Chapter 9
Nine
J osie glanced at the clock. He’d texted her back and told her was running late. But it was nearly ten, and she’d nearly given up. Rolling onto her side, she stared out the window.
Yes, she was curious about Bennett and Mia.
Who wouldn’t be? The whole town was on tenterhooks, waiting to see what was going to happen with them.
But more than anything, she just wanted Carter there telling her the story.
He wasn’t always sympathetic to Mia, but she understood that.
His loyalty would always lie with Bennett, as it should.
She heard the back door open and let out a sigh of relief.
A part of her had wondered if he’d changed his mind.
She wouldn’t blame him. There was a part of her that wanted to throw caution to the wind and tell her parents and everyone else in town exactly what he meant to her.
But then she’d have to admit it to both herself and Carter, and that terrified her.
Carter wasn’t known for sticking. In fact, the minute any woman had started to cling, he’d run like the wind.
She didn’t want to be that girl, and she didn’t want to corner him and make him be that guy .
So it was back to being a chicken and sticking with the status quo as long as they could manage it.
She sat up in bed, propped on her hands as the door opened.
“Hey,” she said lamely. It wasn’t exactly the sexiest of greetings.
“Hey,” he said in return. It was awkward for both of them. Neither of them had spoken since the scene in the kitchen with her parents, other than the few texts they’d exchanged.
But there was one thing she had to say before anything else happened. She had to get it out.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She shrugged. “For being a brat. For being too much of a chickenshit to just live my life. For being so worried about what other people might think of me that it leaves me all but paralyzed. Do I need to go on?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, facing her, but leaving at least an arm’s length between them. Which was never good. If Carter wanted to talk, she was pretty sure the only thing he’d be saying was goodbye.
“You don’t need to apologize to me for that,” he said. “Does it sting my pride? Hell, of course it does. But the thing about it is, Josie, you’re right.”
“Excuse me?”
He chuckled. “People in this town will judge you. They will be all up in your business. I saw Mia and Bennett together tonight, and I got it. For the first time, I really got just how much he loves her. And how much she loves him. But this fucking town, and all the busybodies in it, her father included, nearly destroyed that.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she remained silent. He was quiet, too, thinking. When he did speak again, he made her an offer that she hadn’t seen coming.
“So we’ll do this your way. Secret. I’ll sneak in and out of your house at night when you want me here. You don’t have to worry about being seen coming and going by your nosy-ass neighbors…and if you learn to stifle your screams a little bit, no one will be the wiser.”
“For how long?” It wouldn’t end well. She knew that, but there was no possible way it could. She might as well enjoy it for as long as she could.
“Until it stops being fun for either one of us,” he said.
“We’re not exactly having fun now,” she said.
His cocky smile was enough to melt the panties right off her. “We could be.”
He didn’t need to make the offer twice. Reaching for the hem of her T-shirt, Josie pulled it up and over her head, and then tossed it to the corner of the room.
“Shut up then, and show me.”
He laughed. “You’re not the boss of me, Josie Marcum,” he said, throwing her own inebriated words back at her.
“I don’t have any shoes to throw at you right now,” she protested. “Are you ever going to do something with that mouth that isn’t talking?”
He pulled back the covers, exposing her legs and the simple cotton panties she wore. She’d thought about changing, about putting on something slinky and sexy. But she’d done that last time, and it had been an unmitigated disaster. Also, it smacked of trying too hard. Of expectation.
Carter crawled up the bed, his arms caging her, his weight pressing her back. She was used to feeling short, but being so close to him, she felt small and delicate, feminine and vulnerable in a way that both terrified and excited her.
“You call the shots outside of this room,” he said. “You wanted secret? I’ll give it to you. But in here, Josephine, I’m in charge. We clear?”
A shudder rippled through her. They were perfectly clear, and he’d never been hotter. She couldn’t speak, so she just nodded.
He smiled as he pressed a kiss against her chest, his tongue gliding over the delicate skin between her breasts. With Carter, it was like her entire body became an erogenous zone. He could touch her anywhere, and it was instant heat.
She didn’t try to rush him. She knew better. Carter was going to do what Carter wanted to do and when he wanted to do it. Her only option was to tell him to stop or to let him drive her completely insane with lust.
His hands roamed her skin, callused fingertips grazing, dragging over sensitive flesh until she was writhing beneath him.
Everywhere his hands traveled, his mouth followed.
Hot, open-mouthed kisses, the nip of his teeth driving her to the edge.
She hovered there, her body drawn as taut as a bowstring.
Tension coiled in her. Her breath came in sharp pants.
And all she wanted was to feel him inside her, to have him ease the unbearable ache that he’d created.
When he finally rose and stripped off his own clothes, baring his perfect body to her, Josie couldn’t not touch him. Sliding her hands over his steely thighs, her nails raking his skin and eliciting a sharp hiss from him, she smiled.
“You’re in charge. If you don’t want me to do this…”
He didn’t tell her no, but he did grip her wrist and move her hand exactly where he wanted.
With his hand over hers, he closed her fingers around him, guiding her, showing her exactly what he wanted.
Stroking him, feeling him growing even harder beneath her fingers, Josie watched his head fall back.
“Fuck.” The word escaped his lips, part whisper and part groan.
He’d always been in charge, she thought.
In terms of experience, Carter was so far beyond her, it wasn’t even funny.
She was well out of her depth with him, but that didn’t mean she had nothing to bring to the table.
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she rose to a sitting position.
There were advantages to being the short girl, she thought as she leaned forward and took him in her mouth.
Carter closed his eyes at the sensation of her mouth on him. The soft press of her lips around his cock, the flick of her tongue against him…God above, it was amazing. It might actually kill him.
Sliding his hand into the thick fall of her hair, he gripped it tightly.
Not so much to guide her, but because he needed something to hold on to.
Every lick, every brush of her lips on his cock was like a little bit of heaven.
With her hand moving over him, stroking him with a slow easy rhythm, her mouth working him in time, he knew he had to stop her.
If he didn’t, the night would be over before it even began.
“Josie,” he groaned. “Baby, you have to stop.”
“Let me,” she urged. “I want to do this.”
It took all of his strength to say no to that.
It wasn’t just a point of pride to make her come first. He needed to see her wild beneath him, to hear her moaning his name.
The why was a little trickier, unless he wanted to analyze all the feelings he’d been trying so hard to avoid for so long.
So instead, Carter just stepped back from her, easing her hands and her beautiful mouth off him.
“One day soon,” he promised. “But not tonight. I know it’s only been days, Josie, but that’s just too goddamn long.”
Moving onto the bed beside her, he pulled her with him so that she was sprawled across his lap, her legs straddling his hips, and her breasts pressed against his chest. Face-to-face, there was no mistaking the desire written plainly in her expression. He could feel the damp heat of her against him.
Carter parted the slick folds and eased inside her. Watching her face, seeing the pleasure reflected in her eyes, he lost himself in the power of that. He did that to her. Whatever else passed between them, no one else would ever make her feel the way he did.
The way her body closed around him, gripping him tightly, pulling him even deeper, had him struggling for control.
Closing his arms around her, holding on to her tightly, he began to thrust into her, quick, shallow strokes that only fanned the flames and made them both burn hotter. It wasn’t enough.
Carter slid his hands down her sides. Grasping her hips, he guided her movements, increasing the tempo and the force. Josie added a few moves of her own, clenching her muscles tightly around him, circling her hips in a way that practically made his eyes cross.
Her head was thrown back, her long hair brushing his thighs as she rode him.
Dipping his head, he kissed her breasts, laving them with his tongue.
Taking one taut peak into his mouth, he flicked his tongue over the hardened bud until Josie screamed for him.
That was what he wanted. To drive her wild, to make her forget that she was supposed to be the good girl, the preacher’s kid, the shining example that every other girl in town was meant to live up to.
In that moment, he wanted her to be free of everything and just give in to her own feelings.
She clutched at him, her nails digging into his skin, her body taut and quivering against him.
It was all heat and need driving them toward release.
When she stiffened in his arms, every muscle clenching tightly, her inner muscles spasming rhythmically around him, Carter was lost. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, her legs and arms wrapped around him, her head on his shoulder, and both of them still trembling, he accepted the inevitable fact that she had the power to break him.
Somehow, without even trying to or possibly even wanting to, she’d burrowed so deep in him that he was never going to be free of her.