Rush: A Second Chance Romance

by Ellen Lane

  “...I did. Yes. A while ago...I mean, you always wonder about what might have been, right? That’s nothing out of the ordinary. We were kids back then...everything was simpler, so yeah, sometimes I wondered what might have happened if you stayed.” She took another sip of whiskey before exhaling a long breath. “Jeb probably would have thrown a fit and tried to keep us apart - continued to make everything hard. And you would have been miserable in a Georgia school.” A small smile touched the edges of her mouth. “You were always meant for greater things. I knew that. It just wasn’t meant to be.” She set her empty glass aside to search my face, her gaze warm. “And look at you now.”

  Cece’s eyes moved over my features slowly. What exactly she was looking for I wasn’t sure, but the admiration on her face...there was genuine pride there. Despite the fact that the mansion hadn’t impressed her and she’d gone on and on about how I changed for the worse, there was a part of her, however small, that was proud of me.

  The realization was enough to make my heart fill in a way I’d never known it could.

  I reached for Cece’s hand, only to have her start when she realized how close we were. Immediately, she reached for her glass, rising from the couch as she looked away. “I’m going to get some more whiskey. Where’d you put the bottle?”

  Hell no. I wasn’t letting her get off that easy. Not again.

  In a smooth motion, I plucked the glass from her hand to set it on a nearby table before tugging her back down - and into my lap. The affect she had on me was immediately, painfully obvious. Before she could say a word in protest, however, my mouth found hers...and everything else ceased to exist.

  God, she was perfect. Cecily Warner tasted like the sun, rain, and intoxicating sweetness. All it took was a brief brush of my mouth over hers and I already wanted more. I expected she might shove out of my arms the minute I kissed her, or even slap me. That was the fiery Cece I knew. When she merely melted into my arms like she’d come home, I thought that, just maybe, we had fallen off that cliff and died.

  And this was heaven.

  I raised a hand to thread through her damp hair, loosening the knot atop her head so the dark strands fell down around her shoulders. Her lips were soft - agonizingly soft, and I couldn’t resist the urge to tug at the lower one with my teeth. I was rewarded with a surprisingly full-bodied moan for my efforts and my arms wound around her waist in response.

  Dear God, she wasn’t wearing anything under that shirt. As the flannel pulled taut against her curves, I could feel nothing but soft, smooth skin underneath.

  I wanted to touch her anywhere. Everywhere. But most of all, I wanted to keep on kissing her. When Cece’s tongue slid against mine, I could barely remember almost freezing my ass off. Between the two of us, there was enough heat to burn the cabin to the ground. I pulled her tighter against me, my hand sliding along the bare, smooth skin of her thigh. Dear God, she smelled amazing, and every bold movement of her mouth against mine fed the raging erection between us.

  When my hand curled around Cece’s thigh to adjust her so she was straddling my lap, her shirt hiked high - coming mere inches from exposing her entire lower half. Unfortunately, I was too absorbed in kissing her senseless to notice much more than the soft breathiness of her moans as I nibbled on her mouth.

  Of course, we had never kissed like this as kids. We hadn’t even known how to kiss - just pressed our mouths together to acknowledge that we cared about one another. This was something far beyond that -chemistry that had only been hinted at when we were both in the throes of puberty. Cece’s hands came up to cup my face and draw me even closer as she deepened the kiss, and a groan tore up from my throat.

  Fuck.

  I’d never wanted a woman so badly, so quickly, in my entire fucking existence.

  I reached for the buttons of her shirt, desperate to have her naked and under me, only to have Cecily pull back and stop me, her hands curling around my own. She met my gaze with an expression not unlike a deer in headlights, her cheeks flushed, lips still swollen from my kiss. “Rhett...I... I’m sorry, we have to stop. I can’t do this.”

  Somehow, I very seriously doubted that. Cece had no idea what she could do - or what I could make her do, for that matter. That said, I wasn’t a complete animal. This was Cecily we were talking about. The woman I’d promised to behave myself with.

  So much for that attempt. “Can’t we?” I tried for light-hearted, freeing one of my hands to cup her chin, stroking over her jaw with my thumb longingly. She’d never looked more gorgeous than she had in that moment - even with hesitation in her eyes.

  “No, we can’t.” She repeated, her voice surprisingly firm. For all that determination, however, her face was surprisingly red. I arched a brow, refusing to relinquish her remaining hand as she tried to escape.

  “Cece, come on. Talk to me. You can’t always just run away.”

  “Rhett, you don’t want to talk. You just want to-” She glared at me accusingly. Call me an asshole, but she was right. At least, she was half-right. When I pulled Cece back into my arms, molding my mouth to hers again, I wasn’t thinking too much about stimulating conversation. At least, not the type she might be open to. Cece was more than enough to make a man abandon reason for his baser instincts, and the temptation to do just that was overwhelming.

  She kept telling me no. Kept making excuses. The moment I kissed her, all that disappeared. She stiffened in my arms for the barest moment before her hands came around the back of my neck to curl against my nape almost helplessly. I slid my tongue along the seam of her lips, begging entrance, and I was admitted almost immediately.

  She wanted this just as badly as I did...so, why was she fighting it so hard?

  Inhaling her scent greedily, I dropped my mouth to her neck to kiss and nip a hungry path down to the hollow of her throat. There, she tasted like pure rainwater and heat. I wanted - no, needed to devour her. The moment my hand cupped the warm weight of her breast, however, she stopped me again. This time, when she withdrew, the indecision in her eyes was even more apparent. “Rhett, please. I can’t-”

  “Why? Tell me why.” We were two consenting adults, and there was no one around the judge us. I wasn’t asking her to marry me. I just wanted to give into what we both needed. I wasn’t a stranger, and I certainly wasn’t going to take her to bed and then dump her somewhere after the deed was done. I couldn’t do that to Cece and I hoped to God she thought better of me.

  “I... Rhett, it’s stupid. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I do.” I refused to let her change the subject. “Talk to me. I just want to make you feel good.” When I drew a finger over the curve of her breast, her nipple peaked beneath the flannel fabric and a shuddering sigh escaped her. “Nothing else.”

  It was probably the biggest lie I’d ever told, but that hardly needed to be addressed at that particular moment. Cece gazed down at me, her eyes large, before unexpectedly burying her face in my shoulder in obvious embarrassment. “It’s stupid. I don’t want to tell you. You’ll just laugh at me.”

  I was caught completely off guard. Considering my current state of mind and the gigantic erection all but begging to be released, I didn’t think I was capable of laughing.

  “I won’t.” I murmured against the top of her head, stroking slowly through the silky strands. “Tell me.” I pressed a lingering kiss against her brow for good measure, doing all I could to stay my raging libido. It was, however, a bit easier than I had imagined. Part of me was genuinely curious about what made a woman as gorgeous as Cecily so insecure.

  “I can’t...I don’t want this to end like it always does for me. And I don’t want to disappoint you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I nibbled on her earlobe hungrily. “You could never disappoint me, Cece. I’ve wanted you since before I even knew what wanting was.”

  Her returning laugh was so hollow it made me frown. “Rhett, I can’t...get off. I mean...men can’t get me off, and I’m not that great
with myself so...it usually just ends disastrously for me.” As she spoke, her head remained where it was, as if the thought of actually looking me in the eye when she spoke terrified her. “So, I tend to just avoid it.”

  “Avoid sex?” I inquired lowly, my tone carefully neutral. I didn’t want her to interpret my disbelief as any shortcoming on her part, but it was fairly safe to say she could have hit me with a sledgehammer and I might have been less shocked.

  Cece squirmed in my lap, as if the very mention made her desperately uncomfortable. “I’m just not good at it.”

  As a businessman, I couldn’t count the number of times I had to put my personal feelings aside to do what I thought was right. Now, I found it impossible to dispel the rage and disbelief that rolled over me. What monumental assholes must Cece have been with if she believed she was bad at sex? Beyond that, what idiot took a woman into his bed without seeing to her pleasure? In that moment, I wanted to personally clobber each and every dipshit who had chipped away at her self-confidence. Cecily was a woman that deserved nothing less than to be worshipped.

  “Cece, look at me.” At my soft demand, she merely shook her head, burrowing further into my shoulder. I frowned, cupping her chin to direct her face upwards. Her cheeks burned with discomfort, and she still refused to meet my gaze. “Look at me.” A bit of extra steel in my voice was all it took for her eyes to finally lock with mine. “I don’t know who the hell you’ve been talking to, or who you’ve been with - and quite frankly, I don’t care. If you let me, I promise I will make you feel so damned amazing that you’ll forget whatever you think you know about your body.”

  Her eyes spoke before she did. The heat that suddenly flared was enough to make my already hard cock pulse against the rough material of the sweatpants I wore.

  When I lowered my mouth to kiss her again, this time, she didn’t pull away. She let me taste her - indulgent and slow - pressing the softness of her intoxicating curves against me. In many ways, the weather was the foulest luck, but, at that moment, I couldn’t really say I was sorry for it. My hands crept beneath the shirt she wore, moving up the bare, warm skin of her back as I nipped first at the curve of her jaw, then the decadent, slender line of her neck. A soft moan escaped her as her fingers sank into my hair, running deliciously over my scalp.

  She was so damned responsive. When I dipped my tongue into the hollow of her throat, she shuddered. When I sucked at a particularly sensitive spot just beneath the petite curve of her ear, her fingers tightened in my hair. When I finally raised my hands to undo the line of buttons leading downward from her breastbone, she let me.

  It was like being a kid at Christmas - better even. All my Christmases had been remarkably shitty before I left home, so I might never have imagined something as amazing as being able to unwrap Cecily like this. As I had suspected, she wasn’t wearing anything beneath the flannel. Every button I undid revealed more and more of her smooth, tanned skin, until I was eventually met with the sight of her full breasts, topped with ripe, strawberry colored nipples.

  I stopped, staring unabashedly - right up until Cecily raised her hands to cover her lightly freckled chest subconsciously. “Don’t you dare…” I growled lowly, tugging her fingers away. “Let me look. Let me taste…” I lowered my mouth to brush my mouth across her shoulder before marking a hungry path downward towards the swell of her bosom.

  I teased her, scraping my teeth over the soft undersides of her breasts before sucking at them softly. Cecily shuddered, her hands curling into my shoulder as her hips pressed down against the jut of my erection eagerly. She parted her thighs unabashedly to grind against my thigh in an unbridled display of passion that took my breath away.

  And almost distracted me from the task at hand.

  When I took one straining nipple between my teeth to nip and suckle greedily, a soft cry escaped her. I couldn’t help the moan that rumbled from me in response. I had barely touched her and she was already writhing against me like she was halfway to orgasm.

  Was she? Thanks to the idiots in her past, she probably had no idea. But I had no problem testing her limits.

  My thumbs rubbed over the stark lines of her hipbones in encouragement, guiding each slow, gratuitous slide of her body against mine. When I drew on her nipple - long, eager tugs of my lips and teeth designed to undo her - she grasped at me desperately.

  Despite the fact that we’d very recently almost frozen, there was now a thin sheen of sweat covering her skin. One that I had put there.

  I needed more.

  I switched to her opposite nipple, biting hard enough to send a zing of pain-in-pleasure singing through her nerve endings and she arched against me in a silent plea for more.

  She liked that, did she? I cupped her breasts to bring them each to my mouth in turn. My tongue laved one in lazy kisses while my teeth tortured the other, and it wasn’t long before Cecily was all but yanking at my hair desperately. “Rhett…” She moaned huskily - the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. “Please, Rhett….”

  With extreme reluctance, I relinquished her breasts to cup her face, kissing her with a raw hunger that had our tongues and teeth scraping against one another. “Please what?” I demanded lowly against her mouth. “Tell me what you want, Cece.”

  She whimpered lowly, pressing her breasts flush against my bare chest so my cock jumped against her belly. “Make me come…” She breathed against my mouth softly - half-adorably shy, half-pleading. “Please make me feel good.”

  She didn’t have to ask twice.

  I lifted her from my lap to set her on the couch briefly before tossing all the cushions onto the floor before the fireplace. While I might have gladly feasted on the sight of her with her hair mussed, bare breasts heaving, instead, I scooped her off the couch to lay her down among the cushions. The firelight bathed her bare skin in an almost ethereal glow, and I couldn’t help but mourn for all the years I spent robbed of the vision that was Cecily’s half-naked form.

  Reaching down, I undid the rest of her buttons, laying her completely bare before me. I sucked in a breath, not sure where I wanted to touch her first. Those marvelous, sweet tits? The flat expanse of her stomach? Or maybe the those long, long legs.

  Of course, my cock was overly occupied with what was between, and I had to clear my head enough to mentally beat it into submission. That said, the glistening folds at the crux of Cecily’s legs hardly deserved to be neglected.

  Running a hand down her stomach, I paused just above the silken, wet seam of her pussy, rubbing my thumb across the bead of her clit in the barest whisper of her caress. Cecily’s head fell back against the pillows and a long, low moan escaped her.

  My patience evaporated.

  I caught her next moan against her mouth as my tongue tangled with hers. She was so goddamned wet there was barely any resistance when two fingers slid into her. Immediately, her thighs clamped shut around my hand as her hips bucked against my hand greedily. She was so goddamned tight that every movement she made pitched a breathless moan against my mouth.

  I took a taut nipple between my teeth to tug as I stroked her from the inside out and felt her inner muscles quiver. “Rhett…” Her fingers curled into my shoulder, one dragging down to create shallow furrows I’d wear with pride. “God…”

  I wondered if any other man had made her feel this good - surely, if he had, she wouldn’t feel the way she did about her body.

  Each one of Cece’s gasping whimpers was enough to remind me that, while toying with her was delicious, the endgame was to prove her wrong - to feel her come undone beneath me. To that end, I kissed my way over the quivering muscles of her stomach as I slipped my fingers from her to lick them clean.

  I raised my gaze to meet hers, savoring her taste - wondering if it was possible to live between her thighs, bathed by the warmth of the fire. When I pressed my mouth against her ravenously, Cece gasped, immediately trying to wiggle away. No way I was letting that happen. My grip on her hips turned to iron as I pinned her
into place against the cushions.

  And then I feasted.

  There was something carnal, intoxicating and unbelievably sexy about bringing a woman off with my mouth. Feeling the way her body hitched and having her beg me for more and mercy all at once. Cecily, of course, was far more reserved - at least at first. She bit her lip against the sounds that threatened to escape her. Her toes curled and she grasped desperately at my hair and shoulders as my tongue flickered over the tight bead of her clit.

  She was sweet - all but dripping against my lips, and I wanted nothing more than to drink her in until she didn’t remember her own name.

  It didn’t take long.

  When I cupped her ass in both hands, bringing her more firmly against my mouth, she moaned my name. A few slow, sucking pulls at the most sensitive parts of her and she was thrashing, her hands firm atop mine as her hips arched into my ministrations. When I slipped my tongue inside her, she shrieked, her back bowing. I slid one hand around to cover her clit with my thumb, rubbing in rapid little circles as my tongue simulated what my cock desperately wanted and I felt her straining against me - right on the edge of a steep, inviting precipice.

  She hovered there, suspended, and I could feel the tension in her muscles as she fought her own sensibility. Her hang-ups prevented her from giving herself over. She couldn’t completely relax as long as she believed the bullshit incompetent partners had fed her. “Let go, honey.” I whispered huskily against the slick, decadent folds of her sex. “Give it to me. Let me taste you.”

  “Oh God, Rhett…” Her voice trembled as her fingers tangled tightly in my hair. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, please, please don’t stop…”

  She hardly had to beg. You couldn’t have stopped me if the building had collapsed at that very moment. Deftly, I slid two fingers into her clenching passage and curled them upwards to find the spot I knew would make her mine. When I found it, I rubbed in tight circles as I sucked powerfully - hungrily - at her clit.