by Amy Andrews
So ready.
Her underwear met the zip of his trousers and the bulge beneath and she moaned—loud—her head falling back, the kiss abandoned to the pleasure of rubbing her aching flesh in just the right spot.
‘Okay,’ he said, his lips at her neck, his beard scratching so damn good at the sensitive hollows. ‘I think we need to move this inside because I’m about to relieve you of this dress and the neighbours might get a show they hadn’t bargained for.’
There was a smile in his voice as he ground against her and Trinity gasped at how good it felt.
‘I thought you said I should never take it off.’
‘I lied.’
Then he picked her up, still straddling him, and strode into the house.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FIVE MINUTES LATER Trinity found Reid in his bedroom, lamplight bathing him in a soft glow. She’d checked on Oscar and now here she was. He was barefoot and had undone the buttons of his shirt and the top button of his trousers but had taken neither of them off.
How could a partially dressed man be just as sexy as a completely naked one?
She glimpsed the tats that ran under the ridge of his collarbones and was looking forward to exploring them all.
Later...
‘Take off your dress.’
His bold command was as visceral as if he’d stroked his hand along her belly. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t come nearer or tried to touch her but it felt like it.
Quickly, hands trembling behind her, she unzipped. The shoestring straps fell off her shoulders and in one shrug the dress had pooled around her feet. She wasn’t wearing a bra. All that stood between her and naked was faded pink underwear.
‘My God...’ he muttered under his breath, the air hissing out of his lungs as his gaze fell to her bare breasts.
‘Take off your shirt.’
Her request was tremulous with desire, far less steady than his had been. But he stopped her breath as she watched him strip out of it. She feasted her eyes on the acres of tanned and tatted flesh before her just as he was feasting his eyes on her.
She admired the musculature and the art, her heart belting along as his gaze roamed over every inch of her body.
Her nipples puckered tight as he stared at them as if they were his own personal toys.
Trinity didn’t know who was supposed to make the first move now. She didn’t care either. She only cared about his skin on hers. His mouth on hers. The bulge behind his zipper filling her up.
Enough looking. She needed touching.
She needed it now.
She stumbled towards him as if on autopilot. They met somewhere in the middle, at the foot of his bed, her calf brushing the edge of the mattress. She twined her arms around his neck, rising up on tiptoe, her breasts brushing his chest as she sought his mouth, whimpering when she found it, moaning when their lips clashed and clung and opened.
She kissed him deep and hard and wet. She kissed him fast. She kissed him thorough. She kissed him all the ways she knew and all the ways she’d never known. Pressing herself to him, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to think.
‘Slow down,’ he whispered, against her lips. ‘We’ve got all night.’
But she didn’t want to wait all night. She didn’t want to wait another second. She wanted him inside her. She needed him inside her.
Her knee slid onto the bed and she half pulled, half dragged him down to the mattress with her, groping for his fly, desperate to hold him in her hand again, to guide him to where she needed him most.
His lips buzzed her neck, his beard prickling, beading her nipples to unbearable tightness as her hand found the zipper and yanked. Her pulse was like a freight train in her head as she reached inside, her hand finding exactly what she needed.
He was full and thick and Trinity gripped him—hard—stroking up and down the length of him. He was like forged steel wrapped in rose petals and he groaned, deep and low, his forehead jammed to her temple as she kept up the pace.
But she was too damn restricted to do what she really wanted to do. Too many clothes. ‘Off,’ she said, panting in his ear as she used her spare hand to push at the waistband of his trousers where they covered his ass. ‘Take your pants off.’
He didn’t argue, just rolled on his back and wriggled out of the offending articles. Trinity watched, her gaze glued to the jut of his erection—thick and perfect. And then he was back, looming over her on all fours, his hair wild, his tattoos framing him perfectly. He slid an arm under her body and scooped her up the bed until they were fully on the mattress, yanking her underwear off and stripping them down her legs in one easy move.
He sat back on his haunches admiring what he saw. She wasn’t embarrassed by such a thorough inspection; she was beyond that, his heated gaze only cranking her fever higher. He looked at her as if he wanted to devour every inch of her and couldn’t decide where to start.
She knew where she wanted to start. His erection sprang from the nest of hair between his legs, proud and potent. She levered herself up on her elbows, reached for the hard jut of him, but he caught her hand, kissed it, shook his head. ‘Patience,’ he murmured.
Trinity fell back against the mattress, her hair flying as frustration burned through her veins like sulphur. Her breasts jiggled with the movement and Reid’s gaze zeroed in on them. A light that was almost feral, totally befitting his lumberjack masculinity, flared in his eyes and he was on her, his head dipping to claim one nipple as his hand slid onto the other.
‘Oh... God...’ She moaned, arched her back, ploughed her hand into his hair as he settled his body against the mattress, his tongue repeatedly flicking back and forth over the hard nub.
She felt a corresponding twinge in the hard nub between her legs as if his tongue were down there, flicking back and forth. Down where she needed him to be. Where it roared and ached.
Where she wanted the hard, thick length of him to fill and stretch and burn. To rock and pound. To drive her into the bed until she clamped tight around him. To remind her she was a woman.
In the most base way possible.
She needed that.
‘Reid,’ she muttered, dragging all the discombobulated parts of herself together, pulling at his hair, dragging him off. ‘I need you inside me.’
His mouth was wet from the havoc he’d been creating. ‘All in good time,’ he muttered, his head dipping again to reclaim a nipple begging for the hot suck of his mouth and the delicious burn of his beard.
Trinity forced herself to calm, to breathe, to slow down. To let him have it his way, to let him explore. But her pulse would not be slowed, nor would the tremble in her hands or the deeper tremble in her body.
It was seismic. And not willing to be ignored.
Screw it. The time was now.
She yanked on his hair. Hard. He didn’t even wince; there was too much lumberjack about him for that. If anything a flare of something lit his eyes as if maybe he’d enjoyed it.
A corresponding flare lit deep in her body.
‘Now.’ Her gaze locked with his, her breath ragged. ‘I swear to God, Reid, I need you in me now.’
He didn’t say anything for long moments, his gaze searching hers. Then he reached over her to his bedside table, yanking out the drawer, and pulled out a foil packet.
Tearing it quickly with his teeth, he had himself sheathed in five seconds flat before he loomed over her, supporting himself on his forearms as he settled between her legs. She opened for him, her heart hammering, her breath chugging in and out.
She wanted it so bad.
He flexed his hips and she cried out at the fullness of that first thick nudge. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, easing back the pressure.
He was big, she knew that from what she’d already seen of him and how he’d fi
lled her hand, and she was out of practice but women were designed to stretch.
‘God, yes,’ she said, clamping her hand tight on his ass, shamelessly rotating her hips.
He slid all the way in then. Slow and steady and sure. A long low groan spilling from his throat as he eased in to the hilt. ‘God,’ he said, his voice a husky rumble, his forehead resting on hers. ‘You feel good.’
Trinity let out a shaky breath, shifting against the mattress to better accommodate him. ‘You feel incredible.’
He grunted something unintelligible as he withdrew—slowly, slowly—his forehead still planted on hers, then eased back in again just as slowly.
She tightened her hand on his ass. ‘Faster.’
‘No,’ he said as he withdrew and entered again, so slow she could feel every wet inch of herself pulsing around every hard inch of him.
He did it a few more times, stoking the embers deep inside her pelvis, slowly breathing them to life. But they were out of kilter with the frenzy in her nerves and the fever in her blood. She didn’t want embers, she wanted flames. ‘Damn it, Reid, faster.’
‘So bossy,’ he chuckled as his hips delivered more torturously slow thrusts.
‘Please,’ she whispered, clamping down around him and pushing him out as he withdrew, expelling him faster.
She gasped and he groaned at the action, his forehead falling into the crook of her neck as he hunched into it more, adding an extra punch to entry right at the end as he reached her limit.
She moaned at the quick spasmodic jab. The coarse rasp of his beard at her throat intensified the sensation, streaking like a bolt of lightning between her legs.
But it still wasn’t enough. ‘Please.’
He dragged his head off her neck, the liquid blue heat of his gaze locking with hers as he held himself buried deep inside her. The pressure was so intense she could barely breathe.
‘You deserve a man to love you right, Trinity. To take it slow. To worship you. Let me do that.’
Crazy tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. Even in something so base and elemental as sex, Reid was looking out for her. It was sweet and kind. So at odds with his lumberjack physicality but so typical of the gentle man she’d come to know.
But she didn’t want that. Not right now.
She didn’t want slow and steady. She wanted it hard. She wanted it dirty. She wanted it to hurt so damn good. She wanted to feel the ache for days to come. She wanted to leave this bed having had her world thoroughly rocked.
To have a memory she could bring out in the future if things got tough again.
And she knew he could give that to her. She had no doubt he could be a considerate and generous lover but she wanted the lumberjack she knew he was holding back. She could feel it in the tremble of his biceps and the hard clench of his glute beneath her hand.
‘I’m not some fragile chick who needs kid gloves,’ she said, her cheeks flushed, her pulse hammering at her temples and throbbing deep inside her where she gripped him. ‘I’m tough.’
He chuckled. ‘You don’t think I know that?’
‘Then why are you treating me like I’m going to break?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t want you to worship me, damn it. I want you to possess me.’
He stared at her for long moments. His gaze searching, assessing. She saw the moment his mind was made up, the sudden clarity followed by his swift withdrawal from her body.
She opened her mouth to protest but in the blink of an eye he’d flipped her over, wrapped his hand in her hair, dragged her right hip up and used his thigh to push her right knee into a bend, completely exposing her to his view.
Trinity’s heart rate careened crazily in her chest as his erection prodded her slick entrance again but there was nothing slow and steady about this penetration; it was fast and quick, ripping a cry from her throat and a grunt of satisfaction from him.
He tugged on her hair, forcing her head off the bed and her back into an arch, sparks of electricity showering from her scalp all the way down her spine. ‘Like that?’ he whispered in her ear, his beard prickling at her neck and shoulder.
She panted. ‘Yes. God, yes. More.’
‘Good,’ he grunted and gave her more.
Hard and fast and relentless.
He held her like that, one hand wrapped in her hair, keeping her head up and her back arched as his mouth ravaged the muscle that sloped from her neck to her shoulder and his hips hammered into her from behind. It was hard and intense and perfect and all she was capable of was moaning and writhing until the hand he had on her hip slid around to her front and ploughed through the slickness between her legs, finding the hard knot of nerves.
‘Come for me,’ he demanded in her ear, low and ragged.
And she did. The pressure that had been building blew out in one hot flare and she came. Loud and long. Bucking against him as he mercilessly drove into her over and over again.
‘Trinity.’
He groaned into her neck as the piston of his hips suddenly stopped. One second. Two. And then he bellowed his own release, muffling it in her shoulder as his hips bucked again and he rocked them towards the light together.
* * *
They lay unmoving for a long time in the aftermath, their bodies still intimately connected. Reid had collapsed against her, his weight pressing her to the bed, his mouth pressed to her nape, sweat slicking them together.
And she revelled in it.
Trinity had known she’d shatter. Hell, she’d craved it. But in a physical sense only. She hadn’t been prepared to be broken into a thousand pieces emotionally. She hadn’t been prepared for the gates of her heart to break open too and for love to flow in.
She hadn’t been prepared for love at all.
But, as they lay in a sweaty heap, she knew it had happened anyway, could feel the burden of it sink to the pit of her belly.
She was in love with Reid Hamilton. It wasn’t lust or gratitude or friendship. It was the deep and totally gut-wrenching abyss of unrequited love.
She’d wanted him to remind her she was a woman. She just hadn’t expected that taking Reid into her body would make her his woman.
And he could never, ever know.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
REID SHIVERED AND his groin tightened as Trinity traced the feathers of his eagle wings with her index fingers. She was firmly snuggled into his side, her hand reaching across to his opposite arm. The tattoo was on his back but the wings stretched all the way around to brush the tops of his biceps.
It was two in the morning and they’d already had sex three times. The second two not as hurried as the first. She had let him love her slow and easy the next time. And the third time, he’d headed down her body and shown her there were many, many ways to make a woman call out to God.
They were sated—for now—as they lay in each other’s arms. His hand was stroking from her ass to her hip and back again as they drifted in the aftermath. He’d always enjoyed the post-coital haze, floating in his own bone-deep satisfaction, knowing whoever he was with was floating in hers.
But this was different. There was no exit strategy forming in his head as per usual. Lying here with Trinity was...grounding. And not in a bad way. Ever since she and Oscar had moved in he’d felt...settled. Not something he’d experienced since before his parents got divorced.
He’d forgotten how good it felt.
‘You like them?’ he murmured, prying heavy eyelids open as her exploring fingers brushed down his biceps.
She wrinkled her nose slightly as her gaze followed the path of her finger. ‘I’m not a big fan of tattoos, I have to admit, but they suit the whole lumberjack thing you’ve got going on.’
That surprised a laugh out of Reid. ‘Lumberjack?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled as she levered
herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. ‘The whole big, macho, bearded biker thing. All you need is a flannel shirt and a big old axe and you’d be the real deal.’
Reid shook his head, amused at the thought. A lock of hair had fallen forward over her shoulder and he pushed it back. ‘Any particular reason why you’re not into them?’
She sighed. ‘Those couple of years on the streets...tats were usually a signal that you were someone who shouldn’t be messed with. That was their point, I guess. I learned to be wary.’
Reid had known a lot of badass guys in the military who had been fully aware of how intimidating their tats could be and had revelled in it. He just appreciated the art.
‘And yet you have one,’ he murmured, his fingers tracing the ladybird tattoo on her right hip he’d thoroughly checked out on his way down earlier.
‘Brian talked me into it. The place we went to was a real dive. I’m surprised I didn’t get hepatitis. If I can ever afford the luxury of having it lasered off, I will.’
There was a grimness to her voice. ‘Well, I like it,’ he teased, to lighten the mood, his fingers stroking the offending piece of artwork.
‘It takes me back to a dark time in my life every time I see it.’ She shuddered. ‘I hate being reminded of it all the time.’
Reid couldn’t fault her reasons. Hell, he understood them. All of his tattoos had been acquired during his tours of duty in the Middle East. A lot of bad memories there.
But good ones also.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, picking up the same, persistent lock of hair he’d pushed back earlier, toying with it, ‘those reminders can be good.’
She regarded him for long moments. ‘Is that what yours do?’ Her fingers had shifted to his mouth now, tracing around the line where his beard rimmed his lips. ‘Remind you of your time in the military?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And that’s...good?’ She frowned. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to be reminded of it.’
He shut his eyes as her fingers fluttered like moth wings over his lips. ‘There are some bad memories,’ he murmured, his eyes drifting open, fixing on hers. ‘Things that still give me nightmares from time to time. Soldiers we lost. People I couldn’t help. The children in the villages... But more than anything it reminds me that we did good over there. Every time people talk about the disaster of it, I know we did good as well. I need that.’