by Violet Duke
“And that’s my point. One night stands are awkward the next day. Plus, they’re singular events—you never expect to see them again…which is why a fling is different.”
Not bad. Considering she’d just pulled that one out of her ass on the fly. He’d clearly underestimated her.
Remembering Connor’s addendum on his one-monthers, Brian asked, “So what’s your policy on notes…you know, for the guest flingee who sneaks out before the resistant flinger wakes up? Connor used to have a strict no notes, calls, texts, emails, or tokens of affection rule.”
“What? How that man never got drilled in the nuts by a stiletto is beyond me. Of course leave a note. I mean it doesn’t have to be a sonnet or anything. Just short and casual…rhyming optional.”
Brian hid his grin. For the umpteenth time since they’d met, he thought about just how fantastically different Tessa was from Beth and Abby.
When he’d first met Beth, he’d felt nervous as hell, his heart had started racing, and absolute gibberish had spewed out of his mouth. Abby, on the other hand, had been an easy fit from the start; he’d felt like he’d known her forever and felt completely relaxed around her.
When he met Tessa, however, it was like he’d been whacked upside the head. She wriggled under his skin and made him feel unsettled around her all the time. And borderline ornery. Plus, she more often than not had him saying and doing things that he wouldn’t normally do.
Like agreeing to have a fling with a ‘fling expert’ who’d clearly never been flung before.
Reaching over for a pen on the coffee table, he quickly initialed next to the title.
“Okay, I’m in.”
While Tessa was busy gaping at his initials, Brian took the opportunity to unravel more of the enigma that was Tessa Daniels. Basically, he started snooping. He headed over to the bookshelf near the kitchen to look at the small handful of memorabilia and even smaller handful of photos. There was one photo with her sister and her dad, one of just her dad when he was older, one of Willow sitting at a piano, and another with Tessa and her sister in a hospital bed, each with matching pink streaks in their hair.
He picked up the binder propped next to the piano picture of Willow. “Are these her compositions?” There were a few dozen at least, all in plastic protectors.
Finally shaking off her stupor, Tessa came to join him by the bookshelf. “Yep. And they were beautiful. I used to love listening to her play.”
“Did you ever play?”
“No. I didn’t do any extracurriculars at all actually.”
Right, because their lives had revolved around Willow.
She gripped her list of rules in her hands and turned back around, her face utterly serious, “Brian, about this—”
Just then, that familiar musical ringtone—seriously, where did he know that song from—rang out from her bag.
“Dammit. Hang on.” She rushed off to go answer her phone.
Hearing her enter her bedroom to continue the phone conversation, Brian looked around the apartment once again. It was stark, bare. Not at all like the time of vibrant home he’d expect from her. Not to mention her bookshelf. The contents of her bookshelf, he couldn’t help but compare it to the one at his own house that was bursting at the seams, and groaning over the weight of all the photo frames they kept cramming onto it.
“It’s not as extensive as yours,” she commented softly from behind him, as if reading his mind. “And I haven’t added anything to it in years. There hasn’t really been any new memories to collect, or anyone to share it with.”
She took a deep breath, and once again, that determined, positive me-against-the-world smile was back on her face.
The woman never ceased to amaze him.
“Brian, I hate to cut our night short but that was work on the phone just now. Looks like I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter. One of our freelancers bailed at the last minute and they don’t have any articles in the bank to cover this specific topic for the summer edition. Since the cover is already locked, I need to write the article. Easier said than done, of course since I have absolutely no experience with the topic, but I’ll figure something out.”
“What’s the topic?”
A slow, brightening light entered her eyes as she gazed at him and said, “Camping.”
He beamed. “Well then today’s your lucky day. Because standing right before you is a bonafide camping connoisseur who has absolutely no marketable writing skills to speak of and will very likely get completely distracted by the gorgeous editor in charge.”
She chuckled. “You’re hired.”
NINE LONG CRAZY-STRESSFUL hours later, Tessa was emailing the article in for submission, and Brian was half-dozing on the double-wide recliner. Damn, the thing was comfortable; he’d have to look into getting one for his house.
Better yet, he could just move hers into his place, owner and all.
Huh.
There were those crazy, random thoughts again.
Tonight, he was blaming it on exhaustion.
“Okay, the issue’s locked.” When Tessa shuffled by to plop down on the sofa opposite the recliner, he scooped her up by the waist, pulled her onto his lap and tucked her right next to him.
Perfect fit.
She cuddled against his chest. “Thank you so much, Brian. There’s no way I would’ve been able to do that article without you.”
“My pleasure. But you really didn’t have to give me a byline.”
“Of course I did. You came up with most of it.”
She cat-yawned. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you a sandwich or something?”
“If I say yes will you actually be able to get up and do it?” he teased, eyes slipping closed with a groan as he pressed the side button to slide the recliner back fully.
“Good point,” she murmured, nuzzling into him sleepily.
Yawning, he held her close and started drifting off.
“Brian?”
“Hmmm?”
“Are you going to keep poking me with that thing all night?”
“As long as you’re lying on top of me? Yes.”
She burrowed deeper and twined her legs with his. “Okay.”
And that was the last thing he remembered before sleep overtook him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE WAS SO WARM.
With a murmur of pleasure, Tessa slowly rubbing her face against the source of the heat, feeling her skin come alive on contact.
“A man can only take so much torture, Tessa.” The low, rough voice pierced through the sleepy fog she was still floating in, but not enough to make the delicious feelings go away. She shifted her hips and felt something hard brush against her inner thigh.
“Brian,” she sighed.
The arms that were once holding her gently, suddenly turned to steel.
“Tessa, wake up,” he commanded, straight out of her most wicked fantasies.
Her alpha man was back. When was the last time she’d dreamt of him? Oh right, last night…and every night before that for weeks. But he felt so much more real tonight.
She smiled against his hot skin and felt a groan rumbling up the column of his throat. Nuzzling against his jaw, she felt reckless enough tonight to test her dream’s boundaries. Sliding her body fully atop his, she reveled at the feel of all those hot, hardened muscles.
Especially that one.
“Godammit, woman.” Strong, thick fingers speared through her hair and cradled her skull as the hottest lips she’d ever felt started searing every nerve ending she didn’t even know she had all along her neck. “If you don’t wake up and stop smiling like the cat who caught the canary, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”
Jolting awake finally, Tessa forced her eyes open.
And found herself drowning in the most intense sea blue eyes she’d ever seen.
“Brian.”
He bucked against her hips. “Stop saying my name like that,” he rumbled, his pupils dilating right
before her eyes, his chest rising and falling raggedly beneath her hands.
Pushing herself up fully, she froze when she felt the hard ridge of his erection nudging urgently between her thighs.
“Don’t. Move.” His eyelids slammed shut, and harsh lines of tension etched across his face as he held her immobile above him.
“Brian—” She scooted forward for better leverage.
Before she could so much as yelp, he sat up fully and yanked her torso against him, his brawny arms encasing her in a cocoon of heat, as every inch of his hard sculpted chest and eight-pack abs sealed her tight against his body. “You suck at following directions,” he growled.
Guilty as charged. Then again, where in the world has he been that he was only now just getting that memo?
As she did, then, attempt to follow directions, she began taking inventory of the changes in Brian. Seeing the hard edge of desire in his eyes was…intoxicating.
She wanted more.
Later, she’d wonder over her sanity for pushing the man when he looked this primal but for now…
She reached up and shaped her hands over tan, chiseled features, smiling when his hips jerked up against hers in reflex as she slid her tongue along the taut line of his lips. A sharp jaw clench beneath her fingers and then nothing.
His harsh breathing had to mean he was as affected as she was, and yet the man still continued to sit there. Brooding. All but vibrating with hot alpha sex waves while he continued to look at her like he wanted to devour her…but just plain wasn’t going to.
Unable, unwilling to wait any longer for him to make the first move, she took control and shifted her hips forward, wanting that snug, rigid fit. Forward and back, forward and back. She became lightheaded as the searing sensations started rushing throughout her system, causing her to pulse against him just as he pulsed right back against her.
After a while, it became less about inciting his hunger, and more about feeding her own. An altogether unfamiliar craving. She hadn’t had sex besides that one time in high school, never even ‘took care of business’ on her own.
Clearly, she’d been missing out.
Her hands fisted in his shirt and her eyes drifted shut. Now if she just angled her hips…
Holy hell.
A vicious, guttural sound from deep in Brian’s chest broke her concentration. But then the feeling of flying that came when he shot up to his feet and pushed her back against the couch, seconds before he started yanking his clothes off soon had her concentration focused on newer, better things.
Wow.
Tense, sculpted muscles as far as the eye could see, rippling and clenching.
“Clothes off,” he rasped, reaching down to drag her shirt up off her body. Front-clasp bras were now her new favorite thing—Brian’s too, judging by the volatile explosion of lust in his eyes that detonated the instant she was fully bared to his gaze.
“So beautiful.”
She felt the rough, graveled words repeated against her neck, moments before his mouth closed over her nipple and sent pleasure lashing across her senses. With lips, tongue, and teeth, he tasted, explored, incited. Soon, her nails were scoring down his back and his teeth were nipping at her in symphony.
“I need to be inside of you now.”
Tessa didn’t even realize he’d slid off her jeans and panties until she felt him slip back between her legs. The tiny gasp she’d been unable to keep buried at the skin-on-skin contact had him gripping her hips and rocking his full length against her core.
“Jesus, I could come just from the feel of you spilling over me,” he rumbled against her skin. “You’re so damn responsive.”
His mouth came over hers again almost desperately, stealing what little oxygen she had left directly from its source as his thumb moved from the blade of her hipbone across her soft mound. Lower, and lower.
Her whole body corded like a bow. “Brian!”
CHRIST, HE’D ALMOST come right then and there.
The way Tessa said his name went to his head faster than whiskey. And the snug grip and slick wet glide of her sex over his violently sensitive head was his drunken undoing. He forced himself back and grabbed for the condom in his jeans. Sliding the rubber in place, he was back in a flash. Thank God, he’d allowed himself that line of wishful thinking when he’d left his house this evening.
She was watching him all the while beneath long dark lashes, her full, soft lips parted in anticipation.
“Not sure I can be gentle this first time, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want gentle,” came her heated reply. “I’ve been fantasizing about you since I first heard your voice on the phone, growling. Your voice has been the one in my head, my dreams. Hearing you lose control…”
It was no use, he had to have her. Latching his mouth onto one pebbled nipple, he plunged into her in one deep thrust.
And froze when she cried out.
“Oh my God, sweetheart. Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
He grit his teeth and started sliding back out of her. Jesus. So unimaginably tight.
“No, don’t stop,” she managed on a gasp, wrapping her legs around his waist to keep him from pulling out completely.
He shuddered as he sank back in partway. “Honey, you’re so tight. I didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Not your fault.” Her voice sounded strained. “I’ve only had sex that one time. Born again virgin,” she joked, breath hissing in at the effort.
He dropped his forehead down to hers. “Good lord, why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve gone slower. Gotten you wetter.”
“Um. I don’t think you could’ve gotten me all that much wetter, Brian,” she replied sounding highly skeptical.
Despite the fact that half his shaft was buried inside of her in the most agonizing pleasure he’d ever experienced, he chuckled over that. Clearly, his little ‘expert flinger’ was even far less of an expert than he’d thought. “Sweetheart, I’m definitely going to have to take you up on that challenge, but not now. Because I’m about two seconds from exploding.” He circled his thumb over her sensitive nub again. “We’ll go slow this time.” Even if it killed him.
He drew back and slid into her gently, starting an achingly slow rhythm even though he was nearly shaking with the intense need to take her, possess her completely.
But the sweetness of her response made it all worth it.
Soft, feathery whimpers against his neck, the sweetest broken cries he could imagine, and soon, pure, naked bliss as she rained over him and arched to meet him thrust for thrust.
When finally, he felt her orgasm start to rip through her, he lost it completely.
Bracing his hands against the back of the couch, he took her, hot and fast, without an ounce of control. She clamped down on him and rode him just as desperately, her tiny inner pulses driving him past sanity, beyond civility.
He grit his teeth to keep from shouting. Heart hammering, red-hot pleasure racing down his spine, he drove into her one last time and reveled in the feel of her snug channel pulsing all around him as he went roaring over the edge.
And everything went black.
BRIAN OPENED HIS EYES and for a second, forgot where he was. When he heard a shower faucet shut off and saw Tessa’s sweet frame outlined in the dark, it all came back to him in a rush.
He got up and headed over to the bathroom, leaning against the doorframe watching the towel drying extravaganza.
“Were you just showering in the dark?”
She spun around and jammed the two ends of the towel back around her.
Shame.
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly. And his imagination went nuts. “It’s a habit. Never wanted to wake up Willow. It’s not that weird. It’s not like I need the light on to be able to run a washcloth over my own body.”
The image that provoked got him hard so fast he felt dizzy.
He stepped forward and trailed a finger over the top edge of her towel, dipped in the valley between h
er breasts. “How about we both shower in the dark.”
Lashes fluttering shut, she murmured distractedly, “B-but I already finished.”
Grinning, he slid his hand past the opening of the towel, and up her inner thigh. “Did you, Tessa? Did you finish in there? Without me? But I thought you were going to let me show you how much wetter I could get you.”
Her breath caught in her throat as he tugged the towel open and slowly slid it down her body. Backing her up into the shower stall, he whispered in her ear, “I forgot the washcloth. Guess you’ll just have to settle for me running my hands over your body.”
Though he couldn’t see her expression, he felt her thighs clench tight as his fingers trailed down over her hips.
With a flick of his wrist, he turned the hot water on, letting sheets of steaming hot water cascade down her soft skin, drenching it as he slid his slick palms down her sides. He couldn’t see her, but he had other senses that were working just fine. Falling to his knees, he brushed his lips down her ribcage and across her soft belly, his tongue teasing the gentle hollow of her navel.
“You are so sexy.”
He sipped drops of water from her soft mound and caught her when her knees buckled.
“So let’s see about that challenge you threw down, shall we?”
TESSA WAS ALL BUT SITTING on his biceps, her back against shower wall, and her fingers threaded in his hair as he slowly, tortuously proved to her over and over again that her earlier assertion wrong. She was most definitely wetter now.
So much so that she wasn’t even blushing over the logistics of her seating arrangement.
For now.
She wasn’t going to be able to take much more.
He’d been torturing her for who knows how long now, bringing her right up to brink three times, before easing off, simply to build her right back up again.
The bastard.
She was all set to take matters into her own hands when finally, she felt two thick fingers slide into her as his mouth closed tight and—