To steal a line from one of her favorite songs, Gage’s body was a wonderland. Even if he hadn’t been a cop, needing to stay in shape to keep up with the rigors of his job, she suspected he still would have been at the gym five or six times a week. Running, swimming, lifting weights. He did a bit of everything, and it showed.
And she appreciated his diligence. She always had, even if his big, muscle-bound, in-shape body tended to make her feel small and somewhat out of shape in comparison.
She’d also always loved his tattoos. She wasn’t inked herself… she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to let someone permanently mark her body with a thousand razor-sharp needles… but she could certainly appreciate the beauty of good body art on the canvas of Gage’s spectacular physique.
While they’d been together, he’d only had a couple-a tribal rope design around his left bicep and a strip of barbed wire around his right wrist. He’d talked about getting more, but to her knowledge had never started the process.
Since their breakup, however, it looked like he’d not only been busy, but perhaps spent the majority of his free time in a tattoo artist’s chair. She could see the nose of a dragon breathing fire at the top of his right pectoral. Full of bright color and angry passion, it trailed up under the black of his bunched-up T-shirt, presumably to cover the slope of his shoulder. She assumed it blanketed a fair expanse of his back, as well, because the creature reappeared below the line of his waist, its tail wrapping around his left hip while the tip curled over his pelvic bone and ended just above his groin.
Licking her lips, she linked her fingers with his and leaned down to press a soft kiss on his mouth.
“You remember this, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
She rested her breasts on his chest, the rough, springy hairs there tickling her sensitized nipples. Lower, beneath her belly, she felt him stir and knew her attentions were beginning to have the desired effect.
“You remember me,” she added, and this time it was a statement rather than a question.
His fingers flexed around hers, and she couldn’t read whether it was in desire or anger.
“I remember you.” She grazed his cheek with her lips. The stubble of his jawline tickled, but in a good way, so she did it again.
“I miss you,” she murmured, feeling secure enough to admit the truth only because he was tied up and-in theory, anyway-at her mercy.
She nipped the lobe of his ear with her teeth and was rewarded with a small, low groan. Her lips traveled down the side of his neck, pressing soft, languid kisses along the way. Every once in a while, she let her tongue flick out to taste and dampen his skin.
She’d always loved the way he tasted-salty and masculine, like a man who worked hard and played hard, and wore both scents as his own personal fragrance. High-priced colognes and aftershaves had nothing on Eau de Gage.
When she reached his shoulder, she gave the muscle there a tiny love bite through the material of his shirt, almost as though she were attempting to French kiss the dragon itself. A shiver of excitement swept through her at the mental image before she moved on to outline the sharp edge of his collarbone, the base of his throat, and down to the positively mouthwatering twin rises of his pectorals.
His nipples were tight little beads at the centers of perfectly round brown areolas. Sexy circles over a mostly smooth, broad chest that tapered to a flat, narrow stomach.
Sliding her hands down the insides of his arms, she toyed with the piercing tips, first rolling them beneath the pads of her thumbs, then the palms of her hands. Letting her fingers wander off to explore other parts of his chest, she replaced them with her mouth. Kissing, licking, biting lightly before using her tongue again to wash away any possible sting.
His breaths were coming in shorter pants now, his body stirring under her sensual ministrations. Beneath her breasts, his belly went concave as his diaphragm tightened.
Her own nipples pebbled at the knowledge that she was turning him on. He might not have expected to land in her bed, but he was going to enjoy himself-of that she had no doubt.
She kissed her way down his sternum, her breath whispering over the light streak of hair that led from his navel to his groin. His penis was fully erect now, responding to her every touch and caress, and hungry to be freed from the confinement of his briefs-an appeal she was more than happy to satisfy.
Pushing them down to join the tangle of denim near his ankles, she shifted to straddle his knees rather than his thighs. It was a shame he was on his back and had to stay that way for the duration because she would have liked to see his rear end, maybe give it a squeeze or take a nice, ripe bite out of it the way she used to.
He’d always had a world-class butt. The kind you could bounce quarters off of-something she knew as fact because she’d tried it a time or two while they were married. He’d put up a fight, acted embarrassed by her fascination with his backside, but had eventually given in.
Forever after, when he was feeling particularly frisky, he’d hand her a quarter and ask if she wanted to put it to good use. Only once, when she’d been mad at him and he’d been arrogantly pressing his luck to begin with, had she threatened to do more with the coin than simply bounce it off his tight ass.
Then again, the view from the front wasn’t exactly a scene out of Fright Night. There were no two ways about it-Gage Marshall was a god. An Adonis in blue jeans and tight black tees. Or in this case, nothing but his birthday suit, a few gorgeous tattoos, and the long, feathery restraints wound around his wrists and ankles.
She took in all of that, every plane and angle, every bulge of muscle and inch of sun-bronzed skin. It was ridiculous for her to be nervous about making love to him considering how many times she’d been with him in the past, but that didn’t keep cocoons of anxiety from unfurling low in her belly.
Maybe it had been too long.
Maybe she’d been missing and wanting him all this time more than even she had realized.
That wasn’t something she particularly wanted to contemplate at the moment, however. It was too deep, too raw, and if she hadn’t figured out her feelings for him in the last year and a half they’d been divorced or the months before when she’d been torn over whether to file or not, then she wasn’t likely to have some amazing epiphany in the next five minutes.
So she pushed that aside, tamped it down and buried it away once again, bringing her attention back to the matter at hand. And speaking of hands…
She gently cupped his testicles, cradling them in her palm, exploring their soft contours. Gage was already tense, his long frame rigid with anticipation. But if possible, he stiffened even more, every muscle drawing tight beneath her touch.
His cock twitched and she used her other hand to stroke it from base to tip and back again. She heard him suck in a breath and lifted her head to find him watching her through dark, heavy-lidded eyes. Neither of them said a word.
Holding his gaze, she lowered her mouth and took him inside. His teeth clicked together and the tendons of his throat jutted out in stark relief. Between her lips, he burned, he throbbed, and she tasted the evidence of his arousal against her tongue.
She would have liked to stay there, licking, sucking, driving him crazy and doing her best to make him come in her mouth. But she wasn’t here for sexual pleasure. Or not only sexual pleasure.
Giving him a blow job, as enjoyable as it might be for both of them, wasn’t going to get her any closer to her goal. And there was no time-or sperm-to waste.
With a last long, slow swirl of her tongue, she released him and rose, shifting so that she hovered just above his upward-pointing erection.
She didn’t have to check her own readiness; she was already wet, almost embarrassingly so. Wrapping her fingers around the base of his erection, she centered the large, plum-shaped head at her opening and slowly lowered herself down his entire length.