Hard Time (15 page)

“Face-to-face.”

Warmth bloomed in me, happy hunger. “Sure.”

“Let me taste you first,” he said, already moving, urging me to swap places. “I’ll get you so ready. And get a hold on myself before I lose it.”

He straddled my legs, and when his hands slipped beneath my back I arched to let him free my bra clasp. His cock pressed along my navel, hot and heavy, still slippery from my mouth. The breath left him in a rush as he lifted the cups away, his lids dropping like blinds, his gaze slivers of heat searing my bare skin. He moved his knees between my thighs, gruff, shoved a forearm beneath my back, taking my breast in the other hand. The rough stroke of his thumb, then the smooth, slick heat of his tongue. I held him, fingers in his dark hair, my own head driving into the pillow as his mouth teased and sucked and spoiled. Then those lips were at my ribs, my belly, his arm peeling free from under me. Strong hands on my hip bones, kisses trailing low to flirt with the lace border of my panties. More lace at the sides, and his fingers curled under it, tugging. I lifted my butt and let him strip me bare.

As he settled between my legs he said, “Tell me what you need.”

“Just to feel how much you want this.” And I could see it already, the need in his eyes and the hunger in his parted lips. Awe in the crease of his brow.

I’d never done this and felt what I did then. Pure impatience, not a trace of worry. I didn’t care how I looked, how I smelled or tasted, and whether those things were good enough. A younger woman’s worries. I only cared that Eric discover it all—the flavor and scent of my desire, the shape and feel of this place he’d not visited in so long.

He taunted, breathing deeply, letting me feel the warmth of his exhalation. I gripped his hair tighter. The faintest contact—his nose, then his lower lip, another long breath. My legs shifted and he stilled them, holding my thighs in place. Those hands told me,
You’re dreaming if you think I’m going to rush this.

His voice told me, “It felt so good—your mouth on me.” I felt each word against my most sensitive skin.

“You felt so good there,” I whispered back. “I want to feel you every way I can, before we say good night. All the ways we told each other about—”

I gasped as his tongue moved, a firm, gliding stroke tracing my outer lip. I let his hair go to grasp his shoulder, needing skin and muscle. He mirrored the caress on the other side, and my nails bit him. A greedy sound warmed me. Slow, long licks along the inner seams of my lips, then a deep sweep of his hot tongue, straight up the center. Another, and finally those soft lips closed around my clitoris.

“Oh.”

He sucked, tongue flickering. And though my sighs were near silent, he moaned as if he were fucking—as if he could feel precisely what I did.

The air was cool when his mouth abandoned me. “What did you fantasize about most,” he asked, “while we were still writing each other?”

I shut my eyes as his mouth went back to work. “Dark things.”

His stroking tongue demanded,
What dark things?

“Always you . . . exposing yourself. Us kissing, maybe, then your hand, lowering your shorts. Showing me how excited you were. Things I never thought about before . . . not the way you make me do.” A man’s bare excitement, bold as pornography.

He changed his position, leaving me aching as he shifted onto his hip so he could clasp his cock. His flesh looked heavy, and as he stroked I watched it go from swollen to steel. Watched his muscles tense, the ones along his side knitting, his belly furrowed, his arm locked. Excitement glistened at his crown, and I felt the same evidence greeting his tongue as he lapped at my arousal.

“I wondered how you looked,” I muttered, head fuzzy. “When you touched yourself. Thinking about me . . . I bet it was never this quiet, or dark.” What else must he be wallowing in? “Never this warm, in the winter. On a bed this soft. Tasting me, like you are now.”

His pumping fist fumbled at that, his laving tongue disrupted by a deep moan.

“Can you taste me?” I asked. “How much I want you?”

“Yes.” His nose rubbed my clit as his tongue drove deep.

I cupped his neck, our skin damp, his hair curling under my palm. “You can’t taste me deep enough,” I said, the words flowing from who knew where. From some dark place hell-bent on baiting this man. “Your fingers can’t explore me how I need you to.”

His hand abandoned his cock at that. Two digits slid between my lips, his mouth claiming my clit. He showed me exactly how right I was.

“That’s good, Eric. But it’s not enough.”

“Tell me,” he murmured, teeth nearly nipping, making me twitch. He moved his fingers like a cock, steady and stiff. “Tell me what you need, Annie.”

“You. All of you.” Imagining just that, the pleasure simmering between my legs spiked, tight and grasping.

“I won’t last a minute.”

“Good. I want to see that. How bad you need this.”

His moan was everything—excitement, frustration, awe, aggression. I could taste his need in that sound, as surely as he could taste mine on his tongue.

“Eric.”

Another moan, a surrender that curled his body around my leg, muscles tightening.

“Show me,” I said softly, and stroked his hair. “Show me what it feels like, to be wanted by a man, the way you want me.”

His eyes caught mine, burning bright across the landscape of my naked skin. Strong shoulders rolled as he moved, stalking up my body, arms at my ribs, thighs knocking mine wide. Anticipation roared through me like fire, and getting a condom detached and unwrapped for him took ten lifetimes. He leaned back, chest and abdomen gorgeous in the candlelight, forearm flexing as he rolled the latex down, all the way down. He was big, and the way it hugged him was the best kind of obscene, making me want to feel the same—stroked and stretched and filled with him, every filthy thing.

“You ready?” he asked me, voice thick.

“Yeah. You?”

He held himself steady, held my eyes. “I’ve been ready for this for months. Though I never really thought I’d get to be here.”

“Me neither.”

“You deserve a man who’ll spoil you rotten,” he said. “Make love or fuck or whatever it is you want, for as long as you need it. What you’re gonna get is somebody else, this first time. I can’t help that. But if you let me, next time I’ll be everything you need, I swear.”

“You already are,” I whispered. “Whatever you are, that’s what I want.”

He lowered onto braced arms, sealing us with body heat. I opened wider. As his smooth, sheathed head met my lips, I grasped his shoulders, anchoring myself. Holding my breath, memorizing everything. Every ounce of pressure as he pushed, every thick inch of his arousal as I welcomed it. Every pound of muscle as his body sank against me.

His eyes shut as his cock slid home, all the way home. “Oh God.”

I could feel him throbbing inside me, the urgent tick of his pulse. It was more perfect and right than I ever could have guessed, the two of us joined this way. Like the electricity I’d felt between our eyes so many times at Cousins, a thousandfold. It put my fantasies to the blackest shame, the reality of this moment.

“Whatever you want to feel,” I told him. “Take it. It can be about you, this time.”

“You’re so
fucking
warm.” His eyes opened. “And beautiful. And soft. Everything.”

“Take me. Take me like this is your birthday—like you can have anything you want.” And wasn’t it his birthday, in a way? A rebirth, a man’s sexuality rising up into the light once more.

With a steadying breath, he began to move. He was recording every centimeter of the friction, surely as I was, every sensation, every subtle, mutual stroke of our joined bodies. I rubbed my palms over his chest and belly, feeling greedy.

“You’re gorgeous.” I drank him in, golden in the candlelight, honed and powerful. His cock glinted each time he pulled out, slick from me. Thick from
wanting
me.

“This what you need?” he breathed, his motions beginning to speed. His excitement had darkened, awe eclipsed by animal appetites.

“Yes.”

“Am I big enough for you?” He made it rough—a half-dozen long, smug thrusts showcasing his arousal from base to crown.

“Yes. You’re perfect.” This needy creature, mine to spoil.

“You make me feel that way. So fucking big. You’re so tight.”

“From wanting you.”

“Yeah.” He lowered, weight shifting from his palms to his forearms. “I can feel it.” And he made me feel it—the way he could fuck hard, effortless from how wet I was. The only resistance came from how lush and swollen he’d made me, how big I’d made him, but not the tiniest hint of friction.

I touched his back, his arms, his hips, kneaded his ass and urged his strokes. He felt so
male
on top of me, strong body flush to mine, muscles clenching. With another man, one I didn’t want this badly, I might’ve felt overwhelmed—plowed or crushed. Violated by the thick, pounding length of him. But all I felt with Eric was his desperation. He moaned against my neck, something in the sound telling me he’d crossed a boundary. That he was too far gone to pull back.

“Show me, Eric.”

A deep grunt answered me, then, “I’m too close. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not—let me see you come apart.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, taking the permission. “I’ll show you.” His body seemed to rise up, casting me even deeper in its shadow. His angle was sharper, his handsome, fierce face right above mine, eyes on fire behind those heavy lids.

“You’re so fucking wet.”

I touched his hair, smoothing it back, holding it. Holding
him
. “You made me this way. The things you did. And from wanting you.”

“You made me this hard,” he echoed, and took me roughly. I palmed his hips, feeling the way his muscles worked.

His forearms butted my ribs, hands sliding under my back. He sealed us together, close as two people can get, holding me tight as his cock took what it needed.

“Oh. Oh, here I come.” He was falling to pieces above me. “Here I come, baby.”

“Good.”

“Fuck, you’re so warm.” He buried his face against my neck, hips hammering hard and frantic.

I held his head. “Come on, Eric.” I could feel his pleasure. I could sense how hard he was going to orgasm from the way it kept building.
Come on home,
I thought.
Home to me.

“Yeah. Yeah. Oh God, here I come. Here I come.”

Every inch of him seized, muscles rigid and his cock buried deep. A grunt, a spasm, and another, and finally—

“Annie.” So quiet. Like a whispered secret, like that very first time he’d uttered my name.

And then it was just his breathing, harsh and labored and wondrous in the dim room. He pushed up, taking his weight off me. His face was incredulous. Drunk. He brushed my nose with his, touched his forehead to mine, panted against my temple. He felt so startlingly right. So meant for me.

He luxuriated a moment longer, then reached between us to secure the condom and ease out. I admired his body as he moved aside and off the bed, ducking out to disappear into the bathroom, returning a moment later. The most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, the candles bringing back that summer tan I’d admired in an alternate reality, in the Cousins Correctional Facility exercise yard. In August. In some previous life.

He joined me, the both of us propping ourselves on our hips and elbows, knees locking, skin radiating heat. He touched my hair, chest still rising and falling hard, though his expression was pure peace.

“Tell me that was worth waiting five years for,” I teased, smiling.

“Tell me the same.”

I nodded. “It was.”

“That was worth way more than anything I can think of.” His eyes roamed my throat, my breasts, our tangled legs. “That was so much more than I even let myself imagine, back when we were writing each other those letters. You felt so much more . . . So much more of everything I’d guessed. Soft and warm and so fucking . . .
right.”

I shivered. “Exactly.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“Anything.” Two minutes of just about anything, I was so wound up. “Your hand, maybe. While you kiss me.”

“Here,” he said, moving. He sat up, legs in a V, back against the pillow and wall. “Straddle me.”

I did, settling so our faces were level. His mouth took mine as two fingertips found my clit, his hard arm flexing against my breast with his teasing motions. I swayed against him, overcome. His fingers curled and dipped, the pad of his hand rubbing me as he penetrated.

“God.” I spoke into his mouth, dizzy.

“Pretend it’s me,” he said, lips moving to my ear. He slid inside me, again and again, and I did as he said, imagined his cock. Remembered his cock, the way it had owned me, flat on my back. My hips were moving then, eager to be the one doing.

“Yeah. Ride me.” His other hand rose up between us, not cupping my breast, merely grazing it, the contact sparking each time my motions rasped my nipple against his palm.

“I’ve imagined this,” he whispered, voice so close by my ear, it became the room itself. “You using me, to feel all this. All those things you missed.”

“Me, too.”

“Next time it’ll be my cock,” he promised. “Hard as I was before. But for you, not me.”

“That’s what I’m imagining.”

“Hard,” he said again. “All for you.”

I flushed all over, from his tone as much as his words. From how cocky he sounded, and from knowing he’d not sounded this way for anyone else in so long.

“What else?” I asked, needing this man, exactly this way.

“Whatever you want, like I said. Ride me. Hold my face between your legs until I taste it when you come. Watch in a mirror as I take you from behind—whatever you want to feel. Or see. Or make me do for you.”

God, all of that. I nearly asked for that final thing, for the mirror. For him behind me, stroking me home, moving his hips so I could imagine we were fucking, that he was owning me. But
not tonight,
my mind whispered, sounding so like Eric, back in his truck. Tonight, face-to-face.

“Faster,” I whispered. “Use your fingers.”

He slid them out, stroking me with my own slickness. “Like that?”