Hard to Lose (The Play Hard Series Book 4)

by K. Bromberg

  There wasn’t a “your place or mine?” Just more stolen kisses here and there as we laughed and laughed while he gave me insight into small-town facts.

  There was simply a tug on my hand as we walked down a few side streets in the warm evening with lightning dancing in the distant sky and a baited anticipation bouncing around us.

  “It’s not much,” Gunner murmurs as he leads me inside his home. There’s a toss of his keys on the table. The shutting of the door behind me. The whisper of my name in the dark.

  And when I turn to face the sound of Gunner’s voice, his lips are on mine. The kiss starts out slow and sweet, like a symphony’s first strings to capture your attention.

  But there’s no need to draw me in. No need to seduce me with a soft melody when I’m already there, already gone.

  We kiss in his entryway with moonlight streaming through the windows and slanting over us. His hands frame my face as our tongues flutter over one another’s and our hands map the lines of each other’s bodies. My hands run up the plane of his back, so I can feel the corded muscles beneath constrict and flex. His run from my hips to beneath my breasts.

  We are slow and deliberate with our actions, almost as if we’re on the same page. The one that says once we unleash this need—this exquisite desire—there will be no going back. Need will turn to greed. Desire will shift into lust. And climax will be the only goal.

  We take our time getting to know each other’s bodies. I gasp when his lips find the spot just beneath my jawline, the stubble of his five o’clock shadow teasing my sensations right along with his mouth. He moans when the chill of my hands hits his bare skin beneath his shirt, and I pull it up and over his head.

  And then he freezes and sucks in a breath when I run my hands up the front of his torso and then chest and feel what I can only describe as indentations marring its surface.

  Scars.

  Like the kind they hand medals out for during fancy ceremonies with lots of high-ranking people.

  Nix’s words hit my ears again, and I’m at a loss for what to do or if I just upset him. So I stare at Gunner in the moonlit dark, searching for an answer I don’t have any right to ask.

  “It feels worse than it looks,” Gunner says quietly, and offers a half-hearted smile as he runs the backs of his knuckles down my cheek.

  I lean in and press a kiss to his lips before stepping back, pulling my shirt over my head, and unclasping my bra. When I let it drop, I love and simultaneously hate the sudden rush of vulnerability I feel as he stares at me. As he takes me in.

  “They feel better than they look,” I offer with a soft smile, hoping to ease the moment and the vulnerability I can only imagine he feels.

  “They look more than beautiful to me.” He reaches for my hand and tugs me against him. Our lips find each other’s again. This time a little more desperate, definitely a lot hungrier.

  We proceed to slowly make it down his hallway, my back seemingly visiting every wall as we go. The one beside the kitchen for a deep kiss. The one nearing the bathroom for a slide of his mouth down to nip my collarbone as his hands find and cup my breasts. Just outside the bedroom so my teeth can gently tug on his bottom lip while I unbutton his jeans.

  Then his room. He leads me in by the hand and then stares at me through the dim light. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel—”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.” I keep my eyes on his as I shimmy my jean shorts down over my hips and stand there naked before him. “The question is, what are you going to do with me now?”

  His cocky grin reappears and his eyes fire as he takes a few steps toward me. A soft chuckle falls from his lips as he copies my actions and shoves his jeans to the floor.

  Well, hello there.

  He’s gorgeous. And not just because he pulls a condom out and jackets up without questioning. But because as he does, I’m allowed a glorious moment to study him. The broad shoulders. The strong forearms. The trim waist that leads down to a very healthy, very hard dick. The firm thighs below it.

  As a woman who unabashedly enjoys sex—the buildup to it and the act of it—I’m far from disappointed in what greets me when Gunner stands there naked before me. Sure, it’s dark in the room, but this is going to be exceptional.

  So damn exceptional.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he murmurs and narrows his brow, as he closes the distance between us. He reaches out to my waist and pulls me against him. Our bodies touch without anything between us for the first time.

  My skin hums from the feel of him.

  My body aches in the most deliciously sweet ways.

  And when his lips slant back over mine and his fingers find their way between my thighs, every part of me wants to beg him to touch me everywhere. His kiss captures my moan when his fingers slip between my slick heat and tuck into me.

  “Christ, Chase,” he says against my neck, the heat of his breath sending chills over my skin. His fingers slide over nerves inside and deliver their own sensual assault.

  My hands grip his shoulders, fingernails digging into already scarred flesh. I want to reach down and stroke him, feel him, return the favor, and yet I’m held captive by his touch in the best way possible.

  His mouth moves to my breasts, the roughness of his stubble, and the warm heat of his mouth against my sensitive nipples, is like adding kerosene to the fire he’s stoking between my thighs.

  “Gunner,” I moan as he continues to slide his fingers in and out at the same time his lips and tongue tempt and tease me into a riotous bliss.

  My core aches and burns and begs for more and when it hits—when the crescendo of the symphony he’s built hits—my body doesn’t know if it wants to tense or collapse in a heap as my muscles pulse and tighten around him.

  “That’s it. Come on,” he encourages as his teeth nip my shoulder. “Come for me, baby.” He groans, his hand now soaked and his dick pulsing against my abdomen, begging to get in on the action.

  My breath is shallow as his chuckle heats my ear. “That was good to start with, but I can’t wait to feel you wrapped around my cock like that.” His tongue pushes between my lips and demands more from me. “Taking me all in.” A line of open-mouthed kisses down my jawline. “Fucking me.”

  I already ache for him to fill me. I just climaxed, but where his touch is akin to a match, his words are incendiary, taunting me to want more.

  And I definitely want more.

  “Gunner,” I whisper, as I slide my own hand between my thighs. I coat my fingers with my arousal and then wrap my hand around his cock and slide up and down.

  It’s his turn to freeze. His turn to groan. His turn to have his fuse ignited.

  And that’s all it takes to ignite the flame we’ve been toying with. Within seconds, Gunner pushes me onto the bed at my back. I scoot back on my elbows and revel in the sight of watching him crawl onto the bed.

  He stops to kiss one of my calves.

  Then another kiss to the opposite knee.

  A playful bite on the side of my hip.

  Then a soft suck on one of my nipples before his lips meet mine again.

  My body writhes in desperation to have him. To feel him. To give him the same type of pleasure he just gave me.

  Gunner kisses slowly at first. Softly. Each time our lips meet, the hunger intensifies. A tinge of desperation morphs into an all-out onslaught of need and greed until I’m spreading my legs and lifting my hips, practically begging him.

  “Please.”

  Thankfully he obliges when he leans up on his knees and places his hands on the backs of my legs as he settles between my thighs.

  His first push in is indescribable. Equal parts burn and bliss as my body stretches to accommodate him in all his engorged glory. We both groan in pleasure. I arch my back and close my eyes to revel in the sensations he just created.

  From there it only gets better. His hands find my hips. My fingers grip the sheets. The delicious stretch as he thrusts in, run
ning the crest of his cock over every sensitized nerve within before pulling back out and doing it all over again.

  We move in sync. Two bodies pushing for the same release. Two people reveling in the chemistry that has led to this.

  He leans over to pull my nipple into his mouth, which makes him bottom out completely within me. We both still at the sensation, and he grinds his hips against mine a few times. The breathtaking sensations of him being in me, and his mouth being on me, push me toward the edge.

  “Yes. Again,” I demand in the most sex-drugged voice as the sensations try to pull me back under the haze of lust and desire.

  “You like that?” he says as he grinds again, hitting and re-hitting the spot within that makes me go mad.

  My mewl fills the room. It’s all I can use to describe the sound I make as my orgasm bears down on me with a freight train-intensity I’ve never felt before. My body’s electrified. From my core to my toes to my head.

  My breath is shallow and my head dizzy as my muscles pulse uncontrollably around Gunner.

  “Fuck, that feels incredible,” he groans. His fingers dig into my hips as he tries to maintain control.

  But I don’t want him in control anymore. I want him to lose his tight grasp on restraint, so I push him by purposely tightening myself around him.

  “Chase. Good God.” And those are the last coherent words he utters.

  There’s something to be said about watching a man work himself up to the point of no return. The taut neck. The tension of his abs as he thrusts into you. The way his eyes glaze over when he looks down to see where he enters you. His bruising grip on your flesh. His Adam’s apple when he throws his head back and loses himself in you.

  And Gunner is all of that and then so much more when he comes.

  He’s freaking perfection, and I have no clue how we climbed so high so quickly . . . so effortlessly. So immediately.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Chase

  I wake with a start.

  It takes me a second to remember where I am since I’ve been discombobulated anyway now that I’m staying in a hotel.

  But I definitely remember my whereabouts when I shift to find Gunner lying on his stomach in the bed beside me, sheets covering one of his thighs and basically nothing else.

  I do what any normal woman would do—I thoroughly study him. But it’s not like I didn’t get intimate knowledge of him last night and the few times we decided to see if we could in fact, come one more time.

  The answer was yes. Yes, we could.

  I shift, a delicious soreness between my thighs, as I study the intricate tattoo just below his left shoulder blade. It’s some kind of Celtic cross with initials carved in its hilt but it’s too hard to see in its entirety because of the angle he’s lying at. Instead I take another peek at his very fine ass before moving back up to his face.

  Thick lashes fan over suntanned cheeks. A lock of hair hangs down and covers one of his eyes to rest on his strong nose.

  Not classically handsome as some would define handsome, but the man is drop-dead sexy, an attraction all in itself.

  I look around his bedroom. It’s basic. Beige walls with hints of grays and blues. A pair of jeans are hung over a chair in the corner and one boot rests on its side beneath it. There’s art hung on the wall and a few framed photographs on his dresser that look like they’re of a grandfather in uniform, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Definitely all signs of normalcy, which is important when you’re a woman who took the plunge and decided to go to the house of the man she doesn’t exactly know all that well.

  The problem was I never had any intention of staying here, but he was so cute and the sex was so good, that it would have been a shame to leave.

  But I need to leave. I need to head out, get to work, and cross this off my list: great sex with Gunner.

  The best part about being busy all the time is that sex is just that. A physical need to satisfy. I don’t have time to get tangled in relationships. Hell, I don’t even want to.

  So this is perfect for me. Some physicality on a quick trip to Destiny Falls. Some satisfaction and a mind-blowing release—or five—to revel in.

  Can’t complain in the least.

  And the moment that thought crosses through my mind, Gunner shifts beside me and the memories from last night come back vividly.

  I smile. How can I not after I had one of the most memorable and unique evenings I’ve had in some time?

  Shifting on my side, I study Gunner again.

  There’s something to be said about a man by his touch. A woman knows it from the moment he lays a hand on her. Greed is easy to identify. Selfishness too. But when a man knows how to touch a woman well—there’s enough pressure but not too much. Friction applied intermittently. A well-timed kiss with alternating intensity. The reverence in how he runs a hand over your body in foreplay juxtaposed with how he grips your hips when he’s driving you both to bliss.

  There is definitely something to be said about a man’s touch when he’s tuned in to the woman he’s with. And Gunner no doubt knows how to touch a woman.

  It’s a rarity for sure.

  Gunner sucks in a breath of air and jolts up in the bed, startling the hell out of me. “Oh my God, I’m going to be late.” Then he looks to his side and the sexiest, sleep-drugged smile slides onto his lips. “Good morning. I should start with that.” He reaches out, takes my hand, and presses a kiss to the center of my palm. “I should most definitely start with that,” he says and runs a hand over my ass and up my back.

  Ache sparks to life from his fingers. Need that I thought was sated isn’t far behind.

  “Morning,” I murmur. My smile is automatic.

  He leans forward and presses a kiss to my bare shoulder before climbing out of bed. “I’m sorry to do this to you,” he says as he walks toward his closet, “but I’ve got to get going, or else I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Work?” I ask, sitting up in bed cross-legged, comfortable in my own nudity and not caring that the sheet is solely covering my bottom half. “The bar is open already?”

  “No.” He looks over his shoulder and catches me checking him out. He grins. “My other job. Or rather I should say where I volunteer. I mean—I mentor boys who have lost a parent in combat. It’s nothing really. Just . . .”

  I don’t hear the rest of his words. The ones that explain how his volunteering isn’t a big deal because I’m too busy realizing that he’s genuinely real. That good guys, unicorns like him, really do exist.

  And I don’t even know how to react or what to say as he pulls out clothes to wear. He was right last night. I am used to selfish assholes. To pricks. Ones worried about if they’re going to get enough time in at the gym after work, let alone make life better for a kid.

  Hell. What is Gunner doing with me when I’m probably just as self-absorbed as the men I typically date?

  From now on when someone says good guys don’t exist anymore, I’m pointing them in the direction of Destiny Falls.

  “That’s incredible,” I murmur as he looks back over his shoulder and smiles again.

  “Not really. It’s just . . . it recharges my tank in a sense. I get as much out of it as they do. Or at least I hope they do.”

  “Still, it’s . . .” My words fade when he turns to face me and for the first time, I’m met with the tapestry of scars that crisscross over his chest. They reflect a horror story all on their own that leaves the utter devastation to one’s imagination.

  My eyes lift up to meet his and he offers me a shy smile. “I know they’re hard to look at.”

  “No. You are definitely not hard to look at,” I say. “Seeing them just makes me think of probably a million things you had to go through to first get them, and then heal, from whatever caused those scars.” His expression softens as emotion swims in his eyes. “It means you were stronger than whatever it was that tried to hurt you.”

  “Not stronger,” he says with a slight chuck
le. “Just lucky.”

  His humbleness is on display again and it brings me back to last night. The vulnerability I felt standing there naked in front of him, and I can imagine he feels ten times more than that every time someone sees his scars.

  “Well, I’m the lucky one,” I murmur as I sit up on my knees and pull him against me for a long, slow kiss. A kiss that restokes the embers left burning from last night.

  “This is a cruel joke,” he says against my lips as I feel his dick hardening against me. “Leaving a beautiful, naked woman alone in my bed is definitely a cruel joke.”

  His lips meet mine again as his hands cup my ass and pull me against him. Christ Almighty, how are either of us even physically able to consider another round?

  His groan reverberates around the entire room. “I need to take a shower.” Another kiss. Another scrape of his teeth against the underside of my jawline. “They’re counting on me.”

  “I’ll just lie here then while you’re in the shower and finish myself off,” I tease—only partially. Because the man already has that ache burning so bright from the feel of his body and the taste of his kiss alone.

  “You’re cruel.”

  “And you’re gorgeous,” I say against his lips.

  He leans back and looks at me, his fingers tucking the hair that’s fallen in my face behind my ear. There’s amusement in his eyes, but also something more that I can’t put my finger on. His smile is soft. “I’ll be in the shower. And if you lie right here, you can get a good angle in the mirror to see me in there.” He pats my ass. “You know, should you need any visual stimulation to help get you off.”

  “You’re a bastard,” I tease.

  “That’s not what you said about”—he looks at his watch—“three hours ago. I believe then you were praising me profusely.”

  The grin he flashes me is mesmerizing. God, he’s gorgeous.

  All I can do is shake my head and flop back on the bed, wondering how the hell this happened, and be grateful that it did.

  Because Gunner is most definitely something else.

  I look through the open doorway and into the mirror. It’s fogging with the moisture of the shower, but I can see him soaping up and washing his hair.