by Aly Martinez
I didn’t care that I was still dressed; he hadn’t even bothered to take my shirt off. Or the fact that Tanner and I had never discussed sex. Hell, up until ten minutes ago, he’d never properly kissed me. But, right then, with his hips rolling between my legs, I wanted him so fucking badly that I didn’t care if the only foreplay I got was him snatching my pants down before he drove into me, stealing the orgasm from my body on the first thrust.
Okay, maybe I did care.
Because that was exactly what I wanted.
To feel him inside me, stretching and claiming.
His teeth at my shoulders, rough and demanding.
His hands at my breasts, kneading and plucking.
The blunt head of his cock, jerking as I milked him through my release.
My head was a mess these days. But Tanner had made one thing clear.
It was my body he was desperate for.
It was me he’d been chasing for the last few days.
It was me he couldn’t get enough of.
Fuck that Rita Laughlin person. Tanner Reese wanted me.
And I wanted him to take it.
“Oh, God, honey. Please.” I went for the button on his pants, but he grabbed my wrist, pinning it above my head.
He continued his torturous rhythm with his hips, rolling and circling, as he dropped his forehead to mine. His lips peeled back off his teeth as he spoke into my open mouth. “Fuck. You’re going to come, aren’t you?”
I was. I absolutely was.
Embarrassed, but not nearly enough to stop myself, I closed my eyes and turned my head away.
His hot breath flittered over my skin, igniting the sparks inside me into a raging inferno.
“Oh, fuck. You are,” he groaned. “Fuck, Rita. Give that to me.” He pressed in deep—or what would have been deep if he had actually been inside me—and demanded, “Give it to me. Let me watch how fucking beautiful you are when you come.” He punctuated it with a nip at the hinge of my jaw.
The sharp twinge of pain severed me in two, my climax tearing through me with the deafening roar of a freight train, wrecking me in its wake.
I was spiraling out of control. Higher and higher, my whole body wound so tight, I prayed for the crash. And like a boulder dropped over the edge of a cliff, I crumbled. The fall back to Earth was no less catastrophic—or extraordinary.
And he kept moving. Kept rolling. Kept stroking. Kept fucking me through our clothes.
I writhed beneath him, my body quaking and my breathing shuttering. Through it all, Tanner bit and sucked his way up and down my neck, his talented tongue swirling and soothing the marks he was surely leaving behind.
When I was thoroughly wrung out, I relaxed into the couch, languid and sated. My arms fell away from his back, sagging at my sides, and finally, his relentless rhythm gradually slowed to a stop.
As the sexual fog dissipated, the gears in my mind started turning again.
Specifically, the part of my brain that controlled post-dry-hump mortification.
I flicked my lids open, hoping I was waking from some kind of orgasmic dream.
But nope. The first thing I saw was his bicep, flexed beside my head.
“Oh. My. God,” I whispered.
“Holy fuck, Rita,” he rasped like he too was spent.
Okay. Okay. Maybe I wasn’t alone. “Did you…”
He chuckled, nuzzling my cheek with the tip of his nose. “No. That was all you, babe.”
“Oh, God,” I croaked. The heat that only seconds ago had been coursing through my veins was now creeping into my face.
“Tomorrow…” he started, pausing to shift to the side. He wedged his back against the couch, rolling me to tuck into his front.
Burying my face in his chest, I finished the thought for him. “Tomorrow, we are going to have couple’s electrical shock therapy in hopes of erasing that from both of our memories forever.”
He rested his hand in the curve of my hip and gave me a gentle squeeze. “I see the blood hasn’t returned to your head yet. I’ll give you a minute to recover. Because there is no fucking way I’m ever letting anyone take that away from me. Tomorrow, I’m forking over my life savings to buy a mountain and then I’m paying someone to carve every single detail of the last ten minutes into the side of it so that the sexiness of watching and feeling you come against my cock can be passed down through the ages for all of eternity.”
My stomach dipped, and my pulse slowed. At least he thought it was hot and not as totally sad and desperate as it’d felt to me.
“Okay, that’s a bit much, honey,” I told his chest. “I’m glad you liked it and all, but why don’t you just commit it to memory or something?”
His shoulders shook with amusement. “Rita, look at me.”
I shook my head. “I’m good. Thanks.”
“Baby,” he crooned. “Seriously, give me those eyes.” He walked his finger up my side before sneaking under my arm for a tickle.
“Tanner, stop!” I half yelled, half laughed. But he ultimately got what he wanted because my head snapped up.
A satisfied smirk decorated his face. “You gotta stop being embarrassed all the time. I didn’t just like that, Rita. I fucking loved it.” He slid his hand between us, the backs of his knuckles brushing against my nipples.
A gasp escaped my mouth before I could stop it, and it made his smirk turn downright smug.
“I haven’t even seen these yet and I already have claw marks on my back. Who else can say that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Men who wrestle bears.”
He threw his head back and a rich laugh bellowed out. “Jesus, you have a snarky reply for everything, don’t you?”
I placed a kiss in the hollow dip at the base of his neck.
And then I froze with my lips still touching his warm skin when he asked, “It’s been a while, huh?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. It hadn’t exactly been a while since I’d had sex. Maybe six or so weeks. Good sex? Psh. I couldn’t even remember. But it had definitely been a while since I’d come with a man. Greg wasn’t known for his sexual prowess—or his selflessness between the sheets. I’d learned to drop my fingers between my legs when we were together if I wanted an orgasm. Something he had not minded; therefore, he had never tried to change. And, given the state of our marriage over the last few months, a couple of late-night quickies had not resulted in an orgasm, much less a mind-blowing one like Tanner had given me without so much as taking his pants off.
“Uh…I guess you could say that,” I replied.
He gave me back his eyes, all the humor gone from his face. “I’m guessing since you only found out about the affair a few weeks back that shit hadn’t been good with you two for a while?”
I sighed. “Are we really going to waste oxygen on Greg right now?”
He kissed me, letting it linger as he inhaled reverently. “I have no interest in talking about that prick. But I do want to talk about you, and unfortunately, I can’t do one without the other, at least not on this topic.”
I twisted my lips, dread souring my stomach. Sadly, that was true. Especially considering…
“He’s the only man I’ve been with.”
Tanner turned to granite. “I’m sorry. What?”
Softly laughing, I shimmied down to hide my face.
“Nope. Nope. Nope,” he said, shimmying down too. “No more hiding. After what just happened, we need to have a little chat about sex sooner rather than later. I’m willing to take it slow, and I’m more than willing to dry-fuck you into oblivion, but if you’d whispered, ‘Please, Tanner,’ one more time, things would have ended a little different—like, say, with my cock buried inside you.”
My breath hitched, those sparks he’d momentarily extinguished at my clit sizzling back to life. I squirmed, pressing my thighs together to ease the ache.
A small smile popped his dimple, letting me know he’d noticed, but he continued talking. “The only thing that stopped me was, well, it was a fucking spectacula
r show, and also, I don’t have a condom on me. So we did what we did, and now, we are going to have a conversation so that, if the mood strikes again in the future, we both know where we’re at. And for that conversation, I’m gonna need you to look me in the eye, babe.”
I pursed my lips. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Responsible.”
He pecked my lips. “No one else? Really?”
“We met when I was twenty-one. Married at twenty-three. Separated at thirty. Few weeks later, enter Tanner Reese. So yeah. I haven’t had a lot of time for other men.”
“And what about before you were twenty-one? No high school or college boyfriend put the moves on you in the back seat of his Ford Taurus?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Did you drive a Ford Taurus?”
He smirked. “Maybe.”
Shaking my head, I explained, “When I was in high school, Jon and I took turns on the weekends staying at home to make sure our mom kept breathing while she was passed out on the couch. The back seat of any guy’s Ford Taurus was pretty low on my list of priorities. By the time college rolled around, I was up to my eyeballs in student loans, so I had to work my ass off in order to pay for room and board. I didn’t even allow myself to think about men because I couldn’t afford the distraction. If I didn’t graduate, I had no way to pay back the loans. So I kept my head down until my senior year and then met Greg at a bar the first and only time I’d allowed myself to go out.” I shrugged. “So here we are.”
“So here we are,” he repeated. He rested his hand on the side of my face. “Now, walk me through the part of how you became so sexually deprived that I was able to make you come without ever dipping a finger in your panties.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Um. No.”
“Um. Yes,” he mocked.
“That’s none of your business, Tanner. And tomorrow, after electrical shock therapy, you won’t remember it anyway. So it’s a moot topic.” I started to roll away, but he caught my hip.
“I’m not asking for specifics about you and Greg having sex. God knows I don’t have enough mind bleach for that. But maybe a little insider info on how long shit has been running downhill for you two. I’m just trying to see where I’m at in all of this.”
That shouldn’t have sucked as much as it did. It shouldn’t have even been a conversation we needed to have. Most people would consider it taboo to talk about the ex with the new guy. But, unfortunately, until I got the divorce finalized, Greg was still a part of my life regardless of how much I wished he weren’t. This meant he was part of Tanner’s life too.
I groaned and stared into his deep, blue stare. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For the fact that we even have to have this conversation. This is why I’ve been trying to keep a little bit of distance between us. It’s not fair.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t give the first fuck if it’s fair. Stop with the distance. I know the score. And I’m still here because I want to be here. With you. Regardless of what baggage does or doesn’t come with you. I’m only asking questions because I’m trying to gauge how slow I need to take this thing. If you were blindsided by this shit with him and Tammy, the answer is really fucking slow. I don’t want to be your rebound guy. But if you two had been falling apart for a while, therefore you’ve had some time to distance yourself from the relationship, then the answer would be that I only needed to take it a little slow. But if you two were over and done with long before you found out about the other woman and she was just the precipice to get the ball rolling on your divorce, then I need to get the hell up and go grab the condoms from the glove compartment of my Rover.”
My chest got tight when he stopped talking. How was he so sweet? I mean, seriously, that could get obnoxious one day.
“Are you ever a dick?” I asked.
His eyebrows furrowed. “I…um, I’m pretty sure it happens on occasion. Why?”
“Because it’s going to be really annoying if you’re this great all the time. I’m warning you. I’ve been known to get a tad bitchy sometimes, and it’s going to be no fun at all to take it out on you if you always say the right thing.”
A Tanner Reese masterpiece split his mouth. “I will definitely keep that in mind and do everything I can to step up my dick game.” He paused, twisting his lips. “Wow, that did not come out right at all.”
A laugh didn’t just flow from my lips. Rather, it traveled through my entire body, soothing the bruises inside me before springing from my throat.
This. Man.
I slid my arms around his neck and dragged him to me for a deep kiss packed with as much gratitude as it was passion.
He hummed against my lips, the corners tipping up into a smile even as I felt his cock thicken between us again.
What I wouldn’t have given to be free to fall in love with this man. He was pretty perfect for me.
But right then, I was not perfect for him.
Maybe one day though.
And maybe, if I was really lucky, I wouldn’t ruin us both trying to get there.
Breaking the kiss, I finally gave him what he wanted to know. “I was blindsided, Tanner. I didn’t think he would ever cheat on me. But we were also falling apart for a while before that. I’m harvesting more resentment toward him than I am any brokenhearted emotions. I’m pissed at him, but worse, I’m pissed at myself for allowing him to pull the wool over my eyes for so long. So, as much as I would love to tell you to go grab the condoms out of your car, maybe we should just take it a little slow for a while.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Though I did kind of leave you hanging on the dry-humping thing, so if you’d like to give it another go so you don’t end up with blue balls, I would be willing to lay here and fake moan for you.”
Chuckling, he moved in for another kiss. “As very appealing as that offer sounds, what do you say you point me to the beer and we’ll watch some TV instead? Are you all caught up on Game of Thrones?”
His warmth engulfed me, and I snuggled into his chest, relishing in how easy Tanner made everything. Even the hard stuff.
“Not if there’s more than one episode,” I replied.
“Are you fucking kidding me!” he boomed, suddenly sitting up. “You haven’t watched Game of Thrones?”
I turned and put my feet on the floor. “It’s not my thing.”
His face was hard and red when he stood and stabbed a finger in my direction. “That’s bullshit. Game of Thrones is everyone’s thing. You need to shut it with that blasphemy and turn on your goddamn TV. Right fucking now, woman.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Is this you being a dick?”
He blew out a hard breath and planted his hands on his hips. “I figured I’d give it a shot. Is it working for you?”
It wasn’t. But he was. Every single thing about him was working for me.
And for that reason alone, I smiled like a freaking maniac when he picked up the remote and turned on Game of Thrones.
* * *
“That’s a load of shit!” I yelled into my phone while pacing my downstairs kitchen.
Andrea was glaring at me from across the room, and at least a dozen cameramen were milling around, attempting to look disinterested.
My attorney, Doug Cross, sighed across the line. “I agree. But unless the judge grants the injunction, Shana can do whatever the hell she wants.”
“Stall her,” I demanded.
“Or we could buy the publishing rights. By the time you finish trying to stop this, you’ll have spent damn close to the three million she’s asking for.”
“Yes, I’ll have paid that money to you. I’m not giving that bitch another dime. She’s gotten enough already.” I raked a hand through my hair.
Andrea clapped loudly, drawing my attention up. “Joan already left. Don’t touch your hair or we’ll have to reshoot everything.”
Joan was Simmer’s one-woman hair-and-makeup department. Considering I was the only person in front of the camera this week, her job wasn’t
all that demanding. But in my current state of exhausted-and-pissed-off-at-the-world, I was infuriated that she’d left before we’d finished filming.
“And whose fault is that?” I shot back at Andrea.
“Excuse me,” Doug said, reminding me that I still had the phone to my ear.
“Not you,” I groaned, heading for the back door.
“Five minutes,” Andrea called after me in the especially bitchy tone she reserved just for me.
I slammed the door in a petulant response.
After snagging a pack of cigarettes off the small table, I plucked one out with my lips and ignited the tip.
I inhaled deeply, basking in the burn in my lungs as I stretched them to capacity.
It had been a long-ass week.
The Tannerhouse was only days away from opening and Porter had been running me ragged with last-minute shit. It wasn’t his fault. He had a lot of stuff going on with his kids and was doing the best he could. But my eighteen-hour days on the set of Simmer weren’t leaving me much time to pick up his slack. We were both struggling, and on top of that with Shana’s shit hitting my fan once again, I was at the end of my rope.
“What can we do?” I asked Doug on a smoky exhale.
“At this point, we start thinking about a defamation case for if and when the book releases. Judge Bernard might not be willing to stop the publication. But I don’t foresee any problems proving slander and hopefully winning all royalties.”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Fuck the royalties. I’m more concerned with what the hell is going to happen to my career after half of America including the president of The Food Channel reads that I was snorting lines off of a hooker’s tits.”
“I know. And trust me—we are still working on the injunction, but the judge did not seem favorable today. I think now would be a good time for you to reach out to the network and let them know what’s going on. Who knows? They might surprise you.”
“Or they might fire me,” I muttered before taking another drag. “Christ, this is such a fucking nightmare.”
“Just hang tight, okay? We’re going to get through this. Nobody’s losing their job.”