Bending the Rules

by Susan Andersen

  “Oh, yeah,” he agreed with a fervency he feared was too damn revealing. Yet, looking at her lips so soft and full, her skin so smooth and flushed and her eyes so heavy-lidded and carnal, the fact that he’d exposed himself just didn’t seem worth worrying about. At least not right this minute. Grasping her ass, he hauled her up.

  She laughed and wrapped her legs around his waist. And he kissed her.

  Heat, barely banked, roared back to life and his fingers dug into the firm cheeks they cupped. He wanted her. God, worse, he needed her. The thought sent a cold lick of unease trickling through the hot quagmire of his mind.

  But before it could give him second thoughts, it struck him he wasn’t in this alone. Poppy’s laughter turned to breathy moans that constricted his gut. She strained against him, her legs tightened around his hips and her arms around his neck as if she, too, felt driven to get closer, closer.

  Sweeping what seemed like fifty pillows onto the floor, he settled her on the space he’d cleared and peeled her arms from his neck so he could access the zipper on her hoodie. A satisfied grunt sounded in his throat when its sides fell apart and he saw the high, round shape of her breasts pressing against her white tank top. They jiggled enticingly when he peeled her out of the sweatshirt and her nipples formed pale spikes that tented the thin, stretchy cotton.

  “God,” he whispered and dropped down over her. Catching himself on his palms, he lowered his head to kiss her again.

  Now that he finally had her prone on a comfortable surface, some of that fierce gotta-do-her-now urgency faded. Not that he still wouldn’t die to eat her whole. But he had her where he wanted her and felt like he could take a breath. Take his time. She’d gotten a little beat up today. The last thing she needed was him going at her like a starved dog on a juicy bone.

  His mouth softening, he sipped from her lips, leisurely savoring their supple give in their still-closed state, their slick heat when they parted on a tiny moan.

  He spent long, fervent moments simply kissing her, reveling in her sweet essence. But when he felt his hips start that age-old rhythm against her, first easily, then with serious intent, he lifted his mouth and slid down her body. Cupping her breast in his hand, he pushed it up and kissed the pale curve that spilled above the tank’s low neckline.

  Sinking his face into her cleavage, he pressed both breasts together and inhaled. Then, drunk on her scent and the warm, plush rub on either side of his scratchy jaw, he pulled back to gently bite her nipple through the fabric.

  “Jason!” she breathed and arched her back, offering herself up for more.

  He was happy to oblige, but first he needed to see what he had touched. Snaking a hand beneath the hem of her tank top, he worked it up her midriff, shoved the stretchy fabric above her breasts.

  He left it there, bunched from armpit to armpit. Because the sight that greeted him, soft curves ivory-fair and round, stiff little nipples the palest pink he’d ever seen, derailed his thoughts entirely, never mind whatever intention he may have started out with.

  “Sweet,” he said hoarsely, touching the tip of his finger to one straining nipple, arrested by the sight of his brown-skinned finger, so dark against her porcelain flesh. “God, these are sweet.”

  She hissed in a breath, raising her hands to spread her fingers against his chest. Heat seeped through the cloth of his shirt, but almost in the same heartbeat that she’d touched him, she tore her hands away to begin fumbling at his buttons.

  “You’ll help me if you want to keep your shirt intact,” she muttered. “’S not fair you get to look at me and I haven’t even seen a glimpse of you.”

  He pushed away to kneel astride her thighs and started working the button placket from the top down, while she unfastened from the bottom up.

  “I fantasized ripping this off you,” she said, her eyebrows furrowing as an especially recalcitrant button refused her attempts to work it through its hole. “And if the damn thing doesn’t get in gear, I still may.”

  “You had a fantasy about me?” He stilled for a second, his heart unaccountably racing at the idea.

  She flapped an impatient hand at the button he’d quit manipulating with the job only half-complete, and he unbuttoned it, then yanked down the knot of his tie.

  “Yes,” she answered, as she worked on the final fastener. “And you may have featured in one or two of my Sheik daydreams as well.”

  “Chic?” he said, confused. “What, you like the way I dress?”

  “No.” Shaking her head, she gave him a wry little half smile. “Well, actually I do. But I’m talking white-hot sex in the oasis—you know, like Valentino? The Sheik.” She glanced up at him, her irises bitter chocolate–dark against the startling whiteness surrounding them. “I wouldn’t get a fat head about it, though, because the fantasy didn’t originate with you. It’s been my running favorite since Ava and Janie and I made up increasingly raunchy stories about the guy when we were twelve, thirteen years old.”

  “So this sheik,” he inquired. “He—what? Abducts you to his tent in the desert or something?”

  “Yeah.” She gave him a crooked smile and shrugged. “That race across the desert on his midnight-black Arabian is usually the starting line.”

  He slipped his tie through its loop and shrugged out of his shirt. “I could get into that.” To his surprise he thought he could actually get into it big-time. Who knew? Sexual role-playing wasn’t something he’d ever included in his bag of tricks.

  The moisture in Poppy’s mouth dried up as Jason’s shirt slid from his shoulders. He was svelte in his clothing, but sans the shirt he looked much less civilized, more in keeping with that always blue-black jaw of his. His shoulders were wide and bony, his arms long and leanly muscled, feathered with black hair and traced with soft, standing veins that snaked down the inside bend of his elbow and along his forearms. And his chest—

  She swallowed hard. God, his chest and abs were corded with muscle and covered with more fine black fur, this spreading fairly densely across his pectorals before descending in an ever-narrowing stripe down his abdomen. He was the Sheik of her fantasies and she wanted to sink into him, to feel that dark hair abrade her nipples, marvel at the differences in their coloring when they were skin-to-skin.

  What had he said? That he could get into the fantasy? She wiggled out from between his legs, then rolled up to knee-walk back to him, stripping her tank top as she went. Looping her arms around his neck, she pressed herself close, savoring the hardness of his chest flattening her breasts, the cloud of hair both crisp and soft that her nipples sank into.

  “Me, too,” she agreed. “But for now I’m happy just to get into this.” Gently, she bit the stubble-roughened thrust of his chin.

  His hands splaying across her bare back, he lifted her against him, raising her until her knees cleared the beloved tea-stained quilt a former commune member had made her when she was a teen. Laughing, she parted her legs to wrap herself around him once again.

  Hanging her weight from his front while he was leaning into her wasn’t her brightest move, however, and they overbalanced. She tumbled onto her back, Jason atop her, pressing her into the mattress.

  It was the first time she’d borne his entire weight and she moaned with pleasure.

  “Sorry.” Breathing hard, he started to push off.

  “No. Stay.” She tightened her arms around his neck. “You feel gooood.”

  He froze for an instant, hot, dark eyes blazing. Then his weight came back down atop her and his long fingers grasped her head. He slammed his mouth over hers.

  Gone was the slow, erotic gentleness he’d treated her to moments ago. He was all muscular heat now. All rough-skinned hands and male aggression.

  And it made her so hot she thought she’d explode.

  She couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t think. God, she’d believed she was sexually excited before, but that paled compared to the arousal roaring through her veins in this moment.

  Shooting fire thro
ugh every nerve ending.

  Turning her nipples so hard it was nearly painful.

  Saturating swollen tissues deep between her legs.

  Barely recognizing those breathless moans rising in the air as her own, she writhed beneath Jason’s weight, digging her nails into his nape, trying to widen her legs between the hard thighs holding them captive.

  He raised his head and stared down at her. Then he slid down her torso. Palming her left breast, he pushed it up at the same time he lowered his head. Holding her gaze, he wrapped his lips around the projectile point of her nipple. And sucked.

  Head punching back into one of the remaining pillows, she chanted his name in rhythm to the suction pulling at her breast. Lust was a dozen flaming arrows shot straight to that pulsing target between her thighs.

  As if he knew it, Jason slid onto his side without relinquishing her nipple. Easing his hand from the breast he’d been plumping up, however, he brushed his fingers down her diaphragm, leaving a trail of heat all the way to her waist, and from there down her stomach. Insinuating his hand beneath the hip bands of her sweatpants and panties, he eased his forefinger between the lips of her sex.

  Poppy sucked air…then held her breath as his fingertip continued downward, following the intimate curve until his long finger disappeared into her hot, wet depths with one deep, devastating plunge.

  An atavistic sound exploded from her chest.

  Her nipple popped free as his head jerked up. Licking his lips, he looked from her expression to where his hand disappeared beneath the waistband of her sweats. Then he raised his eyes to hers once more. That middle finger pushed deeper as his palm flattened over her mound. “Shove down your pants,” he commanded. “I do my best work when I can see what I’m doing.”

  His words exploded a sharp, hard little contraction inside her. Her sheath clamped tightly around his finger and she watched as the fires already burning in the backs of his eyes flared.

  “Shove ’em down,” he growled.

  Raising her hips, she did as he ordered.

  “Oh, God, look at you,” he said hoarsely. His gaze roamed from her breasts thrusting ceilingward to her sweats tangled around her knees—then honed in on the blond curls between her thighs. “You are so pretty.”

  His thumb slid up and down her furrow and he hissed when it set off another small orgasm. Leaning down, he bestowed a quick, sharp nip to the tip of her nipple, then withdrew his finger from her as he slithered down the quilt toward the foot of the bed. After stripping her of her sweatpants, he applied his hands to the insides of her knees and pushed them wide.

  Before she had time to feel the slightest bit awkward, he lowered his head and gave her a slow lick up the soft split between her legs, ending with a flick of his tongue against her clitoris.

  “Oh, God!” Jackknifing halfway to a seated position, she fisted her hand in his hair, not quite sure even as she did it what action she intended to take.

  Then, his dark eyes watching her every reaction, he lapped at her again and, panting, she realized it wasn’t to pull him away.

  She flopped back down onto her pillow.

  He grinned up at her, all flashing white teeth and long, strong tongue flattened against her most intimate tissues. Looking at him, feeling what he was doing to her, she came for real this time. Her orgasm rolled through her, a hard, clenching interior earthquake that had her thrusting her hips high while her attenuated moan kept time with the sensations that just kept coming and coming and coming.

  “Jesus.” Looking up the length of her body, Jase watched as she went wild. Spreading his hand just above her mound, he held her down while he lapped her through another set of spasms. God, he wanted to be inside her, wanted to feel her wrap all around him like a rubber band when she went off. This time was for her though.

  But, holy shit, she was so damn beautiful getting off it was hard not to climb all over her like a kid on a new set of monkey bars.

  He was so hard he was hurtin’ by the time she went limp, and he fished his wallet from his hip pocket to extract the condom he’d been carrying since the night he’d planned to score at the cop bar.

  Looking at Poppy sprawled, naked and satiated upon her bedspread, he had the oddest moment of gratitude that he hadn’t.

  Not quite sure what that was all about, he shoved it aside and shucked out of his slacks and socks. Then he rolled the protection on. Coming back to lie alongside her on the bed, he tenderly brushed her hair, which was growing to almost scary proportions as it dried, off her face, and leaned to press a gentle kiss on her lips. “You okay?”

  Her lids slowly lifting, she hummed a little nonanswer that nevertheless sounded pretty damn happy, and breathed in deeply through her nose. Then, gentle as a zephyr, her exhale drifted through softly parted lips. “Better than,” she breathed, the corners of her lips curling up. “Way better. Hugely better.”

  “Good.” He leaned down to give the curve of her neck a nuzzle.

  Then a nip. “Because there’s more where that came from.” And going back to the basics, he kissed her for the umpteenth time. Then he set about arousing her interest in Round Two.

  To his gratification, it didn’t take long. Mere minutes into his ministrations, she rolled them over so she was on top.

  “Aw, Jeez-us!” He gasped when she plopped herself directly atop his dick.

  Grinning down at him, she wiggled around, and it didn’t matter that she knew exactly what she was doing to him—he was pretty sure his eyes were crossed. Then she shifted back onto his upper thighs and all that wondrous wet heat she’d been teasing him with disappeared. His cock sprang upright so fast it nearly slapped her in the stomach.

  Her hand wrapped around it. “Lookie, he’s all suited up.” She shot him an ironic smile. “You’re such a Boy Scout.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he groaned even as his hips shot up when she squeezed him through her fist from tip to root. “Be prepared,” he wheezed. “Those are words to live by.”

  She laughed and climbed onto her feet to crouch over him, holding him in place while she centered herself over his blindly seeking dick. Lowering herself a fraction, she rubbed its head along her slick, swollen furrow.

  And her laughter died. “I wanted to tease you into insanity,” she whispered, gazing down at him. “And I really thought, since you took such good care of me, that I could hold out long enough to do it.” She made an adjustment and lowered another inch and Jase gritted his teeth as he felt the head of his cock start to push into her. “But I can’t,” she said. “I wanna know what you feel like inside me too much.”

  Another inch and the head popped past the ring of muscle at her entrance. Then she just kept on going until her sweet round butt settled against his balls. And fuck, oh, fuck, she was so hot and slick and tight inside.

  His hips shot up again. Bracing her feet, she rode him like a Saturday-night cowgirl on the mechanical bull. The resulting sensation had him nearly blind with need. But it was time he took charge.

  So, clasping her hips in his hands he raised her up.

  Almost, nearly, just about off him.

  Then he slammed her back down. Raised her up and pulled her back down.

  Her eyes closed and her white teeth clamped over her rosy lower lip and she crossed her arms in the air over her head as a soft moan escaped her.

  He crunched up and took a fast hard pull on her nipple. She hissed, her eyes flying open.

  “I want to be on top,” he growled around the tight little morsel between his teeth. He gave it another tug, then turned it loose and looked her in the eye. “I want to hold you down and fuck you—love you—till you scream.”

  A helpless little mew sounded in her throat and, taking it as assent, he flipped them over. Lacing their fingers together, he pressed the backs of her hands into the quilt on either side of her head, spread his thighs until hers were wide-open and braced his toes in the mattress. And he sank into her, a long, slow push that ended with an emphatic up-tilted thru
st at its apex.

  He knew he was hitting her sweet spot when her eyes lost focus, and he pulled out so slowly he felt the drag of every single millimeter of those slippery tissues trying to retain their clasp on him.

  Then he pushed back in.

  Pulled back out.

  Pushed—

  “Omigawd, omigawd, omigawd,” she started to chant, her voice climbing with each imprecation. “Omiga—Jason? Oh, God, Jason!” Her legs wrapping tightly around his hips, her head rocked back into the pillow, she started coming all around him.

  The look of her, wild hair, flushed cheeks and inward-looking dazed eyes, the feel of all those tight, sharp contractions squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing his cock broke his grip on the slow, controlled strokes he’d been employing. Mine, he thought savagely and thrust into her harder, faster, disengaging their fingers and pushing up onto his planted hands to gain more leverage. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.

  She kept coming all around him and his world went red. God, he was so close, so clo—Oh. Fuuuuuuck!

  He shoved deep one last time and held, throwing back his head and growling long and low as the spasms milked him dry. When it was over, when she had wrung every last drop of sensation to be had out of him, his head flopped forward, too heavy to hold up.

  Then he slid bonelessly atop her.

  For the longest time he merely lay there feeling his heartbeat slowly descend out of the red zone. Eventually, however, his brain reengaged.

  Okay. He didn’t know what the hell all that mine crap was about. Hell, he didn’t even have a clue what it was he felt when it came to her. It sure as shit wasn’t love, though. He was a de Sanges; what did he know from love?

  So this…whatever it was between them wasn’t the stuff of happily-ever-afters. But neither did he like what was going down around her all of a sudden. It would kill him if something happened to her. Serve and protect—that was what he knew, what he did. Who he was.