Chapter 3 #2
I don’t know how long I sleep for. All I know, as I float up through the layers to consciousness, is I’m cocooned in warmth, and my nose is pushed against a firm cushiony muscle. There is dim light and hard floor beneath me as my eyes flutter open, and I confront a flat, brown nipple.
I’m fully awake now, my body reacting before my brain gets into gear. I glance up into the sleeping face of a very familiar man, his mouth slack, his whiskery jaw so damn tactile. I’m asleep in Danny Colton’s arms?
I frantically think back. The blizzard. The heating in my apartment. Knocking on Danny’s door. Getting into the elevator with him.
Oh no…
I blink, my head jerks up, flight or fight kicks in, and I choose both as my brain grapples for explanations.
What did I do?
Unfortunately, it all comes back to me – Danny’s hand down my pants, Danny talking dirty to me, Danny kissing me, Danny making me come – as I scuttle backwards, crablike. I have to get as far away from him as possible in an elevator that suddenly feels about as large as a postage stamp.
I scuttle until the wall hits my back and then I scuttle up until I’m standing, and I stare at him, horrified for a beat or two, until every detail of what we did comes back, and I drag my eyes off him. I snag my reflection in the dull aluminium finish on the opposite wall.
Good lord!
I stare at the woman who looks back at me, her hair in a cloud around her head and completely naked from the waist up. My pulse splutters in my chest as I look down at myself.
Yep. Topless.
What on earth is the matter with me? I cover my nudity with crossed arms, but I still don’t recognise the woman opposite. The woman whose driving force until she got in this elevator was to save as many grandmothers as she could from the results of car wrecks.
‘Looking for this?’
Everything inside me freezes at the deep, male voice. My gaze cuts to the floor where Danny is now on his side, propped up on a bent elbow as my shirt dangles from his fingertips. He doesn’t bother to suppress his amusement.
Leaning forward with both my hands still crossed in front of me, I snatch it off him and press the scrunched fabric to my chest to cover my modesty. He watches me and my pulse hammers madly as I contemplate how to put on my shirt without flashing at him.
‘You need me to fill you in on what happened?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s all coming back to me.’
He smiles a big smile. ‘You’re freaking out about it, aren’t you?’
I shake my head. I have levels of freaking out at the moment, and level one is my state of dress. Maybe I could ask him to turn around?
‘Could you… do you think you could turn around so I can put my shirt on?’
That’s how bamboozled I am because I could just turn around, but it doesn’t occur to me right at this moment. I’m caught between mortification and some sick kind of wantonness that likes the way he’s looking at me with such frank appreciation.
He shakes his head, slow and deliberate. ‘Hell, no.’
I didn’t expect him to refuse, and my breath catches.
But I suddenly have bigger concerns. I finally notice he’s not wearing a shirt, either.
Acres of tan – despite living in the middle of the Rocky Mountains – and tattoos stretch smooth and taut over flat abs and wide, round shoulders.
I blink and drag my eyes off a chest cluttered with ink that I suddenly want to lick.
Concentrate, Holly.
He came into this elevator wearing a T-shirt and a hoodie, which are now both on the floor. I sift through my addled brain, trying to remember when it came off, but I can’t. I’m sure it was still on when I drifted off to sleep.
‘Where’s your shirt?’
‘I took it off about half an hour ago.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s hot enough in here without having a woman plastered all over you.’
‘Oh.’ Warmth floods my cheeks, adding to the heat already in abundance. I suck in a breath of stuffy air and send out a quick prayer for imminent rescue.
He looks me over like he’s contemplating what to do with me next, and my breath cuts off in my throat; my organs melt down. A voice yammers at the back of my head.
Put your shirt on, Holly.
But I’m too caught up in the contemplation of his gaze to listen to it. My legs tremble as his gaze lingers everywhere, and I’m glad for the solid bulk of the wall behind.
‘I’m hungry,’ he announces.
I blink. With him looking at me like this, food is the last thing on my mind. But his sculpted musculature looks like it needs a lot of calories to keep it pumped and primed. He pushes to a sitting position in one graceful movement, and my throat is suddenly dry as toast.
He does that slow prowl towards me again until he’s close enough to sit back on his haunches. I should be mortified that he’s practically sitting at my feet, his head level with my crotch, his gaze wandering slowly over my body, his nostrils flaring.
But I just feel dizzy. And taut with anticipation.
A man is at my feet, gazing up at me, his focus intense. The hard thump of my heart bounds through my abdomen and pushes against all my pulse points.
‘You might have to wait till we get out of here.’ I clear my throat, my voice annoyingly raspy.
He shakes his head slowly, his smile growing bigger. ‘I have plenty to eat.’
I’m confused for a moment. Then his hand lands on the fabric of my shirt, just under where I clutch it to my chest. He tugs it, and some of it slips through my fingers to reveal the upper swells of my breasts. I grip harder, resisting the pull.
‘What are you doing?’ My voice, still husky, hovers in the air as heavy as the throb between my legs.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. ‘I want to look at you.’ His words are like a caress. Like he’s leaned forward and brushed his lips against my belly. ‘Then I’m going to eat you.’
My stomach clenches tight. The crude statement shocks me so much that when he tugs again, the shirt slips from my hands. I’m laid bare to him now, and his gaze zeroes in on my breasts. My nipples pucker at his intense interest, and he smiles knowingly.
I should be embarrassed at my exposure, but my brain is still stuck back at the eating part. He isn’t hungry for food and everything below my belly button clenches.
He wants to… He’s going to… go down on me.
Without taking his gaze from the diamond-hard tips of my nipples, his hands slide up the sides of my legs, and my skin tingles in their wake.
He’s going slowly. I know I can stop him at any moment.
I know he will stop if I ask. All I have to do is open my mouth and tell him no. Such a simple two-letter word.
So easy to say.
But my heart is thundering, and my throat is dry, and I’m so drenched between my legs with wanting I can smell it. He can, too, the flare of his nostrils tells me so. And I want this. For him to put his mouth to me.
To… eat me.
I’ve never achieved orgasm the two other times a guy has gone down on me. Never. But I liked it. I liked it a lot. And everything is hot and tight and tingling, and I’m so primed for another climax that Danny will probably only need to breathe on me down there and I’ll come all over his face.
The thought is shocking. And so damn titillating.
For a moment, I wonder if Danny planned this whole thing somehow and he’s rigged some kind of aerosolised drug or aphrodisiac to slowly diffuse into the ventilation system of the elevator. Because this isn’t like me. I don’t do stuff like this.
Until today. Today, suddenly, I crave it.
I push the thought aside. This is Danny. He’s not the grand master plan kinda guy. Too elaborate for Mr Laid Back. And why conjure up a blizzard and trap women in elevators when he can just crook his finger? When he can look at me and tell me he can get me off with just one hand and I let him?
Why extend himself?
His fingers reach my waistband, and his gaze seeks mine. ‘Whaddya reckon, Doc? Care to help a starving man out?’
The air almost sizzles as my breath huffs out. I don’t say yes, exactly, because I’m too enthralled to form coherent words, but when he hooks his thumbs under my waistband, I don’t object. I just stare at him, my lips parted, my breathing a series of soft, ragged pants.
His eyes stay locked on mine as he peels three layers of clothing – sweatpants, long johns, underwear – down in one smooth movement.
All the way down. His gaze never leaves mine, even as his hands urge me to step out of the confines altogether, including my socks, and he tosses them over his shoulder.
Only when I’m fully naked does he break eye contact, his gaze meandering down, down, down until he reaches the juncture of my thighs, and his breath hisses from his lungs in an audible stream.
‘Oh yes,’ he whispers.
He stares for a long time, his nostrils flaring, his mouth slightly parted, and my heart beats, and my mouth waters, and the slickness builds between my legs. My rectus abdominis muscles behind my belly button pull tauter and tauter.
I swear I hear them creak under the tension.
He leans forward and brushes his mouth against my inner upper thigh, and a low moan gurgles in the back of my throat.
It’s loud, though, in the cloistered air of the elevator, louder again as he repeats the caress on the other side.
His breath is hot on my leg as he nuzzles closer and closer to where I need him most.
A hand slides onto my right ankle, and I startle at the unexpectedness. My pulse spikes, but he just urges my leg up and over his shoulder, baring me fully to his view. And he looks fully. I’m the most exposed I’ve ever been to a man’s gaze, and I’m so turned on I can barely breathe.
He flicks his gaze up. ‘I usually like to take my time when I eat, but I’m in the mood for some fast food right now.
’ He brings those sexy, wicked lips so close to my own slick, swollen ones, I swear they quiver beneath the fan of his breath.
Our gazes mesh. ‘You might want to hold on to that railing, Doc.’
He’s on me then, his mouth opening over me, and I gasp and writhe as his tongue immediately hits the target, as relentless as his fingers had been. My supporting leg threatens to buckle, and I grab for the railing at the same time his hand grips the thigh to shore me up.
I twist my other hand in his hair as our gazes lock tight, and he watches my face as his tongue flays me relentlessly.
He watches the way I gasp and pant and the way my breasts sway and bounce and the way my face moves.
The way it twists and contorts with the pleasure ripping right through my middle.
My hips start to rock of their own accord, and my hand flattens against the back of his head, holding him there, right there where his tongue is hitting just the right spot.
His hand finds my ass, clamping tight so he can keep hitting the spot, and all the time we stare into each other’s eyes, and the look in his steals my breath.
He’s loving it. He’s loving every second.
Maybe it’s that look. Maybe it’s his technique. Or maybe it’s because I’ve already come once and my body knows the way. Most likely it’s because a guy I barely know except to yell at and hate on is performing cunnilingus on me in a broken-down elevator in the middle of a blizzard.
Whatever it is, it’s working. I’m his burger and fries to go. And I’m ready to go.
I break, crying out loud. A powerful contraction slams into me and the blizzard is back.
It roars through my pelvis like an electrical current, and I cry out.
His hand clamps harder, his tongue works faster.
Another follows and another until they’re ripping through my body as hot and hard and heavy as the breath sawing in and out of my lungs.
The desire to throw back my head, to arch my back, rides my spine like a demon, but I can’t tear my gaze from his. I don’t want to look away from him. Look away from him watching me. Look away from him watching me from between my legs as the orgasm he’s giving me owns my ass.
So I don’t. I ignore the urge to shut my eyes and stay with him until the very end. Stay with him until the orgasm has faded and his tongue is swiping long and slow against my quivering flesh, and my legs really do give out, and he chuckles softly against my thighs as he eases me down beside him.