“Can I ask you something?”
He had to chuckle. Whenever anyone else said that to him, he groaned. With her, he could only look forward to what she was going to inquire with eager curiosity. “Anything.”
“Did you quit smoking?”
For a moment, he was struck speechless. They hadn’t talked about this at all. He hadn’t talked about it with anyone. “I did, actually—well, I haven’t had one in two weeks, anyway.”
“I noticed. You never could go an hour without walking outside to light up.”
Maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as his mind—or his heart—wanted to make it out to be. Any observant person could’ve put it together. But his family hadn’t. His friends hadn’t. She had. She’d watched him that much.
He tightened his embrace on her and turned his face to brush his lips against her forehead. “Thank you.”
She tilted her face up to his. “For what?”
“For being there. For being you. For everything.”
“I’m glad you quit,” she whispered.
“Me too.”
62
Rock Me
She awoke to sunlight pouring in her window and a heavy leg lying on top of one of hers. The previous night came flooding back all at once, too vivid to have been a dream, and besides, the warm male flesh crowding hers in the bed was proof it had really happened. She hadn’t slept much, awakening several times during the night just to stare at him and marvel that he was here, next to her. Her virginity may still be intact, but he’d taken it down from “complete and utter”
to “technical only”. It was something, at least.
She lay on her side with Brian’s arm over her waist. His breath tickled her nape, slow and languid. How would it feel to wake up like this every morning?
She wanted to stretch and arch her back and purr like a cat. The urge was almost undeniable, but it would probably disturb him, and she needed to savor these moments. There might not be any more of them. The numbers on her digital clock said it was almost ten. She was dying for coffee. No class on Fridays, but for all she knew, he had someplace he needed to be. Sighing in resignation, she turned over in his arms and snuggled close, putting her lips on his throat and giving him a gentle bite. He chuckled drowsily and raised his shoulder, forcing her to pull back.
“You can’t be ticklish,” she said in disbelief.
“Mm-hmm. I am.” She loved how he sounded, his voice all slow and sleep-roughened.
“I’ll have to remember that.” Even as the words left her lips, her heart sank. What if this had all really meant nothing to him? What if he wouldn’t take her virginity because he suffered from that stupid male affliction of thinking she was going to want to marry him or something if she gave it up to him? Maybe she would, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, if that was the case, then he didn’t want her wanting him, because he didn’t want her.
Is that really what you want? I’ll hurt you.
It crushed her.
His hand came up to caress her cheek, pushing her tangled hair away from her face. When he looked at her as he was right now, she wondered what the problem was. He had to feel something. There was something there in his eyes she had never seen when he looked at her cousin. A…tenderness, lame as it might sound. As if the sight of her caused something in him to melt. She couldn’t be imagining it. He was so beautiful. Handsome was such a plain word, too plain to describe him. Here in the light of day she could see what she was touching. She trailed her hand over his biceps, tracing the lines of his tattoos. It could turn into a favorite pastime of hers. She sat up a bit and leaned over to press her lips against a beautiful blue rose on his skin. The movement pressed her breasts against him.
“Shit,” he whispered. His arm came up behind her so he could clutch at her hair. His other hand gravitated toward her left breast, palming it and gently massaging. She sucked in a breath and her nipple peaked against him. Her tongue sneaked out to flicker against his skin, and he pushed his hips into her.
63
Cherrie Lynn
His cock was already as erect as it had been last night, a hard ridge in his boxer briefs. It ground into her abdomen and, before he could stop her, she plunged her hand down into the waistband of his underwear and deftly freed it.
“Candace,” he said, his voice tinged with warning.
“I just want to play,” she murmured. “Let me? One more time?”
His groan was a combination of frustrated pleasure and despair. She loved making him sound like that, as if he was torn in two over her, even though she knew she would be better off if she could take the
“despair” out of the equation. “When you ask me like that, how the fuck can I resist?”
Giggling, she cupped both hands around his length and stroked, noticing he’d put his piercing back in at some point in the night. He was big and long and heavy, jutting straight out from a patch of jet-black hair. The thickness of his shaft and the silver glint of his barbell gave her a twinge of anxiety. If she ever got her chance, it would be enough trying to take him in without anything else going along. But at the same time, she wanted to experience everything he had to give her.
She continued rubbing him from base to tip, first with one hand and then the other. She circled the ball on the top of his glans with her thumb. His breath rasped, his grip on her tightened. He reached over and pushed her thigh up, burying his hand between her legs and groaning again when he felt how damp she’d grown.
A gasp ripped from her throat as his fingertip parted her folds and he dipped into her wetness and spread it, circling her clit and then gently probing her entrance. She clamped her thighs on his wrist, all the sensations too much for her to take. He stopped what he was doing only long enough to wrench her legs apart again, his mouth finding hers as his fingers dove back down to take their place between her labia.
“Oh, God,” she said in a rush against his lips. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and stroked it with his own, sending her arousal spiraling into the heavens. One of his fingers breached her passage, pushing past her resistance until he was buried to the knuckle in her heat, his palm tight against her. Instinctively, she undulated against it, collapsing on the bed in sheer bliss as he moved in and out, hooking his finger to graze her upper wall.
When she relaxed for him, she felt him nudge a second fingertip next to the first and nearly lost her mind. So incredibly wet… Her body couldn’t resist the intrusion, and she didn’t want it to. The stretch as he pushed inside was exquisite, devastating, and she could do nothing but spread wider and let him go as deep as he could, her brow furrowed in agony as he did.
“Am I hurting you?” he whispered. She could feel his gaze intent on her face.
“I…just…please…”
“Please what?”
Stop. Don’t stop. I don’t freaking know.
“Surely you’ve done this to yourself before?” he asked, his voice dark and sinful. “Tell me.”
64
Rock Me
“Brian, I…” She trailed off into a moan when he twisted his fingers inside her.
“What did you say to me last night? You wanted me to let you get a little bit dirty. Tell me, Candace. Tell me what you do and what you think about.”
She’d fallen into the Twilight Zone. The world outside was bright and cheerful; birds sang, cars zipped down the street. This was her room, her bed, her belongings. Yet it was an entirely different dimension she’d fallen into. He was its gatekeeper.
“Y-yes, I’ve done this.”
“What do you think about? Do you imagine someone else is here, doing it to you?”
She nodded, her entire state of being reduced to the sensual slide of his fingers in and out of her pussy. So many times, she’d wished it were him doing that to her. And now it was.
“Tell me.”
The words burst out of her throat with an almost humiliating eagerness. “I think about— I think about you. I promise I’m not just saying that because you’re here now. I think about you doing this to me. And kissing me there. I think about…you making love to me.” She wanted to cringe even as she said it. He lowered his lips to her ear, nuzzling the soft, sensitive shell. “And when I make love to you,” he murmured, sending chills skittering madly down her arms, “am I gentle? Or am I rough?” He pushed his fingers hard when he said the last, driving a gasp from her. His palm connected with her clit and he pressed it firmly, still keeping up his torturous rhythm inside her body.
“If I’m having a—oh, God—having a bad day, or if I’m sad, I imagine you’re gentle. But other times…I just want you to…” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, lifting a hand to cover her face.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he whispered. “Although I love the way you blush. Tell me what I do, how you need me. The darkest fantasies you have, in the last wild moments before you make yourself come, what do you imagine I’ve done to you?”
She shook her head on the pillow, not wanting to lend voice to those thoughts. He gentled his movements, and she grasped his wrist hard enough to make her knuckles go white, terrified he would stop if she didn’t reply. “You tie me up,” she said.