by Gemma Snow
“Lucas.” The sound of his name reverberated through his whole body and made him ache, made him want, made him press harder into the saccharine sweet pleasure consuming him. “Jesus, Lucas…”
He came awake slowly, taking in the unfamiliar room, the starkness of the white world outside and the least familiar thing of all. It wasn’t exactly new for him to have a woman in his arms. It was new for him to have this woman in his arms, and for a moment all he could do was blink at her. And throb against her sweet, tight ass, because apparently his body hadn’t gotten the memo that last night had turned into today and oh, hey, he’d left his glass slipper behind at the castle.
“You’re being a tease.” Her face was half-buried in the pillow, her voice muffled, but still he heard the husky, needy sound that sent an ache of desire straight to his balls. He could have her three times a day for the rest of their lives and it wouldn’t be enough, and, of course, he wasn’t allowed that.
“I should probably go.” God, when he had he gotten so fucking good at controlling himself? Certainly not last night.
“Don’t you dare.” Even with her face full of pillow down, Ev could command a damn army. More heat. More need. If he didn’t get out of this bed soon he was going to lose himself in her sweet cunt in all of about five minutes.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he managed, his voice actually cracking.
“Then don’t think.” Finally, she turned to face him. Her hair was mussed and spilling over smooth, bare shoulders. Her lips were swollen and so delectable it was all he could do not to reach out and taste her. But it was her eyes, the desperation and need and potent ache in them that very nearly broke Lucas’ control. “Quinn…” She paused. “He had some work to do this morning, but he said the same rules apply.” Now she was actually hesitant and Lucas could have just about kicked his own ass for that. “If you want them to.”
Want them to? As if he wasn’t harder than fucking steel from just sleeping at her side. Want them to—he nearly laughed but caught himself at the last minute. Instead, he moved closer to her, until his cock bumped against her belly and slid up the smooth plane of her abdomen.
“Does it feel like I don’t want you, Evs?” he asked. “Do you think for a moment I don’t want you?”
She sucked in a breath at the contact then shook her head. It was pretty remarkable, that. Ev was just about the strongest person he knew. She walked the walk and she took control of every situation. She had never been a woman to back down from a challenge and he knew exactly how hard she worked to keep her life and her job in neat, organized lines. Ones he’d just thoroughly tangled. But right now, when she looked so utterly disorganized, so full of heat and unleashed need that stoked such a fire within her, Lucas felt like he was on top of the goddamn world.
“What about you, Evvie?” he murmured, asking the question he already knew the answer to. “Do you want the same rules to apply as they did last night?”
She didn’t reply, at least not in words. Instead, she found his hand and guided it from his hip to the apex of her thighs. Slowly, carefully, she pressed his index finger to the heat between her pussy lips.
“Does that feel like I don’t want you?” she asked him, amusement tangling with the evident desire in her voice. “You make me ache, Lucas. God…” She laughed and the sound came out husky and desperate. “Please don’t make me wait. Not this time.”
He didn’t respond. Instead he lifted her chin with his free hand until their eyes met. Desire mingled with humor and something more raw, something that looked a hell of a lot like anguish in those pretty golden-brown eyes. That, he couldn’t fix, not now, not this like. But he could give her what she wanted. He stroked his thumb across her bottom lip before slipping it into her mouth. Ev pulled him back into her mouth instinctively and Lucas groaned at the sight and sound of her sucking his finger. She’d sucked his cock last night, in the throes of erotic haze, but this somehow felt more intimate, more intense than even the feeling of her wrapped around him there.
Of course it feels more intimate. You’re alone.
Guilt seized him for an instant, but it relaxed in a haze of confusion and lust. Yes, Quinn was gone, not there to…to what, chaperone? Give permission? Nothing so trite as that. His absence and their continued contact certainly added to the growing intimacy, but that wasn’t it.
It was morning. It was the next day and Ev still had her fingers wrapped in his hair, tangling and pulling when Lucas freed his digit from her mouth and began to move it down her chest to the hot, peaked point of her swollen nipple. He circled her rosy flesh before pinching the nub between two fingers and squeezing.
Ev arched, pressing his swollen cock more deeply against her inner thigh, and Lucas sucked in a rough breath.
“You like having your nipples touched?” he asked her. He wasn’t usually this vocal in bed, but with Ev the need to demand and control and reassure drove him to the edge. She drove him to the edge.
“Yes…” She hissed out the word when Lucas pinched her with more intensity then bent down to suck her into his mouth. Her breasts were full and so sweet and achingly swollen and he slipped his hand free from the heated apex of her thigh, enjoying her small whimper of disappointment when he did, to cup her other breast in his hand.
“Have you ever come from just having your breasts touched?” he asked, the words spilling free from his mouth before he’d had the chance to think about them. But Ev didn’t appear to mind, not if the twisting of her lithe body below him was any indication. “I want you to come now, baby, just from my playing with your delicious breasts. Can you do that for me?”
When she caught his eye, her face was already wracked with pleasure and Lucas simply grinned and continued his sensual assault on her needy, desperate body, ignoring the near-painful throb of desire in his own. Instead, he set himself to the task of making her buck and arch and moan and grasp the blanket in needy, tangled motions.
“Lucas.” She could scream his name until the day she died and it still wouldn’t be enough to sate the fire deep within him. “Lucas, it’s too much.”
“It’s not enough, baby,” he replied. “Not nearly enough.” He scraped his teeth along her breasts and she nearly shot up off the bed. He’d gotten the impression she enjoyed a little pain to go with her pleasure the night before, but he ached with the driving need to dominate her, to have her at his mercy as he was so clearly at hers.
But not now. Now was for the intimate. Now was actually a goodbye. And that meant not ever.
But even the maudlin thoughts couldn’t distract him from Ev’s climbing moans and he brought his hand up to stroke the side of her breast before administering a light slap. She inhaled sharply, carried by a soft curse, and heat flooded her pussy, spilling a little onto his leg. Damn if that wasn’t about the hottest fucking thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life.
Then he pulled his hand off her breast and slapped the flesh harder, enough to make her grasp at the bed below her with a force from deep within. He did it again, his other hand still tracing and pinching and teasing her swollen nipple when he brought his palm down against her breast. She was bucking in earnest now and he pressed his mouth to hers in a kiss made of savage, carnal desire. They bit and sucked at each other’s lips and tongues and he continued the slow assault on her breast—light, demanding taps increasing in speed until Ev broke off the kiss, arched her back and screamed into the morning air.
“Fuck, Lucas, fuck. I’m…I’m coming…” Her words descended into a tangled bramble of half-curses and moans and he relaxed his fingers on her and let her ride the wave of pleasure until she slowly returned, her body shaking and flushed and a fucking delectable sight.
“You, now.” Her voice was demanding but wobbly and husky nonetheless, like she was holding on to everything she had. Lucas knew the feeling all too well. He pressed up against her, their faces aligned as he put the head of his swollen cock to her wet pussy. God, she was so incredibly wet, and he
knew she’d be hot and tight and capable of making him lose his ever-loving mind.
He kissed her, slow, long, putting all the things he was afraid to say, afraid to acknowledge into that one lingering kiss, and it released so much emotion it overwhelmed him. It overwhelmed Ev too, because when he looked in her eyes, Lucas was surprised to see a sheen of moisture, though he wasn’t entirely sure if that was her or the filter of his own vision. So sweet and hot and tight and waiting for him. Ready for him. He’d been ready for her for so, so long. And now, in a cruel twist of fate, he only got enough of a taste to make him absolutely lost.
“Please, Lucas.” Her words were so raw and needy, he actually complied with her demand, pressing himself into her inch by inch, kissing her while he did, slow and lingering and steady until he’d bottomed out inside her tight little pussy.
“Oh my God.” She stared in wonder at him as her body stretched to accommodate his cock. “Feels so good, Lucas.” She clutched at him like she couldn’t quite find purchase in this carnal ride they were on. This sweet, soft kissing and low voices and desperation, was so much more dangerous than anything they had done last night. It had the power to break him.
Ev had the power to break him.
“Can I move?” he asked her, afraid to say a word more than necessary, lest he spill the secrets he’d been keeping even from himself these long months.
Ev nodded, her mouth pulled taut, her cheeks flushed, her lips swollen. “Please.” Her voice was wrecked. He pulled out slowly until he was nearly free of her body and desperately, wantonly aching to be back inside her. Then he gave in to what they both needed and pressed back in, filling her, feeling the rush of heated tightness around his cock. She squeezed him, accepted him and demanded of him and he gave her all she needed and more.
They rode each other then, clinging tight to backs and shoulders and arms as the heat and demand and need and far-too-close intimacy began to settle like a warm blanket over them. Lucas committed Ev to memory, the feel of her taking him whole, the brush of her soft, swollen breasts against his chest, the taste of her lips on his mouth, the desperation in her eyes that he couldn’t help but feel went deeper than the physical burn between them.
Then there was nothing but that burn and the way her body and his fit tight together, the way she felt wrapping him and how his balls pulled tight and his cock swelled with every new plunge into her body.
“Evvie, I need you with me.” The words pulled taut from the back of his throat. “God, please, baby.”
She clung to him, though he doubted she knew how hard, and now around swollen, bitten lips. “I’m with you, Lucas. I’m with you.”
She shattered on the last, squeezing so tight around his body, coming hard, so fucking hard her pussy seized and swallowed him in rioting pulses, which sent Lucas into a tailspin of aching, bursting pleasure. He lost the world around him, lost the bed and the cabin and the mountains until it was only him and Ev and the chaos of pleasure between them. He burst hard, pulling himself free of her body just before he exploded, painting her belly in his release, sending him into a deep spiral of carnal, possessive lust that wracked him through the aftermath of pleasure.
It took a few moments, but they eventually came back to life, the small cabin filled with the steadying sounds of breathing, and Lucas couldn’t stop himself from pulling Ev close and holding her to his chest. He’d never be able to do this again, and that settled things in his mind.
I need to walk away from this.
A maudlin thought for the glow racing up his spine, and he tucked her head into his shoulder so she wouldn’t see the heat behind his eyes or the betraying flush of his cheeks. He could have her to himself for just a few minutes longer and he’d be damned to hell if he wasted it.
They didn’t speak. Not when Lucas pulled a few tissues from the bedside table and gently, carefully wiped her body clean. Not when he pulled her back into an intimate embrace that kept them closer than they had been all night. With sleepy eyes, Lucas glanced at the clock on the far side of the bed. It was still early. They had time—not much, but they had time. All the rest of it could wait for a little while. With Ev’s head resting against his shoulder, their arms and legs tangled together, Lucas finally closed his eyes and allowed himself to sleep.
Chapter Eleven
Ev woke in a frenzy. The room was unfamiliar and the bed was unfamiliar and the body she was pressed up against was most decidedly not her boyfriend’s, though it was hard and delicious beneath her fingers and she jolted to full alertness to try to figure out what the hell…
What the hell actually summed it up pretty nicely.
It only took a moment for her to get her bearings. Of course, it was Lucas lying next to her, pressing his hard, muscled body into her back, stirring desire inside her even though she knew their time was over, that it had to be over, or she would risk far too much. This had been nothing more than one night of erotic, uninhibited fun and now everything was going to go back to normal.
Jesus, how the fuck can things go back to normal?
Because she’d had Lucas. She’d had Lucas last night and she’d had him this morning and the lust she had been running from for months, the one she had finally indulged in, was no weaker than it had been before. In fact, even one look at his sleepy face, at the brush of kohl-dark eyelashes against his soft cheeks, at the muscled chest bared to the room, and Ev’s desire ran rampant, stronger, more powerful than ever before. She had wanted him, she had had him, and now she knew exactly what he was capable of doing to her.
What they were both capable of doing to her.
Fuck. People don’t do this. This is…
Except people totally did do this. Apparently. Since Maddy and Lily Hollis were both happy as fucking clams with their lovers, their husbands, big masculine men that she would have taken one look at and assumed they wouldn’t be caught within ten feet of another man’s cock, but who had apparently all been more than happy to jump into bed with one woman.
Fuck, I don’t know. She was overwhelmed and frustrated and not really sure which way was up. Goddamn, she studied the vastest reaches of the human psyche for work—albeit, mostly the ones that turned a person into a serial killer—but through her undergraduate and graduate programs and subsequent training with the BAU, she’d been exposed to nearly every walk of life on God’s green earth.
So why the fuck was it so hard to believe that she might actually want…
What? A relationship with both of them? Yeah right.
“I come in peace, Evs.” Quinn’s voice cut through her circular and none-too-helpful self-flagellation of the morning.
She looked up. Quinn wore a dark green and cream sweater over a pair of nicely fitted jeans. The green complemented the lightness of his dark skin and the emerald shade of his amused eyes, and he looked about good enough to eat, especially when he gave her his rare smile. Even in a cozy sweater, Quinn was still all power and control and raw masculinity.
This is nuts. How can I still want more? After all I had last night?
But, God help her, she absolutely did want more.
“What?” It took a moment for the words he’d spoken to settle in and she cocked her head to the side. The motion caused the sheet that had been draped over her chest to slip free, baring her breasts to the cool room. Quinn’s gaze darkened, but the smile never left his face.
“You’ve got a murderous expression on,” he said. “I just said that I come in peace.” He handed over a travel cup of coffee just when Lucas started to stir beside her. Ev tried not to fidget, but her expression must have given away some of the obvious discomfort she felt, because instead of his normal I’ll talk when I’m dead attitude about most of the things in his life that bothered him, Quinn sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her with so much empathy and affection in his green eyes that Ev’s head nearly exploded.
This thing between them, all of them, it was far more complicated than it would have ever been if Quinn had simply gr
abbed a stranger off the street for their erotic night of pleasure. Of course, she would never have gone through with it if he had grabbed a stranger off the street.
It’s only Lucas. It’s only ever going to be Lucas that fits in, just…fits in.
“Brought you coffee,” Quinn said to Lucas, who sat up looking far cuter than he had any right to. His rich skin glowed in the soft light from the winter wonderland outside, proof it was still fairly early, and his dark hair curled around his shoulders, looking mussed and adorable and like she’d been yanking it all night long in the throes of passion.
The truth was a bitch.
“I’m going for a walk,” Ev said, trying to keep her voice to an even keel and missing it by a country mile. She cracked on the last word, practically sloshing coffee on Lucas when she handed him the cup Quinn had just given to her. She was out of bed so quickly the cold floor barely registered below her feet and the brush of fresh winter freeze made her skin actually feel good—her burning, hot, confused skin. As for the rest of her, the weather wasn’t going to do shit where that was concerned, not if the temperature jumped to ninety and Wolf Creek, Montana, suddenly got a heat warning.
“Ev.” God, had he ever sounded like more of a negotiator in the whole time she had known him? Right then his voice made it seem like she was a breath away from setting off a bomb and he was the only thing keeping her from doing so, not like she was about to walk out of the room, the room where…
Where what? Where she had all the potential of setting off a figurative bomb in the most important relationships of her life.
“Don’t…” She pulled a sweater over her head, grateful for the added protection. And it was definitely Quinn’s. Nice. Wonderful. At least she knew she wouldn’t accidentally grab either of their pants, given the significant size difference in asses.