by Cara McKenna
“Oh.”
The most perfect sound she’d ever inspired. She smiled, kissing his neck, running her palm along his length. He covered her hand, and for once he didn’t move it way. He merely followed the motions as she touched him, neither forcing nor obstructing. She hadn’t even bothered to hope he’d be big, but she relished the discovery, letting him feel the way she measured and approved. He gasped, fidgeted, held her tightly and buried his lips in the hair behind her ear, exhalations heating her scalp.
At long last, he tugged at her wrist, leading it to his hip. He was panting. No surprise, if his dry spell was as long as she suspected.
This was new for Merry, too. Before tonight, sex had always been something she’d let happen to her. Always a passive vessel, too self-conscious to claim ownership or make many demands.
Fuck that. She’d worked hard for her new body, too hard to waste this chance to exploit it. Plus she’d campaigned for this moment—opened this guarded man up, baby step after baby step, and she’d revel in every second of the connection they uncovered.
She peeled off her base layer. Rob freed her legs, watching with wide eyes as she unzipped her pants and pushed them down, kicked them away. Words that had been burned onto her internal script flashed predictably—stretch marks, cellulite. Slack, jiggly, flabby.
She told the words to fuck off, concentrating instead on Rob’s curious, excited expression. And magically, they did fuck off, forgotten. He took her in. Her practical cotton briefs and hiking bra weren’t exactly seductive, but then again . . .
“How long has it been?” she asked. “Since you’ve been with a woman. Kissed or had sex or . . . ?”
He swallowed, gaze jerking between her face and chest and hips and back again. “Over three years.”
Three years. “What have you missed most?”
His darting eyes slowed, making a more thoughtful inventory. “How soft a woman feels,” he murmured. “How soft you feel. And warm. And how good you smell, and how smooth your hands are.”
She heard awe in his voice, perhaps gratitude, and felt it herself—a deep and empowering appreciation for this body and everything it could do and feel.
She stroked those smooth hands down his neck and bare arms. He let her push his tee shirt up, then pulled it off for her, casting it to the floor. She ran her palms over his chest, with its smattering of soft, dark hair.
“You feel good, too. Strong.” She squeezed his shoulder.
“I think you’re beautiful.”
She bit her lip. “Do you?”
He nodded, eyes full of the fiercest sincerity. “All of you.”
Am I not just a disembodied pretty face anymore?
As they kissed, she brought her leg up, inviting Rob to drive his clothed thigh more boldly between her bare ones. Welcoming that proof again—his hard cock heating her mound even through these hateful layers. She found his belt and gripped the leather, tugged him closer. It earned her a groan, a sound nearly like pain that vibrated against her lips.
He pulled away, stealing back his warm mouth and stiff cock, breathing hard. His words were so soft, she could barely make them out. “I want to please you.”
“You can touch me if you want. You know . . .” She nodded between them.
She shivered at the roughness of his fingertips and they skirted her side, tickled her belly. When his touch reached her hip, she let her thighs part, inviting him to a place he hadn’t visited in three years.
He put his mouth to her throat as his fingers grazed her clitoris and lips through her panties. Sensation bloomed wide, coiled tight, and she moaned. His kisses were distracted, interrupted by heavy sighs and labored breaths.
“Can I take these off?” he murmured, running his thumb under her waistband.
“Yes. Please.”
He moved to his knees and Merry turned onto her back, barely breathing as he eased her panties over her hips, down her legs. Off, all the way off.
He lay alongside her, propping himself on an elbow, the other hand grazing her ribs, belly, hip, and finally her mound. The heat of his palm shocked her. She let her thighs part, welcoming him.
Their eyes met for just a moment, then Rob’s gaze fled, attention on his hand. When his fingers touched her clit, she bucked and he pulled away, scanning her face.
“It’s fine,” she said, smiling. “I’m just overexcited.”
She twitched only a little the next time her touched her. He tested her with the faintest friction, her nerves soon melting into pure pleasure. He kept the caresses light, slowly easing the edge of his finger deeper along her seam—deeper, deeper, until her wetness greeted him. The discovery echoed through his body, a tensing tide of excitement that spurred his touch alongside Merry’s pulse.
Rob changed. She felt it in the contact, the way those rigid fingers grew pliable, his strokes fluid. She saw it in his face, as the line between his brows smoothed and his lips parted. His quickening breaths mimicked her own. With every soft stroke of his fingers, another scrap of her self-consciousness fell away, until all that existed was this place, this room, this man, spoiling her.
“Rob.”
He met her eyes, hand slowing.
“That feels great,” she said.
He came closer, slipping his arm under her neck and locking his body flush to her side. He lowered his face, nuzzling and kissing her throat, thrilling her with those hot exhalations.
His fingers grew bolder, parting her lips, dipping inside. She clutched his hair and raised her leg, eager for more. As two fingers teased her folds, the pad of his thumb rubbed her clit. Her hips bucked anew, too eager for the friction.
“That feels so good.” She shifted, interrupting the pleasure but needing to see him face to face. He did as her eyes asked, turning his talented lips to hers.
He mastered the contact and the kisses. All his failings as a warm and gracious host were forgiven and forgotten, so long as he never stopped making her feel this. She reached between them, seeking the erection pressed to her thigh. It hampered his caresses, but no matter. As she closed her fingers around the stiff ridge of his cock, they became teenagers—frantic innocents rushing gracelessly forward to discover what came next.
Bolder still, he slipped two fingers inside her with a soft gasp.
The sound and the penetration together . . . She fumbled with the heavy buckle of his belt, but his laboring hand abandoned her sex to stop her.
“I want to feel you.”
“No.”
“I want to,” she repeated, practically pleading. “And I trust you. You don’t have to be a gentleman.”
“It’s not that. I just want to please you.”
“You are.”
His smile seemed suspended between dopiness and frustration, and he caught his breath, holding their hands still. “I am now, but I’m not much good at multitasking. Not after three years.”
Ah. Okay, that was fair. They could take turns, as much as she wanted all this heated fumbling to be mutual. The poor man was surely on a hair-trigger. She softened her hand, and when Rob released it, she laid it obediently on his chest.
He returned to his task. Three fingers slid between her lips, the muscular pad at the base of his thumb stroking her clit each time he pushed inside. Her excitement grew as his pace quickened, and she imagined this rhythm dictated by his hips as he drove his cock into her. As he surrendered to their most animal natures, and quenched himself on sensations he thought he’d forfeited.
I’ll show you what you’re missing, she imagined telling him.
I’ll show you what you were foolish enough to think you could live without.
That face, disbelieving as he entered her . . . stern as he found a driving beat, frantic as she urged him closer and closer to surrender. She moved her hips, exaggerating the t
hrust of his hand.
“Good. That’s good. Don’t stop, please.” To even say these words was intoxicating, to invite so much attention, to make demands.
“You feel so . . .” Rob couldn’t seem to find an adequate word, and abandoned the search. “Tell me what you like.” He swallowed again, eyes glassy and drunk. “Tell me what to do.”
There was something more to that final request. She could taste it on her tongue, simply watching his lips form those words. Tell me.
“Just what you’re doing.” She shut her eyes, luxuriating in the slippery friction. “Whatever you’ve been missing.”
His hand slowed. Was he thinking, or did he already know what he missed most, but was too shy to name it? Tell me, he’d said. Perhaps he wanted a command, not an invitation. There was one thing Merry missed nearly as much as watching a man come undone. The thing her ex-fuck buddy had been lousy at—and, she suspected, lousy at on purpose, so as not to be asked to bother.
“I haven’t . . .” She trailed off, and Rob’s hand slowed, his eyes meeting hers expectantly.
She whispered, “I haven’t felt a man’s mouth for a long time. Not there. Not for ages.”
“No?”
“Would you . . . Do you like that, or . . . ?”
He nodded. “I do. And it’s been ages for me, as well.”
He missed ice cream, he’d said. And she saw in his hot, focused gaze—he missed what she was offering far more.
“I’d like that,” she murmured. “Please.”
Rob slid his fingers from her and sat up. His chest was flushed and tense, his entire body strained. “It’s a small bed,” he said. “Come to the edge.” He left the mattress entirely, relocating to the wood floor.
Merry scooted close. “Do you want some covers, for your knees?”
His cheeks darkened unmistakably. “No. Thank you.”
Oh ho. Was it her imagination, or might this man be just a bit kinky?
“As you wish,” she said with sly smile, dropping her feet to the ground, legs spread. Rob stroked her inner thighs, attention locked on her sex.
“Lay back.”
She did, and he slid a forearm beneath each of her thighs, tilting her hips up. She held her breath. Broad palms warmed her ribs, and she felt cradled, like a goblet tipped to a man’s mouth. He was going to taste her—sample her. Consume her. Make a banquet of her.
She felt his exhalation as surely as she heard it, the heat of it taunting her swollen, sensitized lips. Then, just barely a whisper—
“Merry.”
His name lodged in her throat, the will to utter it gone as his tongue touched her clit—the barest flick, yet the pleasure sizzled. She caught her breath, found her voice.
“Rob.”
His tongue again, and bolder. He lapped her clit, again, again, slippery strokes growing longer and hungrier. Lower. As he tasted her folds, his nose brushed that tight little bundle of nerves, the contact sweet and intimate, unexpected. Eager fingers kneaded her waist. They were restless, but nothing compared to the need she felt as his lips and tongue and nose caressed her. She covered his hands with hers, rubbing his knuckles. She held his head, traced his ears. He feasted deeply, that cautious man from earlier gone, long gone.
He said he was a bad person. He’d told her so himself, but she couldn’t believe it, not now. He’d deferred his own pleasure, and this . . . No man could be rotten, not if he knew how to please a woman this way. There was practice in this act—mastery. This man knew what he was doing, and he prized the labor of it.
“That’s amazing,” she whispered.
He replied with his tongue, lapping with taut, eager strokes. She fisted his hair and felt the hot rush of his breath as he lost the rhythm—but only for a moment, then his possession returned, more relentless than ever.
His palms trembled, hot and damp against her skin. He shook the way a man might when teetering on the edge of his own release. These desperate hands, this ravenous mouth . . . this man who embodied so many contradictions and secrets. If nothing else, she’d solve one mystery tonight, and discover his body. Every inch of skin—she’d wander it with her hands and eyes and mouth, roam it like an uncharted wilderness. She’d know this man, as he’d surely never intended to be known again when he’d chosen this lonely life.
He slid one hand from beneath hers, eased his arm from under her thigh. Yes, please—let it be that . . .
He granted her unspoken wish, knuckles tracing her lips, tongue concentrating its efforts on her clit. His nose tickled her curls.
Please, please . . .
He merely teased her with the promise, drawing his fingers along her slick seam.
“Please, Rob.”
She felt him shiver, that talented mouth faltering. His fingers stiffened, three uniting as one to ease inside slowly, so slowly. She scraped her nails through his hair, back arching. Show me how you might feel. A pale facsimile, a shadow of the excitement his cock would surely offer, but still so sweet. He drove inside, slow and deep, drew back out. Again. Again, a bit faster, all the while teasing with his tongue. The pleasure gathered inside her, that delicious, fiery need.
She pictured him above her, this wondrous pleasure the product of his cock disappearing inside her, again and again. His body would be extraordinary—all those muscles stark and laboring, hips flexing, abs clenching. And those eyes. Wide with wonder or narrowed in concentration. However they’d look, she didn’t care. She imagined it all, and it was his gaze, his face, that brought her to the brink.
“Rob.”
A grunt heated her clit, his tongue fluttering. His stiff fingers nearly pounding now. Her own fingers slipped from his hair, trembling, tracing his ears, touching his temples, his face. He held her tight, that hand at her waist hot and possessive. The pleasure built, layer upon layer, thicker, harder, more inevitable with every flick of his tongue and intrusion of his fingers, tighter, tighter, rising higher, higher.
“Rob.” More a huff than a name. A plea. Her heels rubbed his back of their own accord. His hair was in her fist. The pleasure crested and finally broke, a furious sea crashing under her skin, rattling her bones, erupting from her lips in an ugly, mewling, primal sound.
He eased, fingers and tongue slowing to the beat of her pleasure, soft caresses soothing in time with her throbbing pulse. He went still exactly as her body did, touching her only with his exhalations—fevered, frenzied breaths.
“Oh God.” She let his hair go, resting her fingertips on her belly, hands shaking, mouth dry. Her head rush triggered a mean ache in her bruised temple, but it registered as little more than a theory, drowned in the receding tide of the orgasm.
She propped herself up on straight arms, and Rob took her calves in his hands. She could see wetness glistening in his beard, and he traced his lower lip with his tongue. His lids were heavy, eyes bright.
Like the sea, she thought again, adrift in green-blue. Was that what he tasted, now? The salty-sweet flavor of sex. Of her.
She drew her legs onto the bed, scooting to the far side to make room. The heat of the stove breached the stone, softening her spine. “Come here.” She patted the covers.
Rob lay with her, his expression lit equally with awe and lust. She’d never been looked at like that before. Not even close. And it was the best thing she’d ever felt.
She drew his face to hers, then cupped his neck. A glancing of noses, then lips. She could taste herself there, she imagined. But she tasted him as well. She knew him. Enough to recognize the flavor of his mouth, the rhythm of his racing pulse beneath her fingers. She caught his lower lip for a moment, then let him go.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
He answered with a kiss—a soft, chaste thing. He was cooling himself, she realized, preparing to follow her away from the sex and back toward a gentle
r intimacy. A safe one, no threat to her vulnerable circumstances.
Fat fucking chance.
She snaked her hand between them, knuckles grazing his chest, ribs, belly. She went for his belt again, and he didn’t stop her when she slid the leather from its buckle. The only sound he made was a deep, curt moan, and it was no protest. She freed the button and lowered the zipper slowly, letting her knuckles caress his cock through his fly.
“You spoiled me rotten,” she murmured, tugging his pants open to frame his straining erection.
He swallowed. “I wanted to.”
“Let me do the spoiling now.” As she slipped her hand under the waistband of his shorts, he shook against her, quaking when she stroked her palm down his smooth, hot, bare skin.
“M-Merry.”
Sweet Jesus, she’d made the man stammer.
“You feel good,” she told him, letting her touch whisper along his length.
He took her wrist, but didn’t hold her tight enough to stop the motions. “You don’t have to.”
“I know. I want to.”
He answered with a groan, the hand on her cheek trembling. She reveled in him—his size, his heat, how hard and ready he was. She felt power in this flesh, pulsing with every heartbeat. And she’d done this to him. She squeezed him tightly, drawing another groan, one that rattled with need.
He slipped his hand between them as well, seeking her sex. Their knuckles rubbed and his touch impeded hers, but he wanted this, she could tell. She tugged his waistband down to free his cock, and his crown brushed her belly each time her fist slid to his base. With every second the exchange intensified, their caresses turning sloppy, but all the more exciting for it.
When their hands grew more burdensome than stimulating, they abandoned them. Rob urged her onto her back and pushed away his jeans, kneeling in his shorts between her legs. Yes.
“I’m not . . .” He trailed off, lowering onto braced arms. “I won’t go any farther than this,” he promised, resting his cock along her lips. She felt its pulse through the cotton that had ridden back up to bind him. With her palm at his hips, she followed the flex of muscle as he stroked his excitement against hers.