Getting His Way: Sapphire Falls Book Seven (26 page)

He looked at her sitting on the desk, gripping the edge with white knuckles.

“What’s your safe word?” he asked.

She licked her lips again. She didn’t like the idea of butt plugs, but she liked the blowjob scene in
Erotic Research
.

Julia had been good at it—the author had said so, but Bryan could admit the description did sound like the book’s heroine had done a good job.

He wondered how many times Tess had read that section.

“Pickle,” she finally said softly.

“Right.”

“Am I—” She swallowed hard. “Am I going to need a safe word?”

“If there’s
anything
you want to stop doing, you use it,” he told her. “Or, you know, tell me to stop.”

She returned his smile with a small one of her own.

“So what are you—”

He knocked the one pile of papers and a couple of pens to the floor. His desk was thankfully pretty bare. He preferred to do his paperwork at one of the tables in the bar.

“Lay back and spread your legs.”

She didn’t want romance. She didn’t want sweetness. She loved
Erotic Research
and had definitely responded the few times he’d been firm with her.

And he was determined to make this
amazing
for her.

So, yeah, he was going to boss her around.

He waited for about ten seconds. Then he lifted an eyebrow.

She lay back.

One eyebrow. Nice.

“Good girl.” He grabbed the arm of his office chair and pulled it around so he could sit directly in front of her knees. “Now feet up on the edge.”

She bent her knees, bringing her heels up to the desk.

Bryan ran his hands up and down the backs of her calves. Tess wiggled her butt but otherwise didn’t move.

She looked gorgeous. Her hair spread out on the pale wood, her breasts rising and falling with her rapid breaths. Her legs trembled and her fingers curled into the top of the desk as if trying to ground herself.

That was good. That was very good. He wanted her off-kilter and spinning. God knew, he was. The trembling thing was apparently contagious.

Tess was incredibly coachable. For him. She thought she was a pushover, but the truth was she wasn’t malleable for anyone but Bryan. She was tough and confident and driven. She knew what she wanted. No one could derail that.

Except for him.

He’d claimed her as his in kindergarten—whether either of them had really understood any of that dynamic then or not. He was the guy who could change Tess, who could make her want more, see the world differently, push herself.

That meant that he had an obligation. Just like a coach, he had to be sure this woman who had put her trust in him, who believed that he would always do right by her, got the very best of him.

And that meant he was going to have to say goodbye to her.

He could convince Tessa to stay in Sapphire Falls with him. He knew that, and the gravity of that truth weighed on his heart. He could have her. But if he kept her here, it wouldn’t really be
her
. Not the her she really could be.

They had a history, he knew her, she trusted him. She could throw him out of her house, tell him he was being an arrogant ass, confess deep, intimate secrets and cry in front of him, and she would still climb up on his desk and let him into her body—and her heart.

That meant he could help her be everything she wanted to be.

Even if it meant making her go to Colorado. And to Jake.

“Bryan.”

Her soft pleading pulled him back from wondering how in the hell he was going to be able to do this and then let her go. That’s why he’d been waiting. He could have been making love to her for a week, but he’d known it would make it harder and harder for both of them when she left if they established any habits.

He’d planned to wait until her last night in town, when things were set in stone, when she couldn’t change her mind, to make love to her.

But, again, things weren’t going as planned.

He couldn’t really say he was upset here though.

He leaned in and kissed her knee. “Open up, Tess.”

She let her legs fall open, and Bryan took a moment to love everything about being a heterosexual man. He ran his hands up her inner thighs. She arched her back as he neared the apex.

“Gorgeous,” he said gruffly. “Fucking gorgeous.”

He couldn’t see her face from his seated position, but he could see how much she wanted him. And for the first time ever during sex, Bryan felt humbled.

Not a common emotion in the heat of the moment, for sure, but with Tess it really worked. She was amazing. He’d been such a jerk, assuming so many things. He’d selfishly assumed everything about this was about him. And in spite of that, she was here, offering him everything.

He could take it all. He wanted it all. He could tell her he was in love with her. He could convince her that he could coach her here and get her ready for the marathons. He could persuade her that she didn’t need Jake.

All of that was true.

But that was why he couldn’t do it. He had to make her go.

This wasn’t just about training and running. It was about Tess being
more
than she’d ever been.

Bryan ran his hands over her smooth inner thighs, loving how the muscles reacted to his touch. Again he stroked her, making her squirm. Then he brought his thumbs together at her center, opening her and stroking over her clit. Her neck arched and she moaned. Swirling over the nub, Bryan lost himself in the sounds of her climbing need.

His name on her lips was perfect, her body spread out for him the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. But he needed to see her face.

“Prop up, Tess,” he said, sliding his hands under her ass and pulling her to the edge of the desk. “Watch me.”

She moved up onto her elbows, almost eagerly. He grinned.

Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted with her ragged breathing. He made eye contact, then purposefully dragged his eyes down to her incredible breasts, over her stomach, the perfect curve of her hips, then to the pink folds his tongue tingled with the need to taste.

“Watch me,” he told her again, moving a finger over her clit.

Her attention focused on his hands as she whimpered softly.

He circled the sweet spot, then slid lower to her hot, slick opening.

“When you’re in Colorado, I want you giving all this sweetness plenty of attention,” he told her. “I want your fingers here, pleasuring yourself, and I want you imagining
my
fingers and tongue.” He slid one digit into her silky heat, only to the first knuckle.

She gasped, and Bryan had to pull back on the need to thrust—even if it was just a finger. Her body was so ripe for lots of hot, dirty sex. There were so many things he wanted to show her, to do with and to her, so many positions, so many ways to make her scream.

“And I’m going to send you a vibrator. Maybe one a month. We’ll start a vibrator-of-the-month club. Just you and me,” he told her. He slid his finger in to the next knuckle. “I’ll send them to you and you’ll send me dirty videos of you using them and calling out my name each time you come.”

She whimpered softly as her body clenched around his finger.

“So greedy,” he said gruffly. “You want this so much. There are so many things you want and don’t even know about.”

The things he could do with a king-size bed, Tess and no time limit.

She arched closer to his hand and made a soft, needy sound.

No time limit. That was the one thing he didn’t have.

He slid his finger into her fully, almost groaning at how tight she was.

“Love your body, Tess,” he said. “You’re so damned sexy like this. All mine. So hot.” He stroked his finger in and out and felt the way she shivered at the friction.

“But you don’t want the flowery words, right?” he asked. “You don’t want to hear sexy and beautiful. You don’t want to hear about how much it means to me that you’ll let me be here like this with you, or how much I want to make this good for you.” He stroked in and out again before adding a second finger.

With the added stretch, she moaned and pressed closer to his hand, taking him in easily.

He stroked deep and a little harder now, sensing her growing need. “You want to hear things like you’re
fucking
killing me and how I intend to suck your clit ’til you beg me to take you, and how I want to feel you coming so hard around my cock the neighbors will hear me shouting.”

He curled his hand, rubbing over her clit with his thumb as he continued to thrust.

“Or do you need even more than that, Tess?” he asked. “Do you need to just flat-out hear that I’m going to fuck you until the walls shake, and that your pussy is the sweetest I’ve ever had and that I want to take you in every way there is for a man to take a woman?”

And that did it. Tess flew up and over the summit into a beautiful orgasm, calling his name, her body milking his fingers.

“Sit up,” he ordered her.

He kept his fingers deep in her body as she put her legs down and sat up. He stroked her as he took her mouth in a deep, hot kiss, relishing the ripples still going through her. Then he dropped his lips to her right nipple and sucked hard.

Tess’s fingers tangled in his hair, holding his head in place. “God, Bryan, yes.”

“You’re going to come for me again before I fuck you,” he told her. He flicked over her clit with his thumb, his eyes locked on hers.

Her body shuddered and she grabbed his shoulders. “I can’t—”

“Yes, you fucking can,” he growled. He leaned in and licked over her clit, swirling his tongue around the sensitive spot and making her cry out. He kept pumping in and out of her with his fingers as he curled his other hand into her ass cheeks and then sucked on her clit.

She pressed closer to his mouth even as she said, “Bryan, I can’t take it.”

“You can take it and you will.” He looked up at her, keeping his tongue on her clit. She was watching him raptly. “Beg me.”

She wet her lips and shook her head.

He sucked and then stopped. He stopped his fingers too, just holding everything on edge.

“Beg me, Tess. Beg me to make you come again.”

She bit her bottom lip.

He started to pull his fingers out.

“No!” she protested, trying to close her thighs and trap his hand.

“Beg me. Say please and tell me that you’ve never wanted anything as much as you want me right now in this moment.”

Not even running. Not even Colorado.

But he couldn’t add that. He couldn’t deny her pleasure, period. If it was dirty talk and reenactments from her favorite romance novels, or if it was letting her go so she could pursue her dream, he’d do it. Whatever Tess needed.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she said, “Please, Bryan. Please make me come. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you right now in this moment.”

And damn if he didn’t see the truth of it in her eyes. They were playing. It was part of the demanding persona she wanted in her lover. It was part of the hot, dirty talk. But more—it was true.

Bryan had a million things he wanted to say. And he couldn’t manage even one of them.

Instead, he bent his head, slid his fingers deep and made her come, made her cry out his name and grip his shoulders as if she’d never let go.

But she would.

And that’s why as soon as she went over the edge, he stood and gathered her to his chest. He let her slide to the floor. When her feet touched the hardwood, he turned her, unzipped, rolled on a condom and grasped the desk on either side of her hips. “Hold on, honey,” he said gruffly next to her ear. “I’ve wanted to bend you over for so long. Now I’m going to think of you every time I come into this office.”

With that thought, he pushed her forward until her breasts rested on the desk and then thrust forward, sliding into her from behind. She gasped and instinctively arched her back, allowing him to get even deeper.

He kept one hand on the desk, lest his ankle wobble on him, but he grasped her hip with the other, holding her still for his strokes. Deep, hard, fast. He took her with the passion of a man trying to make his mark and stake his claim.

Tess pushed against the desk, pressing back into him with each thrust, and soon she was clamping down on him deliciously and crying out his name
again.

Satisfaction streaked through him as he pumped in and out until he couldn’t hold back any longer and came with a shout, gripping her hip and the desk, hanging on for all he was worth.

But it wasn’t his legs that were threatening to make him fall.

That was all his heart.

* * *

Tess knew she should feel awkward after all of that. She’d been as exposed and vulnerable as she ever had. But she hadn’t felt vulnerable. Not even when she’d had her legs spread wide for Bryan and he’d been tormenting her with fingers and tongue.