by Stacey Lynn
“Of course.” While he led the horses away, I stepped through the knee-high grass and out onto the sandy beach area. Kicking off my boots, I bent down to pull off the thick socks he’d also given me and then slid my toes deep into the hot sand until I reached the cool, wet sand beneath the top layer.
“I should have brought a blanket,” Oliver said, stepping up to my side and slipping the cooler out of my grip.
I was thinking of cool sand and clean water and sunshine when I replied, “I don’t mind getting a little bit dirty.”
The bright summer sun had nothing to do with the heat that suffused my cheeks.. I looked at Oliver through half-lidded eyes and his expression said he noticed.
“I know. It’s one of the many things I like about you.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I shoved him playfully, not moving the large man a single inch as I laughed.
“I know that, too.” He slung his arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer to the water. “But I still mean it.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
He tugged at the messy bun on top of my head and grinned. “I know. It’s one of the many things you like about me.”
He was right. Besides being stubborn and arrogant, his playful side was often hidden behind his surly veneer, but I liked it when he shed that for me.
“Come sit with me.” He kicked off his own boots and took a seat in the sand. Pulling his knees up, he set the cooler in between his spread feet while he opened it. I didn’t waste time joining him as he dug through the cooler, emptying the contents before I saw the meal Sue had prepared for us.
“Wow. Lee wasn’t kidding when he said Sue made us a feast.”
There were containers of pasta salad, fruit salad, two sandwiches filled with thickly sliced prime rib on large hoagie buns, crackers, cheese, and several small bottles of water.
“It all looks delicious.” I didn’t know what to choose first when he handed me silverware.
I chose the pasta salad and closed my eyes when the cool flavor hit my tongue. “So good.”
When I opened my eyes, I found Oliver’s gaze fixed firmly on me. “How can you be so sexy even when you’re eating?”
I blushed and looked away, pushing a small chunk of escaped hair behind my ear. Changing the subject away from me, and the way his words affected me, I looked out at the water and asked, “Do your parents come to your games often?”
“Yeah, they come whenever they can, although it’s easier for them to get away after the harvest in August and September. But come fall, they travel wherever they can get.” His voice trailed off a bit and he took a bite of his food. “Dad’s getting older, moving slower than he used to. He wouldn’t admit it, but I know keeping up the farm and all the traveling is getting hard on him.”
I saw in my memory banks my own mom, too young to be so frail and working herself to the bone. Stress and depression along with pneumonia and exhaustion stripped the life right out of her. “I’m sorry.” I leaned over and rested my hand on his knee and squeezed. “It’s hard to watch your parents decline and get old.”
“Yeah.” His voice softened along with his eyes. “But they’ll be there at the first home game in a few weeks. You’ll get to meet them then. I know you usually watch the game in the seats Beaux gets for you, but it’d mean a lot to me if you and Melissa would watch it with them from the box.”
My body stiffened from the shock before I could hide it and his jaw hardened.
“You don’t want that?”
I shook the surprise away and found my bottom lip sucked in between my teeth. “No, I do, I guess I was surprised you’d want me to. It’s soon.”
I realized my mistake as soon as I said it. His eyes flashed.
“Game’s not for three weeks, Shannon. That’s almost two months together. That is what we are, isn’t it?” He leaned forward, setting his sandwich down before he moved to me, stealing the breath from my lungs with his intensity. “Tell me I’m not the only one thinking we were building something here.”
“God, no. I’m sorry.” Shit. Damn it. I didn’t want to hurt him. I hadn’t meant to hurt him. It was clear that I had, and I hated the pain mixed with anger I saw warring in his hazel eyes. I set down my pasta salad and scrambled into his lap, loving that not only did he let me, but he settled me right against him, holding me tight at my waist. “I’m sorry,” I said again, dropping my hands over his shoulders. “I was just surprised, that’s all. Of course I’ll meet them. Melissa and I would love to.”
His lips fell to mine, his tongue demanding entrance into my mouth. I acquiesced quickly, loving the taste of him and the feel of his hot skin against my fingers, burning through his thin shirt.
“We’re together,” he commanded, pulling back and leaving me needing more of him. The kiss was over too soon, and too intense to end at all. His hands cupped my cheeks firmly, his gaze seeking mine, seeking the truth in my eyes before it spilled from my lips.
“Yes,” I gasped. “Of course we are.”
My body heated against his as he held me there, not doing anything except roaming my face and my body with his eyes before he pulled me back to him. Right before he closed them and pressed his lips to mine again, I swore I saw something different…something softer and filled with longing and relief, as he kissed me.
“Eat,” he growled when he pulled back this time. His thick erection pressed against my sex.
Food had been forgotten and my lips parted at the one-word command.
When he saw my eyes flicker with confusion, he smirked.
“Eat and then we’ll get back to the house. You’ll need your energy later.”
A full-body tremble rolled down my spine, making him laugh when he set me back to the ground and handed me my sandwich.
I smirked when I saw him adjust himself and let loose a low groan.
Biting into my sandwich, I grinned back at him. “Can’t wait.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t wait for whatever it was he had planned, because I knew that like everything else that was Oliver Powell, I was going to love the hell out of it.
***
“Relax,” he murmured, sliding his hand down my back.
My body was slick with sweat. My hands were together in front of me with another tie of Oliver’s. It was patterned with black and gray, tiny diamond shapes, and it was the only thing I could focus on while he tried to get me to further relax. I was fully restrained to his headboard once again, depleted from the orgasm he’d already given me with his mouth and his fingers before he’d flipped me over, pulled up my ass, and demanded I spread my knees.
“Please,” I whispered, shifting. I knew what was coming. He’d already dug through my bag and taken out the present he’d given me, the present that had mocked me and scared me and filled me with trepidation, but was now the only thing I wanted inside of me besides his cock. “Hurry.”
He leaned over me, his chest brushing against my back, his full lips and warm breath at my ear. “No. We go slow.”
I’d burst into flames if he went slow. One orgasm was suddenly never enough with him. As soon as I’d climax, he’d bring me to the brink, setting me on fire with his touches and kisses.
He’d played with my puckered hole while he ate me out, licking me and teasing me, igniting my entire body. His fingers had pressed and opened me slightly, and when he’d done that, I’d exploded into a ball of heat so great that I thought I might set the house on fire.
Now he was doing more, preparing me for him but killing me in the process.
“Fuck.” I gasped as his hand ran through my crease at my backside. He gathered my wetness from my slit and pushed it toward the back, making me tremble.
“You’re on birth control, right?” he asked and my breath stuttered. He’d been inside me once before, told me he was clean, and at the time I hadn’t given him that trust.
“Yes.” He slid two fingers inside of my pussy, and I groaned, closing my eyes. “Please, Oliver. I’m dying.”
“You won’t. I want to be bare inside of you tonight.” He pushed and pulled, twisted his fingers and drove me to the edge so quickly I thought I might shatter before he did anything else.
“Yes,” I breathed. “I want that.”
I did. I trusted him with every part of me. He’d shown me who he was and who he wanted to be. There was nothing about Oliver Powell that wasn’t making me fall in love with him.
His fingers paused, making me groan with frustration.
“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice thick with need and emotion. He pressed his hand to my cheek and turned my head so our eyes met. “Thank you for that.”
I swallowed thickly, feeling a burn deep in my throat as I saw how overwhelmed he was with what I’d given him.
He’d wanted me to trust him. Needed to know I did.
“Please,” I whispered, begging now and not caring in the least. I pushed against his fingers still inside me. “Fill me. I can’t wait anymore.”
His expression turned wicked with desire as he grinned and kissed me with a ferocity, stealing my breath, before he pulled back.
The click of the bottle of lube echoed in the air like a fog horn and his fingers slid out of my pussy.
“Relax,” he murmured, coaching me again and soothing me with a hand on my back and my ass. “It won’t sting if I go slow, but it’ll feel better if you don’t fight against it.”
I pressed my forehead into his bed, gripping his tie with my fingertips. “Ready.”
He coated me with lube, the cooling sensation sparking goose bumps on my backside, before he slid a finger inside me there. It burned and stretched but was so deliciously wonderful at the same time.
I pushed back into him, groaning at the sensation I was already beginning to enjoy.
“Damn, this is so damn hot,” he growled as he removed his finger.
The rounded tip of the plug that had once terrified me brushed against my opening. Now, curiosity and need toppled it. He pushed, twisted it while I forced my body to relax.
And then he pushed in. I braced myself with my elbows and knees, pushing into the bed at the same time his other hand snaked around to my front. He played with my nipples, ran his hand over my stomach, and whispered encouraging words to me as he slowly pushed it in farther.
“Fuck.” I gasped as I let the plug begin to widen, stretch me open and further than he had before. The burn was minor compared to the sensations rioting inside me.
“You’re doing so well,” he crooned, sliding his tongue and his teeth against the column of my exposed my throat. “So fucking good. I can’t wait to fuck you while you’re full of this plug. You’re going to lose your damn mind.”
I already had. Everything he did made my thighs tremble, made me wetter. Made my core tighten and pulse.
“Ah.” He pressed the plug inside of me and I groaned. His hand at my stomach drifted lower, his thumb running along my clit.
“Fucking hell, you’re soaked.”
“I know. Please.” I wanted more. Needed more. I had never been so restrained, so full…so fucking needy I thought my heart would shoot out of my chest. “Oliver.”
He kissed my cheek again and moved back until he was behind me, his knees pushing me apart, and then he was pushing his thick cock inside of me.
My back arched at the sensation—the fullness in my backside along with him now. Bare. Hard.
So damn good.
“Hell, you’re so tight now, I can hardly move.”
“Do it.”
My plea frayed the last thread of his control and Oliver moved. He pulled out and thrust in, slamming inside me until he pushed me forward. My arms slid out in front of me, his hands on my hips kept me open for him. I gripped his tie feverishly as he fucked me, slamming his dick inside of me before slowly dragging it out. Every sensation intensified tenfold as he slid along the ridged flesh inside of me
He fucked me frantically, burying himself inside of me. He was splitting me apart and at the same time putting me back together.
“Oliver!” I screamed his name as my orgasm hit me out of the blue. I squeezed my eyes closed against the onslaught of his hips pounding against mine and the wild sensations shaking my body.
“Fucking beautiful,” he groaned, slowing down as the aftershocks left my body. He leaned forward, and with one hand quickly untied my wrists before he slid out of me and turned me to my back.
He slid back inside, pushing my legs wide and high. “Hold on to your legs. Keep them spread for me.”
I gripped them despite my arms feeling languid and my body like jelly.
“Eyes on me,” he growled as he dropped down closer to me. “Every fucking time I slide inside of you I feel every part of you.”
Every time he slid inside of me, I gave him every part of me. It was unavoidable and I’d long since quit trying to hold anything back.
I pressed my legs to his sides and rested a hand to his cheek. “You feel amazing inside of me.”
Every shift of his body made the plug scrape against me, causing delicious friction inside me and sending myriad sensations throughout my body.
I kept my eyes on him, my hand pressed to his cheek as he continued fucking me, sliding in and out quickly and smoothly, until his jaw tightened and his teeth gritted together. “Fucking hell,” he groaned and dropped his head and his eye contact from me. “I’m going to come.”
“Please,” I urged. “Inside of me.”
I wanted him, all of him.
He thrust three more times, seating himself balls deep inside of me and at the same time filling me with him as he came, and as he did, he groaned, “Damn. I fucking love you.”
Chapter TWENTY-TWO
OLIVER
Shit.
I’d said it.
It was too soon. Way too fast. I hadn’t meant to say anything, but it had been pulled from my lips with the force of my orgasm, rendering me incapable of holding anything back from her.
She gasped from surprise and her fingers on my cheek flinched. Beneath me, her abs flexed.
I could mask it. I love fucking you. That was what I meant.
Except I didn’t mean that and I’d told her I wasn’t a liar.
“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” I asked, unable to keep the humor out of my tone in an effort to cover my nerves.
I kept my dick inside of her warm, amazing-feeling cunt and forced myself to meet her in the eyes.
I had never been a sissy, never run from my fears, and I wasn’t going to do it now. Not when I’d laid everything out on the table for her.
“You don’t need to say it back,” I said as I lifted my head and met her gaze, the way she nibbled on her bottom lip. “And I didn’t mean to scare you. Didn’t mean to say it either, but that doesn’t mean I don’t mean it.”
“You…” She blinked rapidly. Her chest thundered against mine as fast as mine was beating against hers. “You love me? Like love me, love me? Or love fucking me love me?”
“I’m beginning to think…” I said, bracing myself on one elbow and pressing my fingertips to her hairline with my other hand. I trailed my fingers through her curls, untangling them from where they’d bunched around her shoulder. “…that there isn’t a part of you that I don’t love, Shannon.”
“Wow.” She swallowed and blinked harshly. “I just…it’s so fast. I wasn’t expecting this.”
“You don’t have to feel the same way.” After her freak-out at meeting my parents earlier, I wouldn’t be surprised. Didn’t mean I didn’t have the fucking urge to hear it, though—to know someone looked at me and felt the way about me as I did about them.
“No,” she said. She relaxed beneath me. “I do. I do feel the same way.”
A slow grin began stretching my lips. “You do?”
“Of course I do. You consume me. Everything about you is something I’m falling in love with. It’s just...the speed of everything scares me.”
“Fuck the speed,” I said, slidin
g out of her despite wanting to be buried in her forever. “I live my life full throttle, no looking back. No regrets.”
She paused before whispering, “No looking back. I like that. Full speed ahead.”
I rolled to the side and pulled her with me. She wrapped her legs around mine, tangling us together as I brought her lips to mine.
“I love you, Shannon.”
Her lips twitched before her shoulders relaxed and she smiled up at me, thick black lashes rimming her beautiful chocolate-colored eyes. “I love you, too.”
I hugged her to me tighter, kissed her softly so I could show her without words exactly what hearing that from her meant from me, and when she relaxed into my hold, softening toward me and giving me everything she had without words, I pulled away.
“Let me go get a cloth and get us cleaned up so we can sleep.”
Her eyelids opened slowly, as if she was already halfway to dreamland.
I felt the same way.
***
I opened my eyes in the morning and grinned as soon as I saw Shannon sleeping next to me. She had small freckles dancing over the bridge of her nose, her pink lips slightly parted and long black eyelashes fanning from closed lids.
I wanted to kiss every inch of her but withheld myself. I’d worked her over hard last night, multiple times after we’d rested and eaten dinner, taking her again and again long into the night. I should have still been sleeping, but it was the curse of a man who grew up on a farm and lived a life that required earlier mornings that prevented sleeping in.
The sun wasn’t up yet and I had work to do.
Adjusting my already hard dick, I groaned as I brushed against Shannon’s cheek and slid out of bed, careful not to wake her.
She didn’t move at all as I pulled away and threw on the shorts and shirt I’d worn the day before. I didn’t need clean clothes to muck out some stalls and feed the horses.
When I came out of the bathroom after putting on my glasses and brushing my teeth, she was still lying in the same position, both of her hands pressed together beneath her cheek, eyes still closed and lips still parted.