Chapter 19 #2
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she lifted them up to meet his and stared at him through inky lashes. “I’m sorry I didn’t return your messages. I was just… I really liked you, and I knew you could hurt me. I was just scared to get hurt.”
The vulnerability in her words and her eyes…it was radiating off of her.
“I liked you, too,” he admitted. “I still do. I thought about you every day. Several times a day. All day, in fact. I couldn’t stop. It was…frustrating.”
Her lips curled at the edges slightly as she repeated, “Frustrating.”
“Yes,” he confirmed with a growl, and her whisper of a grin spread to a full-blown, high-wattage smile.
He didn’t care that his frustration was the price for her amusement.
All of his life he’d been searching for a purpose, for some sort of direction, this was the first time he felt as if he’d found it.
Her smile warmed him from the inside out like a shot of whiskey.
It made him feel satisfaction, as if the only reason he was on this earth was to make this stunning, gorgeous perfect specimen of a woman standing in front of him happy.
“Well, I’m so sorry you’ve been frustrated for the past two months.
” His chest rose and fell in labored breaths as her large, blue-green eyes stayed locked on his.
Her hand moved down his chest and abdomen, past his waistband and over his erection straining against his zipper.
Her fingers cupped his shaft, causing it to swell as tingles lit up his balls.
Her fingers squeezed, massaging him outside his pants, as she rasped, “That must have been so hard for you.”
AJ’s restraint snapped and he cupped her face and then burrowed his fingers into the soft tangle of hair at the back of her neck.
He drew her in, lips finding hers with a hunger that startled him and startled her, too, from the way she gasped, quick and sharp, into his mouth.
He had never allowed someone to have free rein of his body before.
He had to have control, to know exactly where he would be touched, to anticipate the sensation.
But everything was different with Poppy.
With Poppy there was only the one clear imperative—satisfy, claim, possess.
His tongue pressed between her parted lips, and she opened to him, her hands now clutching at the front of his shirt, yanking him closer until only a fraction of air separated their torsos.
She tasted faintly of cinnamon and clove, something warm and wild.
AJ kissed her with the ferocity of a man starving for her—deep, searching, and relentless.
Her mouth met his, matched his intensity, and for a dizzying moment he lost himself in the noise of it, the damp sound of their kissing, the wet slide of tongues, and the breathy, half-whimper, half-moans she made as he walked her forward until her back was pressed against the wall.
Her hands moved to his shoulders, nails digging through cotton, and the sensation was grounding, real, anchoring him to the present.
It wasn’t even a conscious thought to strip her out of her clothing.
A primal instinct took over. His hands simply acted, finding the zipper and dragging it down her spine.
Her back arched and pressed her body into his own.
He tugged the fabric down her arms, letting it pool at her waist. The skin beneath was warm and soft, and he trailed his palms down, mapping her with the reverence of someone reading braille.
Her lower body shifted and the dress fell to the floor.
She stepped out of it, never breaking their kiss, her hips rolling in a taunting figure-eight that made his cock throb, desperate for friction.
She worked to undress him, too. Her fingers fumbling over buttons, her teeth snapping at the lobe of his ear as she whispered how badly she wanted to fuck him. He felt her impatience in every touch and heard her desperation in every word. She was as greedy for him as he was for her.
When she reached his belt, she lowered to her knees and lifted her eyes up to meet his, her question a silent one.
His left hand brushed the hair that had fallen in her face while his right unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.
He took off his shoes and pushed both down, stepping out of them.
When he stood back up, his cock was standing at full attention, already leaking with pre-come.
She took him in her hand, then her mouth, the shock of wet heat making his knees nearly buckle.
He braced one hand against the wall, the other buried in her hair.
She took him all the way in, gagging a little on the first pass, then recovering, humming as she bobbed her head.
The vibration of her moan sent a spike of sensation through his core, and he groaned, barely holding himself back from fucking her throat, from giving in to the blind drive to lose himself.
His knees almost buckled again when he saw the smile in her eyes as she doubled down, tightening her fingers around him, twisting her hand as she sucked him harder and worked his tip with the flick of her tongue.
The sensation proved to be too much, too good.
He pulled her up, unable to last a moment longer under the pressure cooker of that much pleasure.
His mouth covered hers, and he tasted himself on her tongue.
She whimpered as he carried her to the couch and laid her down.
He kneeled beside her and placed a cushion behind her head so she could watch him.
Her hair fanned out, and he took a moment to appreciate how feral and beautiful she looked.
He said nothing, just slid her panties down, slow and deliberate, then pushed her thighs apart.
She was already wet for him. He ran his fingers up and down her folds, each time he did, her seam pulsed against his touch.
Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he leaned forward and licked her with the same hunger, the same searching thoroughness, as he’d kissed her, and her whole body writhed, hands fisting his hair, voice gone breathless and high.
He mapped her again with tongue and lips, cataloguing each gasp, each twitch, each shaking moan.
With every pass of his tongue over her nub, her body jerked, and on the last one, he covered it with his lips and sucked as he pushed two fingers inside of her and bent them up.
He began to flick both the tip of his tongue and his digits as he intimately massaged her inner walls.
In seconds she came apart, her whole body stiffened, then shuddered, her thighs crushing his ears, her voice clawing free in a long, desperate gasp.
He didn’t stop until her entire body went limp, knowing that he’d drawn every last drop of pleasure he could from that release and knowing that it was just the beginning.
Tiny bright flashes of light were strobing behind her lids.
She couldn’t believe how hard she’d just come, she was actually seeing stars.
She couldn’t believe she was with AJ again, like this.
She couldn’t believe everything he’d said tonight.
He’d looked her up, too. He’d seen her photo and felt her.
That was exactly what had happened to her.
Maybe it was nothing, but it didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like something. Something real. Something special.
Before she’d fully recovered, AJ’s hands found Poppy’s hips, and he hauled her up and over with a single, practiced motion, flipping her so she was braced on her knees, chest pressed into the soft leather of the couch’s armrest. The quick transition sent a pulse of adrenaline through her, and she clung to the edge, heart hammering against the cushions.
Her head turned to the side, and she looked over her shoulder.
He stood behind her, surveying her with a gaze that was hungry and unguarded.
She watched as his palms spread across the planes of her ass, spreading her open, thumbs skimming the delicate skin where her thighs met her pelvis.
A shiver ran the length of her spine, the kind that started somewhere deep and primal and ended in the tingling of her fingertips.
He liked control, no, needed control, she’d learned that about him the first time they’d hooked up, when he’d wordlessly secured her wrists together with his tie.
It was something that she’d tried before, and honestly it hadn’t done much for her, but it was different with AJ.
Everything was different with AJ. She’d been obsessed with the way he’d kept his eyes on hers the entire time he was eating her out, like he needed to verify each reaction, to monitor every micro-flinch of pleasure.
Now, as she was on all fours, she found herself wondering if he read her so easily because he was always, always paying attention, not just in the intimate times, but all the time.
He lowered down, and she felt him breathing her in as he spread her legs farther apart.
She was shocked when she felt his tongue run slowly, almost reverently, along the seam of her sex until he hit her most sensitized nub.
She gasped, jerking forward, but he wrapped his arm around her waist and anchored her, holding her exactly where he wanted her.
His tongue returned, moving greedily between her folds, slick with want, swollen and pulsing, then up, impossibly, to the cleft of her ass, flicking and circling, teasing the ring of muscle as she whimpered under the sudden, illicit heat of it.