She smoothed a finger along the satin-edged neckline of her thermal pajamas. By rights, she ought to be freezing, since the attic got even less heat than the second floor. Ice etched a blue-white pattern on the panes of the small sash window to the left of the bed, yet she felt like she could’ve been on a tropical island. Heat pulsed through her veins and spread its warmth clear out to the tips of her fingers and toes. She looked at Cooper and wanted nothing more than to yank open her top and press her breasts against that hard, tan chest. And if that didn’t warn her to make tracks just as fast as she could hustle her arousal-stunned body, she didn’t know what would.
She tore her gaze away from Coop’s torso and glanced at the barbell that was plainly the object of his wrath. Then she cleared her throat. “So, if I’ve got this straight, you’re a dumb-ass, but basically an uninjured one?”
His mouth looked so sulky she wanted to just eat it up. But then it quirked in a self-deprecating smile. “Yeah. That about covers it.”
The smile was truly her undoing. He was so clearly cranky, yet he didn’t allow his bad temper to keep him from seeing a glimmer of humor in the situation. “Good,” she said firmly. “Then I won’t hurt anything if I do this.”
She launched herself at him.
Coop caught her midfly. He’d barely scooped one arm under her round little butt and clamped the other across her back before he toppled over. They hit the bed kissing.
He ended up with Ronnie sprawled on top of him, and he tightened his arm beneath the swell of her bottom to anchor her there. Sliding his free hand up to cup the back of her head, he held her in place while he slaked a hunger that felt as if it’d been building forever. God. Her mouth felt so soft…tasted so sweet. He’d begun to think he’d never get to kiss her again.
He’d lost track of the passing minutes by the time she raised her head and blinked down at him. Tangling his fingers in her hair to prevent her from moving too far away, he smiled up at the swollen, bee-stung look of her lips. He raised his head to trace them with his tongue.
She moaned softly and lowered her mouth to give him freer access, and everything that was male in Coop rose up to stake a claim. He tightened his fingers and raised his head up off the mattress to deepen the kiss, but it wasn’t enough, and he rolled them until he was propped over her. The sudden move ripped their mouths apart and Coop grinned at the bemused look on Veronica’s face as she blinked up at him.
“Wasn’t I just on top?”
“Yeah.” He made an adjustment that settled his weight more firmly atop her. “But now I’ve gotcha in your rightful place—in the subservient position.”
Her eyes narrowed to little crescents. “With that attitude, I’m guessing you don’t get lucky real often.”
He attempted to look innocent. “What? You think my technique could stand a little work?”
“Your technique could stand a stick of dynamite.”
Coop brushed his fingertips along her hairline. He dipped his head and kissed her, all soft suction and demanding tongue, then pulled back to look down at her. “I feel like I’ve been wanting you, waiting for you, forever.”
“Oh.” Veronica swallowed with difficulty. “Your technique just improved by leaps and bounds.” She lay beneath the warm press of his body and looked up at him. His dark eyes smoldered with desire—desire she had caused—and it made her feel incredibly powerful. She could get addicted to causing such a strong reaction in a man like Cooper Blackstock.
“Yeah, well, it’s about to deteriorate again,” he growled. “Because when you look at me like that—”
She licked her lips. “Like what?”
He whispered a swear word and lowered his head to kiss her. It was rough, fast, and on the edge of control, and when he pulled back and stared down at her, he was breathing hard. “Like that. When you look at me like you don’t even require foreplay, like you wouldn’t stop me if I spread your legs and—”
Sensation speared deep between her thighs and a soft little moan escaped her.
As if the sound were the final straw and his patience for talk had just disintegrated, Coop clamped his mouth down on hers. He kissed her with such strength and authority, it pushed Veronica’s head deep into the mattress. Cupping her face between his hands, he pumped his tongue against hers in a rhythm as old as time and as carnal as original sin.
She wrapped her arms around the strong column of his neck and clung, pressing herself as close as she could get while returning his kiss for all she was worth. Long before she’d had her fill, though, his mouth was gone. But she didn’t have time to protest its loss before she felt it hot against the angle of her jaw, just behind her earlobe. Then, without giving her a moment to acclimate to that, he eased down the column of her throat. He kissed her softly in one spot, fiercely sucked her flesh against his teeth in the next, then immediately soothed the place with the flat of his tongue before moving on. Sounds of satisfaction rumbled deep in his throat as he made his leisurely way down to the triangular hollow at the base of hers. As he laved it with his tongue, he slid a hand between them. His fingers traced the edging on Veronica’s pajama top to its uppermost satin button. Slipping it free, he moved on to the next.
And the next. And then to the one after that. Until the front halves of her top slid apart, and Coop pushed up on one elbow to better view his handiwork. His vigilance caused a tight ache to form deep between Veronica’s legs. Seeing his sudden stillness as her breasts emerged from the concealing cloth was like having that tightness stroked. Her nipples went taut.
“Here they are,” he whispered and touched a gentle fingertip to the tip of one beaded nipple. “I’ve spent way too much time thinking about these babies when I should’ve been concentrating on other things. I kept remembering how they looked, though. How they felt.” He pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and tugged. A smile crooked the corner of his mouth at the little yearning sound that purled out of her throat, but he didn’t take his attention away from her soft curves. “How much you liked it when I did this.”
Looking at the top of his down-bent head, she demanded, “Rub against me.”
“What?” He glanced up, his dark brows gathered in perplexity.
“I want to feel this.” She reached out and stroked her hand down his chest and along the solid ridges of his abdomen. “When I walked in and saw you without your shirt, I wanted to rip my top open and rub up against you.”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. He fell over her, catching himself on his palms before bending his elbows to lower his chest against her breasts. He slowly stropped himself against her. Up. Down. Side to side. And his dark eyes took in her every reaction. “Like this?”
Veronica’s breath hissed in and her eyelids drifted closed. “Yessss. Exactly like that.” She arched her back to maintain contact, then slowly opened her eyes and looked up at him. He continued to stroke his chest against her, staring down at her. She anchored herself by clutching his waist and did her best to move in counterpoint. The rub of smooth skin against smooth skin created drag and friction, making her nipples feel on fire. The ache deep inside intensified, and feeling restless and in need, she arched her pelvis and struggled against his weight to separate her legs. “Oh, God, Cooper. Please.”
He whispered a curse and surged between her thighs, grinding the hard thrust of his sex against the soft notch of hers. Lowering his head, he kissed her roughly.
A moment later, he ripped his mouth free. “I want you naked.” He levered himself off her and shoved to his feet next to the bed. Staring down at her breasts, at the curve of her abdomen where it dipped in at the waist before flowing into hip, he shucked free of his sweats.
Veronica froze in the midst of raising her hips off the mattress to push down her pajama bottoms. “Oh, my.” Her gaze didn’t bother to follow the sweatpants’ progress once they’d cleared his hips. Oh, my, oh, my. Not wanting to appear to be gawking—even if that’s exactly what she was doing—she murmured, “You really
are a blonde.”
That startled a laugh from him. “Of course I am. What’d you think—?”
“That you dyed your hair.” But she didn’t want to talk about that; she simply wanted to gaze, entranced, at his penis.
Forget that it was long and thick—or even that it had been a while since she’d seen such an aggressive piece of male anatomy in the flesh. Coop’s erection rose out of a thatch of sandy blond curls and jutted straight up. Except it wasn’t straight. You could probably fit an inverted soup bowl between root and tip. “It…curves,” she said faintly.
“The better to reach your G-sp—”
“I mean it really curves.” It reminded her of a scimitar—all boldness and flash. Sort of like Coop himself. She stared at his penis so long that it began to bob and weave, bouncing its smooth head off his navel.
He reached down and wrapped his hand around the base to hold it still, eyeing her warily. “I can’t figure out if that look on your face is pure admiration—or if you’re ready to run for the nearest hammer to pound this into your basic, everyday hard-on.”
“You know, all of a sudden ‘straight’ strikes me as kinda boring.” She licked her lips. “Gimme.”
He laughed and dove on top of her. They rolled and wrestled, but the deeper their kisses and the more body moved against body, the less playful their manner became. When Coop’s fingertips brushed the hot, wet folds between her thighs, they both stilled. For a moment, the only movement in the room was the minute, circular stroke of his fore and index fingers as they separated the plump furrow and slipped and slid along its length.
When his fingers suddenly scissored around her sweet spot and clamped closed, Veronica’s hips arched up off the bed. She groped between them, wanting to touch him in return, but he kept himself just out of reach. “Please,” she panted. “I want…oh, God, Coop, I want—”
He eased his fingers down until just the tips slid inside her. “What do you want?” he demanded, gently massaging the ring of muscle there.
“To touch you. To feel you inside me.”
“Ah, man.” Leaning back, he fumbled in the drawer of the nightstand for a condom. “I planned to show you a little more style than this, to maybe explore that multiple orgasm thing you gals’ve got going for you, but I don’t think I can hold out.” He ripped open the foil packet and rolled the protection on.
“I don’t need you to hold out. I don’t want you to.” The idea that he felt a vestige of performance anxiety and wasn’t simply the indefatigable sex machine she’d first taken him to be did something to her. Something she immediately repudiated. This was about sex. That was all it was about. “C’mere. You can still show me your style—just make it the short version.”
“You got it.” But when he rolled on top of her, he didn’t instantly enter her. Instead he teased. He kissed her. He fondled her breasts. He stroked his erection up and down the slippery folds between her thighs. He even pressed the head of his penis against her opening.
But he didn’t enter her.
Veronica’s hips instigated an age-old rhythm, and her hands slid down to grasp the hard cheeks of his buttocks. The next time he flirted with penetration, she dug her fingers in, trying to anchor him in place. She burned to feel him inside her, and spread her legs farther apart. Finally she just flat out drew her knees back so he wouldn’t miss the target on his next pass. He growled in appreciation. But still he didn’t give her what she wanted.
Coop had no idea why he was teasing her this way. His balls felt as if they were turning blue and he wanted nothing so much as to bury himself in her. Yet something held him back. Some crazy need for…he didn’t know what.
The next time he thumbed his dick down to tease her opening, though, he feared he’d have to cave. He eased just the head inside her, and knew right away it wasn’t one of his brighter moves. She was so hot and wet and—oh, God—tight, that he didn’t know why the hell he was holding back. He retracted his hips in preparation for the drive home and felt all ten of Ronnie’s nails sink into his butt, staying him. Boo had nothing on this woman when it came to the claw department.
“You pull out and tease me one more time and you’re a dead man.” Her cheeks were flushed, her shiny hair mussed, and her eyes flashed fire. “I want it deep, and I want it now!”
Laughing, he planted his palms flat on the mattress, tensed his buttocks, and thrust his hips forward, sinking into her.
She started coming before he bottomed out, and Coop’s laughter stopped up in his throat. “Ah, man.” He felt her contracting around him, heard her breathy moans spiraling several octaves higher, and pure satisfaction exploded through him. Holding himself deep, he ground against her as he felt her climax go on and on. Maybe this was what he’d been waiting for. All he knew for certain was the feel of her coming apart beneath him was the biggest rush he’d felt since leaving Company C.
When her orgasm tapered off he began to move, pumping steadily in smooth, hard strokes. Ronnie wrapped her legs around his hips and moved in concert with him, and he sucked in a breath. He picked up his tempo, digging his toes into the mattress for leverage. He was close—God, so close.
Then Veronica’s breath began to hitch, and realizing she was building again, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to alter his pace to keep from going over the edge. “You really took that multiple-orgasm crack to heart, didn’t you?”
“Oh, God, Cooper.” She stared up at him with glazed eyes. “I can’t…believe…I’m so close…again,” she panted, unwittingly echoing his thoughts. Clearly reading the strain on his face, she added politely, “You needn’t wait for me, though.”
The temptation to take her at her word was sweeter than honey, but he resisted it. He slid a hand between their bodies and delved into the wet, slick heat between her legs. Locating his primary target near the top of her cleft, he feathered the little pearl of nerve endings with a light touch. “Ladies first,” he insisted. He just hoped to hell his eyes didn’t look as crossed as they felt.
But all his good intentions went up in smoke as his orgasm began to build just beneath the point where she sheathed him so tightly. Involuntarily, his thrusts picked up speed. “I’m sorry, Ronnie,” he panted. “I don’t think I can hold back.”
It didn’t matter, because a low whine began to unfurl in her throat and he felt her contract around him once again. Her climax unleashed the tight rein he’d been holding on himself, and he pounded into her with mindless ferocity. He could feel paradise beckoning, and with a roar he slammed deep one last time and came.
And came.
In blinding, white-hot pulsation after white-hot pulsation.
Moments later, shuddering with satisfaction, he eased down on top of her. He scooped his arms beneath Veronica to hold her to him and rolled to his side, careful to stay connected. He felt the little after-shocks of her orgasm pulse around him, and was suddenly filled with a ferocious possessiveness.
It made him uneasy, for that wasn’t an emotion he’d expected to feel. Since she had virtually assured him it would be a cold day in hell before she’d have sex with him, he’d automatically assumed that a big part of his wanting her stemmed from that. He’d also assumed that once he had her, one time would be enough.
But as he stroked a hand down her hair and cuddled her to him, he had a sinking feeling he’d been wrong on both counts.
14
IT WAS ALMOST NOON WHEN VERONICA AWOKE IN A tangle of limbs with Cooper. Whispering a curse, she eased his long fingers off her hip, unwrapped his arm from around her, and after extracting her thigh from between his, silently rolled out of bed. Oh, man. What had she done?
Shivering, she searched for her pajamas. A relationship with Coop had about zero chance of progressing, and she never should have allowed it to get this far. Things might start out all hunky-dory, but she had too many issues with unambitious men to believe great sex could suddenly make those problems no longer matter.
But, oh. Boy. She paused with her pa
jama top half on and looked over at Coop sprawled out in the middle of the bed. Great didn’t even begin to cover it. He’d joked about multiple orgasms, but she’d never dreamed she was actually capable of having them. Last night she’d lost count of how many he’d helped her to. Twice during the early morning hours Coop had pulled her out of sleep for slow, lazy bouts of curl-your-toes sex, and she was so relaxed now it was a wonder she could move at all. If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect a thief had snuck in and stolen all her bones.
She straightened guiltily. But that was hardly the point. Never mind that he kept drawing her like a compass needle to magnetic north; she had to walk away before Cooper Blackstock started to matter too much.
She’d just as soon not do it bare-assed, though. Where the heck were her pajama bottoms?
She eyed the bed consideringly. They were no doubt at the bottom of it, between the sheets where she’d kicked them off. Did she leave them where they were and steal down to her room wearing only her jammie top, or did she try to retrieve them? The former would be the prudent thing to do if she wanted to avoid talking to Coop this morning.
But that was too chickenhearted. She knelt at the side of the bed and lifted the covers enough to slide her arm under, sweeping the sheets for the lost article. When her fingertips suddenly brushed Coop’s warm calf and the side of his knee, she stilled for a moment. Then, drawing a calming breath, she determinedly swept another quadrant.
“That’s flattering, Princess.” Coop’s morning voice was a hoarse rumble. “But as well endowed as I am, you’re still several inches south of the good stuff.”
Freezing with her arm buried to the shoulder beneath the blankets, she slowly turned her head to look at him. Stubble shadowed his jaw and his hair was smashed flat on one side while sticking up like a rooster comb on the other. Even with those Godiva-dark eyes of his looking all sleepy and satisfied, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Allure first thing in the morning. So how come she had to steel herself against his appeal? “Are we talking about your ego, Blackstock? That seems to be the most sizable organ around here.”
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