by Ruthie Knox
He glanced over her clit, and she gasped into his mouth. “Roman.”
That made him smile his blinding smile, the dimple she’d glimpsed once emerging from hiding. Even in the almost-dark, she could see that his smile was genuine and deep, crinkling at his temples. She studied the shadow of his stubble and touched a small indented scar on his forehead she’d never noticed before. All this evidence of his humanity, right there where she’d have seen it if she looked.
“Did you want something, or was that another one of those ‘just Roman’ Romans?” He slid his erection over her again, enticement and tease, and she dug her nails into his back as the movement drenched her clit in pleasure so rich and intense, it took her a second to recover.
Okay, three seconds. Five, tops.
Roman used the delay to move against her again, watching her face, and then again, this time coordinating his thrust with another press of his thumb against her nipple.
“No,” she said, breathless.
“No what?”
He urged her other knee wide, and her hips lifted because she wanted him inside her but she could come like this if he kept working her nipple and easing over her clit, each firm slippery stroke winding her a little tighter.
If he kept looking at her, his eyes intent, avidly gathering every scrap of evidence of what he did to her.
“No idea,” she admitted. Not the first clue, not about anything, but for the first time it didn’t seem to matter. This thing with Roman—maybe this was the point. Maybe it meant something, or would lead her somewhere, or—
“God.”
Roman smirked. He’d twisted her nipple between his fingers and thrust much harder that time.
“You looked like you were wandering,” he said.
“Can’t have that.” She pulled him closer and kissed him, because it was that or smile, and clearly he shouldn’t be able to tease her this way. She’d have to do something about it. Soon. Soon, God, if he’d just keep gliding over her that way … Ashley closed her eyes, pulling her mouth from his. She lifted into each slide, arching her body to meet him.
“Oh,” she said on the next one.
“You’re going to come.”
“Shh. You’ll scare it away.”
He grinned. “Are you always this easy?”
“Shh, shh, shh.” She dug her nails into his butt and pulled him in, closer, harder—oh, wow.
“What do you like when you come?” His voice was low and hungry, full of a smug enjoyment that shouldn’t have made her hotter. “You want me to suck your nipple? Bite your neck? Or, if you want, I could put my mouth—”
“Kiss me,” she demanded, too far gone to think about all his options or the sweetness of being offered this multiple-choice set of earnest possibilities, too close to think because she was winding up, tipping over, God. She kissed him hard until she couldn’t because she was clenching tight, contracting around nothing but the hot, sweet pain of his cock moving over her clit and the feel of him, the smell of him, everything.
He grunted in the middle of it, or groaned, she didn’t know what to call the noise he made except helpless, and it launched her orgasm onto this whole different plane from great to fucking insane, this evidence of his enjoyment, his stupefied pleasure in giving her pleasure. She came long and hard and really really good, and Roman eased her through it, attentive but not pushy, as though someone had earlier given him a list of the fifteen things he could do to spoil her orgasm and he’d diligently memorized it so he could avoid them without apparent effort.
She spun down, her whole body loose, her hands lightly stroking his back, and he kissed her again and said, “That was nice.”
“Nicer for me than for you, I bet.”
“Probably. But it was pretty great on my end, too. Fucking hot.”
She laughed. It came out a snort. Ashley covered her mouth with her hand, and Roman kind of collapsed onto her. “Very attractive.”
She started giggling helplessly.
“Do it some more,” he urged. “Are you ticklish after you come?” He grazed his fingers over her ribs, and she tried to squirm away but there was nowhere to go. He was much bigger than her, plus she really didn’t want to go anywhere when he was pinning her in place so nicely.
“Oh, you are ticklish. Sweet. What about this?” He bit her ear, breathed hot into it, and she shrieked.
“Stop!”
Roman kissed her neck. He kissed his way to her breasts. Ashley quit laughing when he licked over her nipple, and by the time he’d finished licking and started sucking she was moaning again, and he was everywhere. His tongue flattened her stiff nipple against the roof of his mouth, working it. His fingers found her clit, dipping lower, pressing inside her. He released her breast only to claim the other one, muttering right before his mouth closed over it, “There’s so many things I want to do to you, I hardly know where to start.”
“Roman.”
He lifted his head, his lids at half-mast. She watched as he flicked his tongue back and forth over the flesh he’d just softened, bringing it to an aching peak all over again. “What?”
“Do you have a condom?”
“Sure. I left one by the light, didn’t you see it?”
Ashley twisted onto her stomach and reached across the bed to the table lamp, regretting the loss of his fingers and his mouth but too impatient to wait for him to get around to retrieving the package himself. She fumbled, frustrated because she wanted to fuck now, wanted Roman inside her, but she couldn’t find the stupid condom until he lay over her and reached past her hand, saying, “Right here.”
Ashley collapsed, euphoric and exhausted and a little bit dizzy, only to find herself in a new and interesting alignment. Roman was still reaching out, turning on the lamp with a quiet click, his chest pressed against her shoulder, knees straddling her. She pulled up to kneeling and lifted her ass in the air. “Put it on.”
She turned her face to watch as he rolled the condom down his … yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she’d been neglecting this part. She should have been looking at Roman, naked in the yellow-orange light. That hard body, the intensity on his face, his way-better-than-adequate cock rising out of its nest of black hair. Yum.
His hands slapped down onto her hips. “You want me like this?”
“I want you every conceivable way.”
“Me, too, Ash. You have no idea.” Hands to the bed, he lowered himself over her. “But do you like it from behind, or are you offering because you think I do? Because I want to get you off again, if I can. If you don’t want—”
“Roman,” she interrupted. “This is not the time for overthinking.”
“Right. Turn over, then.” His mouth caressed her cheek, the rasp of his skin sweet and intimate. “I want to see your face.”
She turned, surprised because her eyes were misty, tears close. She felt as though she’d spent every day for years and years in layers of padding, gauze-wrapped, and Roman had just yanked hard on the loose end and sent her spinning around, a dizzying whirl that left her bare, her skin tender, her heart open.
I want to see your face.
Who had ever said that to her before?
No one, her mind whispered. No one but him.
Earlier, perched on a tree branch, he’d looked at her in the dappled moonlight and told her, You have me, as though that was a thing people said. As though they were ordinary words, and he could simply offer them up. Whatever you want.
It went both ways. Whatever he wanted, she would give him, and somehow it wasn’t scary with Roman. There were no sharp edges, no cliffs to drop off if she failed to take care. She’d been warned about this man, but she couldn’t be afraid with his soft hair under her palms, the warm hard muscles of his back rippling when he moved, his mouth so patient and caring when he kissed her that every stroke of his tongue sent little eddies of joy right through her.
You have me, she thought, looking into his dark eyes and finding him there, that boy who’d never been loved, thi
s man she’d found to be so different, so much more, so much better than she’d expected. Whatever you want.
He pushed inside her, slow and steady. Withdrew partway, shifting the angle, and then back again, deep and sure this time, all the way in, slicking up moisture as he pulled out and came back, so right, so good.
“Holy shit.” She squeezed around him and relaxed, adjusting to his size and her crazy, crazy need to keep him right here for the rest of her natural-born life.
More tears. She blinked them away, unimportant.
“Ash,” he gasped.
“Just Ash?” Another squeeze.
He groaned. “No, more like I’m-not-gonna-last-long Ash.”
She lifted one knee, shifted beneath him to interlock their legs, and then inhaled, openmouthed, because it worked a little too well, that change. The pressure and friction on her clit the next time he thrust were good enough to blow out a few brain neurons.
“S’okay,” she slurred. “Thirty seconds. All I need.”
She wasn’t even making sentences anymore. Just fragments that she hoped were English.
“You’re kidding. Thirty seconds?” Roman rose to his hands, straight-armed. “I thought you’d need—”
He stopped talking, possibly because she’d started stroking his chest and his stomach, mesmerized by the sight of their joined bodies, and then she surrendered to the whim telling her she needed to rake her nails down his sides and over his ass, then lower, between his legs to cup his balls.
Roman dropped to his elbows, so sudden it became clear he had no choice in the matter. He began to fuck her much harder.
Knowing she could break him that way raised her core crotch temperature about seven thousand degrees. Watching his face, his eyes a little glazed, jaw loose. Every time he thrust into her, she lifted her hips to meet him and the rhythm of her arousal beat more, more, again, more. “Not kidding,” she said. “Jesus, keep doing that. Keep—”
When she squeezed him again, Roman released that grunting, groaning noise.
“I love making you sound like an animal.”
His smile was pained. “I’m not going to last.”
One more squeeze, and his eyes closed, eyebrows drawn into an expression that would have looked like agony if it weren’t for that sound he made. That expression of pure, unadulterated pleasure, foolishly beautiful. His face. This connection. This man inside her.
His frantic haste tripped her switch, focusing her own pleasure down to one intense point of concentration and sending it out to spread through her whole body. Ashley tucked her head against his neck, closed her eyes, and hung on tight, tight, God, everything tightened around Roman and he gasped and went still, panting into her hair, coming with her and into her, both of them clinging like survivors, desperate and needy and sated, fulfilled, happy.
Happy, together, in the moment. In this night.
Even if she didn’t have all the answers, she had this one affirmative answer. Yes.
Yes to the two of them, heavy and weary.
Yes to Roman rolling his weight off her and pulling her into his arms, kissing her neck and her shoulder and the back of her head before he got up to take care of the condom and then returned, pulling the covers over them.
Yes to not needing words or making plans for the morning, because they both wanted the same thing tonight. They wanted to fall asleep in this cold room, huddled under the covers of a cozy bed that smelled like soap and deodorant and excellent sex. His chest against her back. Tucked up together, safe and warm, with all their problems set aside.
Yes to Roman, she thought as she drifted off. Yes.
Maybe when the sun came up, all the rest of the answers would be as obvious as this one.
Episode 7:
Renounced
CHAPTER ONE
Carmen squirmed.
She writhed.
She lifted and twisted and moaned.
How did this man make her so loose? So voluptuously loose, as if he’d oiled her joints or threaded through her veins with winding vitality. She had no choice but to move restlessly beneath his mouth. No choice at all.
It was because, she thought, he had so many tools. He used the bristles of his beard against her. He used his lips, his tongue, his smile, his teeth, his crinkling kind eyes, his giant ridiculous rodeo belt buckle and humongous burly arms. His hands, worst of all. Distracting. Knowledgeable. Attentive.
All of these safe-cracking tools, every one devastatingly effective despite being unsuitable. Despite his being unsuitable.
She did the most unsuitable things for him, too.
It was unsuitable, for instance, to be wearing her skirt right now, allowing it to become rumpled simply because he’d asked her to keep it on. He had, in fact, told her to keep it on, along with her shoes, right before he’d shoved it up her hips with those huge, expressive, sexy hands and buried his face between her legs.
Unsuitable, at seven in the morning of the day she was supposed to be supervising the demolition of Sunnyvale, to be in Noah’s bed, squirming on top of sheets that probably weren’t even all that clean.
Unsuitable to be wet, red-faced, sweating, again.
“You like that, baby?” he asked.
He threw out these statements that weren’t really questions. They only sounded like questions so he’d have an excuse to crinkle up into a grin, rub and pat her belly as though she were a puppy, a woman to be called baby.
Because he was having such a grand time, he wanted to share it with her.
His questions were a form of wasted speech, like a greeting or a goodbye—verbal caresses with no purpose unless it was to make her smile. Which she’d started doing. Smiling and saying silly, juvenile things back to him, like “Yeah. Yeah, you know I do. It’s so good. You make it so good.”
He made her murmur porn-movie platitudes and repeat herself.
He called her baby, and every time she tried to sneer at him for it, she ended up smiling.
Or worse. Sometimes she kissed him.
He stroked her stomach, back and forth, his heavy hand slick with her sweat. It was a trick he’d picked up—touching her stomach, her arms, her neck, to distract her from the progress he was making with his mouth.
The window was open, though she’d insisted they lower the blinds, which now blew up and clacked back down in the intermittent morning breeze, bringing the briny smell of the ocean to Carmen, delivering the world outside to this bed where she was making a mistake with a dangerously addictive man.
It was only supposed to have been once. Yesterday, she’d led him to a motel, and after she got what she wanted from him—more than she wanted—she’d dressed and walked out to her car. But then she’d hesitated.
Carmen had stood beside her car in the bright glare of the motel parking lot, feeling as though there were flat nylon bands looped around her hips, around her breasts, around her throat.
Feeling as though he held the other ends of those bands in his fists, and all he had to do was tug, and she would return to him.
She hadn’t been able to figure it out. Why she wanted to return to him.
But she’d stood there for so long that he’d come out, put his arms around her, and told her he was taking her to lunch.
How quickly she’d said yes. She still didn’t quite believe it.
He’d bought her pan con lechón from a street vendor—a messy, undignified sandwich that dripped on her fingers and stained her blouse while he watched her with eyes full of so much concentrated lust you’d think she’d been blowing him. Then he’d driven her to this little house on the beach in Marathon. Mile after mile without a touch, without a lick or a kiss, until she’d thought she might ignite like a match and burn out before they reached his carport.
In his bed, he’d tortured her, loved her, made her weep, and still she’d promised herself that she would leave before morning.
Don’t stay, she told herself. It will hurt.
But his arm banded around her as the ligh
t faded and the stars came out. The fuzz of his forearm tickled the underside of her breasts. The volume on her inner voice dropped to a whisper, and then she couldn’t hear it at all.
She whispered to the darkness. To the interior of her mind. It’s because of the orgasms.
Carmen had never been a woman to whom orgasms came easily. They didn’t come any easier with Noah, but it was as though he’d budgeted lavishly in his mental calendar for oral sex—hours of groaning, happy, languid licking and sucking and stroking. His fingers went pruney from twisting and rubbing and pressing inside her, and when she pointed it out to him as an absurdity he only laughed and told her there wasn’t anything he’d rather be doing with them.
Noah. Big, smiling, unsuitable Noah, who seemed to believe twenty-five minutes spent making her come was twenty-five minutes well spent.
He lifted his face from her crotch, brows drawn together. “I lost you, baby. What are you thinking about?”
“You.”
“Good things, I hope?”
“Good things.”
He smiled.
He snugged his big warm hands beneath her bare ass, raising her up like an offering, making her feel indulged and indulgent. His thumbs dug into the crease at the top of her thighs. His fingertips dimpled her flesh, his tongue lapped and stroked as he made cheerful humming, devouring noises, as he ate her resistance, consumed her reticence, rumpled the cold poise she’d wrapped around herself long ago when she was a girl who’d been cut so deeply that she didn’t know how to fix it except to freeze herself.
But maybe she hadn’t been frozen all the way, only cold and seeping as her torn edges bound back together.
Maybe beneath a layer of permafrost, deep below the surface, she’d still known how to do this—how to yearn and want and need. How to risk.
She must have had this potential inside her, all that time when she’d thought she was ice. Because otherwise, how to explain what had happened when she first saw him?
How to explain that she’d recognized him and claimed him, her first risk in eleven years of blank, suitable safety?