by K. Bromberg
“I didn’t notice.”
His smile toys at the corner of his mouth. “You noticed.”
“No, actually, I didn’t.” My spine stiffens as the flutter reappears when he reaches out without any thought to the mud covering his hands and places his finger under my chin to lift it so he can study me.
“What I can’t figure out about you, Desi Whitman, is why you keep trying to pretend you’re not interested when you clearly are?”
“That ego of yours is going to be sore tomorrow.”
“Why’s that?” he asks.
“It’s working out right now, flexing its muscles and doing some heavy lifting.” It’s pretty damn hard to be sarcastic when the man still touching you is making you want to lean in and kiss those sexy lips of his and prove just how right he is.
And just how wrong you are.
A sheepish smile paints his lips. “Ah, but you like the muscles.”
I like a whole lot more than the muscles.
“Mmm.” It’s all I trust myself to say.
He leans in closer. I can feel his breath feather over my lips and the look in his eyes—one that says his interest is as strong as mine: hungry and aroused as hell—is enough to make every part of me want to step forward and into him.
But I don’t.
I want to.
But I also want to slow down whatever the hell this is.
“Hey, Desi,” he murmurs as he leans in close enough that both of our eyes flicker down to the other’s lips as we breathe the same air.
“Hmm?”
“You look gorgeous in that color.”
Oh shit.
I just swooned.
First flutters.
Now swooning.
Both are things I never do.
“Thank you.” My voice is barely audible when I finally swallow around the lump of desire clouding in my throat.
“For?” he asks, the rumble of his voice a seduction all in itself.
“For fixing my sprinklers.”
“And?”
“And for the compliment.”
His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “No need to thank me.”
Time feels like it slows as we stand like this in the afternoon sunlight on my patio—me in a bright yellow sundress and him in mud-soaked jeans. The birds chirp above. My heart pounds in my ears. My nipples harden in anticipation.
Jesus, just kiss me already, will you?
“Desi?”
“Yeah?”
Just as I get my synapses to fire and lean in and take the initiative myself, he takes a step back and says, “I need to take a shower.”
I draw in a shaky breath as his eyes remain on mine and their corners crease with his smile.
“It’s a good look for you though.” Nice recovery, Des. At least outwardly it is, because inside I’m kind of a wreck with more want than I care to admit to.
“I don’t need to have mud on me to get dirty.”
He winks, gives me one last once-over with eyes that relay every single thing they want to do to me, before he turns on his heel and heads in the direction of his house.
Unlike last time, though, I don’t walk inside and sneak a peek at him. Instead I walk to the side of the house and watch him as he retreats. The strong lines of his back. The broad span of his shoulders. The sexy swagger that says he’s a man who knows what he wants.
Jesus, take the wheel, because if I’m the one steering it, I’m going to drive right up on that stick shift and see how good he can change gears.
“Later, Desi Whitman,” he says as he rounds the fence without looking back.
“Later, Reznor Mayne,” I mutter to myself. I stare at where his very fine ass turned the corner to his house.
I shift to abate the ache everything about him has brought to life between my thighs.
He already has me feeling spent when we haven’t even kissed yet.
But we will.
No doubt about that.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting it to myself. We’re two healthy adults. Two sexual beings. Two people who just made come-fuck-me eyes at one another so I’d say are definitely attracted to each other.
Christ, Des. Sleep with the man and get it over with already.
If it were only that easy. Because a part of me feels like sex with him wouldn’t be enough. I wouldn’t be satisfied. Hell, I pushed Jeff away to spare his feelings—I didn’t want more. I’ve sworn off men altogether. Yet I’m sitting here thinking about Reznor. About his easy charm and cocky attitude and hot body.
And how he seems to see beneath the surface in a way I don’t let anyone else and yet he doesn’t push or call me on my bullshit façade of courage. But he still seems to want me.
Sleep with him. Then you can move on.
The problem is I don’t think moving on would be starting something I’m not certain I’m ready to handle.
Chapter Nine
Reznor
The beer is cold and shocks the nightmare and memories from my mind. The squelch of the radio. My command authorizing the breach echoing over it. The pop of the flash bang. The crack of the gunshots. The echoes of the screams.
I tilt the bottle up and keep drinking until it’s empty.
It doesn’t even taste good, and it sure as hell doesn’t wash the taste of guilt away. Nothing seems to these days.
Thunder roars in the distance as heat lightning flashes through the sky. Dogs bark somewhere in the neighborhood beyond and the sound tells me I fell asleep and forgot to close the windows.
Toto, we’re not in San Francisco anymore.
There’s no way I would’ve forgotten to do something like that at home. Never. But despite the nightmare I’m slowly coming down from, I do feel more relaxed here. Case in point, the open windows.
“You okay?”
When I hear Desi’s voice, I don’t jump. Years of on-the-job training have settled my nerves, but I question why I didn’t know she was there.
Am I losing my edge?
Then again, maybe I did sense she was there. Maybe she’s who I was standing here looking out into the darkness thinking about. Maybe she’s the one I want to lose myself in for a bit to forget and feel good and everything in between.
“It’s three in the morning,” I say as I walk to the screened-in porch and open the door for her, although the fact that she’s here tells me she was going to open it herself anyway. “What are you doing here?”
She doesn’t speak at first but rather stands there and studies me. There are dark smudges beneath her eyes like I’m sure there are under mine. Her hair is piled on top of her head in some kind of messy bun and her face is bare of makeup. Her long legs are bare apart from very short shorts and her bright orange tank top leaves nothing and everything to the imagination.
Christ, she is sexy.
I clear my throat and love how her eyes drag over every inch of me just like I have imagined her hands would. I should offer to put some shorts over my boxer briefs. I should ask her to come in. Hell, I should do a lot of things but somehow it seems fitting we meet like this.
Somehow I already know how this will end.
And as much as I’m here in Sunnyville to get my head screwed back on straight and uncomplicate everything, I’m not going to fight it one damn bit.
“Desi?”
“I heard you shout. The dogs got restless. I don’t know…” For a woman I’ve yet to see hesitate, her uncertainty tells me all I need to know. She’s as interested as I am. She looks at the fingers she’s twisting together before looking back at me. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“What were you doing up, Desi?”
The half-smile she gives turns me on more than it should. It’s part sheepish, part minx, and whole lot of projected suggestion.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Another aversion of her eyes taking a quick sweep of my place. “You?”
“Nightmare.”
“You okay?” She takes a step inside for the
first time, and the sexual tension between us begins to spark in the static of the air.
“Been better.” I reach out to tuck a loose piece of hair behind her ear.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Not really,” I murmur as my fingers cup the side of her face, and I run my thumb over the softness of her lips. “You?”
“No.”
Thunder rumbles, but I can still hear the hitch of her breath as I slide my hand from her jaw to her shoulder and trace the dent between her collarbones.
“What are we doing here, Desi?”
The quick dart of her tongue to lick her lips is enough to have my dick begin to stir to life. That’s a lie. It already was stirring, but fuck if I’m not hard now.
“You’re going to kiss me and make me forget my bad dream, and then I’m going to kiss you back to help you forget about yours.”
“Is that so?” I murmur as I step into her so our bodies are barely touching. Just enough to turn me on further and not enough to make me question my next move.
“It is.”
“What if I don’t want you to kiss me?” I ask.
I jolt when her hand runs over my cotton-clad cock. Then I groan when she cups her palm over it and grips ever so lightly. “This tells me you’re lying.”
“You might be right.”
Chapter Ten
Desi
He tastes like beer and sex and urgency.
And he looks like how I feel. Tired. Horny. Lost in a sea of wanting to forget. Desperate for the human connection we can each bring the other.
Those were my first and only thoughts when his lips met mine and began their exquisite assault on my senses.
There was no softness, no tenderness—just stripped-down necessity in that first kiss. And the one that followed after that. And the one that is still ongoing as his hands begin to roam up and down the curves of my body. There is no hesitation as they slide beneath the hem of my tank, igniting my skin with the soft scrape of his fingertips against my lower back.
My hands find him too. Up the ridged plane of his chest. Over the strong muscles in his shoulders. To the back of his neck where I thread my fingers through his hair and urge him closer so I can show him how much I want him.
But nothing our hands can do at this moment rivals the conviction of our kiss. He’s a mixture of raw need and desperate desire, and I try to match him kiss for kiss—lick for lick—nip for nip—each touch feeding our urgency to take more from the other. To demand more from the other.
We are chaos as we bump into the wall at my back. All hands and lips and groans and moans, but when he presses my body there, when his hardened dick taunts me in the most deliciously torturous of ways, I know if he’s not going to speed up the process, I sure as hell am.
My hand is back on his cock. It slips beneath his waistband, down past the bristle of hair, and wraps around the smooth, cool hardness of his dick. His body stiffens and he groans against my lips as my fingers play over his length.
Everything about the moment—the feel of him, the sound of him, the air around us that smells one hundred percent of him—only serves to deepen my desire.
And that means I want him now.
I don’t want to think about the flutter or the swoon or how I’ve sworn off men, because right now my body is on fire for his and has thrown caution—that I know will be back shortly—to the wind.
“Reznor,” I murmur against his lips before I rub my thumb over the crest of his cock. I smear precum around as his hand cups my breast and does the same motion over my nipple. “I want—”
He smothers my words with his lips. He silences my request when he touches his tongue against mine. His hands skim down my torso and cuff mine that are pleasuring him.
“No.”
“Rez—”
His chuckle against my lips is laced with so much intention that if I weren’t already aching for him, I definitely would be now. “You’ll get it all right, but like you told me, you only get one chance to make a first impression...and hell if I don’t plan on impressing the hell out of you, Desi.”
My eyes must widen or my body must stiffen or hell if I know, but I only see his eyes daring me to challenge his statement. I only hear our ragged breaths highlighted by raindrops beginning to fall outside.
He wets his lip with his tongue as a ghost of a smile paints his mouth.
“We don’t need this anymore,” he murmurs as he reaches for the hem of my tank top. I raise my arms as he pulls it off. When it clears my face, I love how his eyes widen in pure male appreciation.
“No?”
“No.”
And this time when he steps into me and meets my lips, it’s slow and soft. Sure there’s hunger beneath the surface, vibrating to show me this tempo is as difficult for him as it is for me. But while our previous kisses were like a Molotov cocktail thrown at me already on fire, this kiss is like a slow-burning ember that’s just starting to ignite. My body warms bit by bit, from the center out to my fingers and toes.
With his hands still cuffing my wrists, the focus is solely on our kiss. On the connection of our tongues. On the finesse of his skill.
His lips coax me, brand me, warn me of the promise of what is to come. I already know without a doubt I’ll take whatever he is going to give me. I’ve not known this sort of...need before. But I want him.
God yes, I want him.
Whereas before I wanted to rip his boxers off and get to the good stuff, the way he’s pouring everything into this kiss—as if this is the end game—makes me want to melt into him and realize that this is the good stuff.
This is...the flutter and the swoon and every damn thing between.
It’s intimate. Reverent. Everything I shy away from and tell myself I don’t ever want.
But damn if it isn’t all-consuming.
Lightning flashes and thunder roars. Enough to shock us apart and snap me from the spell I never agreed to fall under.
Our eyes meet across the darkened room and I see the desperation in his gaze. It looks the way I feel.
“Fuck me, Reznor.”
That chuckle again. The one that feels like it rumbles through me deeper than the thunder does as he loosens the grip on my wrists and slides his hands between my thighs.
I sigh. I step farther apart. I dig my nails into his shoulders as he cups me and runs his finger up and down the length of my slit on the outside of my shorts.
“I never thought you’d ask,” he says, moments before his lips crash back against mine and his fingertip slides beneath the hem of my shorts and finds me wet and wanting and oh-so aroused.
The next few moments feel like the lightning flashing around us. Unpredictable. Energetic. Explosive.
Clothes are removed in the short seconds that our bodies separate before they crash back together again. Stumbling steps are taken down a darkened hallway. His mouth is on mine. His hands are running over me. His body is against mine.
And this is how we fall onto his bed—in a torrent of unsated desire where we can’t get enough. A rush of words falls from our mouths.
Please. Hurry. Yes. You ready? Oh, God.
Then there is nothing but pleasure as Reznor licks his fingers and rubs them up and down the length of me before using the crest of his dick to do the same. And then with eyes focused between my thighs and his tongue just barely between his lips in concentration, he pushes that glorious cock into me.
All words turn to groans.
All muscles tense and liquify as the pleasure of him sliding across my G-spot hits me.
“Reznor.” It’s a moan. A plea. A thank you.
“God, that feels good.”
I nod—at least I think I do—because I’m too busy absorbing the pleasure assaulting me as he pulls out before taking his time to push back into me.
My hands grip the sheets as he palms my breasts when he starts to move with a bit more force. Driving in, grinding against my pelvis, ever-so-slowly pulling out before starting the
frenzied process all over again.
The pace picks up. Our own panting and the sound of our bodies connecting with each thrust battling for an audience over the thunder.
Right there.
“Feel good?”
Oh yes.
“Jesus, woman.”
He looks incredible as the muscles in his neck strain and his fingers dig into the sides of my hips as he tips my center to meet him with every thrust. A damn Adonis giving me exactly what I need.
And then it hits me.
The Molotov cocktail.
Its impact turning into an out-of-control wildfire.
It eats the oxygen in the room. It pushes and pulls at every part of me until the flames consume me in an explosion of pleasure.
The orgasm washes over me. In a tsunami of sensations. Followed by waves. Then ripples. With his hips stilled, he stares at me and watches me absorb the ecstasy.
Every part of me wants to look away, but hell if those eyes on me only heighten the intensity. It makes me want to show him how good he made me feel.
So I reach between my thighs where he’s still hard and testing all restraint by not moving. I slide my fingers around the portion of him not buried within me.
He groans. His head falls back and his mouth falls lax as I guide him deeper into me before moving my hands to his hips to tell him I’m all his.
With a scrape of my fingers over his torso, his control snaps. His desire to give me what I need met, his own need supersedes all else now.
He slams into me. Harsh and ragged and desperate. His hands on me. His eyes on me. His cock into me.
And within moments, it’s my name that fills the room. It’s his storm that takes over until his tense body relaxes and he drops onto the bed beside me.
Our ragged pants fill the room only to be rivaled with my pulse pounding in my ears.
“Holy shit.” I finally laugh.
“You can say that again.”
We fall into silence, our minds lost to what just happened between us. Mine wondering how I’m going to walk away unscathed, because Reznor Mayne is definitely a man I’d take seconds with.