Twenty-Six
Montana
What had just happened?
No, scratch that. I knew what had happened. I just wasn’t sure why. That was a lie. I knew why I’d let it happen. The moment Than’s hand started wandering over my body and I felt his erection pressing against my bottom, I knew I wasn’t stopping him. The tingling that ran through my body was far too pleasurable. I just hadn’t expected myself to get so…so…out of control. I’d told him I was coming.
My face heated as I stared up at him. He was breathing heavy, and his eyes were hooded, as if he’d just woken up. Then his gaze drifted slowly down my neck and stopped on my chest. I held my breath, waiting for him to say something, but he remained silent. Even as his fingers slid out of me.
I closed my eyes from the sensation and inhaled sharply through my nose.
“How?” he asked in a husky voice.
My eyes popped back open, and I stared wide-eyed at him. How what?
I shook my head, not sure what he meant and unable to find my voice after that.
If he meant how did we just do that , then I was going to die of humiliation. He’d been awake, right? I hadn’t just taken advantage of a sleeping man, had I? I mean, he’d started it, so that wasn’t taking advantage, was it? Should I have made sure he was aware of what he was doing? He had been talking to me.
“With a face and body like this, how are you a virgin at nineteen?” he asked.
Relief came instantly. He’d been awake. I let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
“You never met my mom,” I told him.
His brows drew together. “You’re a virgin because of your mom?” he asked incredulously.
Without him saying it, I knew what he was thinking. My momma had been a stripper and slept with married men. I was a product of one of those affairs. But he hadn’t known her. What was good for her had never been acceptable for me. She’d wanted more. She’d wanted me to have it all and be all she hadn’t been given the chance to.
“She didn’t want me to have her life,” I told him.
He studied me, then lifted his hand to his mouth and stuck two fingers inside. My body flushed at the realization of which two fingers they were. He sucked them, then pulled them out of his mouth. His nostrils flared as his eyes heated.
“Your pussy tastes as fucking incredible as your skin does,” he told me.
My body shivered from his words.
He ran the tip of his finger down over my collarbone to the valley between my breasts, and a deep rumble in his chest sent a thrill through me. Was he going to touch me some more?
“I’m not allowed to fuck you,” he told me as his fingertip circled a nipple. “But we won’t fuck. I’ll just touch and taste.” He lifted his eyes to me. “Will you let me do that? I’ll make you feel good. You can even ride my face.”
Ride his face? Oh God. I struggled to breathe.
“You gonna let me do that, Six?” he asked.
Six. He’d had to use that name at a time like this. If he thought I was a six, then why did he want to touch me?
He smirked as he lowered his head to the curve of my neck, and his lips brushed against me there. “Don’t tense up on me,” he warned.
That was asking a lot, considering he’d just reminded me that if he wasn’t stuck with me, he’d not have given me a second glance. And I’d let him stick his fingers in me, and then I’d ridden his hand.
I pulled away from him, needing his distracting mouth off me. Where was my pride? I wasn’t some weak female who spread her legs for any man who tossed her a shred of attention.
He grabbed my chin and turned my face back to look at him. I managed the best scowl I could, but it wasn’t that believable, considering my body was humming with its excitement at his nearness. Traitor.
“Why have you gone stiff and cold on me when you were all soft and needy moments ago?” he asked.
I licked my lips and tried to jerk my chin out of his grasp, but he held on to it firmly.
“Tell me,” he demanded.
“I had a momentary lapse of judgment,” I snapped at him.
An amused grin tugged on his lips, and then his knee forced my legs open so that he could cup my crotch and run a finger over the outside of my panties.
“Did you now?” he drawled. Then he leaned closer to me. “Your pussy is so fucking wet that your panties are soaked.”
God! What an arrogant asshole.
“Why do you want to touch me again?” I shot back at him. “I didn’t think sixes interested you.”
He studied me, waiting, as if I were going to say more, and then he moved off me and stood up. I guessed I’d just needed to give him a reminder. It was for the best really. Because if I let him keep doing things to me, I was going to end up hurt. Possibly crushed.
Turning over on my side, I curled my knees up to my chest, but the covers were yanked off me. I looked back over my shoulder to see Than towering over me.
“What—” I started to demand, but he grabbed my hip and flipped me back onto my back.
Then his hand wrapped around my wrist, and he pulled me into a sitting position. It had happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to react.
“Stand up,” he told me, but I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “Get your ass up, or I’ll make you.”
Not wanting him to touch me again, I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress and stood.
“What do you want?” I asked.
Taking my wrist again, he led me over to the small bathroom area. When he had me in front of the floor-length mirror that hung beside the sink, he moved behind me and placed his hands on my waist. His eyes were traveling down my reflection, and I hated that my body reacted to his attention.
“I want you to look. Not at me. At you,” he said, bending his head down so his mouth was close to my ear.
“Why?” I asked, feeling entirely too vulnerable.
He ran the back of his hand over my cheek. “Start here.”
I watched his hand slowly glide down to my chin.
“Are you looking?” he asked.
I jerked my eyes off him and tried to look at myself, but it was hard when he was right behind me. “Yes.”
“What do you see?” he asked.
“My face.”
He chuckled, and goose bumps covered my arms. “Yes, and do you see a flaw?”
I didn’t like this.
“Of course,” I snapped. Who didn’t see flaws in the mirror?
He shook his head. “No, you don’t. There aren’t any,” he replied.
Before I could catch my breath from that response, his hands took the lace edge of my top and began pulling it up. I grabbed his arms to stop him, but it was no use. He was too strong. A deep, pleased hum vibrated through his chest.
“What about these? See a flaw here?” His voice dropped an octave, and his eyes darkened. His gaze was solely on my chest.
“I don’t know. I haven’t studied them that closely,” I said. My voice sounded breathless, but he was making it hard for me to inhale properly.
This time, the back of his fingers ran along the side swell of each breast slowly. “I’ve never seen a more perfect pair in my life,” he told me.
My already-hard nipples ached for attention, but he took the bottom of my top and tugged it down, covering them.
When he went to the waistline of my shorts, I tried to stop him again, but his teeth clamped down on my earlobe, distracting me long enough for him to tug them down enough to show my stomach. He caressed down the center with the pad of his thumb, still gripping my waist with his other hand.
“And here?”
“Yes. The freckle to the left of my belly button—it looks like a mole.” And I hated it.
The corners of his lips quirked. “Now see, I was just thinking how I wanted to start there and lick, nip, and kiss a path all the way down.”
He touched the freckle, then ran his fingertip down my stomach as I watched him. I sucked in a breath when he slipped it beneath the waist of my shorts. His breathing was heavy in my ear, and I shivered. Swallowing hard, I waited, aching for him to touch me already. Our eyes met as we stared at our reflection.
When his hand was under my panties, I made a small sound, and a wicked grin curled his lips.
“And this…” he said with a growl to his voice, then slid one finger over my clit, making my knees buckle. “Mmmm, this, I can promise you, has no flaws.”
I laid my head back against his chest as my eyes fluttered closed from the pleasure.
“You were never a six,” he whispered.
I forced my lids back open to look at him. He was watching me.
“And when you labeled yourself a six, I thought you were joking.”
Okay, so he was attracted to me. Did that change things? Because I wanted more of what we’d done. I just didn’t want to get attached and end up hurt in the end.
God, why did this have to be so complicated?
The sound of his phone ringing in the other room had him pulling his hand from my shorts and heading for the door without a word. I stepped over and grabbed the sink to steady myself. I stared at the girl in the mirror, wondering what had happened to her. I’d have never let a guy I had known less than a week touch me like that before. And the few who had touched me must have done something wrong because it had never felt like that.
I heard the front door open and close as Than spoke in a tone low enough that I couldn’t hear him. Whatever that was about, he didn’t want to know about it. He had secrets. Things he wouldn’t tell me. And I had to remember that.
“You can’t trust him if he’s not telling you things,” I whispered to myself.
Now, if only I could keep that in my head when his hands or lips touched my body, I might survive this.