Whisper Falls (20 page)

After a while, he rolled them onto their sides. He remained buried in her tight warmth, but their movements slowed, and he kissed her some more, caressed those pretty little breasts more gently.

When she looped one leg over his hip, he reached to massage her round ass, at the same time pulling her closer, more snug against him. He was sheathed to the hilt, but he suffered the urge to somehow be even deeper inside her. And he found himself rolling onto his back, lifting her up until she straddled him and then began to grind.

“Aw, babe,” he murmured, liking the rhythm she took on, the untamed way she moved her lithe, slender body. He liked gliding his hands over her breasts, waist, hips, as he watched her.

Although almost as soon as she started, he could see her getting more heated up, could hear her labored breath, could see in her half-shut eyes that she was nearing orgasm again. Damn—it hadn’t been long since the first one and she was already that close? It excited the hell out of him, and he wanted to take her there.

“Bend closer,” he whispered. “Let me . . .” He didn’t bother finishing, just raising as much as he could, lifting his mouth toward her breasts. In response, she leaned nearer, lowering one hardened peak to his waiting tongue. He licked at it just once, then latched on and suckled her, instinctively knowing she needed to feel it harder now—to take her tumbling into ecstasy.

In response, she moaned and arched deeper and he soaked up the pleasure of tasting that engorged nipple, hard as a pebble between his lips.

“Oh—oh God,” she whimpered then, and he watched as her rhythm changed, as her head dropped back, her lips parting, her eyes falling closed. He held her hips, continued pulling on her breast with his mouth. Then she cried out, again, again, and the climax rocked her so hard he almost felt it vibrate through his
own
body.

As she slumped over onto his chest, he wrapped his arms around her, kissing her temple, whispering to her. “You okay, babe?”

“Mmm,” she purred against his sweat-slick skin.

And Lucky kept moving in her. Because he couldn’t
not
move in her right now. Though they weren’t the deep, rougher thrusts his body urged him to deliver, but instead motions as soft as he could manage while she basked in the afterglow of pleasure.

Yet when she whispered against his neck, “I want to make you come, too, Lucky,” that changed everything. It gave him permission to drive harder into her sweet moisture. And thank God, since he couldn’t have held back any longer if he’d tried.

“Aw, now—now, babe,” he bit off through clenched teeth, and then he was lost in the mindless pleasure of exploding inside her, plunging deep with each long burst that rushed through him and out. As he came, she cried out in response to his strokes, her hands clutching at his chest, then falling around his neck. She kissed his mouth, his jaw, then relaxed against him, clearly as spent as he was.

They lay quietly after that, and Lucky listened to the silence of the night. Only it wasn’t really silence. The chirps of crickets came in through the windows and he almost thought he could make out the wild white noise of the waterfall in the woods, but he was surely imagining that. Maybe what he heard was just . . . peace. And maybe he didn’t listen for it very often and had just missed it—or maybe this was simply the first real time he’d felt it in a while.

Not the peace of hiding unbothered, not the peace of blending in so no one would know he had secrets. But
real
,
true
peace. In that strange moment, every muscle in his body was relaxed and he didn’t have a care in the world. Not Mike’s disdain, not his past, not worries over how different he was from Tessa, not even the worry over figuring out how to be a good father for Johnny. In Tessa’s bed, in Tessa’s arms, everything else went away.

B
y the time light filtered through the curtains on Tessa’s bedroom window, they’d had sex three times. Or was it four? Sleep had come in between, but repeatedly Lucky had awakened her—gently. With a kiss on her shoulder, or fingers easing between her legs, and oh—one time he’d simply leaned against her from behind, his rock-hard erection nestling at the center of her ass. After one mere welcoming sigh from her, he’d sheathed himself and eased between her legs and gloriously up inside her.

Now Tessa felt more replete than she’d known she could. And certainly more replete than she’d expected upon going to bed last night. She found herself trying to suppress a bit of giddy laughter at the realization that Lucky had actually shown up at her door, and that finally,
finally
, her long and frustrating sex drought was over!

Turning on her side, she watched him sleep. In one way, he looked out of place here—almost too large for her bed, and as if everything about him lay in stark contradiction to the soft, feminine pastels she’d used in the room.

On the other hand, though, he looked . . . surprisingly serene, and she could almost remember him as a little boy. She hadn’t really known him then—but she vaguely recalled him from elementary school. He’d been just an average kid back before Anna had disappeared—she remembered her mother once referring to him as “that nice little Romo boy,” when he’d sold her some candy bars for his Boy Scout troop. She thought now, asleep, he was like that nice little boy—innocent. Wasn’t everyone at their most pure, most innocent, when they slept?

When his eyes fluttered open, she almost wondered if he’d somehow felt her looking at him. “Hey,” he rasped, eyes heavy-lidded, voice shaded with leftover lust.

She smiled softly, just as glad to see that innocence replaced with heat. “Hey yourself.”

“Doin’ okay, hot stuff?”

“Doing
very
well, thank you.” She saw no reason to be coy—they’d had undeniably great sex and she was still wallowing in the joy of it.

He flashed one of his most wicked grins. “You have a lot of orgasms.”

A small laugh escaped her since, indeed, she’d had so many she’d lost count. A first for her, certainly. And no wonder she felt equal parts joyous and exhausted now. “Like I said, it’s been a while.”

He cocked his head against the pillow. “And here I thought it was just
me
getting you off.”

“It
was
you,” she promised him, voice low. And though she’d have loved to engage in pillow talk all morning long, something more important nagged at her. “About last night, Lucky—I’m really sorry.”

He narrowed his gaze on hers. “What are
you
sorry for?”

She lowered her eyes slightly as she replied. “If I hadn’t come to Gravediggers with Rachel, Mike never would have shown up. And . . . none of the stuff that happened after that would have happened.”

His face went a bit slack at the reminder, but then he resumed being his more usual, confident self. “Way I see it—if you hadn’t shown up at Gravediggers, I wouldn’t be in your bed right now. I wouldn’t know how gorgeous your naked body is. I wouldn’t know how warm and tight you feel when I’m inside you.”

Tessa’s face flushed with warmth, both from excitement and being unaccustomed to such sexy talk.

“So if I had to take a right to the jaw to get all that, don’t worry, hot stuff, it was well worth it.”

She bit her lip, noticing now that the flesh beneath his eye was red this morning and a little puffy. And she was flattered by his words, but . . . “Still, I know that was hard on you. You didn’t have any warning it was coming. And it was my fault.”

Yet Lucky just shook his head against her yellow pillowcase. “It could have happened anytime, anywhere. It was bound to.”

Tessa thought he was letting her off easy. Given that Lucky didn’t exactly frequent any Destiny hot spots, and probably only a few in Crestview, it really
couldn’t
have happened anywhere. But she appreciated his understanding—she hadn’t forgotten the pain she’d witnessed in his eyes last night.

Although he was right—if she hadn’t been so bold, they wouldn’t have ended up like this. “So . . .” she ventured, “why did it take me turning into a wannabe biker chick for you to make a move on me?”

Propping on his elbow, he lowered his gaze, looking surprisingly sheepish. Finally, he focused those chocolate brown eyes back on her and said, “It’s hard to explain, babe, but . . . let’s just say I didn’t think I’d be . . . quite right for you.”

“And now?” she asked.

“I decided to quit thinking so much.”

She smiled in response, still trying to get used to the notion that Lucky had just spent the night with her. “Want some breakfast?”

He shrugged. “Don’t usually eat it, but you
did
give me a workout. What’d you have in mind?”

She thought it over—wanting to offer him something more than the toast or muffin she usually ate. Then she remembered the waffle iron her mother had given her as a housewarming gift. “Do you like waffles?”

“Is there anybody who
doesn’t
like waffles?”

She smiled. “Waffles it is.”

A
fter breakfast, they parted ways—but not for long. It was Sunday, yet since Tessa had more hours than usual scheduled at Under the Covers this coming week, she decided to put in some time on Lucky’s kitchen today. After tossing on a fitted tee, denim shorts, and tennis shoes, she was out the door.

Turned out he didn’t keep much of a typical work schedule, either, as she found him sanding down a motorcycle in the garage when she showed up, getting it ready for paint. He looked over and smiled when he saw her, then bent one finger toward himself, motioning her closer. When she approached, he leaned down to give her a kiss.

Mmm, it rippled all through her, just as electrifying as the very first one less than twenty-four hours ago. “I could get used to this,” she said teasingly—then almost regretted it, worried he’d take it wrong and think she was implying some kind of long-term affair.

But he only cast a lusty little grin, replying, “And I could get used to giving it to you.” So she decided to do exactly what Lucky had told her
he’d
done: quit thinking so much and just enjoy this.

She ended up watching Lucky work for a little while, and when she asked, he explained some of the basic steps he went through to paint a bike, and told her he also did custom painting on helmets, too. He then showed her a photo album he kept of the bikes he worked on, and they picked out a few for her framing project for the living room. Fortunately, Lucky had digital copies on his computer, and he saved them on a CD for her.

So it took a while, but she finally got busy painting his kitchen cabinets. And as she stopped to look around at how things were coming together in the house, it pleased her. It was a far cry from the expensive and luxurious rooms she’d done in the past, but she
liked
that. She liked that the changes she was making in an average home were both affordable and, in her own estimation, appealing. She thought of her design for Lucky’s house as “biker chic.”

Refocusing on the cabinets, she climbed onto a short stepladder, her mini-roller black with paint, and concentrated on covering all the cabinets’ nooks and crannies.

She had no idea how much time had passed when she felt Lucky’s palms sliding up the backs of her legs. “Ohhh . . .” she purred, stilling her roller, catching her breath. She used her spare hand to reach over to the nearby fridge for balance, and said, her voice a little thready, “If you’re not careful, you’re going to have black paint splotches on your appliances.”

“Chance I’ll have to take,” he murmured behind her, then his big hands curved around her thighs and she felt his warm breath at the hem of her shorts—just before he lifted a kiss to her ass through the denim.

“Ohhh
,” she moaned again at the delightfully ticklish pleasure that permeated her.

“Those flowers on your ankle are turning me on way too much, babe,” he said, low, against her rear.

Her reply came amid ragged breathing. “Too much for what?”

“Too much for me to keep my hands off you. I’m gonna have to have my way with you, hot stuff.”

“Is that so?” she purred, staring into the wood grain of the cabinet she’d just covered in black, but totally caught up in the man behind her, and the promise he’d just made.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, kissing her sensitive bottom some more.

“Then you should carefully take this away from me and put it in the paint tray on the counter,” she said, still breathy—but practical.

He did as she asked, and she started to back down the ladder—until he returned, his hands stilling her hips in place. “Not so fast.”

“No?” she said over her shoulder.

“No,” he answered, voice deeper and more commanding than usual.

Then he reached around from behind her to deftly undo the button on her shorts and ease the zipper down. Oh my. After which he began tugging the denim from her hips—along with her panties. And she was starting to suspect her new lover was a little kinky, since it never would have occurred to her to do this on a stepladder, but the daring Tessa who wanted to grab life by the horns didn’t mind—she just waited to see what would happen next.

It felt weirdly exciting as the shorts dropped to her knees, and she bit her lip, one hand on the side of the fridge, the other on the hood above his stove. Lucky wasted no time reaching up to begin massaging her bottom, and as his touch echoed all through her, a hot moan escaped her throat and she arched for him without planning it—just her body’s natural urge.

She let out a hot sigh as the out-of-the-ordinary foreplay aroused her still more deeply—besides feeling his touches in all the usual places, sensation raced down both her legs. Finally, he slipped two thick fingers up into her moisture—making her whimper even as she parted her legs to give him better access. After that, all was quiet but for their breathing as he plunged his fingers in and out of her warmth. Her face grew hot and something about the position made her feel the little thrusts through her whole body.

When finally he withdrew his fingertips, his voice turned raspy behind her. “Come down one more step, babe,” he said, returning his hands to her hips to help her.