by Donna Alward
“I understand that.”
“And Sue got sick and…well.” He cleared his throat. “The boys grew up and left home, and since then it’s been…quiet. It’s been real quiet.”
A bit of that quiet settled over them. He reached up and covered her hand with his. He just held her.
He was tired of the quiet. Been tired of it for a long time. He’d taken to leaving the TV on all the time, even while he was sleeping. The news, the weather, whatever show happened to catch his fancy. If he wasn’t working, he was listening to other people talking in some vain attempt to push back against the crushing silence.
Karen squeezed him tight and then she was moving, sliding out from his arms and straddling him, which gave him a hell of a view of her breasts. She shifted her hips back and forth against the zipper of his pants. “I think,” she said, her voice breathy as she stroked his chest, “that it’s time to make a little noise.”
Just the sight of her up there—the promise of her body riding his—pushed the silence and disappointment and loneliness of the last few years out of his mind. Because how could he think of anything but Karen? Of the way her breasts shifted when she moved her hips, of the way her nipples tightened when he traced his finger in small circles around the darker red parts?
“Yes, like that,” she moaned when he went from circling to tugging on those nipples, gently pulling them toward him. Her head fell back. “Oh, that’s good, Mack.”
His name on her lips…yeah. He half-sat, half-pulled her down to him so that he could use his teeth on her. She ran her fingers through his hair and held him against her breasts as he sucked and nipped and licked at her, her nipples getting harder and harder in his mouth as he got harder and harder beneath her.
“God, you feel so good.” She was panting as he slipped a free hand down her back and palmed her ass again. She still had on those little red panties because, as much as they’d done to each other, they still hadn’t gotten naked yet.
“Take these off,” he demanded and then, just because he could, he squeezed her ass in his hands.
She jolted against him, her eyes wide with what he hoped was desire. “Then I get to strip your jeans off. Deal?”
His blood began to hum. “Deal.”
She sat back on her heels and then rose to her feet to stand over him. Moving so slowly it hurt him, she slipped the little panties down her legs, lifting one foot and then the other before she dropped the little bit of fabric over the side of the bed. She stood over him again and he stared up at her as he rubbed his hands over her calves.
“You are beautiful,” he told her. And she was. Her figure was lush and rounded, the kind of body a man could get lost in.
Because he felt a little lost in her right now. He wanted to touch her again, to scrape his teeth over her skin, to make her shiver and shake and cry out his name over and over.
Her grin faded a bit as she looked down at him. When she shifted her weight, it gave him one hell of a view. “It’s been a long time since I felt beautiful.”
“But you are,” he told her. He sat up and pressed a kiss against the top of her thigh. “Everything about you is perfect,” he murmured, leaning up enough that he could reach the spot between her legs.
He scooted her legs a little farther apart so he could have the best access. Then he licked her. She tasted sweet with a slight hint of chlorine from the pool.
“Mack,” she said, grabbing his head again. “At least—oh—at least let me take your pants off.”
“In a minute,” he told her. “You already did this for me. I’m just returning the favor.” He flicked his tongue back and forth over her little clit. It was red and swollen and oh so slick from when he’d already touched her.
“God, that feels so good,” she groaned. Her legs started to shake. “Mack.” When he didn’t stop, she said with more force, “Mack. If I don’t have you inside of me right now…”
He pinched her clit between his tongue and his teeth. Not much pressure—certainly not a bite in the true sense of the word. Just the touch of teeth on flesh. Just for her.
“Oh!” she screamed and her knees gave. She buckled onto him so hard that he barely had time to lean back and catch her.
When he folded her into his arms, she bit down on his shoulder, and in that moment, he understood. Just another layer of sensation, another touch on the skin. “I want you on top,” he managed to get out. “I want to watch you ride me.”
“Pants,” she whispered. “Condom.”
“Yeah.” He lifted her off and undid his pants. As quickly as he could, he shucked the damned things off and grabbed the box of condoms from the bedside table.
His hands shook as he tore open the packet. There was still an air of the unreal about this whole thing. Was he really in a hotel room with a woman he’d just met, the taste of her sex still on his tongue?
Karen took the condom out of his hand and rolled it on, which pretty much answered the question. Because while his head couldn’t quite grasp the realness of the situation, his body sure as hell recognized reality when presented in the form of a woman who made him want things, made him want to do things that he’d forgotten he used to want.
Once the condom was on, she mounted up and kissed him. He could feel the tantalizing warmth of her sex against his dick, but he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her back. Because this wasn’t just about sex. Maybe it never had been.
She lifted herself up and his dick sprang to attention. Slowly, she lowered herself back down onto him, her body stretching to take him in.
“God, you feel good,” he got out in a hoarse whisper, his face buried against her neck. It was all he could say.
Because the feeling of being surrounded by that warmth, that wetness—it wasn’t like he’d forgotten. How could he have? He’d never been an angel. He hadn’t been a virgin when he’d gotten hitched. He’d liked sex early and often.
But the sensation of a woman’s body closing around his, her muscles twitching with pleasure around him—it was as if he’d put that memory away so he wouldn’t have to think about what he didn’t have anymore.
And now he had it back.
She leaned back and cupped his face in her hands. Her eyes were wide with desire, with need. For him. “I’m going to ride you so hard.”
Sounded good to him. She pulled his arms away from her waist and lifted them over his head. He was forced to lie back, but her breasts were right there, moving back and forth with every single one of her movements.
He caught the tip of her nipple in his lips and began to suck her.
“Yeah, like that,” she moaned and then…then she began to move. None of those little shifts of her hips back and forth, no subtle shimmies.
She rode him, her ass rising and falling on his dick with enough force that, even if he’d wanted to say something—even if his mouth hadn’t been busy with her stiff nipple, pulling and nipping it until she was saying, “Yeah, Mack. Oh God, yeah,” over and over again, he couldn’t have spoken. All there was, all there could be, was his body and hers and the way they moved together, faster and harder and then, when he didn’t think he could take it, harder still.
She let go of his wrists to grab his head and move him to her other nipple. “Like that, yeah,” she said as he sucked her tender skin into his mouth. “Oh God, you feel so good inside me.”
He filled his hands with her ass, pulling her farther apart so he could drive harder up into her. He dug his fingers into her skin, which made her moan his name even louder. “Mack—oh, Mack!”
He pumped harder, faster—the whole time, all the noises she made pushed him closer and closer to the edge. “Oh, God. Mack, I’m going to—you’re going to make me come,” she gasped.
“Come for me,” he said, squeezing her ass harder. She sucked in air and ground down harder on him. “Come for me, Karen.”
/> He managed to catch one of her nipples in his mouth again and held it between his lips as he looked up at her. She met his gaze, her eyes glazed over with lust.
Then he pressed his lips together.
A jolt of what felt a hell of a lot like electricity shot through her. Her mouth dropped open and a noise that was part scream, part moan and all sex rolled out of her.
Mack fell back against the pillows and, grabbing her hips, he thrust up as hard as he could while her orgasm held her tightly all around him.
“God—God,” he groaned, and even he didn’t know if it was a prayer for release or a prayer that it would never end.
Then his climax ripped through his body, pushing him through several final thrusts as he emptied everything he had into her.
She fell forward onto him, her skin warm and damp with perspiration. He wrapped his arms around her and held her, not wanting to break the connection between them.
He didn’t want it to end.
But it had to, he knew that. He pulled out before he lost the condom, but he still didn’t let her go. They lay like that for several minutes, panting and catching their breaths.
Through the post-sex haze, he became aware that Karen was stroking his hair, slowly and gently. He smiled and shifted so he could kiss her. “Amazing.”
Which wasn’t a strong-enough word to describe how he felt, but it was the best he could do. But already the high was fading. He was up past his usual bedtime and he wasn’t used to having this much sex. He was going to be stiff in the morning, that much he could already tell.
But it was worth it. God, it was worth it.
She leaned up enough so that she could look at him. “Will you stay the night with me?”
He grinned, because he didn’t think he had much of a choice at this point. If he tried to drive off into the winter night, he’d probably pass out from sheer sexual exhaustion and crash the truck or something.
Plus, if he woke up with her—and he wasn’t too sore—they’d get another shot at sex again. And he’d like another shot.
“What time is checkout?”
The smile she wore was huge and made him feel good. He’d put that smile there. He wasn’t too old or too out of practice. He could still take care of a woman.
He was still alive. It was a hell of a feeling.
“Eleven.” Finally, she pulled herself off him and stood beside the bed. “Wow,” she murmured, getting her balance. “Just…wow, Mack.”
“Glad to hear it.” Wow. Yeah, that about summed it up.
She went into the bathroom to get cleaned up. Mack took care of the condom and tried to arrange the pillows. He might have been nervous about sleeping with a woman after so long, but the post-sex exhaustion was pretty severe.
Tonight, he’d sleep and he wouldn’t even mind the silence because Karen was next to him. And in the morning, he’d wake up, make love to her again and then…
And then he’d go home. They both would. He’d go back to his ranch, to his quiet house and his cows and horses and the infrequent emails from his sons. And Karen would go back to her florist shop.
And that would be that.
Maybe it wouldn’t be. They were only three hours apart. Maybe…
The bathroom door opened and he shook all the maybes out of his head. Sleep first, then morning sex.
Everything else could wait.
Chapter Seven
After all those years of sleeping alone in bed—because the sleeping-alone thing had started well before her marriage had officially ended—seemed to disappear as Karen curled up in Mack’s arms. She wanted to keep the light on, to keep touching him. He was solidly built, a bunch of muscles that didn’t come from a slavish gym routine, but from an honest day’s work. She wanted to run her fingers through his dark chest hairs.
But she didn’t. If he’d been up since five something that morning and she’d kept him up until past ten having the kind of wild, crazy sex that she’d been dreaming of having for years and years—well, she wasn’t surprised when he started breathing evenly a few minutes after she shut the light out.
So she just lay there for a while, savoring the feel of his strong body moving into deeper sleep.
She was going to be sore, that much she knew. Mack was built like, well, a Mack truck. And he knew how to bite her just right. She could still feel the way his calloused fingers had dug into her backside. God, what a ride.
It’d been the kind of sex that a woman would have trouble walking away from. She hadn’t been lying—she wasn’t looking for a marriage, especially now that she knew more about Mack’s wife. She didn’t want to try and replace a woman he still obviously loved and always would.
But to have Mack in her bed, in her arms?
She wasn’t sure she wanted to kiss him goodbye and be done with it either. Mack had exceeded every single one of her fantasies about a strong, silent cowboy. He’d put her first and made her feel beautiful and special—and that didn’t even take the orgasms into consideration.
The feeling of Mack inside of her, Mack grabbing her, Mack biting her—it’d made all those little pops of orgasms she had with her vibrator look like child’s play. There was no way she could replicate all of those sensations on her own.
She thought back to her last date, with the Toe-Picker, and the ones before that with the colorless, hopeless boys trapped in men’s bodies. She couldn’t recreate the orgasm Mack gave her on her own. Hell, she didn’t know if there was another man in the greater Montana area that could do that for her.
She’d gone looking for her fantasy cowboy and—as unbelievable as it still was—she just might have found him.
Now what was she going to do?
Morning came early. Or, at least, it felt early to Karen. The bed shifted and she became aware of the dim light filtering into the room around the edges of the curtain.
Then she was alone in the bed. She heard the bathroom door click, and for a moment, she couldn’t quite remember—oh. Mack.
Just thinking of what he’d done to her body last night made her muscles clench—which made her realize how danged sore she was. Which was a good sign. She hadn’t dreamed the night of wild sex.
She’d really and truly managed to find herself an honest-to-goodness cowboy, and he was everything she’d ever dreamed of—only better.
Smiling to herself, she managed to roll over, pull the covers up to her chin and check the clock.
6:08. In the morning.
Lord. She normally slept until about seven thirty. The shop didn’t open until ten, which left her plenty of time to sleep in, work out and shower before she surrounded herself with the beauty of every flower she could have delivered to this part of Montana.
What time had Mack said he got up? Five? Yeah, five. He’d slept in until 5:15 the day before, she remembered him saying. And…he got up at four in the summer?
Lord.
The bathroom door opened again, and she managed to get her eyelids open to about half-mast—which was enough to see the naked form of Mack Tucker emerge into the dim light.
If she’d been able to, she would have whistled. The man was masculinity personified. Those muscles. That chest hair, that beard. He wasn’t cut like a man who lived in a gym, but there was no missing the fact that this was a man who used his body every single day.
Languid heat began to build between her legs, erasing the temporary soreness. Hers. He was hers for at least the next few hours. “’Morning,” she murmured sleepily.
“’Morning,” he said as he climbed back into the warmth of the bed. Her arm went around his waist and she curled her body around his. He pulled her in tight and kissed her on the top of her head.
She sighed into him. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you haven’t slept in this late in…years, right?”
He chuckled. “Nope.” He moved h
is hands over her back, rubbing in slow circles. “I’d even go so far as to say decades.”
She let her fingers trail through the hair on his chest. “Do you think you can stay in bed for a few more minutes?”
He tilted her face up. “I was counting on it.” Then he rolled her onto her back, his broad chest covering hers, and kissed her.
She let her hands explore his back because she had not gotten enough of touching him last night. His muscles twitched under her hands, heightening her awareness. His body reacted to hers—he was aware of her on a fundamental level. That was something she’d been missing for years and years—the feeling that she was important to a man because she was Karen, not because she was an available female.
She shifted her legs and looped them around the back of Mack’s—and was rewarded with a deep moan of pleasure when his already-hard dick brushed against her clit. He leaned up on his forearms and thrust against her, his dick sliding over her clit, teasing her. “You feel so good,” he groaned as he leaned back down and kissed her again.
Then he captured her lower lip in his teeth and bit down, just a little. Just right.
She moaned into his mouth as the tension seemed to pull at her body and push it back all at the same time. “You like it like that, don’t you?” he whispered as he kissed her cheek, her neck—and he bit down again.
“Yes. Oh, Mack,” she gasped as he shifted and thrust against her and put his teeth to her skin. She shuddered as he slid over her again and again. The pressure was building, pushing back against her clit. How could she need him this badly already? She’d gone years without sex, and years before that only having sex once a week.
But now? He’d given her three explosive orgasms last night and she was well on her way to another one this morning. She needed more. She needed more of him. “You drive me crazy,” she whispered, shifting her hips against him.