And then take off her clothes and do unspeakable things between those incredible long legs.
Scrubbing a hand across his cheek, Thad gazed at the French doors leading to her bedroom. There she was, just inside, the sweetest, sexiest Christmas present he could ask for. As far as he figured, he had a choice, and he needed to make it, right here, right now. He could either open those doors, wrap his arms around Jolie like he’d wanted to all night and make love to her, helping her forget her soul-deep loneliness, because he understood it though he’d be damned if he admitted it. But if he followed through with such a plan, he’d likely be making the second biggest mistake of his life.
And a man like him could not afford another big mistake.
No. Best he turn around, go back to bed and wake up tomorrow much like he had every Christmas since fleeing NOLA. Alone. No attachments, no entanglements.
No questions.
A light came on behind the closed blinds.
Shit.
Her face appeared, peering out between the slats of the blinds. Could she see him?
The door slid open a crack.
“You out there?”
He should have hightailed it while he had the chance, because now it was too late.
Except a part of him was glad. A big part.
“Heya, Jolie.”
“What are you doing?” She had a robe wrapped tight around her as she poked her head outside.
“Just enjoying the quiet.”
“Oh.”
He wiped the snow off the lid of the hot tub, knowing he should be contemplating alternatives but only able to think about one thing: Jolie, and what he might find beneath her robe.
“Did you want to have a hot tub?”
“Naw.” He took two steps toward her.
“Is everything okay?”
He hated how tentative she sounded, like she’d doubted he would show up. Even though he almost hadn’t. He didn’t like being a disappointment. And he particularly didn’t like disappointing this woman, no matter what his logic center was saying.
“Everything’s just fine.” Another measured step, then another until he was face-to-face with her.
“Did you still want to come in?”
“Are you inviting me in?”
She hesitated, then smiled. “Yes, I am.”
“Then let’s go.”
She backed away from the door so that he could enter, and the first thing he did after sliding the door closed behind him was take off his boots.
The second he stood up, she grabbed the front of his parka and pulled him close, planting a deliciously warm kiss on his cold lips. “I’ve wanted to do that all night.”
“You and me both.”
She smiled up at him, a wide, radiant expression that once more drew his attention to her lovely mouth.
Seriously, that mouth.
“You have the nicest mouth, did you know that?” He ran a thumb across. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” Was she purposefully tempting him by rubbing her lips together?
“Hmm.” She backed up to the bed, watching him, playing with the ties on her robe. Her eyes glistened in the lamplight, not with melancholy but with playfulness.
“Go ahead,” he rasped.
“Go ahead and what?”
“Take it off.”
Instead of untying the ties, she tightened them. “You first.”
Thad groaned. The sweet Jolie from earlier in the evening was nowhere to be found and a vixen had taken her place.
“You drive a hard bargain, miss.”
“Shut up and strip.” She pointed. “Now.”
“Bossy.”
“Uh-huh.”
He unzipped his parka and tossed it onto a nearby chair. Then he took a couple steps toward her. “You gonna help?”
“Nope. Just gonna watch.” She sat on the edge of the bed.
“You’re wicked, you know that?”
Her smile told him he had yet to see the exact degree her wickedness could reach, and Thad had to quell the urge to tear his clothes off, stalk up to her, rip open her robe like he was tearing tissue paper from a gift and take her the way she said she liked it. Hard and fast. He paused to suck in a deep breath. The mere thought of it sent blood pounding between his legs.
He started in on the buttons on his shirt: one, two, three.
Pause.
Four, five, six.
“Keep going.”
Yanking on the bottom of his shirt, he pulled it from his jeans and finished the last few buttons before shrugging out of it, not even bothering to toss it, but dropping it on the floor. With both hands on the bottom of his undershirt, he pulled it over his head.
There was something satisfying about hearing her gasp at the sight of his chest. Thad moved closer, just in case she was of a mind to touch. He glanced at her hands, where her fingers played with the ties of the robe. He could almost feel them on his skin. Delicate and soft. Tentative and teasing.
Good God, he needed to unzip his fly because he almost couldn’t breathe from the pressure building behind it.
One more step and he was knee to knee with her. Needing to get closer, he straddled her legs so that his crotch hovered right above where her hands rested in her lap. Tugging on his belt buckle, he asked, “You sure you don’t want to do this for me?”
While her head moved back and forth in denial, her fingers seemed to have other ideas. She dropped the ties of her robe in order to caress the outside of his thighs.
Nice.
“I got a job for you,” he said through clenched teeth because her touch felt so damn good.
“That right?”
“Yep.” He twisted his right hip toward her. “Reach in that pocket there.”
She did as he asked, her hand slithering deep inside to where he’d stuck a row of condoms.
“Put those on that bedside table for me, would you?”
Ever so slowly, she withdrew her hand, pulling out the four-pack of condoms with it. With an arched brow, she held them up with the tips of her fingers. “Four? Rather presumptuous, don’t you think?”
“I prefer to think of it in terms of being prepared for all eventualities.”
Laughing, she deposited the condoms on the bedside table while he popped his belt buckle. Then he captured her left hand and placed it over the bulge at the front of his jeans. She may have said she didn’t want to help, but as far as Thad was concerned, there was nothing sexier than soft fingers working a zipper. Nothing more arousing than a feminine hand searching down inside behind his fly, coming in contact with his inflamed flesh.
“Oh, my,” she breathed, her small hand doing exactly what he’d imagined, wrapping tight around his erection.
She squeezed—blessed girl—and then tugged her hand out of his shorts to grip the waistband of his jeans. The denim didn’t want to cooperate, and Thad had to move out of range in order to strip them off because he needed the blasted jeans gone. Right now.
Clad in only his boxers, he moved in again, taking her elbows and urging her to her feet, his hands resting on the ties to her robe before undoing the knot. “I wonder what we have under here?”
She pretended to slap his hands away but not before he got the ties undone and the robe spread.
“Lord have mercy,” Thad gritted out, taking in her gorgeous body.
The robe slid off her sho
ulders and she stood there, bathed in lamplight, his very own contradiction. An angel, a vixen, a sweet-tempered seductress.
As if to prove his point, she turned and gave him a gentle shove, pushing him onto the bed before climbing up after. To think he’d only seen her as all flailing arms and legs when he’d first met her. That image seemed laughable now because this woman moved with lithe grace, her honey-brown hair swishing across her shoulders as she straddled him.
She lowered herself, bare chest to bare chest, her soft breasts like sweet pillows between them. “You like my mouth, huh?” Was she purposefully biting down on her full lower lip? Probably.
Beautiful, wanton woman.
Thad couldn’t help himself. Taking a fistful of hair, he yanked her close and kissed her open mouth. So warm. So wet. So provocative. She wriggled deliciously on top of him and his other hand went low to her bare ass, pulling that part of her close, too. Only his boxer shorts keeping them from each other.
Twisting her head out of his grasp, Jolie met his gaze. “What is it exactly about my mouth that you like?”
Cupping her chin, he tugged on her lower lip and she sucked his thumb into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it, never breaking eye contact with him. Was she hoping to see some kind of reaction? Couldn’t she feel it rising between them?
She covered his hands with hers and pulled his thumb slowly from the warm cavern of her mouth. Then she licked the tip of one finger and the next. With her lips parted, she moved her mouth back and forth across his fingertips, licking and dipping, miming the very thing he was hoping she’d do with another—very aroused—part of him.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes.”
Her smile was pure sex before she dipped low, taking his fingers deep into her mouth before withdrawing, nice and slow, sucking hard while Thad cursed a blue streak under his breath. A fleeting smile flashed before she moved on, nibbling his jaw on a path for his ear. “What else do you like?” she whispered hotly.
“Whatever you want.”
“Really?” She slithered lower, nipping at his neck and biting his collarbones. Lord help him, the woman was a wild carnivore cloaked in the skin of some gentle fawn. A sweet and sexy paradox.
What she did next was an almost exact repeat of the fantasy he’d had in the shower. Her mouth on his chest, sucking his nipple. Hard. Licking the lines between his abs, back and forth, the touch made more sensual by the swish of hair that followed her tongue.
She stopped when she came to his pelvis.
Lying on one side of his legs, Jolie followed the line of hair from his navel down to the waistband of his shorts. Dipping beneath, she ran her fingers horizontally along his belly, grazing the tip of his cock.
With one finger, she drew a line down the center of his erection, the touch more excruciating because it was over the top of his boxers. For the moment, Thad was content to watch her gentle, almost innocent exploration of him. However, when her fingers ventured beneath the waistband of his boxers again, it was more than he could take and he lifted his hips, needing her to take them off.
Which she did, thank God.
“You’re as handsome here as everywhere else,” she said, gazing down at his engorged cock.
Cheeky girl, repeating what he’d said to her earlier in the day.
But her cheekiness did not end there. Hell no. Those delicate fingers of her tickled the sensitive skin on either side of his erection, his cock jumping toward her hand, pleading with her to touch.
She ignored him.
“You trying to kill me, girl?”
“Maybe,” she said, licking the tip of her finger before softly drawing a line down the full length of his penis.
Torture.
But when sweet Jolie wrapped her cool hand around his cock and kissed the tip of him, his mind went blank. All he could do was watch and feel. The same tongue that had swirled around his thumb swirled around the head of his cock. That lovely wide mouth opened over him, not touching—oh, no—but breathing hot, damp air over him. No contact but ever so close.
The need to thrust overcame him and he lifted his hips. Needing that mouth. Needing that tongue. Needing suction and heat and warmth and everything else.
Needing her.
“What do you want, Thad?” she whispered, gazing up at him from between his legs.
“You, baby.”
“Which part of me?” Her eyes were hooded with desire and she licked her lips with exaggerated purpose. Seductive. Wanton. Beautiful.
“Whichever part you want.”
And there it was, that luminous smile he couldn’t get enough of, but it disappeared when she bent low in order to lick his length. Thad jerked involuntarily. The woman was in danger of turning him into something so far removed from a gentleman that it scared him. He was on the verge of becoming the man he hadn’t been in a very long time.
“Tell me,” she urged, circling his head again.
Thad groaned. She shouldn’t be doing this. No matter how good it felt.
Jolie licked her hand and wrapped the damp palm around his shaft, moving it up and down. “Is this what you want?”
Yes. That felt good, but what was even better was when she lowered herself again so that her mouth remained open on top, so that with every upward movement of her hand, the tip of him entered that blessed space.
“Say it, Thad.”
He groaned, long and low, and then found the words. “Your mouth. I need your mouth, Jolie.”
10
While on vacation, don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. As long as you ask nicely.
Jo Duval
JOLIE HAD NEVER felt more in control, more powerful, more feminine. Just as she lowered her mouth over him and sucked, Thad threaded his fingers through her hair, a desperate act, and ground his pelvis up, moaning guttural and low.
How was this possible? How did she, Jolie Duval, have this ability to make a man desperate? To make him groan in ecstasy? Had she always had it?
Who cared. She had it now, and she was about to take full advantage of it.
She pulled back, sucking as she went, and then dropped down again, going deeper. The result was a whole string of nonsensical curse words interspersed with grunts of pleasure.
She had never elicited such sounds from a man before. It was hot.
Jolie got lost in it all, enjoying not only Thad’s response to her mouth but the pure pleasure of the act. How it made her feel alive, excited, powerfully aroused.
When Jo finally lifted her head, she was met with a man who appeared almost feral: his nostrils flared, his cheeks flushed and his teeth bared.
“Enough,” he growled.
In one swift movement Thad flipped her so that he was lying on top of her. He pinned her hands and between clenched teeth said, “You like to tease men to death, do you?”
Was that what he thought of her? That she did this all the time?
She shook her head, though she couldn’t shake the smile, because the idea of her, Jolie Duval, as a shameless tease was pretty damn funny.
“So it’s true.” Thad nudged her thighs wide, still holding her arms down.
“Nope.” Her smile must have said otherwise.
“Who are you?” His gaze softened and so did his grip as his mouth descended over hers. “Who the hell are you?”
Thad’s lips were soft as they slanted over hers, yet his tongue was insistent as he pushed
it into her mouth. He released her hands to cup her face and hold her so he could kiss her the way he wanted, with an open, giving mouth, becoming more wild and ravenous by the second.
“I am in desperate need of a condom but I don’t want to move,” he murmured against her lips.
Blindly, Jolie reached toward the bedside table, knocking her phone off in the process, but thankfully finding what she was looking for on the second pass. She passed the condoms to Thad, who groaned as he rolled off her, lying on his back beside her as he tore open a packet.
She played with herself while he rolled on a rubber and when he turned back toward her, he took hold of her hand—which she’d had wedged between her legs—and licked her fingers.
Jolie was sure she’d died and gone to heaven.
When he was done, he moved back on top of her. “Now, where were we?” He kissed her. “Mmm. This feels about right.”
Jolie adjusted her hips beneath him before taking hold of him and guiding him to her entrance. With a grunt, Thad looked up. He smoothed hair from her forehead and gazed into her eyes as he thrust, entering her slowly, inch by magnificent inch.
“I was mistaken.” His voice was rough. “Now, this feels about right.”
She couldn’t agree more. But neither did she question why Thad’s body, fully seated inside of hers, felt so right. He stayed there for a few breaths, simply staring into her eyes, a serious expression on his face, then his lids slid shut and his mouth descended on hers. The stillness of the moment passed as Thad kissed her, withdrawing and then thrusting with more force, while his tongue did the same.
Once, twice, three times.
He lifted his head in order to take a few deep breaths.
“Again,” Jolie panted, clutching his ass with both hands, pulling while she lifted her hips.
“Woman, you keep that up and I’m not going to last.”
“It’s okay,” she said, tugging again.
“No. It’s not.” Thad rolled off her so that he could lie by her side. “You have any idea how close you got me.” He dragged a finger from her lower lip, down her chin and throat to her breasts.
A Christmas Seduction Page 10