Break On Through (14 page)

He cleared his throat. “Cleo, are the commercials, uh, bothering you?”

She crossed to the counter where she made a great show of folding the dish towel.

“Cleo?”

“If you must know…” she mumbled.

“I think I must.” When she was silent another long moment, he tried again. “Cleo—”

“I see people doing—” Whirling around, she made a vague hand gesture, “—you know, everywhere.”

Trying not to laugh, he rubbed his hand over his chin. “You mean doing, uh,
it
?”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“No, darlin’.” Shaking his head, he took a small step closer. “I think you’re just wound a little…tight.” He took another step.

Her eyes went wide.

His hands came up, trying to soothe, remembering he’d promised himself he’d make her feel safe. “I’m not going to pounce.”

She swallowed, all big eyes and flushed cheeks. “Maybe…maybe it would be better if you would.”

Chapter Eight

Any thought Reed had of going home evaporated in the sudden heat of the room. He stared at Cleo for a long moment, letting her obvious arousal wind
him
tight. Then, dying to touch her, and with that tacit approval she’d just given him, he reached out his hand and rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip.

She sucked in a breath, and when he made a reverse pass, her small tongue stole out to taste his skin. With his other hand on her shoulder, he drew her closer and then let his thumb slide over the wet surface of her tongue and into her mouth. He ducked his head to meet her gaze. “Suck,” he whispered.

When she jolted, he tightened his hold on her. “I want to feel your mouth all around me. Suck.”

When she complied, it was as if she held his cock in the heated cavern. Her gaze didn’t leave his as she worked on him, sucking and swirling, and he watched more color flag her cheekbones and cross the bridge of her nose.

“Good job,” he said, praising her, then pulled free from her mouth with a pop.

She gasped, as if the mere sound had stroked an erogenous zone. Bending over her, Reed drew the wet digit down the side of her neck. As he’d planned, she responded by turning her head to give him more access. He immediately took up the invitation, pressing his mouth to the sensitive space behind her ear. She clutched at him, her hands fisting in the sides of his shirt as he painted figure eights with his tongue. Her scent rose in the air, sweet, with that hint of spice.

Sinking his fingers in the back of her hair, he drew back her head for his kiss. His lips pressed to her softer ones, and he gripped the lower with his teeth, drawing it down so his tongue then could slide inside.

Against him, she trembled. He deepened the kiss, then found the hem of her T-shirt with his free hand. Avoiding touching her flesh with his skin, he drew it up, breaking their kiss to pull it over her head.

She stood in the kitchen light, her skirt hanging low on her hipbones, her torso pebbling in reaction to his heated gaze. Over the cups of a lacy blue bra, her breasts quivered with each of her heaving breaths.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“Reed…”

“Shh.” He drew his hand over her hair to calm her, then hooked his forefinger in one of the bra cups. Tugging, he pulled it lower to reveal the upper curve and then the turgid nipple. As he stared, it tightened further, and turned an even darker pink. With the minimum of contact, he tucked the material beneath her breast.

Then he stepped back.

Cleo looked down, her expression somewhere between dismay and desire.

“Beautiful,” he said again. There was one way to distance her from her doubts and insecurities—by Reed taking over and taking her far above them. “I’m going to look how I like tonight. Play how I like. Taste how I like.” Make her fly high, high, high.

She quivered. “What about…?”

“You?” he asked. “I promise you’ll enjoy it.”

“Reed—” she began.

He pinched her nipple, and her next sound was a strangled moan.

It made him want to taste it on his lips. He drew her in for another greedy kiss, his hands sliding over the smooth skin of her back. The taut nipple pressed into his chest and he worked at the buttons of his shirt as he continued kissing her.

When he stepped back to strip off the garment, her mouth was puffy and red, her gaze slumberous. She swayed a little and he moved nearer, quickly baring her other breast by tucking the cup beneath it. Then he slid his arms around her again and kissed his way from her throat to one nipple. It only received a quick swipe of his tongue before he bent lower, nuzzling the underside and breathing in the fragrance of her.

Her hands clutched at his back and the bite of her short nails caused him to revisit that sweet, hardened peak. He pulled it inside his mouth, sucking hard. She moaned, her fingers digging deep.

His hands toyed with her other nipple, pinching and then strumming it with his thumb. “Please.” Her whisper was rough, her hands urgent as they moved over his back and then his chest. “Please, Reed.”

“I’m taking care of it. Taking care of you,” he said, moving to her other nipple. Glancing up, he saw her gaze was fixed on him. She shivered, her eyes darkening as he worried the peak with his teeth. Then he sucked, and she cried out, arching over his arm.

“I’m going to fall,” she said.

“Then we take this to the bed.” He went for her mouth again, delving deep until they were both panting. His lips slid across her cheek and down her jaw as he ushered her the short distance to her bedroom.

A single, low light glowed from the bedside table. He directed her toward the mattress and when he sat on it, he pulled her between his splayed thighs. Reaching around, he unhooked her bra. It fell to the floor and he began kissing her breasts again, sliding his tongue over her nipples and finally, down her torso. Her belly hollowed and he gave a wet kiss to her navel, blowing there until she moaned again.

He caressed the globes of her ass over her skirt, sliding the fabric up and down. Then he caught the back of the hem and lifted to tuck it into the waistband. He stroked her ass over her panties now, pulling her closer so that the front of her skirt brushed the denim covering his cock. Primed as he was, it felt like the stroke of a hand and he groaned against her breast, his dick jerking.

Her hands were in his hair, holding him close, but he broke away, rolling and tugging to take her down on the bed beside him. Then he loomed over her, an elbow on each side of her head as he licked her earlobes and nibbled at her mouth. When she tried lifting her head for a deeper kiss, he moved away.

“Shh,” he said. “Be still.”

At his direction, her body went rigid beneath his, her every panting breath making her lovely breasts quiver. He gave each nipple a brief, firm suck, then moved downward. With his knees on either side of hers, he pushed up her skirt to her hips.

The triangle of her panties was the same pale blue as the discarded bra. He ran his finger over the low-cut elastic waistband, then along the edges where the fabric met her thighs. Her fingers spread, clenching at the bedspread.

“Yeah, darlin’,” he said. “You hold tight there while I take good care of you.”

Her next sound was part entreaty, part protest.

“I
am
going to take care of you,” he promised. “I’m going to play with your pretty pussy and make it desperate.”

“
I’m
desperate.”

The slight pout in her voice made him grin and he leaned down to bite her lower lip. “You don’t want me to hurry this along, really you don’t.”

Then, keeping her legs closed with firm pressure from his knees, he hooked his thumbs in her panties and began wiggling them down, halting when he’d revealed the pad of her sex and just the top inch of her pussy lips.

“Reed,” she whispered on another moan.

Sliding his legs behind him, he put an elbow on the side of each slender thigh, not allowing her to let them fall open. His mouth made a wet trail from hip bone to hip bone, then he flattened his tongue and took it to that closed groove of her pussy. Starting at the rolled panties, he wiggled it upward, delving into the seam and searching out her clit.

He groaned, her sweet, creamy taste delicious. The tip of his tongue nudged the hard knot of nerves and she bucked, her movement hampered by his constricting elbows and the weight of him on her legs.

He licked again, delicate and careful, and one of her hands clutched at his hair. “Yeah, baby,” he said, lifting his head. “Let’s get your panties the rest of the way off.”

Her face was flushed. This was working for her, big time, he thought, satisfied and getting hornier by the second. Back on his knees, he yanked her panties down and tossed them to the floor. Instantly, her legs inched apart, but he pressed them together again, running his hands from her ankles to her thighs.

With a leg on either side of hers, he went back to kissing and caressing her breasts. He plumped them in the cup of his hands and brought them to his mouth, where he washed them with the flat of his tongue, then lashed at the nipples, punishing them for being so damn tempting.

“I’m going to make you come with my mouth,” he told Cleo. “Your juices are going to flow right onto my tongue and I’m going to spread all that wetness over your sweet, sweet pussy.”

“Reed…the way you talk…”

Yeah, the way he talked was turning her on even more. Let her hear what was going to happen, he thought, all the better to up her anticipation.

Lifting one of her clutching hands from the bedspread, he kissed her fingers and sucked just the tips of them inside his mouth. “Unless you’d rather show me how you do it with these,” he said, and flicked his tongue in the center of her palm.

She gasped, her body lifting up, pushing into the weight of his. “Oh, God,” she said. “
Reed
.”

It was the strained and eager note he’d been waiting for. He began sliding down her body, one of his jean-clad knees finding the juncture of her thighs. He pushed it against the hot flesh there and she bucked against it, riding, riding.

He licked her nipples a last time, feather light, and then moved again, until he was positioned between her thighs. He pushed them apart with his palms, splaying them wantonly, and she jolted in his grip, her hips rising.

Her pussy lips unfurled as he watched, blossoming under his ardent gaze. Liquid glistened, making his mouth water. He glanced up to see her staring at him, her breaths coming hard and fast.

“Oh, darlin’,” he murmured, and then he ran one hand between her swollen folds, using his thumb and forefinger to expose her to him fully. Her hips were lifting and falling and he drew close, breathing in the warm scent of her arousal. Careful not to start too strong, he licked at her wet, straining flesh, soft strokes with the flat of his tongue, then curling it to draw her taste into his mouth.

He curled his hand around one of her thighs, a restraining pressure that made her growl, low and soft. He grinned to hear it, then kept up his steady ministrations, using up-and-down strokes with increasing pressure.

She was getting close.

With his nose, he nudged her clit, aware it had to be throbbing.

“Hurt here, darlin’?” he asked, a wicked note in his voice. “Let Reed suck it all better.” And then he did just that, took her sweet nub into his mouth and sucked, beginning to nurse the orgasm right out of her body.

She made a half-swallowed noise and then quivered in his hold. As her body began to really quake, he twined two fingers and slid them deep inside her channel. Her muscles instantly grabbed, pulling them deeper, and he closed his eyes, reveling in giving Cleo her climax.

Just as her inner tremors were beginning to quiet, he released her clit and brushed kisses on the insides of her thighs. “I told you I’d take care of you.”

One of her hands lifted, then languidly tangled in his hair. “Reed—”

It was all she got out before a ring tone sounded.

Her body jackknifed on the bed. “
Reed
.” Her wide eyes shot to his face.

“Your phone,” he said, gently pulling his fingers free of her body.

Another layer of color joined the pink cast orgasm had left on her skin. “Oh my God.”

Still in his jeans, he made his way to the kitchen and brought her cell back to her. By the time he returned to the bed, she’d flung her skirt down. One arm was over her breasts as she reached for the device.

Reed’s luck had run out.

“I totally understand, Jeanette,” Cleo set into the phone. There was apology in the glance she sent him. “Tell Obie it’s fine he wants to come home. I’ll be there very soon.”

Good mother that she was, in minutes she was dressed and out the door with her keys in hand. “Sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “I…”

He waved away her concern, hoping like hell his raging hard-on would subside sometime soon. “I understand.”

Once she left, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He supposed bed games were over, but perhaps he should wait to make sure she returned safely home? To occupy himself, he shrugged into his shirt then placed her clothes on the dresser in her room. Thanks to that one year as a cadet, he couldn’t leave the bed in its mussed state.

As he put it back to rights, an idea occurred to him for his manuscript-in-progress. Maybe Jesse would find a key to the book notations left beneath his pillow. As Reed started considering the possibilities, he looked around for paper and pen. He didn’t take notes on his phone as the tiny keys seemed to inhibit his creativity.

Distracted, thinking only of his story and not about Cleo’s privacy, he yanked open the drawer of her bedside table. “Ah-hah!” he muttered, finding a pen right away. His fingers then encountered paper…a smallish manila envelope, he realized, pulling it out. “Can’t write on that.”

As he went to shove it back in the drawer, the flap caught, and photos slid out. Reed froze, staring down at them.

They were Polaroids—who the hell had such a camera these days?—and they were of Cleo.

Her shirt off.

Her bra remained, but that didn’t do anything to disguise the bruises. On her cheekbone. Over her ribs.

Man-sized, black-and-blue fingerprints circled one arm.