First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (18 page)

“No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop at all. I want this. I want more. I want it all.”

“You’re sure?” No question in his voice—he was confirming.

“I am. What about you?” I asked.

His warm lips and confident hands were my answer as he eased me onto the bed, our bodies resting on top of a pile of peach cloth.

And so Liam took as much as he gave, and it was pure and tender and what I needed.

In the end, I had lost my virginity on prom night, alright.

Except with the last guy I’d ever imagined.

Chapter Five

Sam

Amy’s apartment, after the show

Reaching for her again, my hands cradled her jaw, fingers interlaced in the long hair at the back of her neck, our breath mixing as tongues touched. My hands shifted to her arms, finally settling down and then—

Peace.

Something deep inside me just stopped, as if it could finally rest.

Sanctuary.

This wasn’t about fucking.
That
I could get nearly any time I wanted after a show. This was about intimacy. The point when you’re with someone, touching them and you realize that you’ve been invited to cross an invisible line and enter a new world. We all build shells around ourselves, and cracking them open to display what’s underneath takes a lot of courage. Sex itself isn’t what I’m talking about; there are degrees of touching and knowing and forging ahead with someone when it comes to being intimate.

Amy trusted me enough to let me touch her again.

It’s
all
about trust.

My hands roamed over her waist, the curve of her side and hips, the ends of her long hair tickling my palms. God, she smelled so good, and the heat of her lush body felt made solely for me, conjured only for the space between us. Her mouth devoured mine, her boldness making me rock hard as we entwined ourselves on her bed. Months without sex made me more than ready.

A tight band of need clenched every muscle in my body as Amy’s hands found my ass, then roamed up my back. No woman I’d been with had ever been so bold, and it turned everything up a notch. Wanting a willing body in bed was one thing; finding a woman willing to tell me what she wanted so that we could make everything so much better had been a rich fantasy of mine for—well, forever.

Could this really be Amy?

“Amy,” I said, pulling back just enough to look in her eyes, “I don’t get many second chances in life. I feel like I’m living in some sort of surreal moment where it could all be taken away in an instant, like when I open my eyes, or when I blink, as if this is an alternate reality,” I explained, my words feeling empty and stupid.

“No,” she gasped, interrupting me, wrapping those warm arms around my neck. “It’s the past four years that were the alternate reality. This,” she added, punctuating her words with a kiss that shot down my core and back to my brain like being stroked, “this is the life we should be living.”

“And now we are,” I finished for her, so ready to make love to her, to connect and deepen, to serve her for all the rest of time—in whatever reality we could carve out for ourselves. Pumped by desire, it was hard to balance my body’s screaming need to be in her, to give myself to her and to have her do the same, to get hot and sweaty and breathless on her bed with what I also knew—via a thin shred of restraint—needed to be respected.

I’d hurt her so intimately four years ago.

Could I heal her with intimacy now?

If this was her giving me the chance, then maybe I could start to believe in the divine again.

Amy

“Tell me what you want,” Sam said, murmuring in my ear before kissing my neck.

“What I want?” I laughed, my palms meandering down his back. What was left to want?

“I want to know everything about you, Amy. How you want to be kissed, how you want to be touched.” His eyes sought mine, looking up through his eyelashes as his mouth traversed my shoulder and collarbone.

As his lips touched mine again, tongue languid and searching, seeking as much to touch and know me as to communicate his own need, Sam’s words echoed in my head. My inexperience hit me hard, cutting short the yearning touch my hands wanted to continue. Once with Liam, a year with Brent—that was it. Sam must have been with so many people. A drummer in a band? And so hot? Of course he had expectations and comparisons and I—I had just my own wanting of him.

Half naked and all-eager, the full impact hit me just as Sam’s hungry kiss swept me out of my mind. His hands were on me, stroking my breasts and making my nipples ache. His palms were cupping my ass and his erection was at my fingertips, his hard, muscled back was mine to explore with my own hands.

But so much more than that—his
words
. Who says these things? I’d played out this moment thousands of times in my head over the years. Wondered how it would feel to hear him whisper my name, to be told he wanted me—needed me—
craved
me like no other woman.

His words were enough.

I didn’t want
enough
. I wanted so much more, and he offered it to me right now with his mouth, his hands, the hard press of his rigid manhood against my torso, my hand now seeking it out, enjoying the anticipated groan.

Sam didn’t disappoint. He slid his hands under my bra and unclasped it, nimble fingers so confident, as if he’d touched me this way a thousand times before. I felt unbound in more ways than one. Without saying a word, I pulled my own top and bra off, the air chilly enough to make my flesh pebble. When I threw my clothes aside and brushed my hair from my eyes, I found Sam gloriously shirtless, too, his eyes expectantly delighted. Matching mine.
 

So many years of pretending to be someone I wasn’t faded as reality filled the room like oxygen, fresh and clean and rejuvenating. Images of what it meant to be a sexual being tore through my mind like the moment of orgasm, where time speeds up and slows down at once. The headiness and import of this epiphany dissolved as I lit up in a grin, which Sam returned. I decided in that moment that I simply would not be self-conscious. Any hesitation was gone.

Gone.

Like his stilled hands, the butterflies of self-doubt stopped their fluttering.

And something in me just...broke.

Snapped.

Surrendered.

Be still, my heart
had a whole new meaning as his eyes took me in and I found him appreciating what he saw. My fingers drank in his skin, parched, seeking to be quenched. Everything outside of this room faded, leaving only the sound of our breath, the rasp of skin against skin and sheets, and the deafening silence of questions unasked but quickly answered through touch.

Oh, how hot and soft and hard and
good
his body felt against mine.

“Amy,” he groaned, the vibration against my lips as his hands inventoried me, taking what I’d thought of as my ribs, my hips, my waist, my breasts and turning them into some kind of holy path to be traversed and revered. Those hands said millions of words that would never escape from Sam’s lips, but that I knew now in the most intimate of ways.

How many more words could his body say?

Bring on the dictionary. Please. And then a thesaurus...

I felt seventeen and twenty-two at the same time, a scrabbling piece of my brain trying to stop the undeniable—that we were a man and a woman ready to make love, and not stumbling teens dancing around what we wanted. Sam’s strong touch dipped down under my waistband, my throat tightening in a gasp as his finger slid under my panties, the pads of his fingers sinking into my ass and raking up, the sensation making me want him inside me, thrusting and sweaty, calling my name.

His mouth on my breast, his tongue played with my nipple as I tried to catch my breath, each nip and suckle interrupting all attempts at finding any shred of self-control.

Good.

My own hands seemed useless, as if I’d forgotten what to do with them as Sam took every remaining brain cell I possessed and tweaked it with his tongue. His hands now worked to dispense the final barrier between us, my pants opening and sliding down over my thighs as if they had a will of their own, the delicate hush of silken panties against my skin like a chorus cheering us on.

“You are so amazing,” he murmured, coming up to kiss me. A quick kiss, then he gently leaned me back on the futon and nuzzled my belly, trailing kisses up to the underside of my breasts, then down...down...to foreign territory.

That’s right.

No man had ever gone there with his mouth.

And Sam’s sexual GPS seemed to have my clit as its destination.

Don’t recalculate. Don’t recalculate.

All the reading, all the romance novels and sex manuals and erotica and sex magazine stories and articles, had made me want this with a dripping need that made me ache from throat to...

There.

Oh, yes—
there
. For years I’d wondered what it would actually feel like to have someone do this to me—to want to do this. To enjoy doing this. Sam’s fingers were so gentle, yet commanding. He knew what he was doing, I—I hadn’t had to ask. Earlier, he’d asked me to tell him what I wanted.

And yet he knew.

“Oh!” fluttered from my throat, the sound almost an afterthought, the touch of his lips and tongue on my bare lips and clit so enticing and electrifying it felt more like a shock than an erotic sensation. A flash of heat poured through all the nerve endings in the softer, wetter parts of me, a slower, deeper tightening in muscles through my belly and ass contrasting with the microshocks of pulsing shivers that his mouth elicited.
 

The feeling of giving my body to him so intimately, his mouth guiding me to a place of pleasure I knew existed in theory but couldn’t imagine was so—

Sam stopped and ran his hands up over my hips, to the edge of my breasts, and kissed my mons, the gesture surprisingly sweet compared to the very erotic nature of what he’d just done with me. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered.

Too shy to look down at him, afraid I would meet his eyes and he’d see the mix of everything scattered inside me, I arched my hips without realizing I did it, let my fingers sink into his hair, and whispered back the only word I could think or speak:“More.”

His hands came back to my thighs, taking in my skin as if he were memorizing it, his hands so worshipful it made me relax. No self-conscious posturing, no worrying about the light and having my physical flaws exposed. We were just here and enjoying each other. That was all this had to be, even if there really was so much more.

“With pleasure,” he said, his voice filled with a playful tone that made me want him even more. As his tongue savored me I inhaled sharply, pressing against his mouth ever so hesitantly, wanting this to last forever, even as I felt the familiar tendrils of an orgasm beginning to grow inside, seeking light and the explosive release I anticipated would come soon.

His mouth knew exactly how to play my body, though, and then just as I ached for him to enter me, to make love, I felt a finger slip in, slow and measured, as Sam’s tongue teased and laved, his other hand sliding over my belly, my hips beginning to shift in concert with his tongue.

Oh, God. Perfect. This was like rich, melted chocolate poured over the core of my sexuality, like wet velvet and—all the clichés seemed simultaneously deeply true and exceptionally shallow to describe how it felt to be licked and suckled and the flittering touch of a man who clearly loved to go down on a woman. His hands, his mouth—his whole being—transmitted that fact with his slow motions, how he took his sweet time, how he checked in and treasured all of this.

All of me.

And then—some shift inside made my mind go blank, my body arching up, an uncontrolled shaking taking over. Reflex made me pull away but Sam followed, his hand pressing deeper into my navel, his mouth pursuing my clit as I began to writhe, the waves of heat like a nuclear cloud, both explosive and expansive at once.

I needed to freeze. I needed to twitch. I needed to pull away. I needed to shove myself deeper onto his tongue. All those states needed to exist at the same time and it defied the laws of physics to even try, yet that’s what happened as every muscle in my body tightened at once, my walls clamping on his fingers, my legs squeezing together, my arms reaching up to grasp a pillow and pull it apart, the harsh sound of the sheets ripping off the corners of the bed as I balled them in my fists.

The tension abated and all my muscles melted as Sam’s mouth changed against my lower lips, as if I could feel him smile, his tongue slowing, and then—the pulse began again, my entire body riding this new wave. This time, though, the wave didn’t crest. It built and built, Sam’s ribs embraced by my thighs, his mouth a mystery that solved my need, and the climax he pulled out of me shattered everything I thought I knew about life.

All I wanted was him. His skin, his flesh, his tongue, his whole self as the orgasm took over all my blood, a heated rush trying to escape through my core, my mouth, my hands, my—anything that would unleash what was in me. What Sam had found in me.

What Sam had put in me all those years ago.

“Sam!” I moaned, his name replacing the word
more
, because I had enough right here, right now, and as I said his name a second time I thrashed, my head twisting from side to side as the room spun and swayed, my body exploding vessel by vessel, nerve by nerve, with a pleasure that made me part of everything.

And then it was too much. Too intense. Too—just
too
.

“No!” I begged. “Please. Stop, stop, stop,” I pleaded, scooting back and sitting up fast, my core on fire and my legs shaking. “It’s too much. I just—wow.”

Sam sat up, too, and I realized he was still half-clothed. I was completely nude and wet and my scent was all over him as he crawled to me and took me in a breathtaking kiss, my own taste in me without warning, the boldness making me ready for more instantly.

With hurried fingers I dispatched with the snap on his jeans, the hiss of the zipper like a gasp to match my own, and then Sam kicked off his pants, never breaking the kiss. My own taste seemed normal now, and his rock-hard erection was in my hands in a second, his mouth a groan that rewarded my own boldness.