Jaded (9 page)

For a split second she studied him. An odd mix of emotion flickered through her eyes, hesitation and nerves blending into a need that would have knocked at his heart if she hadn’t told him flat-out that she wanted to get over a mistake. No problem. If she wanted to go home with a sabbatical fling behind her, he could do that.

Then she straddled him, planted her palms on either side of his head and kissed him. It was hot and wet and sliding, pure visceral demand. A bolt of electricity splintered inside him, and he wrapped one arm around her waist while the other cupped her skull. Her tongue slid into his mouth, rubbed against his. He growled and fisted his hand in her hair at the same time he tightened his grip on her waist, pulling her tight against his erection.

Easy . . .

But she rocked against him, the movement hard and slow, just like he liked it, and
easy
incinerated in the heat combusting between them. He used his grip on her hair to tug her head back and expose her throat. Lifting his head, he nipped and licked and nuzzled his way along her jaw to her pulse point. A faint scent rose from her skin, and it was all he could do to refrain from biting the town’s librarian in a place not even a turtleneck would hide the mark.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

She tugged her head free from his grip and straightened her elbows to loom over him. Shiny hair clung to her flushed cheeks, and he took a primitive satisfaction in the fact that her sexy mouth now crossed the line into provocative.

The corners of her lips lifted, telling him she not only knew what he was looking at but why. Once again, he exhaled long and slow, fighting to keep control.

When she bent and put that mouth to the hollow between his collarbones, his hard-won control slipped a little more.

No expectations. Just take what she’s giving you. Don’t ask for more. Hope is what burns you. Not disappointment.

“I want to taste you,” she said.

His heart stuttered in his chest before he answered. “Be my guest,” he said roughly.

She put her lips back to the hollow, slowly, thoroughly exploring the landscape of his chest and shoulders with her mouth. He took in the arched line of her spine, the flare of her hips in jeans until he couldn’t take any more, then closed his eyes. The blunt-cut ends of her hair added texture to the soft, wet kisses, while the contrast between trailing hair and her teeth made him tense and grunt.

“Too much?” she asked, concern in her eyes.

Fuck no.
He managed to filter his response to a curt, “No.”

“Good,” she said, and shifted down, nuzzling into the mat of his chest hair, then the line disappearing into the waistband of his jeans. She sat up, straddling his thighs, and tucked her hair behind her ears.

He knew what was coming next. She’d unbutton his jeans. Instead she trailed her fingers over his hip bones, sending another flare of heat to his cock.

“I’ve never actually seen these muscles defined before,” she said.

Suits with desk jobs had no reason to work out enough to get that kind of muscle. In Denver, he had had good reason. Sure the chief and the mayor developed high-level strategies to combat gangs and drugs, but strategy didn’t mean shit at two in the morning when it was him and a tweaker. Strength and smarts lowered the odds he’d get zipped into a body bag. In Walkers Ford, he’d increased his odds of dying of old age, but old habits died hard. All he had left of the life he’d imagined for himself was Duke and his workout routine.

In response, he linked his fingers behind his head to elevate it and nodded at her. “See something you want?”

She smoothed her fingertips inward from his hip bones. The muscles contracted and her gaze flashed up to his. “Does that tickle?”

“Not hardly,” he replied.

Confidence renewed, she slid her fingers into his waistband and began to work open his button fly. The backs of her fingers brushed his erect cock with every movement, and his heart pounded hard and slow in his chest. No flirting glances, no teasing looks through that sexy hair, just a businesslike stripping that left him with his jeans trapping his legs and his cock straining up toward his navel.

She stopped and peered at him. Her fingers toyed with the hem of her blue V-neck, but he stopped her. “Only if you want to,” he said.

Her shoulders relaxed. She pulled the T-shirt up and off, then dropped it on the floor by the bed. She wore a pretty lace bra in a shade of cream very close to her skin color.

“It’s going to be hard to walk into the library knowing you’re wearing something so sexy under your clothes,” he said without moving.

And there it was, the blush he dreamed about, blooming on her collarbone as she ducked her head and reached behind her back to unfasten her bra. The lace dropped away, rasping against his cock as she dropped it beside her shirt.

She looked so mysterious wearing only spring twilight and a blush. Her nipples hardened under his gaze, but he stopped himself from reaching for her. Intentionally or not, she rewarded his restraint by leaning forward to lick a path from the base of his shaft up to the tip.

A low growl rumbled into the air. For a split second he wanted to roll her, spread her, and fuck her, but pride and intuition kept him to nothing more overt than a tightening of his interlaced fingers. He could hold out against this, and that smart little voice in his head, the one he always honored, told him she needed this.

Don’t worry. You’re going to get yours.

He shut off the more cynical voice in favor of concentrating on the sensation of Alana’s hand wrapped around the base of his shaft while her lips closed around the tip.

“Oh, fuck,” he said.

And there went his filter. Her tongue sought out the bundle of nerves just below the tip, teasing and flicking before she took him deep enough for her lips to meet her fist. The resulting combination of hot wet mouth and tight squeeze was enough to make his hips buck. Keeping the tight suction she moved slow and purposefully, as if her purpose was to drive him fucking insane.

“Stop,” he bit out.

Her little hum of protest vibrated down his shaft to his balls. Breaking his promise to himself, he reached down and wove his fingers into her hair and tugged. Breaking contact, she looked up at him. Her eyes were glassy, the blue stormy dark and unlike anything he’d seen before.

“I’m gonna come if you don’t stop,” he said. “Is that what you want?”

She blinked, and a bit of awareness returned. “No,” she said.

She scrambled off him. He shucked his jeans while she did the same beside the bed, her movements jerky and endearingly awkward. Biting her lip, she yanked open her nightstand to remove a box of condoms. An unopened box of condoms. While she tore into thin cardboard he stared unabashedly at the slim curve of her hips and the triangle of pale blond hair at the crux of her thighs.

“Yes, I am really a blonde,” she said without looking at him.

“I didn’t doubt it,” he replied, amused.

One condom gripped firmly in her hand, she straddled him again, her hair swaying as she did. She opened the packet. He gripped his shaft and pulled it away from his abdomen, but let her roll down the latex without his interference. As much as he wanted to cover her fingers with his, to guide her hand down to his balls and the sensitive patch behind them, he held off.

Next time.

If there is a next time . . .

There’s so going to be a next time, because if this is all she wants, that’s great. It was all he had to give.

She wrapped her hand around his and centered herself over his erection. The pause before she lowered herself went on long enough for him to drag his gaze from the vision of her hand, his hand, his erection, and the damp, mysterious curls a mere inch away from his shaft.

“I want to ride you,” she murmured when his gaze met hers.

The words nearly disappeared into the deepening night and the fog of lust clouding his brain. “I want that, too,” he replied. “So bad.”

She sank down, her hand leaving his to brace on his hip bone. He kept his wrapped around the base of his shaft, preventing her from taking him in fully, until the sensation of wet heat working the head of his cock drove him to grip her hips and guide her down.

Her eyes closed and a very faint, high-pitched noise escaped her parted lips. It took every ounce of willpower he had left at his disposal to keep his hips still and relax into the pleasure, the sheer, undiluted pleasure of being inside her. She shifted a little, tensing and releasing around his cock until he was settled exactly to her liking, then braced her hands on his shoulders and lifted her hips. He flexed his hands, part urging, part guiding her back down.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, that’s good.”

He growled his agreement, then growled again as she found a rhythm she liked, slow, steady, stretching time like taffy. Each downstroke firmly embedded him inside her, but she didn’t rush. Slow went with gentle and hard with fast, but Alana disconnected the two, keeping the pace torturously even and wickedly hard. His hands slid up her torso to cup her breasts, but she didn’t speed up. Instead, and oh, this was new, this was different, this made things a thousand times hotter, he felt her inner walls undulate around him as he rolled and pinched her nipples.

He’d thought he would treat the librarian like a well-bred lady, but she was taking him apart, muscle from bone, brain from defenses.

“Jesus,” he ground out. Air huffed from his lungs when she straightened and put the heel of her hand against his sternum. He lifted into her next gliding, quivering stroke and she cried out, her head lolling back on her neck.

The urge to bite that pale, slim throat roared along his nerves, but he held off, held off, because a hot red flush climbed from her collarbone over her fluttering pulse into her cheeks. Oh, Jesus, that was hot. That pushed him right to the edge, his balls tight, release seething in the tip of his cock, sweet heat and primitive pressure barely lashed down until . . .

She cried out again, the sound redolent with helpless release. The rhythmic clench of her walls around him, the defenseless droop of her shoulders combined to push him over the edge. Blackness swamped him as he jetted into her.

When he could see and think again, he opened his eyes to find Alana slumped above him, eyes closed, purely satisfied female slackening every line of her body. He’d done that to her. Him. He wrapped his arms around waist and shoulders and rolled her onto her back.

Her eyes flew open and she gave a startled gasp. Not bothering to explain what he couldn’t understand himself, he gripped her hair to expose her throat, then set his teeth to the soft hollow under her jaw.

She quivered under him, and the soft sound she made, all purring surrender, rippled through him. He felt himself start to soften. Reluctantly he pulled out, then walked down the hall to the bathroom, where he cleaned up. When he came back into the bedroom, she’d pulled the sheet and blanket up to her chin. He found his jeans and shorts, and stepped into both at once.

“Something tells me I’ve underestimated you,” he said as he buttoned his fly.

“How so?”

“You wanted this for a lot longer than the last couple of days. I thought maybe you were scared.”

Her skin pinkened again. “I said I wasn’t savvy. I’m experienced enough to know better,” she said cautiously. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.”

“Felt like a damned good idea to me,” he said, and put his hands on his hips. She didn’t fuss or fidget under his gaze. “What do you think about renovating your kitchen?”

She blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “It’s your house,” she pointed out.

“You’re living in it,” he replied. “Never mind. I’ll tackle it between tenants.”

“I’ve already cost you three months you could have spent renovating,” she said. “That would be fun.”

“You’ve never renovated anything before, have you?”

She shook her head, a smile curving her kiss-swollen lips. “Not fun?”

“Depends on your idea of fun.”

“It sounds interesting,” she offered.

“I can go with that. Another chance for you to tell me what you want,” he said.

She blushed, and her hand tightened on protective cotton and chenille armor, but then she climbed out of the bed, took her robe from the hook on the closet door, and wrapped it around her body. “We just established that I don’t have any experience with renovations,” she said again as she tightened the belt.

“You’re better with decorative stuff,” he said vaguely, looking around the bedroom. She hadn’t done much, but what she had done made the room look soft and homey. Feminine without froufrou shit, and somehow right for the house. His grandmother would have approved.

“All right,” she said.

“Saturday,” he said decisively.

“The library’s open until one. I’m free after that.”

She followed him into the kitchen where he plucked his T-shirt from the floor and pulled it on. Duke, still sprawled under the table, lifted his head to peer inquiringly at Lucas. He clicked for him and the old dog scrambled to his feet.

“Is Cody working Saturday?”

She nodded as she began clearing the dinner dishes. “He wants to get his hours in as quickly as possible.”

“Good.” He gathered the bread platter and her wine glass and set them on the counter. “Look, don’t get too close to him. You’re thinking about what you can do to help him. The answer is nothing. Just stay out of it.”

She gave him a smile that said she’d do whatever she damned well pleased, but covered it with a polite, “I’ve got it. Thanks for coming over.”

“The house doesn’t have a dishwasher,” he said.

“I don’t mind at all,” she replied, “I think Duke’s ready to go.”

“Thanks for dinner,” he said.

4

L
UCAS RIDGEWAY LOOKED
good in pink.

Alana’s cheeks flushed as she walked from her house to the Heirloom for breakfast, more than the damp spring air could explain away. But remembering Lucas’s tanned face and hair-roughened body against her pale pink sheets sent electric heat flashing along her nerves.