Making It Last - A Novella (Camelot Series) (10 page)

He wanted to watch her face and tell her he loved her and feel like it was just them—just the two of them—and nothing else mattered.

“Hey, Steve?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“You wandered off there for a minute.”

He looked up. He had.

And she was flat on her back, propped up on her elbows, with her knees tipped modestly in.

Open your knees
.

She didn’t. She looked a little ticked.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was thinking about the marble.”

“I told you already. I’ve got carpet in my front hall. Indoor-outdoor. Indestructible, easy to vacuum.”

“That sounds scratchy.”

Open your knees, bun
.

“Practical, though.”

He reached out for her ankles. Caught one. Dragged her closer.

“Hey! Nobody said you could touch.”

“Tell me no and I’ll stop.”

She watched him. Her eyes were liquid, her mouth gaping open slightly.

She didn’t say no, and that was all the invitation he needed.

He pushed her ankles apart and reached inside her skirt. Found her panties on each side and yanked them off. He pushed the skirt up to her waist so he could see her bare legs, all the way up. A slice of soft stomach.

Her pussy.

Completely, totally naked.

Oh, Jesus.

The surprise of it made his hand clench on the post, even as he felt his forehead furrowing into a frown.

He knew why he wanted to fuck it. He didn’t know why he needed to frown at it, too, as if Amber’s pussy had tricked him, somehow. As if she’d taken something that belonged to him and messed it all up without his permission.

He glanced at her face, then back between her legs. Unable to look away from it for more than a second.

She flicked her dress down and scooted up the bed, away from him.

“Don’t do that, bun,” he said, and without thinking, he climbed up after her. He wanted to pin her down. Lift up her skirt and look, and then look some more, and then taste.

With all the hair gone, she was so much more
pink
. So many shades, her clit more prominent, her arousal so obvious.

“Who the fuck is ‘bun’?” she asked, echoing his earlier question.

“Amber,” he said. Because he was getting tired of the game. It had been fun, but now it was just kind of mystifying, and he felt … he didn’t know how he felt. Frustrated. Betrayed, a little bit.

Outrageously aroused.

“Jennifer,” she countered.

“Come on, Amber. Show me.” He put his hand on her knee again.

“I don’t know. It didn’t go well the first time.”

“I thought it went pretty well.” He had to reach down to adjust himself. His jeans weren’t the most comfortable vessel for containing a hard-on of this magnitude.

“You looked like you wanted to assassinate it.”

“I promise. That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Like I spoiled your favorite toy.”

Closer to the mark.

“It’s not spoiled.”

“It’s not a toy, either,
Steve
.”

He met her eyes. She was more pissed off than he’d realized. He was, too, and he didn’t know why.

He wanted her to stop calling him Steve. “You kind of sprang it on me.”

“Poor baby.”

“What do I have to do to make up for it?”

“I don’t know. Compose an ode?”

“To your bare pussy?”

“Too ridiculous?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Let me think.”

She tapped her fingers on the mattress, eyes on the ceiling. He slid his hand up her thigh. Over her waist. He cupped her breast. “You move fast, Steve.”

He leaned down, shoved a swoop of black fabric out of the way, and took her nipple in his mouth.

Her skin smelled like citrus and candles up close. Not candles. Chocolate-chip cookies.

Vanilla. Reminded him of baking.

The bunched shape of her nipple in his mouth reminded him of his wife, their bed, the hot welcome of her body.

This bed could be their bed. He could be her husband here. Make her say his name.

He sucked the way she liked him to. Hard, long pulls, with his free fingers flicking over her other nipple through the fabric. His thumbnail scraping over it as his tongue worked the wet one. Normally a soft pink, they darkened when he did this, marked by his mouth, the sensitive
skin around them turning rosy from his stubble.

It always made him harder, seeing how he’d marked her.

She sighed and placed her hands on his hair.

He kissed the top of her breast and the space in between.

“I like what you’ve done with the landscaping,” he said solemnly.

“Thank you.”

“If you want, I’ll compose a poem with a lot of very bad stuff about wet roses in it.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Yeah. I’m hoping you’re not going to make me.”

He worked her other breast the same way, clamped his fingers over her wet nipple and tugged as he pulled with his tongue. She inhaled hard.

Her knees fell open.

He could smell her.

“God, Amber.”

“Jennifer,” she whispered.

“Amber,” he insisted. “I want you. I want my wife.”

He touched the smooth skin between her legs. Felt her slick heat, the pebbled texture of her inner lips, the stiff point of her clit. Both foreign and familiar.

She lifted her hips into his hand, her breathing choppy, eyes drifting closed.

“Say my name.”

“Tony,” she whispered.

“Look at me.”

She dragged her eyes open and blinked, focusing on his face.

“Say it again.”

He circled her clit. Tried to think when touching his wife had ever been so erotic. When she’d last been this keyed up, this sexy.

“Tony.”

The sound of his own name filled him with primal satisfaction. “I want to see you. Let me watch you make yourself come.”

“Okay.”

Tony took his hand away and backed off, propping himself on an elbow.

“You’re gonna show me?”

“Yes.” She dropped her hand between her legs.

“Hold on.” He flipped around so his head was low on the bed, with an excellent view of the action. He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.

She laughed softly. “This is insane.”

“No, it’s not. It’s awesome.”

Her fingers parted her lips. She looked soft there. So wet.

He worked his hand inside his shorts, unable not to, because it was so fucking
hot
, watching her hips rocking up to meet her hand. She’d never used to do this. She’d told him when they met that she made herself come riding a pillow between her legs, and he’d had to work hard to coax that confession out of her—she’d gone bright pink when she told him and stayed that way for
ages
.

He wondered when she’d even taught herself to do this. If she’d just known, or if she’d had to practice, or—

She slid one slippery finger inside herself, and he had to squeeze tight at the base of his cock and close his eyes to keep from coming all over his hand.

Fuck.
Fuck
.

Even now, he could
hear
her. Breathing fast. The soft sucking noises of her working her fingers inside, so he had to open his eyes to see how she penetrated herself—shallow dips, moving her finger all around the opening, and then she licked two fingers on her other hand and found her clit.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

He could see everything. Everything. How fast she did it. How hard she was pressing her clit now, where before she’d been lighter, and what she was doing—he did that exact thing with his tongue. That exact tapping, circling thing, and then this harder lapping, stiff as he pushed inside her with two fingers, sometimes three.

He’d taught her how to do that.

Or she’d taught him what she liked.

Either way. Fucking hell
.

He wanted her nipple in his mouth. His fingers down there, finding their own way to help. Spreading slick moisture back to circle around her ass, which always drove her crazy when
she was right on the edge.

He wanted to kiss her.

But he watched, and she got there fine on her own. Panting. Then a long moan. Her whole body lifted off the bed, tightened up. Her finger working furiously on her clit, harder and faster than he ever did, the scent of citrus and tropical sex everywhere.

She bit her free hand, right above her thumb. Bit hard, with a muffled
mmphf
, and he knew she must do that at home. He could see how she’d do it, flat on her back on the floor of the living room with her jeans around her ankles.

It was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, wired directly to the space behind his balls with a focused, hot, melting pressure, because he hadn’t known. He hadn’t
known
. He’d had no idea she had this whole sexual life separate from him. That she could fuck herself until the tips of her ears flushed pink and she went spent and limp. It made him wonder what else she could do.

Made him want to buy her whips and chains and vibrators, empty the bank account and spend every penny they had on the entire contents of the Good Vibrations catalog. Lock the bedroom door and tease out all the other secrets she’d been keeping.

But first—before all that—he wanted to fuck her. See how he compared. See if he could make that flush spread across her chest, over her naked pussy.

Tony crawled up the bed so he could see her face. She’d draped her wrist over her eyes.

When he lifted it off, she opened them and smiled at him.

“So that’s how I do it,” she said.

“Yeah.”

That was how she did it.

“I stand by my original position,” he told her.

“Which is?”

“You should show your husband. As often and as thoroughly as possible.”

She smiled again, and he kissed her.

* * *

He kissed like Tony. He tasted like Tony, and his weight felt like Tony’s on top of her. The stroke of tongue into her mouth when she parted her lips—Tony.

There was no way to pretend and, it turned out, no reason to. Not once his hand had gripped her ankle, pulled her down the bed. He’d taken off her panties like Tony, spread her legs open with one big hand on each thigh in a confident grip that spoke of familiarity and possession.

Her husband.

His wife.

And if he hadn’t—if he hadn’t been Tony, if he’d felt like Steve, looked at her like Steve—she never would have taken it so far. It was the craving in Tony’s eyes, the hard clench of his jaw, and most of all the sound he’d made when he unzipped his jeans and took his cock in his hand that had made her do it.

A low, tortured moan that said she’d surprised him, and he’d liked it. It made her want to surprise him some more. It made her feel as though she’d taken a sledgehammer to the invisible wall between them, and when she hit it, the air filled with masonry dust and sharp shards of rock, and they lodged in her with a sweet sort of pain that she remembered from a long time ago.

Before Jacob.

Before the house, before her dad had his stroke, before Tony had to work so much because Patrick had quit and the economy had tanked and the bottom had fallen out of everything.

Such a stupid sort of miracle. He’d called himself Steve, she’d had a stranger yank off some of her hair, and now she had her husband braced above her, his zipper catching on her dress, so worked up that she had to smile when he tore his mouth away and kissed her neck. She had to smile, because even if she could give herself a better orgasm than he could, she loved him like this. She felt bright and open, sunlight pouring in all over both of them.

Like anything might be possible, if she could just remember how to grip the sledgehammer. If she kept smacking it into the wall.

“How do I get this thing off?” Tony swooped his finger along the neckline of her dress, raising goose bumps across her chest. She lifted her arms and undid the clasp behind her neck, and he pulled her dress away, slowly, almost gingerly, as though there were something special about it. Something precious.

He nuzzled between her breasts. “You smell so good. Like a cookie.”

She smiled. “New lotion.” Tony fondled her breasts. Kissed one, and then licked her nipple and sucked it into his mouth. One of his favorite things to do. She’d hated it when she was
breast-feeding. Hated his preoccupation with her breasts, because she’d felt as though the only thing anybody in the world wanted from her was to get their hands on her tits.

Now it felt good, but in an abstract sort of way. The stirring between her legs belonged to some other body, completely non-urgent.

She sifted her fingers through Tony’s hair and watched him. His hungry tongue. Listened to the little sounds of pleasure he made. Felt him press his cock against her thigh, needing pressure. Needing her.

He found the side zip on the skirt and lowered it, sliding the dress off so that she was naked.

He stood, pulled off his T-shirt, shucked his jeans. The humming between her legs dialed up a notch at the sight of him. Sexy arms, sexy chest, handsome face, so intent. So
focused
. His erection flushed, the slit at the tip wet.

Nothing about him the least bit strange or unfamiliar or
Steve
.

She opened her arms, and he crawled back up onto the bed and over her.

She opened her legs. He came between them, his hand angling his cock so that the blunt head of it found her opening and then he was pushing, pressing in, stretching and filling her up with that hot, intrusive
thing
, and this part she couldn’t do herself. Or she could, but she didn’t care to. She only wanted Tony here, like this. Only Tony’s smell, Tony’s cock, Tony’s face so stern, concentrating because she could tell he wanted to fuck hard. He wanted to come. Soon.

She could let him. Wrap her legs around him, tell him,
It’s okay. I already had mine
. Because it would be an age before she was ready again, probably, and it hardly seemed fair to make him wait. He’d pushed his forearms right up beside her ribs, lowered his head. He was mouthing her neck, not quite kissing her because he didn’t have the focus to kiss her. He had to keep his mind on not coming.

If she shifted just so. If she squeezed. He would—