That Thing Called Love

by Susan Andersen

  He hauled her off the table and straight over the shoulder he’d dipped to get under her stomach in a fireman’s lift. He surged up to his full height.

  “Jake!” she protested, grabbing the back of his shirt.

  He stroked a placating hand down the back of her thighs. “I know—not real romantic. But trust me, it’s the only safe option open to me right now. I can’t be face-to-face with you or you’re gonna be back on that table. Or on the floor. Or up against the nearest wall.” Shit. “They’re all starting to sound like perfectly fine options for our first time together, but I’m betting you’d enjoy a softer surface.”

  He strode over to her bedroom. Opening the door, he maneuvered her over the threshold and kicked the door closed behind him. Then he strode across the tiny room and flipped her onto the bed.

  She shoved up onto her elbows and knuckled her hair out of her eyes, but Jake didn’t give her time to get situated or have second thoughts. Digging a knee into the mattress, he dropped onto his hands and crawled up the bed to hang over her on all fours.

  She flopped flat on her back. Arched her slender brows. “Now what?”

  “Oh, honey.” He bent his elbows to stroke his chest against her breasts as he planted a fast, carnal kiss on her lips. Straightening, he looked down at her. Her nipples poked hard points into her soft sweater. “Now I do all those things I’ve fantasized doing to you.”

  She insinuated her hands beneath the hem of his old Columbia U. sweatshirt and caressed the bare skin at the small of his back. For the first time since she’d launched herself at him, he recalled his less-than-pristine state and felt a moment’s uncertainty.

  Christ. He was hardly every woman’s dream in his current condition. Had he even showered today?

  But it didn’t seem to bother her, for she merely murmured, “Cool,” and rubbed her hands up his bare back, his ratty sweatshirt pooling in the bends of her elbows to follow the path her fingers set. “I guess that means I get to do all the things that I’ve imagined doing then, too, yes?”

  His momentary doubt dissolved. “I’m counting on it.” He came down on top of her.

  Jenny apparently had other ideas, however, because she snapped a finger under his nose. “Back up on your hands, mister,” she ordered and tugged on the sweatshirt she’d raised until it was a thick band circling his chest and upper back. “I want this off. Now.”

  “Pushy little thing, aren’tcha.” He followed her command, however, and she pulled the garment over his head. That left it stretched across his chest from biceps to biceps and, lifting his right hand, he yanked his arm out of the sleeve, turning it inside out in the process. Then, raising his other hand, he repeated the process. But this time it bunched around his hand and he shook it sharply until the damn thing finally lost its grip and sailed over the side of the bed.

  Jenny slapped her hands to his chest and shoved determinedly. He obediently fell away from her, flopping over onto his back.

  She rose onto her knees, mounted him like a horse and sat astride his thighs. Perched atop him, she undulated slow and sexy, like a stripper on a sluggish mechanical bull. Pressing one clenched fist into her thigh, she raised her other arm overhead, moving it in slow counterpart with the lazy rock of her body.

  She looked down at him through heavy-lidded eyes and licked her lips. “Save a horse—ride a cowboy,” she murmured.

  “Yee-haw.” The back-and-forth motion had its predictable effect on his dick, and he gritted his teeth even as his hips cocked up to keep it aligned with the yielding friction of that soft, soft place between her legs.

  Then it was gone as she slid her body down until she lay with her stomach atop his thighs, her legs stretched out along his. A discerning cock would likely be disappointed, but his was an opportunist of the equal opportunity variety. It liked every move she made and adjusted happily to nestling between her little tits.

  Threading her fingers through the light fan of hair on his chest, she bent her head and nuzzled the top of his chest, then stretched to do the same to the contour of his neck where it flowed into his shoulder. Scooting up, she pushed his arms up to curl over his head on the mattress, holding them pinned with dainty fingers splayed across his forearms and the press of her inner arms against his.

  It was surprisingly erotic and, feeling the need to hide how effortlessly she was heating him to the boiling point—which, okay, was a joke, considering the evidence of it determinedly prodding her—he said drily, “Dominatrix one of your fantasies?”

  “You bet,” she agreed. “Next time I’ll dig out my leather corset.”

  “I’d like that. I’m—”

  She sank her teeth into his triceps in a quick bite.

  “Christ!” Who would have expected that to be such a turn-on? He shivered as she licked away the sting he only belatedly realized had startled him more than dealt much actual pain.

  “Nothing egocentric about you,” she said huskily against the side of his neck, where she was placing soft, openmouthed kisses. “A god, I’ll grant you. But definitely one of the lower-case-g deities. Musclicious, maybe—that minor fertility god of hard bodies.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  This time she bit the ball of his shoulder and he thrust upward to rub against her nearest body part. Damn. The girl was a moving target.

  So, what was it about her, anyway? He’d been with some seriously sexually accomplished women in his life—hell, with some of the world’s most sexually sophisticated women. So how was it that the far-from-sophisticated kiss Jenny had given him a moment ago made him feel like an addict who’d just mainlined the highest-grade product in existence?

  First one’s on us, little boy.

  Like hell. He could take over like that! There wasn’t a doubt in his mind he was reams more experienced than she. He could have her begging for mercy in moments.

  Yet he lay beneath her, still except for the jump of a muscle here, a seeking upward thrust of his hips there, desperate to see what she’d do next.

  He gave up trying to swallow the occasional groan as she relinquished her grip on his arms and worked her way back down his torso in tortuous increments, exploring with her hands, her lips, her teeth and tongue. Clenching his own teeth to keep the crazy-ass pleas gathering in his throat from escaping, he looped his locked fingers behind the back of his head and crunched up to look down at her when she finally reached his waistband.

  Unbuttoning it, she fiddled with the zipper head. Stared at the tense muscles in his abdomen for a moment. Then she glanced up to meet his gaze as she slowly lowered his zipper. His cock, behind the thin, stretchy cotton-and-silk blend of his boxers, made a break for it, crowding the opening.

  She looked down and simply gazed for a moment where the barely concealed bulk of him was framed between wide-open zipper teeth. Then, tearing her gaze away with a clear effort, she shot him a one-sided smile. “You know, I really expected you to be a more handsy kind of guy.”

  He stilled. “You want my hands on you?”

  “Well, of course.” Running an exploratory finger down the length of the soft fabric over his hard dick, she licked the ab above his boxer’s band and heaved a faux sigh, which wafted warm air to add an additional layer of torture to the mix. “Why is it that women always have to do all the heavy lifting?”

  “I’ll give you heavy lifting,” he growled and, ripping his hands from behind his head, hooked them beneath her armpits and pulled her up the length of his torso. Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled the two of them over.

  He pushed up on his elbows and grinned down at her. “I liked that domination thing you had going. Let’s continue with that—we’ll just reverse the spin.”

  She made a dismissive noise and flashed him a look down the length of her nose—a feat he had to admire, considering how hard it must have been to pull off, flat on her back
with him looming over her. “Nobody likes a copycat, Bradshaw.”

  “Oh, you will,” he promised silkily, and threading their fingers together, he replicated her earlier movements, enjoying the slide of her sweater-covered breasts against his bare chest as he pressed her arms to the bed above her head. It occurred to him that his pledge would probably carry more weight if he’d stripped her first, but he mentally shrugged. A guy could only do what a guy could do. He lowered his head and kissed her.

  God, he loved her mouth. Her lips were soft and oh, so pliable. And when they opened beneath his, her mouth was hot and wet. He’d never tasted another like it, and lust pounded in his pulse points at the way her lips worked his as feverishly as his did hers. At the way her tongue tangled every bit as aggressively.

  Manacling her wrists in his left hand, he lowered his right to slide beneath the thin tomato-red wool hem of her sweater. The feel of her beneath his fingers had him raising his mouth from hers and hissing in air through his teeth. “God,” he breathed reverently. “Your skin is so damn soft.”

  Bondage lost its allure and he relinquished her wrists in favor of gripping a handful of her hair. He circled his fist to twist a slippery length around it, tilting her head back until her throat was an exposed arch. Lowering his head, he strung openmouthed kisses from the silken underside of her jaw, down the smooth-skinned column to the fragile triangular depression at its base. He lapped the flat of his tongue into the hollow, with its faint tracery of blue veins, and felt his cock jump when her pulse hammered beneath it.

  Slipping his free hand beneath her top, he cupped a lace-covered breast.

  Jenny arched her back, ardently pressing the small globe into his palm. “Jake?”

  “I want to strip you naked and lick every inch of you,” he muttered hoarsely, inching down the bed to use his tongue to delineate the curve of her collarbone in her sweater’s wide, scooped neckline. Beneath whisper-soft wool, his thumb traced circles over her beaded nipple, abrading its impudent point with the bra’s lace. He wanted nothing more than to drive her as out of control as he was beginning to feel. “I want to bury myself so deep inside of you all I can feel is you coming all over my cock.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Jenny twisted with languid sensuousness against the quilt-covered bedding. She’d gotten a kick out of being in charge—how often had that happened in her admittedly limited sexual dealings? But she liked this, too, this conceding of authority. She was accustomed to being in charge of damn near every other area of her life and hadn’t known how good it could feel to let someone else take over.

  And, oh, my, how Jake had taken over! She was this close to climaxing simply from the sound of his voice, from the inflammatory words he used. Without so much as a naked skin-to-skin touch. She couldn’t discount that lace rubbing, rubbing, rubbing against her nipple, but still—she’d never been with a guy who talked like this. Never dreamed how sexy it could be.

  But words were just the additive in the fuel; Jake didn’t need dirty talk to rev her engine. That silver tongue of his was so fiery against her skin she wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d branded his initials all over her with it.

  Oh, God, indeed.

  “I think you’ve got on too many clothes,” he murmured. “We need to lose this sweater. I wanna see what I’m touching.”

  The tension holding her throat arched for his kisses disappeared as his long fingers slid out of her hair. And before you could say “striptease,” he’d whipped the offending sweater over her head and off her arms, now flung over her head. She started to lower them.

  “No, you don’t.” He was back in place, one hand spreading across both wrists, staying her. “I like having you in my power.”

  She snorted at the same time that tissues deep between her thighs gave a fast, sharp contraction.

  Jake’s gorgeous mouth quirked up on one side. “Don’t see that happening, huh?”

  Oh, I don’t know. But, of course, she couldn’t say that.

  Could she?

  No, of course she couldn’t. “Not in this lifetime, bud.”

  “Oh, you never wanna say never,” he murmured and rolled to his feet alongside the bed. “That’ll only get my competitive juices flowing. Because I’m pretty sure that I can make you feel things—do things—you’ve never dreamed of.”

  No fooling. “So...what?” she said in a tone that said, In your dreams. “You have a yen to play sheik to my slave girl?”

  His hands, which she suddenly noticed had lost a good deal of their tropical tan, shoved his cords down his legs and he kicked free of them. “Aw, now you’re just messing with me,” he said as he went to work shaking her out of her jeans. But he took his gaze off his work long enough to pin her in place with intense eyes. “I’d make a kick-ass sheik. I can think of all sorts of things I’d do to you—make you do to me. Honey, we’d be howling at the moon before I was done.”

  She swallowed hard—and squeezed her thighs together. Okay, maybe his way of talking about these things was a fuel all its own. But she managed to give him a supercilious look, complete with raised eyebrows.

  “You know you like the idea,” he said, but she could tell by the humor in his voice that he had no idea how much.

  She forced a sigh. “I have an early meeting in the morning. You plan on talking all night?”

  Jake laughed. “No, ma’am,” he murmured. And thrust his boxers down.

  She gawked—there was no other word for it. Not when the sudden loss of the last bit of clothing left his penis aiming like an assault rifle straight at her. “Oh. My. God.”

  “I know,” he said ruefully. “It’s not polite to point.” And giving her a crooked smile, he hooked her calves in his hands and yanked her down to the end of the bed until her lace-covered butt slapped against his bare thighs. Bending her knee, he wrapped a warm hand around the instep of her right foot and pressed its sole against his penis, using it to push his sex back against his ridged stomach. “Better?”

  She stared at the length that thrust out above the tips of her red-painted toes. “That’s really not as long as it looks, you know. It’s just that I have little feet.” Instead of sounding dismissive, the pitch of her voice started rising higher with each word until “feet” cracked in two beneath its inability to reach an impossible octave. God, could she sound more idiotic? She had to quit trying to act all cool—it only served to bite her in the butt. Just being herself couldn’t possibly sound any less ridiculous than that lie.

  She cleared her throat. “Still. Maybe you’re a more important god than I thought.” She curled her toes against him.

  His penis twitched against the bottom of her foot and he flashed her a white, white smile as he stepped back, allowing her foot to slide down his thighs. “You have to be the most fun woman I’ve ever met,” he said, reaching for her and rearranging her back on the middle of the bed. He fetched his wallet from the back pocket of his discarded cords and tossed it on the nightstand.

  Then he fell over her, catching himself on his palms and toes. Holding a plank position over her body, he lowered his head and kissed her.

  Softly.

  Sweetly.

  With lips that moved gently, sucked lightly, licked lazily at hers. As if he had all the time in the world.

  Unlike Jenny, who, just like that, went up in flames, plunging back into the conflagration that his break to disrobe them had temporarily banked. Threading her fingers through his hair, she held him to her as she kissed him back. Without nearly the softness, the sweetness or the gentleness he demonstrated.

  Jake growled deep in his throat and, lowering himself to her side, reached for the front clasp of her bra. He unfastened it with a dexterous snap of his fingers and gently peeled the cups from her breasts. “Look at you,” he said softly, doing just that.

  No, don’t. It was a knee-jerk reaction and sh
e swallowed the words, because, really: Show a little pride. Her boobs might not be as grown-up looking as she’d like, but their slight roundness was pleasing and her nipples were pretty.

  And, oh, God, with his hand shaping one and his mouth nipping at the other, she couldn’t think straight. “Not requiring much foreplay here,” she panted, shifting restlessly on the quilt and arching her back to push her breast deeper into his mouth. She felt as if he’d been teasing her for hours. Days. Weeks.

  He released her nipple with a pop. “No? Too bad I’m in charge here, then, isn’t it? ’Cause I’m all about the foreplay.” His eyes locked on hers, he sucked her other nipple into his mouth and slid a hand down her stomach. Inserting it beneath the hip band of her undies, he slipped a sly forefinger between her legs, separating buttery folds to feather her clitoris.

  Shooting Jenny straight into a climax, detonating her so hard and fast his name was a startled cry from her lips.

  “Holy shit,” he said, his eyes smoldering green sparks behind narrowed lashes. “Take note, Bradshaw,” he murmured to himself. “Listen to the woman the next time she tells you what she does or doesn’t need.” His finger kept up its gentle circling until the last contraction faded and her hips abruptly lost their high arched rigidity and she collapsed back on the bed.

  Slowly, he pulled his hand out of her panties, tugged them off and fumbled on the nightstand for his wallet. “You game for round two?”

  She looked at his raging hard-on and bestirred herself guiltily. “Oh, God. For all my big talk about heavy lifting, I’ve let you do all the work. Give me a second and I’ll rectify that.” Maybe. If she could slap hands on her skeletal system, which seemed to have deserted her.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, unrolling a condom down his sex, then turning on his side to face her and propping his head on his hand. He trailed the backs of his fingers down her body, from her collarbone to her navel to the tops of her thighs, coming close to but not touching what she most wanted touched. “Like you, I don’t think I’m up for much foreplay. When a woman comes fast, they call it multiorgasmic, because she can turn around and do it again. When a man does, they call it premature ejaculation.” He grimaced. “Not exactly what any guy wants to hear applied to him.”