“Is it okay, Laurel, if I lick your pussy?”
She whimpered, forcing out a breathless “yes.” Her hands flew to the edge of the desk on either side and gripped hard, as if she would fly off the glossy surface the moment his mouth touched her again. “Just please don’t make me ask you for it.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t dare.” He leaned in closer and kissed the inside of her thigh, tingles zipping and firing in all directions. “But…” Another kiss, this one on the opposite leg. “…you are going to have to demand it. Tell me to lick your pussy.”
She groaned. “You’re maddening.”
“And you’re going to say the word ‘pussy’ or spend the rest of the evening enduring the endless torture of wishing you had.” His eyes zeroed in on her and glinted. He was teasing, of course, and she knew why. Get her to relax, to step out of her box. She doubted he truly expected her to say it.
Any other time the word “pussy” would have her cringing. But coming from Micah’s mouth, in his low, sexy tone, had her spitting out the words before she could think twice about it. “I want you to lick my pussy and suck my clit and make me come hard and fast on your mouth.”
Way more than he’d planned, obviously, by the way his eyes grew rounder. A turn on, too, by the devilish smile that followed. His hands flattened along the base of her back. “I won’t let you fall. Spread your legs wider.”
She could hardly breathe because those words made the sweet spot between her legs swell. She did as he said, propping her ankles on his shoulders and letting her knees fall outward. Bared completely for his taking. And that’s exactly what he did.
First a tender trail of kisses then a soft lick, and once his mouth covered her entirely and his tongue darted between her folds, the threat of bursting from the inside out weaseled closer.
His tongue plunged in and out of her, swirled around her sensitive nub then plunged again, and the combination of sensations had her panting in mere seconds. “Tell me how it feels,” he demanded against her flesh. Teeth grazed lightly. He sucked her nub hard.
It felt so good, there was no way she could manage speaking at that moment. Her lungs seized and released, her words shaky as she said, “It’s like my body is flying and falling all at once.” Normally with an orgasm so close, talking would’ve halted all forward movement, but telling him what her body was doing in the very moment she was about to spill over the edge slammed the wash of pin-prickly pleasure into her tenfold.
She gasped, and then rode the wave until her body went limp.
Slowly he lowered her to the desk. Her eyes closed, the jangle of his belt buckle echoed in the room, then the brush of denim along his skin, and she grinned. Him inside of her, fully and completely…yes, that was what she wanted.
The crinkle of foil came next, and then his hands were on her, dragging her to him. He positioned the head of his massive erection at her opening and looked down with dominant, hooded eyes—eyes that said he would own her the instant he slid inside of her—and grinned.
“Think hard, Laurel. Are you sure this is what you want?”
Hard.
Want.
Sure.
“Positive,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. She wound her fingers around the base of his penis and tugged gently, holding tight against him as—millimeter by millimeter—he entered her. Once buried to the hilt inside her, he held still, giving her a moment to adjust, but more a moment to relish the sweet wave of chills that rose up all over her body. One thrust, and he’d found that sensitive spot.
The one his tongue couldn’t reach earlier.
The one that was impossible to find with some men.
As if to put an exclamation mark on that fact, Micah pumped once then paused back where he’d been, hot, sharp tingles jolting out from her core. Her insides contracted at the same time her hands gripped the edges of the desk. Her mind was telling her to do one thing, her body another. But she couldn’t hear what either of them was saying because that feeling in between her legs overpowered…everything.
Micah planted his hands on the desk, one on each side of her, and ran a trail of kisses along the valley of her breasts before taking them fully into his mouth, one at a time. The pressure inside her short-wired her senses until all she could see, smell, and feel was him.
Drowning… It was like she was drowning in everything that was him, yet it was his arms that held to her tight, his hands now on her cheeks, fingers threaded into her hair. He took her mouth with his, traced his tongue over her lips until they parted and he dove in. Below, his body started to move simultaneously, a delicious friction forming with the effort.
Her hips matched his movement as much as they could under the weight of him, tiny gasps of pleasure fluttering off her lips each time he buried himself farther inside her. In his arms, surrounded by him, overwhelmed by him, she felt…she felt…safe. Like he would never let anything in the world happen to her.
Her heart cracked at that thought, and the rest of her body let go completely. As if her cells knew they were safe to open and explode and release. She trembled. Shuddered. Then relaxed into the hard surface of the desk. Dear Jesus, how am I ever going to recover from this?
Strong arms scooped her up and carried her to the desk chair. Micah sat, straddling Laurel’s legs over him. He took her breast into his mouth and whispered around it, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met, Laurel.”
A small laugh shook her chest. “Do you say that to all the girls who straddle you in the back office of your bar?”
Both his hands planted firmly on her hips, his fingertips pressing into her skin. Leave a mark on me, Micah. That way I’ll know this is real. “You’re the only person I’ve ever brought back here,” he said. “So I guess that means yes.”
His words, and the relaxed look of his face as he said them, filled her. Consumed her. And she wanted him to feel what she just had. The going under. Being entirely overwhelmed by a single person. So that was what she did—fixed her arms around his thick neck, pressed her breasts in his face, and rode the shit out of him until he grabbed hold of her, pumped hard into her, and called out her name.
They sat in the silent room for a moment, catching their breath and waiting for their heart rates to return to something that didn’t feel like it was being propelled by something illegal. Micah didn’t say a thing, and after a few minutes he stood, lifting her to her feet. He found her clothes and helped her into them, and once she was dressed, he took her face in his hands.
His soft, wet lips fell on her neck, both sides of her jaw, and then her forehead. Finally, he looked down into her eyes for a long moment, then leaned in and pecked her lips delicately.
She blinked, his fingertips feeling as if they were touching her with the sensations of a hundred thousand million hands. But it wasn’t his touch that knocked into her like a timbering tree. It was the thought that came just before he let go.
I think I’m falling for you, Micah.
It was way more intense than he’d expected—having Laurel fully. Completely. Up until now, messing around with her had just been like scratching an itch; satisfying, but he’d forget about her the minute she left at the end of summer. But…as he’d helped Laurel into her shorts, then bra, then shirt and watched her straighten everything in preparation to exit back into reality, the more he realized he didn’t want her to leave. Didn’t want her to move on. The time they’d spent together had been slowly gouging a mark into his heart—enough to know that it might be impossible to forget the beautiful doe eyes that stared at him like he was everything in the world.
The thought scared the shit out of him. Up until now, the only thing that had terrified him was failing Shae. Not being the father she wholeheartedly deserved and giving her the best life possible. But now Laurel was here, and every time he thought of her, saw her, touched her, it was like he was losing a war. One he didn’t even know he was fighting. Being with her was like being in a cloud, where everything be
came distorted and fuzzy with no definite edges.
That cloud carried him into the long hours of the night, and once back home, after he’d thanked and paid Mrs. Briggs for watching Shae, then said good night to Laurel as she was pulling her bedding from the basket beside the couch, he collapsed onto his bed.
The Experience seemed to be a success with a better-than-expected turnout and ecstatic partner. They hadn’t calculated their profit yet, but based on the fact that many of their specialty drink ingredients had run dry a good hour before last call hinted to something they’d be smiling over tomorrow.
He lay back on his pillow, the darkness of the room and stillness of the night settling around him. How long had he slept in this room, alone and staring at the ceiling like this? So why did it suddenly feel too dark? Too lonely?
It wasn’t a conscious thought to get up and walk to the edge of his room, but as soon as the door opened and his footsteps padded down the hall, he knew exactly where he was headed.
In the living room, Laurel was already sprawled out in the couch bed with the lights out, the blanket crumpled at her feet, and her arms resting above her head. He couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or not. Wouldn’t have mattered either way.
He approached without slowing, then leaned down and scooped her up into his arms.
“Oh my gosh, what are you doing?” Laurel whisper-shouted with a startled laugh.
Curling his arms upward so her face would be in front of his, he nibbled her lower lip and spun for his room. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought maybe you’d have a remedy for that.” His steps were silent under the echo of his heart beating in his ears.
For a breath of a moment, she stared up at him. Then she ran her fingers down the side of his face, the slight scrape of her fingernails leaving tingles in their wake. “I might be able to come up with something.”
He nudged the door to his room shut with his foot then laid her out on his bed, the loose T-shirt covering her flinging up at the sides, revealing a sliver of milky smooth skin that he suddenly wanted to run his mouth over. He pushed up the material and placed a brief kiss in the center of her stomach, just below her belly button. Then he lowered on top of her and brushed back her hair, looking her in the eyes. “I was thinking,” he said, dropping a kiss onto her jaw, “tonight was the first night off you’ve had since coming here.” He kissed her softly before adding, “And it hardly seems fair that it should have to end so soon.”
Laurel shook her head, not understanding what he was talking about but loving his breath against her face just the same. His hand slid up her shirt and his palm met her skin, continuing upward until he was cupping her breast.
“You must be really worn out, watching Shae day in and day out like that.”
She tried to shake her head, but with her long hair trapped beneath her shoulders it was barely a movement at all. “I’m fine.”
That might’ve been a lie. Watching after a six-year-old 24/7 was more work than she’d anticipated.
His lips left her neck, and he looked her in the eyes. “You’re a bad liar,” he said, tracing the curve of his knuckles over the thin layer of her sports bra. Right over her nipple. “I know how hard it is to watch her. I know how tiring it can be.” He dropped his mouth until it was pressed against hers so gently she hardly even felt it. “I just need to kiss you for a little bit. Then I want you to roll over and get some sleep.” His mouth touched hers again, but the way his lips moved couldn’t even come close to what his words just did to her.
He wants to take care of me?
Whoever knew that could be such a turn-on?
But holy hell, it was so hot.
His hands slipped under the elastic band of her bra, and his mouth covered hers. Each time his tongue slid against hers, it sent her head in a whirling, dizzying spin and stole another bit of her breath. Will that ever get old? The way he steals my ability to think?
He may have just said all they were going to do was kiss, but to her, what they were doing was much more than kissing. His mouth was everywhere. So were his hands. He drove the material of her shirt up above her bra, then moved the bra up too, exposing her breast. His tongue teased her, warm and drawing quiet whimpers out of her.
Running his hand down her stomach and over her tight cotton shorts to her thighs, he—at the same time—propped himself up on his elbow, hovering above her, the weight of his leg dipping the bed between her legs. Fingers reached the insides of those legs and then scraped their way to the material between them and her head fell back and eyes slammed closed and—
Oh. My. God. This is the hottest kiss I…
have…
ever…
had.
He began kneading his hand into her, firmly pressing against her shorts until every inch of her body was—not very silently—begging for him. His mouth slid to her neck and kissed and sucked and nibbled, all in the same spot, as if he was trying to claim it. Claim her. Without moving in any way, he slipped his hand under the waistband of her shorts and over the top of her underwear and if she’d known losing one small layer would have increased the intensity this much, she would’ve requested it minutes ago.
“Fuck, Laurel. You’re soaking wet.” One finger hooked around the edge of her underwear and pulled them to the side. “I need to feel you.”
And then she died.
Or came alive.
She couldn’t even tell as his finger slipped inside her and sounds tumbled off her lips and then as he kissed her gently, muffling all her noises as her body crumbled beneath his hand. The fire that shot through her body was so intense and drawn out that she clung to him, afraid for him to move his hand. Just leave it right there, Micah, and let me sleep with it.
A minute passed, and then another, and their bodies were absolutely still with the exception of their chests rising and falling heavily. Their eyes were still closed and their lips were still touching, but they weren’t kissing. They were just…surviving. Or she was, anyway.
After a few moments, he pulled his hand out of her shorts, kissed her once more on the lips, then rolled her over and tucked her body into his, wrapping his arm around her.
“Wait.” She peeked over her shoulder and asked, “What about you?”
He grinned, his eyes glinting even in the darkness of the room. “I don’t see any need to keep score.” He tugged her closer, the warmth of his body caressing her clear down to her toes. “Now, go to sleep.”
Chapter Eleven
Laurel grabbed her keys then knocked lightly on Micah’s closed bedroom door—the harsh sound against the wood suddenly throwing her back into the memory of being in his office at the bar, pressed up against the door with his body supporting hers. The memory faded into her lying on his bed this morning, when she’d woken up alone, in his sheets, smelling like she’d submersed herself in everything him.
A loud creak pulled her back to the hallway. She blinked. The door swung wide, and Micah’s massive body filled the entire space. A shirtless, tattooed chest stared at her—one that in all the times they’d been together, she’d never seen completely bare. She’d only gotten glimpses of the tattoo peeking out from the collar of his shirt, though the words “and miles to go before I sleep” scripted around the edges of a solid black compass rose wasn’t at all what she’d expected. She was curious what it meant, but at the same time didn’t want to know. Did it have something to do with the fighting?
Instead her gaze traced down his torso, across the muscles that rippled along it, down, down, down over the trio of reddened fist-sized blotches on his left side and then even farther to where those muscles formed a V and disappeared beneath his low-slung jeans. The sight alone made it difficult to breathe, but not because of how appetizing he looked.
“You were punched?” Laurel inhaled through her nose, trying to quell the sudden panicky feeling prickling up from her stomach. So that was why he’d left in the early hours of the morning? To fight?
Micah ran his hand through his hair,
the lifting of his arm revealing two more—and much darker—blotches marring his skin. “That’s nothing you need to be concerned with,” he said, his voice firm, but not as harsh as it had been in the past.
She stepped forward and caressed the side of one finger as lightly as she could over the welts. “Do they hurt?”
He stiffened under her touch. “I’ll be fine.”
Of course he would be fine, they were only welts. But that wasn’t what she’d asked. “I know…but do they hurt?”
His hand covered hers, stilled her movement. She waited for the moment he would shove her hand away. Waited and waited. Then he gently lowered her hand back to her side. “Can’t say they feel good.”
The relaxed look on his face filled her with so many emotions it was impossible to categorize them. She was sad at how unaffected he was by the whole fighting situation. Angry about it too. And beneath that sadness and anger, something thicker and fuller and heavier pressed in on her chest. What would happen to Shae if one day Micah didn’t return from a fight?
The threat of tears stung her eyes. The precious six-year-old, already missing a mother, without a father too? The thought had her speaking before her mind could catch up. “I’m quitting this job.”
“You what?”
She sighed, trying to sort out the thoughts her mind was throwing at her. “You said the money from your side job paid my salary, but if this is the result of you trying to pay me with blood money, then I don’t want any of it. I quit. I’ll finish out the summer with you, because it’s what I agreed to do and I don’t want to see Shae spending the rest of the summer at the bar, but I don’t want your money.”
Brown eyes, darker in the dim light of the apartment, assessed her up and down. Her turquoise sandals. Jean skirt. Up to the simple black tee and arrow necklace, then they landed on her eyes. For a minute he just stared at her, his face an expanse of nothingness. No expression at all. Then he pointed at his welts and laughed as though he knew pain and to him this wasn’t pain. “This also pays Shae’s school tuition. Should I pull her out of that, too?”
A Moment of Weakness Page 13