More Than Lust (Courthouse Connections Book 1)
Page 7
“My parents might not say anything, but I’m sure they’d be disappointed if I suddenly started frequenting sex clubs.” Disappointed was an understatement—Mom and Dad would be shocked out of their wits, conservative churchgoers that they were, if they even thought Andi was doing anything they’d consider scandalous.
“Here come the guys,” Marcy said as Gray and Sam crossed the dance floor. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Gray was into sex games. He had a miserable childhood, having to toe the line for Mommy Dearest, especially after his dad died. It would make sense if he rebelled in a big way once he got out from under her thumb.”
Andi wondered . . . If Gray wanted to tie her up, would she let him? It might enhance the sexual experience for her if she felt she had no choice but to submit. Oh well, she’d probably never know, she thought as Sam and Marcy hit the dance floor to a slow, sexy rendition of “Memories of Us,” the song she’d always thought she’d like played at her wedding—if, that is, she ever found the right man.
“Want to dance?” Gray stood and held out both hands. When she stood, he led her to the floor.
“It’s obvious that your dance classes paid off,” she said when he held her confidently and led her to the gentle four-beat rhythm of the song. It felt right in his arms. Not weekend hookup right, but really right, as if this was exactly where she belonged.
When he bent and kissed her, it felt as though this seemed right to him too. Later, when they were alone at his condo, making love as though they’d done it every night for ages, with a familiarity that was practically unheard of in the short time they’d known each other, Andi decided to go with the flow. What felt so right couldn’t possibly be wrong, as Gray had said earlier when they’d danced, sung karaoke tunes together during breaks . . . and enjoyed the company of friends he’d known for years but she’d only shared professional ties with before this evening.
Chapter Nine
On Sunday morning Gray woke, keenly aware that this would be his last day with Andi for a while. Determined to make the best of it, he shook her gently.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. I don’t want to miss a minute of the time we’ve got before I have to catch that plane. What would you like to do?”
She reached up and pulled him down on top of her. “Everything. Anything. As long as we do it together,” she told him, her words hardly more than a whisper against his cheek as she sought and found his lips.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he murmured, invading her mouth with his tongue when her lips opened slightly as though in invitation.
Meeting his gaze, she shot him a smile that took his breath away. “Yes I do. But this time I want to pleasure you.”
“You always pleasure me.” That was no exaggeration. No woman had ever given him more pleasure than Andi, in bed or out.
She ran one finger down his chest, paused at his navel, and looked up at him as though she thought she needed permission to go lower. “But this time I want to explore every inch of your fantastic body . . . set the pace.”
That sounded like too interesting a prospect to turn down, even though Gray usually liked to be the one to control his sexual encounters. “Be my guest,” he said, grinning at her as he flopped on his back and waited to see what she’d do. “Just remember, though, that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Tonight I’ll be the one in charge—and I may have some ideas that will shock your semi-innocent little mind.”
When she wrapped a hand around his erection and slid it up and down, he thought for a minute that he was going to come, just from that simple caress. Because it’s Andi’s hand, Andi holding me, whispered a voice in his head.
It had been just thirty-six hours—a day and a half. Hardly long enough to form the sort of connection he was feeling. He felt it, though, sensed the beginnings of emotion he hadn’t experienced since—well, ever.
“Does that feel good?” Her breath blew warm on the head of his dick when she lowered her head.
He wanted her to stop. No, he wanted her to take him in her mouth and suck his aching flesh. Damn it, Gray didn’t know what he wanted, until she reached out her tongue and tasted the lubrication at the tip of his cock. “Oh, yeah, it feels good. But you don’t have to . . .”
“I want to touch you . . . taste you . . . do everything you do to me that feels so incredible.” She licked him again, this time sliding her tongue along his entire length, stopping to kiss his scrotum. “I want to make memories for when you have to go.”
Memories of us. They’d danced to that song last night, making love as much as two people could do fully clothed, in a public place. As Gray recalled that dance, he grew harder, desperate to roll over and claim her again, in the morning light, the way he’d made love to her last night . . . and the night before.
Surprising him, she moved, straddling him, taking him inside her warm, wet sheath. “Oh yeah, sweetheart, fuck me. I love the feeling, being inside you this way.”
She pulled back, and when she did he remembered too. Being inside her felt so incredible because they’d forgotten protection. “In the night stand drawer. Grab a condom and put it on me.”
She did, grinning as she sheathed his erection. “We wouldn’t want any lasting results from our weekend fling, would we?” she asked teasingly as she lowered herself on him once more.
Part of Gray—the alpha male that sometimes took over for his brain—wanted nothing more at that moment than to make her pregnant. The saner voice in his head urged caution. “Not now, when I’m on assignment and wouldn’t have the fun of watching you have morning sickness. Someday, though, after I get back and quit the DEA . . .”
He didn’t finish that statement because it was flat-out insane to be thinking of a future with a woman he just met. Even though it felt as if he’d known Andi all her life.
The way she moved on him was making it impossible to think at all, of anything except the hot, tight sheath that fit him like no other. Of the pressure building in his balls and the need to roll her over and fuck her until they both achieved nirvana.
He’d promised, though, so he endured her pace, savoring the sight of her flushed face, her tousled auburn curls as she made love to him. The sheen of sweat on her breasts and belly aroused him beyond measure, and when they came together and she stretched out on top of him, their bodies still joined, a peaceful, satisfied feeling practically overwhelmed him.
Much later, after packing up her things and grabbing the bag he’d put together for his assignment, Gray and Andi mapped out the rest of their time together.
● ● ●
After checking out a craft exhibition in downtown Tampa, Gray surprised Andi by suggesting that they drop in on her parents.
What she’d expected would be a quick visit ended up including a picnic lunch in her folks’ backyard, with her brother and his family joining them. He seemed interested in everything, even anecdotes from her childhood that should have embarrassed Gray as well as Andi herself.
“I like your folks,” Gray told her after they left and headed back toward a shopping center in Ybor City, where he said he wanted to get a few toys for them to play with. When he led her into a store market “For Adults Only”, she realized just what kinds of toys he meant and felt her cheeks grow hot.
She imagined they were getting beet-red, even redder than her hair, and it got no less embarrassing when she watched him pick out something called a mushroom that the store clerk snickered as he placed into Gray’s basket. “What’s that for?” she whispered once they’d moved away from the pimple-faced clerk who had her thoroughly unnerved.
“You just wait and I’ll show you.” Gray grinned as Andi looked in the basket at the clear plastic device that looked sort of like the vibrator she had at home—but not quite.
Judging from the items on display in the store, she assumed the mushroom had something to do with sex—everything in the store seemed to cater to one kink or another. She just hoped Gray would find everything he wanted and get
them out of here before she died of embarrassment.
He must have sensed her discomfort, because he selected a vibrator that looked very lifelike other than its fluorescent purple color, a pack of batteries—and a set of handcuffs that looked very real, indeed. After settling up with the clerk, he took her hand and led her outside.
“Do you want to spend the night at your place, or shall we go to a hotel?” he asked after they got in the car.
“My place.” Andi wanted, at the very least, to have memories of the two of them together in the apartment she called home. “If it’s okay with you.”
“It’s fine. I was hoping you’d ask.” Gray stopped his car next to hers, helped her out, and took her hand as they walked together in the light of a crescent moon. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but I’ll be back, and we’ll see where this relationship is headed. It may have started out as a casual hookup, but it’s way more than that to me.”
Andi tried to choke back tears, but now wasn’t the time for histrionics. “To me too,” she managed. “Let’s go inside and make some more memories to hold us while you’re gone.”
Not a word of love crossed his lips, or hers. It was too soon for that, Andi knew as she showed Gray around her apartment. But one thing for sure, she thought when he crawled in bed beside her, gloriously naked, what they’d found together was more than lust. She couldn’t wait to see where their feelings might lead them—when he came home again.
Epilogue
Early the next morning, as the sun was beginning to rise . . .
“You like it when I do this. Admit it.” Gray paused and kissed her.
“Okay, I admit I like everything you do.” Andi laughed. She’d never had more fun in bed than she’d been having this weekend with the big, hunky DEA agent who now had her cuffed to her bed and was pretending to do a body cavity search. She writhed beneath him, wanting him to make love with her again before he had to go.
She couldn’t believe all they’d done since cutting out on the function where they’d met three days ago. They’d made love every way imaginable at his beachside condo. Now they’d come here to her apartment because he was leaving on assignment in just a little while. He’d resorted to restraining her and initiated her into sex toys and bondage games. She’d loved it, every minute of it. Hell, she was still loving the weekend finale. And she didn’t want him to go.
Nobody else had ever introduced toys into her body and made her like it, but Gray Syzmanski had. His tongue, his large, callused finger, and now a vibrating dildo mercifully much smaller than his sex—all had probed various orifices in the past few minutes. Once he’d gotten her past the initial discomfort, the attention had produced a delicious arousal that threatened now to explode.
“Help me out, damn it, I need to come.”
“Patience, sweetie. I’ve got to make sure you’re not hiding any contraband.”
“Hurry.” Damn it, if he didn’t quit playing and get down to business, she was going to come by herself. “You do know that you have an ideal tool to make that search.”
“Not quite yet. Turn about’s fair play. First you’re going to give me some tongue while I’ve got you all tied up.” He straddled her face.
He tweaked her clit, then dipped his fingers into her vagina, telling her in his rumbling deep, mesmerizing voice about all the arousing things he still had in store for her. “There’s nothing I won’t do to make you come. Nothing I can’t do for you. Oh, yeah. Keep that up and I’ll give you a snack.”
“Mm.” Much as Andi liked swirling her tongue around the ruby knob of his sex, she wanted it inside her more. Playfully she nipped him with her teeth.
He pulled out and switched positions. “Dangerous little piece you are,” he growled, rubbing himself along her labia before taking out the dildo and plunging inside.
The minute he primed her G-spot, she started coming. Over and over and over again, each wave of sensation better than the last one, until she felt him twitch and jerk as he spurted deep inside her.
She’d gotten him so hot that the condom broke. Right now she didn’t care. The afterglow of the climax to end big climaxes had her limp as a dishcloth, weak as a kitten. So weak she barely noticed when he unfastened the cuffs and set her free.
Later, she heard him swearing in the bathroom while she lay like a rock in bed. When he came out, he wore a towel and a worried frown.
“It broke, honey.”
“I know. I felt you coming.”
His tanned cheeks reddened. “Yeah, well . . . Are you going to be okay?”
“If you’re asking if I’m on the pill, no. But it should be okay.” No way did Andi want to send Gray off on his dangerous secret mission worrying about whether he might have gotten his three-night stand knocked up. “I’m clean, and I assume you are, too.”
“Sure. That’s not what I meant.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’ve got to get out of here or I’ll miss my plane and end up getting fired. I should be back in three or four weeks. I’ll call you.”
“Okay.” She wished she believed him.
“Really. I want some more of this.” He reached down, cupped her mound. “Not often a guy finds a real hot redhead who’s not only hot in bed but also fun to be with. Now that I’ve found mine, I want some more. ”
“Oh, yeah. So do I.” Maybe this would end up being more than a three-night fuckfest. Andi hoped so.
“I’ll count on it. Now give me a kiss and wish me luck with the drug cartel we’re going in after.”
Gray tasted of mouthwash, not sex, when he kissed her one last time. “I’m serious, Andi. This isn’t over. We haven’t been together long, but what we have between us means an awful lot to me. I intend for us to find out where our feelings take us when I get back.”
Then he hugged her hard, and he was gone.
The End . . . (for now)
Coming June 9, 2015, pre-order your copy now!
The Defenders
Courthouse Connections Series, books 2 and 3 in one boxed set for your reading pleasure
The Defenders, men who believe, as is provided for in the United States Constitution, that all those accused of crimes are entitled to competent defense in a court of law . . .
Tony Landry has every reason to believe accused criminals deserve competent defense, but young prosecutor Kristine Granger can’t see right and wrong in the shades of gray—until her love for him helps show her compassion she lost when her sister died tragically.
Gray Syzmanski has come home, battered and scarred, to take his place in his family’s law firm… and to renew with prosecutor Andi Young the relationship that eight years ago was “More Than Lust”… Can they now find the love denied to them so long ago?
Coming late June 2015
(watch Facebook and Twitter for pre-order availability)
The Prosecutors
Courthouse Connections Series, books 3, 4, and 5 in one boxed set for even more reading enjoyment
Attorney Sandra Giancone is self-reliant. She doesn’t want a man unless he’ll make her submit… until her good pal Rocky shows her true love doesn’t have to be vanilla, and loving happily ever after is worth it with him. See what they’re up to in LOVE GAMES.
Assistant state attorney Craig McDermott’s personal trainer seems like the ideal gal to teach him everything there is to know about sex before somebody at work finds out he’s a
A friend’s destination wedding brings lawyer Marcy Kramer and her ex, Sam, back together five years after the divorce that left her hating him. A hurricane forces them to share their fear during the EYE OF THE STORM, but it takes more than a Cat 3 hurricane for them to reveal secrets, gain mutual forgiveness, and rediscover the love that never truly died.
What is the Courthouse Connections series?
A series of contemporary romances set in and around Florida’s Gulf Coast, Courthouse Connections be
gan as a series about trial lawyers and law enforcement personnel whose work centered around the Hillsborough County, Florida’s thirteenth circuit courthouse. It was originally called LAWYERS IN LOVE before I got rights back and renamed it COURTHOUSE CONNECTIONS in order to expand the series to include stories that don’t include an attorney as either hero or heroine.
Over the course of seven books so far, the original characters have reappeared, having their own stories in expanded settings, while I’ve added new stories and characters whose professions have expanded from law and law enforcement to medicine, physical fitness, legal practice in fields other than criminal law, and so on.
I love the characters, know the setting (I’ve lived in Tampa, Florida practically all of my adult life), and have always had a keen interest in the legal system and how it works.
I hope that readers will enjoy the expanded setting, new character occupations, and different story lines that I call “Extras”, where original characters will reappear while new ones are introduced. The first of these “Extras”, JAKE’S LOVE, is an Amazon exclusive and Courthouse Connections Series story #7, in case anybody’s counting.
Jake’s a transplant surgeon who knows Marcy and Sam (a fertility specialist), from EYE OF THE STORM. Jake’s love is Meghan, the widowed mom of a former patient. I hope you’ll give this short novella a try—the conflict’s unusual, to say the least, but their romance provides what, for the most part, is a light, sensual read.