"You are beautiful. I won't stop saying it, even if I have to whisper it late at night when we're both a little too drunk."
"You've been setting out two bottles every night. This is obviously part of a fiendish plan."
His hand was so warm and strong on the back of her head. "I don't have a fiendish plan."
"I'll bet you say that to all the girls," Rox said to him, her voice too damn breathless.
"I usually don't have to be drunk to make a pass at a woman, but you're married."
Guilt wormed around her. "Oh."
"Why doesn't he tell you that you're beautiful?" Cash whispered, and he leaned toward her.
"Because he doesn't lie to me." His lips were an inch from hers, less than an inch.
"Then he's blind. Or purposefully stupid. Or a cad. Or he doesn't want you to know it." Little puffs of his breath-scented with wine and mint-touched her lips.
"But it's the truth. I'm just ordinary. And chubby. And not cute." Just a fraction of an inch. A sliver of air separated their mouths.
Cash asked, "Shouldn't you be defending your husband's honor about now?"
The wine kept her from coming up with a defense for her fictional husband. It fuzzed around her head until her fingers curled around the back of Cash's neck, and she pulled him that last fraction of an inch to her lips.
He grabbed her lips with his. His arms wrapped around her, around her shoulders and around her waist, and he pulled her against his chest and abs, locking her against him. Her arm slipped around his neck. Her other hand splayed on his chest, feeling the rounded muscle in her palm.
His lips felt as soft as the other night, but this time, his hands roamed over her body. He sucked gently at her lips, nipping, and his tongue stroked over hers. His hand dropped, and he gripped her ass, shoving her hard against him.
He lifted his head. She tried to keep kissing him, but he peeled her off with his arm around her shoulders. His mouth found her neck, and he scraped his teeth over her throat and breathed on her moist skin, making her shiver.
In seconds, she was panting and arching her neck, trying to get closer to him, to get more of him. It had been so many months since a man had touched her, and she had been too near Cash all that time.
A whisper of cologne, warm spices and musk, lingered on his skin, and she breathed him in.
Cash sat backwards on the couch, and his strong arms hauled Rox with him. She twisted and ended up with her legs straddling his thighs, standing on her knees. They were both wearing jeans, but she was essentially open to him, the bulge in his pants directly below her spread legs. If she lowered herself, her clit would rub right on him.
He surged forward, gathering her to him and shoving her tee shirt up to her armpits and then over her head. It flopped on the carpet somewhere. He was so tall that he had to bend to run his lips over the tops of her boobs, his breath warm and humid on her cleavage and the swells above her lacy, pink bra.
Yeah, she had been wearing the good lingerie, and she had bought more since she had moved in with Cash. Her subconscious had been planning this for weeks.
"Wow," he whispered, grasping her breasts, almost kneading them, one in each hand.
He had probably never felt real ones before. After all, they lived in California.
Cash held her tits, his palms and fingers full of her skin, and lifted them to his mouth. His lips and tongue started gently, drawing silken lines around her nipples through the thin lace while he held the weight of them, and then he opened his mouth, sucking her in.
Ripples started in her body, flowing outward.
He opened his mouth, breathing on the wet fabric and her skin.
Rox felt like she was tumbling and falling, speeding out of control. "Cash," she gasped.
"Hell, yes. Say it again." He used his thumbs to flip aside the lace of her bra cups and licked her nipples, suckling them into hard peaks.
Rox curled down over his head, standing on her knees, holding onto his shoulders, and gasping while he rolled his tongue around one nipple and the other and then sucked her hard. Her breath roughened, panting.
She didn't want to ask where this was going. She didn't want to know.
He stroked down her body to her ass and pulled her harder against himself while he lipped and tongued her tits. He cinched one arm around her waist, holding her tightly. With his other hand, he popped the clasp on her bra behind her back, dragged it down her arms, and tossed it aside, too.
Her body was winding up, just from his mouth on her breasts. Her breath caught in her throat, and she whimpered.
Cash glanced up at her, and he cracked a grin with his mouth still around her nipple, baring his teeth. He sucked her tit into his mouth and gently bit her.
Waves rolled through Rox, and she arched backward.
His arm around her waist held her to him, and he grabbed her other tit with his mouth and drove her crazy with sucking and biting that one, too.
God, she was ready to beg him to take her, and she couldn't. Too many things swirled in her head, all the reasons she shouldn't, not being able to work with him again, and that he would ghost her and disappear from her life as surely as if he had died.
She couldn't stop that tortured whimper, though, and she clutched his broad shoulders and his head to her, almost crying out.
His arm tightened around her waist, and she was falling to the side. She flopped on her back on the couch and grabbed her head. Everything was spinning so fast around her, but she could tell that it wasn't the wine that was dizzying her. It was Cash, and his hands and mouth on her body, and the spice of his faint cologne and the way his hair fell over his forehead and the fuzzy abandon in his bright green eyes.
He scrambled over her, grabbing at the fly of her jeans and skinning them off her in one fluid move, taking her underwear and fuzzy socks with them.
Damn, he was good at that.
And she was not surprised at all.
He pressed his lips to her belly, laving his tongue over her navel, traveling downward.
She arched under him and grabbed his shoulders, trying to drag him up because she was desperate to kiss his mouth, to have him in her arms and inside her body, but he stretched downward and laid on the couch between her legs.
"Cash." She tried to curl up to grab him.
He pushed her chest back with one hand and flipped her thighs over his shoulders.
She closed her eyes and reached for him, running her fingers through the silky strands of his hair. "You don't have to-"
He opened his mouth on her thigh and ran his teeth over her skin. "I want to."
"You don't have to."
"You've never been with a man who likes to watch you come, have you?" His deep voice vibrated, and his lips brushed her thigh as he spoke.
She opened her eyes. The ceiling above her was white and very far up there, and all she could feel was his arms locked around her thighs, holding her down. "I-I don't know."
He chuckled, his breath puffing against her skin between her legs. "If you don't know, then you haven't been."
Shudders ran through Rox at the thought of him watching her.
He started with her folds, running his tongue over the outside of her, almost tickling with the delicacy of his caresses until she was whimpering again.
His tongue grazed her clit, already swollen, already lightning-sensitive, peeking out.
A bolt of pleasure shoved though her, and Rox arched under him.
He licked her deeper, stroking her center with his tongue, staying away from her oversensitive clit.
Her body was tightening, and her fingers curled into fists in his hair.
He opened his mouth, sucking at her and licking, like he was using his mouth and tongue to suck the meat off a ripe peach. He was eating her, deep and hard, and Rox arched under him, trembling, her whole body crackling with energy begging to be released.
One of his arms that was wrapped around her thigh withdrew, and his mouth moved up just enough, not all the way to that pinpoint of sensation that was throbbing, begging for release, but up, and he slipped a finger inside her, rubbing her inside, too.
Rox bucked her hips, trying to find her release, and he growled against her pussy while he ate her, and then he slipped another finger inside her, too, filling her and stroking her hard.
She thrashed on the sofa, but his other burly arm around her leg held her down.
Some other finger drew light circles over her asshole, not scary at all, but he was attacking every sensitive place on her. She curled up, panting, crying, so tightly wound that her body was going to break.
Cash glanced up at her, a wicked gleam breaking though the daze of lust in his green eyes, and he moved his mouth up just far enough to take her clit with his tongue, rubbing and sucking it while he fucked her hard with his fingers and rubbed her asshole.