17. Dane
One word.
No coercion.
It’s honest and so fucking Warren to be sweet that I snap.
Gripping his face in my hands, I kiss him until it’s hard to breathe. His fingers work to undo the buttons on my shirt as he tries to talk through kisses.
“I loved watching you before your event,” he breathes as he kisses my neck.
“I’ve never seen you so hot before.” His lips and words have equal effect.
Yes, we’ve already had orgasms together, and I’ve felt his desire.
This is more, and I crave it. So much I ache all over for even a scrap of his affection.
“Your eyes. You get this look that’s so intense I feel it everywhere.” Warren keeps talking as I push his shirt off his shoulders and reach for his belt.
“Do you feel it here?” My palm ghosts over the bulge behind his zipper, and he gasps against my lips.
“Y-yes.”
It’s hard to concentrate on everything with Warren as we work to get each other’s clothes off. Every touch from him feels like a gift. From his lips on my skin to his fingers sliding through my hair. He could just hold me and touch me, and it would be the best memory of my life.
He drops to his knees to remove my jeans and underwear, and it’s a sight I’d never thought I’d see. This man, who is so far out of my league in every way, is here right now by his own choice.
I wobble as he pulls off a boot, and I reach out towards the wall.
Warren laughs, and my answering smile shocks me with how easy it is to feel so comfortable with him like this.
Warren still kneels in front of me, half-dressed, while I’m completely exposed.
Not just physically. He makes me want so much that the words almost come bubbling out.
“Is this okay?” he whispers and presses a kiss to my thigh.
“Yeah, but you’re still dressed. It’s not fair.”
He stands then, those deep brown eyes searching for something in mine I hope I’ve kept hidden.
“Should it be fair? Or can I just do to you what I’ve been thinking about since the last time we were together?”
Warren’s mouth is on me again, and my hands clutch at him just to hold myself steady.
“And what have you been thinking about?”
His throat bobs with a swallow before he replies.
“Feeling you naked with me under the sheets. Touching and tasting every part of you because the small part I already did wasn’t enough.
” Again, Warren’s lips burn a path across my skin as he kisses across my collarbone, then my jaw.
“Wishing I’d have been brave enough to do this years ago, but things were different then. ”
Years? It’s been years for him too?
My hands have stopped moving as Warren keeps driving me higher with his words and kisses. It’s too hard to concentrate because everything he says is so close to the same thing I keep locked away.
He uncurls my fingers from the edges of his waistband and steps back slightly. I watch far too closely as he kicks off his boots and strips the rest of his clothes off while his gaze never leaves mine.
“Better?” he asks as he steps closer and presses us together.
“Warren…” I can’t string words together to make a sentence, but his lips smile against my skin as he rocks his hips against me. He’s winning this, and he knows it. For once, I’m okay with losing.
“I like…what you said. Before.”
Warren pauses, and with an almost childlike happiness, he says, “Really?” Like I just told him we were going for his favourite ice cream. “I can just do what I want?”
“Yeah, I mean, depending on what you want, I might not last long.” Wow. An entire sentence while our dicks touch. Go me.
To say Warren is a passionate and thoughtful lover is probably not enough to do him justice. After guiding me to the bed, he’s made good on his promise to taste me everywhere, and I’m a quivering ball of horniness when he finally comes up for air.
“Don’t move.”
He slides off the bed, and I watch his tight ass as he rummages through his bag. Fuck, he has a great ass. A great everything, really.
“I don’t think I could if I tried.”
His warm laughter does things to that organ in my chest I keep under lock and key. Warren tosses a strip of condoms and lube on the bed as he settles back over me. “I can’t tell you how fucking sexy you are like this, Dane.” He punctuates the statement with a slow kiss. “I want to fuck you.”
“Please,” I whisper and press my lips against his harder.
“So polite now in the bedroom, but you can’t be nice in the ring?
” He reaches over and grabs a condom, dragging the edge along my chest and down my thigh.
Warren has always had my admiration, right from the first time I saw him with his too-long hair and well-worn jeans.
His lack of confidence in the ring misled me.
I teased him because I knew I couldn’t have him, and I knew he’d never win as long as he stayed in his head.
But now? Watching him turn me inside out and make jokes while he rolls a condom on? Confident with me naked under him? How the fuck will I ever be right again after this?
“You don’t deserve it in the ring. Gotta keep you grounded so you don’t beat me.”
Warren’s reply is to push my leg back while he notches his cock at my ass. “Oh Jesus, Burke.” I gasp as he fills me, and my fingers curl into the sheets.
His skin shines with a film of sweat, and I’ve never seen Warren look this at ease. This confident and, I’ll be honest, hot.
With every punch of his hips, he drives me higher.
There’s so much to take in, it’s almost overwhelming.
Warren’s hair, damp with sweat, sticks to his forehead as he watches where we’re joined.
The muscles in his arm holding my leg flex in a way that’s almost obscene, and the intensity of this moment short-circuits my brain.
“Touch yourself,” he grits, and I immediately do as he says.
His eyes grow so dark I can barely make out his pupils.
“Fuck!” Warren’s mouth drops open as his movements stutter.
His body shakes as he gasps for breath while he rides the wave of his orgasm.
He’s wild and beautiful. When he licks his lips as he watches my hand stroking my cock, I’m done for.
I come with his name on my lips and my entire body shakes as I unload. Closing my eyes, I try to catch my breath after the most intense sexual experience of my life. With my biggest rival in the ring. Jesus Christ, I’m screwed in more ways than one.
Warren slips out and lowers himself to kiss me softly. “I’ll be right back,” he whispers.
The bed dips as he moves away, and even if I wanted to make a break for it and avoid all this, I can’t. My limbs twitch with false hope of use in the aftershocks of the most incredible sex.
The bed dips again, and a warm cloth is on my stomach, cleaning my mess. Opening my eyes, I watch as Warren cleans not just my stomach, but my hand and dick. His gaze meets mine, and his smile borders on shy.
“I thought I might need to get you some oxygen or something. You were puffing pretty hard. You okay?”
Physically yes. Mentally…hell fucking no.
“Yeah.”
He tosses the cloth on the floor and pulls the covers over us both.
“I don’t know about you, but that was the best sex I’ve ever had, and it feels like my eyelids are made of concrete.
” He pulls me back against his chest as little spoon and arranges me to get comfortable. And I don’t complain one bit.
Warren’s arm draped over me, his warm breath on the back of my neck, and his leg wedged between mine feel like heaven. I should freak out and put distance between us, but I can’t.
Not anymore.
His chest already moves in the quiet way one has in sleep. Knowing I’m already in too far to change my attachment to him, I slide my hand over his, where it rests on my stomach. Even as he falls asleep, he splays his fingers so I can slide mine between them, and he kisses my neck in the darkness.
Part of me wants to cry or just rage over how good it feels to have someone hold me and worship me the way Warren did tonight. But I’m tired. From life, travel and rodeo, and mostly from fighting Warren.
Eventually, I fall asleep with him and hope I didn’t just make my life harder than it already is.
The clock on the side table reads a few minutes after 4 A.M.
We’ve shifted in our sleep, and now I’m draped across his chest like a favourite blanket. Warren’s fingers lazily dust up and down my spine, and before I can think better of it, I press a kiss to his chest.
“Sleep okay?” he murmurs.
“Yeah…you?”
He remains silent for an extra beat, then clears his throat. “Yes…Did you know you talk in your sleep?”
Squeezing my eyes closed, I pray to god it wasn’t anything to make him think less of me. I can do that while awake just fine.
“No. Sorry if I kept you awake.”
His fingers never stop moving: up my spine, into my hair at the base of my neck, and back down again. It makes me never want to leave this bed if he’d just keep doing that.
“The talking didn’t keep me up. It was what you said that kept me awake for a while.” His fingers stop in the hair at the base of my neck and stay there. I’ve never been one to cuddle, but I wish he’d not stop while I dread what I revealed in my sleep.
“It was probably just a bad dream,” I rasp.
“You kept saying, I’m sorry, Darla, it’s all my fault. Multiple times, Dane. I had to calm you down.” His lips press a kiss to the top of my head, still resting on his chest. “What happened to Darla?”
She trusted me, for starters. Everyone who knows what happened to Darla is now dead…except me and Darla. I could lie to him, and I should. Maybe he’d not be so quick to care if he knew the truth. Once he knows, I might never get to wake up like this again.
“It’s okay to tell me.” His voice cuts through my thoughts. “But if you don’t want to, I understand. You just seemed…you were so upset. It was hard to see you like that, and I couldn’t understand why.”
“Why are you so good, Warren? You don’t know a thing about me, and you’re upset because I’m distressed in my sleep.”
Another soft kiss to the top of my head.