Chapter Ten
Troy swallowed as she continued to stare at his mouth, her fingers loosening and tightening in his shirt, loosening and tightening. The tension in the sling of his pelvic muscles cranked tighter, the vastness all around them shrank down to just him and her.
It was too dark to see the moment she made up her mind. One second the heat of her gaze flicked tiny flames over his lips, the next she was yanking on his shirt, extinguishing those flames with the salve of her mouth.
Extinguishing and stoking at the same time.
Her lips slammed into his, hot and urgent, openmouthed and full throttle, charging through his heart and frying every last brain cell in an instant. Fire flashed to his groin and he groaned into her mouth as he slid his hand onto her opposite hip, dragging her onto her side, dragging her flush with him, their bodies joined from thigh to chest, his splinted arm squashed between them.
She kissed with all of her body, deep and wet, making little noises at the back of her throat as she fisted his shirt. She gasped as he thrust his thigh between her legs, breaking the kiss.
“We’re not having sex,” she repeated, her voice a low mutter as she sucked in air.
Troy’s pulse hammered so loudly through his ears he barely heard her. His body was on autopilot, primed to respond to pleasure. To seek it and to give it.
“Okay,” he muttered back, his own breath ragged as he palmed her ass.
She leaned in for more, her lips hot and insistent on his, her head twisting and turning as she went deeper, her tongue seeking his, sighing when she found it, moaning when he stroked and probed in return.
The handful of her ass was hot and sweet and he squeezed it reflexively, holding her fast against the thrust of his thigh. She flexed, riding the intrusion. Rubbing lightly at first, then harder.
Dirtier.
Fuck. So hot. So sweet. Like heaven and hell all in one glorious handful.
She broke off the kiss again on a strangled gasp, staring at him, her chest heaving. “We’re not having sex here tonight.” Even as she said it, she rode his thigh harder. Troy’s eyes almost rolled back in his head at her barely leashed restraint, at the buck of hips that didn’t seem to buy the message her mouth was selling.
“Okay,” he agreed. If she chose to dry hump him all the way to orgasm beneath a billion stars he’d be in that.
Hell, he was totally hot for that.
She came back for more. Her mouth moving over his like a storm, fast and furious, lashing him with passion and intensity. She was whimpering now, clutching convulsively at his shirt as her inner battle raged. Like she wanted to push away yet dissolve into him at the same time. Troy clamped down harder on her ass, wanting nothing between them, urging her to keep rocking against him.
She gasped, her lips breaking from his, a low growl of frustration rumbling from her mouth as she moved restlessly against him.
“What do you want, baby?”
He’d asked her the same thing in the bathroom that day because Troy was all about giving women whatever the hell they wanted but also because her conflicted passion bled all over him.
“Not this.” Her denial came out on a pant even though her hips were telling him a completely different story.
“Okay. We can stop.” It would kill him to stop. But he would.
“Are you insane?” she demanded, her voice crazed in the calm of the night as she pushed on his chest and rolled up over the top of him.
Troy sucked in a breath, loud in the stillness, as she rose above him, framed by starlight. He clutched her waist with his un-splinted hand as the apex of her thighs found the hard bulge behind his zipper. Her skirt had ridden up. Legs, bare and pale flashed in the dark as she undulated her hips, rubbing slow and sure along the hard line of his cock.
Her long, low moan sighed into the night, whispering through the trees around them. She looked wild and wanton, and Troy vaulted up, claiming her mouth, sliding his hand into her hair, plucking at the band that held it in its ponytail and releasing it. It fell thick and lush around his arm and in layers over her shoulders and down her back.
Somehow during their passionate make out they’d managed to slide off the windshield to be on the hood proper and he reclined back against it now as she shook her head. The heavy tresses swung free, the celestial backdrop crowning her with a halo of stars.
She was like some kind of creature of the night or forest nymph and he was totally in her thrall, his chest tight, his pulse beating to some wild pagan rhythm.
She swooped down, her hair falling in a curtain around them, blacking out his world as she kissed him again.
And kissed him. And kissed him.
And every time she went to pull away he lifted his head off the hood, chasing, following, hunting her mouth, refusing to let her lips off his.
Demanding more. Needing more.
His good hand drifted to her ass and he planted it there, holding her fast against his aching cock, pressing it hard between her legs, grinding up as she was grinding down, stoking the heat between their legs into an inferno, whipping the breath in his lungs into a tornado.
“Yes.”
She moaned, panting her desire as she pulled away, anchoring her hands on the pectoral muscles of his chest, extending her arms until she was upright. Or, as upright as the length of her arms allowed, anyway. She dropped her head down, hunching her shoulders as she rotated her pelvis, slow and easy.
Her hair obscured her from his view but the rough pants falling from her mouth told him she was enjoying the action. She leaned into him for purchase, her fingers digging into the muscles beneath her palms as she rode his erection. Troy grasped convulsively at her waist as the wild pull in his groin suffused pleasure to the taut bunch of his ass and the tense strain of his thighs.
She pushed away from him, removing her hands as she seated herself fully over his cock. She rode him like a cowgirl at a rodeo, gripping his hips hard between her thighs just as she’d done in the bathroom, just as he’d instructed her to do with the bull.
Gripping hard and grinding harder. Undulating those hips as if she was swinging a lasso about her head.
Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Her thighs trembled; her head fell back as if she couldn’t keep it upright any longer. The tips of her hair brushed his hand at her waist and he itched to wrap it around his fist.
She looked utterly enraptured and she snatched his breath away.
He grabbed the hem of her shirt instead, his hand sliding under to the feverish flesh beneath. He needed to look at her. To see her breasts glorious in the starlight, see her nipples tinged in the first silvery threads of the rising moon.
“Take your top off.” His voice sounded alien even to him. Deep as a mine and twice as dark, a crack in the quiet of the night.
Big mistake. The rock of her hips ground to an instant halt. It had been the wrong thing to say. He could almost hear the gears in her brain changing down as she stared at him.
Speaking at all had been stupid.
“Oh God.” She groaned, dropping her forehead into her hands as she shook her head. “God…no no no!”
Before he could stop her, she’d dismounted and was sitting beside him, skirt askew, legs stretched out in front, face still buried in her hands, her hair an effective barrier from his gaze.
“No,” she said, whispering this time.
Troy’s head spun as his body changed gears from full throttle to hard brake. He waited for a moment or two before he dared speak, before he could speak. His brain could barely form a coherent sentence given all his blood was stuck stubbornly south of his belt.
“Joss.” He cleared his throat of its husky rasp. “Joss.”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently and collapsed against the hood. “We’re not supposed to be doing this, remember. We had that one perfect moment. We’re not supposed to be ruining it.”
Troy’s chest was rising and falling as rapidly as hers; their breathing, the only noise, poked holes in the dark as they both shifted air. “I don’t think us going at it on the hood of my car is ruining anything.”
“I can’t have sex with you, Troy.”
“Yeah. You’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
She groaned again. “It’s just that…you’re so damn tempting.”
He grinned. At her conflict and the absurdity of it. As if they were teenagers who’d sworn a virginity pledge and had the purity rings to prove it. He rolled up on his side, supporting his head with his palm. “I’m sorry. For being so tempting.”
She snorted. “No you’re not.”
Troy laughed. “You’re right. I’m not.”
“My life is just fine.” She glanced at him, her brow furrowed. “You know?”
Troy did know. But he also knew what it was like to have more. “Don’t you want it to be great?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m fine with fine. There were a few years there where fine was more than I ever dared hope for.”
Troy understood that too. He’d have given anything for fine those first sixteen years of his life.
“But my body has a mind of its own when it comes to you, Troy Jensen. It’s been a long time and my libido had decided that you’re its kick starter. I could get very distracted by you. Sex would be very distracting. And the truth is, I don’t have that kind of luxury.”
She flicked her gaze to the heavens and he swore he could see starlight reflected in her eyes. Her words found purchase in his heart. He liked the idea that he could distract her because his truth was nothing had ever distracted him from his goal of bull riding.
Until her.
“Are you telling me you aren’t already distracted? You think not having sex is going to stop us from wanting to have sex? I don’t know about you but I haven’t been able to think of anything else but being inside you since your bathroom hand job. Actually…probably since the lug wrench.”
It may have been night but Troy swore he could see dull color flooding her cheeks. He certainly saw her knuckles whiten as her fingers twined in the fabric of her shirt.
“It’s best just not to go there.”
The rasp in her voice told him she’d been there all right. More than once. Well, okay then. There was more than one way to skin a cat.
His heart rate, which had started to settle, picked up again. She’d said no sex, then no sex it was. But hell if he’d ever met a woman who needed an orgasm more. Damned if he was leaving here tonight without giving her a bloody good reason to go there as often as possible.
She thought sex with him could be distracting? He didn’t need penetration to achieve that. She hadn’t even begun to know the meaning of the word.
He vaulted upright and slid off the hood, his feet landing on the ground, the crunch of dirt loud in the silence.
“Troy?”
She lifted her head and glanced down her body. Her skirt was still high and tempting on strong bare thighs that were parted enticingly. His dick, which hadn’t exactly returned to its flaccid state, hardened in an instant thinking about how tight her thighs had squeezed his hips.
Wondering how hard they’d squeeze his face.
He grabbed her left ankle and yanked. “Troy,” she squeaked as the hem of her skirt flapped higher, the slippery fabric assisting him. Her ass stopped where the hood started to slope into the grill and he bent first her left knee then her right, placing both of her feet on the bumper.
Wide, wide apart.
“Troy? What are you doing?”
Her voice shook and he felt it right to the root of his cock. She looked magnificent, sprawled out on his hood, her legs spread wide, her hair spread out around her like some pagan sacrifice under the stars.
He stepped between her parted thighs and his dick shot to granite.
“Troy.”
He slid his right hand onto the bare skin of her right thigh, slipping under the hem of her skirt, brushing over the gauzy fabric of her underwear.
“Troy.” Her voice was high and strained, the breathy quality of it trailing like vapor into the night air. “I said what are you doing?”
Troy found the thin side strap of her underwear and plucked at it. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“I think you’re taking off my underwear.”
“I am.”
He pulled on it tensing for her resistance, waiting for her hand to clamp on top of his but it didn’t. She didn’t tell him to stop. She didn’t squirm away. She didn’t try to pull her skirt down.
She didn’t exactly lift her hips either but she certainly wasn’t stopping him.
He smiled to himself as he stepped back and eased them down her legs, stuffing them into the back pocket of his Levi’s. She shivered as he slid a hand onto her knee and stepped back into the cradle of her thighs.
“I meant what I said about sex.”
His hand slid all the way up her leg, pushing what little skirt was still covering her out of the way, holding it in a bunch at her belly button. Her nudity was fully exposed to his gaze and he looked his fill, breathing out hard.
“Who said anything about sex?”
He leaned in, his mouth dropping to the pale slice of skin between where his hand held her skirt and the thatch of hair between her legs. She wasn’t trimmed as was the fashion among the women he usually took to his bed but Troy was not a fussy guy and here, under the stars, his head filling with the musky scent of her arousal, au naturel seemed fitting.
The ragged pant of her breathing stuttered into the air as he lazily stroked his tongue down.
Down. Down. Down.
She roused. Shifted. Raised herself up on her elbows, her abs tightening, her thighs tensing. “I think you’ll find that still counts,” she said, obviously throwing one last-ditch effort into denying herself the pleasure she so clearly craved.
He chuckled low, his warm breath fanning her belly, satisfied to feel gooseflesh stippling the soft skin. “If you think this is sex, you need to read some more textbooks, doc.”
*
Troy applied gentle pressure to her abdomen where his hand fisted the fabric of her skirt. “Lie back, baby. I’m about to fly you to the moon.”
He vaguely heard the quiet thunk of her head against the hood as his tongue resumed its southward journey. Vaguely sensed the ooze of tension from her muscles. Vaguely heard her gasp and moan, “Oh my God,” as his tongue dipped lower, swiping down the seam of her sex.
Then he was lost to the taste and the feel and the scent of her. The heat and the wet of her, the salt and the musk, the slick and the sweet. It filled his head, drummed through his chest, gripped his cock. He wanted to tear his zip down and feel her all around him, hot and slick, massaging him, milking him.
But he wanted this more.
Wanted to gift her something she’d gifted him in the bathroom—the power of giving without receiving. With no notion of reciprocation.
One perfect moment.
Troy’s tongue found the beaded knot of nerves and circled it, pressing hard. She bucked her hips and cried out into the night. So he did it again and again, her hips lifting rhythmically, thrusting into his face with each pass. He lapped it up, circling harder and faster. The reckless demands of her hips, the slickness of her sex, the strangled moans falling from her mouth rocketing his own desire into the stratosphere.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
Her thighs clamped tight around his shoulders and Troy could feel them trembling. She was close, so close and he wanted nothing more than to rip the splint off his arm, slide both hands under her ass and lift her to him, keep her right where he wanted her as he drove her over the edge.
He grabbed her right leg instead, slinging it over his shoulder, opening her right up, taking full advantage, sliding two fingers into her tight, slick heat as his tongue pounded her clit.
She came then. Hard. And loud. Gasping into the night, her thighs clenching, her internal muscles clamping tight around his fingers, the heel of her right foot drumming into his back.
But he barely felt it. He was too busy with his tongue, flicking at the impossibly hard nub over and over, wringing every second of pleasure out of it. Making her gasp and moan and plead for more.
And he gave more. Gave his all. His fingers thrusting, his tongue circling. He gave her everything until she sagged in his grip and pleaded for him to stop.
He stopped. Slid his fingers out, eased her leg down and dropped his forehead to her belly, trying to catch his breath. Her large abdominal pulse thrummed just beneath echoing the loud thud of his own heartbeat still washing through his ears.
He wasn’t sure how long they lay like that, wasn’t conscious of anything other than her breathing and her pulse and the scent of warm, satisfied woman. At some stage though her hand landed in his hair and he stirred.
“I think I just scratched your hood up wolverine-style,” she said, her voice still a little husky.
Troy chuckled, dragging his forehead off her belly, resting his chin there instead. Her hand fell away and he noticed she wasn’t looking at him, her gaze firmly fixed on the stars. “A badge it will wear with honor.”
She sighed, long and deep, and Troy wished he knew if it came from pleasure or regret.
“What time do you have to pick Damien up?”
“Soon. But I don’t think I can move. I seriously think you melted me into a puddle.”
Troy tried and failed not to let it go to his head. There were only two things he was really good at. Riding bulls and satisfying women.
But Joss wasn’t just another woman to him. Deep in his bones he knew she was special.
She was the eight-second ride. The gold buckle.
“That’s okay. I think you’d make a helluva hood ornament.”
She groaned then and flung an arm over her face. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to look at you again.”
He laughed. So that was why she was studying the sky like an astronomer discovering a new planet. He eased himself back a little, pulling her skirt down to her knees, his good hand resting on her covered thigh.
“Come on, Joss. You can do it,” His voice was coaxing as he slipped his hand into hers. “It’s not that hard.”
She rolled her head from side to side. “Maybe for someone who does this all the time.”
He hooted out a laugh at her unintentional insult, not remotely insulted. A bird somewhere beyond the tree line, however, did take objection to the sudden noise, squawking and flapping its wings indignantly.
“You seemed perfectly able to go on after jacking me off in the bathroom the other day.”
He pulled gently on her hand. She rose, her hair falling like silk around her head, a dull flush staining her cheeks. Troy’s pulse skipped a beat. She was so far removed from his usual type yet his heart swelled just looking at her.
With her sitting on the hood and him standing between her legs, their heights evened out. Her mouth was right there and he wanted to kiss her again. Lie her back again. Make her come again. Make her come all night.
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know; it just is,” she dismissed. “And how in hell am I supposed to look my son in the eye so soon after you—”
Troy waited for her to finish the sentence. She didn’t. He cocked an eyebrow. “Went down on you?”
She blanched. “I was going to say debauched me on the hood of your pickup.”
He grinned. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Oh God.”
She dropped her forehead into her hands again and, before he could stop himself, Troy was pulling her into a hug, the crown of her head pressed into the base of his throat. He half expected her to pull away and when she didn’t a feeling of such incredible tenderness swept over him he had to lock his knees against its dizzying effects.
She stayed there for what should have felt like a very long time to a guy who didn’t often hug women in a non-sexual way. But it didn’t. Surrounded by night and starlight and everything Joss, it felt right.
“So…” Her voice was muffled against his chest and she lifted her head, squirming out of his embrace. “We’re even now. That’s the end of it. Okay?”
Troy regarded her. She was clearly serious but he wasn’t so sure about the prospect. She was a fool if she really thought their chemistry was ever going to be satisfied with a hand job or two. But he didn’t want to complicate her life either. If she could keep her hands to herself then he sure as shit could.
“Okay.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that okay like you said about half a dozen times tonight because I wanted to hear it but you ended up having your way with me anyway?”
Troy smiled. “It can be whatever you want it to be, baby.”
He slid his hand onto the side of her neck then round to her nape, her hair warm against his fingers as he tugged her close and kissed her. Hard.
She kissed him back. Harder.
This wasn’t the end of it. Not by a long shot.