Page 49 of The Catch

As Josh marked her mouth and neck with his tongue, she wondered how things would change once they finally did this. Would he still look at her with that curious amusement once he knew her inside and out? She really liked that look. Was that what Minnie meant when she said he was enchanted? Would this be the thing that brought them back to reality where things were more complicated? Or was this the part where her safety rope finally snapped and she free-fell into whatever this was going to be?

There was only one way to find out.

She hooked her leg around his, sliding up his thigh like a fire pole until they were better aligned. The friction was enough to make her cry out, and Josh responded with a delightful press of his hips into hers. When she pressed back, his kisses became messier, almost desperate. It was the most unleashed she’d seen him: quickened breath, darting hands. She was dying to see him really lose control. What would it look like? Would he be loud? Rough? He was always so deliberate, she couldn’t picture him like that, but his whole body was accelerating now, taking her with him.

He moved to her neck, nuzzling and biting, tipping her chin with his nose until all she could see was his rustic-looking, wooden headboard. Cat didn’t even have a headboard. Her queen-sized bed sat on one of those old adjustable metal frames. This one was heavy and huge, and it wasn’t even squeaking, even as the mattress rocked with their movement. Come to think of it, his sheets were amazing too. They were so soft, and if she remembered correctly, they matched the comforter—

“Catia,” he said as if he could tell she was doing that nervous rambling thing inside her head. He purposely blew out the word over the moisture on her throat, making goosebumps flare over her skin, straight down to where she felt him brushing against the satin between her legs.

Josh’s hands continued to roam, squeezing her waist, then along the curve of her hip, before he hooked his fingers on the waistband of her panties and slid them down her thighs. She grinned against his mouth as she squirmed her way out of them, kicking them off of her feet and into the twist of sheets.

“Your turn,” she taunted, tugging at the boxers he still wore. When he took over, she clutched him tighter, forcing him to slither out of them with one hand, while maintaining their furious kiss. He laughed boyishly, his eyes sparking in the dark, and she thought maybe Minnie got it backward. Maybe Cat was the one who was enchanted.

When they were finally bare skin to bare skin, he slowed, cupping her jaw in his palm. Her pulse went wild as Josh broke their kiss and locked onto her with his gaze. His eyes were the black ocean of that night on the beach. His hips were the gentle ebb and flow of the tide. “You okay?” he breathed, just like he had then.

“I’m good.”

He studied her expression so long that her cheeks flushed under his gaze, then, satisfied with whatever he saw there, he kissed her hard one time, and his heat was gone.

Cat whined out in protest, clenching her eyes shut to focus on the feel of their legs still tangled. The bed dipped beside her as he stretched and she heard a drawer open then close, then a tearing sound. The mattress rocked again, bouncing with the movement of his upper body, and then he was back.

“God, Cat… ” he mumbled through a grin that was pressed against her breastbone. “From the moment I saw you, I wanted you underneath me. To put my mouth all over you… ” He trailed off, snaking his arms under hers and tightening them around her back, then he shifted his weight, flipping them in one fluid motion so that she was on her back.

“You were very patient,” she simpered.

“I’m done being patient.”

She giggled, the noise sounding foreign in her mouth. She sounded like a schoolgirl, but she didn’t care. Shefeltlike giggling. She felt like screaming his name. She was screaming it right then in her head, but it was coming out as more of a whimper.

Josh kissed her again, every lick and nip like fire, then he nudged her thighs apart, slowly, inch by inch, until he was one pulse of his hips away. One moment from something she knew would change everything.

Nineteen

It was exactly as Catimagined when he pushed into her. Josh was committed to every move he made, and this was no different. Where she was constantly measuring herself in his presence, he was always throwing himself whole-heartedly into the moment. She sucked in a hot breath, tremors shaking her body as he laced their fingers above her head and stayed perfectly still. “Cat,” he whispered, though it almost seemed like he was speaking to himself now.

“Is this what you thought would happen when we met in that sleazy bar?” she asked against his temple.

He laughed. “I was just hoping for another slow dance. But I’m glad it is happening.”

“Me too.”

Josh curved his back, pressing his forehead to hers, and rolled his hips like a wave that built and broke in a crash of sensation inside her. Scooping a hand underneath her, he held their bodies together while he moved, skillfully hitting her pleasure on the inside and the outside.

Three gorgeously precise thrusts in, and he’d already put all of the jackhammer idiots she’d ever slept with to shame. Not that there were that many. She’d only slept with four other men: a few embarrassingly bad times in high school with her boyfriend in the back of his Chevy Caprice, an experiment in hook-up culture in college before she met Micah and gave him the remainder of those years, and one painfully impatient man whom she’d talked herself into dating over a year ago, to pop her post-Micah cherry. The rest of the men she’d dated she’d cut loose well before sleeping with them became an option. At twenty-seven, she had little experience in the grown-up version of sex, but Josh was giving her a crash course. Just like he had the night before.

He pressed his open mouth to her ear, alternating between kissing and whispering to her—how she felt, things he wanted to do. She knew if she tried to respond, it would be incoherent, so she let him keep going, delighting in the way he spoke to her. Perfect, polite Josh and his dirty mouth. It thrilled her a little to think that it was just a taste of what she would get once they were more comfortable with each other.If we get that far.

That thought, and all others, cleared her brain when he moved his hand to a particularly perfect spot between them. Her vision started to go white, her entire world shrinking to the mere sum of the synapses firing in her brain and the tremors building deep inside her core.

Josh said her name a few more times then some sort of an invocation followed by an expletive that changed the meaning completely. She was smiling at his strangled mutterings when it hit her. Every muscle in her body tightened, her back arched so high off the bed she must have looked like an acrobat performing some insane contortion.

“Josh,” she spat out in time with the tremors that ripped through her body. She could feel him smiling against her cheek as he held her up, bracing himself on his elbow while she shuddered and shook in his arms. “Oh my God.”

She sucked in a hard breath, and Josh clutched her to his chest like she was a prize he’d just won. Maybe she was because she suddenly wanted to live in this room forever. He could put her up on a shelf, and she could smile down at him and tell him how fucking amazing he was whenever he wanted.

When her muscles released, and she fell boneless against the pillow, Josh followed her. She watched him through the slits that were her eyes, his face glistening with sweat, his jaw tense as he continued to pump into her. The sensation was overwhelming as she hadn’t yet recovered, and every stroke was an electric current that both pleased and shocked her.

He touched her cheek and kissed the tip of her nose, then her chin, beckoning her consciousness back to him. When she finally refocused on his face, he smiled a sweet self-satisfied grin, but she saw something else flickering in those pretty blue eyes. Something wolfish. She could tell that he was restraining a rougher touch, and she wanted it.

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