by Sedona Venez
Growling, I pushed her onto her back, sandwich and picnic basket completely forgotten, and I laid claim to her mouth. The taste of her flooded my senses, honeysuckle and cardamom, and I sucked her tongue, unable to get enough of her. It had been so long since we last lay together like this, so many years since I’d been inside her, and my cock was straining against the zipper of my jeans, screaming for release.
“Let me help you with that,” she whispered breathlessly, reaching down toward my jeans.
I stilled in anticipation as her fingers hovered over my zipper.
I growled as she popped the top button on my jeans and then ever-so-slowly drew the zipper down. A wicked smile lit her eyes as my cock sprang into her waiting hand.
“Commando, and oh my . . . it’s so hard.” Her tone was teasing as she wrapped her fingers around my throbbing shaft, and I groaned. “And, right now, it’s all mine.” She flicked her thumb across the tip, smearing a bead of pre-come down the length of my cock, and then began to pump her fingers up and down my thick length.
“Yes,” I groaned, rising up onto my knees so I could watch her as she pleasured me with her hand. “That feels so good, Liv.”
“You like that?” She reached around and gently began kneading my balls with her other hand. I groaned again, words failing me, as she stoked the fire in my loins. “How about this?”
She leaned down, taking me into her mouth in one smooth motion, and I cried out her name, clutching at her shoulders to steady myself. I nearly came right then and there as she began bobbing her head up and down, as she used her talented tongue and lips to tease me to almost unbearable heights.
God, she’s good. So good that in just another minute . . .
“Stop,” I rasped, pulling her away from my cock.
She looked up at me, and I thought she was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life, her sparkling eyes burning with desire, her pink lips glistening from sucking my cock. And she hadn’t even taken off any of her clothes yet.
“I want to be inside you first.”
Nodding, she leaned back again, but this time, I caught her by the wrists and pulled her up. Taking my time, I bent down, grabbed the hem of her top, and slowly rolled it up, kissing each inch of her smooth, creamy flesh as it was revealed. Her muscles trembled slightly beneath my lips as I kissed my way up her torso and then across her breasts, biting down on one puckered nipple through her bra. I was rewarded with a tiny moan that made me ache for more, and in an impatient move, I pulled her shirt off the rest of the way and carelessly tossed it onto the picnic blanket.
“Woman, you are so gorgeous,” I said, drinking in her exposed upper torso.
Her breasts were larger than I remembered, nearly spilling out of the lacy black bra she wore, but there was nothing fake about the flesh I squeezed through the fabric.
“I could just eat you up.”
“Do it,” she demanded, arching up toward me and offering me her breasts.
I reached down and undid the front clasp, and they sprang free, revealing large pink nipples that made my mouth water.
“Happily,” I said.
Then my mouth was on her left nipple, licking, flicking, and nibbling. Olivia’s moans filled the air as her fingers found my scalp, clutching me to her breast as I teased and tormented her. Her nipples always had been sensitive, I remembered, so responsive to just the slightest touch. I never even needed to touch her between her legs to make her wet. All I needed to do was play with her little pink nubs, and she would be aching and wet and needy.
“Yes,” she hissed as I switched my attention to her other nipple. “Oh yes, Eli, please. More.” She wrapped her legs around my waist, hooking me closer so she could grind her pussy against my cock. “Oh, yeah!”
I smiled against her breast as she shuddered in my arms, an orgasm already upon her. She was the most responsive woman I’d ever made love to in my life, a fact that always delighted me. The number of orgasms the woman could have in a single encounter . . . it blew my mind sometimes.
“Do you like this?” I asked, pushing her jeans down to her ankles. “You like how I make you feel?”
“Yes,” she gasped, pushing her pants off the rest of the way. “Oh God, yes. Always.”
“Does anyone else make you feel the way I do?” I demanded, reaching between her legs and sliding a finger inside her.
“No,” she moaned, writhing beneath me. “No one makes love to me the way you do, Eli.”
She shuddered as I began pressing two fingers against her G-spot, stimulating her.
“Please, Eli, please. I need to come again.”
“Oh yes, Olivia,” I growled, circling her clit with my thumb as I continued pumping my fingers against her hot womanhood. “Come for me.”
Her moans grew louder, and my cock throbbed painfully, wanting so badly to be inside her, but I wanted this more. I wanted her to come apart all over my fingers, and she did with a scream that startled birds into flight from the trees nearby.
“My turn,” I growled when it was over, flipping her onto her stomach.
Obediently, she thrust her ass into the air, and I sank my fingers into the round globes, kneading them and pushing them apart to reveal her glistening wet pussy.
“Do you want me to fuck you, Olivia?”
“Yes,” she panted, pushing her ass more firmly into my hands. “Hard.”
I reached into my pocket, tugging out my wallet with a gold packet inside. Quickly, I pulled out the package, tearing it open and sheathing my cock with the condom.
“Say it,” I demanded, gliding the tip of my cock against her folds.
She was so ready that her juices instantly coated my cock, lubricating it for her.
“Fuck me, Eli,” she begged. “Now.”
“Yes,” I hissed.
Then I groaned as I thrust into her, filling her all the way to the hilt. I gripped her hips as I began pumping into her, the sound of her moans spurring me on. The noises of pleasure and of breathy sighs and whimpers and flesh slapping on flesh filled the air around me, a beautiful symphony that only we made together and one I’d thought I would never hear again.
“Come for me,” I growled, sliding a finger into her ass the way I knew she liked and pressing against the sensitive spot just inside there. “I need to hear you come again.”
“Oh God,” she gasped as I fucked her even harder, her entire body vibrating with the motion.
I watched as the orgasm hit her while she threw her head back and cried out to the heavens, her inner walls pulsating around me, and it was all too much. I felt the wave of my climax approach, and my entire field of vision went white, hitting me with the force of an oncoming car. Colors exploded in front of my eyes, swirling kaleidoscopes, seeming to coalesce into two separate figures drawn together like magnets and then merging as one, drawing all the colors into a big sphere that eventually burst into shimmering light.
I knew immediately what the light show meant from what a shifter friend had explained to me about what happened to him when he found his mate and what Gunner had detailed to me when he first had sex with Celine.
It’s a sign that Olivia is my true mate.
But I’d already figured out that shit years ago. The kaleidoscope of lights just confirmed the fact.
Groaning, I came, crying out her name in release.
When we were done, we both collapsed on the grass, breathing hard.
“I guess we’re not returning this picnic blanket,” I joked, using it to dispose of the condom and to wipe my hands.
“I have a feeling they weren’t expecting it back anyway.” She turned her head my way and smiled contentedly. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, strands of it stuck to her flushed, sweaty face, but she was radiant, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen someone so lovely.
“You’re beautiful,” I murmured, leaning down to kiss her. “So incredibly beautiful.”
We lay in the grass for a long while before the breeze began to take on a chill,
forcing us to don our clothes.
“Guess we ought to head back,” she said, packing up the picnic basket. “Those clouds coming in might rain on us soon.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed the picnic basket and blanket with one hand. Then I took her hand in my other and led her back down the path. “We should beat the rain if we get going now.”
We walked beneath the canopy of trees in comfortable silence for a long while before Olivia spoke. “I was thinking about what you said earlier . . . about the ham and local meat and stuff. And it sounds to me like you’ve been here before. Am I right?”
“Well, not here, specifically, but yes.” I nodded. “I was stationed in St. Albans in my second year in the Army. Stayed there nearly two years before I was reposted in New Mexico. New Mexico was one of my favorite places, I have to admit.”
Her eyes softened. “Would you have eventually chosen to come back here on your own?”
I looked out onto the water, considering. “Maybe. Probably,” I said. But I wasn’t sure that was the truth. Wasn’t sure I would have been content to leave Olivia forever, even if all I’d been able to do in Chicago was watch her from afar. “But I would have missed Chicago.”
She frowned now, her eyes suddenly dark. “You never should have come back.”
I was taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. “Now, look, I know you’re upset about the way things turned out—”
She shook her head forcefully, cutting me off. “I saw what the Outfit was doing to you,” she bit out, ripping her hand away from mine in a motion that hurt far more than the bite in her tone. “The way it was eating at your conscience and your morals and the danger you were putting yourself in. I couldn’t let you do it to yourself anymore. So, why, after all the hard work we put into getting you out, would you insult everything we did by coming back?” she shouted. “I just don’t understand it, Eli.”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping. I knew Olivia was right. She was the one who had come up with the plan for getting me enlisted in the Army to get me out of the Mafia. Something I never would have considered had she not been so insistent. I’d never wanted to leave her, but the truth was that it had been best for the both of us. Her father never would have condoned our relationship had he found out about it, and the mob life had been taking a toll on our connection as well. We had been secretly seeing each other in high school, and we were passionately in love with each other. But we had to hide our relationship from her parents because they had labeled me as a no-good street thug. Touching Olivia after I’d had blood or drugs on my hands was never easy, and the knowing look in her eyes always told me she knew the hands that touched her were soiled by unspeakable acts. The fact that she’d allowed me to continue to touch her was as true a testament to her love for me as anything was.
“You know my mother died a few years ago, right?”
Olivia frowned. “No, no one ever told me.”
“Well, I was abroad when it happened,” I said in a clipped voice. “She died very suddenly from a stroke, and I was in the middle of a war, so I didn’t hear about it until months later. By that time, she’d already been buried, and I wasn’t in a position to come home.” I scrubbed a hand across my face. “I know I could have gone anywhere, but when I got out, the first place I came to was my mother’s grave to pay my respects.” Old grief and anger welled up inside me, but I choked them back. “I should have been there for her when she passed,” I whispered. “Not off fighting a war I never even believed in.”
“Oh, Eli.” Olivia stopped on the trail and pulled me into her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
As she stroked her hands up and down my back, I remained rigid, unwilling to let the emotion spill forth. But eventually, I relaxed into her arms and buried my face in her hair, allowing the grief to drain out of me.
“I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I said gruffly, but there was no malice in my words. “You’d moved on from my life to live your own. I didn’t expect you to keep tabs on my mother.”
Olivia pulled back, shaking her head. “You know I never really forgot about you,” she said, reaching up to place her hand against my cheek. “I used to hope that maybe, one day, I’d run into you during my travels,” she said, a blush stealing across her cheeks as she glanced away. “That maybe I’d see you in your Army fatigues, looking all dangerous and sexy, and we’d fall into each other’s arms again and run off into the sunset, away from the Outfit, my father, and everything else.”
I chuckled, touched by her admission. “That’s got to be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said.
I turned my head so I could press a kiss into the heart of her palm. She smiled then, and a weight lifted from my shoulders that I hadn’t known was there. A weight of grief, guilt, and shadows that had evaporated as soon as I cleared the air between us.
“Let’s head back,” I said, taking her hand in mine again. “If we make it in time, we can watch the rain from the windows and sip some hot chocolate.”
She grinned. “Boy, you sure do know how to show a girl a good time.”
CHAPTER 15
Eli
I CAME AWAKE VERY slowly to the sensation of a naked woman in my arms, the curve of her bottom pressed into my groin and the swell of her breast nestled gently in my palm. It took my sleep-muddled mind a moment to work out that it was Olivia, and I smiled, my heart swelling with happiness that, in the back of my mind, I knew I didn’t deserve.
Closing my eyes, I dipped my head farther into the crook of her shoulder and took a deep, greedy inhale of her sweet, spicy scent, squelching the tiny voice warning me that I shouldn’t be getting close to her, that we would be better off parting ways—for her own safety as well as mine.
She deserved a man with an untainted past. One who could provide for her and give her the house with the white picket fence and the backyard pool where she could play with her children or host gatherings fellow soccer moms could attend and be green with envy over her perfect house, perfect children, and perfect husband.
But I knew if I ever met that man, I would pummel him into a bloody pulp and ship him back to Perfectville before Olivia could fall in love with him. My wolf wouldn’t allow anything less. My beast and I were head over heels in love with her, plain and simple.
Keep her, my wolf rumbled in a rare moment of vocalization. She belongs to us.
She stretched in my arms, pressing her bottom more firmly against me, and my cock sprang to life, chasing any thoughts of argument out the window. Growling, I nibbled at the junction of her neck and shoulder and was rewarded with a half moan, half giggle that was utterly adorable.
“I’m guessing you’re awake?” she teased.
I snatched a packet from the nightstand, tore it open, and covered my cock with the latex before lifting her left leg and sliding inside her.
“Seems that way,” I murmured to her before tracing the shell of her ear with my tongue. I bit down on her earlobe, sucking on the sensitive flesh as I thrust in and out of her at a leisurely pace, enjoying her breathy sighs of pleasure.
“Touch me,” she whispered, catching my fingers in her hand and guiding me to the V between her legs.
My fingers dived obligingly into her folds, seeking out her nub of pleasure until she let out a soft, mewling cry that told me I’d found her source of bliss.
“You’re so sexy,” I growled as I stroked her in time to my thrusts. “I want to hear you come.”
“Oh God, Eli,” she crooned, moving herself closer against my cock and then pushing up against my hand in a rolling motion that seemed to hit all her sweet spots. “Yes, I’m going to come.”
“Do it,” I ordered, pinching her clit between my thumb and forefinger. “Let me hear you. Now.” I smiled as the first shudder rolled through her, and my wolf rumbled in satisfaction as she cried my name over and over again. “Yeah, that’s it, baby. You’re so hot,” I whispered roughly against her ear, turning so I was pressing her into the m
attress again. “So beautiful.”
CHAPTER 16
Olivia
ELI MOVED ON TOP of me, his face just inches from mine. A breath breezed over my neck and shoulders before his mouth lowered to meet mine. I opened my lips, my tongue wanting to tangle with his, to taste his sweetness, a mix of honey and dominant masculinity.
He moaned into my mouth, a muffled cry of desire, and I shuddered at the delicious sound of his need for me. His broad chest lowered against me until I thought I’d suffocate from the weight of him, but he kept me secured in his embrace, his hands reaching out to pin my wrists to the bed.
“You’re all mine,” he growled into my ear. His teeth nipped the sensitive ridge of my lobe. “All mine.”
With that, he slid his cock deep inside me with one rough push, and I cried out as he filled me.
“Eli!”
He groaned, seeming buoyed at the sound of his name on my lips, and he pushed harder, his cock buried deep inside my tight, aching pussy.
“Fuck me, Liv,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with intense heat, locked on my face.
I gyrated my hips in a slow motion, taking in everything he gave and giving it back.
“That’s my girl. Yeah, that feels amazing.”
I wanted the moment to last forever, but I was close. Too close to continue crawling along the edge of glory. I sensed myself getting lost in his eyes, and in that moment, the world stopped turning. All that mattered was the unshakable connection I felt when I forgot all the reasons Eli was no good for me. I saw my future. An eternity of blissful happiness. A world in which Eli brought me more joy than I had ever felt in my entire life.
The father of my children.
My mind raced as a series of images flew through my head, unstoppable, uncontrollable. I shut my eyes, trying hard to hold on to the distance I had worked so hard to maintain between us. That last wall, the one that protected my heart, came tumbling down, crashing into a million pieces, and as Eli lowered his mouth to mine once more, I realized I had never stopped loving him. I never, ever would.