by Holley Trent
“Oh, fuck!” she gasped.
He was so big, and she wasn’t prepared to take it all at once, and especially not at that sharp angle. But she whispered “Please” so he wouldn’t stop—because she wanted more of it.
“Shhh.” He twined her hair around his fist at the top of her head and gave it a short tug. “Open your eyes while I fuck you so I can see how you look at me when you want to fall apart. And maybe I won’t let you.”
He worked his hips a bit side to side and gave her a bit of a stretch before slamming into her again.
“Fuck!”
“That was what you wanted, right? All you wanted from me?”
“No, I—”
Another thrust, another tug of her hair that divided her attention and frustrated her brain.
“I don’t chase women who tell me no.”
Thrust.
“I don’t chase women who I think I don’t have a shot in hell with.”
Thrust.
He released his hold on her hair and adjusted his leverage so he could thrust into her faster, harder, and her body accommodated him—welcomed each slam into her pussy and each torturous tap against her clit and glide against her tingling nipples.
“But I wanted you, Valerie.” He looped his fingers around her neck and nibbled at her jawline, skimming his thumbs up against her windpipe.
“Yes.”
“I wanted to keep you, but you didn’t want to be kept.”
Her pussy gripped him tight, and his thrusts sped. The pressure built and that electric intensity coalesced in her womb and threatened to spread throughout her.
He pressed the heels of his palms against the front of her neck and stabbed his tongue into her mouth as squeezed, lightly then more firmly. Letting her breathe, and then stealing her air away.
“I wanted everything you could give me,” he said. He squeezed a bit tighter—a bit longer—and pulled his cock almost all the way out of her.
“Please.”
He thrust back in and gave her some air back. “And I don’t think I was being unreasonable. Was I being unreasonable, pretty girl? Don’t close your eyes.”
She forced them open and dragged her tongue across dry lips. “Not unreasonable, but—”
“My turn to talk.” But he didn’t talk. With another squeeze of her throat, he quickened the pace of his thrusts even more, so her body had no recovery time to process the sensation, only that the fire was being continuously stoked and burning so hot for him that she thought it would consume her.
She was light as a feather and her skin was the stars, and his talented tongue in her mouth was the entrance to a dangerous sea, and she wanted to be pulled under each and every wave he made.
He increased the press on her neck a little more and with one more urgent thrust started the explosive cascade in her body that had every cell in her body dying a little death and being reborn anew. Her vision blurred and her brain was a fog of delirious pleasure and greedy yes, please, and her mouth said words that meant nothing and yet everything.
“Everything, Tim. It’s your…everything.”
“Fuck. That’s what I want.” His hands left her neck and he gripped her hips, thrusting into her again and again and pulling yet another orgasm out of her that she hadn’t anticipated and that she couldn’t stop. She was limp—a toy especially for his pleasure—and feeling so good.
She didn’t know when he stopped. Only that she opened her eyes to the feeling of the cool, wet cloth between her thighs that made her giggle and her nipples bead.
He pulled her limp body up to the pillows and tucked her in beneath the covers. Then he dragged an ice cube across her lips until she took it into her mouth.
“Suck and swallow,” he said in a low, quiet tone that left no room for disobedience, not that she would have disobeyed.
She let the remnants of the ice pass down her throat and sipped the water he pressed to her lips next.
He nudged her hair back from her face and watched her intently as she sipped. “All of it,” he said. “Slowly.”
She nodded, and tried to follow his instructions, but found herself gulping instead of sipping, which only made her finish that much faster.
Then he pressed a slice of peach to her lips. “You need a little sugar. Finish this like the good girl you are so you can get a good night’s sleep.”
“But—”
“My turn to talk.”
She pulled the fruit into her mouth, and then more and more until he was satisfied.
Then he licked the juice from his fingers and laid her down. He held her against him and stroked the side of her body gently, occasionally kissing the top of her head.
“Sleep. Don’t say anything. Just sleep.”
And what else could she do, being thoroughly fucked and with her brain a hormonal mush?
She giggled as his hand skimmed over the fine hairs on the sides of her arms, and then she did what he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tim sat at the controls to the boat and watched the waves crash ahead of him in the moonlight. The boat was moving at a crawl, which suited him fine since they were headed nowhere in particular.
And that’s where he felt he and Valerie were at the moment relationship-wise, too—nowhere in particular. He would have much preferred to be lost in the middle of the sea with no map than to be in such an uncertain place with a woman he was falling in love with and wasn’t certain would stick around.
At the sound of light footsteps padding behind him, he didn’t turn around, but he didn’t have to. He could see her reflection in the window.
Her long, coily hair darkened the shoulders of her borrowed T-shirt. She held her arms pressed tightly over her belly.
He did turn, though, because he didn’t like her stiff posture, and he didn’t want her to think he didn’t care.
“Come here.” He gestured her over and pulled her onto his lap.
She sat rigidly until he tucked his chin over her shoulder and looped his arm around her waist. She slumped then, looking down at her knees.
The obvious question was “What’s wrong?” but there was so much wrong with them.
He could dance around with his words a bit and lead up to what they both needed to say later. A question that had nothing to do with the two of them seemed like the easiest place to start.
“So, what’s going on with Kevin?” he asked.
She let out a quiet laugh and skimmed her fingers along the side of his forearm. “He was afraid to ask me.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a program at the community college. He needed two references. He got one from Frank and I said I’d write the other.”
“What kind of program?”
“It’s a trade program for construction skills. I think masonry, plumbing, electrical, and all sorts of intro level things like that. It’s meant to help people decide which stream to take.”
“I never knew he was interested in that.”
“I don’t think he did either, to be honest.”
“Why would he want to do that and not—”
“Not work for the family business?”
Tim shrugged. “I mean, it’s there. He knew I’d employ him and pay him fairly. I would have treated him just like everyone else just like I used to during the summers when he was sixteen and seventeen.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like building boats.”
“But the opportunity was right there for him to make something of.”
“And so was your parents’ farm.”
He groaned. He hated when logic bit him in the ass.
“Neither you nor Clay wanted to farm,” Valerie said. “You went off and did your own things.”
“And now there’s no farm.”
“Even if you had farmed, there’d be no guarantee it would have continued to thrive or even stay out of the red. You followed your passion, and maybe that’s what Kevin needs to do.”
“He doesn’t have a passion. Or a
t least, if he does, he doesn’t talk to me or Heidi about it.”
“I think he’s a lot more practical than you give him credit for.”
Tim raised a brow. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that he’s looking for his life’s work right now. He doesn’t have that kind of ambition yet. Right now, he’s just trying to find something he’s good at that doesn’t stress him out.”
“And construction is that?”
“I think he likes being a member of a team and having no more pressure on him than there is on anyone else. And I think the repetitive motion is soothing for him. He doesn’t have to think or plan ahead, just follow instructions.”
“He’s a follower? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Some people just are, Tim. Not everyone wants to be groomed to be a manager of something or to own a company. And I think maybe he was afraid of that because he thought it was expected of him.”
Tim opened his mouth to rebut but closed it. She wasn’t wrong. That had been expected of Kevin. He was a Dowd, and Tim and Heidi both had high expectations for him, but any parent would have for their kid.
Any parent who loved their kid, anyway.
“So, you’re saying I shouldn’t expect so much from him?” Tim asked hesitantly.
“No, Tim, I’m saying that right now, he doesn’t want a lot of responsibility. He’s not ready for it and I think deep down, he’s known for a long time he wouldn’t be. Maybe in five years, he’ll be confident enough to try to move up the ladder, and who knows? Maybe in five years, he’ll think boats are interesting.”
“I don’t know how to digest that. Why couldn’t he just tell us that?”
“Our parents are who we fear to disappoint the most, and we’re supposed to do more than our parents did at the same age, right? That was my impression, anyway.”
“You’re an incredibly accomplished woman. What are you racing against?”
She shrugged and let out a dry little laugh. “The same clock as every other woman my age who’s trying to climb up the ladder of some professional field.”
“Explain it to me. Boat building is generally a male industry, sales and finance aside.”
“People assume that women are going to stall in their careers when they get to a certain stage. We don’t get the same opportunities our male counterparts do unless we shout from the rooftops that we’re not interested in putting down roots.”
“I don’t understand why that should happen.”
Valerie laughed, but there wasn’t a single hint of humor in the sound. “When a couple has a baby, who stays out of work longer? And which parent is less likely to return to work if a second child is born? And which parent always gets called first by the child’s school if he or she is sick or needs to be picked up?”
“Mom,” Tim admitted.
“Right. And because of that, if there’s even a remote possibility that’s what we have in our future, we get passed over for jobs. It doesn’t matter how excellent our work is or that we have a mitigation plan to minimize disruptions. The assumption is that we’re going to fail because we can’t have it all.”
Tim drew in a long, bolstering breath and forced it out through his nose.
That was something he couldn’t fix, and he had no reason to believe she was exaggerating. There had to be a reason there weren’t more lady CEOs, and that the ones who had made it to the top had done it at the expense of so many other things in their lives.
“It’s not that I don’t want what you’re offering me, Tim. I do. I want you, and the house, and the kids to go inside it. I want the boat trips and the aimless travel. But my career is also important to me. I’ve put my all into getting where I am. I’ve had some stumbling blocks, sure, but I’m moving forward, not backward. That’s more than I can say for a lot of people my age.”
“So, you do want me.”
“Yes! That was never to be debated. And I’ve thought this through so many ways and tried to figure out how to have everything. I’ve done the brainstorming, and talked to others who’ve been in similar places, but I just don’t know how to make it happen. I don’t want to be where my mother was.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“Well, she was brilliant. Just, generally brilliant, you know? Not just professionally, but in every aspect of her life. She excelled because she had the intelligence, the ambition, and the energy to do so. She was on a tenure track at the university she taught at. She was so close. Maybe a year from tenure because one of the professors in her department was about to retire and she hit all the right notes to be the next in line.”
“What happened?”
Valerie expelled some more of that mirthless laughter. “A man happened. I was born and then my sister a little over a year later. The professor finally retired. My father left. Of course, they would never admit that we were the reason she got passed over, but the puzzle pieces all fit. They put a younger, less qualified adjunct professor into the tenured spot. He’d barely cleared his probationary period.”
“So, a man.”
“Mm-hmm. With two little kids and a stay-at-home wife.”
“I’m sorry.” Tim really meant it. If there were some way for him to go back in time and fix everything, he’d move mountains to do so if he’d thought that would make Valerie happy—if it would make her whole.
She shrugged. “That’s the way the world is, and things haven’t improved all that much in thirty years. I hate having to choose between things that are so important to me. Either way I choose, I’m going to have regrets. Before, I thought I’d be okay as long as I was a success and had accomplished that thing I always set out to do, but it’s not enough, is it?”
He rubbed the sides of her arms and closed his eyes, so he didn’t have to look at her shaking hands. Her bobbing knee already had his stomach nervous and tied in knots.
He couldn’t tell her what was or wasn’t enough. It wasn’t his place to, and now that he understood why she’d been so reluctant in the first place, he couldn’t blame her. He, probably more than anyone, wanted her to succeed. He’d be proud of that—of her. That was the kind of woman he wanted for a wife and for the mother of his kids—even the stepmother of the one who evidently told her more than he told his own father.
“What am I supposed to do with you, Valerie?”
She exhaled a quiet scoff and hung her head, wringing her hands some more. “I thought I knew, but I don’t.”
“What did you think you knew?”
“I thought maybe that we could work out some kind of compromise, but we can’t, can we? What I want to do, I can’t do…here.” She pointed toward the window—ostensibly in the direction of the coast which was actually on the other side of the boat.
“And I can’t move for you. Follow you around like a housewife,” he said.
“Exactly. I suppose this happens to lots of folks who wait until they’re thirty to start allowing themselves to even think of settling down. They get there, and they can’t have what they want, so they have to leave something on the negotiating table, either in their personal life or their professional one. With me, I don’t have any leverage. There’s nothing I can demand that would make things better.”
“Could you work for a local firm? Would you consider that?”
“I have. There’s one in Norfolk.”
“Bit of a commute.”
“Not if I’m living in Norfolk.”
Fuck. He raked his hair back from his forehead and let out a ragged exhalation. “So, I’d have to spend ninety minutes in a car to go see you, and then we’ll have this conversation again in a year when I want you to move in with me.”
“Because you have a home already, and even if you didn’t, there isn’t much between Norfolk and there.”
“Exactly.”
“I tried, Tim. I did. I swear I did, but I just don’t see how it could work.”
“This feels like a breakup. Don’t tell me this is a breakup when we’ve barely go
tten it together.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “We don’t have to call it that, but at some point, we will have to call a spade a spade because you’ll want to move on to someone else and you can’t leave attachments dangling.”
He didn’t want to think about moving on to anyone else. No one else hit all the right buttons for him. No one else made him believe for the first time in five years that trying again was worth the energy and all the frustration.
There had to be a way to give her everything she wanted. He didn’t know what it was, but he built things for a living. When plans went wrong, he figured out new ones and made the finished product even better than what he originally set out to do.
She may have thought there was no room for negotiation, but he wasn’t done exploring options.
“Let’s get some sleep,” he whispered. “If you want to call this a breakup, fine, but I want to hold you tonight and for as long as I can until it doesn’t suit you anymore. Will you do that, pretty girl?”
“You know I will.”
“All right, then.” He helped her to her feet and held her hand as she walked toward his bedroom.
She climbed into bed and he curled behind her, not even bothering an attempt at chastity. He freed his cock, rubbered up, and slipped into her while tugging the soft lobe of her ear between his lips.
She sighed and looped her fingers through his that were draped over her hip.
“Just let me.” He started long, slow strokes that had him on the edge so quickly it was as if he hadn’t come so fucking hard just hours before.
She felt so good, gripping him the way she was and holding his hand like she needed him.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he whispered.
“I’m not doing anything, Tim. I’m just lying here letting you take care of me.”
“I’m trying to. Lord knows I am.”
She curled her legs and leaned forward a bit, altering her angle so he could deepen his, and he drew in a long, ragged breath and let her take care of him, too.
“So good,” he whispered, and stroked in and out, savoring the delicious squeeze each time he tried to pull out. Give that back she seemed to be saying, so he did, and for as long as he could until he had no choice but to find her swollen button and rub it so that she’d not only have her release but that he’d have his. He couldn’t go until she did, because it wasn’t a time for games, just love, and he wanted to love her so badly.