[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet

by Catherine Gayle

  A few well-aimed thrusts of his fingers later, along with the perfect amount of pressure on my clit, and I shattered in his arms. I don’t know if it was a more explosive orgasm than I usually had because he was an expert in how to work me or if it was simply because there was the added aphrodisiac of him and not just me and my B.O.B., but I came so hard that my muscles all went limp and my bones melted. If he hadn’t been bracing me against the wall, I would have been nothing more than a puddle on the floor.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful when you come,” he said gruffly, his mouth right by my ear as he rested his cheek on the wall. His hand was still on my sex, his fingers tracing the sensitive outer folds. He shifted his position, pressing the pad of his thumb beside my button, and I nearly came off the wall.

  “I’m too sensitive for more right now,” I panted. I’d always been that way. Once I climaxed, it was almost painful to continue, at least until things started to settle. I needed to rest and recover before going back for seconds, and even then, it would only be for Hunter’s sake, not mine. I was a one-and-done kind of girl. Always had been. Always would be.

  “You sure about that?”

  “I…” I thought I was, but he was grinning at me with a cocksure smile that made my belly do flips. Maybe I was wrong.

  Hunter released my wrists. I eased my arms down to rest my hands on his shoulders and attempt to hold myself upright. That proved to be unnecessary. He lifted me by the waist and carried me to his bed. In record time, he had the rest of my clothes off me. He shifted my position on the bed, tugging me by my hips until my bottom was right at the edge of the mattress.

  Then he kneeled to the floor and placed my thighs on his shoulders.

  He tongued me, a long lick from my opening to my clit and back. I gasped at the sensation, digging my hands into the sheet, belatedly remembering about the burn. I let go with that hand but held on with the other. Sheer determination was the only thing keeping me on that bed. Well, that and his strong hands, his fingers pressing into my hips.

  After a few more strokes of his tongue, he raised his head and met my gaze. “Still too sensitive, or do you want more?”

  I was definitely too sensitive if the shudders coursing through my body with every minuscule touch were any indication, but damn if I didn’t say, “More.”

  TALLIE CAME THREE more times with me going down on her before she finally let go of her inhibitions enough to direct me where she wanted me. Her good hand fisted in my hair, thighs clutching and holding me in place, hips bucking and driving that sweet pussy up toward me, she kept my focus directly on her swollen clit.

  She only had a narrow triangle of hair covering her mound, dark and perfectly trimmed. Probably because of all the swimsuit portions of her pageants. I supposed it was habitual for her to keep herself groomed that way these days. I didn’t particularly care one way or another. Bare, hairy, shaved, landing strip…whatever. I didn’t care as long as it was wet and responsive. A pussy was a glorious thing, as far as I was concerned. And Tallie’s? It was one of the sweetest I’d ever come into intimate contact with. Right now, she was slick and ready.

  I put my lips around her tight little bud and sucked it into my mouth, three fingers pumping into her sex and stretching her so she would be prepared to accept me. It didn’t take much of that before her pussy was clamping down on my fingers again, trying to hold them in place as the walls of her sex tremored with another release.

  She let out a moan of pleasure that I felt all the way down to my toes. My dick perked up at the sound, not that he wasn’t already raring and ready to go.

  There were few things in the world that turned me on more than watching a woman experience a powerful orgasm. Being the one who was giving it to her? That would be one of those few things.

  Too sensitive, she’d said. Not fucking likely. The son of a bitch she’d been with before just hadn’t known what the hell he was doing, and she apparently hadn’t known enough to tell him he was full of shit. That added sensitivity just opened her up to more pleasure, only she didn’t realize it.

  Now she knew better, though.

  When the aftershocks of her latest climax subsided and her limbs turned soft as butter, I crept up to the bed to lie beside her. She immediately curled in toward me, tangling her long limbs with mine, seeking more contact. We definitely weren’t done yet, but I needed a moment to catch my breath.

  Her hand trailed over my chest before moving lower. She tugged my T-shirt free from my waistband and then dived in to explore.

  I put my hand over the top of hers, stopping her. “If you aren’t careful, this’ll be over before it begins.”

  “Oh, we haven’t started yet?” she said, batting her eyes at me like a fucking tease. She wriggled her fingers to get free of my grip, inching them closer to my painfully hard cock.

  I wasn’t ready for that to happen. Not yet. I might blow the second she touched me.

  I rolled us over with a feral sound coming from deep within me, trapping her beneath me, my thighs on either side of her slim body to keep my weight from crushing her. “Can’t get enough?”

  “Never.” She didn’t let our change in positions slow her down, dragging the fabric of my shirt up.

  I decided to help her out, leaning back and finishing the job. I tossed the shirt to the floor, and she took that opportunity to splay her palm over my chest. It felt so fucking good, having her touch me. Made me want more. Made me wonder why I had waited so damned long to get her in my bed. And now that she was here, why the hell wasn’t I just flipping up her legs and plowing into her, because she sure as hell acted like that was what she wanted from me.

  But I wasn’t. I couldn’t seem to make myself. With Tallie, I wanted more than just a quick fuck, more than merely a good time, and that scared the shit out of me.

  I leaned over her and took my time kissing her, reveling in the sweet way she opened herself to me and the quiet sounds she made. Her hand roamed over my chest, my abs, my back, never still as she explored my body. She even reached up with her injured hand to tease my skin with her fingertips. I supposed they didn’t hurt too much. The worst of the burn had been on her palm.

  I shifted my weight, and she spread her legs to accommodate me, opening to accept me as readily as she’d given me her wrists to hold against the wall earlier. If not for the fact that I’d just been licking her pussy, so I knew how very ready and willing she was, I’d worry that she was just going along because that was what she was expected to do.

  But that wasn’t the case here. It was nothing of the sort.

  She wanted me as badly as I wanted her, and there was no point in either one of us trying to deny just how much that was.

  She rolled her hips up toward me, grinding her pelvis into mine. “Take off your pants, Hunter,” she said, panting, desperate, when I moved to kiss her collarbone. “I want you inside me.”

  I wanted to savor what we had going, though, so I kept kissing her, molding her breasts to my hands. Tallie’s breasts were perfect. Slightly more than a handful. Tight nipples. Small, rosy areolas. Soft and pert, and insanely sensitive. Her body was a fucking gift to mankind, or maybe a gift to me. No clue what I’d done to deserve it, but I wasn’t in any hurry to waste what I’d been given. I broke away from her neck and shoulders, and I dipped my head to take one of her breasts into my mouth.

  She took the opportunity while I was otherwise occupied to clamp her hand down on my ass and draw me in toward her, rubbing my dick against her sex through the fabric of my pants.

  I groaned and increased my efforts.

  “I’m running out of patience,” she groused, gasping for breath as her back arched, driving her breasts closer to me.

  I couldn’t help it; I chuckled.

  She smacked my ass, likely intending to get my attention with it, but she didn’t have enough force behind it for me to find it anything but playful.

  Still, I couldn’t help but lift my head and raise a brow in question. “Is that
how you want to play this?”

  She looked at me, her mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out. She had no clue. She might not be a virgin, but she was still fucking innocent when it came to anything outside the realm of vanilla sex.

  I might be into a little spanking and other light kink like that, but now was probably not the time to introduce it into our relationship. We needed to talk about it sometime when we weren’t in the heat of things. I wanted her clearheaded to make a decision like that, if we were going to go there at all. Besides, she was injured. It wasn’t something I’d even contemplated before now, assuming anything of that nature would be off-limits. The last thing I needed was for Lance, or even Mr. Roth, to get wind of us engaging in sexual activities they didn’t think were kosher, and the next thing we knew there’d be a shit storm in the media, far bigger than anything either of us had experienced with our indiscretions to date.

  I shook my head. “Never mind. Not now.” Then I kissed her, hard and fast, before rolling myself away from her so I could shed the last of my clothes.

  Single-minded dumbass that I was, I only realized I didn’t have any protection when I reached for the drawer in my nightstand, where—before I’d been married and under the impression that I wouldn’t be getting laid for a year—I would have kept at least a small supply of condoms. There wasn’t any point in opening the drawer, though. I knew I hadn’t bothered to buy anything since I’d arrived in Tulsa. What was the point? If I wasn’t fucking Tallie, then I wasn’t going to be fucking anyone. That much had been made clear early on.

  I groaned, flopping back on the bed.

  She crawled over, following me, immediately reaching for my cock with her right hand. Her fingers closed around me, and my hips responded, driving up into her grip.

  “Tallie,” I warned.

  “What?” Again, with the batting lashes.

  “You’re playing with fire, baby.”

  She slid her hand up and down my length. “Silly me. I thought I was playing with you.”

  I reached for her, drew her in to place a kiss on her forehead even as I groaned. “I don’t have any condoms.”

  “We were both tested before we got married,” she said matter-of-factly. “Couldn’t get the license otherwise, silly. And we both know that neither of us has been with anyone else since then.”

  “But you could get pregnant.”

  She licked her lips in concentration, pumping me with a fierce determination I’d rarely seen in her. “On the pill.”

  “The pill doesn’t always work.”

  “Neither do condoms.” She propped herself up with her free arm, leaning over me. Then she licked a circle around my nipple like I’d done to her earlier, drawing back to blow cool air over the wetness.

  That was almost too much for me. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, focusing as hard as I could on holding back my orgasm. Although, I couldn’t quite figure out why. I mean, if I wasn’t going to fuck her, then I might as well come from a hand job, especially one delivered so sweetly.

  I didn’t want to blow my load like this, though. I wanted to be inside her just as badly as she wanted it, but one of us had to be reasonable about this, think things through with a clear head. The head on my shoulders. Not the one being driven to the point of no return in her small-but-untiring hand.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to focus so I could think.

  Tallie took that opportunity to straddle me.

  “What are you doing?” My eyes popped open, and I stared at her. She stared back, until I finally gave a slow nod.

  She lowered herself onto me, using that same hand to guide me inside. She was so wet that I just slipped right in, balls deep, despite the fact that she fit me like a glove. I could feel…everything. I’d never, not once in my life, done the deed without a condom. Never felt this sort of skin-to-skin contact, her slickness blanketing me. It felt like heaven.

  “So good,” she said, putting her hand on my chest to steady herself as she rose again.

  And then I was lost.

  She lifted off me, dropped down to grind against me. I reached for her waist and hips, helping her balance as she rode me like she was made to be in my saddle. It wasn’t long before she tossed her head back, increasing her pace. Since I was holding on to her, she lifted her hands and teased her breasts, making the sweetest sounds of pleasure I’d ever heard.

  And she clamped down on me, her pussy clenching with the beginnings of another orgasm. That was it. I couldn’t hold out any longer. I held her tight and drove up into her, hard and fast, listening as her sexy sounds turned to shouts. Or maybe I was shouting, my sounds matching the frenzied need of my body as I shot my load inside her.

  She collapsed against me, her face turned to mine with the cutest smile on her lips. I brushed her hair out of her eyes so I could see all of her face. But then I couldn’t seem to stop myself from stroking her hair, easing my fingers through the tangled strands and working out the knots.

  I did the same with my other hand, stroking her back. Her ass. Her thighs. She lay there, boneless, letting me do as I would.

  So I did. I kept touching her, holding her, caressing her, until I recognized my mistake. I shouldn’t be doing this, because if I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall for her. That went against everything we’d agreed upon from the outset. But I couldn’t seem to make myself stop, and she sure as hell wasn’t doing anything about it.

  Before I knew it, she was asleep in my arms, and I’d be damned if I wanted things to be any other way.

  LIFE WITH HUNTER took a sharp and decided turn after that, much as we’d known it would. Whatever our relationship was morphing into, we weren’t just roommates putting on a show for the media anymore. Kissing and touching each other no longer had to stop the second we were in private. A whole new world was open to us now, but I still wasn’t sure how that was going to work itself out. I doubted he had a true sense of where our relationship was heading, either.

  Did he think what we’d shared was meant to be for one night only? It was a hell of a single night, if that was where he stood on the matter. I’d lost count of how many times he’d brought me to ecstasy. Throughout the night, we had dozed for a while and then had sex for a while before dozing some more. We’d been wrapped up in each other all night long, unable to untangle our limbs for more than brief spurts. If he got it in his head that he wanted to end the physical side of our relationship and go back to how things had been before, I was going to have a hard time coming to grips with it.

  When we got up in the morning, he showered and got ready for practice while I fixed him some breakfast. Fruit and oatmeal—not something I could screw up and not something that would require much use of my hand, which was a heck of a lot more sensitive now than it had been last night. Adrenaline? Or maybe sex endorphins. Either way, I needed more of it today, please and thanks. The whole time I worked on putting together Hunter’s breakfast, I worried about what last night would mean for us in the long run. Was he starting to feel for me the way I felt for him? Should I dare to ask?

  He came into the kitchen and fixed a cup of coffee before kissing me on the cheek. He smelled good enough to eat, the scent of the coffee combining with the scent that was purely him, and I fought to keep my composure.

  Then he sat down on one of the chairs across the bar and settled in to eat. “Forgot to tell you last night, with everything going on. We’ve got our first preseason game tonight, if you want to come.”

  My heart fluttered to life. “Really?” This would be the first time he’d included me in anything to do with his professional life, and it sounded as if it was voluntary on his part.

  “Yeah. I’ll take you in early and introduce you to Dana Zellinger. She can help you get settled.”

  “I’d like that.” I’d like it more than I could ever hope to explain. There was a sense of nervous excitement bubbling up within me.

  He took a bite of his banana, chewing it with pensive eyes on me. “An
d there’s an Ice Breaker event on Thursday afternoon. First time the team is getting out with the public, letting them see who we are. They want me to bring you, so I hope you’re not busy.”

  I deflated slightly at that. For one thing, pointing out that the team wanted me to be present meant Hunter wasn’t on board with it, or at the very least, it hadn’t been his idea. For another, I’d been planning to spend time with Kade at Horizons every afternoon, even though I knew neither Hunter nor Kade was particularly keen on the idea. If I went to the Ice Breaker, I wouldn’t be able to go on Thursday. Still, it wouldn’t hurt for me to skip the one visit. Besides, that would be a great opportunity for me and Hunter to be seen together by those who mattered, other than just dinners out and things of that nature, which was probably why the team had suggested he bring me.

  I skimmed my fingers over the smooth granite countertop, tracing the lines I found while I screwed up my courage. “Do you want me to be there?”

  He set the banana on a plate, covering my hand with his and stopping me from my continual nervous outlining of the patterns in the stone.

  I flashed my eyes up to meet his. Green. Heated. Piercing. He could melt me with nothing more than a look.

  “I think after last night, you should realize I like being with you,” he said.

  I flushed, lips parted, and my palms got all sweaty. How could he do that to me with nothing more than a few words and a sexy look? But I nodded. “I like being with you, too,” I said shyly. “Of course I’ll come. Whatever you need me to do.”

  A slight scowl brought a crease between his brows, but it was gone before I could comment on it. He finished his breakfast, and I went off to shower—a slow process due to needing to change the bandage on my hand. By the time I was dressed, he had left for practice.

  I intended to visit Kade this afternoon, and then tonight I’d be going to the game, but I still had hours to kill before either of those things came to pass. Instead of hitting the gym, since I didn’t want to aggravate the burn on my hand, I went for a jog through the neighborhood, which necessitated another shower and change once I got home. Then I didn’t know what to do with myself. At least not at first.