Pay Up

by Kaily Hart

  He put his middle finger to her, traced through her folds carefully and probed gently. He let out a breath when she flexed against him in invitation. She was hot and tight and he sank his finger in slowly until he could go no farther.

  He swallowed in awe as he withdrew and sank back in, again and again, as slow as he could. Her eyes were closed now, her hips rocking back and forth as he fucked her with his finger, a small, carnal sound escaping her throat each time he went deep. He added a second finger. It was a snug fit, but he strummed her clit with the thumb of his other hand and was rewarded when she arched back and her hands fisted in the strands of his hair. She was thrusting in earnest now against his hand, pushing on his head, urging him down to her.

  “I want to make you come with my mouth again,” he warned.

  She moaned. He put his mouth to her, sucked on her clit strongly and just like that he knew she went over. She cried out, thrusting her lower body against his lashing tongue in short, sharp movements. He used his free forearm across her abdomen to hold her still, to make sure he could keep his mouth against her until she finished.

  Chapter Six

  Carly unclenched her hands and threaded her fingers through the length of Rio’s dark, silky hair as he made his way up her body, stopping to nibble on the underside of one breast. She stilled when she felt the rough tickle of the fabric of his jeans against her thigh.

  Oh God. She’d come. Twice. And he still had all of his clothes on.

  Carly pushed herself up with an effort. She’d never felt so weak, but there was determination in the jut of her jaw and strength in the hand she used to urge him over and onto his back.

  His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark with need. His breathing was ragged and she loved the way his gaze traced across her naked breasts as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Undo my shirt.”

  His voice was low and rough and his insistence caused a jolt low in her abdomen that should have been pretty much impossible.

  “Undo it,” he urged. “I’ve imagined your hands on me so many times, taking my clothes off, touching me. Do it. Please.”

  She’d touched him plenty of times before. She knew how hard he worked to stay in shape and how built he was. She still jolted as she laid her palms on his chest. He felt so hard. She could feel the raging heat from his big body through the smooth cotton of his shirt.

  Carly slowly undid the buttons and pushed the fabric aside. She ran her hands lightly down his chest, his tight abdomen. How many times had she wished she had the right to touch him like this? To reach out whenever she wanted and put her hand on him and have her touch accepted, welcomed?

  She saw him swallow and his jaw clench when her fingers dipped lightly into the waistband of his jeans. She jerked the buttons open awkwardly, wondering how she was going to get them down when he suddenly lifted his hips off the bed and yanked the jeans and his underwear down to the tops of his thighs, as if he couldn’t wait any longer.

  She’d meant to undress him with finesse, with a deliberate slowness, to torment him until he couldn’t stand it, but she forgot all of that when she saw his beautiful cock.

  “Oh, Rio.”

  It was long and thick, lying up against the flat plane of his abdomen. The fleeting view she’d had of him before had hardly done justice to a cock that was big and hard and so rigid she could see his heartbeat as it flexed.

  She knelt between his legs, her throat dry at the spectacular view, his musky scent surrounding her, his arousal front and center in her line of sight.

  He groaned at the first contact of her tongue, lifting off the bed and up onto his forearms as she licked up his length and gave a small sucking kiss on the head. His eyes were dark and dazed.

  “Carls, I’m not going to be able stand this for long,” he warned.

  After what he’d done to her? Twice?

  “Suck it up, big guy.”

  Suck. Rio swore he almost came just hearing her say the word, her lips looking wet from doing just that to him.

  He spread his legs as far as the jeans would allow, to give her better access when she bent to him again.

  “Go easy, okay?” he asked when she’d barely breathed on him.

  He eased her back when she’d done no more than lick up his length a couple of times. He couldn’t stand it and as much as he’d love to spill himself into her mouth or all over her beautiful breasts, he just wanted inside her. Now.

  “Enough.”

  “Rio, no, I’m—”

  “Yeah, you looked as if you were really getting into it, but I’m not going to be able to last as it is. We’ll see how easily you can drive me out of my mind once the edge is taken off. Later.”

  He rolled to his feet beside the bed and flung his shirt off, pushed his jeans and underwear down and toed off his shoes, all the while his gaze traced the along the lines of her body as she turned around and sat back on the bed.

  “But…”

  “Later,” he reassured her. “Trust me. Later.”

  His heart thundered in his chest, his blood a roar in his ears as he looked at her. Every other woman he’d ever looked at, touched or been inside of faded from his mind. God, did she have any idea how fucking beautiful she was?

  He crawled up and over her, trying to control the tremor he felt in his hand as he laid it on her smooth thigh and she eased back on the bed under him.

  “You have no idea the things I want to do to you, how I want to do them to you.”

  He bent down and took a nipple between his lips, tonguing it against the roof of his mouth, celebrating the way she clutched at his shoulders and gasped when he laved the other nipple in the same way.

  “Anything. However you want. Please.”

  Her legs moved restlessly under him when he switched nipples again.

  “Rio, please. Touch me,” she begged when he didn’t say anything. He had no doubt where she wanted him to touch her, but he needed a minute, a minute to get the red haze of lust under control so he didn’t come the minute he got inside her.

  “Touch yourself.”

  “Rio…”

  “Touch yourself. Show me how you want me to make love to you.”

  Rio angled himself so he could see the hand she eased between her legs. His heart thundered even more. Instead of the teasing touches he’d braced himself for, she slid two fingers deep inside herself without hesitation and pumped her hand back and forth.

  “Hard. And fast. I want it hard and fast,” she panted.

  Fuck.

  Rio grasped her hand and pulled it from her body. The next time she came he was going to be inside her and it looked as if she’d been about to send herself over.

  He eased his weight down on top of her, angled himself so that his cock was poised over her hot, wet opening and paused. Carly clutched at his shoulders, clasped her thighs around his tightly. Anticipation was a sizzle that ran through every nerve ending in his body as he looked down at her.

  “Rio… Hurry up already.”

  Oh God, this was what all those other women had experienced. She’d known instinctively this is how he’d be in bed, playful, bold, uninhibited…and completely addictive.

  “Carls. Look at me.”

  Carly lifted her eyes to his with an effort, her lids like lead. She inhaled sharply when she felt him sink more of his weight onto her, his body pressing more urgently against hers. His face was directly above hers, his forearms bracketing each side of her head. His eyes blazed with need, his jaw clenched tight with the effort it must have cost him to hold off pushing into her.

  “I love you, you know that, right?” he rasped.

  Everything inside her went still. Surely he didn’t… Did he just say…what she thought he said? And even if he did? Carly tried to temper the flare of whatever it was that sprang to life at the words. There’s no way he meant it like she wanted, needed, ached for him to mean it. He couldn’t have. Could he?

  “Rio.” The sigh turned into a gasp as he drove into her
in a single move that buried him all the way inside her.

  “Carls, you’re…we… Christ, it…”

  She trembled as she looked up at him, feeling stretched and full, braced for another thrust that hadn’t happened yet.

  “Yeah…”

  He brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead with a hand she swore shook. “I thought I must have dreamed this part, at least,” he ground out.

  “This part?”

  “Yeah, how incredible it feels. God, have I ever once told you how beautiful you are?” His voice was low, intense.

  “No…”

  “Then you should probably kick my ass.”

  “I have better things to do with your ass right now. Like—move it.”

  Carly groaned when he began thrusting in a steady, deep rhythm. He clasped her hands in his and raised them up above her head, holding her stretched out beneath him. She couldn’t use them for leverage. There was nothing she could do but meet his thrusts with her own lower body movements, making a perfect counter to his as best she could. This was Rio and he was merely holding her, yet it fired off every fantasy she’d ever had about being dominated, except this was much more exciting then anything else she’d ever experienced or fantasized about before.

  Rio bent and licked her nipple with firm laps of his tongue in the same maddening rhythm as his body into hers.

  “Guess…I now know…what all the…screaming’s about,” she gasped between thrusts. “Why haven’t we…ever done this before now?”

  “Because I’m an idiot.”

  Carly closed her eyes against the sensations as his thrusts became faster, harder. Every time he thrust in, he flexed his hips too so that his body hair ground against her clit. Tremors pulsed and rolled outward through her body from the contact. He was rocketing her to another release that gave her a moment’s panic before she stiffened, the ecstasy almost painful as she was thrown headfirst into a series of waves so intense they racked her body with heaving shudders.

  She was vaguely away of Rio’s shout, his face buried against her neck as he groaned deeply, his body jerking against her in what seemed to be an endless sequence of spasms to match her own.

  * * * * *

  “We didn’t use anything. Again.”

  Carly was trying her damnedest to get her breathing under control. It wasn’t easy when he was still buried deep inside her and she could feel the thunder of his heart against her chest.

  “I—it’s okay.”

  Rio fingered a strip of her hair, rubbing the strands gently. “I’ve never done it without a rubber before, not even when I was little more than a kid, more horny than smart.”

  “Me either.”

  “Even with what’s his name?”

  It struck Carly that Rio had never actually used Greg’s name whenever he referred to him.

  “Yeah, even with him.”

  Rio frowned. “Did he—”

  “Do you really want to talk about Greg right now?”

  “No. No. Um…what about—”

  “I’m on the Pill.”

  Rio eased back from her, withdrawing from her body carefully. She couldn’t prevent the small gasp when he finally slid free.

  God, he was building up to something. Carly steeled herself for it, but all of a sudden she just couldn’t wait.

  “Damn it, Rio. If you tell me you’re sorry…”

  Carly stopped when her throat threatened to close completely. She wouldn’t break down in front of him. She wouldn’t.

  He touched a fingertip to her bottom lip.

  “Carly, do you have any idea how much I wanted to kiss you that day in the elevator, back you up against the wall and just go for it? My reaction to you was not one I should have had. I had a girlfriend and we… I thought… Christ, one look at you and I knew the feelings I had for Liz were lukewarm at best compared to what I was feeling for you. I didn’t know you, I hadn’t touched you and I might never get the chance, but I knew right then it was over with Liz. It had to be.”

  “You broke up with Liz because of me?”

  “No. I broke up with Liz because I shouldn’t have gotten a hard-on for another woman when I was with her. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I dragged it out, probably made it worse. It took three months, all the while I tried to keep away from you, but by then you were dating pretty hard core. So, I cooled my heels.”

  Yeah, she remembered. The girlfriend pact. They’d made a pact to accept dates from any and all guys who asked. For six months. No exceptions. Supposedly to find “Mr. Right”. What a disaster it’d been.

  “By the time I thought the timing was right, you were hot and heavy with…”

  “Greg.”

  “Yeah. I figured it’d run its course and I’d be ready. In the meantime we were hanging out, became friends…and I just…”

  “I felt it too, you know. That day in the elevator. God, Rio, do you know what it’s been like for me?” Carly whispered. “Watching you with other women, watching them hit on you, watching you smile at them, touch them, God, even hearing you fuck them? I told myself I never had a chance, that if you’d been interested I would have known, you would have shown me, but it didn’t stop the pain each and every time you hooked up with someone.”

  His jaw clenched and his eyes bore into hers. The satisfaction that had been etched into his features was gone in an instant. “I know every time you’ve been out with a guy or had someone over at your place. I know every time a guy’s spent the night here and I know every night you never came home. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. So, yeah, I think I’ve got a clue.”

  Carly blinked. She’d heard more swear words from him lately than from the entire time she’d known him. The emotional edge to his voice was one she’d never heard before and it cut into her.

  “You make it sound as if it’s been a lot. It—”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered how many. One guy, one time, was too many.”

  “Rio—”

  “Carls, look… I don’t want to think about you with other guys, okay? You’re beautiful, gorgeous. I’d be an idiot to have a problem with the fact that there’ve been others. But I don’t… I don’t want to think about it. I just want to think about how it was with us.”

  Carly swallowed. “Okay.”

  He pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “It blew my mind, you know.”

  Her heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So, you…you want to be a…friend with benefits, Rio? Is that it?”

  “No!”

  Carly couldn’t help the flinch.

  “No,” he repeated, his voice quieter but firm. “I don’t want any sort of arrangement like that. Where we sleep together when neither of us is seeing anyone else or even if we are? God, no.”

  “Then what? You need to give me some clue here, because—”

  “Didn’t you hear what I told you before?”

  Her stomach lurched. “That was…”

  In the heat of the moment.

  Rio cupped her jaw and lowered his mouth to hers, sinking into a kiss that had intimacy and familiarity written all over it. The heat of his big body seared hers, scorching between her legs when his tongue moved urgently against hers. By the time he pulled back she was clutching his shoulders, her lips clinging to his, her breathing unsteady.

  “And if that doesn’t tell you anything,” he groaned, “I’ll say it again, say what my body’s already told you. I love you, Carly. Not as a friend, but as a man loves his woman. I’d kill to protect you, I’d give my life for yours, I’d—”

  Carly put a finger to his lips shakily. Oh God. Every part of her felt as if it were trembling, trembling in reaction, in wonder, in awe. “Okay, I think I get the message.”

  He sucked the tip into his mouth. It should have been impossible, but pure heat and moisture bloomed between her legs again.

  “You’re not going to ask me how I feel?” she breathed.

  He bit
and then kissed the thick pad of her hand. His smile was full of male confidence. “You wouldn’t have let me do the things I did to you if you didn’t have feelings for me and you wouldn’t have given yourself to me the way you did if you didn’t love me.”

  Cocky. That’s what he was, but dead right. She’d tell him so the next time she had him in her mouth.

  “So, where do we go from here?”

  His smile broadened. It was sinful and wicked and caused her stomach to lurch in response. He ran his hand down the slope of her body to rest over the slight curve of her abdomen, his hand splayed wide. There was no doubt it was a touch of possession. His gaze swept over her features before locking on hers.

  “You pay up.”

  “Pay up?”

  “Yeah, you remember the bet. You owe me.”

  “You…you want to talk about…that stupid bet?”

  “Nope. I want you to pay up. I won.”

  Carly swallowed, his touch making it difficult to focus. She moved her legs, barely able to keep still and gasped when she brushed up against the hair-roughened lengths of his. “How do you figure?”

  “I…ah, the Pink Pony. I might have had a call there a few weeks back.”

  She was becoming used to that smug smile and it did things to her insides she could become addicted to. The sheepishness was new. “A call?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. Some old guy collapsed. Heart attack. I think the lap dance he might have been having at the time was too much for him.”

  Carly just looked at him as it dawned on her. He’d known he’d already won when he made that outrageous bet.

  “And no one on staff was called Honey,” he added.