by Maisey Yates
He’d never felt anything like this before, and he was lost in it, only able to be carried out by the strength of the tide. Helpless against the current of need that had overtaken him completely.
She whimpered. A sound of feminine urgency unlike anything he had ever heard before. She was different than Caroline. It was impossible not to compare. Not because he had cared especially for her, but because she was the only woman he had ever touched like this until now. Until Casey.
Casey. This woman whose name he’d only learned twenty minutes ago. A woman he’d first laid eyes on last night.
He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but bury his fingers even more deeply in Casey’s hair. She was so soft. Everything about her. More than that, she was like a shot of alcohol to his system. Every damn shot of whiskey he had denied himself for the past twenty-six years.
Suddenly, he keenly felt the years of denial. The abstinence. From sex. From alcohol. From pleasure in all its forms. Because it canceled out his control, and he knew it. He knew that he had to do better than that, knew that he had to guard against it. But not now. He couldn’t do it now.
She traced his bottom lip with the tip of her tongue and a deep, intense shudder racked his body.
She slid her hand down his back, then around, placing her palm over the hardened length of his cock, squeezing him as she deepened their kiss. A rough, harsh growl rumbled in his chest. A hard, feral sound unlike any he’d ever heard come from his body before.
She laughed, the sound tasting sweet on his lips as she tightened her hold on his length, curling her other arm around his neck and holding him tightly against her. Not that he was tempted to pull away. Never in his life had he been past the point of no return. He was a man who prized his control above everything else. But now? Now there was nothing else but this. This campground, this tent, this woman.
With the darkness closing in tightly around them, it was easy to believe that.
She wrenched her mouth away from his, pressing a kiss to his neck before angling her face up, her lips brushing against his ear. “How about you take me inside the tent and fuck me?”
Never in his life had a woman uttered those words to him. He’d never even fantasized about such a thing. So he was completely unprepared for the effect that it had on him. He wrapped his arms around her, curving one tightly around her waist, sliding his other hand down over her ass before reaching lower, curling his fingers around her thigh and tugging her up, wrapping her legs around his waist as he held her tightly and took them both to the front of the tent.
She planted her feet back on the ground as he bent to haul them both inside, never breaking the kiss as he settled over her. She parted her thighs, arching against him, pressing herself hard against his arousal. She reached between them, flicking open the snap on his jeans and drawing the zipper down before reaching inside and gripping him tight. He hissed as her soft skin made contact with his own bare flesh as she squeezed and stroked him, while continuing to kiss him deep.
Without thinking, he put his hand on her stomach, pushed his fingertips up beneath the edge of her shirt, over her flat stomach, moving up to cup one perfect breast. Her bra was thin, lacy and insubstantial, and he could feel her nipple, tight and hard, through the fabric. He moved his thumb over the tightened bud and she gasped, tugging her mouth away from his as she did, panting and clearly as affected by all of this as he was.
She let go of him, wrenching her shirt up over her head and contorting so she could reach behind her back and unhook her bra, leaving her completely topless. It was too dark in the tent for him to see much beyond the pale shape of her body. He slid his hands down her sides, then covered both of her breasts with his palms.
“Oh, yes,” she said, the words a sigh on her soft lips.
A shot of straight adrenaline to his system.
He traced the elegant curve of her body, down beneath the waistband of her jeans, beneath the flimsy fabric of her lace panties, until he made contact with her hot, wet center. She bucked against him and he kissed her as he stroked her, teased her.
“You like that?” he asked, his lips still pressed against hers.
“Yes.”
Satisfaction roared through him like a beast and he shifted, sliding one finger inside of her as he continued to stroke her clit.
He couldn’t believe he was doing such an intimate thing with a woman he’d barely had two conversations with. He didn’t know how old she was, where she was from, whether or not she liked chocolate or George Strait. Real, important questions that a man should know the answers to before he put his hand between a woman’s thighs.
But as she moaned and moved against his touch, he couldn’t imagine doing this with someone who knew him. Because the stranger-thing cut both ways.
She didn’t know he was doing his best to be responsible. Didn’t know he’d only slept with one woman. Didn’t know he’d never picked up a stranger or done a reckless thing in his whole life.
He could be anyone with her. Do anything.
He slipped a second finger inside her she moaned, flexing her hips against his hand, rubbing harder against him as she chased her release.
He wanted her to have it, before things went any further, needed her to have it. To defy the years spent not doing things like this because control had been so much more important.
“Come for me,” he said, the words rough, unrecognizable.
She let out a hard, shuddering breath as she rocked against him, her internal muscles clenching around his fingers as she climaxed almost on command.
“Oh,” she said, throwing her arm over her eyes, breathing hard. “That was...unexpected.”
He nuzzled her neck, kissing her there. “Was it?”
“Unnh.”
“Is that a good sound?” he asked, pushing her jeans down her thighs, taking her panties with them.
“I’m killed,” she said, sliding her hands along his spine, gripping the hem of his shirt and pulling upward. “Now get naked.”
A sudden thought struck him like a blow to the head. “I don’t have condoms.”
“Oh!” She scrambled from beneath him and hung halfway out the tent, reaching for something outside. She was bent at the waist, the display completely immodest and giving him a prime view of her ass. Or it would have been a prime view if it weren’t so damned dark. “I have condoms,” she called back over her shoulder. “Somewhere in my bag.” She flattened herself in the doorway of the tent, reaching as far as she could. “Here!”
She moved back in, kissing him as she flashed the plastic packet. She opened it quickly, then placed the protection over the head of his cock, rolling it down over him quickly. Her breath hissed through her teeth and she swore.
“What?” he asked.
“Damn, you’re hot,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her breasts against his chest, pushing him back so that he was lying down and she was on top of him, her thighs draped over his.
“Am I?” he asked, unable to resist moving his hands over her back, her ass, and up again.
“This is already a lot better than it usually is. And you aren’t even inside me. Yet.” She shifted, lifting her hips and positioning herself over his length before lowering her hips down slowly, taking him inside her tight, wet heat inch by agonizing inch. She let out a shuddering breath, a whimper on her lips as she seated herself fully onto him, her fingernails digging into his skin.
She pushed herself up as she shifted her hips and he raised his hand to cup her breasts, heat washing through him as she established a rhythm that set him on fire. He lowered his hands, gripped her hips tight, bracing himself as she rode him.
He was lost in this, in her. In the way she felt, the way she smelled, the sounds she made. It didn’t matter that he could feel every rock beneath the floor
of the tent, didn’t matter that the cold was seeping up through the thin fabric. Hell, the cold was welcome. Because he was on fire.
She was heat personified, a living flame dancing and shimmering in his hands, consuming them both. She rocked against him, her thigh muscles quivering. He could tell she was on the edge again. And so was he.
He held her tightly and reversed their position, settling between her legs and thrusting deep inside. She gasped, arching her back before wrapping her legs around his waist and taking him deeper.
“So good,” she said, kissing his shoulder, the contact searing his skin like a brand.
And then he lost himself. His control, his every thought. His ability to breathe. He growled, lowering his head and scraping his teeth over her collarbone as he curved his hand around her back, slid it down to her ass and pulled her up against him. Hard.
A sharp sound escaped her lips as a shiver wound through her, her internal muscles tightening around his cock as she came again.
White-hot pleasure exploded behind his eyelids, release roaring through his veins like a beast as he let go completely, his mind washed blank of anything but her. Of being inside her, pressed against her, his lips on her skin, her flavor on his tongue.
For a moment, there was no past, no future.
There was only Casey. His entire universe made up of a stranger who might not even like chocolate.
And for the first time in recent memory, he was happy.
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN AIDEN SAT UP, moving away from her, Casey had to fight the inexplicable urge to cover herself. She didn’t know why she was suddenly so conscious of the fact that she was naked. It was dark. And he was far from the first man to see her naked. But he was perhaps the first man that didn’t just expect that he was going to see her naked, to not require it in order for him to hand out help. And what had happened between them was somehow beyond her experience.
Her response to it had been... Unexpected.
Her response to him was unexpected.
Normally, she was more calculating and all that. More skilled, more in control. But she had forgotten to put on her favorite persona when she’d taken off her clothes, and that just left her naked. So, no wonder she was so conscious of it now.
She swallowed hard, feeling around the tent for her clothes as he did the same.
She wondered if she should say something. Or if he was going to say something. Then she just felt irritated because normally she didn’t think things through quite as deeply. It was sex, not calculus. It wasn’t all that difficult. Everything had gone exactly as it should. Better, actually. She should be luxuriating in the aftereffects of not one, but two orgasms. Seriously, that never happened. She had become completely certain that the multi-orgasmic female was a myth. Well, Aiden had just busted that.
It was just difficult to luxuriate when you felt so damn self-conscious.
She pulled her shirt over her head, then wiggled back into her jeans. She snagged her bra and panties and crawled out of the tent to stuff them into her bag. There would be no brassiere left behind, because it wasn’t like she had a surplus of them. But she couldn’t really justify taking the time to put everything on. She just wanted to get her skin covered up and her head on straight.
She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Then she heard Aiden get out of the tent. She very purposefully didn’t turn to look at him. The tent fabric rustled as he finished deconstructing the scene of their downfall.
“Are you ready to head back?” he asked, his voice sounding like it was scraping his throat raw.
“Yeah,” she said.
The alternative was, after all, standing out here freezing her ass off.
Getting back into an enclosed space with him beat that out by a narrow margin.
“I’ve got your sleeping bag.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She had no idea where her wit had gone. Where her fantastically distancing one-liners had scampered off to. Little cowards. Fleeing at the first sign of difficulty.
“You’re welcome.”
Of course he was polite after sex.
They walked back to his truck in silence, and he continued with the old-school-gentleman routine by opening the passenger-side door for her. “I didn’t realize all I had to do was flash my tits to get you to play the part of gentleman. Usually, it kind of works in reverse. But good to know that a little sex puts you on your best behavior.”
Oh, there were the snarky one-liners.
He said nothing, only rounded to the other side of the truck to get in and start the ignition. She scrambled into the cab, shutting the door and buckling up, letting out a heavy breath as they pulled away from the scene of the crime.
The silence was too heavy. Like being wrapped in a blanket in a room that was already too hot. So she decided to throw it off. “You don’t have anything to say?”
“Not really,” he said.
She looked over, clearly able to see the tension in his muscular frame in spite of the darkness in the cab. “If you clench your jaw any tighter your teeth are going to explode. And I will not be paying your dental bill.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to react casually to things like this.”
His words made her stomach sink down low, that unfamiliar creeping shame spidering up her arms and neck. “I do. You just do, because it isn’t that big of a deal.” She despised the defensiveness in her tone. But she couldn’t do anything to get rid of it, either.
“Maybe not to you.”
“Oh, yes. Not to me. Because I’m obviously the one at fault here even though you were totally on board.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. So what, now you’re just going to sit over there bemoaning the fact that I sullied your good little farm-boy member with my filthy body?”
“Hey, these are your issues, not mine. I was there in that tent with you. I don’t absolve myself.”
She snorted. “You do think there needs to be some absolution.”
“It’s not the way I do things.”
“Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and let you know I don’t think there’s a way for us to have this conversation where you don’t come across as an insulting prick.”
“I’m not trying to be. I’m just...trying to let you know that this isn’t something I would normally ever do. I don’t sleep with people I don’t know.”
“I’m Casey James. I’m a waitress at Ace’s Bar. I won’t be in town very long. I like cheeseburgers and long walks on the beach.”
“Chocolate?” he asked.
“What?”
“Do you like chocolate?”
“Random. But okay. I do. I like chocolate a lot. I don’t eat it half as often as I would like to.”
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated breath. “You always interrogate your lovers?”
“No. But we already established that this is unusual for me, so indulge me.”
“Chocolate is a luxury. One I’m not always able to afford. When I first ended up out on my own I bought all kinds of crap, just because I could. But you figure out pretty quickly that man can’t live on Lucky Charms alone.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I can see that.”
Now he sounded...vaguely pitying. Which was worse than judgmental. Or maybe she was just hard to please.
Well, that wasn’t true, she thought smugly. She had just been pleased twice, very thoroughly. Of course, that was just physically.
“Yes, my sob story is one filled with boring nutritional decisions. Being an adult is not as advertised, at least in my experience.”
“Mine, too.”
“Do tell. Tit for tat.” She watched his muscles tense again when sh
e said the word tit. Funny. He was kind of adorable.
“More responsibility, less doing whatever you want.”
“And I don’t even have responsibility, beyond keeping my own self alive. But let me tell you, it can be a full-time job when you don’t have any real place to stay.”
“Yeah, why don’t you have a place to stay?”
“Wow, really? You’re going to ask someone why they’re homeless?”
“Yes, I am. Because you have a job, and you seem to do it pretty well. So, I assume you could get a job anywhere you wanted to. And even if you couldn’t get a great place to live, you could get a place to live. It seems to me that moving from place to place is part of what keeps you from having that. So, why do you do it?”
She realized then that they were on that long driveway that led back to his place. She’d been completely lost in conversation for the entire trip back and hadn’t noticed just how much ground they’d covered. “I don’t know. It seems to me you’d have a lot less responsibility if you didn’t cling so tightly to one place. So, if you don’t like it, why do you do it?”
Silence settled between them, and she had a feeling she’d crossed the line. It wasn’t even an invisible line, the one that tried to ward off commentary about his living situation, about his parents. It was bold, black and plain as day. She’d never been one for minding the rules.
“Aren’t you obligated to anybody?” he asked, his voice raw. “Is there any one person you feel like you have to serve before you can serve yourself?”
She swallowed, her throat dry. “No. Nobody took care of me, Aiden. I had to take care of myself. So, I’m my highest priority. I can’t afford to be a martyr.”
“Just trust me, I can’t afford to leave my family.”
“Trust isn’t really something I’m big on. But if you say so.”
“The trailer is going to be cold,” he said, the abrupt subject change nearly giving her whiplash.
“Fantastic. Any other selling features you want to throw out there? Black mold? A vole in the plumbing?”