Her eyebrows draw together and her eyes search mine.
“What? Tell me what’s wrong.” I rest my forehead against hers and breathe her in. The essence of her skin must be filled with brown sugar and oranges because she smells like Christmas to me. A beautiful package of what my heart desires.
“Don’t you want me?”
Her words are brutal because they tell me too much about her. She’s vulnerable and fragile.
“You don’t know, do you”?” I take a deep breath. Not only am I ready for us to open up physically, I want to bare my soul to her. “I have wanted you from the minute I first laid eyes on you.”
“Yeah?”
I stroke the side of her cheek with one hand. “Yeah. And then it kept getting worse. You’d come over in those tiny shorts and borrow a cup of sugar—”“
She laughs. “I never borrowed any sugar.”
I kiss the side of her neck, dragging the tip of my tongue along her skin and leaving goose bumps in my wake. “Ok. Books, then. Same thing. But the shorts. Killing. Me.” I nibble on her earlobe and press my cock into the soft spot between her legs. “Every. Single. Day. So if you think I don’t want you, you’d better think again. Do you want me?”
“I want you.” She states it as simply as someone walking up and saying they want an ice cream.
I move her from my lap, get to my knees, and slowly unzip her shorts. She reaches up and unzips my jeans. I lean in and kiss the corner of her mouth, starting out slow. Her hands grip the back of my neck and the simple touch sends one hundred degrees of heat straight to my cock. I try to slow down, but it’s too late. Try to pull back, but my mouth has an agenda and shifts to her breasts.
She’s perfection to me. Her slender frame thrums with electricity, muscles tense with each pass of my lips. I suck and bite and tease along her perky breasts down to the dip of her navel. My tongue flicks into the valley of her belly and she squirms.
I glance up through my lashes at her. I peel the shorts slowly down her hips and her panties with them. She helps me by sitting back so I can take them. The thin material of her panties is soaked and a thrill runs through me, zinging every cell as I discard them on the floor. I grin at the way she’s watching me, her cheeks so flushed and her nipples tight little peaks begging for my mouth.
I’m at the edge of the bed, so I stand and push my briefs and jeans to the floor. My body is so ready for hers. I swear I could come hands-free purely from the lusty look she’s giving me.
I take a couple of steps to my nightstand and retrieve a condom to place near us. She surprises me by grabbing my hand and pulling me onto the bed. If my body had its way, I’d push inside her in one stroke and then another and another until I found my release. My urgency for her would take over. Instead, I want her to set the pace.
It’s a tangle of sheets as I roll her on top of me. “Ride me,” I whisper, my voice scraping every vowel and consonant.
She has this expression of shock—only for an instant—and then it’s replaced with excitement. “Tell me if I’m doing it right.”
“You can’t do anything wrong.” I grab the condom and roll it on while she watches. My heart slams hard against my chest.
Harper moves her body over my hips and places her entrance over the head of my cock. My pulse—all the blood in my body—is focused on one thing. Filling her. Making her understand how much my body yearns to be inside hers.
I grab her hips and lift myself to slide inside. I shake with the effort to go slowly. Each centimeter inside her incites me to push harder, go faster. She’s so fucking tight.
“It’s been a while,” she says, squeezing her eyes tight.
I pull out and thrust in, one long stroke, unable to stop. “Does it feel good, baby?”
“Ahh…” She hangs her head and squeezes her eyelids shut. “Yes.”
“Move however it feels good. Up and down. Fast. Slow.” My last words sound guttural, restraint forcing me to resort to one-word, monosyllabic speech.
Harper sets a rhythm, her body sliding faster and faster until I’m gritting my teeth in an ecstatic pain. I forget about her fragility.
I dig my fingers into her hips, urging her to continue. We’re a streamlined instrument that demonstrates how two bodies become one.
In the quiet of my apartment, there’s only the labored sound of our breathing and the glorious music of skin hitting skin, rising to an ultimate crescendo. Although her eyes are closed and her eyebrows drawn, I can’t stop watching her. I reach down where our bodies meet and rub my thumb against her. Her lips smash together as if the pleasure is too much to bear. The moment I sense her orgasm coming, a tensing and pulsing of her body around my cock, I wish I could slow it down so I could memorize her face.
She groans, the sounds hitching as each wave of pleasure rolls through her.
My own release chases hers. My fingers dig into her hips as I quit fighting it and thrust long and hard. Giving everything of my body in the final seconds of claiming her.
Mine.
I thrust a second time, although we’re both spent and it’s a half-hearted stroke to tell her I’d do it again if I had any strength left. She languorously bends to place her head on my shoulder and licks away the salt of my sweat.
“I’ve never…” she whispers and her lips tickle my collarbone.
“Never what,” I prompt. My eyes are closed, but I open them to peek down at the top of her head.
She’s breathing as hard as I am. “That. I’ve never. It’s the first. Orgasm.”
Harper lifts her hips and pulls away. It’s as if I’ve lost a part of me, a sanctuary I’ve never visited before.
She relaxes her body and rolls to lie beside me on her belly.
I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like hearing it. I want to be better than her former husband. But then, I don’t want to compete with a dead man. There’s no honor in being jealous of a man six feet under.
“Hey,” I say into her mass of hair. It’s strewn across my chest and sticking to the warm skin of her back. I lift it and blow across her neck.
“Hmm?” She places her hand on my chest and one finger traces over my nipple.
“Don’t go anywhere.” I get out of bed, and walk to the bathroom so I can dispose of the condom. My apartment is small and it’s not a stone’s throw from one end to the other.
I make a quick trip into the kitchen and grab a couple of bottled waters. When I walk back in, she hasn’t moved. “You need to stay hydrated after last night.”
She lifts her head. “Thanks.”
I make a nest of pillows against the headboard and drag her to sit with me. Twisting the cap off, I offer a drink of mine. She lifts the bottle to her lips and it’s sinful that I get half-hard just watching her throat work as she drinks. “You’ve ruined me for other women,” I say. “I guess that was your plan.”
She chokes on her water. I pat her gently on the back.
“Stop doing that.” Harper laughs at my expression of mock confusion. She pokes me in the ribs. “Stop waiting until I take a drink to say something funny.”
“You think I’m kidding?” I take the bottle from her and guzzle it.
“Yeah. I do.”
I place the water on the nightstand and pull her to lie back in my arms. “No joke. I’ll never find another like you. You don’t take yourself seriously. You like to read as much as I do. You’re absolutely gorgeous. And most of all, you’re real. Real and honest.”
“Mmm…” she says.
“And I forgot about your ass. Oh my God, your ass.”
She giggles and I smile into her hair.
I like the sound too much, so I continue. “Your ass is the stuff men dream of.”
“So poetic,” she says.
“Yeah. Did I tell you I’m a writer?”
She gives an unladylike snort. “I think so.” She looks at the ceiling and then tilts her head back to make eye contact with me. Her expression is suddenly as somber as a storm cloud. “Do you want to know about my past?”