by Whitley Cox
The summer night air was dense with the scent of flowers and fresh-cut grass. The stars overhead twinkled, and the breeze that swept across her bare arms and legs was a welcome reprieve from the inferno raging inside her.
She broke the kiss long enough to mutter, “Condom.”
If he hadn’t come with provisions, this couldn’t go any further.
She couldn’t risk it.
He grunted a yes but then angled himself up onto his elbow and peered down at her. “That’s not why I came over here. We don’t have to if you’re not ready.”
Paige fought the urge to laugh. She was no virgin. Instead she cupped the back of his head and brought his head down until their lips just touched. “I want this. I want you.” She shifted beneath him. The hammock wasn’t going to work. They didn’t have enough room to move. “Not here, though.”
He pushed himself off her and waited for her to sit up, watching as she climbed off the hammock and laid out the blankets she had on the grass.
“Much better,” he said, the rough and gravelly tenor of his voice making her shiver. He was such a gentleman. She knew he wanted this just as much as she did, but he was willing to hold back, taking his cues from her and willing to go slow if she needed to.
But she didn’t need to.
She needed this more than she’d needed anything in a very long time.
She needed Mitch.
Mitch didn’t judge her.
Mitch didn’t demand anything of her.
Mitch just wanted to make her feel good, make her feel beautiful and special and like she could take on the world.
Right now, she didn’t want the world, though. She just wanted the man standing in front of her.
She knelt down on the blanket and held a hand out to him. He joined her, the two of them kneeling there in the dark backyard, holding hands, bodies pressed against each other, mouths open, breathing each other in.
She’d showered and changed after everyone left that night. Sweat from working in the kitchen all day, combined with flour from the sfogliatelle, had her standing under the cool spray of the shower for nearly half an hour to rinse away the grime. She emerged refreshed and invigorated and ready for Mitch. Choosing to go braless—because what woman wasn’t tired of wearing a bra by nine o’clock at night?—she tossed on a dark blue tank top and a flowy black skirt, letting her hair dry naturally after applying a liberal amount of curl cream. She was all for the natural look, but if she didn’t tame the mane with some product, she would look like she’d stuck a fork in an electrical socket.
That was the curse of having curls.
His hands fell to the hem of her tank top, and he lifted it up. She raised her arms, helping him guide it over her head. It fell to the ground beside them.
“I would love to photograph you naked,” he murmured, leaning forward and pressing a warm, wet kiss to her collarbone. His hands came up, and he gently cupped her breasts as his lips began to roam across her skin, chasing the goosebumps. “Your skin is so perfect.” He kissed the slight swell of the top of her breast. “So pale.” His tongue swirled around her areola, and she let her eyes flutter shut. “I can see every vein beneath the surface.” He drew her nipple into his mouth and sucked.
Heat raced through her, landing firmly between her legs. Her lips parted, and a whimper escaped before she could stop it.
“One day, I hope you’ll let me. Just for my eyes and only my eyes. You really are the perfect model.” His mouth moved over to her other nipple, and he gave that tight and needy bud the same exquisite attention he had the first.
Paige arched her back slightly, pushing her breast against his mouth, wanting him to suck harder, pull and nip, make her feel alive.
A snap of pain had her eyes flashing open.
He sawed his teeth back and forth over her nub, giving her exactly what she needed, exactly what she craved.
Paige’s fingers made their way into his hair, and she gripped it by the roots, holding him right where she wanted him, savoring her, teasing her, tormenting her to within an inch of her sanity.
He released one of her breasts and pushed his hand down beneath the waistband of her skirt. “Are you wet?” he murmured against her breast, taking the nipple back into his mouth and sucking hard.
She tilted her head back up toward the stars. “Yes.”
“How wet?”
Paige swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“Hmmm,” he hummed, the vibration of his mouth on her racing at hyper speed right down to her clit. “Perhaps I should investigate.”
She licked her lips in anticipation at the thought of Mitch’s head between her legs, his lips, his tongue, his fingers pleasuring her.
She nodded, giving his head just the slightest push.
His warm chuckle against her heated flesh made her melt. “I love a woman who knows exactly what she wants,” he said, pushing her down to the blanket and pulling her skirt off in the process. When he realized she’d also gone without panties, his eyelids dropped to half-mast. “And boy, do you know what you want.”
Paige snagged her bottom lip between her teeth and smiled. “I want you.”
Mitch’s smile was pure triumph, pure adoration.
He sank down to his belly on the blanket and pushed her legs open, running a finger up between her slick, plump folds. “You’re so wet,” he purred. His thumb rested on her clit. Her pulse began to thunder in her ears. His thumb jiggled, and her hips leapt off the blanket. Mitch’s eyes gleamed with victory, and the diabolical smile that slid across his lips made her want to push him to the blanket and sit on his face. Smother the smile and put him to work.
But instead she watched him. Watched him slowly explore her body. He picked up her leg, and beginning with her ankle and working his way north, he planted featherlight kisses on each and every one of her erogenous zones: her ankles, behind her knees, her inner thighs, her hip bones, her belly button, the swells of her breasts, the hollow of her throat, the side of her neck and, finally, once again, her mouth.
His kiss, like all the rest on her body, was light and gentle. But she didn’t want light and gentle. He’d worked her up into a frenzy. She wanted hard. She wanted passionate. She wanted powerful.
With her hands in his hair again, she pulled him against her, prying his mouth open with her tongue and sweeping inside. He pushed back with his tongue, realizing her desperation for more, and took over, deepening the kiss, pulling whimpers and soft mewls from the back of her throat.
Her hips lurched off the blanket, desperate for friction, but he hovered too high above her. She needed to feel his weight on her, needed to feel his warmth, his strength against her body. Protecting her.
She released his hair and moved her hands lower, grappling at the buckle on his belt, frantic to feel him in her palm.
His hand fell on top of hers and he stilled her efforts, breaking their kiss at the same time. “Not yet,” he murmured against her mouth before trailing kisses back down the same path he took before until his face hovered just over the apex of her thighs.
He nuzzled her mound and spread her cleft wide with his fingers. When he finally drew her clit into his mouth and sucked, she cried out and her body bowed on the blanket, her heels digging into the cool earth. He flicked her tender nub with the tip of his tongue, swirling it around the hood before sucking hard on one of her folds, tasting it, then switching to do the same to the other.
Two long, strong fingers slid inside her channel and pumped, curling right where they needed to and pressing up hard on that magical little spot.
Paige’s eyes shut once again, and her lips parted. No words came out.
He kept her spread wide with the fingers on his other hand, letting the cool evening breeze sweep across her damp core until she shivered. Only then did he drag the flat of his tongue up from her perineum to the shaft of her clit, following it with his rough, stubbly chin.
She’d been white-knuckling the blanket for dear life but let go and broug
ht her hands up to her breasts, caressing the weight of them and tweaking her nipples, bringing herself more pleasure.
She pulled hard on one until a small but delightful throb swirled through her chest and down to her clit, pulsing and joining with the pleasure Mitch gave her.
She was close, so damn close.
She tapped on his head to let him know he could stop, but he simply grabbed her hand and put it back on her breast, continuing to swirl that magnificent tongue around her clit and rub the sensitive spot inside her.
She pushed up into his mouth, feeling his nose knock her mound. She wasn’t even sure he could breathe.
She didn’t care.
“You’re going to come hard for me, baby,” he purred against her swelling clit. “So hard. I can’t wait to taste you.”
Those dirty words did it.
He pressed up even harder on that sweet spot inside her, sucked like a Hoover on her clit and she detonated. A barrel of gunpower and Mitch held the match. She exploded around him, pouring her juices into his mouth as her pelvis pushed up off the blanket and hard against his face.
He took it all, and he demanded even more.
At the peak of her orgasm, when the bright lights were flashing behind her closed eyelids and her pulse beat like a gong inside her ears, he added a third finger inside her and pressed up more on her G-spot. He sucked even harder on her clit. The man did not quit.
He wanted more.
She gave him more.
Just as the first orgasm was crossing the finish line, its arms raised and a smile on its face, another one took off, crashing through her unexpectedly and causing her whole body to shake. She was in the throes of a new climax at the same time she was in recovery from the first one. Her body didn’t know what to do. It didn’t know how to respond, how to react.
She simply lay there and trembled, a cyclone of pleasure swirling through her, about to pick her up, thrash her around and then drop her unexpectedly from the sky.
How would she ever recover?
Mitch would protect her. He would take care of her.
As she was finally coming down from the second orgasm, her body like a rag doll, she felt him pull his fingers from her, and his mouth released her clit. She hadn’t bothered to open her eyes yet, but she knew he was taking off his shorts from the sounds that competed with her still-hammering pulse and the crickets and frogs in the backyard.
Seconds later, she felt his hard, warm chest brush against hers. “Open your eyes, Paige,” he ordered.
With the laziness of a satisfied feline basking in the window on a sunny day, Paige pried her eyes open. He hovered above her, the muscles in his biceps, shoulders and pectorals flexing as he held up his own weight. She felt his cock, thick and encased in latex, poised at her center.
She lifted her hips, eager to have him inside her.
He stared down into her eyes, the green of his irises glowing like hanging moss in the solar lights that lined the garden. His arms bracketed her head, and he brushed the hair off her face with his hands. “You’re incredible,” he whispered, his lips brushing lightly against hers. She tasted her own arousal on his tongue, which only turned her on even more. Sour and slightly sweet.
“Mitch,” she murmured against his lips. “Please.”
She felt him smile, his mouth widening against hers. He did a little hip swivel, pushing in just the tip only to pull it back out again.
She growled and grappled at his back, lifting her legs up to push his butt cheeks with her heels.
She. Needed. Him. Inside. Her.
“Please!” she pleaded.
Once again, their eyes locked. His pupils were huge, and his nostrils flared. But it was his smile and the way his eyes focused on hers that made her heart swell, that made her want Mitch more than anything she’d wanted in a very long time.
Finally, with a speed that frustrated her to no end, he eased himself inside her.
She was tight. She knew she was. It’d been over two years since she’d had sex, and that had been with Adam.
He went slow, probably because he thought he might hurt her.
She didn’t want slow.
Her body stretched to accommodate his length and girth, welcoming him in, squeezing him, rippling around him as pleasure speared through her, radiating outward from her core.
With a grunt from him and a sigh from her, he hit the hilt. They both paused.
Finally.
Thank God.
Paige swallowed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, loving the feel of his strong, corded muscles and the way they bunched and flexed beneath her fingertips as he held himself over her.
Then they began to move.
They fit together perfectly. Moved together flawlessly. He rocked into her. She bucked up against him, clenching her internal muscles around him, drawing him deeper inside her, welcoming him home.
He dipped his head and sucked on one of her nipples, drawing the tight bud into his mouth once again and scissoring his teeth over it like he had before. She bowed her back to give him greater access, tilting her head to the sky. That also changed the angle, and his lower belly grazed her clit just right.
She’d already had two orgasms, but another one was right around the corner.
She was close. So close. Quivering, rippling, clutching, on her way to reaching the summit. When she finally did, she arched her back even more, pressing her breasts up toward the stars and deeper into his mouth. Every muscle in her body went rigid as Mitch pumped harder and faster, searching for his own sweet release.
His teeth found her neck. He grunted, and air fled his lungs just as she felt him begin to pulse inside her. She peppered kisses along his sweat-misted shoulders and neck, loving the manly, musky scent and taste of him. Salty, but also uniquely Mitch.
He lifted his head and then gently rolled to the side, tying off the condom and putting it to the side in the grass. He drew her against him so her back was to his chest, then he grabbed the second blanket she’d brought out and fanned it out over their bodies. Once she was nestled in tight to him, he laced their fingers together and kissed her shoulder.
She sighed and melted deeper into his embrace. “How many condoms did you bring?”
His chuckle made her insides turn to jelly once more. “A few. But you need to give me a few minutes.” He kissed her shoulder again. “You’re incredible.”
She spun in his arms to face him, her heart feeling lighter than it had in far too long. She kissed him lightly on the lips, then the nose and finally the cheek before she said, “You make me feel incredible. And I never want it to end.”
13
Mitch had no idea what time it was, but he didn’t really care either. In his mind, all that mattered was that it was sexy time.
Paige was an insatiable woman. Once she’d opened up to him and realized he wasn’t going to run for the hills, that he wanted her, flaws and all, she’d become this incredible, powerful, slightly demanding sexual goddess, and he was reaping all the benefits.
After having sex the first time, they’d lain on the blanket in the backyard for a while, talking again, but this time about lighter things. About her time in France, working as a chef and her plans for the restaurant. Then she’d pushed him onto his back, sheathed him in another condom and ridden him like a wild woman of the west. He’d never seen anything quite so glorious in all his life—her pale skin, near-translucent in the darkness; her hair a wild mass of curls, falling over her face like a veil as she leaned forward over him, pushed a nipple into his mouth and finally let go.
They were once again cuddled up on the blanket, but she was playing with his cock and he had his fingers between her legs, when his phone in the pocket of his shorts began to ring.
Who the fuck was calling him this late at night?
“Do you need to get that?” she murmured, her hand stilling but also squeezing.
He nodded and reluctantly removed his hands from the sweet heat between her legs and sat
up. She let go of his shaft and sat up with him. He grabbed his phone. It was Adam.
Fuck.
“What’s up?” he asked, hoping to God it wasn’t anything serious and that Jayda was okay.
“I have to take Violet to the hospital,” Adam replied, panic thick in his voice. “She’s bleeding and having really bad cramping.”
Mitch’s eyes darted to Paige. Her own eyes had gone really wide.
“I’m on my way.”
“We need someone to stay with Jayda.”
“I’m coming with you. She’s my sister.”
“Okay, I’ll call your mom, see if she can come over and stay with Jayda.”
Paige’s hand landed on Mitch’s shoulder. “I’ll go stay with Jayda. My parents can watch Mira.”
Mitch nodded. “Paige says she will come over and stay with Jayda.”
Adam seemed distracted on the phone. “Okay, hurry.” Then he hung up.
Paige was already up off the blanket and getting dressed. Mitch did the same, and within seconds they were hightailing it around the side of the yard to the pool house.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Paige said, heading into the main house. “You go home.”
Mitch nodded, already making his way down the path toward the side gate. Moments later, he was in his car, desperate not to break any speed laws but knowing he needed to get to his sister as fast as he could.
Should he call his mother?
Would Violet want her to know what was going on?
Eventually, because he needed something to keep his mind from going off the deep end, he decided he would not call their mother just yet. They didn’t know what was wrong with Violet, and there was no sense sending their mother into a tailspin if he didn’t need to.
Adam was with Violet right now. She wasn’t alone, and Mitch would be there shortly. Violet was in good hands. She was going to be okay.
He just had to keep telling himself that.