He ran his palm over his mouth and from beneath, she thought she heard the word fantasy.
But then he was back at his belt. Never in her life had she seen anything so sexy as when, inside of two tugs, he had the belt loose and his fly open. Her eyes followed the neat line of hair arrowing south of his waist and—
Oh, yes, please.
His fully engorged shaft was thick and dark and jutting out from his body at an angle that defied gravity. And though she’d seen him like this before—had intimate knowledge of how he fit within her—the sight of him was shocking.
Arousing. Incredibly, unbearably arousing.
Making every part of her achy and swollen. Needy. Desperate.
So she did the only thing she could think of, banking on it garnering the same powerful response it had the first time. Breathless and trembling, she whispered, “Jeff, please.”
It worked, because before she could draw her next breath, he’d kicked off his pants and shorts, returned to the bed and, body half covering hers, was kissing her senseless.
Supported on one arm, he stroked her greedily with the other, running a possessive hot touch up and down her thigh, catching the back of her knee in one hand so he could pull it alongside his hip and make hard contact with the soft needful place she wanted him to be.
Only she was still in her bra and panties. Too many layers between them.
She was about to complain when Jeff rocked against her just right, and her breath caught and her mind blanked of anything beyond the pressing, immediate need for him to do it again.
Her hips tilted in wanton invitation. Her hands running from his shoulders down his spine as far as she could reach, her heels sliding up the backs of his hard thighs to just beneath his butt as the steely length of him rolled across the wet strip of thin cotton covering her sex.
“Yes!”
Dipping into the cups of her bra, he carefully worked the lace beneath her breasts and sat back, eyes locked on the erotic display he’d made of her.
“Darcy—”
But whatever he’d meant to say was lost when he lowered his head and flicked his tongue against the turgid peak.
The fleeting contact wasn’t enough. Not when he blew a warm breath across the tip, either, and especially not when he brushed his lips in a wicked back and forth tease that on every other pass or so allowed the achingly tight bud to slide between.
More.
“Please, Jeff,” she whimpered. “In your mouth. Please.”
He groaned and closed over one nipple, drawing with a sweet suction as he slid a hand into her panties and cupped her tender flesh.
His touch.
She’d tried not to think about it after that first night, but there was something so incredible about the way he’d handled her. Like he knew exactly what to do, what would feel the best, how she liked to be stroked, when to tease and when to give her what she was desperate for. So in those weak moments when her thoughts strayed, they’d strayed to this.
His fingers pressing between her slick folds, playing over her cleft. One thick digit working slowly inside her swollen, slick channel, then a second, stretching and filling her in a way that was so good, it made her beg for more, open her legs wider and tip her hips into his touch.
“Yes,” she gasped, head tossing against the pillow as pleasure rocketed through her center with each gentle thrust. The tremor of need built fast, gathering strength with each guttural bit of praise, encouragement and promise of more.
He drew her nipple into the wet heat of his mouth, suckling in a rhythm that matched the slow stroke of what then became three fingers.
“Oh, God! Jeff, please,” she panted. “Please! I need. I—”
Her pleas cut off as his thumb settled firmly at the top of her sex and—
“Come for me, Darcy.”
—her world came apart, sensation and tension from every extremity surging, together, crashing through her in wave after wave of pleasure that was sharp and sweet and hot and, as was so often the case with Jeff, like nothing she’d known before.
* * *
Holy. Hell.
Darcy was coming against his hand, the pleasure he wrung from her body more satisfying than if he was the one finding his release.
An hour ago, he’d been about ready to sell his soul to get some sleep, but now? He’d forgo sleep for the rest of his life if it meant more of the silky sound of Darcy moaning his name. Only the rest of his life wasn’t an option. What he had was tonight, and he wanted to make it last. Draw it out as long as possible. Give her what she wanted first. Then start in on what she needed. And after that, what he needed to give her.
One night.
Hell, the dull edge of that thought was nearly enough to yank him out of this perfect moment. But with so few precious hours available, he wasn’t going to waste them dwelling on the things he couldn’t have.
When the last of her tremors subsided and her body melted back into the mattress beneath her, Jeff backed down the bed, peeling her panties off in the process. Then coming back up, he pressed a kiss against her sex, earning himself another pleasured gasp and Darcy’s full attention.
Pushing to her elbows, she stared down the length of her body at him. And damn, he’d never seen anything like it before. The silk of her long blond hair hung in a sexy tumble around her face and past her shoulders. Her eyes were all bedroom, slumberous and sated while somehow asking for more. Her lips parted and kiss swollen in a way that had him fighting about a dozen depraved impulses at once. Her belly softly rounded. And her breasts—
God help him, he should have finished what he started in taking off her bra, but some primal part of him was seriously getting off on the tight, peaked bounty of ripe flesh, overflowing the lace constraint he’d only managed to pull partially out of his way.
Darcy seemed to have noticed where his attention had been snared, too, because she glanced down at herself and then arched a questioning brow at him.
“I look—”
“Like a goddess,” he said, reaching for her and helping her to her knees.
He unhooked the back clasp of the bra that had served his purposes more than hers for the past minutes, and brushed the straps down her arms before ducking aside to retrieve a condom from the wallet he’d tossed on his nightstand. Then circling behind her, he pulled her against him so they were kneeling upright together and whispered in her ear, “Not of this world, you’re so incomparably sexy.”
The little noise she made suggested she didn’t entirely believe him, but it was true.
She’d been gorgeous that first night in Vegas, but now he couldn’t look at her without being blown away by the absolute lush perfection of her.
And tonight she was giving herself to him.
His erection was throbbing painfully with need where it rested between the press of their bodies. He had to get inside of her. Had to have what he’d been ruthlessly denying himself.
Pulling back he ripped open the condom—and Darcy turned, looking over her shoulder first at the condom and then at him.
Her eyes skated away and she quietly asked, “Do we need that?”
Which was when it dawned on him. She was pregnant. He couldn’t get her any more so.
But that wasn’t what she was asking.
Pressing his forehead against her shoulder, he told her the truth. “I haven’t slept with anyone since we were together.”
She stiffened. “Olivia?”
Her doubt made sense. Everyone had known it was serious with Olivia from the start. But in that moment, Jeff realized his need to make a connection might have been more a result of the one he hadn’t been able to keep with the woman finally in his arms, than the woman he’d found to replace her.
“We didn’t—we never had sex. I don’t know why, bu
t I just—” He’d found and manufactured one excuse after another for them not to, somehow managing to convince them both it wasn’t about him. But it had been. Or more likely, about Darcy—whose breath had left her in a rush, though which emotion was behind that forceful push he didn’t know.
“The condom, it’s an ingrained habit. I wasn’t even thinking about it, but whatever you’re comfortable with. I can wear it.”
She looked back at him again, meeting his eyes over her shoulder and looking almost shy. “I want to feel you. Inside of me. Only you.”
His heart began to thump to a savage rhythm as some possessive part of him roared to life.
Only him.
He couldn’t wait another second.
Adjusting his knees, he positioned his shaft between Darcy’s legs. Groaning at the slick heat he found there, the skin on skin sensation that was only about to get better, he ran the length of himself through the spread of her folds.
“Lean forward, baby. I’ll go slow.”
God help him, the sight of her when she did was almost too much to bear.
Taking himself in hand, he notched the head at her opening, and at her eager plea for more, carefully fed the length of himself, inch by painstaking inch, into her tight, clenching sheath.
Heaven.
Bliss.
Nirvana.
Her bottom was pressed into his groin, the inner walls of her sex hugging him as he was as close to her as he’d ever been to another person. A part of him wanted to hold on to the connection forever, but another instinct-driven part urged him to move.
To draw back through all that snug, wet friction and then watch his uncovered length sink deep again, while Darcy’s fractured, needy cries stroked all the places within him her body couldn’t touch.
But he wanted more. Wanted to give her more.
Buried deep, he urged her upright. Thrusting slow and steady, he kneaded her breast with one hand, while letting the other ride the hills and valleys of her body to where she was slippery and wet for him. To the hot, swollen bud that made her inner walls clench like a fist every time he grazed it.
Made her mindless and wild and, for however briefly, his.
“Jeff, oh, yes, yes, like that,” she panted, pushing back into his groin even as her knees widened in a plea for more of his fingers on that secret place.
He circled, the slick orbits closing ever tighter until at last, she gave him what he needed. Another throaty cry of release as she came around his thrusting shaft and against the stroke of his fingers.
And while she lost herself in pleasured delirium, the hand he’d had at her breast coasted lower until he was cradling the place that was theirs together, and he gave in to the fantasy that for those few moments, everything he wanted was within his hold.
EIGHTEEN
That was—
She’d never—
There weren’t—
How had he—?
Wow.
Darcy blinked, shook her head and contemplated a hard pinch on her arm, just to make sure she hadn’t actually been dreaming. Only if she was, forget the pinch—with Jeff still dropping slow sensual kisses around her hips, thighs and belly—this was a dream she never wanted to wake from.
Of course thinking like that was enough for her to give herself a hard mental shake and remind herself this was about one night. About the both of them burning off the last of a lingering attraction while it still wouldn’t get in the way. While they had the chance.
Only as she lay in this bed that was Jeff’s, and yet not really, soaking in the attention of a man with a gift for spoiling her, she had to admit, at least to herself, her attraction wasn’t going anywhere. So maybe tonight was more about the chance to act on something she wanted but knew better than to try and keep.
And tonight what Jeff had given her was an experience incredible enough to keep her in fantasies through the months and most likely years to come.
Eventually there would be someone else—another man in her life. Maybe. If Gail had anything to say about it, anyway. But it would have to be a very long time off. Long enough for the memory of what being with Jeff was like to dull and fade. Because this, tonight—she already felt like he’d ruined her for all other men. And based on the glint in his eyes, he’d only just gotten started.
Crawling over her, he positioned himself between her legs, careful not to allow his weight to rest on her, but still somehow maintaining a contact between them in too many places to count. “Marry me.”
Darcy blinked up at him, her heart freezing until she caught the playful mirth in Jeff’s eyes and relaxed back into the bed. “Okay, but only for tonight. And only if you do that thing again.”
Gathering her close, Jeff kissed her long and slow and sweet as if he too wanted to draw out the night between them.
“God, you feel so good,” she whispered, awed by how true it was. “It’s been so long since I didn’t feel bad, I didn’t even remember what this was like.”
“It’s only been five months, baby, and you’ve already forgotten? My ego demands I make a more lasting impression this time.”
“Your ego again. Hasn’t he gotten us into enough trouble already?” Her hand smoothed over his chest, her knees sliding up against the outsides of his solid thighs.
It was so intimate.
The eye contact. The touch. The press of his hard sex against the wet softness of hers.
They wouldn’t have this again and she trusted him, so she told him what she’d meant.
“Besides, I’m not talking about the sex. What I’m feeling right now is more than that.” Then realizing how he might take her words, she quickly amended, “Don’t worry, I don’t mean love or anything crazy. It’s just...for once I’m not worrying, or sick, or uncomfortable or any of the other things. When I’m with you like this, I feel like everything is going to be okay. I feel...safe.”
There weren’t any questions. There wasn’t any risk.
Braced on his powerful arms above her, he searched her eyes, a slight furrow forming between his own. “Then maybe you should stay in my arms.”
Darcy stilled, not wanting to read...anything into his words.
He meant tonight. Right now. For a few more minutes.
His gaze darkened as he stroked her ear, down her neck and over her breast, where he circled her nipple with the tip of a single finger. “Maybe I shouldn’t let you go—”
His words cut off at the quiet thud of the door closing downstairs.
And suddenly Darcy’s heart was pounding for a different reason altogether than it had mere seconds before.
“Your mom!” she choked, trying to wiggle out from beneath Jeff, whose chin had pulled back and seemed to be eyeing her with equal parts amusement and irritation. Okay, and the lust was still there, too.
She shoved at his shoulders and he backed off the bed, muttering something about the joys of being a teenager again, and Darcy wondered just how many times he’d been caught in his parents’ house.
Then getting back on track, she realized the only thing that mattered was that this would not be one of them.
Jeff already had his pants on, and tossed Darcy her bra and his borrowed T-shirt. Then ducked, coming back up with her panties.
“Relax, I’ll head my mother off downstairs. Tell her not to bother you tonight.”
Darcy coughed. “What? No! Jeff, you look like...”
He pulled his T-shirt on over his head, thankfully covering the skin she’d marked.
“...well, like you’ve been doing exactly what we’ve been doing in here. I didn’t think it was possible, but even your hair makes you look guilty.”
Jeff stopped and, one arm in his dress shirt, craned to catch his reflection in the mirror. “Geez, you’re right.”
&n
bsp; Yanking the T-shirt on as fast as she could, she looked around. Though they’d never actually made it underneath the covers, the duvet was a crumpled heap and the pillows scattered clear across the room. One was even in the doorway to the bathroom.
“She doesn’t still check on you before going to bed at night, does she?”
Jeff looked at her like she’d gone mad, and he thought it was adorable. Which was so not the response she was after right then.
“This is bad,” she stated, dread settling deep in her belly.
“No, it’s not.”
“Your mother opened her home to me. And the second she walks out the door, I’m treating it like—”
Jeff was in her face, then cutting her off with a hard kiss before pulling away to meet her eyes. “I know for a fact she’s left the house since you moved in.”
“That’s not the point and you know it. Button your shirt,” she said, desperately.
“Yours is inside out,” he returned, flashing a grin when she gasped.
“How can you be so blasé about this? It’s your mother. In her house—”
“Technically, it’s my house. But I know what you mean.”
She blinked at him, then yanked her shirt off and quickly pulled it back on.
Jeff held up a hand, squinting. “Do you hear her? Because I don’t. And for reasons I prefer not to get into, I’m pretty adept at sounding out my mother’s tread on the steps.”
Darcy arched an amused brow at him. “I can only imagine.”
And then her betraying mind was doing just that and it must have showed because suddenly Jeff pulled her in close, tsking at her ear. “Mmm, naughty. I’ve mentioned how much I like that, right?”
Flustered she pushed back, trying to make her scowl stick. “I don’t hear her. So I’m going to make a break for it. Good night, Jeff.”
He shook his head, catching her hand and threading their fingers together. “She must have gone up the south stairs. Stay.”
Darcy looked down at where their hands were joined, felt the overwhelming pull of yes from the very deepest part of her.
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