by Skye Jordan
Wild.
She’d known Trace would kiss like this—absolutely wild.
She slid her hands through his hair, let her arms fall over his shoulders, and sank into him with a moan purring in her throat.
The pie was long gone, but Trace kept kissing her, and she kept letting him. His arms doubled around her and pulled her up against his body. His strength took her breath. The passionate way he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her washed away every thought. One hand cupped the back of her neck in a firm, controlling hold that made her feel safe and so completely desired. His other arm moved low and curved around her hips, positioning her sex in direct and perfect contact with his erection.
His erection.
The reality shouldn’t have been so shocking, but after living in such a screwed-up marriage for so long, Avery had begun to believe she was incapable of exciting a man. And she’d sure as hell never known the thrill of a man guiding her hips into a rich, slow grind that rocketed her straight into intense pleasure.
She was downright euphoric when she turned her head to break the kiss and draw air, whispering, “Oh my God.”
Trace froze. His hips stopped their erotic rock; his lips rested listlessly against her temple. And a whole different kind of tension filled him.
“Fuck.” His curse was barely a whisper, but it filled Avery with a frantic type of dread.
She closed her eyes and twisted her hands in his T-shirt. “Don’t you dare.”
“Avery—”
“I swear to God, Trace, if you pull back . . .” The mere thought ground her already-shattered heart into dust. She didn’t have an ultimatum handy, but she knew everything between them would change. It had to. She couldn’t keep living every day wanting someone so badly only to know she couldn’t have him. She’d wasted enough of life that way.
He exhaled heavily, rubbed his forehead against her hair, fisted the hand at her hip. “We can’t. You know we can’t.”
“No. I don’t.” She laid her hands against his shoulders and pushed back. Would have looked him in the eye, but his were cast down. “Give me one good reason. One. Other than the fact that I’m not as hot as your usual hookups.”
His eyes lifted and locked on hers with anger flashing. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. And you know why. I’m too old for you. Too screwed up for you. Shit, I work for you.”
“What you are is an idiot, and I said a good reason.” Hurt joined her anger. “I may not have the experience of your usual flings, but I learn fast. It may not be the best sex of your life, but if you tell me what you like, what you want, I’ll make sure you’re not disappointed. And you don’t have to worry about me holding on. I’ve been permanently cured of wanting any kind of commitment.”
“Jesus Christ.” He rubbed his forehead, his voice soft, his expression pained, his gaze sympathetic. “Slow down, honey. I think you might have had a little too much of that expensive wine—”
Anger seared a path down her breastbone. She picked up the bottle and shoved it into his hand. “Have I?”
He tilted the bottle, and through the light-gray glass, no one could mistake it was still more than three-quarters full.
“If you don’t want me, then just be man enough to say you don’t like what you’ve tasted. That you prefer something different. But don’t use bullshit excuses, and don’t put it on me.”
Holding the tattered threads of her dignity together, she pushed against his shoulders and tried to stand, which she immediately realized would be more than a little awkward in these heels. But before she could even get one foot underneath her, Trace gripped her waist and hauled her back to his lap. Then slid his hand around the nape of her neck and held his gaze on hers.
“I never said I didn’t want you.” His voice was gravelly, serious, and edged with something emotional—pain, anger, something . . . “I want no one but you. I haven’t been able to think of anyone but you. I’ve been trying to avoid exactly this for two goddamned months because I have a job to do here. One that means a whole new life for you. One that means a whole new start for me. And I’m trying like hell not to fuck that up for either of us.”
Stunned by his admission, her heart dropped to her stomach. All her anger drained, leaving behind hurt, confusion, and shame. She dropped her focus to his chest with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I haven’t been thinking about anyone but me. I’m such a—”
He pulled her in and kissed her quiet. “You’re always thinking about everyone else.” He kissed her again, tasting her in a way that reached between her legs and pulled. “You’re perfect.” He turned his head and kissed her the other way. “You’re beautiful and sweet and so fucking strong you amaze me.” Both hands slid into her hair, and his fingers fisted. The sting radiated along her scalp and made her gasp. Trace drank the sound and did things to her mouth with his tongue that made her writhe against him, then broke the kiss suddenly. “Your ex-husband was the biggest fucking idiot on the face of the planet.”
That made her laugh. A breathless, dizzy laugh that filled her with warmth from the toes up.
And he kissed her again, this time pulling away to say, “This is a really, really, really bad idea.”
“Maybe.” She scraped her upper lip between her teeth, hoping to quell the butterflies in her stomach. “But none of the ideas I thought were good ever panned out very well, so . . .” She shrugged, scanned his face again until she met his gaze, then forced herself to hold it. Forced herself to own this decision. “Guess I’m really, really, really ready to try a bad one.”
“Jesus Christ.” He dropped his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “You’re fucking fearless.”
She huffed a laugh, picked up his hand, and pressed it over her crazily beating heart. “I’m not fearless. I’m just less afraid of being with you than I am of hating myself because I passed up the chance.”
She couldn’t read all the emotions that rushed across his face or filled his eyes. Only knew they seemed to spill into her body and tangle with her own to make her heart trip and her pulse speed.
“This could backfire big-time,” he said. “You know that.”
She shook her head and stroked his face with both hands, then ran her thumbs over his stubbled cheeks. “We won’t let that happen.”
He slid his arms around her and stroked his hands up her back, warm and rough against her bare skin. Then he pulled her in and kissed her again, his mouth gentler now, the kiss filled with the kind of emotion that had been missing in her marriage for so long she wondered whether it had ever been there.
Avery sank in, wrapped her arms around his neck, and soaked it up like a sponge. So needy after going without for so long.
Trace’s hands caressed her back, raising gooseflesh and tightening her nipples, before sliding down again, his fingers tugging on the bow holding her dress together. Avery tensed as Trace leaned back and let the sheath fall away until the fabric rested at her hips and she was all but naked on his lap. His gaze seemed to scour her forever while his hands fisted and released in the fabric pooled at her hips.
Avery found it increasingly hard to breathe as negative thoughts pinged through her mind. Her breasts were too small. Her body too boyish. She was too ordinary. The other women he slept with were hot and sexy and curvy—she’d heard the rumors. Seen them, with their long legs and big boobs, come by the site now and then, looking for him.
But then he breathed, “Holy hell.” His hands moved back up her body, warm and strong and sure, making her belly flinch, her breasts tighten. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”
And as if he couldn’t wait another second, he pressed his face between her breasts, his mouth open and hot on her skin.
FIVE
Everything seemed to speed and spin around Avery, yet details stood out in relief. The thick, silky feel of his hair between her fingers as she held him close. The spicy, clean scent of his skin as she pressed a kiss to his jaw. The heat of his body warming h
er everywhere.
He closed his mouth over the side of one breast and worked his way around to the other side before pulling her nipple into his mouth and sucking with a deep moan of pleasure in his throat. Her breath caught, her back arched, and Avery was instantly lost in a swirl of lust that had been repressed for far too long.
His hands gripped her hips and pulled her into him, starting that mind-blurring grind again, rocking her sex against his while his lips moved to the other breast. And when his mouth closed over her nipple, Avery dropped her head back as if it were too heavy to hold up. Another surprised sound of pleasure rolled out of her. Trace growled, digging his hands into the flesh at her hips to intensify their rhythm, his lips tugging hard on her nipple.
“Ah . . .” Avery realized an orgasm was right there too late to stop it. She fisted his hair, uttered a confused, “Trace . . . ?”
He lifted his mouth from her breast long enough to kiss her mouth and murmur, “Gonna come for me, baby?”
“I . . . God . . .” The sensations just layered and deepened, and her body slipped from her control. So quickly. So easily. “Trace . . .”
“That’s it,” he murmured, biting her neck. “Easy, sugar. Relax. Let it come.”
But when his mouth slipped back to her breast and bit gently, there was no relaxing and nothing easy about the orgasm that shocked her body into a tight bow, bending her backward over his arms and pulling a scream from her throat.
Avery shuddered and fisted her hands in his T-shirt to hold on. Her hair fell from the bun, spilling everywhere. Even though she struggled to rein it in, her mind slipped right out from under her. Her body rippled with sensations she’d never experienced—not with David, not at her own hands.
And when her mind slowly returned, and Avery found Trace’s heavy-lidded, sparkling-blue eyes watching her, embarrassment flooded her in a heat wave.
She closed her eyes and lowered her head with a confused, “Jesus.”
His hand cupped her face and lifted her head. “Look at me, Avery.”
She opened her eyes but could barely meet his gaze.
“Don’t second-guess your body. It’s telling you what you need, however and whenever you need it. There is no right or wrong in sex, and that was the hottest, most gorgeous thing I’ve seen in a long damn time.”
Her chest released and emotions flooded in, wetting her eyes. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and kissed him hard and deep. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes and before she could wipe them away, Trace licked them. He then stood, lifting her with him, and set her on her feet.
Steadying her, he let the dress fall to the floor, leaving her in nothing but pink lace panties and heels. His gaze devoured her, while his hands stroked her arms, then threaded their fingers.
Avery’s mind drifted to all the light in the kitchen, to the darkness outside. “Should we turn off the lights?”
“No one could see us unless they were standing on the porch,” he murmured, distracted. Then added a soft, “You take my breath away.”
Another wave of emotion pushed through her. God, it had been so long since she’d felt wanted. And to be wanted by a man like Trace, when he could have any woman, when he’d seen her at her worst . . .
Avery had the sudden and urgent need to live up to her own promises. She stepped into him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and offered her mouth, open and eager. He enveloped her, crushed handfuls of her hair in his hands, and kissed her as if he could never get enough.
With a groan, he lifted her off her feet. Avery held his shoulders tight as he spun and dropped her ass on the butcher block. She gasped at the cold hitting her backside, steadied herself with her hands, and found them sliding in mango juice.
Trace didn’t seem to notice or care. He hooked his fingers in her panties and dragged them over her hips and down her thighs, then let them drop to the floor. His hands slid back up her thighs, his fingers tense and sinking into her flesh. His fiery gaze scoured her legs, then settled on her sex.
Avery’s nerves started to rise again. She wanted to ask him what he wanted, what she could do for him, but was embarrassed because she should already know.
So she did what came naturally and fisted the soft cotton tee in her hands, pulling it toward his head. Trace lifted his arms and let the shirt come off effortlessly, exposing all that tan skin, all those roped and ribbed muscles, and the dusting of dark hair across his chest that tapered into a line down the middle of his abdomen. And even though she’d seen his upper body dozens of times when he’d been working around the café, somehow he seemed so much bigger now, so much stronger, so much hotter. Far more . . . real. Probably because she’d become the queen of denial and suppression, and hadn’t given him adequate room in her conscious mind.
The pressure of his hands on her thighs dragged her thoughts back as her legs slid open easily, lubed by the juice covering the wood. And when he got a clear, pornographic view of her pussy, he groaned. The sound made her sex clench, and he smiled. He rubbed one hand through the juice, then stroked the cool, sloppy liquid over her skin until he reached her opening and sank one finger deep.
Avery pulled in a sharp breath and gripped the edge of the butcher block until her fingers stung.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
I can’t believe I’m . . .
“Jesus Christ . . .” She barely heard her own words over the buzz building in her ears. That felt so good.
Trace watched his own hand as he single-mindedly fingered her so slowly she wriggled toward him.
“Hmm, you like that.” His lips twitched into a grin, his tongue licked his bottom lip, followed by his teeth, but those eyes stayed on her pussy. On his fingers stroking and sinking deep and stroking again. On the way his touch made her shudder and tense and pant.
And when the pleasure pushed outside her boundaries of control, her hands clenched a little more, back arched a little more, thighs tightened a little more, and the sounds escaping from her throat grew higher, louder, longer, and far more needy. But he kept one big, wet hand on her thigh, holding her open. “No, no. Let me see. Let me watch.”
Then he pulled his hand back, met her eyes deliberately, and held them as he took his fingers into his mouth and sucked. Shock burned straight down Avery’s chest and zapped her sex like a current.
Trace’s eyes fell closed on a long groan. “Mmmm, fuck that’s good.”
Fire leaped through her body. Her chest was so tight, she could barely breathe. He was even further beyond her sexual expertise than she’d realized. Until this moment, she hadn’t recognized just how naive she was. Hadn’t understood just how much she didn’t know. Hadn’t comprehended that even the dirtiest conversation she’d listened to among other army wives hadn’t prepared her for this.
For Trace.
His hand slid between her legs again, rubbing in the juice before sliding two fingers inside her. Avery gasped, tensed, and writhed into delicious pressure. “God, Trace . . .”
“I love hearing that.” He released a heavy breath and leaned in, pushing her thighs wider and lowering his head to stroke his tongue across her mouth. “I love hearing my name on these lips.”
She opened to him, but he just hovered there, out of reach, his gaze drilling into hers as he moved inside her, driving her a little closer . . . a little closer . . . a little closer to the promise of ecstasy. To the promise of sweet oblivion for several long, delirious seconds.
She was getting so much more than she’d expected. So much more than she knew what to do with.
Yet she still heard herself say, “More, Trace . . .” Her voice came out shaky and weak, and she reminded herself of an addict searching for a hit. “I want more.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Oh, you’re gonna get more. Plenty of time, Cupcake. We’ve got all night.”
The wicked promise lighting his eyes shot twin streaks of excitement and alarm across her nerves. Holding tight to the wood with one hand, she reached
out and tugged his belt through the buckle. “I can’t do this all night.”
He chuckled. “Well, now I’m going to have to prove you wrong.” He pushed deep, creating heat and pressure and wild, mind-numbing pleasure that halted Avery’s hand. Her mouth fell open, and a surprised cry rose from her lips. “And you know how stubborn I can be.”
He covered her open mouth with his and stroked her tongue the way he was stroking his fingers inside her until she was struggling to lift into his hand. “Ah, God, Trace . . .”
“Tell me to make you come.”
The pressure centered deep in her body. A wild kind of need that would have had her begging if she didn’t feel such a sense of shame about it.
“Trace . . .” She was so close, wanted it so bad.
He put his mouth near her ear and whispered, “Beg me, order me, do it however you want to do it, but I’m not going to let you come until you ask for it.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and bit out, “Fuck.”
Trace laughed. A hot, nasty laugh as he kissed a trail down her neck. “It’s so hot to hear such a dirty word from such a pretty mouth. I can’t wait to see the other dirty things that pretty mouth can do tonight.”
“Oh, God . . . ,” she moaned; her arms burned from lifting her body into his hand, searching for another delicious peak. And his dirty talk was hitting some crazy place inside her, turning her on in a way she’d never believed possible. “Trace . . . please.”
“Open your eyes, Avery. Look at me and say it.”
She gritted her teeth, frustrated with need, angry he was pushing her to uncomfortable limits. And opened her eyes to his. “Fucking make me come, dammit.”
The lust that flared in his eyes burned through Avery, and the smile that glittered across his face could have come straight from the devil. “Well done. Now keep your eyes open and on me.”
“Trace—”
Her angry warning was cut off by the thrust of his fingers inside her and the following rub and push and grind of whatever he did. “Ah . . .”