by Cara McKenna
“Good girl. Just like that. Just like that.” Now his hands urged. She took their direction with gusto, spoiling him.
He asked, “Do you like it?”
She freed her mouth and met his eyes. “Yeah, I like it.” She licked his head, making his shaft jerk in response. The power shifted, quick as that. She stroked him slowly, appraisingly, lapped at him again. “You like what I can do to you?”
“Yes.” It was more a hiss than a word, as she took him back inside, deep. He moaned, gathering her hair in both hands. “Like that, just like that. Fuck, you look beautiful. Make me come, darlin’. Please.”
Was it the dirty charm of the darlin’ that got to her, or the needy please? Whatever it was, she couldn’t take him roughly enough. She’d never given head quite like this, so hungry she felt as aggressive as a man must, taking a woman hard from behind.
“Yeah,” he murmured, sounding lost. “Yeah. I think you like that.”
She told him with her mouth, she fucking loved it. She loved this feeling, too, as though she was performing for him, or spoiling him, or just blowing his mind. Pleasing him, and hoping no other girl had ever done it better.
“That,” he grunted when she took him with quick bobs, sucking hard. “That’s it. I’m so close.”
She tasted the truth of those words as his cock primed.
“So close,” he said again. “Will you taste me?”
She didn’t stop to articulate her reply, just told him with her tight, eager draws that she was in this, to the end. And that pushed him over the edge.
He came with a disbelieving moan, his release hot and long and tasting like everything Connor, intensified. When his muscles unclenched and his hold on her hair softened, she drew back, sitting on her heels.
Just like that, the spell of the sex was broken, and though she wasn’t panicked, she felt a ripple of nervous energy course through her.
What happened next? She didn’t know him well enough to guess. Could she stay the night, or would they dress and get on his bike, and end the best date she’d had in ages on Donna’s stoop? Would he leave her in that big, cold, creepy house, leave her unsure if he’d want to see her again? Unsure what he’d think if she stopped by the bar when he was working—if that was too clingy? Too eager? Too—
“You need something to sleep in?”
And her nerves were gone. Toppled.
She nodded. “If that’s okay. My crashing here.”
He smiled as he stood to root through his dresser. “If it’s okay? After all that? You’ll be lucky if I ever let you leave.”
He tossed her a T-shirt and Jamie was grateful for the task of pulling it on—she was embarrassed by how hard his words had her grinning.
Chapter Five
“Are you shattered?” Connor asked. “Or do you want to stay up and watch some telly, or...?”
Jamie couldn’t guess if she was exhausted or wired. “We can watch something, yeah. It’d be a shame to waste those beers. I barely tasted mine.” She pulled on her underwear and called herself dressed, following Connor back into the living room. He’d put on boxers and a tee, and she liked sitting cross-legged on the couch beside him, her knee resting on his thigh, skin to skin. She liked it even better when he put his arm around her shoulders and handed her the remote.
“Pick something really dull,” he warned. “Because if you don’t bore me to sleep fast, I’ll be pestering you again in twenty minutes.”
She smiled to herself, and contrary to his suggestion, she began scanning for anything involving car chases or explosions. She found some kind of police drama, but couldn’t care what was happening on screen. She could only register the hot weight of his arm and subtle scent of their sex, the dull, pleasant soreness in her hips. She could think only of the things they’d done and wonder what might be next. And when next would come. She wanted to do everything with this man. Make him feel everything a woman could give a man, take every experience he offered in return.
His arm shifted behind her, fingers toying with her hair. She leaned into the contact and groaned happily when he rubbed her scalp.
“May I say something to you?” he asked, attention on the TV.
“Probably.”
He pulled away, turning to face her. “I fancy you,” he said, voice suddenly strong and earnest. Not a sentiment he’d yet shown her, but it rang genuine. Rang through her body, bright as a bell. “A lot. If you weren’t flying back home in a week, I’d have...”
“Yeah?”
He took her hand and twined their fingers. “I’d have hoped maybe this would be something. Something more than a holiday fling, for you.”
“You’ve known me a day,” she said softly. But that made no matter to her heart. She felt the same. And it seemed safe to admit the truth—after all, he clearly wasn’t saying these things as a ploy to get her into bed.
He nodded. “I know. I’ve known you a day, and we just had some of the best sex of my life.”
She was frankly shocked her heart didn’t explode with pride.
“Everything’s intensified, obviously,” he went on. “Concentrated. But all that aside, I still haven’t felt this for someone in a long time. Before the sex, even. Just driving around with you, talking over dinner. Sitting across the bar from you last night. But I don’t know—I just feel it. That thing I told you about, that easy thing that makes you want to walk beside somebody, for as long as it lasts.”
“We’ve got nine more days.”
He nodded. “We’ll have to make the most of them, then.”
She looked to their hands. “Thanks for saying all that.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t too much. I’ve had relationships in the past where I felt those things, but buggered everything up because I couldn’t find the bollocks to tell the girl what she needed to hear. Maybe because you have to go soon...maybe that’s why I said it. Because I’m losing you anyway, so the possibility of scaring you off by saying too much isn’t so bad. Or maybe I just don’t want to miss the chance.”
“Or maybe it’s just easier, since we aren’t going to have the time to really know each other.... We’re never going to get to that point in a relationship where we start to grate on each other, or disappoint each other....” Or break promises. She blinked, catching herself. “Sorry. I just went somewhere kind of heavy there. But really—if this had happened back home, and there was a chance of dating you, for real...the stakes would be way different. I wouldn’t be lounging around in my underwear like this, or talking this way. Not after one day. Not even after a week. I’d be measuring whatever I said. Holding back probably, not wanting to be too intense or too easy or too attached or whatever, and scare you away. So yeah, you’re exactly right.”
“We can skip the drawn-out courting,” he said, “since we don’t need to worry about the future. Like we can skip right to the honeymoon while you’re here and just stay there. Never have to face the reality of going home and negotiating all the dull, grown-up shite that goes along with actual marriage. We can live the romance of a lifetime for ten days.”
She squeezed his fingers. “Deal.”
They went back to watching the TV and sipping their beers, but measure by measure, minute by minute, the pitch of it shifted. They were leg to leg, then somehow her legs were flopped across his lap. The fingers that had been flirting with hers were now flirting with her hip, tracing the hem of her underwear, and her own fingers were rubbing idly at his shoulder, under his sleeve. Her lazy breaths had grown heavy and her pulse sped up. She could tell he was feeling the same distraction; his attention was on her, though his gaze was on the screen. His quiet voice broke the wordless stretch as he lifted her legs from his. “Be right back.”
He returned from his room in half a minute, something in his hand. Something square and small and not especially well hidden.
She shot him a dry smile as he sat back down. “Feeling confident, I see.”
He shrugged innocently. “Never hurts to be prepared.”
“In case some sex suddenly breaks out, like a freak rainstorm?”
He laughed. And fuck, what a laugh. “Just in case.”
If they’d been simmering before, now they were bubbling. The tension made the whole pretending-to-watch-TV charade unbearable, especially after Connor hauled her calves back over his thighs. He toyed with her toes, then grazed his fingertips absently up and down her shins.
She grabbed a pillow from his end, sat it against the couch’s arm behind her and reclined. A girl could get used to this—lounging around while a hot Irishman rubbed her legs.
Of course it wasn’t long before the idle rubbing grew more purposeful. In five minutes flat he was kneeling between her calves, massaging her thighs, the touch slipping higher, higher, high enough for his thumb to trace the hem of her panties, then for the backs of his fingers to whisper over her mound. Her clit pulsed and her breath caught. She saw he was hard, and her glance was encouragement enough for Connor. He used one arm to brace himself, then went to work.
His hand slipped between her legs, stroking her boldly through the satin of her underwear. It felt so good she shut her eyes and sighed, giving herself over. The more he gave, the more she wanted, until she was arching into his touch, riding his hand.
She gasped when his thumb tucked under the fabric to pet her clit. Her eyes opened to find mischief on that handsome face along with dark pleasure. He liked doing this to her. Not just the act, but making her crazy. Knowing how to make her crazy. Christ, the bag of tricks he’d surely cultivate if she let him...
“What are you thinking about?” he asked softly. His lids looked heavy now, and he sat back just long enough to grab the remote and mute the TV before going back to work.
“About how smug you look, knowing how to make me crazy.”
He slid all four fingers under the crotch of her panties, fisting it loosely. His knuckles brushed her lips and clit as he ran his hand up and down, up and down. She ground her head into the pillow and her spine curled, hips fidgeting. Begging. His smile was wicked, telling her she was exactly right—he relished torturing her like this.
“You want me?” he asked.
“I bet you can guess the answer to that.”
“I don’t want to guess. I want to hear you say it.”
The hot truth of those words could’ve burned the flat down.
“I want you,” she said.
A tiny, silent wisp of a triumphant laugh. He took his hand away, and she expected that condom to make its debut, but he surprised her. He was moving—off the couch entirely. To his knees. He curved his long torso and put his palms to her hips, telling her to shift, to part her legs for him. His mouth found her through the satin, as shocking as skin on skin. She squeezed his shoulders and let him do whatever he wanted. She felt lips, tongue, teeth. She felt hunger and excitement in the ways he caressed her, and shameless fascination. She let him do what he loved most, and figure her out.
He alternated with his mouth and his hands, and with the torture of the wet satin and a quick taste of his tongue or fingers now and then, when he deigned to slip her underwear aside. He wasn’t on a mission to make her come, even. He was exploring, lingering, experimenting. No rush to get her there and take his turn. Pure play.
Fine for him, but Jamie was going to go insane from all this teasing.
She ran a gruff hand through his messy hair. “I want you.”
“You’re having me.”
“You know what I mean.” She gasped as he slipped the wet fabric aside and lapped her deeply.
“I don’t know,” he murmured, so fucking innocent. “Tell me.”
She held his head as that tongue teased.
“Your cock.”
“Oh,” he drawled, then shocked her with a nip of his teeth. “Oh, I see.”
She gave his hair the softest twist. “You waiting for me to beg or something?”
“Never.” He was up—standing, shedding his tee. He laid it over the center cushion, then ditched his shorts and sat. “Come here.”
She pushed her panties off and obeyed.
It was like their kissing from earlier, only so not. So much skin, and now that scent of rubber as he sheathed himself. They both smelled of sex now, whereas before, on this couch, she’d still been imagining how they might be together.
She settled, his cock sinking deep with a rush of heat, a thrilling sensation of claiming. She stilled, memorizing the moment.
It felt sort of wrong, the texture of the scratchy fabric under her knees, the setting, this room she couldn’t call familiar yet, the uneven cast of the screen’s glow. But Connor—she knew him. Maybe not his middle name or his favorite food or the fondest memory of his childhood, but she knew his body, knew it nearly as an extension of her own. Crazy.
“Ride me,” he said softly, shifting to urge her.
She sought the right motions and he adjusted how he sat, and together they found the perfect angle. He slipped the shirt up her waist, then she raised her arms and let him take it off of her. Warm hands cupped her breasts, closing the circuit that wired her arousal. Again he played, stroking and teasing until he found the caresses that had her frantic, begging him with her motions. Inside her, he felt thrilling. Stiff and thick, hot. And excited, more than anything. No matter how masterful he might seem, this was proof his body was burning up, too.
She changed the way she moved, making it as much for him as for herself, she hoped. Long, slow pulls as she eased back, and she tightened herself as she drew him inside with each stroke. It was working. She could see the flush in his cheeks and feel his palms growing slick against her skin. She brought a fever to his body as surely as he did to hers.
He kneaded her backside and guided her motions, far more desperate than before. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”
“Connor.” Christ, the man could be so sweet to her on a date, then so perfectly dirty. But no matter the flavor, no matter what he was feeling, it was so unmistakably genuine. He was present in everything he felt and had no trouble expressing those things.
“Tell me you like it,” he said, his lips right up against her ear and the words practically on fire. “Tell me.”
“I love it.”
“Love what?”
“Your cock.”
His hips rolled between her thighs, lengthening her strokes, exaggerating the sex. “Can you get there, like this?”
“I think so, yeah.” If she took him at just the right angle, her clit brushed the base of his cock with each push.
“Good,” he said, watching as she found her way. “I want to be that—exactly what you need.”
More than you know. This encounter went so far beyond the mechanics. The fact that it was him excited her more than any beautiful part of his body, any quality of the friction or the newness. It was a fundamental, inherent rightness, as natural as magnets or gravity or summer chasing spring. Unquestionable. Inevitable. But also completely insane, that in some ways she knew him inside out and yet didn’t truly know him at all. Like a perfect stranger she’d known all her life.
His sounds drew her from the thoughts, suspending her in nothing but his low moans and grunts, the noises of a man who’d gone beyond performance and was now at the mercy of the sex itself.
“You close?” she whispered.
“Not till you come.”
“Are you close, though?”
A flustered groan. It drew her arousal into a tight ball, low in her belly. She imagined him losing control before he wanted to, and for some reason the vision had her panting. She took him faster.
Was he kneading her hips, or trying to still them? She couldn’t tell anymore. Didn’t care.
“Not till I’ve gotten you off,” he begged. He was close, then. How tempting. She rode him faster, feeling wicked.
He gasped, then made an angry sound, a sigh of the most desperate frustration. She thought perhaps they were about to turn this into a race when all at once she was on her back. He pushed h
er down, separating their bodies, and knelt between her legs. His cock was slick, standing out thick and ready, but he didn’t give it to her. Instead she got his thumb, moving in tight, slippery circles, her pleasure on such a sharp edge it flirted with anguish. He was so far past teasing now. He wasn’t coaxing this orgasm from her—he was just about forcing it on her.
When she came, it was from the look on his face. She saw every fierce thing a man could feel, and she couldn’t wait to see it all fall apart as he lost himself, watch all that mean determination shatter in a bolt of release. She reveled in that image as she rode out her own pleasure, then coasted on perfect blankness as his slowing fingers drew out every last pleasure pang.
She swore, letting her arm flop to dangle beside the couch.
From above her came a cocky “Mmm.”
“That’ll teach me,” she sighed. Never try to beat Connor Kelleher at his own filthy game.
“Where were we?” he asked, then moved pointedly back to how he’d been sitting. Jamie’s legs were half-limp, her muscles wrung out and lazy, but she got back into position, straddling him.
“Now,” he said against her throat, tongue lapping her skin. “Now you make me come.”
A shiver solidified her wobbly limbs and steeled her determination. She took him as she had been when she’d been hell-bent on making him lose it—fast and rough.
“Like that.” His words echoed everything that had happened earlier. All those things he’d said while she’d sucked him, all those private thoughts falling down from above her, hot as drifting embers. “Just like that.”
His hands were on her butt again, dictating.
“Get me there,” he murmured. “Just like you wanted.”
She leaned into his shoulder and clutched the back of the couch, taking him harder than she’d ever done with a man before.
“Fuck. Like that.”
Like that. A mantra she’d be taking back home with her and chanting again and again as she soothed herself to sleep.
Between her thighs, through the force of her sex, he was coming apart. The hands holding her hips shook, as did his voice when a long moan rumbled up from his throat.