by Cherrie Lynn
Settling himself between the open cradle of her thighs, he guided himself to her entrance, nudging into the impossibly tight ring of muscle. Her eyes flew open and she stared up at him, her bottom lip quivering. That lip was too pink, too swollen, too tantalizing. He leaned down and lined it with the very tip of his tongue, drawing it between his lips to nibble it. Against the engorged tip of his cock, he felt her flare open the tiniest bit, the remaining aftershocks of her orgasm reaching for him. It almost sent him over the edge.
“Can I have it, baby?” he whispered.
She gave the briefest of nods, which caused her mouth to slide over his. “Yours.”
“Mine.” He gathered strength in his hips, slid forward against her resistance. It gave, and her fingernails dug into his shoulders as her eyes fell closed again. “No, open them, Candace, let me see you.”
She did, and like some kind of psychic vampire he fed on those emotions flashing through her gaze. Pain, fear, love, determination, astonishment, surrender…oh, God, the sweetness, the rapture…
“Fuuuck,” he groaned, pulling back. The first hot, swollen inch of her had fisted him so tight he lost his breath. He’d been worried about her, but what a hell of a debacle this would be if he couldn’t go on.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, moving her hips, seeking to rejoin him. “You aren’t hurting me.” If only she knew how much she was hurting him. That soft, wet oblivion opened to him again and he sank forward, a groan tearing from his lungs, and she took his entire crown, engulfing his barbell so that he felt the tug all the way through his shaft and up his spine. She gasped as it slipped inside, caressing her upper and lower walls. Caught in her tight squeeze, he struggled to maintain control, to not go too deep too soon.
Her thighs went tight on his hips, the strong muscles hindering his advancement. “Spread your legs wider, let me go,” he said, staring into her beautiful eyes. She did, only to clamp them hard again when he pushed. “Is it starting to hurt, baby?”
“I…”
“Talk to me, so I can make it better.” And get his mind off his own desire to plunge wildly into her.
“Overwhelming,” she breathed. He withdrew, holding his cock and gently teasing her clit with his lower bead until her face muscles went lax with pleasure.
“Ohh,” she moaned, her legs falling open again.
“Better?”
She nodded. “But I want you back inside me.”
Fuck, he loved this woman. His cock glided down through her slick petals and slid almost effortlessly into her pussy again. So, so wet. She was just finding it difficult to stretch around the broadest part of him. “I want that too, baby, so much.”
He kissed her, slow and soothing, picking up a quick, barely-there rhythm with his hips. Too much of this and he was going to blow his top way too soon, but it was the only thing he knew to do to help her. “Relax for me, take me deep. You said you want me there.”
“Oh, yes…”
Sweat broke out across his shoulders as he increased his force by tiny increments. “Think about getting the tattoo, how it stung, how you didn’t know if you could do it at first, and how beautiful it was afterward.”
“That turned me on so much. I was afraid you could tell.” Her voice was strained, but he loved that she was trying so hard.
“I could.” He gave a little shove deeper, wrenching a gasp from her and an answering groan from him. “All I could think about was ripping off my gloves and stripping you down right there.”
“I wanted you to.”
“I’m here now, baby. Right here. I want you just as much as I did then.”
“Brian, please, I need you. Just…just do it.”
“You don’t need me to be rough this time.” His rocking motions were carrying him deeper even as the orgasm built up in his shaft, drawing his balls up tight. His heart was like a jackhammer in his chest. He needed to pull out and catch his breath before he embarrassed himself, but he was deep enough that the long drag out of her body might be his trigger. So he stopped, braced up on his arms, panting and trying not to look at her. Another trigger might be the sight of her loveliness pinned beneath him, all spread out and open to him.
Who was he kidding? She was his trigger. He was loaded and ready to fire at the first hint of pressure where she was concerned.
She whimpered and shifted impatiently under him, and he quickly pressed a hand flat to her stomach. “Don’t move.”
She was so damn obedient, she actually listened. He let his thumb wander down to her clit, stroking the stiff bud and feeling her internal muscles clench around him reflexively. “Shit, Candace.”
“I can’t help it, you do this to me. I need you. I lo—” She broke off, and he did look at her then, silently begging her to complete that thought. Please, please… But she only licked her lips and skimmed her hands over his biceps.
Maybe she’d only been about to say she loved how he made her feel, or she loved being with him, or she loved puppy dogs. Fuck. There was no way a girl like her should be falling for a guy like him. But that didn’t stop him from wanting her to. God, how he wanted her to.
He moved his hand and lowered himself over her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close to his body. “Grab me and hold on tight.”
Her soft arms snaked around him and her legs locked around his waist. He blew out his breath and pushed. Her gorgeous mouth opened as her body did, yielding, allowing him deeper. Her head tilted back on the pillow, exposing the graceful column of her throat, and he couldn’t resist sinking his teeth into the side. She shuddered, and he was dimly aware that her fingernails dug into his back harder with every luscious inch of her that he gained. He stopped his motions, pulled out in one delectable slide, pushed all the way in to the hilt.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, more of a prayer than a curse. She was paradise. Fucking nirvana. What breath he had was wrenched from his lungs. That hot sheath wrapped so tight around him, muscles stretched and quivering around his girth as she held him in her depths…
Candace ran her tongue over her lips, her blue eyes staring ravenously up at him despite the tears streaking her cheeks. Shit. She was about to eat him alive and request seconds. He knew it.
“You did it,” he murmured, managing a weak smile for her. He brushed at a droplet shining at the outside corner of her eye. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m more than okay.”
“Now tell me what you want me to do.”
“Move,” she said, sounding desperate. She made a little rocking motion with her hips.
“What happened to getting dirty?”
“Fuck me,” she all but snarled at him.
“That’s my girl.” Slowly, he withdrew, watching her face intently. She sighed, her eyes rolling back as her lids fell closed. When he was just about to slip out of her tight channel, instincts broke through and he shoved back in, fierce and deep.
She moaned, her knees lifting at his sides. “Please, please, please…”
“Like that?” he whispered, doing it again. Filling her up quick and hard, dragging out slow. A rosy glow was spreading up her cheeks, and she arched her breasts against him so that the hard peaks of her nipples grazed his chest as he moved. “Or how about this?” Rolling his hips rhythmically, he set a slow, fluid pace.
“Mmm, that’s…ohhh, Brian.”
Gauging her breathy moans, he found her sweet spot. Whenever his bead brushed it, she gasped and shuddered and clutched at him, so sensitive. Giving her time to get used to the sensation, he gradually decreased his movements until he was working that spot back and forth, until her sighing, staccato groans were musical with her pleasure.
“You’re the sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” he rasped, hearing how savage he sounded. He’d always been prone to letting crazy shit tumble out of his mouth during sex, things he sometimes didn’t even remember later, and he almost dreaded what she might tear loose from his soul without his permission.
Her tongue sw
ept over her plump lips, leaving them glistening. Her arms tightened around him. She whimpered his name. More tears squeezed out from between her closed eyelids.
“I can’t wait to watch you come this time. Oh, my God. You’re going to take me with you when you do. I wish we didn’t have anything between us, I wish I could fill you up.”
Her brow furrowed hard, lines appearing between her delicate eyebrows. The muscles in her thighs went rock hard. He knew it was coming, could feel it in the way her slick heat contracted around him. Her groans formed into words: his name, curses, deities. He abandoned his rhythm, gave her one long, hard stroke and sent her flying.
It was no effort to let go and join her. His release had been poised in his shaft from the moment he’d breached her. In sweet relief and a rush that made the room spin, he drove her through her climax and flooded the condom tip, sorry that he couldn’t let it loose inside her, couldn’t leave her with a part of himself this time. That urge had never been so desperate before.
Shaking all over, he collapsed over her, careful not to crush her with his weight. She felt so fragile beneath him. Burying his face in her damp, sweet-smelling hair, he breathed her in and simply basked in the afterglow. Her grip on him was still as fierce as it had been during the throes of her orgasm, and she muffled her little sobbing sounds by pressing her mouth tight to his neck.
“All right, baby doll?” he whispered, lifting a bit so he could find her lips with his own. He didn’t want her to suppress those sounds. He wanted to drink them up. She sighed as he kissed her, her warm, minty breath playing across his mouth, and she settled to stillness in his arms as if his kiss alone had soothed her.
He didn’t know what to do with this much love being thrown at him. He wasn’t used to it. Sex to him had always been about two people getting off on each other. This was a whole new world.
Yeah, he was a sap, and he didn’t give a fuck anymore.
Only reluctantly did he withdraw from her, turning away to dispose of the condom. Her blood streaked it, and he froze. He, who was supposed to be an expert at talking people through painful procedures endured for the greater good, was momentarily rattled.
What if he’d hurt her more than she let on? It wasn’t any surprise to see the bloody remnants of her innocence on him, but he still felt like a slimy bastard. He’d gotten rough in the end. She might bring out the animal in him, but he could’ve at least tried to keep the fucking beast caged until she was more accustomed to this. She deserved to hear everything he had to tell her.
He left the bed and came back with a damp washcloth, his thoughts in turmoil. Candace lay with her eyes closed as he snapped off the lamp and crawled back under the covers with her, loving her intake of breath when he gently slid the washcloth between her legs. “Better?”
She turned her face into his shoulder, the shyness in the gesture inciting a whirlwind of fierce protection in him. “Mm-hmm.”
“I love you,” he murmured. There was no stopping it. He might as well have commanded the wind not to blow, such had been the need to not hold back anything from her at that moment. “I think I always have.”
As far back as he could remember, he’d never uttered those words to a woman. He couldn’t even recall the last time he’d said them to his mother. And here they’d fallen out of his mouth and he didn’t even have the throes of ecstasy as an excuse.
Well, maybe he did. He was still in them.
“I love you too,” she said, simple as that.
There was no doubt in his mind about her sincerity, even if she hadn’t been able to say it earlier. Her heart, her vulnerability, her fear…all of it had been right there in her eyes. She could break him down with a single look.
He stroked her hair back from her forehead with his free hand, propped up on his elbow. “I am so sorry I hurt you. All the way back to when we first met, I am sorry for anything I ever said or did that might have caused you even a moment’s displeasure.”
“Brian, you haven’t done anyth—”
“No, I have. Even being with Michelle when I should have been with you all along.”
“Don’t apologize for that. She liked you a lot. You liked her too.”
“She didn’t brighten the whole room for me when she walked in the door. She didn’t make my whole day better just by smiling at me, or make me ask myself what she would think of me when I said or did something shitty to somebody. She wasn’t the one who made me want to get off my ass and do more, be a better person. Only you’ve ever done that, sunshine.”
Even in the darkness, he knew she smiled. “I missed hearing you call me that. I had no idea you felt that way about me.”
“I am out-of-my-head crazy about you.”
They fell silent as she nipped little kisses across his chest. He contemplated dozing until her voice drifted through the pleasurable haze in his mind.
“Brian… I have to tell you something.”
Oh. Shit. The way her voice had darkened from its sweet coo didn’t bode well. If she was about to trot out some line about how she had feelings for him, but this had just been about sex or getting back at the parental units or whatever-the-fuck else, he might as well take a sledgehammer to his own skull right now and get it over with. “What?”
“Deanne’s wedding was today.”
Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. “Weren’t you supposed to be in that or something?”
“I was supposed to, yes. I left last night after the rehearsal dinner, and didn’t tell anyone where I was going. And then I saw you this morning, and…here I am.”
Christ, she should have said something. He never would have—
Exactly. If she’d told him she couldn’t go with him, they would still be right where they were before. He wouldn’t have wanted that for all the world. “No one has any idea where you are?”
She shook her head, looking miserable.
“No wonder Michelle called me twice today.”
Candace stiffened in his arms. “She did?”
“Yeah, at the concert. I let it go to voicemail both times, and I never bothered checking the messages.”
“Don’t check them, please. I don’t want to know what’s going on. I don’t want to ruin this.” She sighed. “I hope you aren’t mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad?”
“Because I was afraid you might have been thinking that everything was fine and people knew I’d come here with you and were okay with it. But as usual, it’s not fine at all. I’m going to try to keep you out of it as best I can, but when I get back I’m going to be facing—”
“Don’t you dare keep me out of it. I want to be right there at your side when you go home. I want them all to know where you’ve been.”
“And I was afraid you might think I was a wimp for running away from my problems instead of facing them. Brian, I couldn’t. Deanne paired me with that guy I told you about, the one who cornered me at the party. Mom even invited him to our lake house this weekend. I ended up in a huge argument with everyone. So, wimpy or not, I ran. I couldn’t take any more.”
“I get it, sweetheart.” His vision was washed with a red haze at the thought of that douche bag trying to get his hands up her skirt all weekend long. Hell, no. That shit was over with, as of this moment. She was his, and no one hurt what was his. “I don’t want you to worry about it. I’ll be there, and I’m not going anywhere. We’ll stay gone however long you want, in fact.”
“I have to get back tomorrow. I have finals starting Monday.”
“Shouldn’t you be studying?”
“I’ll be okay. And I know there are other options out there for me, so I don’t give a damn what they think or do anymore. But I’m so used to them taking care of everything. I’m scared.”
“It’s scary for anyone. You just buckle down and get through it. But in your case, I’d wager it’s mostly their fault for sheltering you so damn much.” He gently stroked her face with his thumb. “All locked up high in y
our tower. I want to rescue you.”
“Like a knight in a fairy tale?” Her voice was quivering, and he wondered why. Here he was trying to be all white-knight dashing for her…
“Yeah, sweetie. Just like that.” He kept soothing her, rubbing her back, tracing the line of her nose with the barest brush of his lips until he felt her relax.
“That’s what I’ve always dreamed of. What I’ve always wanted.”
“Well, that’s good. You’ve got it now.”
“But what I’ve realized lately is that as much as I’ve fantasized about the fairytale, and wanted it to be you, what’s become most important to me is getting to a point where I’m able to save myself.”
He probably had no business being proud of anyone. It sounded condescending, and he was certainly in no position for that. The emotion that swelled in his chest for her was more like reverence. If she would keep him around so he could watch her spread her wings and fly, it would be enough. But he wanted to be right by her side. “I’m there in whatever capacity you need me. Savior or cheerleader, whatever. I’m flexible.”
“God, I love you,” she whispered, tilting her head so that she captured his mouth with hers.
Let tomorrow take care of itself, he thought. She might have left a clusterfuck waiting back home, but tonight, they only had each other. And her lips were so sweet against his, he could have eaten her alive.
In fact, that sounded like a damn good idea.
Chapter Seventeen
His friends were going to take one look at her and know, but Candace didn’t mind. In fact, it gave her a wicked little thrill.
Every time she moved, she felt him. He’d left a raw, aching fullness between her legs that kept her on the verge of arousal even when he wasn’t anywhere near her. Whenever she sat, she found it hard to resist grinding her hips in tiny circles to drive the sensation deeper, to send aftershocks through her body.
The faint pink mark of possession he’d left on her neck when they’d been waiting in line after the concert was plainly visible when she was wearing this tank top. She loved that it was there…even if her mom would have called her a trashy whore. The thought made her chuckle, though it was grim.