Page 51 of Brave
He drank her gasp between kisses, answering her next gasp with a hungry growl of his own as he stripped her underwear all the way off.
She tried to get on top. Her muscles were a year out of shape, but she’d have ridden him until it hurt, just so he would keep touching her, but he rolled her onto her stomach instead, caging her beneath his hard body.
“Knees,” he ordered.
She scrambled into position, his nips across her shoulders and his kisses on the back of her neck melting her. She cupped his hands when he cupped her breasts, loving how he molded them to his grip. Her back against his chest, her head on his shoulder, she lost herself in every kiss, every tender caress that teased at the peaks of her nipples, and every heated grind of his cock pressing hard up against her buttocks.
The night table jostled when he at last reached past her to fumble a condom from the drawer. She heard the rip as he tore into it with his teeth right before he sheathed himself, first in polyurethane and then in her.
She tried to go down on all fours, but he pulled her back up again. He held her tight against him, his mouth never far from her skin, the fingers of one hand like a hungry mouth feeding at her breast, while the fingers of his other parted her folds to expert search of her clit.
She gasped when he found it, the slow upward grind of his cock pushing so deep that all she could feel was filled by him. The heat of him. The hardness.
The tenderness of him joining into her one slow undulation after another.
She could have cried, and not because it hurt. It didn’t, not even the grinding thrusts of his hips pumping against her wealed backside. It was pleasure. Pure, physical pleasure winding itself through every trembling nuance and nerve until all she could feel was the tightness of his arms, the thrust of his cock, the burning of his nipping, suckling, hungry kisses on the side of her neck, and the earth-shattering release that ripped from her clit to her womb when he groaned, “Come on my cock, honey. Come right fucking now.”
She did cry then, and she didn’t even know why. She tried to hide it. It should have been easy in the dark, but something in her breathing or her shaking must have given it away.
He didn’t even take care of himself first. Laying them both down, he held her in through the tears of the aftermath and he didn’t even try to shush her. All he did say, was, “That, honey, was making love.”
She knew better, but she hugged his arms while he held her and she didn’t argue.
Chapter 14
“I can’t do this,” Puppy gasped. Clinging to both the passenger side of his car door and her pack, she struggled to get her breathing under control. Every time she thought she might manage it, she thought about her cellphone and, in particular, about her voicemail messages where the call from the Deanwood library sat waiting for her to listen to it again. “What was I thinking?” she squeaked, horrified. “I can’t do this!”
“Yes, you can,” Carlson corrected.
“Yes, I can,” she obediently echoed, but she knew better.
Pulling into the parking garage just down the street from Black Light, Carlson found an empty stall on the second level and shut the car off. Swiveling to face her, he said, “Look at me.”
She did, but she could barely think past her panic as it was and all they’d done was offer her an interview. She covered her mouth, sure she was going to vomit.
“Deep breath,” Carlson said helpfully, and she did her best to obey that too. “Number one, if you’re going to throw up, do it outside the car.”
If she weren’t trying so hard to fight back the panic, she would have laughed. Snorting, she nodded instead. “Yes, Sir.”
“Number two,” he continued, “when’s the interview again?”
Oh God… “Next Friday.”
“Next week, not this week?”
She nodded.
“Do you trust me?”
Without hesitation, she nodded again.
“Good girl. You’ve got this.” Patting her on the knee, he jerked his thumb toward her door. “Let’s go.”
It was a two-block walk from the garage to the Psychic Shop’s secret Black Light entrance. Holding her hand the whole way, Carlson kept up a cheerful chatter, most of which she was too rattled to hear. You’ve got this, he’d said, but while she so badly wanted to believe him, that little voice was whispering away in the back of her head and its voice was far stronger than her confidence. She wanted her notebook, just holding it would have been a comfort. Writing out the last thirty lines of that first phrase he’d given her would have been too.
I’m not broken or stupid.
But the problem was, she was.
