On the Ropes (23 page)

He put his hands on her waist and pulled her into the open vee of his legs. Laying feather-light kisses across her belly, he reveled in the sound of her hitching breaths, and her tentative grip on his hair.

His tongue delighted in the taste of her skin as he dragged it around her navel and down her belly. She was salty-sweet and smelled of arousal, in spite of her obvious nerves.

Her belly quivered beneath his tongue as he dipped his head lower and tasted more of her, down to her pubic bone.

She tugged his hair harder when his fingers breached her pussy.

“You’re so wet.”

“I’d be dead if I weren’t.”

He worked his thumb in slow circles around her clit and delved his fingers farther into her. “I think you missed me a little.”

“Not just for the sex.”

“Yeah? What else did you miss?” He pulled his hand free of her and sucked his fingers clean. Having her depart from him before he’d had his fill and then staying away for a month made that taste seem like a delicacy he needed to gorge on. He wanted to toss her onto her back, put his mouth between her legs, and fall asleep sipping her essence, but there were other needs that needed fulfilling first. Yeah, he wanted to fuck her, but right now, it seemed more critical that she fuck
him
.

He wouldn’t give her control because she wouldn’t know what to do with it, but he could give her what she wanted.

He stood, and put her hands at his waistband. “Finish undressing me.”

She looked up at him with a confirming glance, and got to work unbuttoning, unzipping, undoing.

He stepped out of the shorts and underwear pooled at his ankles and let her explore him. Her hands pressed tentatively against his chest as if his skin would scald her—as if he’d refuse her.

Some days, he might. He’d set the pace for their play and have her touch him only when he saw fit, but he didn’t want to play dominance and submission games tonight. He wanted her at home, not just within his dwelling, but with his body. His love for her.

He lay back on the bed, pulling her atop him.

She sat up, straddling him, still exploring the planes and valleys of his chest as if it were some marvelous thing.

“I’m comfortable here,” she said, rimming her fingernail around one of his stimulated nipples.

“On top of me?”

“No.
Here
.” She canted her head toward the room in general, and probably the house beyond it.

“Good. Everyone should have a place where they feel at home.”

“I worried that would be in Michigan with my mother and her cousin.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. I…I’m certain that wherever my mother is will always feel like a sort of home to me, but not
my
home. Not where I belong.”

“You belong here.” He laced his fingers together behind his head to keep from touching her. This was her show.

She skimmed her fingers down his belly, stopping where her thighs pressed to his sides. “I think so.”

His dick gave a warning jerk when she backed her ass against it. Teeth clenched, he squeezed his fingers together harder, trying to force them down into the sheets. He could use his words, not his hands. This was about her comfort. Her pace.

“Sit on my cock,” he whispered.

She eased back onto it, drawing in a long breath and putting her head back as she slid him in to the hilt.

Her silken warmth permeated to his core, seeming to relax every muscle in his body. All the bruises he’d earned in the past couple of weeks during vigorous workouts, the stiffness in his neck and back from toiling over the last few corporate contracts he’d needed to draft—they all seemed to melt away. Her touch was healing.

No, just her
presence
was. He hadn’t known what his happiness looked like until he put her in the picture.

“Ride me.” His voice was a rough rasp.

She seemed to have been awaiting further instruction with how she just sat meekly on his cock. He filed that information away for later. He’d told her he could be bossy, and she seemed to want that from him. Only him, though.

Her soft moan as she rose up and lowered herself back down nearly undid him. She was so easy to pleasure, but she behaved as if she weren’t used to it. He’d never stop giving her pleasure for as long as he was able.

“Do you mind if I get horizontal?” Her hips hovered over him, working only his cock head in and out of her.

Driving him
fucking
insane.

“Go ahead. Fuck me. I want to see your face as you come.”

“You’re not going to help?”

“I’m providing the equipment. I’d say that’s helping enough.”

“What if I’d prefer for you to do the work?”

He shifted his hands so they were flatter beneath his head. “Preferences are nice. I prefer to sleep on the left. I prefer boxer briefs over shorts. I
prefer
being on top.”

“So get on top.” She moved as if to roll onto her back, but he pushed her legs farther apart with his knees so she fell flat onto his chest.

She pressed her hands to the bed and eyed him with malice as her pussy clenched around him. “You’re topping from the bottom.”

He shrugged and let a smile pull his lips. “I am what I am. What are you going to do about it?”

She pressed the insides of her knees against his thighs and rode him. At first, it seemed she was watching him, studying his face to assess his pleasure, but then she stopped looking. Her eyes closed and rhythm changed as she swiveled her hips and ground her clit against him.

Her toenails dug painfully into his shins as she glided atop him and brushed his cock head over and over her innermost erogenous zone.

Each of her inhales was a gasp, each exhale a moan.

When she tucked her face against the side of his neck and pressed her hard nipples against his chest, he wanted to buck—to give to her in full what she was only taking in sips—but he held still.

Finally, she pulled her knees up beneath her, pressed them against his belly, and rode him with the desperation he knew inflicted her.

“Kiss me,” he said into her hair.

She eased off him just enough to plant her mouth on his. Her lips parted for his tongue, and he thrust into her mouth with the same frenzied rhythm she maintained down below.

His balls drew up painfully tight in want of release. He growled out a curse with each slip of her sheath around him, each clench of her muscles, and willed his body to do what his brain wanted. To keep the dam intact, the gate closed.

Her teeth breaking skin on his chest sent a sharp flare of pain through his core that was translated by his stupid cock as pleasure. She screamed around her mouthful of flesh, tightening her clamp around his dick.

And now he
did
buck up into her, spilling his seed as her body convulsed atop him.

He put his hands on her waist and shoved her down on his cock hard, making her take all of him.

“Stephen!”

She came again and fell atop him into a boneless, shivering mass.

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, and rolled her onto her side as he slipped out of her.

In his arms, her body’s violent shaking subsided and her breathing steadied.

When she was quiet, nestled against him with her eyelashes tickling his chest with each blink, he said, “Tell me something, Jan.”

She laughed quietly. “Anything?”

He massaged the small of her back as she toyed idly with his one exposed nipple. “Mm-hmm. Anything.”

“Okay. I’m glad I made you wait.”

“Ouch, sweetheart. I can’t say I agree.”

“You don’t have to, but, if I didn’t make you wait, I couldn’t be sure now that this is where I need to be. Here with you.”

“You don’t care that I’m only practicing law part-time now? Personally, I’m feeling a bit shiftless.”

“I’ll find ways to keep you occupied.” She sat up, and her teasing smile nearly took his breath away.

Waiting had been a bitch, but she was worth it.

She made everything worth it.

Holley Trent
is a Carolina girl gone west. She writes snarky contemporary and paranormal romances ranging from sensual to erotic that are usually set in her home state. Her books feature alpha geeks, athletes, Vikings, shape-shifters, and cowboys, and she loves writing them all. She’s a winner of the CIM-RWA Abalone Award and a three-time Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence. When Holley’s not writing, she’s researching genealogy and sighing about her ancestors’ checkered pasts. She lives on the Front Range with her husband, two kids, and two cats. To find out what’s coming next from Holley, visit her website at
www.holleytrent.com

Keep reading to see how the series began in

He teaches about the Irish past. She worries about their Irish future.

Grant Fennell seems to lack the luck of the Irish. He’s had his nose broken three times, his dissertation advisor was a useless lump, he’s thirty-one and finishing his PhD, and he can’t find a teaching position in the US. Then he accepts a job in his native Ireland on the same day the stunning former student he’s been intrigued by for nearly eight years shows a shred of interest. Finally, he catches a break: Carla Gill needs his expertise.

Carla is at a dead end on her late Irish-American father’s family tree project. Who better to assist than an expert on Irish history? Especially one with the face of an Adonis and a brogue that makes her want to shed her clothes. She’ll be his girlfriend, all right, in spite of her overprotective brothers and nay-saying friend.

But when Carla accompanies Grant to Ireland to conduct her research, he makes it clear he wants to put her on the fast track to matrimony. The professor wants to teach her something about “happily ever after.” Does she really want her happy ending to start right now?

A Lyrical e-book on sale now.

Learn more about Holley at
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/29540

“Carla! Carla! Wait.”

The bewildered young woman hesitated in the middle of the brick path. She gave her apologies to the torrent of undergrads forced to step around her at the last minute and stood up on her tiptoes trying to see over moving heads and shoulders. Extra bodies seemed to come out of the woodwork on campus during final-exam time. Any other Thursday Carla would have been able to make her appointment without a single jostle. Many students spent Thursday mornings recovering from the Wednesday night special at the pub. She sought out a familiar face, but couldn’t make out anyone she knew. Perhaps he’d been calling some other Carla.

“Carla Gill! Wait there, please,” the man called out once more in his low tenor voice.

No, he was yelling for her for sure. Carla was a rare enough name for a twenty-five-year-old, and the chance of there being another woman on campus at that moment with the same surname was infinitesimal. It wasn’t one of her friends or coworkers. The accent, a lilting, gentle brogue, was far out of sync with the Southern drawl her friends and family were prone to falling into.

The stream of bodies on the walkway broke just long enough for a man of athletic build around six feet tall to cut through and loop his right arm around her left one. He smiled brightly and nudged her forward to move and clear the path for the harried students. “How are you?” he asked, picking up the pace and navigating her smoothly through gaps of slower-moving bodies.

She couldn’t answer. She was paralyzed by some odd combination of arousal and shame. Seeing him caused her pulse to speed, her breath to catch. She knew this man, but even with him being a pale Adonis and so familiar, she couldn’t remember his name. Worse, his scent stupefied her, triggering memories of another man she hadn’t seen in ages. She hadn’t smelled that brand of soap since her father died.

He turned his head to look down, raising one black brow.

“I’m well.” She turned her face forward once more. Of all the flaws she pitied herself for, her tendency to blush at the drop of a hat was by far the most embarrassing. She started reciting the alphabet in her head, pausing at each letter to try to prompt her memory. She’d just seen the man six months ago at the bar and they’d chatted for a full thirty seconds before she was pulled away by her friend Meg. She’d been stupefied then, too, staring at his face as if it was some kind of hypnowheel. She’d done the same two years before that when they’d run into each other at the student store. They’d been next to each other in line. He was buying printer paper, and she was buying art supplies. He’d turned around and asked the same question: “How are you, Carla?”

“Fine, fine,” was all she could manage, nodding like a bobblehead doll. He’d smirked and completed his transaction, then touched her arm gently before walking away. She hadn’t known what to make of it.

She made it up to G in her head as he deftly steered her around a clump of girls who’d paused to ogle a smartphone screen, and took the fork in the path to the right. Grant. His name was Grant. He was a graduate student and teacher’s assistant who taught English Composition, or at least he had been when she was in his class. That was going on eight years ago.