Uncommon Pleasure (27 page)

“I couldn’t find the other one,” she lied. She pulled her keys from her skirt pocket but dropped them before she could get them in her purse. On his knees on the blanket, Sean picked them up, and zeroed in on a plastic picture frame-chain holding a picture of her crouched down by her niece.

“I thought you weren’t close with your half brothers,” he said as he studied the picture.

“I’m not,” she said. “I called Jeff when Dad was diagnosed, and Lindsey invited us to Mikkie’s birthday party a month ago. She’s trying to figure out how to reconcile them. Dad didn’t go to the party, which was one more thing on Jeff’s list of stuff Dad did wrong. The list starts with Dad leaving his mother for mine, and the fact that their marriage didn’t work either doesn’t make him any less mad. Apparently stubbornness runs in the Simmons family.” She pointed at the picture of Mikkie. “She’s a handful. That’s us at her birthday party this year.”

“The cake on her face gives it away,” he said. “Why didn’t your dad go?”

“His medications weren’t quite right then,” she said, but it was an excuse, and she’d bet he knew it. “Can I have a sandwich, please?”

They divided up the food. Abby ate with the extra red fleece blanket draped across her lap, but the breeze chilled her back and
sent goose bumps racing down her arms. “I should have brought a sweater,” she fretted. Last year a picnic like this would have lasted all afternoon, with reading material, conversations, and maybe a nap. She had her flash cards for microbiology, but this chilled she’d be home in half an hour.

And it shouldn’t matter.
This isn’t what you wanted Sean for anyway
, and he’s breaking the rules. He maneuvered you into this.

But it’s such an excellent opportunity to prove that you’re over him. Sex is one thing. A shared meal is more intimate. So do this. Eat with him, talk to him. He’ll leave knowing what was so meaningful before is completely casual now. It’s just a question of finding the right time to walk.

He stretched out on his side, head braced on his palm. “Come here,” he said.

Suspicious of his intentions she sat with her back to his abdomen and draped the red fleece blanket over her legs. He pulled a book of poetry, of all things, from his backpack, so she started working her way through her flashcards, murmuring lists of virulence factors to herself. After a few minutes he asked, “What are you studying?”

“GI bugs,” she said, refusing to feel embarrassed about studying pathogens that caused diarrhea. The very young and the very old were highly susceptible to diseases a healthy adult’s immune system fought off. This mattered. Long term, that was what mattered.

She felt his gaze on her cheek like the caress of his fingers, and risked a glance at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She ignored the quiet admiration in his look and went back to the flashcards she’d made, but when her head drooped for the second time, his arm came around her waist. “Come here,” he said.

Without protesting she lay down beside him. “Thirty minutes,” she said. “That’s all.”

He tucked the blanket around her. His body heat, trapped in the blanket, quickly warmed her. “I’ve got you. Go to sleep, Abby.”

She did, awakening to his hand at her waist. Keeping his movements slow and subtle, he untucked her shirt from her skirt and slid his hand up to her breasts. She gasped when his fingertips found her nipple, stroking the hard nub through the silk of her bra. Electricity coursed from her nipple to form a deep, dark ache between her thighs. The tension doubled when he treated her other nipple to the same torture.

“Sean,” she whispered as she rubbed her ass against his tantalizingly unavailable cock.

“I promised you we’d have sex on this picnic,” he murmured against her ear. “Tell me no if you’ve changed your mind.”

A little nervous about such a public seduction, she glanced around the park, but the cloudy skies and cooler air kept the park fairly empty. Still…“We can’t have sex here,” she said.

“So we’ll have foreplay here.”

His hand left her aching, throbbing breasts and skimmed her abdomen, over her hip to the hem of her skirt. He tucked that up to her waist, then she lifted her bottom hip so he could do the same with the rest of the material. His fingers trailed lightly over her abdomen, tracing the elastic edge of her panties, just above her mound. With an unfocused gaze she looked down her torso, but the blanket hung loosely enough that she couldn’t see his hand move, only feel it. Once again his fingers slipped under the elastic on her upper hip and tugged, then repeated the move at her lower hip. It took three attempts to get the material down to the tops of her thighs. He left them there.

“Take them off,” she said, feeling less dressed that if she were totally bare.

Behind her, he shook his head as his hand stroked over her curls. “Too much movement.”

She gave a pleading little sigh. He slipped one booted foot between her ankles, creating just enough space between her thighs to admit his hand. They were just a couple lying on a blanket, covered by another blanket, only their shoes exposed. So what if their feet were tangled up together? No one would guess that the silk of her underwear stretched taut around her thighs and his fingers were parting her swollen pussy lips to delve into the wet heat he aroused.

Stroke…stroke…stroke…slow and imperceptible. Getting a man off required an obvious movement. Not so for a woman. A woman could be driven out of her mind by motions so tiny and discreet that no one would suspect she was being touched. His hand barely moved, just the tip of his middle finger against her wet, swelling clit.

Heat flicked through her, drying her mouth and stealing her breath. She closed her eyes and drifted deeper into sensation from the slow circles his finger made around her clit, so arousing, yet not enough to get her off. Not hard enough, not fast enough, not precise enough.

None of it was enough.

“I want to feel you,” she said, undulating against his hard shaft to make herself clear.

His hand left her clit to throb as his hand went to his button fly and popped it open. A few furtive movements, and his erection pressed against her bared ass, hot and silky smooth.

“Where do you want it? Here?” he asked. She felt his knuckles bump against her tailbone and the rounded flesh of her ass as he stroked it under the blanket. “Or here?” With those words he tucked the shaft between her legs so it nestled against her hot, wet folds.

“There,” she whispered. His fingers resumed their slow circles, and the heft and thickness of his shaft, so tantalizingly close to where she really wanted it, ramped up the hot, syrupy tension even more. He was hard and hot between her legs, his shaft clasped
between her thighs while the dark blond thatch of hair rasped against her bare buttocks.

The risk made her need profound. His fingertip slid through her slick heat and dipped into her swollen channel before returning to her clit. He thrust into the slick grip of her thighs. She gasped, breathy and high, unable to control the noise, or her face, then bent her arms at the elbow and closed her eyes. Maybe she’d look like she’d fallen asleep again under the blanket, not like she was quivering with need.

A low, rough chuckle rumbled in Sean’s chest. “You just lie there. I’ve got you.”

He did. He had her in every sense of the word. Emotionally, physically, mentally, right now she belonged to him. With the tip of his finger he left her clit and dipped down to stroke the soft, slick skin of her sensitive opening. “You’re so wet,” he said.

“We shouldn’t do this here.”

“Tell me what you’d do if we were somewhere private.”

“One part of me wants to shove you back, climb on top of you, and ride you until I come.”

His cock throbbed as he bent his head and bit down on the delicate curve of her ear. Edgy restraint was in the move, which sent liquid fire streaming down her nerves. “So fucking sexy to watch you take what you want from me,” he growled. “What’s the other option?”

“Roll over and spread my legs for you,” she said.

The hand between her legs stopped moving for a second, just long enough for him to press against her mound. A shudder rumbled through him as he ground against her. “Which do you like better?”

His hand wasn’t moving, so she could think a little more clearly. “I’d come in about five seconds if I was on top,” she admitted. “It takes longer when you’re on top, but it’s a hundred times hotter when I’m totally helpless under you, spread for you, taking every
thrust. I know I’ll come, but it’s not in my control like it is when I’m on top. You control it. Sometimes you make me wait and sometimes you drive me there so fast and hard and hot I see stars, and all I can do is cling to you and take it and beg—”

Where did that come from?

The hand bracing his head reached around to cover her mouth. “Abby. Stop talking.” He was thick and hard between her thighs, her juices slicking up their bare skin as his cock throbbed once, twice, before he got himself under control again, and started breathing. “Fuck,” he said. “Just…fuck.”

She turned her head just enough to see his face, which made her pray to the gods who protected Marines on leave that no one would stroll past them. Heat burned on his cheekbones, and his blue eyes burned with unmistakable male intent. There was no way a passerby would think this was innocent. She was crazy to think it was meaningless.

Knowing surrender was in her every move she faced forward and let the dark, hot undertow of his touch close over her head. Every muscle in her body was drawn tight with pleasure as his circling fingertip picked up the pace, almost immeasurably. Soon she was stifling little cries in the back of her throat. His hot breath gusted over her jaw as he curled around her. It was slow, slight, subtle, and it was tearing her apart.

Almost there.
She tipped her head back, trembling,
almosttherealmostthere
, felt his teeth close on the tendon in her neck. “Beg,” he commanded. “Beg like you would if I had you on your back and at my mercy.”

“Please.” The word was nearly soundless, forced from her tight throat by a need powerful enough to overcome fear. “Please, Sean. Please.”

The hand supporting his head once again covered her mouth, pulling her back against his bunched shoulder. One little thrust, then
a second, both in time to the relentlessly circling finger on her clit, and she came. His hard hand stifled the involuntary cry that tore from her throat as the leading edge of the crest slammed into her. Wave after wave of pleasure swept from core to fingers and toes, again and again. If he hadn’t held her together, one arm anchoring her hip while his fingers drove her insane, the other around her neck and face, she would have disintegrated into brilliant, white-hot shards right there on the hard, leaf-strewn ground.

The all-consuming passion ebbed from her body, leaving room for her to come back to herself, now soft and limp in his hold. Behind her he was still rigid in every sense of the word, from his cock nestled between her thighs, the trembling muscles of his abdomen, the rock-hard planes of his shoulders and chest. Desire poured from him in waves, physical, emotional; the sheer charisma of Sean swamped her, dragging her under. On the edge of tears, she buried her face in her folded arms, breaths shuddering into the air, snagging on the rough edges in her throat.

Damn him.
Damn him.

A year ago she’d been young enough and stupid enough to believe in Prince Charming, in love at first sight. Experience taught her otherwise. Well-meaning friends said
Forget about him, that’s the way his type is, just chalk it up to doing your patriotic duty and move on
, but the emotion remained. She couldn’t forget him until she’d seen him again, finished the ending he’d begun, but on her terms. She would not quit. Point of honor. Point of pride. He’d started it, she would finish it, right to the bitter, bitter end.

Behind her Sean bent his head to that sweet spot at the nape of her neck. Heat arced through her like the flame from her father’s blowtorch. She whimpered, tightening her thighs around his cock. To her surprise he put space between them and buttoned up, then tugged her panties up as best he could. Still reeling, she moved automatically, straightening her skirt as he stood. Cool air swept
over her heated skin as he pulled the blanket away and began folding it briskly into a neat square.

“That’s it?” she asked from her kneeling position. With his erection at eye level, she’d bet not.

“Pack up the food,” he said and reached for the bottom blanket.

She fitted lids back on half-full containers and stacked them in the cooler, shoved the trash into a plastic bag. He shouldered all their gear, took her hand, and set a brisk pace back to the path leading to the parking area.

His Mustang wasn’t the only vehicle in the lot anymore, but the other cars appeared empty, their occupants meandering the trails. When they reached the car he dumped everything in the back seat, opened the driver’s door, and slid in. It took a second to turn the battery on, then he powered the driver’s seat all the way back and hauled her in to straddle him, one knee on the side of the seat, the other foot planted in the dirt outside the car.

Off-balance, she looked out the wide-open door. “We can’t have sex here!”

“The fuck we can’t,” he said, all command. “This won’t take long.”

The need burning in his blue eyes sent sparks skittering deep into her belly. In the time it took him to get a condom from the console and smooth it on, she’d steadied herself, one hand holding her skirt up, the other gripping the back of the seat.

With no preliminaries at all he tugged her panties aside, centered her over his straining shaft, and guided her down at the same time he thrust up. His thick cock stretched her, opened her, until she came to rest against his pelvis. Despite her resolve, the connection when he pushed in halted her breathing.

And his. A moment of breathless awareness hummed between them, crackling and snapping like a live current.

“Oh, fuck,” he ground out. His head dropped back, but his gaze held hers. “Ride me.”