by Jillian Neal
Charlie brushed a kiss on his cheek. “It’s almost four in the morning. I got a nap and you didn’t, so if anyone is going to be making someone moan it’s me.” She tripped over the empty bottle of Crown on his floor. When he caught her, she leaned down and picked it up. Concern dampened the intrigue in her eyes. “Do you have some kind of problem I didn’t know about?”
“I don’t have the problem that caused that to be on my floor anymore,” he assured her.
“What was the problem?”
“That the woman I love was supposed to marry someone else.”
Her exhausted eyes softened even further. “Jamie,” she shook her head. Setting the whiskey bottle down she wrapped her arms around him. “I’m so sorry I was so stupid.”
“None of that. Let’s get some sleep.”
She flung off her clothes and crawled under his quilts and blankets, and he was astonished with the ease at which she allowed herself to be naked with him. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sleep in your bed.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s cozy, but I’m really hoping you’ve washed the sheets since the last girl slept here.”
“Been months since that happened. I washed the sheets last week.”
“Come here,” she beckoned. He toed out of his boots and flung off his clothes as well so he could join her. “Thank you for rescuing me, and thank you for always being there for me. I promise I’ll figure out how to be your girlfriend and even your wife. I just need a little time.”
“You take all the time you need, but you’ve already got it all figured out. We don’t have to do everything perfect. We just have to try.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
There were so many things that Charlie wanted to give him. Reassurances, satisfaction, and most of all love. She let her hand skate down the firm planes of his chest and her fingers ripple over his six-pack. Being able to touch him like this was something she wasn’t certain she’d ever understand. It still felt oddly forbidden, something surely she would never be lucky enough to have. And yet, he was right there, tensing under her touch.
As her hand neared his abdomen, the heat pouring off of his erection greeted her senses. She wanted to absorb every moment of this. To memorize the heady sensation of his rampant desire for her. Using her thumb and middle finger, she traced the sides of his cock and reveled in the needy growl it produced. He sounded like a wounded animal trapped in a cage, and only she could save him.
“I want to taste you,” she whispered as she let her fingertips trace and tease the steel-hard length of him. With a smirk, she said, “I want to suck your star-spangled firecracker.”
They both laughed. His fingers wove through her hair as he angled her face up to look at him. “If you put that sexy little mouth on me, angel, I’m gonna come down your throat. I won’t be able to pull out. I’ve dreamed about it too many times.” His warning was drenched in aching need.
“Good. That’s exactly what I want.”
“I’ll be rough with you.” This particular warning was a choked moan that did things to Charlie she couldn’t fully explain. Her body reacted on behalf of her mouth as she bucked against his hip and shuddered as his hip bone taunted her clit. “You like that, don’t you, naughty girl? You like knowing that you drive me so fucking wild I lose control with you.”
She kissed her way under the covers until he flung them off. Spinning her tongue around his navel, she watched his eyes flare with desperate hunger. “If you want a taste, you have to earn it, angel. Wrap your hand around me and get my cock between those titties. Let me fuck them first. I ain’t got patience for your teasing right now.”
Her breasts being a part of giving a man a blow job had never even entered her mind. She’d become so accustomed to removing them from the equation altogether. Jamie had united them back to her in their sexual encounters, but this was almost as shocking as it was confusing. Yet, he did not appear to be kidding.
If that’s what he wanted, then she’d do her best. She wanted this to be all about him. And the best part of that was—meeting his desires aroused her own. His satisfaction was the crown that led her to climax.
Her nipples were drawn to stiff peaks of want, and her breasts themselves were stacks of swollen need. Even the scars that night seemed slightly less pronounced somehow. She followed his instructions and held his length between them.
“Jesus, that’s good. Feeling those nips press into me. Such a good girl,” he grunted. “Do you feel how fucking slick I’m getting just thinking about being in your mouth, baby?” The pearlescent precum weeping from his slit had her grinding herself against his mattress. She did that to him.
Charlie nodded and licked her lips, pouring lighter fluid on the flames of yearning in his eyes. Such a dangerous and simultaneously thrilling thing to do for a girl who’d lived the life she had. But the fire in his eyes would never hurt her. It would never take anything away.
“Clean me up,” was his next command.
“Yes,” she let the whispered word caress over his cock before she complied. She wrapped her lips around his head and indulged in the earth and salt flavors of Jamie. He tasted like hers. She fluttered her tongue over his slit, trying to coax out more of his need, and listened to him roar out his pleasure.
“So damn good. Who the fuck taught you to do that? I’ll fucking kill them.”
Trying not to laugh at that, she shook her head. “I’ve never done this before, but I’ve read a lot of books.”
“I’m the only one who gets to see you like this. Do you understand that? This is for me.”
She nodded and then indulged herself in a few gentle sucks of his head and crown. He gave several ragged thrusts set to the rhythm of his hunger. She pressed her breasts together tighter instinctively and suckled at his head when he brought it near her mouth.
“So fucking good,” he ground out and picked up pace. “Your tits feel like some kind of goddamn heaven I’ll never deserve against me. And that tongue, baby, that tongue needs a reward.”
“I love how you taste. I want more.”
Jamie’s hand tightened in her hair and lifted her face away from him. She pouted, which seemed to please him more. He swung around and steadied himself up on his knees. She was unable to keep her breasts on him in that position, so she wondered what was coming next. The fact that he kept her guessing only further amped her own arousal.
Keeping his hand in her hair, he guided her face back to his cock. “The deeper you can take me the better your reward gets, honey.” Challenge accepted. She traced her tongue up and down his cock, making him groan. And then as she drew him deep into her mouth and adjusted for his size, he extended his arm down her body and gripped her ass with punishing force.
His fingers brushed along the center making her shiver and clench. “Relax for me, baby. Arch your back. Let me show you how good I can make this feel.” Allowing him to lead her, she did as she was told. She took his cock deeper into her mouth and arched her ass up higher in the air. “That’s it.”
She began sucking in rhythm as he strummed the center of her ass. He throbbed against her lips. The forbidden sensations filled her with some kind of primal femininity she hadn’t expected.
“Someday, I’m gonna make this little rosebud mine, angel. All mine. Fill it full of me,” preceded his next half-starved groan. He sounded like he was half in agony and half in ecstasy, and she had done it all. “So tight. I won’t make it one thrust before I’m pulling out and coming all over that sexy ass. Spilling down between those pussy lips.”
Lost in his filthy words and in the pure erotic bliss he was conducting with his fingers, she moaned over his cock.
“Fuck. That’s it. Tell me how good I taste.” A shudder rippled throughout his body and that heady sense of power filled Charlie again. She craved more attention on that forbidden spot he kept flirting with. She pressed back slightly to meet his fingers and then took his cock deep again desperate for friction on
her ass. She was desperate for more of this particular illicit reward.
She had no idea how this man that she’d craved for years, so secretively she’d kept it from herself, was the sin and the sinner, the savior and her redemption all tied up in one beautiful package. But she wanted every side of him to belong only to her.
Sucking him harder, she relaxed her throat and let the sounds he made, the scents of him aroused, and fullness of her mouth absorb her every sense. She focused on the sensations between her ass cheeks. How did that feel so good? How had she never heard of this?
Another rushed moan spilled from her lips and ran the length of him.
“Fuck baby, if you keep doing that I’m gonna come. If you don’t want to swallow me, I need out now.”
But she did want to swallow every drop of him, wanted him to flood her mouth. She sucked harder and he lost his rhythm teasing her rosebud. A lengthy line of expletives flew from his mouth as hot cum flew from his cock. She drank him down through the first few spurts and then pulled her head back. The next landed on her breasts. It was the first time in her life she’d ever thought of them as sexy.
He gasped for breaths and then cradled her face in his hand. With his other, he dragged two fingers through the cum on her chest and brought them to her mouth. Obediently, she spun her tongue over his fingers the same way she had his cock.
“So goddamn perfect. I love you so fucking much.” He grabbed some tissues from a box on his bedside table and scrubbed her clean. “I have no idea what I did to deserve that but give me a minute and I’ll make it up to you.”
He collapsed on his back and drew her up on his chest. “You don’t have to do anything for me. It was perfect just like it was.”
“That ain’t how this works,” he insisted.
“But sometimes it’s how I need it to work.” He’d stripped her of so many guards, done things she’d spent a lifetime thinking were sinful until he’d convinced her otherwise. She just wanted to sleep in his arms and deal with the deluge of thoughts later.
“You sure, sugar?”
She nodded against his chest.
“You want to talk about any of that?”
“Why did what you were doing to me feel so good?”
A sleepy chuckle shook his chest. “You have a whole lot of nerve endings down there. Plus, sometimes things that we’ve been told are forbidden feel even better than they would if we’d never been told that.”
Thoughts of forbidden fruits, and Eve, and temptation and then…her father flitted across her mind. Cringing at that, she squeezed her eyes shut and forcibly pushed those thoughts away. Ugh, who thinks of their dad after that?
“You okay, sweetheart?” Her tender, caring, overprotective Jamie was back.
She grinned. “Lots of weird, random thoughts.”
“I’m here for weird thoughts. They’re also totally normal.”
“Let’s go to sleep. We’re exhausted.”
“I won’t argue that, but if you need to talk, wake me up.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The next evening, Jamie tried to shake off what had happened in the shower as he wrapped a towel around his waist. He’d fucked her in the shower again, and again she hadn’t climaxed. Maybe she didn’t like shower sex. But what he thought was far more likely was that he’d pushed her way too far, too fast the night before, and she still wouldn’t really discuss it with him.
“It’s not going to happen every time,” she reminded him as she carefully combed out her long auburn curls. “If I feel like you expect it to, then I’m really not going to be able to.”
“I’m not trying to put pressure on you, honey. I just want to make sure I always do right by you.”
“You do.” She disappeared into his bedroom and started to get dressed. They’d quickly snuck over to her house, in one of his brother’s trucks, and she’d grabbed a bunch of clothes and other things she wanted to keep at the ranch for the week.
They’d gone to such lengths that morning not to face anyone yet, Jamie was confused by her afternoon announcement that she wanted to go out. Women. Why did they have to be so damn confusing?
When he finished dragging his comb through his hair and putting on deodorant, he joined her in the bedroom. “You’re sure you want to go out tonight? You know this whole town is gonna be all over us.”
“As much as I always thought I would love to hide away on Holder Ranch every day for the rest of my life, I don’t want that right now. I want to go live my life with you. We’re dating so we should go out and date, right? People will get over it. The sooner they get over it the sooner I can start applying at other eldercare facilities. I want to work.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I really don’t think you get how accustomed I am to having people talk about me behind my back or directly to my face, even. You don’t get to grow up being the preacher’s daughter and not get judged constantly. So, add that on top of being the girl whose house burned down and her mother died and the sheer amount of pity—that’s really just gossip in a Halloween costume—that gets heaped on top of you, and believe me, I can more than handle people thinking whatever they’re going to think about the two of us.”
“I do get that. It’s my job to keep you safe. I don’t like the idea of you hurling yourself from the skillet to the fire, so to speak.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I know you don’t, but we can’t stand outside of it forever.”
Jamie shrugged on a clean, white button-down mostly to watch the way her eyes flared when he did that. He still wasn’t certain that she really understood what would likely come from them showing up officially together down at Rusty’s Spur—Holder County’s only loud and proud honkytonk—but he’d protect her until his dying breath. If she wanted to go, he’d take her.
“Besides, Becca said she’d come by.”
And there it was. She wanted to go see her sister. “You know we could just go to Becca’s house and hang out.”
“Becca is never at her house. I’m not sure she even remembers how to get there. If she’s going to be at Rusty’s tonight, I want to go see her. I need her take on how my dad’s acting about this before I talk to him.”
Jamie lifted her cell phone from the front pocket of her purse. “There’s like fifty-seven different ways to talk to her on this thing. But I draw the line at you communicating via those Tik Tok videos. What the hell are those even?”
Charlie giggled. “I want to see her. I miss her, and…” she gave him a deliciously naughty grin.
“And what, baby doll?” Unable to resist that expression on her face, he moved to her and wrapped her up in his arms.
“And I kind of want everyone to know that you’re mine.” He could feel her cheeks heat through his shirt.
“Now that is a plan I’m on board with. You shoulda started there.” He released her, waited on her to slip into a pair of ballet flats, and guided her out to his truck.
The Spur was packed that night as usual. Jamie kept his arm wrapped tight around Charlie. If she was out to make a statement, then he’d do everything in his power to hand her the proverbial microphone. He brushed a kiss on her cheek for good measure as they headed toward an empty table near the back.
He tipped his hat to his cousins Jace and Boone who were seated at the bar. They returned the gesture. “Glad you finally got your shit together on her behalf, man,” Jace slapped him on the shoulder as they passed.
“Better late than never, right?” Jamie offered for lack of anything better to say.
Every eye in the bar was on them. Why people cared what the Holders did still didn’t make any sense to Jamie. But apparently everyone did. He pulled her into the booth beside him. If they were gonna make a statement, they might as well leave no room for doubt. “I’ll never get why so many people care what me and my family do,” he whispered.
She offered him a sympathetic gaze. “You’re Jamie Holder, and you’re out with the preacher’s daughter. It’s only going to
get worse. Are you okay with that?”
“I’m down for whatever you want. I just don’t get the fascination with us. We’ve been running the ranch for hundreds of years now. Ain’t nothing about that going to change.”
“You’re kind of cowboy royalty,” she informed him. “I know you don’t want that, but you are.”
“Yeah, well, you can call me the king of Fuck that Nonsense.”
The waitress made a beeline to their table. “What can I get y’all?”
“I’ll take a Crown and Coke,” Jamie ordered then turned to Charlie. “You want a glass of red?”
Charlie glanced around the room at all of the people, trying and failing to pretend that they weren’t staring. “Uh no, I’ll just have a club soda, please.”
“Sure. No problem. We heard you two were back in town this morning. You running from your wedding is all anyone can talk about. I keep telling people, look, if you get the chance to get yourself a stallion you don’t walk down the aisle to meet a donkey. It’s simple as that.”
Charlie choked back laughter while Jamie made no such effort. He laughed at her outright. “Could you hurry it up with our drinks?”
The waitress sighed. “Yeah. Sure. You want it on the Holder tab?”
“No,” he reached for his wallet. “I got it.”
“Such a stallion,” Charlie harassed as she whispered a kiss on his jawline.
“Don’t you forget it.”
When the waitress left, Charlie scooted even closer to him. “I don’t get why everyone is shocked I’m with you. They’ve seen us together before. We’ve been hanging out together for decades. I get that brides don’t run all that often, but it can’t possibly be this fascinating.”
“Are you not drinking because of your daddy?” Jamie asked.
“Yeah. People tend to call and rat me out, and that’s a pain for him. It’s just easier not to drink in public. Plus, I kind of like soda.”