“For what?” I asked.
“To find a room.”
46
All the Time in the World
Daisy
I should have been nervous. I couldn’t be.
Less than ten minutes, and Gray was pulling into the valet area beneath the wedge-shaped bulk of the Distinction Hotel, built atop the stonework of the old post office. I said, “This is ‘getting a room?’”
He said, “I couldn’t take you to some cheap place with a plastic shower, could I? Nothing says ‘special effort’ like a plastic shower. Stop talking and come on.”
Another valet, then a cavernous lobby full of polished stone. A sleek, dark reception desk, and minimal fuss. A quiet, smooth lift that deposited us on the eighth floor. And Gray, stepping through the doors of that lift and pulling me into his arms. More than that. Lifting me straight up and saying, “Wrap your knees around my waist.”
We were still in the corridor. Down the hall, I heard a door close. Right here, Gray had one hand under me, holding me up, and he was headed down the corridor. And kissing me. A tap of the keycard against the door, and he was shoving it open, somehow still holding me up. The door slammed shut again, and he hit a light switch in the foyer and toed his shoes off. After that, he was carrying me across the room, but not to the bed. To the ottoman in front of the couch.
“I want to … do it, though,” I said when he set me down there. “On the bed.”
“No,” he said. “We’re here first.”
“Gray,” I said. “Come on. Please.”
He was on his knees in front of me, slipping off my sandals, one after the other, but he took time out to glare at me. Dark eyes. Hard mouth. He said, “We’ll get to the bed. We’re not getting there now.”
I shivered, and his face changed. Gentled. He said, “If you want that New Age fella after all, tell me. I can try.”
I said, “What? No.”
He smiled, then. Slow and sweet and wicked. And said, “Then let’s do this my way.”
Oh, bloody hell.
I nodded. I didn’t have breath to say anything.
He said, “Lie back, sweetheart.” And I did. My head over one edge of the big round ottoman, my hips at the other. He said, “I’m going to unbutton your trousers now.”
It was like that first night, in the ute, and it was nothing like that at all. He pulled the shirt out of my waistband, and then he unbuttoned the first of my sailor buttons.
Pop, and the silver button slid out of the hole. Then on the other side. Pop. His hand shoved the filmy shirt and camisole slowly up, and his mouth came down over my midriff. He kissed his way across my ribs, then down my belly. Going so slowly, his hand leading the way, stroking down my body. Finding the buttons again.
Pop. Pop. That was the second two gone. I was looking up at the ceiling, one palm behind me on the floor to hold myself up, the other one in Gray’s hair. Short, because he’d had it cut today.
His mouth was low on my belly, his tongue tracing a line between those two buttons.
Pop. Pop. Unbuttoned to my pubic bone.
He said, “Daisy. Don’t tell me you’re not wearing any undies.”
“I didn’t …” It was a gasp, because he was between my legs, unbuttoning my blouse, pulling the two halves apart. Stroking his way up my torso, taking the loose camisole with him, until I felt the softness of the silken fabric against my throat, and the weight of the blouse against my upper arms where it hung open.
“Pardon?” he said, his palm brushing over one breast, then the other one. “You were saying?”
I was burning up. I couldn’t see him, but, oh, could I feel him. I said, “I wanted to be … different. I wanted to be excited.” Would he please just touch me? All I was getting were those teasing brushes of his palm, and I needed more. Didn’t he know that?
When his tongue touched my nipple, I jumped. When his hand reached inside my trousers, I gasped. And still, he didn’t hurry. His mouth played at my breasts, and his fingers were exploring me. Under my clothes, the tight fit providing the same friction it had been giving me all night, teasing me past bearing. I was shifting on the ottoman, up on the balls of my feet, trying for control I didn’t have, starting to call out.
He said, “Shit,” against my breast, then, “I have to do this.” And then he was off me, pulling the tight trousers over my hips, yanking the cigarette legs over my heels, then all the way off me. He was up my body, then, pulling me up to sitting, shoving the blouse over my arms and camisole up over my head.
“Open your eyes,” I heard, and I did. Naked, sitting on the edge of a pouf, facing a fully dressed man kneeling between my legs. And all I wanted was all of this.
His hand, shoving back my hair. His mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth, and both his hands going to my lower back, pulling me into him.
I said, “I want to take off your shirt.”
He sat back. And he let me do it, the same way he’d done. One button at a time, and I kissed and touched every place I’d uncovered. Like my fantasy, but so much better. My palms running over broad slabs of pectoral muscle and the black whorls of his tattoo, down a hard midriff. My lips at his throat, his chest. My hands stroking the white shirt down his arms until it fell to the floor, and then running over bronze skin. Over shoulder muscle, over biceps and triceps, over forearms, all the way to his hands. He turned his over, laced his fingers through mine, pulled me close, and kissed me again.
“Jeans,” I said.
He got to his feet. Standing over me, his hands on his belt buckle, and it didn’t scare me. It didn’t. I put my hands over his and said, “Let me,” and he did.
Tongue of smooth leather through faded denim belt loops. Pulling back against the resistance of the metal prong, and feeling it give. Sliding the leather through the buckle, and watching it part.
A metal button, opened. My fingers, deft as they would be with a patient. A woman’s fingers, not a girl’s. Taking the metal tab of his zip delicately between thumb and forefinger, and pulling it all the way down. Taking my time. Getting my hands under the denim, under the soft fabric of his briefs, and sliding everything with me, all the way down his thighs, over his calves. Watching as he stepped out. One foot, then the other, and he kicked the jeans away.
I was still sitting on my ottoman. I knew he wanted me to lie back, so I didn’t do it. Not yet. He could play? So could I. I drew my hands down his quads, feeling their bulk, the light rasp of hair. I reached around to his bum, then, more daring still. Tight. Hard, asking for my palms to be there, so I did that, too.
He was standing rigid, only his chest moving as his breath came hard. Wanting to give me the power.
Finally, I touched him. The same way I had in the car, and different, because he was right here. A finger stroked down the length of him and back up again. And he took hold of my wrist.
“Normally,” he said, “I’d say …” He cleared his throat. “Probably wouldn’t say much, to be honest. But I need to do this first. Lie down, baby. Let me see you. Let me touch you.”
My heart was beating like a drum. Like a hummingbird. It was vulnerable, especially stretched over the ottoman like that. It was trust.
He didn’t say anything. He waited.
I lay down. One hand behind me on the carpet. Now, I was the one waiting until I felt his hands pushing my knees apart. Then his mouth was on my inner thigh. And moving up.
I’d never, ever done that. I’d never done anything close. It was too much, and the panic I hadn’t felt yet tonight was here. I tried to close my legs, to twist up and off the ottoman, and he sat back and said, “Daisy? What?”
I said, “I don’t … you don’t …”
He said, “You’ve never done it.”
“No. I told you. Disappointing.” I tried to laugh. It was hard. I shivered, suddenly cold in the air conditioning, and said, “Can’t we just do it … regular? I don’t know how to do … uh, any special things.”
His face softened, and h
e stepped into me and pulled me close. “Never mind. It’s all good. Come on.” He took me over to the bed, pulled the duvet back, and said, “Lie down. We’ll take a pause.”
“Sorry,” I said, as I climbed in, and he climbed in after me. “I told you. Heaps of trouble.”
“Daisy,” he said, got onto an elbow, and kissed me. Gently. “I should’ve thought.”
“We should’ve just done it,” I said. “I told you. If you’d done it fast, I could’ve … I would’ve …”
He lay down beside me, wrapped both arms around me, warming me up, kissed my shoulder, and said, “But don’t you see? I didn’t want you to have to do it fast. I wanted you to know you could relax and enjoy it. I still do.”
“I can do it now,” I said. “Really. I know I can.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, and kissed me again. “Let’s sleep on it. No worries. I’ve got you. And we’ve got all the time in the world.”
47
Never Enough
Gray
She’d want to talk, I knew, but I didn’t know what else to say. I’d listen, I guessed. I’d listen, and try to decide how much of my fury to betray. What kind of a man was given a warm, strong, loving woman like this and responded by crushing her spirit? So much so that twelve years later, after everything she’d accomplished and everything she’d pushed herself to be, she was this scared of not pleasing me?
You’ve done exactly one romantic dinner, I reminded myself. She wasn’t scared any other time, was she? Not when we’d been running together, and not when she’d been teasing me. All the many times she’d teased me, sexually and otherwise.
That was what to say. I’d remind her of that.
Except she didn’t give me a chance. She was quiet beside me, my hand on her shoulder the only point of connection between us, and after a while, I drifted off. I dozed and woke, dozed and woke, and when I drifted up to consciousness for what I knew wasn’t the first time, the room was dark. It hadn’t been that way when we’d got in here, surely. Somehow, I was pressed against Daisy’s body, my arm across her breasts and her arm over mine, her hand clasping my own, her other hand curled on the pillow. She was so much smaller than me that the top of her head was tucked under my chin, and I could smell the flower and almond scent of her.
She’d woken up, got out of bed, and wanted to climb back in with me again. And when I’d pulled her close in my sleep, she’d let herself go there. I ached with unreleased arousal in a way I hadn’t since I was a teenager, and I held her tucked back into me, warm and safe, and felt like a man.
She stirred the tiniest bit. A wriggle, then, and she was pushing back a little closer. A soft sigh, a foot running slowly down my calf, and then her leg was on top of mine. Her hand moving mine onto her breast, her fingers stroking over the back of my hand. Her index finger tracing the webs between my fingers. Her round little arse pressed up warm and tight against me, starting to rock just a little.
I was awake now.
It was so dark. She’d pulled the blackout curtain, and I couldn’t see her at all. But bloody hell, could I feel her.
She still wasn’t saying anything. I could feel the beat of her heart under my palm, the same way I’d asked her to feel mine. I stroked my hand over her breast. Slowly. Carefully. And I heard something. Another sigh. And my name. A whisper.
My hand, gliding over smooth skin, delicate curves. Sliding over her midriff, her belly, stroking down her thigh and coming back up again, still slowly, to capture the other breast. And then doing it again. Hearing her breathing getting faster.
When I shifted over and turned her onto her back, she came. I still couldn’t see anything but the barest outline of her body, but I could feel her under my hand. And when I shifted my weight onto an elbow, I could kiss her mouth. So I did.
A hand on a breast, stroking slowly. My tongue in her mouth. My other hand tangling in her soft hair. And then I was moving down her body, bit by bit. Tasting. Testing. What felt good, and what felt better.
When I got my mouth on her nipple, her breathing got faster. She was so sensitive here, and her pretty little breasts just made me happy. I was all the way over her, sucking on one of them, playing with the other, then shifting my focus, and she was panting.
When her thighs came up and wrapped around my upper body, I thought I’d lose it. And this time, when I started to move down her body again, she didn’t stiffen up.
I kissed her navel, sent my tongue there to play, and she moaned. I ran my fingers over her ribs, and she squirmed. I shifted down a little more, got a knee in my hand, shoved it gently over, and kissed the side of it, then kept going up her inner thigh. Soft and slow and easy in the dark, the scent of her in my head, her breath loud in my ears.
When I touched her gently, she squirmed. I cupped my hand over her and squeezed, and she made a noise in the back of her throat. Not quite a moan. I did it again, and then I did it a few more times, until I felt her hips starting to move the tiniest bit. And then I spread her with my fingers, and the noise in the back of her throat got a little louder.
Gentle and slow. Lips and tongue and a strong, slow hand. My thumb drawing down the whole sweet, smooth curve, exploring every fold and hollow, and my mouth around that magic spot.
She wrapped those thighs around my head.
I could hear faint scratching noises. Her hands, scrabbling against the sheet.
I sent a finger slowly up inside her, and her hips rose all the way off the bed.
I finger-fucked her long and slow, and I ate her up the same way. When her thighs clamped my head tighter and her strong inner walls closed around my finger, I pushed another finger in, and she couldn’t be quiet anymore. This time, she had to call out.
I sent my other hand up and found her breast, and I pinched her nipple along with the thrust of my fingers, the suction of my mouth. I found her rhythm, and I pushed her. I got her crying out, incoherent. I got her fists beating against the mattress.
Hotter. Tighter. Harder. My finger finding the perfect spot and pressing it, and her hips were trying to come straight off the bed. I could feel her back arching now.
I got rougher.
She wailed. And she came. And then she did it again.
It lasted bloody forever. The waves rolling her, the noises pulled out of her the kind that nobody in the world would have recognized as anything else but a woman having one hell of an orgasm. Or more than one, because she was doing it again and again. Barely coming down, and going up again.
Daisy Kittredge. Whore of Babylon. Multiorgasmic. Hot as hell.
I kept going until she was panting, until she was shuddering, and then I grabbed a pillow from the top of the bed, rolled her over on top of it onto her belly, and said, “Wait.”
On the floor, in the dark, stumbling past the couch, feeling around the edges of my ottoman and finding my jeans. Finding a condom packet in the pocket, ripping it open with hands that wanted to shake, rolling it on. Blessing the optimistic nature that had seen me stuff three of them in there after my shower tonight.
And then back to the bed.
She was still there. I felt around for her, found her sweet bum raised by the pillow, and ran my hand down it. I got over her again, felt all the charge of having every bit of her underneath me, of being over her, because no matter how gentle I tried to be, I suspected I’d never be a New Age man, and whispered in her ear, “We’re going to do this a bit differently. Something else new. If you don’t want anything I do, if you want me to stop, tell me. I feel like I’ve got to have this. I’ve got to have you. But I’ll stop anyway.”
Daisy
What?
I should care what he was doing. I couldn’t. He was kissing his way down my spine, one vertebra at a time, his hand tracing its way along beside his mouth, and I was shuddering. I wasn’t a woman who couldn’t do this anymore. I was a woman who couldn’t wait.
He spent some time at the small of my back, his fingers feather-light at the base of my spine, nearly t
ickling, endlessly sensitive. He kept his mouth there, and his hand rubbed over the curve of my bum, his big palm taking up nearly all of it. Stroking and pinching, all the way down to my upper thigh, and back up again, awakening sensation everywhere he touched. Going slow. Taking both our time.
When his fingers probed me again, I gasped and pushed off my knees. And he slid inside me, a little at a time, his hand still underneath me, finding that button again and squeezing it, making me squirm. Another push, and he was all the way inside. Stretching me. Filling me.
It was vaginal sex, but it felt completely different. It felt amazing. He was all the way over me, surrounding me. It was completely safe, and it was absolutely not. He was too big and too strong for that. It was animal. It was primal.
He did it the same way he’d done everything else. Starting out easy. Thrusting deep, but doing it in slow motion. His hand on me, squeezing with every one of those thrusts that woke up all those nerve endings I’d never thought I had. I felt every one of them all the way to my toes, and I would have moved, would have squirmed, would have backed into him, but I couldn’t. I was pinned underneath him, unable to do anything but feel this.
I didn’t need another orgasm. I needed to lie back and relive the ones I’d already had, but I couldn’t, because I was being pushed up again anyway. I was gasping into my hands, pushing up on my elbows.
Which was when his upper body came down over me, pressing me flat again, and he started to do it harder.
It was relentless. He was so big, and he was going so deep, and I was calling out.
His hand pressing the mattress down, just above the top of my head. His harsh breathing in my ears. His scent, dark and wild, around me. His body, taking me over. Careful, and so strong.
Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3) Page 34