by Amy Andrews
And, yes, since moving to Credence, they had become friends. His heart pinched and his breath hitched at the thought.
“And right now I’m going to do what friends do for each other, which is get on this bed with you, put my arms around you, and hold you while you cry.”
He didn’t give her a chance to rebuff his suggestion. Just crawled onto the bed.
“Couch, George.”
Wade was used to a plush king bed, and this rock-like double ensemble was definitely not big enough for the three of them. The dog whined but, recognizing the authority in Wade’s voice, shifted away and jumped off the bed, padding over to the couch.
Wade lay back and held out his arm to CC. “Come here.”
She shook her head, wiping at her eyes as she insisted, “I’m really f…fine.” But her voice wobbled and her face crumpled.
“You’re really not,” Wade whispered, shifting closer to slip his arm under her neck and scoop her close.
She didn’t resist, but she didn’t submit, either. Not for a beat or two, anyway, holding herself stiffly at his side, but then she stopped. “I don’t understand why I can’t stop crying,” she said, her voice plaintive and tremulous in the dark.
Wade squeezed her shoulder. “Because he was your father and the rest doesn’t matter.”
The tears came then—again—and she melted into his side, her face turning into his shoulder, her hand landing on his chest, twisting in his T-shirt as, for the second time tonight, she let it all out.
Wade just lay there, staring at the ceiling, letting CC cry, holding her close, his fingers gently stroking her arm as the storm raged inside her. He held her until she’d cried herself out. Held her until she grew heavy against him and her breathing evened out. Held her until his own breathing evened out, and he too drifted into sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
CC’s eyes drifted open some time later. They were gritty, as if they’d been rolled in gravel and shoved in backward, but at least they still opened. She had no idea what time it was, but it felt like hours had elapsed. It was still dark in the room, no light peeked in around the edges of the terrible motel curtains, so it had to be before four in the morning.
Way too early, even for her.
Her lids fluttered closed again, a relief to her aching eyeballs, and she sighed and sunk a little further into the delicious heat surrounding her in the air-conditioned room. There was warmth at her back and a cushiony heat hugging her ass, spreading along the backs of her thighs. It was almost as good as the warm tickle at her nape and the heavy band of heat pressing low against her abdomen.
She sighed and pushed back against it, her ass cheeks finding hardness as well as heat as the band across her stomach shifted slightly, and she vaguely realized it was a hand and fingers.
Not her own.
Wade!
CC’s eyes flew open as the whole evening came crashing back to her in the kind of downer that people took drugs to avoid.
Holy shit.
Wade was in bed with her. Wade was holding her. And, if she wasn’t very much mistaken, Wade was hard. It may have been a while since she’d been this close to a male erection, but it wasn’t something a woman ever forgot the shape of—or the feel.
Sweet mother of pearl.
It felt just like it had in the dream. The dream she’d told him about. CC almost groaned aloud as that particular realization dawned. She’d asked him to never speak of their kiss again, yet she’d just gone and blurted out about the dream.
What the hell had been wrong with her?
Oh…yeah, that’s right—Señor Cuervo had been wrong with her.
She shut her eyes and wished she was still drunk, wished that this awful moment of self-awareness could be put off for just a little bit longer.
Sobriety sucked.
Almost six years of an unblemished record (notwithstanding the kiss they weren’t speaking about) with Wade, and she’d blown it. And not in a small way, either. Oh no, not only had she gotten drunk, puked everywhere, then cried all over him, but she’d told him about the dream.
About the sex dream.
This was bad. Very bad. Although her current situation was probably the baddest of all. Her back squashed into his front, Wade’s…biological reaction to the situation making itself well and truly felt.
Because that was what it had to be, right? He was a man, and she was a woman, and they were spooned together rather intimately. Intimately enough to feel every freaking contour of what felt like a very large package.
She shut her eyes, trying to hold back a tide of need. His erection wasn’t about her, it wasn’t for her, it was just…male biology. Her body didn’t seem to care, though, as the urge to touch the hardness currently cradled between her butt cheeks, to wrap her hand around it, to suck it into her mouth, to feel it buried deep inside her drove her to distraction.
Her stomach muscles contracted. A slow burn kicked to life between her legs. Sweet Lord—she was going to hell.
Her father had just been buried, and Wade, who was her boss, was being very sweet loaning her the comfort of his body. And she was lying here with a gigantic lady boner—far bigger than anything he was currently boasting—getting all hot and bothered over his completely subconscious erection.
Bad. Bad, bad, bad.
But damn it, this was Wade’s fault, too. If she’d managed to get laid some time in the last few years, maybe all that sexual frustration wouldn’t be choosing now to rear its ugly head. Nor would flashes of the sex dream. Like the scrape of his stubble against her breasts and the hot pull of his mouth.
CC’s nipples hardened in Pavlovian response, and she squeezed her thighs together—tight. It didn’t help. If anything, it intensified the tingle growing between her legs, and she shifted a little—a tiny flex of her hips—to try and ease it.
That didn’t help, either. Not with the hard length of him dragging against her in a scandalously erotic way. It felt good. Too damn good. Even through two sets of clothing.
And she wanted to do it again.
CC’s heart thrummed in her chest and battered frantically against all her pulse points as she tried to deny the roar of sexual demand. It surged through her ears, loud and insistent, and flowed thick and heavy through her breasts and thighs and groin.
Stop it, Cecilia!
She ordered herself to cease and desist, to go to sleep. That she was grieving and sad and this wasn’t the answer. Not with this man, anyway. Never this man. But he was big and strong around her, holding her safe and close, his meat cleaver hand possessive on her stomach, and it was making her crazy and it was Wade and her body was not listening to her head.
Her hips flexed again of their own volition, a little more this time. Her stomach contracted at the hard press of him, a ripple of pleasure detonating low and deep, zig-zagging a path to her inner thighs. She bit back a moan, shut her eyes, fought to control her breath which sounded loud and ragged in the night.
Stop! She needed to stop.
It would be all kinds of wrong to rub herself to orgasm against him, even though she was already alarmingly close. Wade was her boss, her sleeping boss. It broke God knew how many workplace laws.
Not to mention her messy emotional state.
Frankly, everything about this was wrong.
She should get up, move away. Go take another cold shower. Stop this before it went any further. Salvage what she could of her pride and her integrity. Her professionalism.
This wouldn’t bring her father back. It wouldn’t make him love her, either. Oh God, the irony. If her father had only loved her, she wouldn’t be making such a fool of herself tonight.
A spike of anger joined the squall of emotions battering her insides, and she pressed back into Wade again before she could think better of it. Just briefly. Just seeking an antidote for the anger in the soothing
intensity of pleasure.
Just one more time.
The hand low on her abdomen tightened as a low, ragged groan brushed against her nape. “Christ…Cecilia…”
CC’s heart practically fibrillated at the ragged utterance. If Wade had said anything else, it would have broken the spell. She would have frozen. Or, more likely, have fled. But her name from his mouth, all hot and gravelly on her neck, was right out of her dream, and before she could check herself, she was turning in his arms.
That was it, just her name uttered like that, and every molecule of common sense fled. In two seconds, her front was plastered to his front and her lips were seeking the heat and press of his lips. She found them in the dark, a low moan escaping as her mouth clashed with his, hot and hard and needy.
Greedy. For more. For all.
He met her with the same level of greed. With a long, deep groan and a thigh, hard and hot and insistent, pushing between her legs just exactly where she needed it, hiking her higher.
CC rubbed herself against the thick intrusion shamelessly, both easing and stoking the burn that she’d ignited when she’d so recklessly started this thing.
For five and a half years, she’d deliberately never thought about kissing Wade. Since moving to Credence, she’d thought of it too damn much.
This was better than anything she’d ever conjured.
He was a master, and she was desperate for more, greeting the sweep of his tongue with the sweep of her own, ceding control and taking it back with each twist and turn of their heads. A low groan rumbled through his chest, and she reveled in it, reveled in the way he rolled on top of her, slipping her arms around his neck and opening her legs.
CC gasped as he settled in the cradle of her pelvis, his erection pressing fully against the roaring ache between her thighs. Their kiss broken, he levered himself onto his forearms placed either side of her head. He was breathing hard. So was she. The intensity of his gaze stripped her bare as his eyes searched hers.
Even in the dark, they pierced her right down to her toes.
“On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you still?”
CC gave a half laugh. Most of the tequila she’d consumed had been flushed down the toilet. “Negative ten. I am depressingly sober.”
He nodded. But if she thought that would be enough for him, she was wrong. He continued to stare at her with grim intensity. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
CC’s heart thudded like a gong. “I know.” And she did know. Her brain knew it full well, but her body had the con.
She sensed the same kind of battle going on inside him. The thick erection pressed into the juncture of her thighs was telling her one thing, the tension in every line of his body, another. He was drawn so taut, CC was amazed his body hadn’t bowed.
“I’m your boss.”
She nodded. Yes, he was. But she wanted this. Hell, she needed this. “I quit.”
She was leaving soon anyway, and she needed this more than her job, more than her professional integrity, more than her pride. Suddenly, she needed Wade more than her next breath. He searched her gaze for a beat or two, and CC sensed that the outcome hung in the balance for excruciating seconds.
He growled low in this throat. “I accept.”
A surge of sexual triumph jettisoned into her system, and CC didn’t wait for him to come to her. She lifted her head off the bed and met him halfway, her tongue storming into his mouth, her hands sliding beneath the waistband of his jeans and his underwear to the hot, taut globes of his ass, pulling him in tighter, pressing him more intimately against her, grinding into him.
“Fuck,” he muttered, the cuss word vibrating against her mouth and filling her head with its promise.
Yes. That was exactly what she wanted. Wade. Inside her. Wade, fucking her.
It may have been a long time for CC, but instinct took over as her hands slipped off his ass cheeks to the hem of his T-shirt, burrowing underneath to the hard planes of his back, lifting the shirt with her, up, up, up until she could pull it off his head. They broke lip contact only briefly as Wade ducked out of the fabric, but his mouth was back on hers, hot and hard, in the next second.
He kissed her like no other man had ever kissed her. Like it was Armageddon eve and they were both about to perish. And perhaps they were, because for damn sure, this incredibly stupid deed would not go unpunished.
But hell if it wasn’t going to be worth her while.
Wade’s big hand was suddenly hot on her thigh as he grabbed the hem of her Broncos shirt and pulled, gathering the material bit by bit, lifting himself off her a little to pull it all the way off. His fingers brushed her belly as he exposed it and then her ribs and then her breasts before he was yanking it over her head and off her arms, tossing it over his shoulder.
“Oh yesssss,” he whispered, all hushed and reverent as his gaze drifted to her breasts. Breasts that were tight and achy and screaming for his touch. “Sweet baby Jesus.”
CC’s nipples tightened at the gleam of pure lust in his gaze before he dipped his head and claimed one of them in a lightning-swift maneuver that stole all the air from her lungs.
She gasped at the hot suction and the flick of Wade’s tongue, grabbing the back of his head, twisting her fingers in his hair. She’d barely had time to catch a breath when he switched to the other, stealing it again, a hot dart of pleasure tunneling beneath her skin straight to the throbbing center between her legs.
Instinct took over then as he drove her mindless with his tongue, her hands feeling between their jammed bodies for his fly, finding it, fumbling the buttons and the zipper as his tongue lashed over the tip of a nipple, finally getting it down, reaching inside his underwear with one hand as the other pushed the denim off his hips.
Her fingers wrapped around his girth, and Wade reared back with a cry as if he’d been whipped. The air conditioning hit her nipples, and they scrunched into engorged buds.
“Fuck.” He shut his eyes and panted as CC ran her palm from root to tip. “That feels good.”
He wasn’t wrong. Wade was long and hard and thick in her hand. It should have frightened the hell out of her, considering her vagina had been a penis-free zone for years now, but she was too damn greedy for it. For him.
And what a way to break a dry spell. With Wade Carter’s very impressive cock.
“I need you in me now.”
He groaned and muttered, “Fuck yes.”
His eyes were glazed as he plundered her mouth, one hand busy between them with her underwear, working them lower. She was busy, too, her hand still firmly wrapped around Wade’s erection as she worked his jeans down farther.
There wasn’t much finesse in their disrobing. CC was sure they looked like two drunken seals as they undulated and twisted, unwilling to stop touching each other for the sake of efficiency. But they got the job done, and then Wade was notching himself at her entrance and she was wrapping her legs around the backs of his thighs and he was bending his head to kiss her as he pushed inside, and then he was filling her and it was everything CC hadn’t known she was missing in her life.
She moaned as he slid in to the hilt, stretching her to capacity, so hard and high inside her CC almost orgasmed from that alone. She was so damn close, and she doubted she’d ever been this thoroughly possessed in her life.
What the hell had she been doing wrong all these years?
He withdrew and slid in again, and she cried out at the intensity of it, and the answering contraction low and deep inside her belly threatened to trigger another and another.
Wade eased away a little, peering down at her, panting hard. “Are you okay?”
Okay? She was the freaking Queen of okay. “Yes…God yes. Don’t stop.” She’d die if he stopped now.
Lucky for her, he didn’t. He just lowered his head and kissed her—hard—his tongue thrusting into her
mouth with every thrust of his hips, driving her quickly, so quickly, to nirvana.
This was what she wanted, what she needed. Him and her like this. His body giving her what she’d been craving since she’d woken shocked and frustrated from that dream. His body taking her away to another place, to another plane, far away from the grief and torment of earthly worries.
CC came lightning fast. She never came this fast. She’d definitely never come from penetration alone. But this was no ordinary night, and Wade was no ordinary lover.
She clutched the cheeks of his ass as hot ripple after hot ripple shredded through her abdomen, her inner thighs, her butt, and the muscles deep inside her that clamped tight around him. She cried out as the ripples swamped her, drowning her in pleasure, breaking their kiss.
Wade buried his face in her neck, hunched himself over her, and fucked her harder. CC wouldn’t have thought it could have gotten any better, but Wade clearly knew what he was doing as she spun higher and higher with every slam of his hips, every pant and grunt and groan from his mouth, until she swore she saw the face of God.
Or whoever the hell it was out there that dished out spectacular orgasms.
And just when she thought it couldn’t get any better and that the fall would soon be upon her, Wade came too. He came with a muttered curse into her neck, his hips snapped to a halt, his glutes like rocks beneath her palms, his biceps bulging and trembling, his face twisted in a paroxysm of pleasure so intense CC’s orgasm surged again as Wade’s hips jerked back into motion and they flew together into the night.
Chapter Nineteen
CC was out of her body so long it seemed like time stood still. It wasn’t until Wade slid from her and rolled onto his back, scooping her against his side, that all her scattered atoms came together.
That was when reality intruded.
She may have been half joking when she told him she quit, but it was time to pay the piper. What they’d done was serious. He had to see she couldn’t keep working for him now.