She couldn’t wait.
When they finally reached her bedroom, he slowed his pace slightly as he walked across the room and carried her to the bed. He planted kisses all over her face and neck, speeding up the beating of her heart until she thought it might pound right out of her chest.
Her breathing had evolved to nothing but a shallow pant, to the point where she felt like she could barely get enough oxygen. Unless, of course there was another reason for the way her head was spinning at the moment. Which was very possible, of course—she was just having a very difficult time using reason or logic at the moment.
He laid her down gently on the mattress, brushing her hair back from her face and then leaning down to continue his pattern of soft kisses across her chest.
God, there was something about the way he looked at her, the way he touched her—it made her feel treasured. Like she was the most valuable thing he’d ever seen or laid his hands on.
She thought she might like that feeling even better than the arousal. But, again, it was hard to tell—the arousal was pretty fucking fantastic.
He reached behind her, his fingertips urging her to lean up a little bit so he could unfasten her bra. Her stomach fluttered with anticipation. He was about to see her naked, from the waist up at least. She was nervous about that. Not that she wasn’t proud of her body, she was. But the stakes were just so high. She wanted Troy to look at her and see the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. That was an ambitious bar to set for herself, but dammit, it was what she wanted.
Would her body live up to the challenge?
Troy pulled her bra off of her arms and tossed it aside with a sensual reverence that made all of her nerve endings fire. He ran his fingertips down her arms and then back up her torso, taking his time to let his touch linger every time her skin shivered from the pleasure of it all.
Finally, he brought his hands up to cup each of her breasts, brushing his thumbs over her distended nipples again and again. The electric shivers that the action sent through her body made her squirm and writhe on the bed. Every time the rough pads of his thumb made contact with the sensitive skin of her hard nipples, she felt it everywhere—her belly, her core. The throbbing earthquake the friction sent rocketing through her left no part of her body untouched.
“Oh, God, Troy. It feels so good.”
“I want you to feel good, every bit as good as just looking at your beautiful body, and touching it, makes me feel. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
His words caused pleasure to bloom deep in her belly in a way that even his touch had not been able to. They were deeply satisfying to her, somehow. They reached a deep emotional place inside her, scratched an itch that only he had the ability to affect.
He dropped to his knees beside the bed and his mouth took the place his fingers had been just a moment ago. He latched onto each of her nipples in turn, swirling his tongue around and around as she tangled her fingers tight in the back of his hair, pressing his head forward and urging him on.
She looked down her body, loving the site of his head moving gently back and forth from one breast to the other. Loving the way that each nipple, as he left it behind, was glossing and shining with his saliva, beautiful visual evidence of the pleasure his mouth had just been giving her. And then, she’d get lost in the swirling bliss of what his mouth was doing to the nipple that he’d moved to.
She honestly wondered how it was possible that it could get any better from here—and he hadn’t even touched her below the waist yet, she hadn’t even held his stiff erection in her hand, or her mouth. Intellectually, she knew the best was yet to come—but emotionally? Physically? She had a hard time wrapping her mind around that, because what she was already feeling was so spectacular.
He kissed his way up her chest and over her neck, trailing his mouth up to her ear. Positioning his lips just millimeters from her, he whispered, “I’m going to taste every inch of you Alison. Just lay back and relax. My mouth is going to take you places you’ve never been before.”
In the past, when she’d heard guys make over-the-top promises like that—usually drunk in a bar somewhere—she’d laughed, because of the hubris of the statement. It made it unrealistic.
Not so with Troy. She couldn’t have been further from laughter as a response to his statement. But that was because, with him, it didn’t seem like overconfidence. It just seemed like a factual statement of what was about to happen, and the shivers she felt in response to that calm, confident assurance told her that it was, indeed, true.
He moved his mouth back down her body, using the hard edge of his tongue to trail curlicues on the flat expanse of her belly. She couldn’t hold still when he touched her and kissed her like that. It was absolutely impossible, she just had to move. Her back arched, her hips squeezed and rolled. It was instinct, pure and visceral.
With a smooth practiced movement, Troy unbuttoned her pants and pushed them down her legs, along with her lacy panties. He pushed them off of her feet and tossed them aside to join her bra in an unseen corner of the room.
She was laying there now, completely naked and vulnerable. She felt utterly exposed as he stood there by the side of the bed, still completely clothed, and took in every last detail of her naked flesh. Every curve, every expanse, every fold and shadow—his eyes raked over it with an intensity that told her he was committing it all to memory.
Her voice trembled a little, both with arousal and vulnerability, when she asked, “Do you like what you see?”
He didn’t respond for a moment and she started to get nervous. Was there something about her body that he hadn’t expected? Something that he didn’t like, something that had made him change his mind?
WHY THE HELL WASN’T HE SAYING ANYTHING?
But then, when he answered, it wasn’t with words. It was with his actions.
He dropped to his knees beside the bed, pushed her knees apart, and with zero hesitation moved his head between her legs and enveloped her entirely with his hot mouth.
Chapter 21
Troy slid his hands smoothly up the outside of her legs and fastened his fingers tightly around her hips as he used his mouth to tease her most sensitive regions. It was necessary in order to still her writhing enough so that he could have a little bit of control. He wanted to be methodical at the same time as he was driven by passion so that he could maximize her pleasure.
An unintended benefit of having his hands so tightly wrapped around her hips, though, was that he felt every jump and twitch of her muscles underneath that hot skin, and it drove him almost to distraction. In fact, he got so involved for a moment in the rippling of her ass under his fingers and the twitching of her belly under his thumb that he forgot to concentrate on the work he was doing with his mouth.
He forgot, that was, until she leaned forward to entangle her fingers in his hair and push his head forward, latching his mouth tighter onto her wet folds, as she moaned, “God, Troy, please. Please don’t stop.”
His dick was so hard it threatened to bust right out of his pants. It pressed painfully against his fly and he wanted to release it, but the time just wasn’t right yet. He needed to do this the right way. No cutting corners, no thinking of his needs before hers. He was in this to worship her like the goddess that she was, to give her as much pleasure as he felt just being in the same room with her. To show her, with his hands, his mouth and his body, how lucky he felt to be going to bed with her tonight.
He refocused on the movements of his tongue, trailing it up and down her seam, making sure to move slowly and deliberately, drawing out the sensation and increasing the torture factor exponentially.
When he did finally allow her body to release, he wanted the explosion to be so massive that it would shake her to her very core. That required some buildup, and he was just the kind of man to put in the necessary effort. Delayed gratification was the best kind of gratification.
He pushed his tongue inside of her, pressing up agains
t her strong inner walls, which squeezed against him, making it difficult to go further. But he persisted.
He groaned, thinking about the fact that before too long, his cock would be buried in that sweet tunnel that he was tasting.
Fuck. It was going to be so good.
He moved his mouth back to the top of her slit, swirling his tongue around and around her hot pleasure button the same way he’d just been doing with her nipples. The effect was just as rewarding. She moaned and wriggled under his intimate kiss, seemingly losing conscious control of her muscles.
He could sense that she was ready in every movement, every rapid breath, every twitch and every moan.
He flicked her hard nub faster and faster until she clenched all of her muscles from head to toe. She screamed in pleasure at that exact moment, and he knew he had accomplished his goal.
If her screams were any indication, it wasn’t an everyday kind of climax. He’d wanted to give her something memorable, something without precedence if possible, and he thought that he might’ve been able to achieve just that.
She arched her back and dug her fingernails into his shoulders as she crested the peak of her pleasure again and again.
He reached up and tweaked her nipples in the same rhythm he gently lapped at her feminine mound, aiming to prolong the pleasure racing through her as long as humanly possible.
When she did inevitably come down from that high, he kissed his way back up her belly, slick with a thick sheen of perspiration now, and looked her in the eyes as he stroked her sweat soaked hair back from her forehead.
“Was that good for you, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice tender as he studied her beautiful face, now slack from pleasure and exertion.
She reached her hand up and laid it across his face, a gentle smile softening her lips as she studied him.
“I think you may’ve taken ten years off my life—or maybe added them on, I can’t be sure.”
He laughed along with her and then kissed her deeply. This kiss was not like the one they’d shared downstairs, or any of the others since the encounter had started. Those had been about the buildup of what was to come. This one was about solidifying the bond that had grown between them. It was deep, and sweet, and passionate in a way that was more about the emotional and spiritual than the physical.
That wasn’t to say it didn’t turn him on. He would’ve been lying if he’d said that his dick wasn’t growing steelier with every passing second as he moved his tongue against hers. There would never be a time when he’d kiss a naked Alison and not have it turn him on, that was just a given. But his physical reaction was secondary to the emotions he was feeling for her.
He was in awe of her, and at the same time wanted to protect her from anything that might threaten her or harm her. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms, take her far away to a secluded place that only the two of them knew about, and spend the rest of their lives making her the happiest and most well taken care of woman in the world.
He knew it wasn’t realistic, but to even want those things was such a step forward for him. He’d never been interested in a woman—not really, not for anything more than simple short-term physical gratification—since he’d come back to Valentine Bay. After all, with his responsibilities, the risk was just too great. To bring someone into their lives, to give his heart away and risk having it broken…no. That could end up being too much of a distraction. He was all Mila had now, and she deserved better.
But with Alison…damn, it was like he had no choice. He’d taken one look at her and fallen so deeply, and so fast, that there was no coming back from it.
One thing he knew was that he was ready to take it to the next level. Stroking her skin lightly with his fingertips, he whispered, “Are you ready, baby? Are you ready to feel me inside you?”
Her eyes rolled back and closed, and she let out a luxuriant groan, followed up by the breathless exclamation, “Oh God, yes. I’m beyond ready. Please.”
He pulled a condom out of his wallet and set it aside, then undressed as quickly as he could, turned on all the more because her eyes were focused on every new inch of skin he exposed with laser precision. And the more clothes he removed from his body, the more lust pooled in those brown orbs, and the faster and shallower her breath came.
Damn. He was being looked at like a sex object, appreciated as a pure physical specimen, and he sure as hell liked the way it felt. He was pretty certain it might’ve been different if the person appreciating every ripple of his toned athlete’s muscles wasn’t Alison, but since it was, the blatant devouring of her gaze made him almost as hard as the sight of her gorgeous body did.
When he was completely naked, he unwrapped the condom and slid it down over his steel hard erection. He didn’t even need to make room for himself between her legs by pushing her knees farther apart. She’d already done that. Watching him take off his clothes and then prep his cock to be inside her by sliding the condom over it, she’d done her part to get ready for the two of them to come together as one and spread her legs wide to welcome him.
When he was positioned at her entrance, he looked up at her, locking his gaze onto hers. This was more than just physical, more than just gratification. He knew she felt it too. He wanted this to mean something. He wanted their souls to connect at the same time their bodies were, and he couldn’t think of a better way to do it than to be looking right into her eyes as he slid inside of her for the first time.
“Are you ready?” he confirmed again before making a move, and with the words still partially on his lips, she was already nodding furiously. He smiled at her eagerness; he felt exactly the same way.
He thrust his pelvis forward, her velvety inner walls closing around his sheath and holding on tight. God, it felt so good. He couldn’t even process thought for a moment—it was like his brain was engulfed in a fog of pure sensation, and he had no desire to try to escape it. In fact, if he could’ve just lived there for the rest of his life, that would’ve been an enticing proposition.
He moved back and forth inside of her, pumping in and out at a steady rhythm and enjoying the gasps, moans, and grunts that his pounding drew from her mouth. As much as making love to her felt incredible, it was just as awesome to revel in all of the pleasure he was giving her as it was drinking in the pleasure he was feeling himself.
As his rhythm increased, her fingernails dug into him, in his back, his chest, his neck, and his hair. The sharp bite of her nails—not quite pain, but almost—sent sparks of electricity racing through the nerve endings in his skin. It was unlike anything he’d experienced, and he liked it.
Suddenly, her back arched and she cried out at the same instant he felt her walls clamp down around him and squeeze. He knew that he’d sent her over the edge of orgasm, and that knowledge, combined with the sensation of her wrapped around him like the tightest of gloves, sent him rocketing over that peak as well.
He slammed his arms around her and pulled her to him, holding her tight as he emptied his load. He grunted against her neck, feeling the throbbing of her pulse against his lips and marveling at it—her heart was beating so fast. He’d done that to her. A primal and masculine pride welled in his chest that was almost as powerful as the orgasm he was experiencing.
In that moment, she was his woman, and he’d given her the ultimate pleasure. That was his purpose, as her man, and he’d fulfilled it well.
No wonder they called it “cocky.” He definitely felt self-satisfied and proud of his performance, and it all had to do with that part of his anatomy that the attitude was named after.
As their blood slowed in their veins and their bodies cooled, Troy rolled over onto his back and pulled Alison with him, snuggling her up against his chest. He stroked her hair, kissed the top of her head, and felt almost entirely happy and content.
Almost.
There was one little problem, one small doubt torturing him from the back of his mind. What if she left? What if this was just a vacation fling for her, and he�
��d made the stupid mistake of not only letting her into his heart, but also into Mila’s life?
That would be the ultimate in bad parenting decisions. Mila would be heartbroken if Alison up and disappeared one day, and he wouldn’t be in much of a position to help her, because he’d be heartbroken himself.
Still, he tried to just push down those niggling worries and enjoy the moment. After all, he was lying naked in bed with a beautiful and accomplished woman in his arms. If he couldn’t just quiet his mind and enjoy that, dammit, then he deserved to have his man card taken away.
Then, with no warning, the quiet of the nighttime house was split by the piercing tone of the smoke alarm. Troy and Alison both sat straight up in bed, and Alison looked at him with wide eyes.
It occurred to him first, and he slapped his palm against his forehead, then scrambled to jump up and pull on his pants. He didn’t even bother with his underwear or shirt, let alone shoes.
“It’s the smoke alarm,” he told her as he zipped up his fly. “The lasagna. It’s been in the oven all this time.”
She groaned as she jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom to grab her robe off of the hook on the back of the door. When she came back into the room, tying the rope around her waist, there was also a wry smile on her face. “Well, I guess you could say this was a pretty good first time. In fact, you could even say we burned the house down, in a manner of speaking.”
Chapter 22
“Dude, Troy, where were you? I’ve said your name like five times.”
It wasn’t the statement from Jett that snapped Troy back to reality, it was the punch in the shoulder. But it did make him realize that he’d been completely lost in his own world. Thinking about Alison’s lips. Her hair. Her creamy skin. Her…
He returned the punch and said, “Hey, just because you don’t have anything to say that’s more interesting than my own thoughts, it’s no reason to turn to violence.”
Playing By Heart Page 9