Forearms posted on either side of his hips, I breathed in his musky, soapy smell. What would he feel like inside me? It would be so easy to slide up his body so I lay flush with his and guide him into me.
No. Just this and nothing else. An apology for the destruction of his family. That was all.
I kissed his tip with my breath held, waiting for him to stir. When he didn’t, I flicked out my tongue and licked halfway up his long shaft.
His mouth fell open in a soft gasp, and his eyelids fluttered.
I had never done this before, but I’d read about it plenty. Lisa Montgomery never skimped on the sex details, and that had to count for something. I slipped his tip inside my mouth and brushed my fingers up the velvety length of him to make a fist.
His stomach muscles contracted. He heaved a groan that reverberated all the way to my tongue.
Slowly at first, I began to stroke him as I took him deeper into my mouth.
Both his hands gripped the sheet underneath him and twisted, his eyes still closed in sleep or bliss or both.
I sped my rhythm, and with each flick of my tongue, my hips thrust the air, my body craving its own release.
“Paige,” Sam moaned, his whole body twitching, the cords in his neck straining.
Hearing him say my name in such a state of passion made me grin around him. I swirled my tongue over his tip while my hand continued to work him, and then I whispered, “Yes, Sam. It’s me.”
His eyes popped open, and his steady, moonlit gaze heated my insides to jelly. Caught in the act without the illusion of a dream, but I didn’t hear any complaints. Keeping my eyes locked on his, I took him into my mouth again and slid my other hand inside my soaked panties.
“Oh, my fucking god,” he breathed.
I moaned around him as I glided two fingers inside myself and grinded against the palm of my hand. I was so, so wet for him, for what I was doing to him.
The muscles in his hard body jumped to keep up with my mouth’s pace. His gasps punctuated my moans. His hands skimmed to the back of my head, not to guide me, it seemed, but to brush stray hairs away from my face so he could look at me as I sucked him.
With him now fully awake, this felt real. It wasn’t a dream, though it did feel like an out-of-body experience. It unnerved me, scared me even, but the uncertainty of what this meant, what it could change between us, turned me on even more.
After all, he was the one who wanted to get personal.
My tongue followed a glistening trail up toward my fist as the tightly constructed seams in my perfectly crafted life began to come apart. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, until my whole body burst into transformed pieces. I cried out and let my orgasm pulse down to my curled toes.
Once I stumbled back into this new reality, I met Sam’s fiery stare, the sound of his rough breaths coupling with the rush of blood between my ears.
“Holy fuck,” he rumbled. Then he gently guided me back to his unfinished business with a quick slide of his tongue across his lower lip.
I took as much of him as I could and pumped him with renewed vigor. His head smacked the pillow again, and with each thrust of my mouth, his hips rocked upward toward my face. The fists at the back of my head wound around my hair tighter and pulled until it was almost painful, but not quite. Then, with a growly moan, he filled my mouth with warmth and salt and a masculine flavor that was all his.
Delicious. Every inch of him. And I was a fool to think that one taste would be enough.
I continued to stroke him gently, pressing kisses to his thighs, his hips, the happy trail climbing up his stone-carved abs, while his orgasm finished shuddering through him. Maybe it was the alcohol still thrumming through my veins, but I didn’t want to end this, whatever this was exactly. I wanted more, and more meant all of him for the rest of the night and into infinity.
Every time I was with him, he made me feel like a treasure. He was a beautiful distraction, but if he knew the truth, all of it including what I did tonight, he would likely kick me out of his bed.
I sat up, wiped my mouth, and leveled him with a casual look I hoped said Well, it’s been fun, even though it had been so much more. But the smoldering blaze in his eyes tripped me up in my haste to clamber off him. Luckily, I caught myself before I toppled onto the floor. But my lack of grace couldn’t sever the lock between our gazes, because underneath his lustful burn, tenderness sparked there, too.
“You’re welcome to come back and do that again anytime,” he said.
“I’m drunk,” I said as if that would explain everything and somehow shine a better light on me.
“Remind me to get more alcohol,” he said, smiling.
I shook my head, my cheeks flaming, the room suddenly spinning. What must he think of me? That I was a lush who slinked into guys’ bedrooms late at night looking for some action? That was actually closer to the truth than I cared to admit.
“This was a mistake,” I said and hoped my harsh tone conveyed I really meant it. If only I’d realized that before I’d climbed on top of him. Before I drank him further into my very existence.
Before I could flee the room and slam the door on what I’d done, he grabbed my hand.
“Was it?” He sucked two of my fingers into his mouth, the same two fingers I’d used to get myself off.
His sinful tongue stroked them, and the drag of those full lips over my knuckles shuddered fevered memories throughout my body at what else he could do with that mouth. He eased my fingers out, and the slow slide of his lips over my flesh ignited my center once again.
“It doesn’t taste like a mistake to me.” He sat up at the same time he pulled me down to sit next to him.
“I’m sorry,” I said without looking at him. “I took advantage of you, and...I’m sorry.”
It seemed I was developing a pattern of sneaking into men’s bedrooms at night. Since Rick was physically scarred while in the line of duty, dangerous, rugged, and unconditionally forbidden due to our nine-year age gap, my whole sixteen-year-old world began to revolve around him while he stayed with us during his summer internship. He knew Dad from a high school aerospace engineering work study program, and Dad thought he could get him a job before Max Cleary wooed Rick into becoming a senator. While Rick stayed with us, I welcomed his lustful stares, awoke gasping every morning with thoughts of his hands on my skin, until things spiraled out of control between us. That was before I realized what he really was—cold, heartless, and married.
I’d wanted to blame my sexual curiosity on a hormonal imbalance, but my doctor, and later Dr. Morrison in college, had confirmed everything was normal. Then why weren’t all sixteen-year-olds climbing into bed with older men and later popping out babies? Inside my barely existent social circle in Wichita, it was just me.
Maybe Dad had been right—maybe I was wicked.
Sam scooted forward to brush his fingers across the back of my neck and gently turned my face into his palm. “Don’t be sorry.”
The backs of my eyes burned, and I quickly looked away. What kind of kick to the self-esteem would it be to be given a blow job, then have the girl cry all over the place like a blubbering idiot from guilt?
His fingers skimmed slow and gentle toward my chin and turned me once again to face him. “How much did you have to drink tonight?”
I shook my head, and the room tipped. My stomach bubbled with nausea. I couldn’t even begin to count how many glasses of wine I’d had.
Something so sad and haunted rolled across his face with a wince that it broke my heart all over again. He scrubbed a hand down his face then searched the floor for a pair of boxers.
“Come on,” he said, hauling me to my feet. “You need to sleep it off.”
He ushered me in front of him toward my room, safely tucked away in his boxers. He turned the light on and folded back the blankets on my bed for me.
Since I’d gone to the cowboy bar dressed for bed, I crawled in and burrowed under the covers as if to disappear. I di
dn’t deserve his compassion, but it flooded me with a warmth more intense than alcohol and sex combined.
When I was settled, he slid the glasses from my nose and set them on top of the nightstand. Then he brought me a trashcan from the bathroom and said, “Sleep on your side.”
I nodded and assumed the position, but a bounce on the bed clued me in that I wasn’t alone. He was climbing under the covers with me.
Under my wide-eyed stare, he paused. “I just want to make sure you don’t die. Just sleeping, okay?”
“Yeah.”
His nearness and the sound of his voice sank my eyes closed with a shiver. He was such a good, sweet person, so unlike Rick in every way, and the more I got to know him, the clearer that became. I wasn’t so sure I deserved someone like him, but if I let it, it could be too easy to let my heart get as carried away as my body and fall in love with him.
What a terrifying, exhilarating experience that would be.
18
Sam
“THESE THINGS HAPPEN,” Hill had said about the missing money.
That was pretty much all he’d said over the phone, but the tight, lethal way he said it made me think there was a little more to it than that. He mentioned something about the money being added to Rose’s debt, but didn’t give me any figures or timelines before he ended the call.
It made me seriously wonder if he was even keeping track of the deals I made for him. I doubted it. I could be working the debt off for the rest of my life, which would likely be shortened by a lot if I kept up my shitty luck.
Between Riley and I, we couldn’t scrape together enough cash to pay Hill back for the stolen money, not unless Riley skimmed some off the top of Dad’s upcoming presidential campaign. But from what it sounded like, there were already some shady dealings there. Something about illegal donations. Good old Dad.
Even if Riley could get the money, I doubted Hill wanted me to pay him back that way. Next time Hill was in a talkative mood, I would be sure to ask him. While we were at it, we could have a good heart-to-heart about our favorite Lifetime movies.
The worst he could do would be to say no. Actually, the worst he could do would be to kill me, but since I still had a pulse after I’d talked to him, I wasn’t going to worry about it until I needed to. What else could I do?
In the meantime, I thought about Paige. Everything I would like to do to her. Everything she had done to me.
Late Saturday morning, somewhere between sleep and consciousness, the memory of her lips wrapped around my cock bolted me upright in bed. No way had that really happened last night. No fucking way did she sneak into my bedroom to suck me off. Did she?
I’d had plenty of wet dreams starring Paige, but none of them had felt so real. And she hadn’t jilled herself off in any of them. I could still taste her on my lips when she tried to leave my bedroom, her eyes wide with a regret that had no right to be there. It hadn’t been a dream.
I sat up in her bed. Humidity rolled from the open doorway of her bathroom, perking up my whole body with Paige’s sweet and spicy smell and the image of her naked in the shower. But the light was turned off. She must’ve gone downstairs.
I went across the hallway into my bedroom to the nearest pile of jeans, anxious to see her. I had a feeling the blush that would likely fire up when she saw me would put the one the morning after I drove my tongue into her to shame. Unless she still felt guilty about blowing me. In which case, I would find a way to convince her that what she did ranked right up there with such religious experiences as bacon and hearing the rev of a once-dead engine under my resurrecting hands.
She wanted me, even though she was miles better than me, was older and way more sophisticated, and was loads sexier than any girl I’d ever had. Me. Not my skank of a brother or some boring dude in a suit and tie. Me.
And wow, could she give head. That innocent librarian thing she had going on was a genius cover for the naughty streak inside.
I found her sitting at the island in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee and staring at her phone which was playing that song by that British singer I always heard everywhere. Her still-wet hair hung in loose waves around her face, which was paler than usual, and there were dark circles under her eyes. It was her mouth that caught my eye, though, and not for obvious reasons. She had tightened it into the most determined line I’d ever seen on her, like she had just figured something out, or was trying to fight back a puke bubble.
“Hungover?” I asked.
That blush I’d been waiting for burned her cheeks when she met my gaze. She smiled down at her lap. So innocent and yet so not.
“This is my second pot of coffee, so I'm feeling better,” she said, nodding. “Thank you for...putting up with me.”
“No problem.” I swept past her to the coffee maker. She must have been awake for a while because there was only a quarter of a pot left.
“And I’m sorry for...last night.”
Yeah, she’d mentioned that afterward, too. But from the sound of her voice, I couldn’t tell if she still felt guilty about it. After I poured myself some coffee, I decided it was time to find out.
“You mean you’re sorry for falling on my dick with your mouth?” I asked, then turned to see her reaction.
Her mouth fell open, then she snapped it closed again and blinked hard. The corners of her lips twitched upward. “Wow. How very blunt of you.”
“I accept your apology, but only if you don’t say you’re sorry again.”
She looked at me then, really looked at me, and something lit up those dark eyes I’d never seen before. Appreciation? Something else?
“Agreed,” she said.
I smiled into my cup while pouring scalding coffee down my throat, and I didn’t even care.
She scooted off her stool and drained the last of her coffee. “There’s a fundraiser at the literacy center where I used to volunteer today, and I...I wondered if you would like to go with me to read with some kids.”
I gulped, trying not to flinch while the coffee blistered everything on its way to my stomach. “Kids?”
“Yeah.” She held a hand three feet or so over the floor. “You know, those people who are smaller than us?”
The teasing tone of her voice and the way she’d cocked her head made me want to run my tongue over every square inch of her. I shifted my weight to ease the stirring in my jeans.
“Read with them... Why?”
She gave an exasperated laugh. “To show them how fun reading can be. To get them talking and thinking about books.” She waved a hand at me. “To show them even cool people like to read.”
“So, I’m cool people now, huh?”
“Please.” She set her empty mug next to the sink. “You wrote the book on cool. The longish hair, the facial scruff, the leather jacket, the whole bad boy vibe. You were promoted to the cool people club a long time ago.”
“I see,” I said. “And are you or are you not a member of the club, too?”
“Of course,” she said and threw me a smile over her shoulder that tightened my jeans even more. “I started the club.”
“Right.” My gaze travelled down to those seductively swaying hips while she glided out of the kitchen. So, so right. “Okay. I’ll go.” How could I not?
But while I tossed back my coffee which hadn’t cooled much, my mind buzzed around how I would be able to keep my hands off of her if we spent more time together. But the question that fell out of my mouth when she came back was, “Bacon?”
Her laughter brightened her face to a not hungover normal. It brightened the whole fucking house.
“I like that you have priorities,” she said. “Yes, bacon. But I’ll take care of it while you go put a shirt on and get ready.”
I crossed my arms and screwed up my mouth into my best skeptical face. “Uhhhm...”
“Go. You can trust me with your bacon baby.”
“Train you, I did,” I said in a Yoda voice and left the kitchen with more of her laughter trailing
behind me.
Best sound ever. If humanity ever needed saving, we should play her laugh on repeat. That, and old Metallica.
Dressed and properly baconated, we sat in my car at a red light while Paige weaved her fingers through her hair. It still hadn’t dried, and her spicy candy smell filled the tight confines of the car with every absentminded stroke she gave it. I was swimming in Paige and loving every second of it. All the muscles in my body were wound up so tight, ready and so willing to pull her into my lap and ravage her, but I kept my hands locked at ten and two.
Eyes on the road, soldier! my dad always used to tell me. Pretty much the only solid advice he’d ever given me.
Paige looked out her window, lost in thought, while Saturday morning traffic crept along. Silence didn’t usually bother me—in fact I often preferred it after only one cup of coffee—but with Paige, I felt like I needed to crawl deeper inside that beautiful brain of hers.
“When did you volunteer at the literacy center?” I asked.
“I used to every Saturday when I lived here. I knew it would look good on college applications, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.” She shrugged. “Until we moved to Wichita. It has a couple places like it, but I never got around to volunteering again. I miss it.”
“You were really thinking about college applications when you were fourteen.” It was a statement, not a question, because I could believe it of Paige.
“I started when I was twelve, not fourteen, and yes, I was thinking about college. Weren’t you?”
“Not at twelve,” I said.
Even when I was in college, I wasn’t thinking about college. I enrolled at Georgetown U my first semester because Dad wanted me to, said it would make an honest man of me. Maybe he should’ve gone instead. I went to all my classes. Okay, I went to some. Actually I just drove by the buildings when the classes were taking place, thinking all that honesty would filter into my skin through the open window. Imagine my surprise when it didn’t.
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