Inside Out

by Lauren Dane

  Emotion flooded her as he touched the daily reminder of her shame and stupidity. He didn’t see them that way.

  He opened his eyes, those deep blue eyes, and kept his gaze on hers as he kissed a little higher. Using his body to open her thighs up, exposing her pussy to him right at face level. She swallowed past her fear and discomfort and reached out slowly, her fingers tunneling into that thick, soft hair.

  “Higher,” she whispered, not knowing how the words she’d been thinking had escaped.

  Up he went, dropping kisses against the hypersensitive skin of her inner thighs. Every once in a while he’d stop and lave his tongue over a patch of freckles, which melted her insides for more than one reason. How something so sweet could also be so ridiculously hot, she didn’t know.

  But it was.

  He slowed just an inch away from her pussy, and she couldn’t stop her annoyed sigh.

  “What now?” he asked, his grin so wicked she nearly came just looking at it.

  Was he going to make her say it? She debated just letting it go. It wasn’t like she’d been given oral sex in a really long time, so she couldn’t really miss it. She could easily ask him to be inside her.

  “If you can’t say it out loud yet, just nod or shake your head when I say it. Okay?” He added that last bit, she realized, holding back a smile.

  She nodded her head.

  “Would you like me to lick this beautiful pussy until you come?”

  Hearing the words come from his mouth, knowing they were about her, made her weak in the knees. Left her dizzy and titillated. Outside a porno flick, she’d never actually heard a man say it in that voice, much less to her.

  When she nodded, she hoped she didn’t look as eager as she felt.

  “Scoot to the edge of the chair,” he said, pulling her hips gently, helping her get into place. “There.” He spread her labia open and looked at the heart of her. The intimacy of it, the depth of connection and trust she felt for him made it hard to breathe.

  Then he licked her, and she lost her mind. She wanted to watch, but as his tongue made long, slow sweeps through her pussy, up and around her clit with just the perfect amount of pressure, she forgot, letting her head rest against the back of the chair, her eyes sliding shut.

  His shoulders, the smooth, hard contour of his muscles, played against her inner thighs. He slid his hands, bigger than she’d imagined now that they lay against her skin, up her belly.

  “God, you’re talented,” she whispered when his fingers found her nipples.

  She hadn’t been expecting it. Usually it took her longer to reach climax, but it hit her hard as he sucked her clit into his mouth. Her back bowed, mouth opened on a sigh of his name, as orgasm took hold from toes to scalp in a long, seemingly endless flood of pleasure so intense she saw stars.

  “Sorry about that. I meant to drag it out.”

  When she opened her eyes, she found him resting, his head on her thigh, looking up at her with a smug, satisfied grin.

  Ella couldn’t help but laugh. He was irresistibly unrepentant. “Don’t apologize. Hey, wow, listen to me.” Her voice had roughened, toning down the squeak and higher pitch.

  “Sex voice.” Standing, he extended a hand to her, which she gratefully took, not knowing if her knees were ready to support her just then.

  “What?” She shook her head. “While you tell me, on your back on the bed. Do you have condoms?”

  Cope nearly choked as he moved to obey, getting on his back and really liking the way she looked crawling onto the mattress at his feet. “Yes. I have condoms.” If he could keep from coming before he even got inside her.

  It had been close enough as he’d been surrounded by her. Scent, taste, the feel of her all soft and wet against his mouth and lips. She lived inside him now, filling him in ways he wasn’t sure how to process.

  “I meant, you know, the way your voice changes after a really good orgasm. I can’t wait to hear it again and again.” He reached for her, and she obliged, scrambling atop his body.

  “I’ve never had this happen.” She slid her pussy against his cock; her breath caught as the head brushed over her clit. And then she did it again.

  “You’ve never had sex voice?” he managed to say through a clenched jaw. Christ, he was the first to ever give her a mind-blowing climax? That was fucked up. Nice, he couldn’t deny, being the first one to deliver it to her, but no one should be their age and have not experienced being a little fuck-drunk.

  “No.”

  He reached for the condom he’d put on his nightstand a few days before. He’d tucked five more in the top drawer because he’d been a Boy Scout, after all, and being prepared would be a far better fate than not.

  “So fast? I thought I’d reciprocate.” When she licked her lips, she ground herself against him again. Only his eyes had been glued to her breasts as they’d swayed.

  “If you put your mouth anywhere near my cock, I will blow. And it’ll be over for a few minutes until I can recover. Have you ever thought about piercing one of these?” He pinched a nipple.

  “Will I turn into a pumpkin at midnight?” She leaned to the side to see the clock, and her angle changed until the tip of his cock fit against her gate. “Oh.” She stilled before circling her hips just a tiny bit. Enough so that the scalding heat of her slicked over him.

  “Jesus. You’re going to kill me. Order me to put this condom on and fuck you. I’m begging you.”

  “Go on then.”

  He wasted no time rolling it on, tossing the wrapper in the general direction of his wastebasket. And then she was over him, reaching back and guiding him into her with excruciating slowness. Sweat broke on his brow as she began to sink down on and around him.

  Tight. Tight, hot and wet. So much so that she brought him to the brink by the time she’d fully taken him into her pussy.

  Looking up at her, he was struck by the moment, by the long, pale beauty above him, that hair tousled around her face so sexily. Every inch of her skin exposed to his gaze, his hands and his mouth. “Never in my life have I seen anything so beautiful.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. I feel like I’ve won that big sweep-stakes with the giant check and the balloons and camera crew.”

  Normally when women went on about his body or his looks, he became warier because they most often were just into him for that reason. But when Ella complimented his looks and his body, it was different, truly flattering.

  She mattered, and part of that was that he mattered to her.

  Then she leaned down, kissed him softly and began to ride.

  Her hands braced on his hips, she rose and fell on him as he tried to hold back enough of his attention not to come, thinking of algebra and how he needed to get varnish . . . fuck. “Holy crap,” he muttered as she swiveled on him. Well, that wasn’t going to keep him from coming.

  “What? Am I doing it wrong?” she asked, her words slow and thick. Damn. If he could hear that voice at least once a day, his life would be so much better.

  “Just the opposite, Red. You’re so right I just may come so fast you’ll never want to do this again with me.”

  Her sleepy look vanished, replaced by surprise. “That’s not going to happen.” She wore a smirk as she said it, which only made him laugh. It’d been years since he’d laughed and talked so much during sex.

  “Good to know.”

  Even through the condom, the heat of her drove him mad, made him yearn to be inside her, skin to skin. The pleasure of it was nearly painfully sharp, so tight. He wanted to break her fast—and clearly she’d been on one for some time, given the way her body surrounded him so snugly—with flat-out awesome sex. But she’d brought him to his metaphorical knees with the way she’d given herself to him, to this between them.

  And so here he was, the experienced guy, self-assured and sexually confident, totally at the mercy of this redheaded siren rising and falling over him.

  She stilled, her body pressed down as far as she could
go against his, his cock deep inside her pussy.

  “Everything okay?”

  “This is so good.” She stretched each word out, still not moving. “I can feel your . . . I can feel you move around inside me.”

  Her blush turned her skin an alluring shade of pink.

  “My cock? It’s twitching in there because I’m trying not to come.”

  “I’m not very good at this. I want it to be good for you.”

  Man, did he want to punch the ex in the face about eleven thousand times a day. “Ella, I was ready to come even before I got all the way inside you. That’s one of the definitions of good for me. Not so good for you.” He laughed. “I’m supposed to make it last. Also? I like being inside you. More than just about anything else I can think of at this moment. I can’t imagine where you’d get the idea you weren’t good at this.” He could, obviously, but he wasn’t going to go in that direction.

  Ella didn’t say what she was thinking right then, which was that he’d been with women who knew how to use their bodies better.

  Instead, she concentrated on her body, on his as he fit inside her so well. Experimenting, she circled her hips, still seated against his. From the gasped snarl he gave in response, she figured it was something to keep in mind for next time.

  Next time.

  She laughed out loud, just for the joy of it all.

  “Whatcha laughing about?”

  She liked this position because she got to look down at the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He wore a smile on that mouth of his. Mmm, that mouth.

  “Just enjoying myself.”

  “Happy to oblige. By the way, it’s my turn next. We’ll see how I can torture you then.”

  She gave him another swivel and leaned forward to begin a slow, torturous up-and-down pace.

  “If that’s supposed to be a threat, you’re doing it all wrong.” His turn, huh? Having control this time was nice, something she needed to get over the fear. But she wasn’t sure she’d need it again. Still, the idea of a little back-and-forth excited her. What would he do with his turn?

  “Gonna kill me first,” he gasped out as she changed the pace, speeding up, adding that circle as she took his cock into her body fully once more. It felt so unbelievably good. Sex had never felt like this before.

  And then he reached between them, touching her clit and sending a ripple of pleasure through her system. “Oh!”

  One of his eyebrows rose, and his mouth quirked up, but he didn’t move his fingers away. He kept them there, sliding back and forth over her clit, building another climax. One she hadn’t thought possible.

  It filled her, a rush of pleasure flowing through her body, bringing her pace faster, harder against him as the need to come grew. At last she could hold it back no longer as it sucked her under, her inner walls contracting around his cock as he thrust up when she came down.

  Her nails scored his sides, and he gave a long groan and came, his fingers digging into the muscle of her upper hips, holding her in place.

  Limp, she rolled to the side, trying to get her breath back. He pulled her close, and she nuzzled his neck, loving the way he smelled and the security of his arms around her.

  “Yep. Totally going to kill me. But I’ll die a happy man,” he murmured against her hair, making her laugh again.

  “Yeah. I was right.”

  She managed to flop onto her back. “About what?”

  “Chemistry, darlin’. We have it.”

  She smiled.

  13

  Cope had been smiling pretty much nonstop since, well, since he’d first gotten up the nerve to ask Ella out, but most definitely since they’d finally gotten naked and sweaty at his place.

  Four days. It had been four days since he’d held her, kissed her, touched her skin.

  Friday night had been the finest sexual experience of his life. Sharing with someone he connected to like he did Ella had been mind-blowing. The reality of her, of being inside her, her taste on his lips, her skin under his hands, had been far better than even his wildest fantasies about her.

  She’d unleashed something deep inside him. Had held up a mirror, and the man she saw—the Andrew she believed him to be—was so much more than the Cope he’d allowed himself to coast into. He’d alternated between shame that he’d been so lazy and pride that she saw far more than the surface. Unerringly, Ella Tipton had stripped away all the artifice and struck deep, to the heart of him. That was humbling.

  He needed to hold that to his heart just then. “Dad, wait.”

  His father turned around and, seeing it was Cope, slowed down. Cope knew if he’d run his father to ground at home his dad would have just used his shop to hide behind. Instead, he knew his dad and Todd’s went to the Renton Fish and Game Club three times a week to shoot guns and the shit with all the other old retired cops.

  Cope put his hands in his pockets and leaned against his dad’s driver’s side door.

  “I didn’t expect to see you today. I just finished up in there.” Billy motioned back toward the building he’d come from. “But I can always stand some more.”

  Another area Ben had excelled in, marksmanship, was something he and their father had shared. Or they used to. Cope was good enough for the job, better than most in fact, but he wasn’t Ben. His scores didn’t still remain on the wall of fame like Ben’s did. But Ben and their father didn’t go shooting together anymore.

  “Nah. I’m good. I was just at the range on Friday. Listen, Dad, I need to talk to you about Ben and the baby.”

  His father’s smile slipped away, his mouth hardening into an implacable line. “Subject’s closed, boy. Your brother has his head in the wrong place. More like he’s using the wrong one. You have nothing to add.”

  And that was really the heart of it, wasn’t it? His father truly believed that. “Bull. Dad, you can’t call him and hint around that he’d be better off if Erin lost that baby. She’s been having problems lately with her blood pressure. Did you know that? Can you imagine what you made him feel like when you brought up the chance of her losing the pregnancy? What the hell were you thinking? You can’t possibly wish this. It’s like you’re a total stranger.”

  The narrowing of eyes and crossing of arms had kept Ben and Cope in line as boys, even into their teen years and beyond. Right then, though, Cope was more afraid his father had damaged the family past all ability to fix.

  “This is none of your business, Andrew. If you and your mother would stay out of it, I’d have talked some sense into your bother long before now. He’s not in his right mind. I won’t pretend otherwise.”

  “It’s going on four years now, Dad, that Ben’s been with Todd and Erin. It’s not a passing phase. This isn’t about Ben’s cock. Do you think so little of him that he would just make disastrous choices to get laid? Come on. As far as business goes? This is my business. My family is my business. You made a comment about your grandchild dying. How is that sense? That’s crazy and hateful. Even if Erin was bewitching Ben in some way, what’s it to you? This is nonsense, and you’re ripping the family apart.”

  His father leaned close, but Cope stood his ground. “He’s my son. He’s meant for so much more than this. He’s not even gay. I could deal with that. But he’s got one of each and neither of them is worthy of Ben.”

  “Are you even listening to yourself? He’s happier than I have ever seen him. Is he in a relationship you can talk about in the annual Copeland Christmas letter? Probably not. But so what? I’m with them all the time; I have zero doubt that he’s not just loved by Erin and Todd but adored by them. They’re making a family together. He doesn’t need your approval of where he puts his johnson.”

  “Watch your mouth, Andrew.”

  He rolled his eyes at his father. “He loves them right back, you know. They’re good together. They’re having a baby, and it’s theirs. Not Todd’s, not Ben’s, but theirs. I’m not asking you to think this is all great. I’m telling you, you have to find a way to deal with
this. Mom is sick all the time. Holidays are the pits since you refuse to allow them in the house. We’re all in the middle, and you’re pushing everyone away.”

  “Why are you here? This is between me and Ben. Your mother has nothing to do with it either.”

  “Does she know you made that little crack about Erin falling down some stairs?”

  Cope dodged his father’s fist as Mr. Keenan came charging toward them, hauling Cope’s dad back. “Billy Copeland! Stand down, man. This is your boy!”

  “You’re tearing us apart, Dad. I hope you realize this before it’s too late. Some things you say can’t be taken back.”

  “I should have said more a long time ago. Look at you! Can’t be bothered to do anything but hit on rich women and charge them too much for security services. Your whole life is about getting ass, Andrew. Your brother is wasting all his promise in this stupid whatever the hell he’s in. I failed the both of you.”

  Cope felt it like the slap it was. He took a step back. “Yeah, you did fail.” He looked to Mr. Keenan. “I apologize that you had to get in the middle of this.” He turned and walked away, his good mood disappeared.

  For a moment after he’d walked into the café, Cope watched the table where his mother was sitting and knitting. She’d aged a lot over the last several years. The estrangement between father and son had torn her apart. And it hadn’t just been their father who’d reacted so strongly against Ben’s choosing to be with Erin and Todd. Their older sister had taken their father’s side along with Todd’s oldest brother and his wife. Holidays, once boisterous and filled with Keenans and Copelands, were now a more subdued and careful event. He knew it had taken a toll on everyone. Even his father’s rock-solid friendship with Todd’s father had taken a huge hit. After that morning, Cope feared there’d be permanent cracks between them.

  “Hey, Mom.” Cope kissed his mother’s cheek before sitting down with her at the table. They regularly met at the café for lunch or coffee. It made Erin feel better to see her there, and it helped his mother feel more connected to Ben and the baby to come.