffered heavily, and no amount of making out with other kids behind closed doors could make that okay.

  But he laughed anyway. Whatever trials she’d gone through, she’d managed to come out intact. Intact and, well, happy.

  He wished he knew how.

  “All those tangled IVs and anti-nausea drugs…” She heaved a mock sigh. “It wasn’t always pretty, but we did the best we could. You don’t know sexual resourcefulness until you sit down with a group of teenagers who don’t dare let their heart rate monitors get high enough to set off alarms. The trick is to switch them when the doctors aren’t looking.”

  “Okay, now you’re just making things up.”

  “I guess you’ll never know, will you?” she asked, a coy lift to her brow. “The misdeeds of my youth aren’t a story for someone as uptight and proper as you.”

  “Uptight?” he said.

  “I mean, you are the one freaking out over a tiny pump while there’s a hot and willing honey trap on your sleeping bag.”

  Hot? Willing? This woman had no idea what she was doing to him over here.

  …or maybe she did. The coy lift to her brow turned downright taunting. “Or is it Bubbles watching us that you object to? I gotta warn you, Harrison, you can’t kick her to the curb every time you bring a woman to your bed. I guess, if you’re one of those guys who just gets in there and bam-bam, crank-crank, finishes the job, it won’t matter so much. But I was sort of hoping you’d be the kind who takes his time—”

  “Sophie Vasquez, if you don’t stop right now, I’m going to…” He trailed off, struggling to think of a punishment that would vindicate a fraction of the things she was making him feel right now.

  “What will you do to me?” she purred. She shifted onto her knees and drew so close they were practically kissing. Her breath was warm against his mouth, her lips a smile against his. “You’ll bam-bam, crank-crank, finish the job? Don’t worry—I’m ready. I promise to come the moment you enter me.”

  There was nothing for it then but to give up. Give up, give in, give this woman everything she demanded and more. He could go to his grave knowing that he’d fought his valiant best—and that his valiant best wasn’t even close to enough to defeat a woman like Sophie.

  He acknowledged his helplessness by touching his mouth to hers and kissing her until both of them were breathless. He didn’t know if it was the close air of the tent or if kissing Sophie would always leave him with a whirling head and no sense of his surroundings, but he was forced to push her to the ground so they both had somewhere to rest.

  There wasn’t so much space in the tent that they had much in the way of room to navigate, but it didn’t seem to matter. She accepted the full weight of him as if he were nothing, bore the press of his body as a delight rather than a burden.

  Harrison paused to unzip her jacket, his fingers shaking like he was some goddamned teenager who’d never felt up
a woman before. Sophie didn’t help matters any by moaning and arching her back, the warm jut of her breasts—Lady and the Tramp—tempting him into skipping his slow, sultry plan of disrobing her piece by piece. As much as he would have liked to take his time with each button, exposing her soft skin in inches, he didn’t have the willpower.

  So he yanked. Her oversize white shirt popped open with a satisfying scatter of buttons around the tent. The delicate band of a pink, lacy bra peeped up at him, encouraging him to explore with fingers, lips, tongue, teeth.

  “This is not the kind of bra you’re supposed to wear camping,” he said in the absence of more appropriate commentary. A better, more sophisticated man might whisper sweet nothings or compare the dips and valleys of her body to the majestic mountains all around them, but no one had ever accused Harrison of being sophisticated.

  “Yes, but it is the kind of bra you wear when you’re trying to tempt a man into fucking you.”

  His mouth grew dry at the harsh yet sweet resonance of that word on her lips. Fucking. Not rolling in the hay. Not tumbling in the sheets. Not even making love. This sweet, beautiful woman was revealing more than just a tempting pair of breasts swelling out of a lace bra. And Harrison—God help him—loved it.

  He groaned and ran his fingers down the midline of her stomach, her skin warm and impossibly soft. That feeling of heat and silk only increased the farther south he went, skimming past her navel and down the gentle swell of her belly. By the time he managed to reach the top lace of her underwear, she was scorching.

  Although he was scorching too, he forced himself to take a deep breath and slow down. Sophie might think she could taunt him into making a botched, rushed job of this, but no matter how animalistic his urges tended to be, he was still capable of some restraint.

  “I’m a man of honor, goddammit,” he said as he moved back up her body. He intended to make that same journey, over her bra and down to her panties, but this time, he was going to do it with his mouth. “I want to taste you. I want to savor each limb.”

  Sophie’s body shook with laughter, all those soft, rounded parts quivering against him. Burying her hands in his hair, she stroked and teased her nails against his scalp. “Oh, dear. I had no idea you were capable of so much eloquence. All that reserve was just part of your plan to lure me in, wasn’t it?”

  He yanked himself out of her grasp and tugged her jeans down her hips. Without bothering to remove her pants all the way, he laid his hand flat against the soft upper swell of her mons, eliciting a gasp. “I am not eloquent.”

  “No?” she asked and tipped her head back against the ground, grinding her hips upward until his hand was forced to move lower. Even through the thin satin of her panties, he could feel how wet she was, how ready. “Darn. I was looking forward to it. I guess you’d better spread my legs and fill me with your mighty oak instead. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  He was in the middle of doing just that when he stopped. “What did you just call it?”

  “Your thundering maple,” she replied, her head tipped back in ecstasy as his hand lay heavy against the wet heat of her. “Your turgid member, your one-eyed snake, the purple menace. I need it hard, Harrison, and I need it now.”

  “Purple menace?” he echoed.

  “Well, I can’t see it from here, obviously, but I’ve pictured it plenty of times. Would you mind if I make a more detailed survey later? I need you.”

  He proved powerless against a supplication like that one. “Your wish is my command—as long as you return the favor.”

  “Oh? And what do you wish?” The gentle mockery in her tone indicated she had no intention of doing anything she damn well didn’t want to.

  “You. Naked. In the sleeping bag. It’s going to be a tight fit to squeeze both of us in there, but I’ve never known a tight fit to be unpleasant where sex is concerned.”

  “Oh, you sweet talker, you,” she teased.

  Her movements as she removed her clothing were not designed to entice a man. She didn’t coyly expose her skin one inch at a time, and she didn’t shimmy or shake as she pulled her jeans over her hips to showcase the rounded curves of her ass. Her movements were neat and efficient and even more seductive because of it.

  All those parts of her that had been brought to his attention over the past few weeks—her naked shoulder and her bared neck, the sweet curve of her back and her strong, capable legs—hit him at once with their perfection. Not because they were perfect, but because she was.

  “Don’t gawk,” she chided, but with enough stiffness in her voice that he knew she was feeling shy. “You’re not the only one who feels awkward sometimes.”

  “That’s not what you’ll be feeling in a minute,” he said, and swiftly unplugged his port before swabbing it down and putting it away. He paused long enough to grab a condom from his insulin kit—those zippered pouches proved handy from time to time—before stripping his own clothes.

  “There is no way you’re going to fit inside,” Sophie said as he approached. As she was only halfway sitting up at the time, she was exactly on eye level with his erection—a thing his body interpreted with literal enjoyment.

  “That’s what they all say, but you’d be surprised how much nature allows for—”

  She squeaked. “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it! Although, um, congratulations? And it’s not nearly as purple as I’d thought.”

  She followed this bit of insight with a giggle. Harrison wasn’t a vain man, but hearing a woman giggle while he was naked and about to fuck her wasn’t his customary response.

  It was Sophie’s response though, and he shouldn’t have expected anything less.

  “Scoot over, you provoking brat. I’m coming in there to make you regret your insolence.”

  “Ooh, I like the sound of that. Make me regret it. Make me regret it so hard.”

  She’d been correct in assuming that the two of them in a single sleeping bag would be a tight mishmash of body parts, requiring plenty of shifting and tugging and laughter. What she hadn’t realized, however, was that once he was in and the length of her naked body was pressed against his in a perfect fit, nothing else mattered. She was impossibly soft, her limbs sliding up and down his in a way that made him ache to be inside her. And he would too, but not before he took her face in his hands and kissed her—long and slow, savoring the way she squirmed and moaned with each slide of his tongue along hers.

  She was a body in constant motion, a woman full of vitality and joy. And he wasn’t going to lie—the wet, searing heat of her as she wrapped first one and then the other leg around him was more temptation than any flesh-and-blood man could bear.

  Before he penetrated her, however, he halted his wandering inspection of all her soft and slippery parts to cup her face. The two of them were perfectly immobile inside the sleeping bag, the only movement the rapid beat of her heart against his chest and her quick, panting breaths.

  “I like you, Sophie,” he said. It was both everything and nothing and somehow the only thing he could think of to say.

  A smile curved her lips, almost as though she could read his thoughts and see what he really meant. She proved it by her next words. “I know you do. It was inevitable. I warned you, remember? I’m like a goiter. A heaving, podgy pustule that grows out of your—”

  Which was why he was laughing when he finally entered her. There wasn’t much in the way of room to navigate the mechanics of bam-bam, crank-crank, but some things didn’t require a ton of finesse.

  Sex with Sophie was one of them. She was so inviting, so warm, that he felt at home the moment he slid into the wet heat of her. She angled her body to receive him, murmuring only once about how proud she was of nature for making it possible for even so big and wicked a man as him to fit.

  “Now you’re just being mean,” he said, but he was still laughing.

  “I won’t ever be mean to you,” she promised and, with an angelic look he knew was calculated to drive him craz
y, added, “At least, not unless you deserve it.”

  There was nothing for it after that but to give her exactly what she deserved, which was as good an excuse as any to flip the sleeping bag so she was lying pinned underneath him. The friction and undulations of her hips against his did most of the work, and with his body on top of hers, gravity took care of the rest.

  As was the case with most things where Sophie was concerned, she made all the noise she damn well pleased as her body rocked, an orgasm shaking her. Since Bubbles might take it into her head that those sounds required investigation—and because the majority of his friends were seated only a few hundred feet away—he silenced her with a deep, penetrating kiss that echoed the slide of his cock inside her. He didn’t fully capture her scream that way, but it still felt amazing, that combination of sound and sensation entering his body at the same moment he released into hers.

  He would have liked to stay that way forever, snuggled inside a sleeping bag—snuggled inside her—but the snuffling sounds from the corner picked up with an urgent whimper Harrison recognized. He might not be great at knowing when Bubbles was trying to alert him to a health hazard yet, but he’d spent enough time cleaning up puppy messes to realize that now was a good time to take a quick walk.

  “Your timing is worse than a postcoital confessional,” he grumbled to the animal as he reluctantly unzipped the sleeping bag enough to slip out. At Sophie’s laugh, he turned to her with an accusing finger. “You should put that on the brochure, by the way.”

  “What? That puppies have to be potty trained even when you’d rather be fucking the trainer?”

  There was that word again—fucking—so incongruously hot on those sweet lips of hers. Even though his body was still reeling from his orgasm, he could feel the stirring of interest taking over again.

  Especially when she laughed and added, “Sure thing, Harrison. I’ll ask Lila to put that in the next one.”