Hard and Fast (24 page)

Maybe, just maybe, all the way to that sacred place they were both curious about that had thus far eluded them.

The moment stretched and she didn’t know what to say, if she should rein it in, keep it light and casual, or hint, take a risk, suggest there be more than a few romps in bed together.

But then Ty’s mouth split into a grin. “So we’re a couple of loveless Joes, huh? At least we know how to have bang-up sex.”

A little deflated, then irritated with herself for feeling that way, Imogen forced a smile. “True.” What she didn’t say was that they both knew at some point sex could no longer sustain a relationship, that you either had to cross over into emotional intimacy to mirror your physical intimacy, or go your separate ways. Almost no one could have a long-term sexual relationship without developing feelings for the person or developing the desire to feel more than they did. At least Imogen knew she couldn’t.

She already felt more than she should.

Stuffing another grape in her mouth, she struggled to find something witty to say in return, but she was never witty. So she was chewing, wishing she could swallow her confusing emotions like fruit, when Ty reached over and ran his finger across the back of her hand.

“Do you know that when you have an orgasm, you stop breathing?” he said, his own food abandoned on the table as he stared at her with a look that she recognized.

The change of subject caught her off guard and she swallowed hard. “I’m aware of that,” she said, her heart rate stepping up at the memory of his fingers inside her barely an hour earlier. “When it grabs me like that, I can’t breathe.”

“That silence, the way your eyes go wide and your mouth drops open, and you stop breathing for a second or two, is the hottest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you,” she said, not sure what else to say. While she was surprising herself by how sexually comfortable and almost coy she was with Ty, she was still no seductress. She didn’t know how to play the game, only how to be honest.

“I want to see that look right now.”

“Fruit and turkey don’t get me that excited,” she said, which was the truth. But he got her excited, and just staring at her across the table was enough to have her feeling the beginnings of a blaze stoking to life between her thighs.

The corner of his mouth went up. “I would wonder about you if they did.” Ty stood up. “Come on.”

“To the tent?”

“Yes, unless you want to do this on the table.”

The thrill of it warred with the image of splinters in her backside. “I thought you wanted to eat first.”

“Changed my mind.” Ty was coming around the table, and he took the sandwich out of her hand and slapped it down on the table. “Up. Come on.” He tugged her hand to get her to rise. “I’m going to make you stop breathing again.”

“We talked about this, remember?” Imogen said in protest, even as she went with him. “I don’t have multiple orgasms.”

“That was an hour ago.”

“I still think it counts . . . It’s sort of like I can’t have more than two in twenty-four hours, usually only one.”

“We’ll see.”

A shiver went up her spine at that promise. “Am I going to be uncomfortable?” she asked, thinking about the hard ground and her head grinding into it.

Ty threw open the flap to the tent. “Only if having a dick buried in you makes you uncomfortable.”

Alrighty, then. It was safe to say she didn’t really have a problem with that, even though his words startled her. “You shock me sometimes,” she told him.

Looking back at her, he paused, his eyes searching. “Am I too much for you, babe? Do I need to rein it in? Because I can do that.”

She took a second, really listening to her gut. Did she want him to stop being outrageous and demanding in their sexual encounters? Uh, no. Not at all. She loved that he took charge, that he guided her and told her what he wanted. That he forced her to say what
she
wanted. There was something very sexy and primal about being taken by Ty.

“No,” she told him, shaking her head. “Nothing is too much.” She knew precisely how that would sound to him, and it had the effect she wanted. His eyes narrowed, and a low groan slipped out of his mouth.

“Oh, yeah? Then in you go. Down on the sleeping bags.” He gestured for her to enter the tent.

Imogen ducked and entered, getting her bearings. It didn’t look glamorous or comfortable but it didn’t look dirty either. And there was something cozy about the peak of the tent and the nylon walls. She dropped to her knees carefully and crawled forward on the sleeping bag. It was thicker than it looked and not as dreadful as she had anticipated. But concerns about damage to her knees disappeared when Ty moved in behind her and pulled her hips back until her backside collided with a very impressive erection.

“Hello,” she said, turning to look at him over her shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting that.” Even though they were fully clothed, the motion of him bumping gently into her, over and over, had her thighs going damp.

“If you’re on all fours in front of me, I consider that an invitation,” he said, his grip on her hips tightening. “It’s presenting.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that.” So she could do it frequently. Imogen bit her lip when his hand slid across her thigh and moved down to cup her mound. Then she struggled not to moan when he undid her jeans and started tugging them off.

“They’re not going to come off in this position,” she said.

“You want to bet?”

Not really, because Imogen could already tell he was going to prevail in triumph over the denim. He pretty much had them down her thighs already, and when she leaned forward a little, he was able to get them down to her knees, panties included. Then his finger slipped inside her and she stiffened. The man knew dead-on right where to touch her. It was amazing. It was sexual ESP.

“Shit, I left the condoms in my backpack out there,” Ty said, even as his finger continued to move. “I have to go get them.”

“I’m on the pill.” Imogen rolled her hips back to meet his strokes, her eyes half-closed at the delicious impact of her colliding with his finger. “As far as anything else goes, I trust you. I presume you would trust me to be truthful with you about my health as well.” She panted a little, struggling to find her breath. “I mean, honestly, it’s all rather bizarre. Every relationship passes out of the condom phase as a couple becomes more committed and/or trusts one another on a deeper level. Yet, unless they have actually been tested for disease during the course of the relationship, they are no more ‘safe’ than they were when they were still using condoms. What changes in reality? Nothing, except the skewed perception that now that they know each other, they couldn’t possibly have an STD, whereas previously it was still a possibility. It’s an odd alteration based purely on emotion, isn’t it?”

“Very odd. And I don’t have anything. I’ve been tested.”

“But it’s not like you can carry around a card indicating that you’re—”

He interrupted her. “Hey, Engine?”

His finger had stilled in her, which she found disappointing. She wiggled a little to provoke a response from him but he didn’t give it. “Yes?”

“Are you giving me permission to be inside you without a condom?”

Imogen processed the question and didn’t hesitate in her answer. “Yes, I am.”

He gave a soft, exasperated laugh. “Then quit yapping and let me fuck you.”

“Hey.” She reached back and smacked at his leg, which was somehow magically bare. How he’d gotten his own jeans down his thighs was a mystery to her. “I don’t yap.”

Ty yanked off his T-shirt. “No, you’re right, you don’t yap.” His finger slipped into her again. “You are the smartest woman I know, with witty and interesting observations on everything around you, especially people, and I love to hear you talk, to hear your thoughts. Most of the time. Now is not one of those times, because right now I just want to grit my teeth, let my mind go blank, and sink into the sensation of your body closing around mine in a hot, wet cocoon.”

She swore that with each word he spoke she got wetter and more aroused, until she was thrusting frantically backward onto his finger and gripping the sleeping bag beneath her by the time he was done talking. That had sounded hot and excited and almost, kind of, romantic. Like the Ty McCordle version of Shakespeare. “Okay,” she said. “I’m done thinking.”

“Good. Just feel me.”

Then he removed his finger and thrust inside her, sans a condom, and Imogen’s head snapped back at the acute pleasure the impact brought. “Oh, God,” she said, her muscles trembling around him as she wondered for a split second if she’d actually had a mini-orgasm.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, hands squeezing her thighs, his penis pulsing inside her as he paused. “Thank you, thank you for letting me go bareback.”

“Bareback?” She gave a soft laugh. “I like that expression.”

“I like this,” he said, and started to move, a quick, hard pace that had Imogen holding on to the sleeping bag so she didn’t fall.

She could honestly say that she liked it, too. It was possessive, urgent, the hot friction, the hard slap of his thighs against her like an invitation to lose herself in sex, to let it take her and sweep her under until she was screaming with pleasure. The position that had always bored her somehow took on a totally different meaning, ripped a relentless and uncontrollable response from her, a desperate need to meet his rhythm, to hold on.

“Oh, babe,” he said, his voice ragged.

“Yeah?” Imogen dipped her head and let her hair slide forward over her face.

“Yeah.”

He thrust so hard she actually lost her balance, then gasped when he quickly pulled out. “Oh, where are you going?”

“Too close,” he said. “Lie down on your back.”

Already used to his orders, she immediately did it. He always had great ideas, and she trusted this one would be no different. Once she was on her back, he stripped her jeans and panties all the way off, then did the same to her shirt. It was warm in the tent, the sun filtering down in the cracks where the window flaps were, and it felt intimate, cozy, just the two of them out in the middle of nowhere.

Imogen smiled up at him and he paused as he leaned over her. He cupped her cheek, stroking her skin, and smiled back. “Can I kiss you?”

“Of course you can. You’ve done everything else.”

He laughed. “True enough. But looking down at you, you look so pretty, so perfect, I thought maybe I shouldn’t mess up that smile.”

Ty really was romantic. She could have never imagined how sexy and tender his words could possibly be, but they were. On the verge of melting like milk chocolate in the sun, she reached up and ran her fingers across his bottom lip.

“I would love a kiss.”

“Then I guess I have to.” Ty leaned over her, propped up on his arms, and kissed her.

She loved the way he kissed her, the way he started out slow, then got faster and more demanding, his kisses hungrier and more urgent as his tongue dipped inside her mouth. Ty pulled back and took her glasses off. He tucked them in the corner of the tent, then took her shoulders and rolled her so she was on top of him.

Sprawled across his chest, she asked, “So what do you have in mind?”

“First you’re going to kiss me.”

Grinning, she leaned down and moved her mouth over his, enjoying the control the angle gave her. “Yeah? And then?”

“Now you’re going to sit on my face.”

Subtle as usual, Ty was. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He started to push her back so she’d sit up. “And why do we keep saying ‘yeah’ to each other?”

“Because we don’t know what else to say?” Imogen hadn’t even noticed, which was interesting because usually she noticed everything.

“Yet another reason to put my tongue to better use.” Now he was tugging on her hips, trying to get her to scoot forward on his chest.

Imogen was sitting up at his urging, but was looking around the tent, wondering how she could manage the position he wanted without a headboard. “I don’t have anything to hold on to,” she told him.

Ty took her hands and placed them on her breasts. “Hold these.”

She laughed. “That’s not going to give me balance.”

“But it looks good.” His eyebrows went up and down as he gave her a naughty look. “Rub your nipples a little.”

“No. I don’t think any of this is going to work, Ty.” Maybe it would physically, but for some reason she felt awkward and self-conscious.

He didn’t even bother to respond. He just yanked her forward until her thighs were on either side of him. Spreading her apart, he slid his tongue along her. It was an intimate position, one that surrounded his head with her body, and left her sitting up, feeling exposed and vulnerable.

One of his hands snaked up and covered hers, his thumb rubbing across her beaded nipple. “We can change positions if you really want to,” he murmured between flicks of his tongue.

Imogen almost said yes. She wasn’t used to being so out there in the air, so to speak. But then she hesitated. “Do you like this position?”

“I like looking up at you. I like seeing you in the power position, taking what you like. But I want you comfortable. Hell, I want you more than comfortable. I want you moaning and writhing and coming all over me.”

That was a good plan. Imogen closed her eyes and took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders. What difference did it make how her body was positioned? Would a woman who was truly confident in her sexuality hesitate to sit up when a man was offering to give her oral sex? Of course not, and Imogen wanted to be that woman. She wanted to stop thinking and just feel.

So she sat up and shut down her mind, concentrating on the sensation of Ty between her thighs, coaxing her body to desire. He was incredibly good at it, hitting her in just the right spots, with just the right pressure, kicking up her breathing into panting.