by Megan Hart
Graham said her name in that low-deep, grumbly growl she’d adored from the first moment she’d heard it. His pace didn’t falter, not even when she rocked back and forth to meet each thrust. Every so often he added a simple twist of hip that had her gasping, then writhing.
“I thought about this for an entire year,” he said.
Julia had little breath for laughter. What trickled out was half a sigh, have a chuckle. “Oh, God. Me too.”
His fingers tapped her clit, a Morse code of passion, the message unmistakable. Her cunt opened to him, easing each push and pull with her liquid heat. Julia moaned his name and it ended on a sobbing cry.
This wasn’t going to last long. A year of foreplay had made that impossible, and so had what they’d already done. But Julia had never believed longer automatically meant better. With the surge and roll of orgasm washing over her, all she could think of was how good he felt inside her.
She came with a hoarsely muffled shout, her face buried in the sheets they’d rumpled. She put her hand over Graham’s to stop him from stroking. Pulsing pleasure shuddered through her. “Slower,” she gritted out, and he slowed.
Julia lifted her head from the pillows and pushed back against him. His cock throbbed inside her. Each breath she drew brought the scent of him and their fucking to her, and she shuddered.
She looked over her shoulder at his face, taut with desire. Sweat gleamed along his hairline. He rocked his hips slowly inside her, and she could see the effort it cost him.
“Graham, I want to get on top.”
He nodded and slipped out of her with a hand on the base of his cock to keep the condom in place. Julia, her breath coming more easily as the pleasure of her climax dissipated, punched the pillows into place so he’d have something to lean against, and she gestured for him to trade places with her.
With Graham propped on the pillows, she straddled him and slid down onto his prick with a sigh. The entire switch had taken only a few seconds, but when her heat enfolded him he let out a groan and thrust upward. In this position his cock rubbed her just behind the pubic bone, and Julia bit her lip at the sensation.
“Put your hands on the headboard,” she said.
There was no point in making him do that other than the pleasure it shot to her clit to watch him obey. He did without a second thought, those big hands gripping the wooden spokes of the fancy headboard the way she’d clung to the metal bar. She remembered suddenly the sight of his face bisected by the dark cloth, how full his mouth had been and how she’d wondered about the color of his eyes. He arched when she lifted herself, then slid down his erection. She did it again, then again, as she leaned forward and her hair fell around her face.
“Fuck me,” she said. “Harder now. Oh…God…”
He moved up as she moved down, and the wet slap of their bodies meeting pushed pleasure through her. It seemed unlikely that she could come again and even more impossible that she could stop herself. Her nails dug into his hips as they rocked and thrust, and Julia lost herself in the feeling of being filled.
Her orgasm tingled this time, not roaring, but it was delicious just the same. She gasped out his name, urging him to come with her. Giving him permission. And then, demanding. And again, he obeyed. With a deep groan he thrust into her one last time.
When their breathing eased, she leaned to kiss his lips, tasting of salt. He let go of the headboard to hold her. They breathed together until she rolled off him with a sated sigh. Graham turned on his side to spoon her. He kissed her shoulder, his hands resting lightly on her belly. She thought lazily about reaching to pull up the blanket, but before she could say a word, Graham had done so.
“You’re very good,” she murmured, wanting sleep.
He paused before answering. “At…?”
“Fucking me.” She laughed a little. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” He didn’t sound as sleepy as she felt.
Julia yawned and snuggled further into his embrace. “Giving me what I want.”
More silence, this time so long the doubts tried to rear up again. Julia did her best to push them aside. Now wasn’t the time. They’d had amazing sex, and tomorrow, she’d leave to go home. That was all this had been. The consummation of a dream.
“I’m glad.”
She yawned again. “You can stay, if you like.”
At first she was sure he’d decline, and she braced himself to believe his excuse, no matter what it was. “Thanks.”
He held her closer. His breathing slowed. Julia, warm beneath the blankets and deliciously worn out from the sex, began to drift into dreams.
“Why did you walk away?”
Sleep fled. She tensed but forced herself to relax at once. She thought of several answers but in the end decided to trust him with the truth. “I was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of me,” she said.
Graham kissed her shoulder again. They rested in silence for a bit until he spoke again. “And now? Something changed your mind, Julia. Something gave you a reason to email me.”
“I didn’t know you’d offer to take me to dinner,” she said with a small laugh. “It’s just chance and coincidence I had the layover, you know. I wasn’t planning on meeting you here.”
His arms tightened on her. “But when you knew you were going to stay overnight, you emailed me.”
Julia shifted in his arms. Her ass pressed neatly into his groin, and though she couldn’t imagine him being able to get hard again so soon, she felt him stir a little against her. “I did.”
“So, what changed?”
“I wanted my cake,” she said honestly. “I knew what I wanted and I guess…I wasn’t afraid to have it, any more.”
His voice was amused. “I’m your cake?”
She nodded and snuggled further into his embrace. “Yes.”
“I’m bad for you, but you want me anyway?”
She thought for a moment before answering. “I thought what I wanted…what I liked…was bad for me. It was the only reason I could think of for why I couldn’t ever find what I wanted with any man. That it was wrong to want it. That’s what I meant. That’s what I was afraid of. That’s why,” she said softly, “I didn’t fuck you a year ago.”
“My friends,” Graham said, surprising her, “have this idea about what makes a man a man. Most of them think they’re good ole boys, you know? Macho. They like to brag about getting head but never about how they spent an hour using their mouths on a woman. Their entire idea of themselves is wrapped up in this…image.”
“A lot of people are like that.”
Graham’s fingers played on her belly. “Are you?”
“I never liked to think I was,” Julia said and turned to face him, their heads sharing a pillow. “Are you?
“Nope.” Graham linked his fingers through hers and brought their hands to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
“Of course I do.”
“The trust exercises.”
Her heart thumped and she had to duck her head for a moment. When she looked back at him, though, she couldn’t hide the broad smile. “They turned you on, didn’t they?”
“Yes.” He kissed her hand again.
“Me, too.”
“But you were afraid?” His curiosity didn’t feel aggressive or judgmental.
“Graham, I like…”
“I know what you like, Julia.”
Julia tensed but forced herself to relax at once. “Do you?”
“You like Italian food. And snow. Goldfish. And you like to be on top.”
He said it casually enough, but Julia sat up to look at him. “And do you like to be on the bottom?”
“If you’re asking me do I like to be tied up and spanked, the answer is maybe. I don’t know,” he told her lightly. “But do I like to make a woman happy? Yes. I do.”
Julia drew her knees to her chest and folded her arms around them. “I like
to be made happy.”
Graham sat, too, the sheet pulled across his lap. “So why not let me try?”
There were a hundred, no, a thousand reasons to point out to him why it wouldn’t work, but Julia could only put voice to one. “I’m going home tomorrow.”
“So we have until then.” His grin was unrelenting.
She couldn’t resist poking him, just a little. “And after that?”
Graham put a hand over his chest and made a little bow. “I’ll have to keep trying, won’t I?”
“It won’t be easy.”
“It doesn’t have to be hard.”
Julia raised a brow and gave his lap a pointed glance. “It does at least sometimes.”
They laughed together and sank onto the bed in a sea of pillows and blankets. Side by side, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. Her head found a place on his shoulder. When he stroked her hair, she thought she’d fall asleep right there, but she forced her eyes to stay open. She didn’t want to miss a minute. He nuzzled into her neck and settled there.
“How is this going to work?” she mused aloud.
“Pretty good, I think,” Graham said. “But I figure you’ll tell me.”
She pinched his nipple, lightly, just hard enough to tease. He hissed in a breath. Julia smiled. “I’ll have to learn a little bit more about you, Graham.”
“Height, weight, education, that sort of thing?”
She ran her hand from his nipple to his balls. “More like…limits.”
When she toyed with his cock he drew in another breath and went very, very still.
“And we’ll have to figure out a way to make the long-distance thing work,” she added, already plotting.
“I’m very good at taking direction,” Graham said and groaned when she stroked him.
“And I,” Julia replied as she leaned to kiss his mouth. “am very good at giving it.”
And that, she thought as she rolled on top of him to stroke and kiss, was enough to start with.
REASON ENOUGH
Reason Enough is a followup story to Dirty. Elle and Dan also appear in Broken, Stranger and Naked in small roles. (And possibly some other titles I’ve forgotten to name!)
Chapter 1
It wasn’t the sort of question I could answer at once, without hesitation. It took me hours to pick out which bathmats to put in our new bathroom. How on earth could I decide in one split moment if I should agree to have a baby?
“Yes? No?” Dan nudged his chin into the curve of my shoulder and neck from behind as his arms slipped around my waist. It made washing the dishes difficult, so I let the greasy pot in my hands slide back beneath the soapy water and leaned back against him. “Maybe?”
“Where did this come from?” I asked, practically, I thought.
Dan’s hands moved up and down my waist and crept below the hem of my shirt to link over my belly. “I was just thinking about it, that’s all.”
“Hmm.” I turned to face him, my hands going behind me to grip the edge of the sink. “A baby is a big responsibility.”
He grinned.
“Dan….” I had nothing to say, really. No real protest.
“Never mind, Elle.” He kissed me. “It’s just something I thought about, that’s all. When you mentioned the pills.”
I’d had a hangnail gone awry. My doctor had prescribed antibiotics to help get rid of the infection. Antibiotics can interfere with the effectiveness of birth control pills. I’d offered to use my mouth on him instead of making love.
“I thought you’d like a blow job.” I heard the slightly cool tone of my voice and imagined the slightly cool expression on my face, to match. “I mean, you usually do.”
Against me, on the places our bodies touched, I imagined heat growing. He pushed his hips forward a little bit to nudge a definite bulge against my stomach. He kissed me again, our mouths opening, and his hands gripped tighter on my waist.
“You know I do,” Dan murmured against my lips.
“Here? In the kitchen?” I raised a brow but kept my mouth from the smile threatening to tip it. “How shocking.”
“Shock me.”
We’d only been in the new house, our first together, for a few months. We hadn’t yet made love in every room – though not for lack of effort. I let my hand slide to his belt buckle. I tugged it open, moving his body as I did.
Dan let out a small grunt. “Use your mouth on me, right here.”
It would kill my knees, that tile floor, but I didn’t protest. I liked sucking Dan’s cock. He thought he was lucky. I was the lucky one, though. Lucky I’d found him, and that he loved me.
Luckier I loved him back.
I pushed him, not too gently, until he took a couple steps back. I unzipped his dark trousers, his work clothes, and pulled them over his hips. I went to my knees as I pushed the cloth over his thighs and down to his ankles. His cock tented the front of his soft boxer briefs, and I got rid of those, too.
I looked at him for a minute with my hand on the base of his prick. I licked my mouth to wet my lips, and Dan’s hands slid into my hair. Not pulling, not pushing. He was waiting for me to move. He could be patient if he had to be. If I made him.
I tilted my head to take him in as deep as I could. The groan of his response thrilled me. Sucking Dan was about him, but it affected me, too. My nipples tightened. My clit rubbed against my panties, and I reached with the hand not holding Dan to pull my skirt up my thighs. My knees protested the cold, hard tile without the cushion of my skirt, but I ignored the sensation. My fingers crept under the skirt to touch, just once, the silk between my legs.
“Yes,” Dan said. “Touch yourself.”
I didn’t answer, my mouth being occupied with other tasks. I sucked him a little harder, my lips closing over the head of his cock and meeting. Like a kiss. A second later, the pause so brief it was hardly there, my mouth opened again and I took him down the back of my throat. Up again, this time with one hand following and the other rubbing the front of my panties.
Dan’s fingers slid deeper into my hair, and he pulled out the spring-clip I’d used to keep it up. Dark lengths tumbled around my shoulders. I smelled the shampoo I’d used that morning when I’d bound it up, still damp. He finger-combed it, careful not to pull too hard as my head moved under his hands.
His breath hitched, in and out, faster. It wouldn’t take long for him to come. The question was, how long would it take me?
I closed my eyes. The kitchen went away. So did my job, the bills I meant to pay later, the message on the answering machine from my mother. The discomfort in my knees and jaw vanished, too.
My world became the taste and smell of my husband and my hand between my legs. I rubbed faster over my panties, my clit a tight, hard bump under my fingers. I sucked Dan’s cock a little harder, a little faster, losing my rhythm once or twice when my own pleasure made me sloppy.
“I’m going to come, baby.” Dan’s regular voice was often enough to get my hormones jumping, but the way he sounded just before he came was the trigger on cunt’s pistol. He spoke. I shot off.
I teased myself with rapid flicks of my fingertip on my silk-covered clit. A harder touch would send me over faster, but it felt so good I didn’t want it to end. Pleasure built. My muscles tightened. I couldn’t breathe. I had to breathe.
With a low moan, Dan bucked his hips forward. His taste flooded me. His hands tightened in my hair and I swallowed, hard, so I could find the breath to moan.
I pressed my palm between my legs as my body shook. I’d become a fist, closed tight, but now I opened wide. I shuddered and swallowed again. Dan pulled back.
I blinked as my orgasm subsided and looked up at him. Sweat fell at that moment from his face onto mine, onto my lips, and I licked it away. Dan reached to help me up with a hand beneath my elbow, and I groaned at the creak of my joints.
He pulled me close and kissed me, then hugged me with my face to his chest. “You are so good at that. You know that?”
I sm
iled against the familiar fresh scent of his shirt. A shirt I had washed and dried and hung in his closet. The closet in the house we shared.
“I know,” I told him, just to hear him laugh.
He hugged me tighter, and we laughed together. The phone rang. I knew who it would be, and though I didn’t really want to answer it, I knew my mother would keep calling until I did. I looked up at him.
“I love you,” I said, and meant it.
“I love you, too,” Dan answered, and didn’t talk about babies again that night.
Chapter 2
“Hot,” my brother said in a no-nonsense tone. “Don’t touch!”
The little girl reaching for the canister of fireplace matches pulled back her hand and gave Chad a reproachful look. But she didn’t reach again, just turned her attention to the stack of magazines on the coffee table.
“Sorry,” I said. “I should’ve put those away. We’re not baby-proof, I guess.”
My younger brother laughed and shrugged. “The princess needs to learn. Don’t worry about it, Elle.”
The little girl – my niece! I had a niece? How had that happened? I was an aunt. My baby brother had fallen in love and adopted a child and had a life.
“What?” he asked as I shook my head in wonder. “No, Leah. Don’t tear Aunt Elle’s magazines. C’mere to daddy.”
He held out his hands and the girl made her way around the coffee table to take her place on his lap. She grinned, self-satisfied, and looked every bit the princess her daddies believed her to be.
“I almost can’t believe this,” I told him, knowing he’d understand. “You’re a daddy! Chaddie, it’s just incredible.”
He beamed. My brother looked better than I’d ever seen him. He’d gotten slimmer, and impossibly taller. He’d cut his hair, and it emphasized the leaner lines of his face. He’d gotten older.
Hell. We both had. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I looked in the mirror often enough, after all.
Chad kissed the soft, round cheek of his daughter and stroked the length of her black curls. She settled contentedly against him and kicked her chubby legs. He let her crawl off his lap to sit on my couch.