Seven(28)

“To what?” he demanded, in quiet insistence, pushing farther forward until her knees were nearing her shoulders.

To take care of him. To comfort and support him. To challenge his cool entitlement to the world. To share his life.

All of this she wanted to do. All of this felt like her job.

And only hers.

But he’d never agreed to give her such a role in his life, so she could hardly just announce it out loud. So she pulled together a few scrambled thoughts and choked, “To make sure you don’t always get your way.”

He stared at her intently for a few moments, as if he were trying to figure out what she was thinking. Then gave an ironic half-smile. “Love, you certainly do a good job with that.”

She was feeling a mushy thrill from the endearment—which somehow sounded more real than it used to—when he leaned forward all the way, pressing her legs up against her chest.

The whine she gave this time wasn’t entirely from pleasure. She felt a little raw from all the times they’d had sex already in the last two hours, and he was now very, very deep. The pleasure was mingled with discomfort. “Owen.”

“Too deep?” he asked.

“A little,” she admitted. “Usually it’s good like this, but after all the…“

He pulled his weight off her and raised himself again until he was sitting once more on his ankles, thighs parted to make room for her hips. He was still fully sheathed inside her—her ass lifted slightly off the bed—but the penetration was decidedly more comfortable. “Better?”

She nodded, and he raised her hips a little more, changing the angle of his entry.

“Good?” he asked hoarsely, holding himself rigidly in check.

“Good,” she assured him, squirming against him in an attempt to get some friction. Her muscles were already straining from trying to hold her lower body up, but this would definitely be worth a few sore muscles. “Let’s see if you can manage number six.”

Recognizing a dare when he heard one, Owen began to thrust, letting out low little grunts with every slow lever of his hips.

Amy could feel his thrusts hitting her g-spot, and she felt the familiar shuddering pleasure spiraling out from the contact. Biting down on her lip, she gave a muffled moan and wriggled from the increasing intensity of the sensations.

She could feel Owen watching her, and her whole body burned with a hot flush. Partly from a mild self-consciousness and partly from very strong satisfaction in the fact that the focus of that particular gaze was only her.

He was thrusting steadily and leisurely, pulling out as far as he could without losing the position, and then driving back in. On every upstroke, rich jolts of sensation would shoot out from her center, causing her to hum in her throat involuntarily.

Staring at his damp, ardent face, his hot, focused eyes, and his strong, graceful body, Amy was awed by the incongruity of actually having him in her life. Having him in her body. Doing these amazing things to her.

Even just for twenty-eight more days.

“Amy,” he gritted out, his thrusts becoming more rapid. One hand gripped one of her ankles and the other was low on her opposite thigh. “Baby, can you come?”

She was about to choke out an immediate affirmative—the pressure, already interrupted more than once, had started to build quickly below her belly—but she clenched her jaw just in time. This was still a wager and she might not be able to cheat, but she wasn’t going to make it too easy for him.

Instead of answering, she made a silly, helpless noise of pleasure and reached above to grab the headboard. Since her head was tossing back and forth—making her hair fly around messily—and all the tension in her body was coiling up, she wasn’t sure her refusal to answer was particularly effective.

He had to know that she was about to come—her whole body was screaming with it, even if she wasn’t actually screaming.

She whimpered a little more as the pleasure started to crest, and she saw Owen gazing down at his slick cock sliding in and out of her body, a kind of primal heat taking over his face. He made a throaty sound of approval, picked up his speed, and started to grunt more urgently.

Swallowing over a cry of frustration, Amy couldn’t keep her arms from moving. Releasing the headboard, her hands flew back and forth from fisting the bedcovers to squeezing her breasts. She moaned harshly, her whole body tightening in preparation. She was jerking her hips as much as she could, but she didn’t have much leverage to get a real motion going.

His eyes still raking over her, Owen slid his hand down her leg until he reached her groin. Then his fingers pressed firmly into her clit.

She came as soon as he did so. She choked on the burst of pleasure, her body shaking—for real, this time—beneath the waves of sensation. She was vaguely aware of Owen making a choked sound as her muscles clamped down around him ruthlessly.