Touch Me (16 page)

“I’m really good at faking orgasms.”

Inside Payne’s chest, something seized. “Please, please don’t tell me this, Rose.”

“I get away with it every time,” she continued. “I’ll be lying there, doing multiplication tables in my head and when the right moment comes—well,
his
right moment—I fake it.”

She leaned over and looked into his eyes now, upside down. “Do you think Blake sensed it anyway? He never said anything, but he did begin sleeping with our neighbor.”

“If he was half a fucking man,” Payne ground out. “If he sensed something he
would
have asked you about it.”

“Maybe so.” Straightening, she sighed. “I wonder if I would have told him though, knowing it would hurt his feelings.”

“Rose, there’s taking politeness too far.”

“I know. That’s why I wanted to bust some rules with you. I thought it would break me free or something.” She sighed a second time. “Ah, well.”

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t play this game. Jumping to his feet, he grabbed up his beer. Swallowed a gulp down. “I can’t do this, okay? I lied. I lied to you.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, her expression turning smug. “I know.”

Payne stared, and his hand tightened on his beer. “You make me nuts.”

That little smile of hers was extra-maddening now. “As if I’d believe you couldn’t perform.”

That small ego stroke didn’t mollify him. “Then why’d you go along with it and why’d you tease me about your ‘bedroom problem’?”

“Oh, I was honest about that.” She gave a little shrug. “I’m a faker.”

Payne spun, stalked to the sink and then back again. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’ve been pretty upfront, I think.”

Narrowing his eyes, he came to stand toe-to-toe with her, towering over her smaller body. Trying to intimidate her with his size. This situation was careening out of control and he had to get a tight grip on it. “You want me.”

“Yep,” she said breezily.

“I wouldn’t let you fake anything,” he said on a sneer, a last ditch effort to have her reconsider. “It makes me mad even thinking you’d try that shit.”

“I know,” she whispered. Her pulse started speeding in her throat, he could see it thrumming against her tender skin, and her gaze fixated on his mouth. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

He paced away again. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Oh, please, Payne.” One fist propped on a sassy hip. “I’m not fifteen. I’m not a virgin.”

“You’ve never had an orgasm.”

“With a man,” she shot back. “I can do fine on my own.”

“It wouldn’t be the same with me, cupcake.”

He saw her swallow, and he wanted to follow the movements with his lips. “So you say,” she said, with an airy wave of her hand. “Big talk.”

His temper kindled. Maybe she meant it to, but that didn’t stop him from setting the beer aside and once more prowling in her direction. “Are you sure about this?”

She shuffled backward until her shoulders met one of the glass doors that led to the back yard. He put both his hands on the cool surface, fingers spread wide on either side of her head. “I don’t do this politely, cupcake. It won’t be flowers and candy and me trying to woo your climax out of you.”

“Maybe that’s what I need,” she whispered. “An absence of wooing.”

His cock, half-hard, went to its full length. Shit. Sweet Rose just might end up with a few tattered petals tonight and it didn’t seem to faze her. She seemed to think she
wanted
it like that.

The idea brought him up short.

This was Rose.
Rose.
Whom he’d saved from himself a dozen fucking years ago. Rose, who’d been the catalyst for him keeping clear of the kind of woman that she was, the kind that expected rainbow ponies and ice cream sundaes around every corner. Because of Rose, he’d stayed away from women who thought Payne Colson was a man who could be trusted with their heart.

He’d kept his distance from women who wouldn’t understand he’d ultimately break it through the unfaithfulness that was bred in his muscle, bone, and blood.

Perhaps she saw some of that on his face. “For goodness sake,” she said now. “It’s just sex.”

That really fired up his mad. Resisting her was the only noble thing he’d ever done in his life. The only time he’d leashed himself from having something he truly wanted. He’d done that so Rose Dailey would never utter those fucking words. So for Rose Dailey it would never be “just sex.”

Fine, then. Fine. Screwing her might screw her up but if she didn’t care then neither did Payne.

He leaned into her, pressing his face against her throat. As he drew up his leg, forcing her thighs to part, he licked her skin, shaping that box she’d traced on him earlier. With the tip of his tongue he wrote his name in the center.

Her fingers went into his hair and she arched, her body melting against his. “What if…what if getting me there takes a kiss?” she asked, panting a little. “Mouth on mouth?”

His knee was against her hot pussy and he could feel the dampness already seeping through her swimsuit into his jeans. He’d show her the wet spot if that didn’t mean he’d have to take the pressure away that was priming her to blow—exactly when he wanted her to blow.

“Payne?” she asked, her voice breathy. “What if I need that kiss?”

He lifted his head to look into her flushed face and her dilated eyes, changed from that sun-brightened gray. They were darker now, with just a rim of silver around the edges like a lunar eclipse. “You won’t,” he promised them both. He had to hold onto his one last decency.

Rose watched Payne cock his head now, and the corners of his mouth quirked. “Multiplication tables?”

She nodded, without the breath to talk. The wetness where he’d kissed her neck was evaporating in the air, making her hyper-aware of her drying skin. It tingled when she swallowed. Then there was the place between her legs, already swollen and throbbing.

His knee pressed higher, bringing her to her toes. She took her hands from his hair and grabbed his shoulders to keep her balance.

His gaze settled on the mouth he wouldn’t kiss. Her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip.

She felt his muscles go more rigid. “Where have you had sex, Rose?”

“Uh…”

“I want to know.” His fingertips, cold from the glass, traced her hot cheek. “Tell me, Rose.”

Shivering at the contrast, she stared at him helplessly. “In a bed?”

“Poor Rose,” he murmured. “We’re going to be much more adventurous than that.”

She shivered again, the heat in his blue eyes and the darkness in his voice setting off a primitive warning in her brain. This was the man with the ridiculous shirt collection, she reminded herself, trying to calm. The man who’d given his favorite—he’d said it was Cilla’s, but Rose didn’t believe him—for a wedding quilt. He’d bought her ice cream sundaes and saved her from bullies.

“I think I should make you come for the first time right here, your bare ass against the cold glass while I eat out your sweet pussy with my hot mouth.”

Rose’s knees went to mush.
Oh, God.
This was also the guy who drove too fast and who’d had sex with a billion women and who said he wasn’t going to woo an orgasm from her. He wouldn’t need to, she realized. Just a little dirty talk and the pressure of his knee had her three-quarters of the way there.

“What do you think of that, Rose?” Payne withdrew his knee and she fell to her heels, already missing that firm touch on her cleft.

“I think, um, fine?” Grrr. She sounded uncertain and squeaky-voiced and she decided to keep her mouth shut from this moment on. He might be the experienced partner here, but she didn’t have to sound completely green.

“Good,” he said, then reached for the hem of her cover-up. When it was bunched at her waist, he issued an order. “Hold here. Both hands.”

Clutching the roll of fabric just below her breasts, she watched him strip his shirt away. He looked even bigger to her bared, the light bronzing his wide shoulders and revealing his scar and the dragon-headed, double-helix tattoo on the side of his ribs.

Tossing the garment away, he stared down at her, as if he was deciding what item on the menu to sample first.

The wait ratcheted her growing need. Her nipples had bunched into hard, aching points and more wetness trickled between her legs. She pressed back against the glass, using the support to hold herself steady.

Payne licked his thumb and used it to draw a circle around her belly button. A moan worked itself up her throat, but she swallowed it down, determined to appear composed.

His gaze flicked from her body to her face. “Is this what you do?” he murmured. “Hold back?”

Afraid to speak, she shrugged.

“You gotta feel it, Rose,” he said. His thumb moved to her mouth. “Open up.”

A whimper escaped as it slid between her lips.

Touching his forehead to hers, he whispered his next command. “Now suck.”

She did, desperate for his taste. Prickles spread over her body at the carnality of the action and the way he surrounded her, caged her, his big body so close, his other forearm braced on the glass over her head. Breathing in through her nose, she smelled him, the fragrance of fresh water and warm, golden skin.

His thumb pulled free with a pop and then he brushed it across her lips, wetting them. It was as good as any kiss, Rose decided, swiping out her tongue to taste him again.

He touched his mouth to her temple, then slid it toward her ear. “Fucking’s a state of mind, Rose,” he said. “I’m gonna find my way into yours.”

Alarms went off again. She was supposed to be uprooting him from her head, not giving him access there! But then he swirled his tongue around her ear and the worry was drowned in another wave of heat. One hand released the fabric at her waist to touch his chest, and he instantly moved away.

“Back to position, Rose.” He looked stern, but then he bent to kiss the tip of her nose. “I know it’s hard, baby, but this is what you asked for.”

Closing her eyes, she fisted both hands in the cover-up again.

“Good,” he whispered, then hunkered down so his widespread knees brushed the outside of her legs. His mouth found the skin below her belly-button, tracing from hipbone to hipbone.

Then two fingers of each hand curled around the elastic of her bathing suit bottoms. He swirled his tongue inside her navel as he inched them down. Rose shuddered, her fingers clenching the cover-up just as her inner muscles tightened, trying to hold onto the sweet spasms of building pleasure.

The spandex bottoms rolled into a tight band as he pushed them toward her knees. Halfway there, he paused, and pressed his hot hands against the inside of her thighs, widening her stance as far as the constricting fabric would allow.

He stared at her exposed cleft and more moisture gathered there, a drop of it sliding down her inner thigh. Embarrassed, aroused, and shivering inside and out, Rose could only stare as he swiped it up with one thumb.

Her stomach muscles tightened, unable to look away as he worked the now-wet pad along the groove of her lips, opening her folds to his gaze. Reaching her swollen clit, he gave it the merest graze. Still, she twitched at the touch, biting her lip to hold back the rising tide of need.

With another man she would have been riding the wave, ecstatic about the promise of nearing satisfaction and desperate to grab for it, but with Payne, she didn’t want to peak too soon.

He had so much to show her.

Her breath stuttering into her lungs, she watched as he plied her with his thumbs, peeling her like juicy fruit so that her more sensitive inner tissues were exposed. She felt air against there, and his burning gaze, and then his mouth neared her clit.

Her heart pounded hard against her breastbone and her palms dampened, the moisture absorbed by the bunched material of her cover-up.

“Ass to the glass,” he said. “We don’t want you falling.”

She jerked back, eager for his next move, and the cold against her heated rump sent another round of goose bumps racing over her skin. Holding her breath, she watched his golden head draw nearer.

A breath away, he glanced up, his eyes meeting hers. He frowned.

Rose froze. Please, she whispered in her head.
Please.

“I think I want this to be a private show,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Palms to the glass too.”

So eager was she for him to begin, she slammed her hands against the door behind her, causing it to quiver like she was. The hem of her cover-up dropped—over Payne’s head, screening his next actions from her eyes.

But not from her nervous system.

It didn’t begin with a gentle lick. There was no tentative first taste.

Beneath the cover-up’s fabric, he tongued her, exploring her pulsing flesh from the hard, swollen knot of nerves at the top to the weeping channel. Her hips tilted to allow him access and her fingernails scraped against the surface behind her.

He was a devil, she thought. No golden idol, but a burning-hot, devious demon.

Fucking’s a state of mind
, he’d said, and because she couldn’t see what he was doing to her, her imagination was etching every second of it on her brain, tattooing it onto her gray matter one delicious scrape of tongue against private flesh at a time.
I’m gonna find my way into yours.

She wanted to call a halt; to beg for it never to end. She wanted mercy; she wanted the continued cruelty of this exquisite torture.

The tip of his tongue was flicking against her clit, then lashing it, and she was afraid she’d speak and say something that might never be taken back as raw, scalding pleasure shuddered up her thighs to swirl at her center. She was pulsing her hips toward his mouth, unable to hold back any longer, and then he pushed his face into her wet, open flesh and sucked her clitoris into his mouth.

Hard.

The firestorm of pleasure shattered, shards of it shooting to her fingertips, her toes. Then they were flung back, like filings to a magnet, to her center, to the man who’d wreaked such havoc. To the man who wrung every drop of bliss from her.

She was still dazed by it when he rose to stand over her.