A Time to Fall (Love by the Seasons Book 1)

by Jess Vonn

  Her memory sparked back to Cosgrove Hill. To all the ways he could make her body sing. To the thickness and taste of him in her mouth. She had to have all of him, right now. There could be no more waiting. She needed the man to fill her in every conceivable way.

  “Take me to bed, Cal,” she pleaded, and he wasted no time carrying her over to the tall four poster bed in the back corner of the cottage. He set her down gently on the edge, keeping himself firmly between her legs. He cleared the bed of its abundance of throw pillows in mere seconds. But he didn’t move her, and he didn’t sit next to her. He stayed right there in between her thighs.

  Reaching behind her, he unhooked her bra, freeing her breasts from their torturous capture. He gently reclined her down onto the bed, her legs still dangling on either side of him. Her nipples peaked just anticipating his touch and when his fingers, then his lips, found their way to them, she gasped in pleasure. The suction of his mouth sent shards of sensation to Winnie’s deepest core where desire pooled and pulsed. He nuzzled against her, rubbing the stubble of his jaw against the soft swells of her breasts and groaning with pleasure.

  “You feel so good, Winnie. All I do these days is want you.”

  She wanted relief. She wanted him to crawl on top of her, to thrust into her until the fullness cleared her head of all other thoughts and needs.

  His mouth pulled back and Winnie whimpered at the disconnection. In one quick move, he had her panties off and flung onto the floor behind him. Completely naked now, and completely vulnerable, Winnie should have felt self-conscious, but her wants left no space for insecurity. Her need for this man’s sensual talents superseded all other possible thoughts.

  “Winnie, Winnie, Winnie,” he whispered reverently, looking upon her and taking in her fully exposed body softly lit from the light of a lamp across the room. Any lingering shreds of intimidation dissolved as she watched his face process her with unfiltered hunger. “How did you fall into my life? How did I get so lucky?”

  Her heart and sex clenched simultaneously as his hands fondled her breasts.

  “So sexy,” he murmured. His fingers traced the length of her stomach until they reached her thighs, doubling her need. Tripling it. She’d never needed release so badly. She was close to begging him when his hand slipped down between her legs, gliding through her moisture and rubbing delicately over that most sensitive notch.

  A sob of pleasure tore from her lips, even if his touch only deepened her panicked desire. She was aroused to the point of near pain, so desperate for Cal to drive her over the edge with the full force of his hardness.

  His lips spread into a small smile as he observed the agony she felt beneath his hands. There could be no sexier version of Cal Spencer than the one before her, reveling in the pleasure he could coax out of a woman.

  “Please,” she groveled, needing a climax more than oxygen.

  “Do you need more, Winnie?” he asked, his eyes serious with a spark of mischief.

  “God, yes,” she managed, closing her eyes as she bore out the relentless stroking of his fingers on her clit. Her wanting knew no limits. “There can never be enough of you, of what you do to me.”

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he said, her brain barely processing the warning. He could do whatever he wanted to her as long as his fingers didn’t lift off her quivering body.

  Unless…he wasn’t referring to kissing her mouth.

  “Cal, I…” she started. Her heart skittered all over the place. Wanting him. Fearing that divine intimacy she’d never experienced even as her clit pulsed at the promise of it.

  “You’re going to come,” he promised, his head leaning forward as he kissed her mouth, “and it’s going to be on my lips.” His wicked eyes met hers, daring her to challenge his vision for her rapture.

  She couldn’t.

  He sank to his knees between her legs. She waited with heightened pleasure. Waited for his lips to make contact, and when they finally did, they brushed her inner thigh.

  Damn the man.

  “Please,” she choked out. The vulnerability that came with what he promised to do scared her to death, but she needed it, now. Her sex throbbed with pent-up desire just waiting to be unleashed and, importantly, she trusted Cal intrinsically. She gasped as his lips moved a fraction of an inch at a time, up the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Gasped again when he kissed the soft hair that surrounded her sex. And when the plush heat of his lips finally landed at the core of her desire, she moaned. The feel of his lips, full and warm and wet, cast a ray of golden light up into her throbbing body.

  His mouth opened her up to a pleasure she couldn’t have fathomed. She’d read about it in books. Seen it portrayed in films, but nothing could have prepared her for the raw sensuality of Cal Spencer turning the full power of his mouth to her sex. Nothing had ever felt so generous. So intimate.

  Just like with so many of his other kisses, his mouth was gentle at first, exploring her softly and stroking her with his tongue.

  “Jesus, Winnie, this is making me so hard,” he groaned between kisses before sliding his tongue harder against her, adding pressure and suction and rhythm and depth. She grasped the sheets, certain she’d float up off the bed if she weren’t anchored.

  “Cal, it’s too good,” she whispered, wondering if a woman could pass out from pleasure this intense. How had she made it to the age of twenty-six unaware that it could feel this good? The sensations grew so high and so strong that it became almost uncomfortable. She grabbed at his thick golden hair, and the feel of him working over her, working for her pleasure, took her that much closer. The pleasure seemed to fly through her body in wild, intangible sparks. She wanted to rein it in. Contain it. Magnify it.

  He hooked his hands under her thighs, grabbing her ass and pushing her harder into the pleasures his mouth offered. No longer exploring, his mouth and tongue fell into a rhythm, working their way over that most sensitive spot, steady and firm. Helpless, her body surrendered to him, shattering in ecstasy, in wave after powerful wave of glittery release. She trembled, stunned by the intimacy and the beauty of what Cal had just offered her. What he still offered her as his mouth and fingers gently stroked and caressed her overwrought body while it came down from the stars.

  It was so good. So bright. Winnie couldn’t help the tears that fell down her eyes, no matter if they embarrassed her. The physical and emotional release she felt in that moment couldn’t be contained. Cal kissed his way back up her body, caressing the softness of her stomach and the hills of her breasts until his fingers reached her neck, caressed her face.

  “Winnie, you destroy me. I need you.”

  His words set her sex throbbing. For as perfect as her climax had been, for all of the mind-numbing goodness he’d evoked from her body, it still hungered to be filled with the man.

  For Cal, this was sex. This was about pure, physical connection. But Winnie knew deep in her heart that it had extended to more than that for her. There was a place deep inside of her that only Cal could fill. She’d stupidly gone and fallen in love with a man she could never have. A man who touched her only on the condition that it wouldn’t mean anything. Couldn’t lead anywhere. The acknowledgment of it sent a new torrent of tears down her cheeks, which he rubbed gently with the back of his hand.

  She couldn’t play this game anymore after tonight. She knew from the beginning that Cal would open up doors to unbelievable offerings, but that the time would come when she’d have to walk away again. It would kill her to end it, but it would hurt even more to go one like this, having his body but not his heart.

  She’d let herself have this night, though. One gorgeous parting gift.

  “I want you inside of me,” she whispered, pressing her mouth onto his. The warm connection stoked the embers of desire that still pulsed deep within her. The faint taste of her own climax lingered on his lips, and it only made her hungrier for the man. He pulled a condom out of his pocket as her hands fumbled at the button and zipper of his jeans,
shoving them down to reveal tight green boxer briefs that barely contained his desire for her.

  Sexy as hell. Her hands gripped at the waistband, and he groaned as he sprung free from the fabric. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him in the shadowy haste of their fun on The Hill, but the man was magnificently hung. Hard and thick and satiny. Her mouth watered remembering her first introduction to his dick. Remembering the salt and the warmth of his climax in her mouth. She grabbed at him, needing to feel the weight and heat of him in her hand, on her lips, against her cheek, before he protected himself.

  He didn’t let her play that way for long, though. She could hear his breath quickening, could see his own pent up need tightening his torso as he handed her the condom. She unwrapped it, and rolled it slowly down the hard length of his cock. She backed her way up onto the bed and when he followed her, his naked body crawling up between her legs, she moaned in anticipation.

  The weight of his body pressed down onto her, and he kissed her mouth. Her neck. Her breasts. She could feel his dick twitch against her core at each connection. She could tell how much desire coursed through his strong body. She could sense how desperate he was to spend himself inside of her. Slowly, his cock slid into her slick depths, and inch by inch he deepened his penetration. They both cried out at the rightness of the joining.

  “Christ, Winnie,” he said, giving voice to her very thoughts as he pushed deeper and deeper. His hardness stretched her and filled her in the most satisfying way. He looked so beautiful like that, planted between her legs, his strong, hands holding on to her hips, his eyes closed, his face twisted in pleasure, inaudible moans of satisfaction falling from his tempting lips. She could see how he willed himself to take it slow, how he resisted his own release from the moment he penetrated her. It felt so right, to have their bodies connected so intimately, to know that his body could take such pleasure from being inside of her own.

  “I can’t take much more of this, Winnie,” he said, looking down at her, making eye contact with her for the first time since he’d entered her. Her sex tightened at the intensity of it, and somehow, impossibly, he grew harder inside of her. She couldn’t fathom the pleasure this gorgeous man brought her but she didn’t have to understand it. She only had to feel it.

  “Winnie,” he pleaded, his eyes locked into hers as he quickened the pace of his thrusts. His breathing quickened with exertion. She wanted to break the intimate hold his eyes had on her. It felt too powerful. Made her feel too vulnerable. But she couldn’t. She was transfixed by this man. By his body. By his heart. She needed to memorize every second of what was happening so it could nourish her in the lonely days ahead. She needed to remember what it felt like when love transformed sex into something truly, inexplicably, sublime in case she never felt it again.

  “I need you to come, Cal,” she whispered. “Please.” She rocked from the way he pounded into her now, no more signs of the tenderness or care he exhibited earlier. Now it was animal need, raw and unfiltered. His athleticism took over, ushering in those final, powerful plunges. With each thrust into her core in those final moments, he called her name, until that sweetest agony washed over his face, cried out from his lips, and he shuddered on top of her.

  As his body collapsed onto hers, sweaty and breathless and deliciously heavy, Winnie clung to him like only a woman about to say goodbye to something glorious could.

  Chapter 22

  Cal woke up slowly, and in phases.

  First, his body. Unrecognizable contentment weighed down on his relaxed muscles. He felt rested in a way he hardly recognized, so long had it been. It felt as if he’d let go of something that had long been troubling him.

  Then, his mind awoke. His eyes opened sleepily, seeing an unfamiliar bookcase. He noticed the soft play of morning light on someone else’s lace curtains.

  He wasn’t at home. Finally, his mind caught up to where he was, and how he’d arrived in this particular cottage on this particular morning.

  Winnie.

  Memories flooded over him. Kissing tears off her cheeks. Stroking her breasts against his jaw. The taste of her climax on his lips. The unspeakable pleasure of making love to her.

  His heart caught at that last thought, because it dawned on him how last night had been a first for him. Yeah, he’d had sex before. Good sex. He’d screwed women. Fucked them, quick and hard and to the satisfaction of everyone involved. But nothing like what he experienced last night with Winnie.

  The acts of last night hadn’t involved any elaborate techniques; rather, the magic of what happened between Cal and Winnie originated solely from the chemistry of their two bodies.

  He suddenly, and forcefully, craved more magic. It felt as if a pin had been pulled from him, activating something new. Something desperate and insatiable. Physical desire anchored to something sweeter, more caring. His fingers twitched from their emptiness. His mouth watered and his cock hardened.

  Rolling over with a smile, he prepared to see Winnie’s soft, sleeping body next to him. She’d be so warm. So sweet in her morning state. He might not take it slow this morning. He might devour her rough and fast like she’d wanted it last night before he’d worked so deliberately to slow down the process and savor every minute of it.

  But instead of seeing a mass of mussed brown curls on her pillow, all he saw was a folded piece of paper on the otherwise empty side of the bed. His eyes flickered up to the rest of the cottage. Its quiet emptiness made him scowl. Damn his deep, contented sleep. Winnie had slipped out.

  He sighed as he grabbed the paper. Maybe she’d run out for coffee and donuts and would return in a few minutes. Maybe she’d walk back through that door, ready to ease his aching morning hardness with her curvy offerings. There could be no better start to a Saturday morning than kissing trails of powdered sugar off of Winnie’s soft skin.

  Unfortunately, her note quickly shot that fantasy straight to hell.

  “Shit,” he growled as he scanned the message a second, and then third time.

  Had to take off early for a work thing. Will text you later. Lock up please? -W

  Winnie’s message was curt and dismissive and he easily read everything it communicated between the lines. She didn’t want to talk about last night and now she wanted him out of here. Her morning, unlike his, had been marked by neither an overwhelming sense of satisfaction from the night before, nor an unshakeable need to reenact its highlights.

  That was a hell of a thing to contemplate.

  When he’d followed Winnie home last night and knocked on her door, he had no idea how the evening might unfold. All he knew was that her eyes at the bonfire had expressed such sadness and vulnerability that he had no choice but to find his way to her side. He would have gladly stayed up all night talking to her, holding her, letting her cry into his arms.

  But one look at her at the door of the She Shed, and he’d known what she needed. Her body craved his touch and his strength, and he more than gladly complied.

  It had been a consensual and mutual, he knew that then and he knew it now. But in the harsher clarity of morning light, he realized he had broken several tenets of Winnie’s relationship agreement. The love words he whispered into her neck, her breasts…technically forbidden, yes, but they were involuntary. The woman was sweet and lovely and gorgeous and to ask him to deny those truths as he explored her body wasn’t reasonable.

  He’d also slept over, another broken rule. Another honest, happy accident. It had happened so naturally. After the sheer tidal wave of pleasure he experienced with Winnie’s luscious body, not a word was shared between them. He had nestled in behind her, one arm draped over her so his hand could rest gently against her soft stomach. His pelvis hitched up against the sweetest fullness of her bottom. The front of his knees tucked into the back of hers. His face burrowed into the warm and fragrant nest of her hair.

  He might not remember falling asleep, but he sure as hell remembered the last thought that flickered through his pleasure-drowsy mind, because
it was a thought he’d never had before.

  This is it.

  It freaked the hell out of him at first. If his genetics revealed one truth it was that he was not the settling kind.

  He should run. He should protect Winnie from the heartbreak he would unleash upon her.

  And yet… a deep, abiding since of rightness filled his body and his heart. The challenge of it, of being enough for a woman like her, overrode every insecure, doubtful instinct that bubbled up in his consciousness.

  There had been a moment in his father’s life where the man decided he wasn’t enough for his wife, for his kids. Instead of fighting to become a better person for them, instead of turning to them for comfort and connection, he fled. He did everything possible to resist the love and the foundation right in front of his face.

  All of Cal’s life he’d wanted to prove that he was a different kind of man than his father. It looked like he’d finally found his chance.

  No trumpets blaring, no cupid’s arrows or dizzying love-at-first sight spells. Just the unfaltering realization that his body and his mind and his heart had all somehow arrived at the unanimous conclusion that life was immeasurably better with Winnie at his side. More importantly, he knew deep in his bones that he wanted her to feel the same way about him.

  It wasn’t just the sex. That had been amazing, but it was just one piece of why he’d fallen for her. It was her heart, how it worked to unravel his complex past. It was the humor with which she approached her work, and the challenging characters she encountered there. It was her warmth and ease with his mother, his nieces, with him. Her tenderness and humor.

  He didn’t know if he could be a better man than his father. Couldn’t know that. But damn it, for the first time in his life, he felt ready to try. To be more than he ever thought he could be. He loved nothing more than a challenge.