Hard Way (23 page)

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “Couldn’t be coy.”

“Under the circumstances, that was the best anyone could expect.”

With the grace of some exotic cat, she pressed up from the comforter and sat cross-legged. The pose gave him a heart-stopping view of her pussy, gleaming with the proof of her arousal.

“You’re doing that on purpose.” His voice was a growl.

“Yes. Now come kneel over me like you were.”

He laughed again, as if the air in the room were laced with nitrous oxide. After crawling onto the bed, he knelt right where his cock arrowed toward her mouth, pointing the way. Unnecessary. He knew exactly where he wanted to start—with her teasing smile sucking the head of his prick until she took him deep into her throat.

“More laughter?” She looked genuinely perplexed.

“Because you’re giving the orders.”

Her expression eased and she giggled too. “Yes, I suppose that is a change. I like it.” She glanced up at him from under her black brows. “For now.”

“I’m not asking again, though. Take your hair down for me, Sunny.”

She lifted her arms, which lifted her breasts too. He knew in the back of his mind that she’d done this for him before, but that was as distant and unfathomable as his infancy. He’d been there. That didn’t mean he remembered a damn thing. Or when. Or why he hadn’t memorized every goddamn second. He only knew this—this part of their intimacy—was something he longed for. Craved.
Needed.

Pin after pin dropped to the pillow behind her ass. Each one heightened his arousal to unbearable levels. But he would bear it. He wanted to. Every moment she spent teasing him was another moment she offered as a promise of time. More time together.

“And then?” She looked up at him. “When you see me bared entirely. What then?”

“Then I’ll take a fistful of that gorgeous hair and you’ll suck me. But I’ll ask very nicely first.”

“Manners. Rather unlike you lately, Mr. Takes a Lot.”

His grin was playful and nasty. They could do both. They could
be
both. “I think sometimes about turning us over until you’re the one kneeling above me. You riding me. But it never works in my head. Tell me the truth, Sunny. Tell me that doesn’t work for you either.”

Eyes wide and bright with possibilities, she shook her head. “Not that. Not for us.”

He stroked the side of her breast where it stretched upward. He followed that delicate feminine line to where the fingers of her right hand kept up their maddening work. “This first.”

She paused. There, in the wilds of her intricate braids, she twined their fingers. “You said you want a tease, but I want something different. I’m going to ask it of you, Liam. It’s something I’ve always imagined.”

He choked back his emotions. “Tell me.”

“Will you help me take my hair down?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sunny hadn’t really expected Liam to say no. Her request was a minor thing in the grand scheme of their problems. But it felt bigger. Every move and every word felt bigger than it ought to be. No getting around that.

What she hadn’t expected was the way his hands shook as he reached toward her hair, or the extra drop of precome that welled up from the slit in his cock’s head.

“You like that idea?” She nudged the corner of her mouth with her tongue, licking. She wanted that next step he’d described. To taste him slowly and take her time relearning what made him gasp.

His fingers delved gently into her hair, finding the first pin. He didn’t drop them blindly the way she had been doing. Instead he placed it on the nightstand next to the alarm clock, along with the next two. “I like it. I’ve always loved the way you took your hair down.”

“I know. But it’s never been just for you. I like it too.”

She couldn’t look at all that warm, healthy skin in front of her any longer without touching. She sought out the sharp line that arrowed from his waist to his groin. His strength was never in doubt, but the skin there was delicate—thin and laced with a vein she wanted to trace with her tongue.

He found the last couple pins, lined them up with the rest. Her hair fell in a dark curtain all around her. The strands slipped over her shoulders, leaving trembling shivers in their wake.

That was nothing compared to feeling Liam’s touch smoothing and untangling the braids. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed. “You always have been.”

She skimmed her fingertips over the outside of his lean hips. “You’ve said that before.”

“Like that’s supposed to make it less true?”

“Not at all.”

He combed his fingers through her hair, from her scalp to the long, long ends, drawing them forward to drape over her breasts and stomach—just before catching a fistful at her nape. “Now, Sunny. Please? Will you suck me?” He touched his thumb to the bottom arch of her lip. “This is me asking nicely. Will you take me in your pretty mouth?”

Delicious fire started in the tingling tips of her breasts and crept through her chest. Desire had life. Or maybe she
was
desire. She wanted him so much.

She lapped the welling moisture she’d watched for long minutes. He tasted clean and pure, with the slightest hint of salt. Liam. The taste wasn’t just man; it was
her
man. Familiar and new at the same time.

When she took the head of his cock in her mouth, she couldn’t help but moan. He fit her. Filling her mouth with smooth, smooth skin and swollen flesh. She let the tip of her tongue dance across the little web at the ridge between his head and shaft. He shook. His hands, as delicate and gentle as he was trying to be, folded down on the sides of her head.

Despite this sweet moment, despite the possibilities this night suggested, that cruel, beautiful edge of danger still lurked under Liam’s surface.

Sunny liked it. She liked knowing he was holding it down. For her. For them. As long as he let it loose some other time, and as long as he put it away when they both knew it wasn’t right—that would be
right
. Now they had this gentleness, this new sort of truth.

Damn was it good. She licked the length of his cock, letting the weight of his balls rest in her free hand. He focused on her, but his mouth was parted and softened in a way she’d never seen before. It sent a hot rush of power and want and need straight to her pussy. Shifting her position, she pressed her knees closed against the throbbing between her thighs.

“You like sucking me that much?” He combed through her hair again. His voice was raw. “It turns you on?”

She pushed her mouth down, down over his cock, stroking the underside with her tongue. Even pushing herself as far as she was capable, she could only take in half his length. She wrapped her hand around what was left bare.

She pulled off again with a wet smack. “I do. You taste so good to me.”

He smiled again, but it wasn’t his
for other people
smile. It was for her. “That pleases me.”

She laughed, burying her face against the muscles at the base of his stomach. She nipped the thin skin there, along the vein that had drawn her attention earlier.

He tugged on her hair, but it was nothing compared to what he’d done to her before. “What’s so funny?” he asked with another of those gorgeous grins.

“You! Idiot. ‘That pleases me,’” she said, echoing his deep voice. “I like blowing you. I
am
blowing you. Of course it pleases you.”

He pushed her down. Nicely, of course, with his hands folded around her shoulders, then nudging her legs apart and nestling between them. But even then, Liam was still a lurking beast. Fuck, did she love it. She didn’t try to hold back the shiver that worked out of her wet, wanting pussy.

His cock surged into her with no warning beyond the ready welcome of her body. She clasped his hips between her knees as her head went back on a flush of pleasure. She panted.

“Yeah. I’m a man. I like blowjobs.” His hips nudged and pulled, his prick filling her and slipping away.

She moaned and grabbed his ass, as if she really thought he’d move away from her. “You like lots of things.”

“I do.”

She skimmed her touch up his body, across the small muscles that layered his ribs. His shoulders worked with every slow thrust as he rocked on his elbows. Finally she cupped his face. “Christ, you’re a gorgeous man.”

“Oh, shut it.”

“Nope. I get to say anything I want to.”

His eyebrows flew upward, and he punctuated his surprise with another thrust. “You can always say anything you want to anyway.”

She moaned, couldn’t help it. He worked her so perfectly. “I can. Including…” She gasped, losing the thread of her thoughts on a particularly deep surge. “Including telling you to get down there and lick me. Because I want it. And you want to know the other reason you’ll do it?”

His mouth was curved in a slight smile—the kind that could turn her world inside out, if he knew how much they affected her. How much
he
affected her. The way she lived in fear when he was gone. The way she could hardly breathe sometimes for worry, thinking she was sacrificing her whole self to him. For him.

He didn’t even know. Just…a given.

“Tell me, Sunny.”

She slid her hands around the back of his head, then scratched her nails down his neck. He shuddered, which threw off the slow rhythm of his hips. “Because you want to taste me. You want to lick me where you’ve filled me. Where you’ve owned me. Don’t you, Liam?”

He didn’t answer beyond slipping free of her hungry, wet clench. For all her goading, all the ways she wanted his mouth on her, she almost changed her mind. Because he felt so good inside her and she didn’t want to lose that shivering pleasure. Her knees tightened involuntarily around his hips.

He looped his fingers around one of her knees and bent her leg back. Pushed her open. Her pussy was exposed as the cool air washed over her sensitive skin. “There’s a good girl.”

She shuddered against those raw words. Maybe she shouldn’t like being talked to that way. She sure as hell shouldn’t like their rougher games. She didn’t care. Not when it brought her and Liam closer together. Not when she could almost hope that things would be okay.

Eventually. Maybe.

He slithered down the bed, until his feet dangled off the mattress and his head hovered over her center. Deliberately, he huffed a warm and humid breath over her flesh. Her hips jerked upward.

“Please, Liam.” All soft words and near promises.

He licked one of her lips first. Then the other. His tongue was wet and gentle, but no wetter than her flesh. She wanted him so damn badly. He held her open, his grip sliding up to her thighs.

He licked her like his life depended on it. Pleasure cracked all the way through her chest in response. She cried out, her hands wrapping around his head. Her fingers wound through his hair, but she didn’t dare tug or pull. She didn’t want to change what he was doing. “Oh, that’s good. That’s perfect. I like that.”

He lifted his mouth from her clit, but his tongue continued dancing over the nerve-filled bundle. Rolling, promising touches. He’d push her over the edge, and she’d thank him for it.

“Now who’s being funny, hmm?” He hummed the last sound against her clit, and she moaned. “Of course you like this.”

She nodded, tossing her head across the pillows of their bed. Their bed. All of this was happening in their house. How suddenly bizarre.

“
Please.
” Her orgasm hovered on a near horizon. All she needed was the slightest nudge and she’d claim it.

Liam knew that. Fucking hell, how he must have known it, because he pulled his mouth away and covered her with his body. The planes of his chest rubbed over her sensitive breasts. He stroked home. So perfect. Maybe too perfect. She locked her arms around his ribs, holding him close.

“Here. I always want to be right here,” he said in a deep growl. His mouth pressed against her skin, leaving washes of pleasure in its wake as he teased the curve of her breast. “I always want you.”

“And I’ve always wanted you to show me how much.” She coasted her fingertips over his back, over the muscles that banded his spine. She loved touching him. She loved wanting him.

That had been the easy part.

He knew rhythm, all the way down to his toes. He gave it to her, as each stroke pushed her toward a precipice that glimmered with promise. He took her, but she had the feeling that she was taking him as well.

Words gathered behind her lips. She held them back with her teeth since she had no idea what they’d be. What she’d say. Something true, probably. He caught her gaze and looked deep into her eyes. She’d said that he should lick where he’d owned her, but she hadn’t meant it. Just dirty talk. Raunchy words without thought behind them.

Except now she might say it and mean it. There were certain words she didn’t want voiced when she couldn’t hold them tight and keep them precious. Instead she lifted her head and sealed her mouth to his in a fierce kiss. She turned tongue and teeth and lips into a different kind of speech, so that only their bodies talked.

That mental release let her body go. She dragged her fingernails down his back as she cried into his mouth. Pleasure exploded and took her away. Kept her safe. The orgasm spun her free. When her chest loosened on juddering breaths and blazing joy rushed out through her body, she was happy.