Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Trouble … Trouble … God I’m in over my head…”
“Damn straight you are.”
She trembled with aftershocks rippling through her, as he wrung every drop of her pleasure from her, when he tore his hand free.
Charlie’s eyes fluttered open as her heart galloped and lungs heaved, only to see his lips close around his fingers. His cerulean gaze boring into hers as he suckled clean her arousal and swallowed.
And then, as innocent as can be, he choked out simply, “I missed this.”
She relinquished a death grip and cupped his face. Brushed her thumb over the solemn crease, a vestige of a hard life that had only taught him compassion, that still divoted when he flashed his megawatt grin.
“Missed what it felt like to hope for…” His eyes bounced back and forth between hers, “more.”
He’d been hopeful that that one-night stand was going to be the start of something.
He kicked up his signature grin. “You gonna put in your data that we’re christening your greenhouse?”
She laughed, her head tipping back as he dove into her neck, hungry, and nibbled his way over her collarbone.
“Don’t you want me to return the favor?” she breathed, enough presence of mind grasping her that she trailed her fingers down his treasure trail to the mass behind his zipper, brushing them along the hardened column trapped down a thigh—
He hissed, navel retracting and abs jumping as if pained and pivoted her around, severing her touch, bracing her hands to the metal frame instead.
“You wrap my favorite mouth around my cock, Flower Girl, and I’m gonna explode before you even start kissin’,” he gruffed as his palm came to rest on her rear and patted her there appreciatively, before bending her over and pressing his front against her from behind, whispering by her ear, “Right now, I gotta be back inside you, or I’m gonna die. ”
His calluses snagged on the lace he’d just patted, hooking his fingers in the edges and dragging them down, smoothing over her soft, muscled flesh, squeezing it as he dragged his hand up and down her spine.
Goose bumps rose on her skin as she flashed a glance over her shoulder and watched how reverent he seemed as he caressed her body, celebrating his attraction to her with his focus homed on her every breath.
He flicked the clasp of her bra. It slackened down her arms, leaving her completely bare to him as he kept petting her skin, palming her back, her rear, her shoulders, brushing her hair falling loose from her bun over her shoulder, and finally tugging on the hair tie so that it cascaded like a waterfall around her.
He inhaled, caressing the tresses, as his other hand unhooked his belt buckle and pried open the leather. Popped loose his jeans. Dragged the zipper down. All while holding her gaze as if a captive unable to look away.
And then he reached within and dragged the tent within his jeans up, jutting free.
She sucked in. So primal. He stroked it languidly.
Watched her watch him as he did it. She rubbed her thighs together as he thumped it to her rear and rolled the silky flesh over her skin and dug in his back pocket for his wallet, pulling out a condom and flicking the leather fold to the floor atop the shirt and sterile caps and his button-up shirt now missing a button.
His tattoo rippled. His sisters’ names and thorny hearts and country landscapes and guitars and mechanical tools that faded unfinished down his arm and chest, things that seemed important to him, she realized.
Still palming her rear, he tore the square with his teeth and dropped the wrapper on the accumulating pile. Then he rolled the ring down his thickened shaft, heavy and beading with need, throbbing with low pulses, when he tilted her chin over her shoulder again.
“You with me, babe?” he said, a thick, throaty resonance filled with hope. “You wanna make you and me an us again?”
Always checking with her. Always making sure he didn’t hurt her. He’d been like that their whole first night together, too, so tactile and intense and yet always bringing her back to the moment to make sure he wasn’t overstepping when all she’d wanted to do that night was lose herself in him.
She nodded. Reached back to him to hold on to the lifeline he was offering her. Shifted her legs together again to ease the anticipation brimming through her. “Please.”
The word barely out and he wedged his foot between her muck boots and knocked them apart again, as far as they would go with her leggings and jumpsuit holding them hostage, then took himself in hand and shimmied his helm against her entrance to find his way in.
“Hands on the wall.” His voice, so gravelly.
She grappled to brace the supports—
He slammed his hips forward to smack against her rear.
She cried out as he growled a feral sound, fully seated, and collapsed over her, his teeth gripping the skin of her shoulder blade as if he’d drift away on the wind if he didn’t root himself down.
“You all right?” he managed to bite out, holding still within her.
She nodded frantically, reaching back to his rear, his thigh, holding him close.
He tremored as if paralyzed in the moment, exhaling as if relieved, and began to slide out.
Thrust in. Slid out. Slow pace picking up speed until he was gripping her hair in his fist in one hand, gripping her hip with his other, his stones pounding with each slap of skin, her cries seeping out raggedly.
Something tipped over and scattered on the floor. She couldn’t open her eyes to see. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the fan droned.
Somehow, she was still upright, still grasping the metal like a lifeline as he bit out, “Can’t—hold back—”
“Then don’t,” she begged, squeezing the back of his thigh and pulling him harder until he slammed deep, tipped his head back and gnashed out a growl of release, seating himself as if he’d found home.
Slowly, the droning fan returned to roaring.
Slowly, she began to pick out a fluttering sound, her pounding heartbeat, as his form draped around her and heaved her upright, only to let his legs go out as he slipped free of their union and groaned his protest at the lost connection, collapsing down to his rear.
He pulled her onto his lap to hold.
He simply held her, his forehead nuzzling between her shoulder blades and his lips kissing along the edge of her tattoo, fingers tracing the petals.
“Is this where you got Daisy’s name?”
She grinned sheepishly to herself and nodded, face downturned, mastering her breathing. “Yeah. Naming my favorite human after my favorite flower seemed like a no-brainer and Jason didn’t care what I … named her…” She swallowed, her voice tapering off as he kept kissing a trail along her shoulders.
Would it bother him, hearing her mention her ex?
“You can talk about him, Charlie. He sired Daisy.” He kept nuzzling her, and she closed her eyes. “And if I wanna love you both, what kind of boyfriend would I be if I can’t see this package deal for the prize it is?”
Had he said love? Could he mean it? Could she trust it? He didn’t say that he did. Only that he wanted to.
When the name of the very devil she didn’t want to talk about flashed on one of the papers on the floor, wavering on the air flow.
That folder he’d arrived with. Pages splashed across the floor, having been knocked over in their frenzy. The name the Honorable Calvin Mitchell, district judge of Nacogdoches County, Texas, sat emblazoned at the top of another.
“What are these?” she asked, sobering.
She reached out to pick one up, revealing Ty’s business card nestled into the fray.
His kissing slowed but his hold on her only softened tenderly. “Something I wanna show you. Ty told me to give you this.”
He handed her the card.
“Tyler Dixon’s family law practice?” Green eyes wide, she held it back to him. “Pretty sure I can’t afford him.”
T.R. held up his hand, refusing. “He damn near shoved it down my throat. You can talk rates with him but he don’t offer to help family for a price.”
“I’m not family,” she argued.
His eyes traveled over her hair wavering on the breeze from the fan. He fingered a strand, thinking.