Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Josie shivered at Houston’s sensual touch, at his words, at the insecurity she saw on his face. He was as vulnerable now as she had been after surgery the day before, and she hoped she could give him comfort the way he had her. She wanted him to trust her, confide in her.
“Thank you,” she said, simply. “I’m a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all? You done with those sutures yet?” he asked, plucking at her nipple, casually, as if he hadn’t pushed her away physically and emotionally over and over.
“No.” Not even close. He had extensive embroidery all over his calf, and she’d only removed about a third of it.
Not that she could concentrate with his finger gliding, stroking, dragging her into desire. A moist want heated up the bottoms of the ridiculous bikini she was wearing, and her hand trembled a little against his leg.
“So hurry up.”
“I can’t when you’re doing that.” His finger had worked its way under the wet triangle of her bikini top, distracting her.
“What am I doing?”
Frustrating her, that’s what. “Oh, just casually touching me.”
Shifting a little so his finger fell away from her breast, she focused on the scissors in her hand and snipped another stitch.
“There’s nothing casual about it.”
A toe pressed against her clitoris through her wet bottoms.
Josie jerked back and gave Houston a dirty look, exasperated. “Are you trying to make me hurt you? I have sharp scissors in my hand!”
He looked unconcerned, resting his feet back on the tops of the sandals he’d kicked off, his expression mild but his eyes lit with lust. “But you know what? I trust you, Josie, to take care of me. And I’ve noticed you don’t drop things around me anymore. I wonder why.”
If he was teasing or not, she couldn’t tell, but his words made her warm, and it wasn’t just from sexual stimulation. She’d actually been stupid enough to fall in love with him, which was sure to go over fantastic, if she were ever crazy enough to admit it to him.
“You don’t make me nervous anymore.” It was true. While he still sent her blood pressure into the abnormal range, and could talk her into joining a nudist colony with at most a little coaxing and a box of chocolates, he didn’t intimidate her any longer.
“So it wouldn’t make you nervous if I untied the strings of your top?”
Okay, so she wouldn’t even need the chocolate as an inducement. A little coaxing and she’d be naked.
“No, that wouldn’t make me nervous.” Horny with hurricane intensity, but not nervous.
She added, “But I still think you should let me finish removing these before you take any string untying action.”
As it was she wasn’t being particularly gentle, but was tugging and dropping half-inch bits of thread on his coffee table with double her usual speed.
Yet it didn’t seem to be bothering him or the erection growing steadily in his swim trunks spitting distance from her mouth.
Or tongue distance, she thought, then berated herself for not behaving professionally while she worked. He was just damn close, that’s all.
And she was almost naked, wearing nothing but a couple of overpriced triangles on her breasts and a swatch of nylon across her butt, leaving the rest of her as bare and expansive as the 1-95 highway.
“I kind of like the idea of seeing you between my legs with no top on.”
Josie ripped out a stitch and willed her nipples not to harden ... too late. Geez, was there really any good response to a statement like that?
Emotions far too close to the surface for comfort, she went with humor, relieved she was two-thirds done removing the sutures. “I don’t mind if you take your shirt off.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but he didn’t laugh. Before she could react, his hand was on her back and the ocean-blue strap to her top, tied into a droopy bow, gave way as he jerked it loose.
“Would you like that? If I took my shirt off? Do you like me, Josie?”
Um, that would be a yes. Her bikini crept forward, gravity urging her breasts out of the loosened restraints, top inching up, stopping only when the fabric caught on the underside of her breasts.
Josie was very, very aware that once the bikini top gave, it was an ensemble that would only work in two circumstances.
A topless beach on the French Riviera or a strip club.
Which made her wonder how good it would feel to imitate an exotic dancer’s moves in Houston’s lap.
Minor shifting caused the triangles to give up their valiant hold and bounce up over her nipples like the retraction of a bungee jump. Houston let out a rush of air, his head shaking just slightly.
Josie swallowed the suddenly enormous amount of saliva collecting in her cheeks. “You know I like you.”
“Put the damn scissors down and stand up.”
“I’m not finished. There are still two one-inch segments to remove.” But she shot up anyway when he prodded her with his toe again, sharp pangs of fiery desire darting through her at his nudging touch and demanding tone of voice. The raw need on his face set her arousal to a razor-sharp edge.
“Leave the sutures for later.” He rose off the couch and flexed his leg, bending it several times and brushing his kneecap right across her, on that last bit of intact bikini, the wet bottoms that were clinging to her pussy.
“Ah, much better, even if you’re not finished.”
A gasp ripped out of her mouth when his hard knee nudged against her again. A wicked, acquiescent, encouraging kind of gasp that had her dropping her eyelids in both embarrassment and poignant pleasure, as he forced her legs apart.
She teetered on the edge of the coffee table. “Houston, are you sure we can do this? I don’t want to hurt your leg or anything. Are you in pain?”
Not that he would admit it. And not that she thought he was. But she didn’t want to hurt him.
“The only pain I have is in my trunks from wanting you.” The indignation in his voice was real, not exaggerated.
Josie bent her legs and slipped back to the floor, with more tumbling than grace, landing right between his knees, wishing she’d thought to pull her top off since it was swinging across her breasts like bizarre nylon jewelry. But she ignored it.
Because for once, she wanted to throw him off balance, make him stumble and trip on his words and quake with need the way she did.
Make him forget about his mother’s marriage and his father and his torn-up hand and understand that he could deny it or call it whatever he wanted to, but there was much more between them than explosive sex.
“Good. Then I can do this.”
She reached inside his still damp swim trunks and touched him, smooth and half-hard.
“Josie.” He took a step back and was halted by the couch.
Josie smiled, pressing a kiss above his waistband, running her tongue along the tuft of dark hair there. With more courage than confidence, she pulled the trunks down to his knees.
“Josie,” he repeated, sounding surprised and definitely on the edge, which renewed her determination and aroused her so completely that she was breathing hard before she’d even touched him.
Breasts easing forward and brushing his thighs, she lifted her arms and took him into her unsteady grasp. Felt him thicken and jerk beneath her fingers. Felt the intensity of his desire for her.
Holding the smooth length of him with two hands, she pressed her lips right on the tip of his shaft and allowed herself a little lick.
He shuddered. “Crap, don’t do that.”
She licked again.
Knees squeezed her shoulders. “Damn it, stop that.”
Licks gave way to gentle sucking. God, it felt good to do this, to take him into her mouth and taste with intimate strokes of her tongue.
“My mom might come up here looking for us.”
His voice hitched and through the corner of her eye, Josie saw the fingers on his uninjured hand dig into the couch, searching for a hold.
The tone of desperation in his voice amused her.
He was the one who couldn’t stay on task with the sutures earlier.
Now he expected her to believe he was worried about getting caught?
Houston just didn’t like being in the passenger seat.
Lick, lick.
“We’ll hear the front door. Mmm, you taste good.” Her nipples tightened, rubbing against her loose top, her body echoing the hardening of his.
“Stop it, Josie.”
She peeked up at him, still running her tongue along the smooth ridge of his cock. Houston’s eyes were closed, his mouth a thin line, his arm muscles bulging and tense as he gripped the couch.
“Why? I told you I’ll stop if you’re in pain,” she murmured, confident of his reaction to that statement.
“And I told you I’m not in pain.”
“Then shush and let me suck you.”
“No,” he said, while holding very still.
Between pulling him in and out of her mouth, she carried on with their conversation. “Let me,” she said, filling up her mouth, “do this.” She pulled back, “Just this one time, Houston. I really want to feel you come inside my mouth.”
He just groaned and she slid him past her lips and deep into the back of her throat again. Her jaws strained, but he was so hot, so good, that she sucked in the hollows of her cheeks and refused to let him go.
The original thought had been to take it slow, take her time to taste him, please him, make him ache the way he did to her every time he touched her.
But Josie couldn’t hold back, couldn’t halt her own rising desperation, her own body’s squirming and wanting and urging.
She picked up speed, the moisture of her mouth slicking his flesh as she drew on his hard shaft, his breathing deepening into low guttural groans.
She wanted him, she loved him, she needed to help him see that surgeon or not, he was worthy.
She wanted to feel the hot surrender of him into her mouth as she pressed her breasts against his questing fingers.
Wanted to feel his weight crash against her as he throbbed and thrust his way through a surrender into her mouth.
Anticipation and taste and the little growls he was spitting out had her sliding and shifting, holding onto him, reaching to cup him, digging into his thighs.
Intense, burning want spiraled through her stomach, and she sensed the tightening, the familiar building throb between her thighs that hinted an orgasm could be near.
If she stood, or pushed him back on the couch, she could sink onto him and surrender to a blistering climax. It would be a selfish choice. Or she could stay put, taunt and tease herself, and give satisfaction to Houston first.
Or maybe she could do both. When she nipped at his flesh, he swore with a jerk of his fingers, pinching the bud of her nipple.
The sharp flash of pleasure sent her body racing ahead before she was ready, and Josie paused with her tongue on him to moan with her orgasm, to rock against his leg and rub at her swollen clitoris.
“Fucking, yes,” he said, shaking her shoulder with his tight grip.
“Sorry,” she said, sucking in air, ripples shuddering through her, regret rising that she might have messed up the rhythm of his pleasure. “Sorry, geez, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come, I swear.”
“What made you come, Josie?” Houston asked, his erection still hovering in front of her mouth, his voice tight.
“Doing this to you...sucking...I really like it.”
Leaning against his stomach, she closed her eyes and shivered, her legs buckling under her. Houston tugged her head back so she was looking at him.
The heat of passion in his smoky blue eyes stirred her own desire back to life. He looked ready to consume her, to have her fast and hard and now.
“Get up. We’re going in the bedroom now, before I take you in my living room again.”
“Okay,” she whispered, giving one last kiss to the head of his cock. He jerked away from her, giving her arm another insistent nudge.
Josie stood, wobbling like an eighty-year-old arthritic, digging into Houston’s forearms for balance.
“Oh, God, Sara, I totally forgot about her. I have to call her, she’ll be wondering what happened to me.”
“She’ll figure it out.” Houston bent and took her breast into his mouth like a wild animal with its prey.
Only Josie imagined when bitten by a lion, no gazelle ever wanted to scream in pleasure. She did, and only managed to stay silent by squeezing her eyes shut and thinking about the ruptured Achilles tendon surgery scheduled for the next day.
“No, I need to call her.” And he was really going to believe her by the way she leaned into his touch and whimpered.
But he stopped licking delicious patterns across her skin. “Hurry up.”
“Absolutely.” Josie swiped her phone and swatted at his hands as they came towards her.
“Hey, are you coming back to the beach or are you enjoying an afternoon delight.”
“The latter.” She glanced at Houston. “I got a little tied up here at Houston’s and I’m not sure when I’ll make it back to the beach.”
Sara snorted. “Subtle. Enjoy the sex!”
“Shh! What if his mother hears you?” she whispered, then clamped down on a moan as Houston came up behind her and started shoving her bikini bottoms down.
“I don’t think she’ll mind. She’s getting some action too, you know. I’m the only one who isn’t.”
Josie felt guilty, especially since Houston was bending her over the couch and slipping his finger inside her. “I’m sorry, Sara,” she managed, breath hitching. “Did you change your mind about your beach plan?”
“I talked to one guy and it turned out he’s married. It will take me another six months to get up the nerve to do this again.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Josie started, but Sara cut her off.
“I’m hanging up now before this conversation qualifies us for having participated in a threesome. You are clearly busy.”
Houston’s teeth sank into the tender flesh of her backside and she yelped, dropping the phone and flushing with embarrassment. Sara had known what they were doing. Well, not exactly, but the general idea and that was bad enough.
“Your mother...” she said, though she had no idea why. What the hell was she saying? His mother?
“My mother is busy with Larry.” Houston retracted his finger and trailed her body’s moisture up between her cheeks, her muscles giving a tight jerk at his invasion. Then relaxing, accepting, wanting him.