Don't Hold Back_To Have and to Hold

by Renee Dominick

She came hard, arching into his hold as he absorbed it all with his mouth. She cried out with every exhale, panting through the waves breaking over her, until she sagged, utterly limp, her body as sprung as a broken toy.

  Rob kissed along the insides of her thighs, smoothed his hand over her belly, then slowly scooted up the bed. He could do anything he wanted to her. She couldn’t move to prevent him if she tried.

  He leaned away and returned with a condom, opening it carefully. He sat back on his heels to roll it on. Jenna watched it all, taking in the sight of his beautiful body while hers still pulsed erratically. He was tapered like a sculpture from shoulders to his waist, but a fig leaf would never cover him sufficiently. “Let me loose. I want to help.”

  In answer, he dragged her bottom onto his knees, pressing himself down, nudging at her entrance and then sliding through her crease.

  “Oh.” She moaned, her body racing back toward crisis stage.

  He dropped forward, bracing his hands outside her shoulders, the head of his cock poised and ready. “Say it, Jenna. Say it, and I promise not to dump you on the floor this time.”

  Even with him in control, Jenna had never felt so powerful, or so wanted. “Fuck me, Rob.”

  He thrust inside her, hard and fast, but held himself still, deep within her, his forehead pressed against her chest. “Oh, Jesus, I knew you’d slay me.”

  The curve of his spine drove him deeper, bumping against her farthest depths. She drew her foot up his thigh, along his hip, down the hard curve of his ass. She might as well have spurred him. He sucked in air and sat back on his heels. He took hold of her, sliding out slowly, centimeter by centimeter, their ridges and grooves finding each other. Jenna reveled in the feel of him inside her, and his fingers anchoring her. All that was lacking was attention to her nipples. “Rob, please. Let me have my hands.”

  His gaze darkened. “No, Jenna. I intend to savor all of this, savor you.” He bent, then sucked and tongued her breasts as he drove inside her, one long, slow, deep thrust at a time. She wanted to touch him, feel where their bodies joined, but the fact that she couldn’t use her hands was its own kind of sensual experience. She paid attention differently, took more, gave a little less. Her head rocked back, her whole body electrified, from the tips of her fingers and toes, inward to the fullness around his cock.

  “Fuck…” Rob’s groan sounded critical and his pace accelerated, and the bed began to spring under them, the rhythmic thumps and squeaks only ratcheting up Jenna’s craving for more. She wanted him to bang her, break her, and finish her.

  His fingers dug into her hip, and her head touched the wooden posts of the bed as he buried himself inside her. “Jenna,” he said, followed by a long, guttural sound that rose from somewhere deep within him, like a wild thing in the forest.

  She wrapped her foot around his hips, the only method she had for directing him. She urged him to keep moving, to force her toward the climax he’d built. She was almost there, stalled so close. And then suddenly her hands were free.

  She cupped his balls, tucked them up against the base of his cock, against her body.

  And then she was over the top. Her orgasm washed through her, shooting to her limbs, tingling her fingers, and pointing her toes. She was rigid, silent, and breathless, her foot still anchored to his body as he pushed up on his arms and came, groaning her name.

  When he collapsed on top of her, all Jenna could do was smile. Rob, in her body, her hand smoothing over the long expanse of his back, running through his hair, his breath a pocket of warm dampness on her shoulder. Rob.

  Do-over complete, and better than she ever imagined. Her heart seemed to squeeze three beats into one. They had more between them now than they had last night. More than just sex. Air that needed clearing and truths that still needed telling, but it could wait. For now, she could let herself enjoy this. They had time for the rest later.

  “I’m crushing you.” Rob edged off her and flopped facedown, though he kept his arm slung across her waist.

  Jenna laughed quietly. “You better get the condom off, cowboy.”

  He grumbled and tipped to his side to smooth it off before he dropped it beside the bed.

  “Rob!” Jenna tried to roll aside to pick it up. He clamped his hand across her and dragged her back into the crook of his body, spooning her.

  “I put down a towel earlier,” he said. “You’re awfully fussy for a bad girl.” His lips grazed the back of her neck. They lay quietly for a minute and then he said her name, his voice muffled by the mattress.

  “Hmm?”

  “Next time? Dark and dirty.”

  Gratification filled her, leaving her hot and eager, the sexual version of fight, not flight. “Whatever you say, Rob. You’re in charge.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I just need a little nap first.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jenna woke in the morning and took inventory of her various pleasant aches, lamenting that she had to leave the warmth of Rob’s bed. Even after a night filled with discovery, they could have spent the entire day in bed together, and she still wouldn’t have had enough of him.

  But he had to head to the airport with the others, and she had to drive four hours to pick up her brother. The rental car place was delivering a vehicle for her later on that morning. Their time was almost up.

  It was going to be hard to leave him, but even in her best fantasies, they didn’t get more than a night. They lived nine hundred miles apart, and despite him saying it, nothing about their respective circumstances had changed. He was still staid and steady, with a stable, loving family and a career in academia. Jenna was an artsy tech-nerd, with a problematic parent, a brother who needed her, and a job she loved.

  It still spelled impossible with a capital “I.”

  She’d made it through the night—through more than one awakening filled with frenzied explorations of each other’s bodies—without thinking about the ending. But when sunrise forced her back to reality, Jenna still had one item on her wish list. One last sensual treat.

  She turned over and traced the outline of his lips with her fingertip. “Rob.”

  He woke with a grunt and opened his eyes, bright blue and soft with sleep. “Hey.” He brushed her hair back from her cheek.

  “We have to get ready to leave, but I wondered…”

  He turned onto his back and pulled her on top of him, her body stretched along his. “Anything you want.”

  Jenna hitched her legs up and sat across his hips. “Tempting, but I had something else in mind. Can we go back to that meadow?”

  His eyes cast about in confusion. “The meadow we rode through yesterday?”

  Jenna bent down to kiss him. “Yes. I don’t know if I’ll ever see anything like it again. I want to see it with you.”

  He held her there, kissing her with a tenderness they’d mostly bypassed in the night. They were like a roaring bonfire that had burned down to softly glowing embers.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” she said.

  “I can’t say no to you.”

  Jenna laughed and crawled off him, her limbs weary but functioning. “You’ve done nothing but say no to me, Rob. Forever.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Jenna went to pull on her capris, but Rob stopped her. He turned her about, examining all the small marks he’d left on her body, kissing the scrapes and pink places where his fingers had clenched her, and the darker spots around her areolae where he’d sucked hard enough to leave bruises. “I should be sorry,” he said.

  She turned into his arms. “But then I’d have to apologize, too.” She touched her finger to one of the places she’d left crescent-shaped nail marks on his chest. “Believe me, I’m going to see mine in the mirror and remember every second of how I got them. I’ll probably have to go find my little bullet-shaped friend.”

  “Now you’re just trying to make me jealous,” he said with the mock-stern expression Jenna would be holding in her mind forever. It had preceded some
glorious moments the night before.

  She laughed and pulled on her capris. Rob slipped one of his T-shirts over her head and then dressed more thoroughly himself, in boots, jeans, and a shirt with pearl buttons and two pockets.

  “Good God, you really go all in.”

  “You should know. Come on,” he said, taking her hand.

  In the barns, things were quiet but stirring. Rob went looking for Marianna while Jenna waited just inside the door. A few horses poked their heads over their stall doors, bright-eyed and curious, but only one horse had ever earned Jenna’s affection.

  “Cookie!” she said when Rob returned with her in tow. “What about your horse?”

  “I didn’t think you’d appreciate getting bucked off this morning.”

  He boosted Jenna first, then mounted behind her, the saddle dipping as he swung up. Enclosing her with his arms, he took the reins and they clopped toward the barn door. Jenna glanced over her shoulder, and Marianna waved.

  Cookie’s slow pace gently rocked them all the way to the meadow, and Jenna slumped against Rob’s chest, zoned out and trying not to think about later. Instead, she thought about last night. “You never did answer my question, Rob. What changed?”

  The horse walked on, her hooves clopping twenty or more paces before he answered. “I did say it, just not well.” His hand came around her middle. “In that moment you held me away on the porch, I realized I was in danger of losing something precious, before I even had a chance to appreciate it. I thought I had lost it, actually, that it was too late. But I wanted to try to save it.”

  “Boy, did I let you off the hook easy,” Jenna said.

  “You think that was easy?” He laughed against her ear. “You’re welcome to call me an asshole for needing you to kick me to the curb to wake me up. Does it help that I was terrified?”

  “Maybe. I’ll have to think about whether or not to forgive you.”

  “I’m sorry, Jenna,” he whispered against the side of her face. “I never wanted to cause you pain.”

  “You’re not the only one who needs to apologize, Rob.”

  When they passed through the narrow gap, they found the meadow only partly in sunlight. Rob draped Cookie’s reins around a rock on the shadowed side, the ground bare under her hooves. She stood placidly as he unhooked a leather pack from her saddle, and then he led Jenna into the knee-high grass and waving flowers.

  “I better not get stung,” she said, eyeing a bumblebee the size of a small airplane as it dropped heavily onto a wildflower. Her ankles and feet were dangerously exposed.

  “Stay in my path and you won’t,” Rob replied without turning around.

  “This Rob-in-control thing is going to your head, mister.”

  He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “You think?” He stopped just past the edge of the shadow and pulled a rolled blanket from inside the pack, unfurled it with a snap, and let it float to the ground. He made a sweeping gesture. “Your bed among the flowers, ma’am.”

  “Oh,” Jenna said, charmed. She enjoyed Rob’s shock as she stripped off her clothes and stretched out on the blanket, her head propped on her hand. “Join me?”

  “I don’t know why I ever thought you were bad,” Rob said, tipping her onto her back. He knelt between her legs, pulled a condom from his shirt pocket, and tossed it onto the blanket. “Great minds think alike.” He unsnapped his shirt with a sound like mini-firecrackers that sent her blood surging. “I’m going to have my way with you,” he warned her.

  “Get on with it, then.”

  Rob, the man who had taken the time and care to learn the ways of her body, lavished attention on her, everywhere. Jenna wasn’t as patient. His jeans only made it just over his ass before she had her hand between his legs, caressing him from balls to crown. He groaned and leaped at her touch, as she smoothed the condom over him with long, teasing strokes, purposely driving him crazy. But Rob wasn’t having it. Capturing her hands, he seated himself in one long, thankfully slow entry. She was sorer than she anticipated.

  Slow ended up being the word of the morning. They kissed and rocked together, their hands sweeping over one another as they inched to the brink and stopped short, over and over. Between crests, they talked quietly of would haves, should haves, of the past, but not tomorrow, of their bodies’ desires, but not their hearts’.

  That part was unspoken, but crystal clear. It hurt to think of it, so Jenna didn’t.

  She sat astride him, his hands on her hips, his cock deep inside her, his eyes holding her when she broke. Only after that did he let himself come, too.

  Jenna lost track of time as they lay on their backs, Rob’s head on her hip as she played idly with his hair. “When is your flight?” she asked.

  “Tuesday. I changed it.”

  “What?” Her fingers stilled.

  He tilted up his head to look at her. “It’s finals week, and I don’t have tests until Wednesday. I thought maybe I’d drive back with you, stop by to thank Matt. If you don’t mind the company.”

  Jenna’s heart thumped. “I’d love the company. I was afraid I’d fall asleep at the wheel.”

  “I’m not going to be much help. You wore me the fuck out.”

  “God, I love your secret potty mouth so much,” Jenna said, tugging his hair, her grin so wide it almost hurt.

  “I love everything about yours.” His eyes flicked up to her, but they were both too wrung out to move beyond that.

  Birds swooped above them and bees buzzed by, fat and unwieldy, and eventually Rob shifted to lie next to her, his head propped on his hand. “I’m not going to take tenure. I can’t.”

  Jenna tried to maintain a cool facade as hopefulness smothered her. “But you’ve achieved so much.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve given up more. Being here made me realize I don’t want to sacrifice my life to academia. I can do things professionally that won’t force me to choose between work and my dreams.” His hand was draped across her ribs, and though his fingers caressed her skin, she knew he meant life around horses, not her. “You said it yourself. I can let go.”

  “What will you do instead?”

  “I have plenty of options. I just had to learn to want to pursue them.”

  “Back in Seattle?”

  “Only if you promise to right-swipe me on Tinder.”

  “Ha! You dog,” Jenna said, laughing. “You don’t date online. I don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t anymore, but only because the dean frowned on it.” He wrinkled his nose. “Which means she’s probably all over it, now that I think of it.”

  “Ew. You could call and ask me out, you know. You have my number in your phone. I might even say yes, even though we’re incompatible.”

  “I didn’t say incompatible.”

  She cocked a brow at him.

  “Fine, I’m ready to prove how wrong I was about that.”

  Jenna wasn’t sure she liked the sweet ache his words caused. The hope scared her. “You are pretty good at proving stuff.”

  He ran the pad of his thumb slowly along her bottom lip. “I am a trained legal scholar; it’s what we do.”

  At the moment, he looked as far from a scholar as possible. Naked in a meadow, a scruff of whiskers on his face, hair mussed. He looked otherworldly. Gorgeous.

  “God, I hope you never stop looking at me like that,” he said, bending to her breast, his nips and licks more affectionate than seductive.

  Jenna clapped a hand on his head to still him. “What’s that?” There was a metal clink coming from—

  “Shit!” Rob flung his shirt across her torso and his leg across her thighs just as a shadow closed over them. Jenna looked up into a long-whiskered, equine chin, and farther up, to a man-shaped silhouette. She shaded her eyes.

  “Hola.”

  “Javier,” Rob said.

  “Hi,” Jenna said. Squeaked, really.

  “The veterinarian is here. I came to let you know I am taking the horse,” Javier said in a heavy accent.
She’d only seen him from afar this weekend, and she’d never heard him speak. Jenna lifted her head. He had Cookie on a lead behind him. “Unless you want to bring her down. Right now.”

  “No. Take her,” Rob said, struggling to maintain his dignity while laying bare-assed in a field of flowers in front of his twin sister’s paramour. “We’ll walk back.”

  “What? I don’t have—” Jenna started to object.

  “I’ll carry you piggyback,” Rob said through clenched teeth.

  “Good.” Javier had moved out of the sun, so Jenna could see his lips quirk. “You want to be careful of the pocket gophers in this meadow,” he said. “They can emerge right under you.”

  Jenna rolled her eyes toward Rob, only to find him scowling furiously. She sucked her lips hard between her teeth, her body jerking with suppressed laughter.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Rob said, and gave Javier a twist-of-the-wrist wave.

  Javier tugged the brim of his hat and very slowly—suspiciously slowly—ambled away. Cookie swished her tail, giving them the final word.

  Jenna burst out laughing, feeling absurd and light as air.

  Rob rolled away. “That Goddamned Spaniard.”

  She turned and straddled him, kissing his mouth, his chin, his chest. She slowed her progress below his belly button, working down the length of his cock one slow kiss, one long lick, at a time. Then she took him deep in her mouth, determined to torture him, to make him pay for eight years of holding out on them.

  Slowly, slowly, she unraveled him completely. Finally.

  His fingers remained twined in her hair as he dragged in a breath. “God, I love the dark side,” he shouted.

  …

  Outside the waiting limousines, Chloe hugged Jenna like a boa would its prey. “I’m so happy about you and Rob,” she whispered. Jenna pulled her head back, a dubious expression on her face, but Chloe said, “No. I’ve been waiting for years for my idiot brother to figure it out. Don’t you ruin my joy by saying it’s nothing.”

  Jenna hugged Chloe back. Hard. “It’s not nothing. He’s coming back for a visit after finals. Don’t tell your parents. He’s staying at my place.”