The Dare Collection May 2019

by JC Harroway

  His chuckle vibrated through her entire body. “We’re not done yet.”

  She belatedly realized he was still hard inside her. Becka shivered. She wanted more. Of course she wanted more. But there was a difference between losing her mind and having a quickie in the bathroom and an entire night’s worth of sex.

  What was that you were saying about the ship already sailing? If you wanted to keep the lines between you firm, you shouldn’t have jumped on his cock the first chance you got.

  Shut up.

  “Aaron...”

  He leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. She closed her eyes and simply breathed in the scent of him—of them. It was easier to talk like this, to open up just a little. “I don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “I don’t, either.” His words brushed her lips. “But I don’t want to stop.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him she did, but it would be a lie. There were so many reasons she should call this whole thing off, but she wanted to pretend, just for a little while, that she wasn’t really alone. He made her feel so damn good, and she wasn’t a decent enough person to turn away from what he was offering tonight. Becka licked her lips. “I don’t... I don’t want to stop, either.”

  Aaron shifted back and ran his hand down the center of her chest. He paused for the beat of a heart, with his hand over her slightly rounded stomach, and lifted her, her legs still wrapped around him, to walk out of the bathroom and down the short hallway to his room. The movement of his steps had his cock shifting inside her, and she squirmed in his grip. He nipped her ear, and she could have sworn he was grinning when he said, “This time, we’re going slow.”

  How could he be so measured when she had just come out of her goddamn skin?

  Becka ran her hands up his arms to grip his biceps. “I’m willing to be convinced.”

  “Mmm.” He laid her down in the center of his stupidly large bed. “We’re just getting started.”

  * * *

  He should have been talking to Becka, not fucking her brains out, but Aaron couldn’t convince himself to stop. It felt too good to be inside her again, to have her moving in sync with him as they both chased pleasure. Even if they figured nothing else out, they could figure this out.

  She wanted control. Hell, he wanted it, too.

  It wasn’t on the agenda right then.

  Aaron pulled out of her and moved down her body, reacquainting himself with her. He palmed her breasts, kissing her nipples gently, and then harder when she laced her fingers through his hair and moaned. She’d been responsive before, not shy about telling him what she wanted, but seemed even more so now. He grinned against her skin. “Sensitive, aren’t they?”

  “You have no idea.” She arched her back, offering her breasts to him again. “Don’t stop.”

  He didn’t stop. He lavished her breasts with attention until she was writhing beneath him and cursing and praising his name in equal measures. Then and only then did Aaron move down her body to settle between her thighs. He was too wound up to keep teasing her, and the sight of her wet and wanting overwhelmed him. He fucked her with his tongue, stopping only when he had to hold her hips down, and then he shifted to suck her clit, working her with his lips and tongue. Her cries only spurred him on, making him as crazy as he was determined to make her.

  Her breathless little laugh when she came did things to his chest that he didn’t know how to deal with.

  Becka tugged on his shoulders. “Come here.”

  He crawled up her body, but she was already turning, going up on her hands and knees. The picture she presented, the muscles lining her spine drawing his gaze down to her biteable ass... “Fuck, minx. The things you do to me.” He nudged her legs wider and guided his cock into her. Becka immediately dropped her chest to the mattress, the new angle drawing a curse from his lips. She didn’t just feel good. She felt like fucking heaven. He smoothed a hand up her spine and braced it against the mattress next to her head.

  And then he started to move.

  It had been fast and hard in the bathroom, but Aaron was determined to hold himself in check this time. He noted every catch of her breath, every moan, every time she pushed back to take him deeper. He gave her everything, focusing everything he had on coaxing another of those addicting giggles from her lips.

  Lightning shot down his spine, but he fought it back, fought to hold out as long as he could. “Touch yourself. You promised to come around my cock. I want to feel it again.”

  She snaked a hand under her stomach. He knew the exact moment her fingers made contact with her clit. She gasped and clenched around him, and it was everything he could do not to release then and there. So good. There were so many things wrong with this situation, but this wasn’t one of them. Every move she made was perfection, her body flowing in direct counterpoint with his, heightening his pleasure until he could barely breathe past it.

  He wanted this to last forever.

  He was afraid it might kill him if it did.

  Aaron clenched her hips tighter and drove into her harder. She met him stroke for stroke, and then her entire body went tight and tense and that goddamn giggle slipped free. I could spend the rest of my life pursuing that fucking sound. He’d thought it before, but it never seemed realer than in this moment. His strokes became more frenzied, the need to imprint himself over every part of her taking him to the edge and beyond. Aaron cursed as he came, the pleasure going on and on until he slumped onto the bed next to her.

  “Feel better?” Becka rolled to face him. Her hair was tangled on one side, and she had a sleepy smile on her face. The fact she was in his bed didn’t escape him in the least. It could be like this if we got out of each other’s way long enough to give it a chance. That was the problem, though. He didn’t know if it was possible to create a lasting peace. He didn’t know nearly enough about a lot of things when it came to Becka.

  Belatedly, he realized she’d asked him a question. He propped his head on his hand. “What?”

  Some of the sleepiness disappeared from her eyes. “Did the sex distract you from your worrying long enough to make you feel better?”

  Was that all this was? No. He couldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t. Aaron reached out and tucked a strand of her brilliant blue hair behind her ear. “I could think of worse ways to relax.”

  “Me, too.” She closed her eyes, almost seeming to lean into his touch. “God, I would kill for some pancakes right now.”

  “Pancakes,” he repeated. He glanced at the clock. “It’s after ten.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t.”

  This was his chance to extend their connection past a couple of shared orgasms. He forced himself to drop his hand, to not cage her in even that tiny way. “I think I have the stuff to put together some if you’re in the mood.”

  Becka opened her eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.” Unable to help himself, he leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “I wouldn’t tease a pregnant woman about food.”

  He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

  She shut down. He could actually see her walls coming back up to keep him out, her posture becoming more guarded, her gaze resting on the sheets instead of on him, her lips pressed together as if she attempted to keep sharp words inside. This was it. She’d tell him to get the fuck away from her, and what little ground he’d gained would be lost.

  But Becka finally sighed. “Pancakes really do sound good.”

  “Say no more.” He knew better than to push her now, not after his idiotic misstep. As Aaron climbed out of bed and headed into his closet for a pair of pants, he allowed himself a kernel of hope. Even with everything stacked against them, he now had two avenues to make headway with Becka—food and sex.

  He could work with that.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

 
BECKA COULDN’T STOP looking at Aaron. He was shirtless in the kitchen, making pancakes for her, and she’d never seen a more beautiful man. The muscles of his back flexed as he moved, and she clenched her thighs together despite the several outstanding orgasms he’d just delivered. The whole thing was so...domestic.

  The only time she’d lived with anyone was roommates back in college. They were always too noisy, too messy and too in evidence everywhere she looked.

  Becka didn’t mind noise—her spin classes were so loud with their pumping music that some people wore earplugs. Having the bass thrum through her body as she shouted and directed and got everyone moving for the workout of their life was her happy place.

  She didn’t even mind people. Not really. Being a personal trainer was a different kind of happy, working with people who wanted to get healthy or accomplish some specific goal. She loved watching them put in the work and being their own personal drill sergeant and cheerleader, all wrapped into one. And the look on their face when they realized the moment their hard work had paid off and that they’d accomplished what they’d set out to do? Priceless.

  But when she was done with work for the day, she wanted to come home and just...be.

  Roommates normally made that impossible.

  Aaron as a roommate should have made it doubly so.

  She twisted on the bar stool to look over the apartment. It was a study in minimalism—a place for everything and everything in its place. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the entertainment center that framed the massive TV, and the leather couch and twin chairs on either side of it didn’t have any wear and tear or so much as a scrape on them. The kitchen was equally freakishly clean. If he wasn’t cooking in it right this second, she would have suspected that he didn’t cook by how clean the countertops were. The man obviously didn’t believe in clutter.

  Which was a relief, but at the same time, Aaron being a control freak was stamped over every inch of this place. This was a man who didn’t like messes, and their situation was the very definition of a mess.

  As if sensing her thoughts, he flipped the pancakes and turned to lean against the gray marble countertop. “I think it’s long past time for us to talk.”

  She couldn’t keep dodging him. It was freaking exhausting, and if Becka actually planned to reduce Aaron’s position in the baby’s life to sperm donor, she never should have moved in with him in the first place. She wrapped both hands around her orange juice and stared hard at the swirl in the marble that looked like Abraham Lincoln’s beard. “You are going to be in the baby’s life. I’m living in your penthouse. Don’t you think that’s enough for now?” Even without looking up, she knew his expression had turned stormy, his eyes leaning more gray than blue. She pushed her juice away. “You keep pushing me, and it’s stressing me out. The learning curve on this situation is pretty rough and, this might be shocking, but I’m overwhelmed. You trying to micromanage everything from my bath temperature to...”

  “Drink your orange juice.”

  She gave a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah, like that.”

  “I’m serious.” His big hand appeared in her line of vision and nudged the glass back into her hand. “The calcium and vitamin D are good for you.”

  She closed her eyes and counted to ten. Twice.

  Maybe we should just keep banging it out and stop talking, because obviously we are not even close to being on the same page.

  “Aaron—” She stopped short at the sound of his sliding a plate to her. Becka opened her eyes to find two perfectly shaped pancakes on the plate. She might have stopped breathing completely when he set both the smooth and the chunky peanut butter next to the plate, each with their respective knives. “How did you know?”

  “I’d have to be extremely dense not to notice you walking around with a spoonful of peanut butter in your mouth the few times you’ve graced me with your presence.” He eyed the tubs of peanut butter with narrowed eyes. “They’re both depleted from the last time I checked, so I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer. Let me know and I’ll pick up more next time I get groceries.”

  Heat spread up her chest and took residence in her cheeks. It shouldn’t surprise her so much that he picked up on her eating habits, not when he was obviously watching her so closely, but the thoughtfulness of the simple gesture had her throat closing and her eyes burning. “I, ah, use both.”

  Conscious of his eyes on her, she spread first the chunky onto each pancake, and then took the other knife and covered it with smooth peanut butter. She carefully cut the food into tiny bites instead of rolling it up like a burrito the way she would have if she was alone. “Thank you.”

  “We can make this work, minx. You just have to trust me.”

  That was the one thing she couldn’t do. She did trust that he wasn’t a total asshole, and that he showed every evidence of probably being a good father and a decent friend. But if she let herself sink into the ease of being with him, she was in danger of forgetting exactly how devastating her inevitable heartbreak would be. Everything else might have changed, but that hadn’t.

  If anything, her reasons for not tumbling head over heels for Aaron had just multiplied. This wasn’t some guy she could avoid after things fell apart.

  He was the father of her future child.

  She couldn’t just keep shutting him out, though. He was right about that. There had to be some kind of compromise that got them through this with the least amount of strife. That compromise probably doesn’t include amazing sex and screaming his name. Way to muddy the waters. She silenced the snide little voice inside her. There would be plenty of time for self-recrimination on her seventh run to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

  She finished her pancakes and sat back. “Did you want kids? I mean, if life played out according to your perfect plan.”

  “What makes you think I have a perfect plan?”

  Becka rolled her eyes. “I pay attention, that’s what. I think you’re even more type-A than Allie and Lucy—combined. That’s saying something.”

  He made a face. “Guilty as charged. Though I only ever really had a plan for my professional life. I’ve known I wanted to work in cybersecurity since I was in high school, and it only took my first internship in college to solidify that I wanted to work for myself and own my own business. That goal kept me busy enough that the personal stuff was always being pushed to the back burner. And the last time I agreed to a date, my prospective date ran off with the matchmaker.”

  His date, her sister.

  It hurt to think about, but he and Lucy might have fit. They were both ambitious and driven and more than a little pretty. Lucy and Gideon were perfectly matched, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that Gideon had thought Aaron was a good match for Lucy when he compiled his list of bachelors. That was back when Lucy had hired the headhunter to find her a husband—a position Gideon ended up filling in the end.

  Becka couldn’t be more different from her sister if she’d tried. She was driven, sure, but her dreams had never been to make partner in some law firm or to own her own business. All she wanted to do was live her life to the fullest, to do what she loved and make enough money to pay her bills and travel to places she’d never been before.

  Hard to travel with a baby.

  She took a hasty drink of her orange juice, aware of how closely Aaron watched her. “That’s nice.”

  “Uh-huh. To answer your question—yeah, I want kids. I always have. My sisters might have been aggravating to grow up with, but we’re pretty close now, and there’s something comforting about the chaos of a home filled with a family.”

  She wouldn’t know anything about that. Becka’s parents had divorced early on, and her mother had always been more concerned with her agenda than with her daughters. When Becka was bullied, it wasn’t her mother she ran to. It was Lucy. Her sister had started filling that parental role from an early a
ge, and she’d never quite stopped.

  She still remembered the moment when she realized she was more like her mother than she’d ever be like her sister. Becka was fourteen and had been going on about some drama that she didn’t even recall now, years later, and thirty minutes into her bitchfest she’d realized that Lucy was upset—had been upset through the entire conversation while Becka went on and on about her petty problem.

  It turned out, Lucy hadn’t gotten into the school she’d pinned her hopes and dreams on and was crushed.

  And Becka hadn’t even noticed.

  She’d promised herself right then and there that she wouldn’t walk their mother’s path. She wouldn’t keep being a burden on her sister the same way their mother was. She’d be independent and strong and take care of her own problems.

  A promise she’d mostly kept over the years. Sure, Becka developed a wild streak in college that never quite went away, and she knew her sister worried sometimes about her resistance to the idea of settling down, but those were small sins compared to the kind they’d grown up witnessing.

  At least...they had been small sins.

  Until now.

  She shook her head, suddenly aware that Aaron was looking at her like he expected some kind of answer. “I’m sorry, I missed what you just said.”

  “I asked you if you had ever wanted kids.”

  She pushed to her feet. “No. I never wanted kids.”

  * * *

  Aaron watched Becka walk away with her shoulders bowed, looking like someone had just kicked her puppy. Things had been going well. Better than well. They’d been going good. She’d teased him a little, the sex had been outstanding and they’d managed to share a meal and half a conversation.