by Amy Andrews
“Cole,” she moaned, rubbing herself against him again.
Cole panted hard as the havoc she was creating between his legs undulated like a heat wave through his body. He hadn’t known until this moment that his heart could beat so fast and not just give out. And he was a professional athlete.
Sliding his hands to her hips, he thrust against her again, and she moaned louder this time, murmuring, “Yes, oh yes,” as her hips took up his rhythm, and they rutted together, breathing hard. Christ, if he’d thought to bring condoms with him to the U.S. and had one in his back pocket now, it’d be out and on, and he’d be inside her, giving them both what they obviously wanted.
But he didn’t. And, despite the juvenile nature of their dry humping, it felt too ridiculously good to stop.
“How long has it been?” he whispered, nuzzling against her ear.
She didn’t answer for a beat or two, and when she did, it was low and breathy. “Has what been?”
“Since you had an orgasm with anyone other than yourself?”
She gave a half laugh, pulling her head back a little to look down into his face. Her hips, however, kept up the pace. The urge to let his eyes roll back in his head and just let go, grind mindlessly against her until they both climaxed, was strong, but coming in his pants wouldn’t exactly be a ringing endorsement of his sexual prowess, and besides…he wanted to see her face when she came.
“Three years. Not since Tad and I ended.”
“Jesus.” That was a long time. Cole slid one hand to her nape, anchoring it there as he ground against her a little harder. “Three years?”
She made some kind of noise that sounded affirmative. “What about you?” Jane asked, the words coming out on something crossed between a pant and a moan.
“About eight months. Since before the accident.”
A husky laugh escaped her throat. “We make a fine pair.”
With her undulating above him fully dressed in some weirdly wanton, PG-rated lap dance, Cole couldn’t agree more.
“I don’t have a single goddamn condom anywhere, but that doesn’t mean I can’t—” He slipped the hand at her nape beneath the fabric of her dress draped over his legs and trailed his fingers over her thigh. “Help you out with that?”
It was gratifying to hear the little hitch in her breath, to see the slight widening of her eyes as his fingers slowly traversed her thigh, trekking down the soft inner side, getting closer and closer.
“And what about you?”
Cole grinned. “Ladies first.”
Another husky laugh. “You know you probably don’t need to do a thing. Just sit there and let me keep doing this—” She ground against him hard, and it was Cole’s breath that hitched this time as his hand flattened in the small of her back. “I’m sure it won’t take long.”
“Maybe.” His fingers brushed across fabric—very damp fabric—and she gasped and bucked against him. “But I’m not good at being passive.” Cole quickly found the seam of her sex and teased his finger up and down the furrow, his frustration at the barrier between them already red-hot.
Heat rolled off her, and he could smell her arousal, thick and heady in the intimate cocoon between them. “I can tell,” she muttered.
“Active,” he muttered, lifting his head so his mouth could brush against the pulse he could see hammering at the hollow of her throat. “That’s what I prefer.” Then his fingers breached the side of her underwear, finding all her heat and her wet and stroking.
…
Holy. Shit.
Jane cried out and bucked against Cole’s hand. When his fingers slid deliciously against her aching flesh, her eyes practically rolled back in her head. When he deftly found the big fat X marking just the right spot, she whimpered, then clutched convulsively at his shoulder as the swing rocked and she swayed in his lap.
Her eyes flew open as he whispered, “Easy,” against her throat and his big, solid palm pressed reassuringly into the center of her back. “I got you.” Jane panted as he teased the hard nub at the very center of her arousal. Their eyes met and locked.
“There?”
“Yes.”
“Good?”
“Yes.” In fact, good didn’t even begin to come close to what she was feeling. She’d been close enough to coming just from rubbing against him; with his fingers playing her like an instrument, she was about ten seconds away from the final crescendo.
They entered her then, two long, hard intrusions sliding home, widening her eyes and wringing a gasp from her throat as everything twinged deliciously.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “You’re so wet.”
Jane sank her teeth into her bottom lip as a hot ripple of sheer hallelujah undulated through her pelvic floor, tightening everything. “God,” she panted, her voice so low it wasn’t much more than a rumble of bass vibrating in the air between them. “I’m so close.”
He slid his fingers out, then back in again, and she clenched tight around him as his hot gaze held hers captive. “I can feel it.”
She opened her mouth to tell him to do it again, but then his thumb found her clit and rubbed, and Jane lost all ability to speak. To think. There was no room in her head for where they were or who they were or what was going to happen after. No room for Finn or the business or the job she’d been sent here to do. No room for anything other than the sensations battering her body as a wave started between her legs, creeping slowly at first, then quickly becoming a tsunami of pleasure as it rolled over her body.
Jane’s pulse skyrocketed, and her eyes squeezed shut as she jumped on the wave, surfing its peak and letting it tumble her around, drowning her in its fiery, delicious havoc. Her lungs grabbed for air as she rocked and moaned and panted and cried out his name. “Cole.”
“Yes, baby, yes.” His fingers kept up their rhythm, his thumb still wicked good on her clitoris.
Jane’s eyes snapped open as his baby reached through the thick soup of swirling sensations. Their gazes meshed, his hot and sticky and irresistible. She couldn’t look away as her body quaked and shuddered through the dying vestiges of her orgasm.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “You look good like that.”
If she could’ve replied, Jane would have told him it was easy to look good when she felt fantastic, when her body was being licked all over by a thousand tiny, rough tongues. But then he crooked his fingers inside her, and her orgasm flared to life again, and she gasped.
“Oh god.”
Her body pulled taut once more, and she held tighter to him, his shoulder flexing beneath her palm as his fingers worked their magic, his eyes like dark molten pools as he watched every nuance of her orgasm flicker across her face. Beating back the urge to close her eyes, she forced them to stay open. She wanted him to watch. Watch as she rode his hand, chasing her pleasure, wringing every single second out of this moment.
Jane rocked against him, her hips flexing and bucking, paying no heed to the wild swing of the chair, no heed to anything but the pulse of her body and the hot stickiness of his gaze holding her in thrall. Holding her right to the end until she could hold on to it no more and the orgasm spun away, and she collapsed against his chest, panting and shivering in the aftermath, suspended in time for long, glorious seconds until both chains suddenly snapped and the seat went into free fall.
Chapter Nine
In a split second, Jane went from sex-addled to crystal clear, making some kind of nonsensical eep noise as she clung to the nearest solid thing, which just happened to be Cole’s big, broad shoulders. He was much more expressive in his reaction.
“Holy fucking shit,” he muttered as he made a grab for her hips, pulling her in closer.
It felt like it had happened in slow motion when, in actuality, it took only a couple of seconds for the chair to hit the ground.
They both braced fully for impact, but the jolt
was still shocking, the noise deafening in the quiet of the drizzly night. Somewhere out beyond the back fence, a house light turned on. The dog next door barked. Neither of them moved or spoke for a beat or two; they just sat and breathed, Jane still straddling him, her forehead pressed into the side of his neck until Cole finally opened his mouth.
“Did the earth move for you, too?”
His humor was unexpected in the aftermath of both the intimacy and the…furniture malfunction, and Jane laughed, the whiskers of Cole’s throat tickling her lips. He laughed, too. Well, it was more of a chuckle, really. Deep and warm, and Jane’s heart did a funny little flip inside her chest.
“My grandmother,” Jane said, still not quite capable of moving, “would say this was a message from Jesus.”
Her father’s mother was a devoutly Christian woman who saw sin around every corner—no wonder her father had rebelled and joined the military. She was nice enough but quite dogged about certain things, one of which happened to be Jane’s virginity through her teenage years. She had not been pleased when Tad came on the scene. The man’s got nothing but lust in his thoughts. She’d been right, of course, but Jane’s thoughts hadn’t exactly been squeaky-clean, either, and Tad hadn’t been her first.
“Of course. Jesus knows it’s better to fool around in a bed.”
“I think it was more about sin than location.”
He chuckled again, his fingers absently stroking the curvature of her hip. “Some things are worth going to hell for.”
It was a simple statement that packed a substantial punch, and all Jane could think was amen to that. She wouldn’t have passed up those mad frantic moments making out on the love seat with Cole for a gold-embossed, jump-the-queue pass through the pearly gates.
Hell, she’d go to hell, directly to hell without collecting two hundred dollars, just to do it all again. Which made her aware—very aware—suddenly that at least one of them hadn’t had the pleasure. The evidence of which was still pressing hard and delicious against the dampness of her panties.
Lordy, Lordy. He must think her terribly selfish.
Jane roused herself, easing back a little to look down at him, bringing him into even more intimate contact. His fingers dug into her hips a little as their eyes met. She wasn’t aware of the light drizzle still falling behind her; she was aware only of Cole watching her through heavy-lidded eyes, the slide of his Adam’s apple, and his blatant arousal.
Her cheeks warmed a little as she thought about what they’d just done. How she’d let a man she’d known for less than a week stick his hands in her panties and give her the longest, most intense orgasm of her life. Her grandmother would be clutching her rosary for sure had she known. But Jane felt no shame or guilt. She knew that if the world ended tonight, she’d never regret making out on this love seat with Cole Hauser.
But they weren’t done here yet.
“I agree,” she murmured, flexing her hips a little, rubbing the damp line of her panties along the hard ridge of his erection. “Some things are definitely worth it.”
He gave a half laugh, half groan, his fingers clutching at her hip a little harder. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
“I gotta say, I’m impressed, though,” she said with a smile.
“Really?” His voice rumbled out thick and heavy with a streak of barely concealed impatience.
“A lesser man might have lost this—” She rubbed hard against him, and the harsh suck of his breath was like rocket fuel to her overheated system. “When the swing came crashing down. But yours is still going strong.”
“Honey, I’m a professional rugby player. Our hard-ons never quit.”
Jane had never heard anything so outrageously cocky in her life. She should’ve been able to laugh it off as sexual hyperbole, but she was way too turned on to dismiss his claim.
Hell, she believed it.
“Well…I give it ten out of ten.”
He grinned, slid one of his arms around the small of her back, and dragged her in tight, their centers fully aligned, every contour of his dick pressed intimately against the furrow of her sex. “Oh, I’m sure I can do better than that.”
It felt so damn good Jane was willing to double the score on the spot, and then he thrust, grinding that bulge against the insanely sensitive flesh between her legs. A streak of pleasure twisted through her middle, and she cried out as her eyes fluttered closed and she saw stars.
He cried out, too, but not in pleasure.
It took a beat or two to realize he’d muttered “Sonofabitch,” and that the pressure between her legs ceased instantly as the grip around her waist tightened. She opened her eyes to find Cole’s features twisted in a grimace of pain, not ecstasy. His spare hand was clasping his right hip, and he was breathing heavily. And not in the sexy way.
Oh shit. His leg. His hip.
“Cole.” Her pulse, which had been settling, spiked. She twisted off his lap immediately, sitting back on her haunches as she faced him. “Are you okay? Is it your leg? Why didn’t you tell me you’d hurt it in the fall?”
Jane felt like a real jerk, too wrapped up in her blissed-out state to think beyond herself.
“I didn’t. It was only when I…moved just then.” He shifted slightly, grunting as he resettled himself. “Fuckity fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
“What can I do?” Her hands hovered over his thigh, but she didn’t know the first thing about what might make it better—or could potentially make it worse—so she let them flutter uselessly to her side.
“It’s fine,” he assured. “It’s probably just a slight muscle twinge.”
“What if it’s more?” she asked, searching his face for any signs that he might be worried about the same. There was nothing but pain etched there. “I mean, both your back and your front took the full brunt of the fall, including taking my hundred twenty pounds.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “Until recently, I got paid an obscene amount of money to be ground into the dirt by guys twice your size.”
“Be that as it may, tough guy”—she bugged her eyes at him—“I don’t think you’re meant to have that kind of weight bounced in your lap after a recent injury.”
A slight smile tilted the corners of his mouth. “There’s bouncing, and there’s”—he waggled his eyebrows—“bouncing.”
Jane suppressed an eye roll. “You practically broke my fall, Cole.”
“You’re welcome.”
He grinned now, but it morphed into a grimace, and Jane’s concern spiked again. “Maybe I should call an ambulance and you should go get an X-ray.” The nearest X-ray facilities were an hour’s drive away, but if something was wrong, it was better to know sooner rather than later.
“It’s fine.” He patted her hand, giving it a quick, reassuring squeeze. “I can already feel it easing. It’ll settle soon. I just need to sit for a bit.”
Jane sighed, wriggling off her haunches, pulling the discarded beer bottles out from behind her to sit facing the yard with her legs thrust out in front of her, mimicking Cole, and they sat staring out at the drizzly night. She supposed Cole had been dealing with this long enough to know what he was talking about, but it still left her feeling entirely inadequate. The man had flown her to heaven and back, and she couldn’t do a damn thing to help him right now.
Unless…
She glanced over, her gaze dropping to his lap. It was a rainy night, but her eyes had fully adjusted. Had the mood been killed? “I could provide some…distraction.”
He chuckled then, also looking down at his lap. “I think that moment has come and gone.”
“Oh come on now,” she teased. “Where’s all that professional rugby spirit?”
“I think you’d probably score me a one out of ten right now.”
Jane doubted there would be any universe in which Cole Hauser’s genitals were ever a
one. Even with a walking stick, the man carried himself like he was packing serious dick. Grinding against him as she had, she could definitely give him a eleven, but, truth be told, he was probably always a baseline eight.
Maybe a seven after being plunged in a cold lake or an ice bath.
“I bet I could help get that number up.”
He chuckled, and it was a rich, deep, comforting sound in the night. “I bet you could, too.”
“It seems only fair after the orgasm you gave me.”
“Thanks.” He grinned. “But I don’t need payback.”
“Are you sure?” Jane half turned to face him, snuggling her cheek against the cushion. She loved that, even in profile, she could see he was still smiling. “I’d be very gentle. You wouldn’t even have to move. I can just use my mouth if you like. Little tiny, tiny licks, I promise.”
The thought of giving him a BJ out here seemed terribly exciting. Not something a single mom with responsibilities should be countenancing. But tonight had already been pretty damn risqué—what was one more thing to add to her list of transgressions?
He gave a deep groan that ruffled deliciously through all her illicit places. Rolling his head along the back of the couch, he faced her, their eyes meeting. “You are evil, Jane Spencer.” His gazed dropped briefly to her mouth, then back to her eyes again. “I think what my hip really needs most now is immobilization. Can I take a rain check?”
There was no mistaking the regret and yearning coloring his low request. So much yearning her breath caught. “Of course.” The last thing she wanted to do was cause him further injury.
Jane turned back then to the view, not that she saw anything. Really, the best thing to do right now would be to go. Sitting here like they were more than two people who had the hots for each other and were probably going to have sex very soon was plain dumb.