Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Zoe
T here was no time to get to the loft, so I went to the bedroom just a few feet away, pulling the last stitch of clothing away from my body. The moment I stepped inside, he slammed the door shut behind me, and then I was up against it.
His arms were already under my thighs, yanking my legs up around his waist while my hands speared through his hair. Warrick’s tongue was in my mouth, his kiss so hard that it vibrated right through my whole body. He grabbed my ass again and hoisted me, still pressed against the front door, my legs going around his hips.
Shifting his hips, Warrick pressed me harder against the door, the thick ridge of his cock against my middle. Even through the thickness of his jeans, I felt him, and it sent a thrill of pleasure through my body.
My legs tightened around him of their own accord. “You think everyone is sure we came up here to fuck?”
“Well, weren’t we?” His lips coasted past my ear. “I don’t care anymore.”
“Bed, now,” I demanded.
He brushed my mouth in the barest of kisses, and my pulse launched like a rocket booster. My breath lodged in the back of my throat. Still moving, his lips barely against mine, he swept his hand up my side to rest just under my right breast, his thumb sweeping over an already taut nipple.
He pinched it fiercely, sending a jagged bolt of lust right to my core. I threw my head back onto the pillow, reeling from the sensation. Both of Warrick’s hands cupped me, his fingers tight on my body. The pleasurable pinch of pain had me groaning because it felt really, really good.
Tugging his head down, I kissed him. “Get on with it, cowboy. You’ve got me all hot and bothered with nowhere to go.”
Snorting, Warrick kissed down my body, his lips skittering over my ribs, and I was wet as hell, a puddle of desire.
His mouth captured mine again, and I slid one hand down the length of his cock. He was hard as a rock, his thick length insistent against me. He was big—really big, actually—but desire rushed through me again as he kept me pinned.
As Warrick rose to rifle through the bedside drawer, I gazed in awe at the muscular breadth of his shoulders, the granite slabs of his chest with its wiry furring.
In a haze of lust, my attention dropped to his ridged abdomen, not an ounce of fat there or on his narrow hips. He was taut and sinewy everywhere, with no excess bulk…except between his thighs.
My breath puffed through my lips. God, his male equipment was large. I’d felt his cock before, had it in my mouth, but now, it was a flagpole, and I was the ground he was going to plant it in.
Then, there was the sound of foil crinkling by my head, and I saw him tearing a condom wrapper open with his teeth, looking me in the eye the whole time. He was propped up on one elbow, his other hand occupied with putting it on while his lips coasted over my skin.
I wanted him.
As much as I couldn’t believe that I was naked with Warrick Donovan, the man who had thought I was a hooker days ago, I wanted him. Now.
Grasping my thighs, he bent my knees. “Keep 'em right there for me, darlin’.”
I felt him at my slick entrance, my back arching as he sank in, inch by excruciating inch. My eyes slammed closed, and I grabbed his hair in my fist, a noise I’d never heard before coming from my mouth.
He was big—bigger than I realized, definitely bigger than any previous boyfriend—but he hilted himself in one long, slow stroke, and it felt fucking perfect. Sizzling heat coursed through my whole body as I felt full to bursting.
“Oh, fuck,” Warrick groaned, buried to the hilt, and I coaxed his mouth to mine, kissing him slow and sensual.
Flexing my hips, I gasped; he was touching somewhere deep inside me that had never been touched before, stroking a live wire and rubbing raw nerve. The kiss got harder. Faster. His tongue plunged into my mouth the way I wanted his cock inside my body.
“Hey, cowboy,” I mouthed against his prickly jaw. “Fuck me first, make love to me after.”
“Music to my ears,” he groaned, his thrusts growing from tentative and testing to deeper and deeper still until the square of his hips was smashing into mine. “Christ, you were made to take my cock. Pussy so wet and tight.”
I slid my hand down his neck, to his shoulder, and then he caught it with his fingers encircling my wrist, pushing it down onto the bed, his weight on me. Gripping my hips, he pulled me into his pounding thrusts, his jaw taut with control or restraint; I didn’t know which.
With a growl, he slammed into me deeper and harder than before. Twisting my legs, I clung to the notches of his hips, feeling his muscular buttocks clench and release beneath my heels. I felt the slap of his balls against my perineum and tightened my legs—but he pulled out.
“I want you like this,” he sat on his haunches and pulled me back on his lap. The new angle of his cock hit me like a spear.
My hands flew up to grab the back of his neck while one of his arms came around my middle and the other hand strummed my breast. I bounced on his lap and in counterpoint, he plowed up into me.
I swear his cock was hitting every nerve I had, including some I’d never found before. My eyes slid shut, and I whimpered with pleasure.
We fucked harder and harder, the whole world obliterated except for the pure physical movement of our bodies, raw and hard and rough and like nothing I’d ever even imagined.
I climbed sky-high—and then I was shattering, splintering in half, unravelling, my whole body going tight as a fist around Warrick.
Even while I was coming harder than a fucking supernova, Warrick was relentlessly chasing his own end, holding me tight as he slammed into me. With a roar, he buried his face in the back of my neck, rough grunts on my skin as we rocked together.
Finally, he pulled away and gently let me down to the bed while he left for the bathroom. Did I imagine a little wobble to his walk? My head hit the pillows, my chest heaving, my body feeling lighter than air.
Minutes later, Warrick joined me, his hand sliding up mine until our fingers interlocked and then he closed it, intertwining our hands. I wrapped my other arm around his back, holding him close. I felt his eyes were on me.
“What?” I murmured, sleepily.
He smiled. It was teasing, taunting, a promise of something wicked glinting in his eye. “I think I underestimated you.”
I nuzzled into his chest. “A lot of people do.”
“A mistake I will not be making again,” Warrick said.
“Good.”
“Especially since we’re going fishing tomorrow.”
I woke to the smell of coffee waving near my nose, and even though I was half asleep, I smiled. Looking up, I found him shirtless.
“Your coffee, Sunshine.” He nudged the cup on the nightstand. “I doctored it up best I could for you, a mountain of sugar and a river of milk—I know you like it sweet.”
“I do.”
“Are you sore?” he asked.
I snickered into the pillow. “After the first one when you tore me apart and set me back into my skin, or when you woke after midnight to put me on my hands and knees and fuck me that way… Or what about a couple of hours before when you had me ride you?”
I turned on my back. “I thought you were getting me a defibrillator, not a cup of coffee.”
“You’re going to need it,” he grinned. “We're going fishing, and those fish will put up a fight.”
Sitting up, I risked a fast kiss. It wasn’t just the coffee that was sweet. Warrick Donovan was a far nicer person than most people gave him credit for. “So where are we headed?”
“Get dressed in shorts or something. I have spare waders and a pole for you.”
“I’ve never been fishing,” I admitted, trying to figure out a way to tell him how pleased I was that he was letting me in on this part of himself.
“Not once?” he asked.
“No, because New York has so many lakes and rivers and aqueducts and ponds or puddles in the middle of the?—”
“I get it, I get it,” he laughed. “You and those damn synonyms. Anyway, up and at ‘em. I made some lures for you last night, too.”
Pausing in sipping the perfectly doctored drink, my brows lowered. “What is a lure?”
“Oh, you poor city child,” he sighed. “I have so much to teach you.”
After slipping into the bathroom to use the facilities and brush my teeth, I changed into a pair of jeans, a blouse, and sneakers before grabbing a cup of coffee and pouring it into a to-go cup. Piled at the door, I saw two fishing poles, a backpack, and a box with latches.
“That, sweetheart, is called a tackle box,” Warrick grinned, hefting the poles over his shoulder and the box. “Carry that bag, please. I got food and drinks inside, the waders inside.
"But you need to change those shoes—” He gestured to a pair of water boots. “Those are Connie’s. She comes up here sometimes to fish. She’s got tiny feet too.”
“Aw, thank you,” I said dryly while tugging the boots on. “Where are we heading?”
With Goose padding behind us, Warrick led us down another track, bouncing down a gravel path to this small clearing.
It was not the same way to the waterway where Goose had swum in before, but this time to a jetty. We stopped on the shore for me to put on the hip waders, which were more like rubber overalls, only without a bib.
All around us were hills full of flowering green trees, and the warm, stronger rays of dawn were coming through the boughs. Warrick had chosen a part of the river that was shallower and calmer, curving around an inlet of land lined with scrubby trees and bushes on both sides.
“When this river goes around the bend, it turns into rapids and whitewater,” he said.
We set the tackle and backpack on a rocky outcropping along the bank while Warrick took out the rod and reel for me. He then proceeded to fiddle around with it, talking about guides, hooks, tippets, and leaders.
“Is this how it feels when I talk about my coffee orders?” I laughed. I was never going to remember all the pointers he was giving me but I’d bluff my way out of it. “What is a lie?”
“We’re in one,” he grinned. “It’s an area in a river or lake out of the main current where fish hang out and provide a good source of insects and other food.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You took me to a fish trap.”
“Easy pickings,” he said.
It was not so easy. He put my rod in my hand and came around my back to show me how to cast. I heard his instructions—but my attention was on how firm his body was behind mine and the huskiness of his voice in my ear.
When he finally stepped away, I tried to cast. It took me about ten tries to get it right, but when I did, his kiss to my ear made the pain in my wrist vanish.
He fished beside me, catching fish every so often, but not one tug on my line. He threw most of them back into the stream, but a few went into the cooler.
“I can see why you like it out here,” I told him. “It’s peaceful.”
A sharp tug pulled at my line. “Oh, my God, I think I’ve got something!”
“Reel it in,” he said, coaching me on how to reel it—but the damn fish was putting up a fight.
I ground my heels in. “It’s fighting me!”
Warrick came up. “Give me the line and jump in there. Grab it.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“Go, now,” he ordered. “Hurry up.”
Even aghast, I jumped into the water, and now I knew why the waders were such a good idea. Hurrying to the line, I tried to reach under it—and touched wet scales. I jumped back, scared.
“I’m holding it,” Warrick said. “Don’t let it get away.”
Sucking in breath, I reached in, grabbing at it, but the damn thing was twisting and slippery and un-fucking-grabbable. My hand kept slipping and slipping, and I found myself in a full-on wrestling match with a damn fish, and it was winning.
Desperate, I tried to grab whatever I could, and luckily, I grabbed the tail and held on for my dear life. Yanking it out the water, I wrapped my arms around it—and the tail slapped me in the face.
“ Fuck !” I yelled.
And fucking Warrick was laughing. I suddenly hated the asshole. I tried to avoid the flapping tail, but it was hard. I got about three more whacks before Warrick pried it out of my hand and hefted it to the boardwalk, delivering a hard stun to it on the head.
“Oh, wow, you got a three-footer paddlefish,” he said. “It’s got about twenty-five pounds on it too. I have a killer recipe for this bad boy. You did good, baby.”
I stuck out my tongue. “I think I swallowed some scales.”
I didn’t expect the kiss, but he gave me one anyway, his smug grin irritating. “And now I have some too.”
Elbowing him, I laughed, “Dork.”
We headed back to the cabin, me half wet, half dry, and with a memory to last me the rest of my life. While he went off to the kitchen to deal with the fish, I headed to the bathroom, stripped, and stepped into the tub. Warrick had retrofitted it to be a standing-in shower with a frosted glass enclosure.
I couldn’t wait to get this fishy smell off me.