Why did he have to be so easy to talk to? Why did he even want to talk so much?
He was making it so hard for me to not fall under the too-hot guy spell. The one that usually sucks when you fall out of it.
Still, there I was in his master bathroom, and it was looking more and more likely I was about to get exactly what I’d come over for. Sex with the most attractive man I’d ever encountered.
I didn’t think he knew how sexy he was.
Because if he did, he certainly wouldn’t act like the way he had been. Like he was genuinely interested in talking about my family—genuinely interested in me. It was an old trick no one had ever successfully played on me, but he had skills. That or he had some new and improved hot dude mojo designed to throw me off.
It was working.
Working so well that as we’d talked I’d almost forgotten about my plan. He was distracting me from what I wanted, and cleverly he was tricking me with the exact thing I was looking for.
Maybe I was just that transparent, and he was intuitive.
Maybe there was something about me that screamed lonely and ready for a relationship since he was feeding right into it.
All that aside, I looked through his cabinets for something that would prove he was some hot robot-man hybrid, but all I found was that we liked the same dental floss. His towels smelled like fabric softener, and I filled my lungs with the inviting scent. For a bachelor, the bathroom—and the whole house, really—was very clean.
While I washed my hands. I saw something frightening in the mirror.
My reflection.
I looked like fresh hell.
I pulled a tissue from the holder between the double sinks, took my glasses off, and ran it under my eyes to clean up the raccoon circles. Looking closer I was mortified to see a glob of black eye corner shit. Gross.
Why would a guy like Cord Taylor ever have a girl like me—especially in my condition—in his bedroom?
I didn’t let myself think like that for long. That wasn’t going to help anything, and the fact was, he had and I was there. So I needed to quickly do as much repair as I could.
It wasn’t like I’d have to talk to him much after that night, or as if we were going to become the kind of friends where one would tell the other when they had a wad of goo in their eye. Those people are keepers.
I hoped, after Cord was out of my system and I found a guy in my own league, the new man would be the kind of guy who would tell me about embarrassing things like eye jam or lipstick on my teeth. On some arbitrary list in my head, I noted that I’d gladly trade all the chiseled jaws for someone who would tell me I had a bat in the cave.
We’ll have tonight. That’s all.
That’s what the whole thing was about—getting one step closer to that guy.
However, it didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy myself. Judging by his masterful hand tricks from the night before, it was going to be a mind-blowing farewell to the type of fine specimen he was.
He had talents. God, those tattoos. The muscles. The face. The whole playboy package.
I took my hair down, swept my hand through it, fluffed it the best I could, and pulled it over to the side. Like that, it didn’t appear too awful. There was just so much of it, but I was satisfied. After all, it was pretty dark in his room.
I examined my cheeks and didn’t see the need to pinch them, the wine had made them flushed enough.
With my hand on the door knob, I took a few breaths.
This is it, Dana. Make it count.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, and I quickly realized he wasn’t there. I was a little disappointed, but just in case he was using a different bathroom or something, I sat on his bed.
He’d be back.
Why is it in those waiting minutes do you come up with millions of things to doubt? False things. True things. Scary things. Luckily, I didn’t have very long to wait.
As I ran my fingers over his soft duvet, I heard him walking down the hall back to his room. Back to me.
When he came through the door, his eyes fell on me atop his mattress, and he paused then took an audible breath. It wasn’t very bright in there, but I’d left the bathroom light on, so there was just enough to see his drop-dead gorgeous grin.
“Look at you,” he remarked. I suspected he was trying to flatter me, but it wasn’t needed. Nevertheless, he was convincing in his act because he looked as if he was seeing something much more impressive than the mess of a woman on his bed.
Then again, he’d been drinking. I probably wasn’t too shabby through beer goggles. I had that working for me. Thank God.
I didn’t reply as I scooted back farther onto the mattress.
He watched for a second. Then he stepped closer and handed me one of two bottles of water.
“Here. Drink some of this.” Before placing his on the night stand, he unscrewed the cap and took a long drink.
The water was cold and refreshing, exactly what I’d needed. I replaced the lid and set mine next to his.
He stood beside the bed where my feet hung off.
“Dana.” His voice was measured, but the warmth from earlier was still ever-present.
“Cord.”
“We’ve had a lot to drink.” His hand skimmed over the skin at my ankle, and it sent goose bumps up my leg to my arm. “I know last night…” he began but stopped when I interjected.
“Last night was amazing.” I sounded almost joyful, but truthfully it had been one of the best make out sessions of my life. Amazing wasn’t an exaggeration.
“It was, but that doesn’t mean anything right now. You’ve had a lot of wine, and I don’t want to do anything you’ll regret.”
It was one of those moments where I was sure he didn’t realize the effect words like those had on me. Consideration always touched me deeper than flattery.
“Remember how I ate that thing at the Waffle House, and how you owe me?”
His hand moved higher up my leg. “I do.”
“Well, I’m ready to cash in. I want you. Tonight.” I swallowed because those words had been difficult to squeeze out, true as they were. I needed to be direct, otherwise he might keep playing nice and romantic. Then I’d be in real trouble.
“But then you’ll owe me again,” he challenged, but after tonight it would most likely be done between us.
He’s only saying that stuff to get laid—which is fine because I want to get laid too.
I swallowed to clear some of the wantonness from my throat. With little effort, Cord pushed all the right buttons.
“Sure, I’ll owe you. But I want more than last night.”
The cheap red wine had done its job. I was bold, and again it felt empowering asking him for what I wanted.
His knee sank between my weightless legs on the mattress, and he slowly crawled closer. The pads of my fingers led my hands up the bottom of his shirt, feeling his warm skin tense then relax against my touch. He tucked his hand between me and the mattress, and I arched into the sensation of his fingers spreading across my lower back as he lifted me higher up the bed.
Laying me near the center, he went up on his knees and took his shirt off. What little light there was highlighted the peaks, and shadowed the valleys, of his upper body. I hoped the sight of him would become a clear memory that I’d be able to recall forever.
And, just as I was enjoying the view, he carefully took my glasses off and placed them on the nightstand behind him.
He returned his hand to the small of my back, and I relaxed into his touch. His other arm held his weight over me as it pushed into the plush pillow top beside my head. His knee adeptly moved between my thighs to spread them, making room for him between my legs.
I held onto the flexed bicep that supported his weight suspended above me.
My other hand wandered. First to his back, then it slipped into the top of his shorts. He was tall, and my reach was short, so I couldn’t explore his ass like I’d wanted. Still, when I filled my palm with reachable flesh and held him tight, he flexed and rolled his hips.
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you,” he waged. Even through our pants, his erection found the right spot to press against.
My hips left the mattress, responding to him. Surprised by how, despite our difference in stature side by side, in this new position it felt like we just might fit perfectly.
I hoped he’d accept non-verbal answers, and reached for his lips with mine, but they were too far, and he wouldn’t meet me halfway.
“Whoa. Whoa there, sweetheart. Don’t you want to know what I want in exchange first?”
I fought the urge to object to his pet name, but instead I stared into his eyes as he bowed his head to meet my gaze, a fantastic smirk on his face.
Wait. Was he going to say anal? Nah.
I mean, who was I kidding? He was persuasive.
Then his hips rolled into mine again, triggering my hand to squeeze the skin under the waist band of his shorts. My ass left the bed needing more of that pleasing sensation I’d just felt jolt through me.
“What do you want?” My voice cracked.
Another grind and my open lips met the center of his throat as a quiet moan rumbled through it. I couldn’t stop after that first taste of him on my tongue, and I licked my way across his neck to silkier flesh near his shoulder, and then up to the coarseness at his jawline.
He didn’t resist, instead dipping his head lower to offer my pallet more, but I needed more of everything.
I needed it all.
His lips at my temple, a belly-tightening voice in my ear, he said “First, if we do this, just know you’re not leaving my bed tonight. That’s not debatable. And second, in return for tonight, you have to spend the day with me tomorrow.”
I really tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but I couldn’t.
Yeah, I heard him.
Yeah, I had the impulse to argue.
But, before I could, he paired his lips with mine and kissed the hell, and all my reservations, right out of me. It wasn’t as gentle as it had been the night before, it was urgent and full of this extra something, and I adhered to him.
His mouth moved over mine, his tongue expertly robbing the breath from me. The strong hand on my ass lowered to my thigh and hitched my leg up his side. He touched me with expertise, and I loved it.
Sleeping there was fine. I had a feeling like I’d be too tired to go home anyway. And if I had to spend one more day with him, in exchange for more of what he was doing with those hips, well that was the price I’d pay.
I would have done just about anything, but I didn’t tell him that. I only said, “I’ll stay,” between kisses.
After I vaguely consented to Cord’s terms, and everything else he was willing to give me, my head cleared. Gone was any doubt or worry. Gone were all thoughts of finding some other guy after him. Gone was the stress and all the loneliness.
In place of those things was a man who knew how to kiss and touch me in the ways I liked best, as if I’d listed them in a journal that he’d stolen and memorized.
I relaxed into his embrace and the softness of the pillow top mattress. He clutched the hem of my shirt and lifted it off, carefully pulling it away from us. He moaned, and his lips met mine again quickly before they headed south to my breasts. Sliding his hand up my back he lifted me enough to unfasten my bra and toss it aside as well.
His skin sliding against mine, as he worked his way down the bed, made my eyes flutter shut. My whole body drifted with each deep, slow breath in my chest. I felt weightless in his arm, my body under his sensual command.
He cupped my breast in his palm. Kissed it and gently bit my right nipple, causing me to make a surprised wheezing sound the likes of which I’d never heard before. He sucked at the other but didn’t bite it like he’d done the first—even though that time I was prepared and almost waiting for it to happen.
He cut a cool trail down the skin of my ribs with his kisses. I jumped when he raked his teeth over the flesh at my side, liking again that I hadn’t been expecting the sensation when he did it.
Now with his chest between my legs, it dawned on me where he was going, and I felt nothing but anticipation and excitement. The image of him with his face between my legs had me shifting against him in eagerness.
“God, you’re perfect,” he whispered.
Both of his hands gently ran parallel over my stomach and over my chest. I loved how giant they felt against me. Like him, strong and tender at the same time.
“I’ve been dying to do this, since I saw you in the trench coat.” He pulled the stretchy waist of my bottoms lower on my left hip and tenaciously kissed my skin there.
Another long, desperate moan thundered through his chest between my thighs.
I was almost panting, but trying to stay as quiet as I could to hear him. I’d said so many things over the past few days, laced them with innuendo, and been short with what I wanted, but hearing him say he’d wanted me was damn near overwhelming.
He sounded sincere.
Pillow talk, Dana. It’s just pillow talk.
“Then after touching you last night…” A kiss to my hip. “After you rode out your orgasm on my fingers.” A long lick across my lower stomach to the other side. “After I felt your body go slack when you came down. Dana, getting to see you like that…” He nipped at the skin below my belly button. “All I’ve fucking wanted to do was make you come again, but this time with my mouth.”
His words were enough to do it.
I squirmed impatiently. Because as he was talking about his mouth on me, it made me suddenly aware that it wasn’t, and how desperately I wanted it to be.
I shifted again. The feather-light feeling of his breath against my skin, and how every few seconds he’d run his thumb under the bands of fabric at my hip, teased me to the point of insanity.
Then, his gifted fingers slid ever so lightly between my legs, and I envisioned myself begging—something I’d never done before. I was too proud to do it, but inside I was screaming his name. Telling him how bad I wanted him. Saying how good it felt when he touched me. Insisting that he give me more.
Maybe he could hear it too.
“Are you ready for me?” he asked.
The yes left my tongue, almost as fast as he took my sweats and panties off right after I said it.
He attentively moved down my body, sweeping one leg out to the side, hooked back with one large, strong hand. His lips lightly touched the back of my thigh as they made their drugging way to the inside, where he slowed even more.
For the most part, I’d had my eyes screwed shut, but they quickly adjusted to the faint light that poured in from the bathroom. His muscles flexed across his shoulders as his head bowed at my center.
I surrendered, captivated by a desire like I’d never known.
Cord didn’t rush. Instead, his firm tongue leisurely marked my skin, a move followed by his lips, and then a delicious pull of his mouth, sucking at me.
I gazed down myself, through the valley between my aching breasts, to see his face between my legs.
His large, talented fingers on his left hand held taut to my right hip.
His lust filled eyes met mine, and my mouth dried as I fought for breath.
He looked like a God.
Like a dream.
Like a mirage, except I could feel him. So he had to be real.
Openly gaping at one another, I licked the dryness on my bottom lip as he ran his tongue up the inner seam of me. The vibration of a groan gave a wild buzz to my clit. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I think I stopped breathing all together as his eyes blinked twice, then fell completely shut while he worshipped me with his mouth.
The initial feeling of him—doing that—was all things good. Hot baths on cold days. The way drinking cold water felt like it bloomed when it hit your warm stomach after a long thirst. Like finding something you’d lost.
The attention he gave to exploring me, learning what I liked—even if it was only for the night—made it easy to forget that it could only be once.
I savored every second.
As if I’d sent him my thoughts, he gave me more of what I wanted, exactly where I wanted it. I was selfish and needy, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
He slipped a finger inside me and said against my skin, “I could do this all night. You taste so fucking perfect.”
It would have been easy to let him, he knew what he was doing. That aside, I could barely move or udder a sound, so protesting wasn’t an option.
Like he had the night before, he used his hands, and with the added sensation of his mouth, it wasn’t long before I felt ecstasy blaze through every inch of me. Pleasure hissed through my veins, eliciting an unfamiliar singe of heat over my skin.
I wasn’t sure when it happened, but one of my hands had wandered down the bed and reached between my legs to join him. He turned his head and kissed my fingers. That one little move arrested me, and the weight of it was just enough to tip the scale.
“Don’t stop.” Pressing against the top of the mattress with my foot, I lifted even more into his mouth. With my free hand, I balled the blanket in my fist.
Certain magic, my body was under his spell. It moved to a rhythm he chose. I tightened, and he muttered yeses approvingly against my sex.
My shoulders rolled, my neck fell to the side, and before I even had time to miss his touch, like it never really left, he was above me. Holding himself, he wet his erection, deliciously rubbing it through my center. I felt it for myself, noticing he’d put a condom on, then I retreated.
He slipped the end of himself around the edge of my ready sex. “Do you still want this, Dana?”
He was stealthy, and, I believed, adroitly in control.
I was still trying to figure out how he got his pants off and found a condom without me noticing. It was like I’d fallen asleep, only I knew I hadn’t, but my thoughts were leisurely and dreamy. It was quite possible I was still in that headspace where you don’t really know your name after a really, really flawless orgasm.
I couldn’t speak.
His thumb and forefinger caught my chin and aimed my lazy gaze at his.
“Hey, are you okay?” His other movements stilled too, and his voice became more concerned. “Dana. Talk to me.”
My hand was the first of my appendages with the ability to respond, and I brought it to his side and ran my fingers over his ribs, behind him, to his back, and clung to his strong shoulder. “I’m okay.”
“Okay?”
I admitted just above a whisper, “No, I’m awesome. Thank you. You’re really excellent at that.”
He huffed a short laugh. “At what?” The flirty, good humor quietly returned to his voice.
I didn’t want to waste precious time naming specifics, they all added up to the real answer anyway. Getting me off.
Recovering more, I added. “But I still want more.”
Without his hand between us to guide our connection, I moved my hips seeking him.
He kissed me and the taste of him, laced with my arousal, was intoxicating. I deepened it, greedy and desperate for him to be inside of me.
Cord pulled back ever so slightly, and then I felt the rigid tip of him press against my opening. He tilted his head to the ceiling, and I watched his face as he slowly entered me, inch by delicious inch. His strong chest and shoulders swelled to an even greater size.
It was that feeling I’d craved. It was surely the least feminist thing about me, but the image of his body—tall, strong, and sculpted—entering mine, really did things to me. It caused me to flex in my center and it resulted in the manliest roar I’d ever heard. With his weight on his elbows, his hands cradled my head, and he pushed powerfully inside me and held himself there.
I couldn’t stop myself from topping him from below, pressing myself against him at a pace that wasn’t fast or slow, somewhere right in the middle. He was large enough to stretch me in a noticeable way, but it felt fucking perfect.
He kissed my forehead, and I clung to him, but never felt close enough.
Soon, he was meeting me thrust for thrust and seemed to find a place in me so deep that I gasped to chase my breath each time he pressed me harder into the mattress.
“God, where’ve you been?” he panted.
If I thought his skills in bed were impressive, they were no match for the words he said. Again, I reminded myself it was pillow talk, but it was a glorious fantasy to live out.
His sexy words and the sounds that emanated from him, some sounding like they were produced inside of his chest somewhere, were seduction in the form of sound. The motion of him rocking his hips into me, grinding like he was trying to invade me.
I kissed his chest, and with great effort managed to not sink my teeth into him. The faster he got, the more the urge to scream scaled up my throat.
“I need you to tell me what you like so I can do it, Dana.” I felt the timbre of his voice throughout my whole body, from my breathless head down to my curl-locked toes. Then he added, “Please, I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Keep talking to me,” I requested. I was defenseless against the combination of his body and his sexy words, even if they were all a show.
He hummed. One of his hands moved down my body, palmed my breast for a second, and then traveled down to cup my ass cheek, pressing me into him with even force.
God, it was everything.
“I’m going to come so fucking hard, Dana. Please, I need you to get there before me. Tell me what you need.”
“Harder.”
Honestly, I loved what he was doing already, but there was something about experiencing his raw power and strength that seduced me.
He did as he was asked and without pulling back as far as he had before, he left himself buried in me and pushed into me with mind-bending vigor. Doubling down, thrust after thrust.
“Dana,” he cried desperately, there was such a need in his voice. And, in that moment, I was certain it was a need for me.
“Just like that. Oh, Cord. Don’t stop.”
“God, don’t say my name yet. I’m hanging by a fucking thread here.”
Buried deep, he shifted his hips as if he was trying to find a way to get more of me, and that friction had my back arching completely off the bed into his embrace. One strong arm held me above the bed, and the only thing I was touching was him, and a powerful blow struck me like a high voltage shock wave.
I didn’t have to say a word.
I didn’t have to tell him I’d hit my climax.
He knew, and like he’d finally been given permission to reach for his own, a whole new intensity overcame us.
The sound of our hot, wet bodies, slapping together, panting was all I could hear.
“Cord.”
“Yes,” he groaned, and that was the last he spoke. His speed kicked up to a pace I’d never experienced, and his final burst of stamina was driven by an almost carnal edge.
I didn’t try to match it, I just let him sweep me away as I came and came. It wasn’t until his hips slowed to a dead stop did I feel the sensation of throbbing inside of me, as my fevered muscles gripped him over and over.
He froze, except for where we were connected at the center.
It was fucking incredible, and, truthfully, that was selling it short.
I’d asked him for more and received nearly more than I could handle.