Chapter 17
An hour into her ridiculous suggestion, Tiffany was wide awake and looking down the barrel of another sleepless night.
She’d made a huge mistake. The sound of his tossing and turning and concern for the state of his neck had temporarily overridden the fact she’d been getting hotter and hotter for him as the day had worn on.
Every little touch and look cranked the heat between them until she was aflame with desire.
And she’d gone and invited temptation into her bed.
So now he was just there, beside her, close enough to reach if she wanted to stretch a little.
And her entire body ached with the terrible, terrible torment of it.
Heat had pooled low in her belly, turning everything wonderfully liquid and lax, except for a hot path of tingles that arrowed with military precision south to her clit and north to her nipples.
It turned out that it didn’t matter that she was an adult as she’d assured him, because her body was acting like a hormonal teenager.
Every time she moved even slightly, she was excruciatingly aware of the slipperiness between her legs and her shirt rubbing against her aching breasts, taunting the stiff tips like it was industrial-grade sandpaper instead of soft, worn cotton.
Despite telling herself she would not, she found herself taking another sneak peek of him, the planes and angles of his classic profile intensified by the shadows of the night, the whiskery growth on his jaw darker.
He smelled like soap and the laundry detergent they used below deck, and it was taking all her willpower not to wriggle closer and find out just how feral it would smell on his skin with the potency of his pheromones thrown into the mix.
‘Stop it.’
Tiffany started at the low growl, her pulse leaping as her head snapped back, her eyes on the ceiling again. She swallowed. ‘Stop what?’
‘Looking at me.’
‘I’m not… I wasn’t…’
It was a barefaced lie, but he didn’t call her on it as his mouth settled into a grim line. Her heart rate settled from its spike as she wondered how he’d even known she’d been looking considering his eyes hadn’t opened since he’d laid his head on the pillow.
She risked another quick look for confirmation, which was a big mistake as he rolled his head to the side and caught her staring, his gaze capturing hers and not letting go. ‘I swear, Tiffany, I’m holding on by a thread of honour right now.’
The low rumble of his words dragged heavy fingers through the liquid centre of her, and Tiffany could no more have turned her gaze to the ceiling than she could have flown her ass to the moon.
Need blazed hot blue in his eyes, but knowing he was battling his desires too was little comfort to the ache between her legs.
‘Regretting it already?’ he asked, lifting an eyebrow.
Tiffany didn’t act coy; she didn’t seek clarification – she knew what he was talking about. She should never have invited him back into his bed. ‘Yeah. A little.’
His gaze drifted to her mouth then back up again. ‘Why?’
Because her act of kindness/stupidity had crystallised one stunning fact. This thing between them wasn’t going to go away because it was inconvenient and neither of them wanted it. It was going to have to burn out.
‘I can’t seem to stop wanting you,’ she admitted, each word feeling as calamitous as it was liberating.
Burning this thing out with Theo sounded like the best kind of debauchery, but how long would that take? And where would they be after? The stakes were too high when her best friend was married to his brother and she knew she’d be seeing him on and off for the rest of her life.
‘There hasn’t been a single second since you stepped on this boat that I haven’t wanted to drag you onto this bed and fuck you so good and so hard and so long, you’d never want to leave.’
Tiffany bit her lip to stop from moaning as a hot tide of sensation rolled from her clit to her nipples. Her on this boat? Forever? Ready to spread her legs for him, cater to his every sexual whim whenever he came calling?
Bloody hell.
Shutting her eyes, she rolled onto her side away from him. The man still had one month left to win his dare. And she wanted more from life than being Theo Callisthenes’ fuck buddy. Even if right now it sounded like the sweetest deal.
Shoving a fist between her legs to soothe the gnawing ache, she breathed in steadily. ‘You’re on a sex ban,’ she reminded him, her voice so low and ragged she barely recognised it as her own.
A hand slid onto her shoulder, and Tiffany’s eyes flashed open. ‘Who said anything about sex?’ he muttered as his body pressed along hers.
His lips to her nape. The front of his chest to her back. The front of his thighs curling around to spoon hers. The long hard length of his cock notching into the cleft of her ass.
‘Ari never said anything about me helping someone else with their pleasure.’ Hot air puffed his wicked suggestion across her skin, causing a proliferation of goosebumps from her scalp to her nipples.
‘Would you like that, Tiffany?’ His lips bussed her nape with each word. ‘You got an itch I can scratch?’
Tiffany moaned both at the way he said her name – low and dirty – and the visual in her brain and her entire fucking body broke out in one giant itch. Her hips involuntarily pushed back, her ass rubbing against his erection.
He groaned at the action, the rumble of hot air circling from her nape to her throat. ‘Have mercy, Tiffany,’ he murmured, his mouth a brand on her skin. ‘I only have so much resolve.’
His ragged request squeezed through her belly, and she shut her eyes as she forced herself to stop the agonising tease. For his sake. And hers.
What did she think she was doing? Had she been about to rub herself to climax on his cock? God knew she was in such a hair-trigger state she’d probably manage it in startling time.
Gah! She was losing her grip on this.
His lips pressed into the slope where her neck met her shoulder, and she whimpered at the back of her throat. ‘No kissing,’ she panted, panicked suddenly that she would be the one responsible for Theo losing to Ari in their stupid dare situation.
‘I’m not kissing,’ he murmured, his lips vibrating against her skin, driving her wild. ‘I’m nuzzling. Ari didn’t say anything about nuzzling.’
He nuzzled some more, his tongue licking a hot line to the bony notches of her neck, his hand moving simultaneously from her hip to her thigh to the hem of her shirt.
Tiffany’s heartbeat thumped through every pulse point as his hand pushed under and began to trek back up, skimming over her underwear, her belly, her ribs to finally claim a breast, squeezing it on a groaned, ‘You have magnificent tits.’
The compliment went straight to her head but was quickly lost as his fingers found the taut aching peak of her nipple and strummed. She whimpered at the sensation, and he hushed her as he swirled his finger around the tip. ‘You like that, don’t you?’
Tiffany swallowed, an explosion of sensations popping behind her closed eyes. ‘Yes,’ she admitted on a choked husky breath.
‘I remember,’ he said, his voice dropping a whole other octave, ‘you loved it when I did this.’ He pinched her nipple and Tiffany cried out at the exquisite torment of it, her hand looping behind his neck, holding on for dear life.
Her back arched involuntarily as the torment continued, a hot kick of electricity arcing from her nipple to her clit, which pulsed urgently in response.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, his lips brushing her ear now.
‘Good girl,’ he praised as she whimpered in pleasure.
‘I remember you, Tiffany. I remember you.’
He did. Tiffany had always found walking the line between pleasure and pain exceptionally stimulating, and the relentless pincer was pushing all her buttons. When he released it, she gasped as the cool air blasted the hot compressed nub that was burgeoning painfully back to taut fullness.
‘I know what else you like too.’
He shifted then, and Tiffany was so boneless she fell back against the mattress as he knelt between her thighs, reached under her shirt and dragged her underwear down, stripping it off one leg and leaving it dangling around the other ankle.
Pushing her shirt up to just under her chin, he exposed her to his view, his nostrils flaring as his gaze flicked to meet hers. ‘I’ve been dreaming about this moment ever since I woke to find you gone all those months ago.’
Tiffany swallowed. She’d been dreaming about this too. Him above her, his eyes raking over her body like it was his own personal playground and he had an all-access pass.
‘Spread your legs,’ he commanded, blue eyes burning, the roughness of his voice thickening his accent. ‘I want to look at you.’
Her mouth dry as toast, her pulse an erratic drumbeat through her ears, Tiffany did exactly as he asked, easing her legs apart, conscious that his gaze was drifting down.
Down, down, down. Zeroing in on the hot, liquid slipperiness between her legs, his eyes lingering on the dampness of her inner thighs before drifting back to her core.
His eyes devoured the sight. ‘You are so fucking wet,’ he muttered, his voice somehow filthy and reverent at the same time.
Tiffany couldn’t speak at all as he stared at her, her hands gripping the sheets as she fought the urge to roll her hips in wanton invitation. After several screamingly long moments of nothing but Theo looking at her, the thread of her patience snapped.
‘Shall I start without you?’ she demanded, untangling her fingers from the sheet and sliding them to her clit, which spasmed at the touch, causing her breath to hitch.
Theo snatched at her hand, reefing it away. ‘Nuh uh.’ His eyes blazed a warning. ‘ Mine. All mine.’
At any other time, a man making such a possessive claim would have had Tiffany using several of those words she’d learned far too young on an outback cattle station, but right now she was prepared to surrender all her agency to have Theo Callisthenes looking at her pussy like it was his and his alone.
He lowered himself, settling on his belly between her thighs, his face hovering mere centimetres from her slick folds as he pushed her legs wider, tossing one over his shoulder.
Tiffany held her breath for one beat, two, as he looked his fill again, clearly relishing the closer view before his mouth touched down.
‘Ohhhh…’ she moaned as his tongue swiped right up her centre straight to the hard bullet of her clit, sending spirals of pleasure along muscle fibres that tightened deep inside her belly.
And when his hands smoothed up her body to each claim a breast, his fingers pincering the nipples simultaneously, it wrenched a guttural fuuuck from her throat.
Tiffany felt like she was falling and flying at the same time, and she ploughed the fingers of one hand into his hair and twisted, holding him there as he wreaked havoc, desperately needing a connection to keep her grounded.
If it hurt – and it must have hurt – he didn’t mention. He just hummed appreciatively as he licked and sucked, swirled and lashed, all while he squeezed and released her nipples in rhythmic pulses, catapulting Tiffany so quickly and thoroughly to orgasm it felt like he’d rewired her entire brain.
‘Theo,’ she cried out, her back arching as the building wave morphed in a flash from a pinprick of light into a starburst of sensation, hurtling her through a cosmic vortex of pleasure that swirled and spun and twisted, bucking through her body in ripples that intensified until she was moaning and thrashing against the bed.
His elbows clamped tight around her hips, keeping her in place as his relentless tongue drove her orgasm right to the edge of her consciousness where everything was hazy and indistinct before it started to fade, and he gentled his stimulus to long lazy swipes of his tongue and light swirling caresses around her nipples that eased her back to earth.
Tiffany was panting hard, her pulse still a water hammer through her system as she slowly came back to herself and her surroundings.
She was aware of her fingers still twisted in the silken strands of his hair, the weight of her leg still thrown over his shoulder and the warmth of his breath as he nuzzled her inner thighs.
‘Hey,’ he murmured, his lips bussing the sensitive flesh. ‘How you doing up there?’
Tiffany gave a half laugh as she raised her head off the bed, and he looked up, their gazes meeting over the top of her still-quivering body. ‘I think I just touched the face of God.’
Theo chuckled a very smug chuckle. She knew the man’s ego didn’t need any more compliments, but it had been a transcendent experience, and she believed in giving credit where credit was due.
‘You’re welcome.’ He grinned as he withdrew his hands, dragging her shirt down with him.
Easing her leg from his shoulder, he nuzzled his way back up her body, resuming his position behind her as he slid an arm around her waist and spooned her close.
He was still hard as a rock, his erection settling between the cleft of her buttocks, prodding Tiffany out of her post-orgasmic glow.
That had to hurt.
She rocked back against him, smiling to herself as he groaned and tightened his arms around her. She did it again and his low, ‘Stop that,’ made her smile harder.
‘I can return the favour,’ she suggested, hormones that had been drunk on satiation seconds ago perking up again.
‘Sex ban,’ he grunted.
‘No rules against blow jobs,’ she reminded him, rocking again.
‘Yeah… but I know how you and me work. If you so much as breathe on my cock I’m going to want to sink inside that pussy I just ate out.’
Tiffany drew in a ragged breath at the startling visual. She wasn’t smiling any more because, bloody hell – she wanted him sinking into her, too.
‘Now, quit moving and go to sleep,’ he ordered.
Sleep? He had to be joking. With his admission over how little control he felt around her?
And the echo of her orgasm still glowing in all her pleasure receptors?
And another kind of glow, a different kind.
In her chest. Glowing away at how good it felt to sleep with him cocooned around her like this. How right.
But surprisingly, she did sleep.
Within minutes of closing her eyes, Tiffany fell headlong into the deepest, darkest, most incredible sleep of her life.