25. Sedona
IAN
Mal hadn’t even let me take the dog.
“You haven’t slept in three days, Ian,” he said. “You’re going to lie in this immensely tranquil room on that huge bed with your eyes closed until you either fall asleep or go insane. No scales. I’m taking your guitar. No dog either. Sleep, Ian.” He couldn’t resist a parting shot as he left. “You brought this on yourself, you know. You should have fought for her.”
Asshole.
Like I didn’t know that.
With nothing else to do, I stood at the window wall, considering how well the desert in front of me matched my mood. I watched the shadow of a boulder get slowly longer as the sun went down.
The stillness was broken by a knock at the door.
Fuck off, I thought. There’s no one here.
The knock came again. “Ian?”
Nicky’s voice. But that wasn’t possible.
I crept silently across acres of pale carpeting to hover by the door, listening.
“Ian!” she called again. “It’s not just that I want to sleep with you. I also want to sleep with you. You know?”
Nicky. Hand on her suitcase.
I opened the door to her astonishment. What was she astonished about? She was the one who knocked on my door. “You’re in Denver,” I said slowly.
She shook her head. “I’m in Sedona.”
“You’re in Denver with Archer.”
“Archer is in Sedona with Mal. At least, I assume he is. It’s really hot out here. Can I come in?”
Galvanized, I stepped back and then she was in the room with me, the door shutting out the blasting heat.
“Wow. This place is really beautiful,” she said.
“Yeah. What—what did you mean when you said you wanted—” I couldn’t finish the thought, didn’t dare say the words.
She looked nervous, and I hated that. Nicky should never feel unsure. “Well, only if you want to.”
My fingers flared, but I kept them carefully at my sides. “What about Archer?”
She shrugged, a move calculated to look casual if only every muscle on her body hadn’t been taut. “Archer has given us his blessing.”
“What?”
“He and I had a long talk on the ride down. He says to tell you that if you don’t treat me right, he’ll kick you into shape.”
“He can try,” I said automatically. “Really?”
“Boy,” she said, “I had no idea you’d be so hard to persuade. So you’re not really interested after all?”
I had to make sure before I dropped every restraint I had in place. “Indulge me, Nicky. Do you want Archer?”
She smiled. “No.”
The breath I was holding left me in a huff. “Who do you want, then?”
She was getting exasperated. “You. I want you, Ian. Are you going to make me wait, or are you going to kiss me?”
For an endless second, my paralysis held as I looked at her. As I drank her in.
And then movement was easy. Effortless. My hands found the sides of her face, my fingers slipping along her satin skin. With all the time in the world, I lowered my head to her, and she lifted to me.
We met at the luscious bliss of her lips. My soul was fierce, but my mouth was gentle. I caressed her, learning the soft and miraculous wonder of her.
“Yes,” she breathed against my touch. “That’s it. Some people don’t have to be taught.”
“What?”
“Nothing. More.”
She rose on her toes, fitting herself to me, and I couldn’t stop my arms from coming around her waist, pulling her to me and lifting so I could feel her against me.
She moaned into my mouth and I licked up the sound. Her lips parted for me, and I discovered the smooth heat and raw sensation of her tongue against mine. I groaned, overcome with the rush of nerve endings tingling.
All my nerve endings—including the army now lifting my cock into eager hardness.
This could get embarrassing.
I set her back on her feet and pulled back to rub my hand across my face. “Holy god,” I muttered.
Nicky didn’t let go. When I stood tall, she slipped her arms around my waist and pressed against me.
Against the rude outthrust of my cock.
I groaned and fought to find the strength to push her back.
“No,” she said insistently. “I’m staying right here.”
It wasn’t just that I could feel my pulse in my balls. I could also feel it behind my knees and inside my eyelids. “Then we might have a problem. Because I’m not sure I can kiss you again without coming like a teenager.”
“That’s flattering.” The evil creature. She had the temerity to wiggle against me, forcing me to bite my lip in concentration. Perhaps she saw my wince because she backed away. “Oh, I’m sorry. This isn’t good?”
I cradled her face, keeping distance between our bodies. “It’s so very good. But I’m demonstrating a shocking lack of—of control. And I want to be good for you.”
Her smile went into my eyes and straight into my heart. “Okay. What do you want?”
The number of positions I wanted to fuck her in raced across my brain, none of which were helping with my control. “Come here. Sit down. Let me catch my breath.”
The low sofa faced the sunset, and we sat in stillness for a moment as my pulse settled. I reached for her hand and found her reaching for mine.
“Nicky.” I turned my head to look at her, not yet trusting that I could turn more of my body toward her. “I think you should know . . . I really like you.”
Laughter lit her eyes. “I like you, too, Ian.”
“No.” I tried to clarify, “I mean, I really like you. And Long Island isn’t that far from Delaware, and I don’t want to become your crazed stalker if you don’t want a crazed stalker.”
She studied me and then shifted so she was sitting back on her heels, facing me. “Ian, where am I going to grad school?”
She was quizzing me? “Penn.”
“Why do you think you’d stalk me in Delaware and not at school?”
It took a moment to form my concepts into words, but I spat them out eventually. “Because you’re about to graduate and you’re going to take over as chief operating officer of your parent’s dry-cleaning company?”
I’d gotten A’s on quizzes before, and I remembered being pretty happy about that, but Nicky’s reaction left them in the dust.
She leaned forward, looped her arms around my neck, and trapped my mouth in the heat and glory of a kiss. “You can stalk me, Ian,” she whispered into my mouth.
I needed to feel more of her against me. I shifted, she shifted, and we arranged ourselves so she was draped over my lap, her glorious breasts pressed against my chest. The kisses were drugging me, but I had the presence of mind to announce my actions.
“I’m going to pull out your ponytail. Any objections?”
She purred and shook her head as she licked along my jaw.
And then my hands were filled with the soft cloud of her hair—hair I’d only dared stroke when she was most deeply asleep. “Oh, magnificent,” I muttered.
She chuckled, and that moved her breasts against me. My hand on her back could feel the clasp of her bra, guarded from my greedy fingers by one thin layer of warm cotton.
“I want more than kissing, Ian,” she said to my neck. “I need your hands on me. Touch me.”
I swallowed, trying to maintain control. Without conscious thought, my fingers flicked, and the tension of the bra strap was gone.
She pulled back far enough to grin at me. “One-handed and through the shirt. Nicely done.”
“Lefty too,” I admitted. “Guitar player. I’m good with my hands.”
“Left hand,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve thought about those guitar calluses on my skin. Show me.”
She was going to talk me into an orgasm. But I’d go happily. I pulled her shirt from the waist of her shorts, and she seemed to like the strength of the movement.
I trailed my scratchy, callused fingers over the silk of her spine, and she moved in response, her body a wave against me. I painted her back in stripes, but she shifted under my touch, bringing my hand to her side.
More? I am obedient to you, I thought.
I skated over the ridges of her ribs until I found the now-loose band of her bra. She held her breath, eyes closed, when I paused. Watching her, feeling her breath come faster, I moved under the no-man’s-land of the bra and into forbidden territory.
She sighed as I trailed my fingers up the lower curve, warm and creamy, until I found the nubbed peak. “Ian,” she moaned.
“Yeah,” I agreed. And then I lost my patience and tugged my hand up, pulling her shirt and bra up to her armpits. She lay across my lap, ruby-tipped breasts right there for my hungry hand.
I stroked her, trying to balance my need with her response while her hand caressed the fuzz on my nearly shaved head. I cupped a breast with my full hand, feeling the weight and curve of her, and then stroked my fingers inward until I had her between my pinching fingers.
She groaned at the gentle pressure, and I had another moment of insanity when her response was secondary to my teeth-grinding need. With both hands, I heaved her higher on my lap so I could get my mouth on the crest. She was so good in my mouth that I licked her—deep, slow licks and then fast flicks. Then I pinched the tip with my mouth, and she cried out.
I lifted my mouth, panting, to make sure she was okay, and she grabbed my head and forced my head back. “Again! Do it again!”
Oh, Nicky. You’re going to be a terrible addiction for me.
I couldn’t get at the second breast until I lifted her entirely and lay her on the sofa under me. Crouched over her, I could reach the other breast and could soon admire the shine of my own wetness on her raspberry tips.
She fought to get her shirt and bra off over her head, so I spared an arm to help. But once her face emerged again and her arms were overhead, bound by the cloth, I suddenly liked the position and closed my hand over the shirt to hold her with her hands confined.
“Oh,” she breathed. Then she jumped when I nipped at her armpit and licked along her collarbone.
“If you free me,” she breathed, making my balls tighten, “I can get your shirt off you too.”
If I freed her. What an erotic thought. I stripped the shirt from her arms, and she yanked my shirt over my head. I had to rise to get my arms clear and took a moment to admire her.
Nicky.
Lying under me. Breasts naked and wet from my mouth. Hair in a soft cloud. Mouth open and pink from our kisses. Eyes heated. How had I resisted her for so long?
“Come back,” she breathed. “I want your skin on my skin.”
Instead of coming down to her, I reached under her ribs and tugged her up to me, rubbing my chest rudely across her breasts. She moaned and pulled her mouth to mine. “Ian,” she gasped, “this feels so good.”
“So good,” I agreed.
She fought to get her hands under my arms, and then she was tugging at my belt. I doubled over to keep her hands from my dick.
“I’m not kidding,” I admitted. “I’m going to come if you touch me. I might come if you look at me.”
She laughed breathlessly. “Then I won’t look. I need you in me, Ian. Now.”
“No—more time. More exploration.”
“Exploration later. I can’t wait. If you want me to beg, I will. Please fuck me, Ian.”
The sweet, subservient sounds of the words were belied when she grabbed my hips and tried to thrust up against me. This was no delicate submitting. Nicky wanted. Nicky needed.
And by god, Nicky would get.
“Hang on.” I climbed off her. “I have condoms in the bathroom.”
“Oh, condoms. Thank god.” She threw one arm across her forehead and watched me. I had to back to the bathroom because she was trailing her fingers over her crotch, and that was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.
I fumbled in my kit and found a stash. Thank god. She’d opened her shorts by the time I got back, her hand now slipped into her panties. She watched me, saw my jaw drop, and laughed breathlessly.
“I’m wet. Look.” She held up two fingers, shiny in the falling light, and I had to tamp down the threatened eruption.
“You’re killing me,” I said. I threw the condoms on the bedside table, was at her side in two long strides, yanked her shorts and panties down her body, and lifted her bodily while she gasped and threw her arms around my shoulders. “Bed,” I growled.
I threw her down on the covers, and she bounced, her tits bobbling. She laughed in her excitement and spread her legs wide. “Watch me,” she said.
Organized, tidy Nicky. Careful, thoughtful Nicky. The little sister, the intern. She lay on the bed and fingered herself. Her toes were arched and she was panting, and I thought I’d lose my mind.
My hands fell to my belt. “Close your eyes,” I demanded. “You said you would.”
“You’re going to have to hang on,” she threw back at me. “I’m not closing my eyes.”
I exhaled with a grunt and slammed down the gates of what little self-control I could muster. My jeans hit the floor, and I stepped out of them.
“Damn,” Nicky said, and her tone of admiration nearly polished me off.
“Don’t touch me,” I growled. My hands were shaking when I rolled on the condom.
“Fine. You touch me. Here, Ian. Can you see where?”
“Don’t tease me, Nicky. I’m not kidding. If you want this, stop teasing me.”
“I want it. I want it right now. Right here. Ian, come on.”
The girl deserved better than me rutting over her, but by that point, I would have killed to get inside her the fastest way possible. I knelt on the bed between her outflung legs and yanked her hips up to me.
She yelped. “Oh, god, hurry!”
Hurry. She was urging me to hurry, and I wasn’t sure I could even make it inside her. The perfume of her arousal was invading my lungs, and her hand was reaching for me.
I slapped it away, rougher than I should have been. “Don’t touch, I said!”
“I want to help. To get you there.”
“I don’t need your help, damn it!” Calm down, Ian, I chanted to myself, but it did no good. I couldn’t calm down. I was lost to the primitive man.
I held her thighs in my grip and tugged her where I wanted her. And then I rose just enough to verify that I could pierce her—that the slick, tight tunnel of her lay one thrust away.
I hung there, concentrating. Focusing. Feeling the heat. Knowing the slickness. Ready for the grip. Hold on. Hold on. Be calm.
And she took the decision out of my hands, rippling her hips upward and impaling herself on my cock.
I screamed as I slid inside her, and she screamed in turn.
“Yes! That’s it! Ian, I—I—” Her hand slammed onto her clitoris, and I made it to a second life-altering thrust into her gripping heat before I came from the soles of my feet.
Like a kid, I thought distantly as I shook in the outrush. But Nicky was shaking too. Her legs had come away from my hands, and she uttered a high, keening wail.
I pulled out of her and fell to her side, suddenly boneless. I was lying across one of her legs, and I feared I would crush her. But if a gun had gone off by my head, I wouldn’t have been able to look over.
Limp and shaking, I lay by her side, one hand across her ribs and curled around the curve of her breast. I listened to her breathing, her pants slowing until she exhaled and then forgot to inhale.
I was going to shake her in concern when her breathing started up again. I relaxed, overwhelmed by the relief of tension.
And then she spoke.