Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  The couch creaked as he put one knee between hers. The rough scrape of his jeans against the inside of her knee sent sparks over her skin, from her knee to between her legs, where she was hot and wet and waiting.

  A long moment passed without another touch, and impatient, she shifted back against him, pressing her ass against his body, feeling that he’d unzipped his pants and put a condom on over a very hard erection.

  Moaning, she hung her head.

  His heavy hand landed on her ass, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough that she had to bite her lip from crying out.

  “You ready?” It was just that hand against her ass and the denim against her knee. The memory of his erection in latex. He didn’t touch her anywhere else.

  “Yes.”

  His knuckles brushed her as he positioned himself, and suddenly anxious and needy and desperate, she reached back to grab his thigh.

  He stopped. The tip of his cock pressed against her.

  “Don’t move,” he told her. “Both hands on the back of the couch.”

  She slapped her hand back on the couch.

  The longer he waited the more desperate she became, and she arched her back, trying to ease him in by degrees. Something, she thought, just give me something.

  “Don’t. Move.”

  He spanked her again and she had to lock her arms to keep from falling onto the couch.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “Just … hurry.”

  His laughter flowed over her spine, sending goose-flesh across her skin. “Like this?” Without warning, he slammed into her.

  She screamed, bracing one hand against the tissue-paper flowers so she wouldn’t go headfirst into them. Again. And then again. The couch rocked as her body opened itself up to all the pleasure she could take.

  He curved his hands over her shoulders and found some leverage as he fucked her relentlessly.

  “Yes,” she whispered, her breasts mashed against the back of the couch as he covered her, rocking into her, tip to root, over and over again as if measuring her from the inside, cataloging the depths of her pleasure, the scales to which he could make it grow.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes,” she whispered, feeling tears build in her eyes. Tears because it was all falling away, because without having to humble herself or compromise she was getting exactly what she wanted.

  He lifted her torso, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her breasts. He was not gentle and it was exactly right. His big hands cupped her, the calluses on his fingers were crazy-making, and she stroked him, shifted her hips forward and back, squeezing him between her legs.

  “You …” he breathed in her ear before he bit her neck. “I want to fuck you everywhere.”

  “Yes.” She wanted that, too. She wanted everything.

  He lifted her again, this time her whole body, and he spun, sitting on the couch so she sat, impaled in his lap, her back to his front.

  He arranged her boneless legs so they were on the outside of his, splayed open. Both of them reached down between her legs. His fingers finding her clit, hers finding him where he was pushed so hard inside of her.

  Both of them groaned, curling against each other, finding a thousand ways to touch, each one better than the last.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “No.” She shook her head, her fingers mapping the outline of his sac.

  He pinched her clit and a lightning bolt sizzled through her. Her hands flew back against the couch as she felt like she was leaving earth. Leaving her body.

  He moved her legs again, this time inside of his, and he tilted her up and forward. “Fuck me.”

  Breathless, on the edge of what felt like the orgasm to end all orgasms, she put her feet on the floor and began a slow undulation against him.

  “Yes, oh, God,” he groaned, catching her hips in his hands, squeezing her in a way that made her feel like she was torturing him. Which was perfect. Which added an element to her pleasure that she’d never felt before.

  Her hair had come loose and she shook it out of the way so she could look over her shoulder at him. He was perfect. His muscles flexing, his skin red, his eyes trained on her body. He had his lower lip caught between his teeth like he was a man on the rack.

  Very suddenly, it just wasn’t enough.

  She stood so quickly, he didn’t stop her, and then she pulled him down onto the floor with her, on the rug that was abrasive and rough against her naked skin, but she didn’t care. There was nothing in this world that she cared about more than his body covering hers.

  He slid back inside and she lifted her legs around his hips. He rested on his bent elbows, his cheek pressed against her hair.

  “You ready?” he breathed into her ear.

  She nodded.

  It was wild. Hard and fast and nearly punishing. Both of them straining against each other. They ended up on the other side of the rug, her head hitting the opposite couch. He was groaning in her ear, telling her how hot she was, how perfect, how good she felt, how he didn’t want to leave her, and she was speechless against the growing painful tension in her body. She put one hand overhead to stop them from slamming into the couch and the other she slid between their bodies, her fingers knowing just where to touch herself.

  “Yes,” he hissed, easing himself up onto his knees. “Show me how you do it.”

  So she did, her face turned into her arm; she made herself come while he watched. It took nothing. Three hard, fast touches and it was over, she was up and over the wave, falling breathless and different, on the other side.

  “So beautiful,” he whispered when she was done, panting, sweating, and shaking.

  “You,” she gasped, and he needed no other invitation. He braced himself over her and pounded into her until he, too, tensed, his face locked down, his eyes squeezed shut. She touched one of the rigid muscles in his arms, traced the vein standing out against his skin from the inside of his elbow up to his shoulder.

  He had a tattoo there. A motorcycle thing.

  He was primal and wrong in about a million ways—but in this he was unbelievably perfect. He roared and growled and shook, and she wrapped her arms around him, clutching his easy wildness to her chest.

  Finished, he hung his head against her chest, kissing her left breast and then her right one before pulling himself out of her body.

  The haze and fog of desire was slowly dissipating and she felt very keenly the rug burn on her shoulders. The wet ache between her legs.

  It’s so messy, she thought. And awkward.

  The aftermath of really good sex was everything she hated.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded and sat up, fighting the wince.

  “Your back,” he breathed.

  She had a hard time reconciling the kind, worried expression on his face with the man who’d smacked her ass and fucked her across the carpet.

  “It’s fine,” she said, patting his shoulder. Bones creaking, she stood up and her knee popped. Oh, that wasn’t sexy. She felt his eyes on her as she walked across the room to put on her clothes. On the way back she grabbed his shirt and handed it to him. He’d taken off the condom and pulled up his pants.

  He was watching her with a wary smile, as if he just wasn’t sure what she was going to do. “You’re not very good at this, are you?” he asked.

  “I thought I did all right,” she said, gesturing toward the rug and the couch as if it were the wrestling mat they’d just battled upon.

  “No.” He stood. “At that,” he jerked his thumb behind him, “you’re amazing. The undisputed champ.”

  Well, didn’t that just wreck her.

  “The after part. You’ve got a shitty dismount.”

  The hoot of her laugh was a surprise to both of them.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she admitted with some difficulty. “I don’t … I don’t really know what to do. Or say.”

  “Well, let’s start with a drink.” He walked across the room to their mugs and the bourbon. He splashed s
ome into both and walked back over to her. “Here.” He handed her the mug and sat down on the leather couch.

  She sat across from him on the velvet one.

  “Okay.” He stretched out his long, lean body, still without a shirt, and that was all right with her all of a sudden. “I’ll start.” He lifted his mug toward her. “Thank you very, very much for that.” He took a sip, his eyes twinkling over the mug at her.

  “Thank you,” she said, doing the same. “That was—”

  “Awesome?” It was perhaps a terrible time to be thinking this, but the way he grinned at her, she saw Casey. For a boy who didn’t look much like his father, there were moments of similarity that could leave no question about DNA. That grin was something they shared.

  “It was awesome,” she agreed, and then because he’d been so sure in handling this, so capable and somehow knowing, she mustered up her courage and beat back the black shadows of her doubt and terrible persistent self-denial. “And exactly what I needed.” She met his eyes, feeling a strange and terrible gratitude to this near-stranger. “Exactly.”

  He nodded graciously, and then the grin was back and he left his couch to come to hers.

  Leaning over her, surrounding her with the scent of sex and sweat and him, he pressed a warm closed-mouth kiss to her forehead, her cheek, and then, tipping her face up, he kissed her lips.

  For the first time tonight he kissed her lips and she gasped with the pleasure of it, the chapped dry lips against hers, the wet slide of his tongue, the spicy taste of his mouth.

  He leaned back again, just as her body was warming up under his attention. Like clay that had to be handled before it could be used. She felt malleable to his touch.

  He flopped back to the other end of the couch and had another sip of his bourbon. Belatedly, she realized she had hers, and embarrassed by how quickly she was turned on by his touch, and disappointed that that wet, messy kiss wasn’t going to go anywhere, she took a big gulp.

  Chapter 14

  He needed a second. It was hard to admit but he was showing his age, and after sex like that … he needed a cooldown. A few laps around the track at a slower pace. She looked all tousled and fucked and gorgeous, everything they’d done to each other written large in her dilated eyes, her messy hair, the blush to her skin—and he just needed a second.

  “What are you going to do with Casey this week?” She curled her body in tight until she was just a little ball in the corner of her couch. He wanted to pick her up and put her in his lap, smooth out her hair. Kiss her collarbones, the down-sloping curve of her shoulder.

  Maybe he wouldn’t need as much of a cooldown as he’d thought.

  “He’ll come to work with me,” he said. “We’re finishing up Cora’s patio.”

  “How did you end up being a carpenter and a mechanic?” she asked. “That’s where Casey found you, right? Your grandfather’s garage?”

  The fact that she remembered lit a small match in a very dark place inside of him. “I’ve always been good with my hands.” He waggled his eyebrows at her and she laughed, which had been his intention. He reached out and grabbed her foot. “You’re so far away.”

  She scooted closer, halfway across the couch, and he pulled her stiff and awkward body closer. Until she had her legs across his lap and she was leaning sideways against the back of the couch, chewing on the edge of her thumbnail before catching herself.

  There was no part of her that looked comfortable, as if she was enjoying this, and he wondered if maybe they shouldn’t just leave things at filthy sex on the floor. But their lives were already brushing up against each other in a dozen places and, well, he didn’t want to leave it at filthy sex on the floor.

  He liked her.

  Liked her awkwardness and her seriousness. He liked what she hid behind them. Suddenly, he wanted to see her smile. Hear that hooting laugh again.

  He ran a thumb across the bottom of her bare foot, but she didn’t even twitch. Of course, Shelby Monroe wasn’t ticklish.

  “Tell me about your grandfather’s shop.”

  “Mostly we worked on motorcycles. Pop was one of the best in the business; he had customers from all over the country.”

  As if she knew what he wasn’t saying, she brushed her hand over his tattoo, the stylized Indian 4 motorcycle on his shoulder, a brief, fleeting touch that he wanted to grab onto.

  “When did he die?”

  “Years ago.” He shook his head, surprised by the catch in his throat. But that was what great sex did, it just laid him out flat and emotions walked right over him. “All this stuff with Casey, though, makes me miss him. Makes me wish he were here so I could ask him what I’m supposed to do with the kid.”

  “He would know the answer to that?”

  “I moved in with my grandparents when I was thirteen. My parents died in a car wreck and I was wild. Totally wild.”

  “So, what did your pop do with you?”

  “Well, for one thing he had Nana. And she was a hugger. A total lover—she just smothered me with the kind of affection I’d never had. That helped.”

  Shelby laughed and he reached out to touch her fingers, the top knuckles, the half-moons at the base of her ravaged nails. She had competent hands. No rings. No nail polish. Just her. She spread her fingers out wide, giving him more room to play.

  “Kids should have affection,” she said, her eyes trained on the small dance of his fingers over hers.

  He imagined her as a child. So serious and tidy, her hair in pigtails.

  “Did you?” he asked, hoping that serious, tidy girl was smothered in love.

  But she pulled her hands away and looked up at him with an overly bright smile. Uh-oh, he thought. I guess that’s a no on the affection question.

  “Well,” she said, “if you need help with Casey this week, I have after-school programs on Monday and Wednesday and a birthday party on Friday.”

  He wanted to pull her hands back into his, get back to that quiet place between them that had felt so good, but that moment had passed. She was sharp and bristly again, and because he was perverse and loved a puzzle, he suddenly wanted to fuck her back into relaxing.

  “I approve of the reasons he fought, but I don’t think I need to reward him with more art classes.”

  “Oh, no,” she said with a devilish little half-smile. “The classes are for toddlers—I was going to make him work.”

  Warmth surged through him. “I like the way you think, Shelby.”

  She buried her face in her mug, the blush rising up her neck. Oh man, she just killed him with all her conflicting pieces.

  He took her feet into his lap and when she stiffened he gave her the chance to move, but after a moment she relaxed just slightly, just enough to seem like a yes.

  “Can I ask you something?” He applied pressure with his thumb against the bottom of her foot and she melted.

  “Anything if you keep doing that.”

  “That Dean guy …”

  “Why’d I do it?”

  “You wanted to have sex. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”

  She blinked at him, like an owl facing moonlight for the first time.

  “I suppose for some people it is.”

  “Not for you?”

  “No.” She pulled her feet away from his lap. “Not for me.”

  He stared at her, his lap feeling cold, his hands empty without her to touch.

  “I have a reputation in town.”

  “As what?”

  “As a teacher. A good person.”

  “And wanting to have sex makes you bad?”

  “Don’t oversimplify something you know nothing about. I don’t imagine the world knowing you let someone fuck you like an animal ever damaged your reputation?”

  He laughed in the face of her ire. “Are you calling me a slut?”

  “No. I’m just saying …” He could see the moment on her face when she realized how little she knew him. The brief flicker of alarm that flashed across her face. �
�Well, maybe I am. I have no idea. Are you?”

  “Nope. I’m dangerously monogamous. No matter how toxic or poisonous the relationship, I tend to go down with the ship.” He thought of Vanessa, begging her to marry him. “You?”

  “I’ve never really had a ship to go down with. Though I imagine I would.”

  “You haven’t had a serious relationship?”

  “In college, I did. I moved back home afterward and I dated the guy long-distance, but it got complicated and, well, there just wasn’t anyone in town interested in dating me.”

  “Were there people you were interested in dating?”

  “Sure.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “Again, you’re oversimplifying things.”

  He tugged her leg back into his lap. “I think you like making things more complicated.” He thought, quite seriously, that she was encased inside her reputation. Rusted over with who the world thought she should be.

  “Who was he?”

  “Who was who?” she asked, distracted by his fingers between her toes.

  “The man you wanted to date?”

  “A guy named Joe. A teacher.”

  “And he hasn’t asked you out? Why?”

  “I think because I’m the kind of woman men don’t think about dating. They think of me as a sister and a friend. Not someone they want to have sex with.”

  “I want to have sex with you.”

  “And that works out very well for me.”

  He ran a hand up the leg of her pants, squeezing the firm muscle of her calf.

  “I thought …” she said, all loose and unwound by his touch and the sex and the bourbon. He loved this gooey center of her, a woman with her edges softened, her defenses down. This version of her was just for him. Just for the guy who got through her guarded gates. “After the whole thing with Dean that maybe … maybe he … maybe everyone in town would think differently and someone would ask me out.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.” She laughed, rightfully embarrassed. “I know, I should just have the guts to do it myself, but every time … I don’t know. The rejection doesn’t seem worth the risk.”