Going Down Easy (Boys of the Big Easy)

by Erin Nicholas

Addison pulled in a breath. “Pottery can be fixed. Pencil lines can be erased and redrawn. Not everything is that easy to fix when it doesn’t work out.”

  “You’re right,” he said. He leaned in and put his forehead against hers. “But remember, when you’re scared, I’m perfectly fine with you climbing into bed with me.”

  She gave a little laugh, the puff of air against his lips tightening everything in him instantly.

  He gave a little groan. “I’ve missed you so damned much.”

  Her fingers curled into his shirt, as if she were holding on. “Me too,” she admitted.

  That was all he needed to hear. His lips crashed down on hers, his hand holding her head, the other cupping that ass that still fit absolutely perfectly in his palm.

  Chapter Six

  Addison rose on tiptoe to get closer, opening her mouth for him and moaning when his tongue slid along hers in a firm, sensual stroke.

  They kissed for several long, hot minutes, just pressing close and tasting one another. But it didn’t take long for the rest of Gabe’s body to start demanding more of hers. He walked her backward a few steps to the table and lifted her to sit on the edge.

  “Hey, we put our cookies here,” she said with a mischievous smile as he stepped between her knees.

  “Then this is exactly where you belong,” he told her, running his hands up under the edge of her shirt to the smooth, hot skin of her back. “Sweetest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

  She half laughed, half groaned at that. “You can’t . . . put me in your mouth right here.”

  “Oh, watch me,” he growled, lifting her shirt and taking in the sight of her breasts, encased in pale-peach silk. He ran a thumb over her nipple, watching it bead behind the cup of her bra. Then he lowered his head and sucked on the hard tip through the silk.

  Her hand went to the back of his head, her fingers gripping his hair as she gasped his name.

  He tugged the front of the cup down with a finger, exposing her flesh and swirling his tongue around her nipple. She wiggled against him.

  “Gabe, we can’t do this here.”

  “We can,” he assured her. “We’re going to. I’m starving for you, Ad.”

  Her breath caught, but she tried again. “Anyone could walk in.”

  “No one’s due here again until tomorrow, and Corey locked the door behind him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He and Dana are the only ones who have keys.”

  There was a second’s pause, then Addison breathed out. “Thank God.” She reached between them and stripped off her shirt, then unhooked her bra and tossed them both to the floor behind him. Then she brought his head back down.

  Gabe gave a gruff chuckle but instantly went back to teasing the most perfect breasts he’d ever seen. Soon she was reaching for his fly and had him unzipped and his aching cock in hand. Feeling her fingers wrap around him and squeeze and stroke nearly sent him to his knees.

  “Holy hell, Ad,” he said, his voice gravelly.

  “Need you,” she said simply.

  “All you needed to say.” He leaned back, unbuttoned her pants and, when she lifted her hips, whisked them off, along with the silk panties that, of course, matched the color of her pants. He took a moment to take in the sight of her. He felt like it had been three years rather than three weeks since he’d last seen her, touched her, lost himself in her.

  He ran a hand up the inside of her thigh, glorying in the silky heat of her skin. “Spread for me, Ad.”

  His heart turned over in his chest when she parted her knees, bracing her hands on the table behind her, and leaned back slightly. He cupped the heat at the apex of her thighs and then slid a finger along the silky seam.

  “You are so fucking gorgeous.” He slid a finger in slowly, feeling the tight, wet heat that made him desperate to have it around his cock.

  He wanted to push his pants down and thrust. That was almost all that would register in his mind. But it felt different this time. He’d missed her, he was aching for her, he wanted every damned inch of her against and around every inch of him. But there was more driving him tonight. He pumped his finger deep, relishing her groan and the way her body tightened around him. This didn’t just feel hot. And it didn’t feel playful and fun. This felt . . . primal. He wanted to take her. He wanted to possess her. He wanted to wreck her so that she couldn’t walk away, so that she couldn’t stop thinking of him, so that she would never find anything else to satisfy her.

  And that was so unlike him that he froze for a moment. He wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t the Neanderthal type. But as Addison shifted on the table and said, “Please, Gabe,” he thought that maybe he was, actually. It was just that he’d never wanted someone like this before.

  He removed his finger so he could reach into his pocket for a condom and ripped it open. Then he paused and met her eyes. “My condom.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. This time they were going to use his condom.

  It was not something he’d given a lot of thought to before Addison. Condoms were condoms and, knock on wood, had done their jobs. The night Cooper had been conceived had been a condom-less event. But Addison took charge of the condoms usually. And now, he really wanted—needed—her to trust him to take care of this. Of her.

  It was a small thing, really. Condoms were a detail that millions of people barely gave a thought to every day. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. Because it wasn’t a small thing to Addison.

  She didn’t say anything, but she nodded.

  With his breath lodged in his chest and his eyes on hers, he pulled the condom from the packet and rolled it on. Her tongue wet her bottom lip as she watched, and Gabe felt heat surge through his cock.

  He took her hips in his hands and pulled her to the edge of the table. He took her thighs in his hands, tipping her back until she was propped on her elbows, and spread her legs. She was at his mercy. She didn’t have a lot of leverage, and she couldn’t reach him. She was all his, and even as he eased in to her slowly, watching every inch disappear one by one, Gabe felt the possessive, this-is-all-mine, caveman stuff rip through him. And he loved it. Reveled in it. Wanted to feel it forever.

  Addison’s head fell back, her long hair brushing the table where just an hour ago, brightly frosted sugar cookies had sat. Gabe pulled out and then thrust again, loving the idea that every time she walked into this room from now on, she’d think of this.

  “Gabe,” she panted. “Yes.”

  He watched her breasts bounce as he thrust, could see every delicious, pink inch between her legs, took in her tight stomach, her smooth thighs, and the way her fingers tried to dig into the table, but couldn’t get a grip. But it was the look of bliss on her face, the way she leaned back and let him take her, the abandon of her hair falling around her shoulders, the fact that she was completely naked and that he still wore a shirt and had his pants only to his knees that fired his blood. This was not the put-together, confident, do-it-all-herself single mom and renowned architect in her pencil skirts carrying a briefcase with carefully organized files inside. This was the woman underneath all that. The one who was a little unsure and a little vulnerable. The one whose lipstick was smudged—because of him. Whose hair was tousled—because of him. And who was bare-ass naked on a table—for him. The one who needed him for something. Right now it might just be an orgasm, but Gabe knew there was more, and thought, just maybe, Addison was starting to see that, too.

  He’d touched every inch of her, seen everything, and yet, right now, it was so much more about her trust and the fact that she was here, in this support group, and reading about alligators in spite of wanting to stay away, that made him harder and hotter and more desperate than he’d ever been before.

  Gabe thrust harder and deeper, gritting his teeth against the sensations that threated to pull him into a hot and fast orgasm. Slow and sensual was for king-size beds and tangled sheets and a lazy ceiling fan turning above them while jazz floated up from the street b
elow. Spontaneous sex on the treat table at the community center was for hard and fast. But he had to take her with him. He knew she’d get there with him eventually, but he also knew how to speed things up.

  “God, Ad, your pussy is my favorite place to be in the whole world,” he told her gruffly. It was the truth, and bonus—she loved when he talked to her during sex.

  He felt the resultant tightening around his cock.

  “It loves you, too,” she told him with a smile, then a groan as he pumped deep.

  “Good thing,” he told her, that possessiveness streaking through him again. “Because it’s mine,” he said, for the first time in his life in regard to a woman—or a part of a woman. Though, damn, he wanted all of her. Every carry-wet-wipes-but-don’t-mind-getting-dirty, don’t-cuddle-but-will-hold-your-hand, completely-independent-but-fell-in-love-with-the-support-group-in-three-meetings piece of her. “You’re mine,” he told her as he pumped harder and faster. “Swamp boats or not, no one else is going to be worshipping this body but me.”

  Something about that—the tone, the actual words, the perfect angle of his next thrust—made her moan and her inner muscles tighten.

  “Gabe.” Her chest was rising and falling with her deep, fast breaths, and she was trying to grip the table.

  But she didn’t have to worry. He had a hold on her and wasn’t letting go.

  “Right, Ad?” he asked, his jaw tight. “I’m the only one who gets to see, touch, and taste this pussy.”

  “Gabe,” she panted, her eyes on where he was sliding in and out of her body, ratcheting up the sensations for them both. Her chest was flushed, and he could tell she was getting close.

  “Maybe I won’t let you come, since you kept me away from it for three weeks,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just take what I want, since you didn’t think you needed this. Maybe if you want to come, I should make you promise to give me this pussy anytime I want it.” He pumped deep as her muscles clenched around him hard. “And I want it, Ad. I want it over and over. I want to feel this sweet, wet heat in my hand, on my tongue, and around my cock.”

  She moaned, and her head fell back again.

  “I want to fill you up and wring you out, Addison.”

  She gasped, then gave him a quiet but heartfelt “Gabe.”

  “Every.” He thrust hard. “Fucking.” He thrust again. “Night.”

  That thrust put her over the edge. Her thighs tightened, her inner muscles gripped him, and she let out a soft cry—the one that always made him feel like a damned king.

  Gabe let himself go then, pounding into her, filling her up as promised but feeling very much like it was him who was being wrung out. His climax thundered up from the center of his gut, and he felt the eruption to the soles of his feet. And just maybe his soul.

  Gabe braced his hands on either side of her hips on the table as he struggled to catch his breath. Addison thought maybe that should make her feel caged in, but instead, it felt like he was shielding her, protecting her while she recovered her senses.

  But that might take a while.

  That orgasm had been . . . different. Sex was always good with Gabe. Beyond good. The best she’d ever had. But this time had felt . . . yeah, different was the best she could come up with. Apparently postclimax endorphins made her brain a little mushy.

  Or maybe it was that analyzing—and admitting—how it was different would have made another part of her mushy. Like her heart.

  It was, she knew, in part, all that possessive talk about being Gabe’s. Yeah, it had been dirty, and he’d used the word pussy a lot—a word that she had really thought she didn’t like prior to meeting Gabe Trahan, but he had a way of saying it that made it sound almost reverent . . . and very hot—but it had all seemed about a lot more than him not wanting her sleeping with anyone else.

  Hell, she didn’t want him sleeping with anyone else, either. Ever. For the rest of his life. She didn’t want him talking to anyone else like this. She didn’t want him staking his claim on anyone else. In fact, that thought made her feel possessive of him. The only other thing in the world she’d ever felt that way about was Stella.

  And there was the problem.

  She either had to let him go completely. Or she had to keep him.

  And both scared her equally.

  Gabe finally pushed back and away. Addison felt instantly cold and lonely. She wanted to know that they could go home now and curl up in bed together. That she could reach for him in the night and he’d be there. That when she woke up, he’d be there, maybe in her shower or in her kitchen. And that even if she didn’t see him all day, he’d come home to her.

  She’d had just a taste—Gabe on the pillow next to her, Gabe in the kitchen in the morning, Gabe taking her home at the end of a night out on the town—when she’d visited New Orleans in the past. But then she’d gone back to New York, and none of that was an option full-time. But now that she was here, she couldn’t stop thinking about how he was just a few miles away and that maybe she could have all of that.

  Stupid. That’s really stupid, Addison.

  He gave her a wobbly smile that was sweet and sexy at the same time. He dealt with the condom as he said, “Calling that the treat table is a very accurate term.”

  She laughed and pushed herself up to a sitting position, and she realized for the first time as he straightened his clothes that he was still mostly dressed while she was bare-ass naked.

  “I’ll be blushing the next time I reach for a cookie.”

  He gave her a roguish grin. “Good. And the next time I lick frosting off a cookie, know I’m thinking of you.”

  And in spite of the very recent orgasm, Addison felt her body heat. The man really did have a great tongue. “You lick the frosting off before eating it?”

  His grin grew, and he gave her a wink. “Oh yeah.”

  Addison was suddenly having trouble remembering how to hook her bra.

  She finally managed to pull her clothes on, and they stood facing each other.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” she agreed.

  He took a breath and said, “Addison, I want to keep doing that.” He pointed at the table. Then he looked her directly in the eyes. “But I want more than that.”

  She had to nod. “I know.”

  “Tell me I can have it.” His tone was husky and commanding and pleading at the same time.

  He didn’t touch her, but she felt a shiver of pleasure go through her as if he had. He wanted this. Clearly. She wanted more, too. But she hadn’t even met his son. Addison had never been responsible for a child other than her own, even for a few hours. Stella had never even had a friend spend the night before. But still, Addison had no choice but to nod.

  The look of relief and happiness on Gabe’s face almost did her in. He reached for her, again cupping the back of her head, but he looked into her eyes and said “Thank you” before lowering his head and kissing her slowly and sweetly this time.

  When he lifted his head, Addison felt compelled to say, “But we have to take it slow.”

  “Fine. Okay.”

  The corner of her mouth curled. “Between this and the sex, I could get almost anything from you right now, huh?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “What do you want?”

  She thought about being playful and flirtatious, but instead she went for honest. “I want you to let me meet Cooper at the family get-together and not be pushy or expect too much or read too much into anything.”

  He nodded slowly. “I think I can do that.”

  “Okay, then.” She felt a sense of optimism that surprised her.

  “So we’re going to slowly wade into this bayou rather than jump in to skinny-dip all at once,” he said with a smile.

  She laughed. “There are still alligators in the bayou, Gabe.”

  He lifted a hand to her cheek and smiled. “Yeah, I guess there are. For now.”

  Gabe had expected to like her. He’d expected to think she was beautif
ul. He’d expected to have an urge to make her laugh. He hadn’t, however, expected to fall in love in less than five minutes.

  But Stella Sloan was irresistible.

  She didn’t sit down to play the board games. She stood the entire time, sometimes leaning on the table, sometimes upright and bouncing on the balls of her feet. Whether they were playing a slower, quieter card game or a fast-paced action game, she wiggled, she danced, she jumped up and down, and she grinned, giggled, and laughed. It didn’t matter if she won or lost, she did it all with a big smile and lots of energy.

  And Addison sat nearby, watching, smiling affectionately, but not interfering, not trying to help, not telling Stella to settle down or to sit down or to quiet down. She let her daughter play the games, interact with the other kids and adults, all while sticking close on the periphery.

  Gabe didn’t know who he liked watching more. The bubbly Stella or her quieter, more reserved mother. Because it seemed clear that if Stella were presented with a beignet, she’d dive in, powdered-sugar mess be damned. And he appreciated that. Absolutely. Still, there was something about Addison’s more composed demeanor that drew him. Because he loved seeing that composure crumble and watching her just go for it.

  Gabe was at the table next to Stella’s. He and Cooper and Dana and her two kids were playing a memory game. Which Cooper was winning every single time. Because he concentrated and took the game seriously. Everyone else at the table was just playing for fun and didn’t really care if they won or lost. But Cooper knew the objective was to match the most pieces and clear the board, and he studied the game the way he studied . . . well, everything. If he was going to learn everything there was to know about cranes and bulldozers, he learned everything there was to know. Same for alligators. And where all the pieces were on a game board. Gabe grinned as he watched Cooper press his lips together. Gabe knew Coop was barely resisting telling Grace, Dana’s youngest, where the match was for the piece she was holding.

  Finally, Grace chose a piece. And was wrong. The next move, Cooper made another match and ended the game.