Chapter 42
chapter
forty-two
NATE
With Maren flat beneath me, we’re chest to chest, our hearts beating against each other.
The erratic thumps sync to their own rhythm.
She tugs me farther forward until I fear I’m crushing her, but she sighs into my mouth. It’s the easy, breathy kind of sigh a woman makes when she’s content. When there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. The sort of sound that wraps around my hardening body like it’s casting a spell on me.
I cover her body with mine, molding every inch together like two sheets of metal melting under fire.
It’s hard to imagine I ever lived a life without her.
Maren is my promise, hope, and future wrapped together in a sweet gift from the universe.
I harden against her inner thigh, heat coursing through me and singeing every nerve ending with desire, like a drug.
We keep each other warm far better than the fire next to us, but the flames do help as I slide the sweater off her shoulder, exposing her bare skin to the cool evening air. I trace her collarbone with open-mouthed kisses, trailing my lips across her velvet skin.
So sweet.
I make my way back up and suck on her bottom lip, eliciting a shudder. Her body trembles, starting in the arch of her back and vibrating through her lower stomach.
“Hmm,” she moans into my mouth.
Her smile is small, barely lifting the corners of her lips. It’s very Maren—subtle in softness and incredibly beautiful.
“You like that?” I rasp.
“So hot.” She wiggles beneath me, but with my weight on her, she’s basically trapped at my mercy—not that she’s complaining. Her whimpers are a far cry from complaining. “I want more, Nathan. More.”
I groan at her words, coupled with the fact that she’s now cupping me between my legs.
We’ve been alone thus far, but I still glance around to confirm once more before we do something that’ll have this town squawking for years to come.
But it’s just Maren and me under the stars and swaying trees. The moonlight bounces off the water, the flow of the river slow and steady tonight. The soft splash over the rocks in the middle of the stream add to the sweet melody of the night.
Maren grips me harder. “Nathan…” She cups my cheek with her free hand and navigates me back to her mouth, kissing me as if I needed more convincing.
I fucking need her, and that’ll never cease to be the case
“I’ve got you, Lightning.” I nibble on her bottom lip again.
The cool air thickens as I amplify the kiss, gliding my tongue into her mouth and tasting all of her.
I fumble with my wallet from my back pocket to fish out a condom, but at the wrinkling sound of the wrapper, Maren breaks the kiss. “I want to feel you.”
The most sinful five fucking words in the English language.
If I were standing, my knees would’ve buckled under those words.
“Are you sure?” I manage through my clenched jaw, my body rigged so tight I could combust in my pants. One sweep of the breeze, and I might just lose all control.
“Yes,” she breathes and returns to kissing me, her hands splayed across both of my cheeks.
I make quick word of my jeans, and I hear the thud of her boots tossed to the ground. The fire crackles, flickering in the swirling wind that picks up as the night crawls on.
It’s so peaceful around us—a direct contradiction to our frantic movements, our hands wild and pants flying.
As I attempt to resume my position on top of her, she thrusts her arm out and guides me to lie on my back.
“Let me,” she says, and her voice is so unwavering—so heady—that I don’t argue, not that I would ever dare deny her this.
Maren climbs onto me, with only a sweater draped over the top half of her, bare legs on either side of me.
The moment my tip makes contact with her entrance, her sharp inhale cuts through the silence of the night. My muscles contract to the point of ungodly pain until she settles over me, her tight heat devouring me. I’m drowning, completely overwhelmed with her walls squeezing and pulsing around me.
“Oh,” she moans as she swallows all of me.
I’m buried inside her, free of anything separating us—not even the past.
I slide my palms up her naked thighs as she rises and falls, her hair flitting backward in the breeze. The fire behind her frames her silhouette as she rocks over me, adjusting to me with each rotation of her hips.
Maren swipes the strands from her face, then digs her hands into her hair, riding me so perfectly and blissfully.
It’s an image I’ll never forget.
Passion. Pleasure. Total abandon.
She’s relentless as she chases her climax. My inner thighs drip with her pleasure, and I can tell she’s getting close when her moans escalate into cries.
Her hands become frenzied as she grips my chest, abs, and arms, like she’s lost control of her limbs altogether.
“That’s so perfect.” I caress her bouncing leg with one hand, and I use the other to skim up the outside of her other thigh. Then I meander toward her center. “You’re doing so good, riding me like this,” I hiss through gritted teeth and fight like hell to stave off my own release.
Her cries reach a higher decibel.
Jackpot.
My girl definitely likes it when I praise her.
“You take me so damn well,” I continue. “You’re fucking beautiful.”
“God. Oh, God.” Her mouth falls open as she bounces on top of me, faster and harder.
I rise into a seated position and fist her hair. With my free hand, I use my thumb to rub circles along her clit, my teeth drawing blood from my bottom lip as I fight the urge to come.
I can’t finish before her.
“Oh!” Her eyes fly open as a pair of headlights blink through the trees.
My movements stutter as panic courses alongside my impending release. “I think we have company,” I manage between labored breaths.
But Maren doesn’t stop. “I’m so close,” she sputters.
Tires roll over the gravel path and fallen leaves, crunching with warning.
“So… close,” she hisses. “Right there.”
“Say my name,” I say, my voice low as it scrapes over my throat. With an interruption dangerously close, I press the bundle of nerves harder with my thumb. “Be a good, filthy girl, and say my name as you come on my cock.”
She does as I command, but it’s not what I expect.
“Nathan!” My name is drawn into a cry, which releases from her pretty pink lips as more of a roar.
It echoes among the trees, and the leaves crackle from birds scattering from the branches.
Something splashes in the river, and the bushes on the other side of us tremble, like a squirrel disappearing deeper into the wooded area.
It feels like the whole world is rattled as Maren collapses against me, the quake of her body lasting longer than any orgasm she’s ever had with me.
She alternates between shudders and whimpers, and I explode too, the experience almost more than I can handle. I bury my face in the crook of her neck until I’m hidden in her hair, and wave after erotic wave crashes through me.
Maren continues vibrating, and I cling to her harder than I would a flotation device in the middle of the ocean—during a storm.
We stay like this, wrapped in each other, for what feels like an hour. It’s probably only a few seconds, but I need the whole hour to crawl down from this high.
But time is not on our side.
The sound of two doors slamming shut behind us has me scrambling to my feet, which gives me whiplash—times a hundred. I bring her up with me as my head spins. If it were possible to alter the axis of the Earth by sex alone, Maren and I just accomplished it.
I’m reeling as I blink, shaking the blur free from my vision. “Here,” I say, collecting Maren’s jeans.
“These are your jeans.” She pants each word, clearly having just as much trouble to function as I am, but she can at least tell the difference between her bottoms and mine.
“Fuck,” I mutter and continue my search for her pants, until I spot them by the large rock.
Once we’re dressed, voices drift through the opening of the trees. Maren and I throw all the food and empty wine cups into the basket like the picnic is the offender of the evening and not that she and I just had sex out in the open, where anyone could’ve caught us.
The possibility might’ve spurred me on just a little harder, and if I had to guess, it could’ve had a lot to do with how intense her orgasm was too.
She definitely possesses a kinky side, and I’m going to take great pleasure in exploring it.
We don’t make eye contact with the group of teenagers wandering toward the fire. “We left it burning for you,” I call over my shoulder, and Maren and I burst into laughter on our brisk walk toward my Jeep.
Once inside, she arches over the console for a searing kiss. “I don’t know what kind of… magic you just pulled, but… that was fucking phenomenal.”
I smile against her playful lips.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that.” Her chest heaves like she just swam three miles. “I can’t even call it an orgasm.”
I grin harder. “What would you call it?”
“I don’t know, but it lives in its own realm. There are no words.”
I pull back to get a better look at her, leaving my fingers tangled in the chestnut strands of her windblown, sexed-up hair. “You really know how to fuel a man’s ego, don’t you?” I tease, my other arm wrapped tightly around her waist.
“You deserve a fucking museum of golden trophies—like, golden trophies of your dick.”
I throw my head back and bark a laugh. “All right, all right,” I stutter between laughs.
“I’m serious. I’d spend good money to pay tribute.”
With the echoes of my laugh still hanging between us, I drag my twitching lips along her cheek until I cover her mouth with mine in a deep kiss that yanks on my heart. “That wouldn’t work for me,” I whisper.
“Why? It would be any man’s dream to have a museum dedicated to their”—she clears her throat—“impressive appendages.”
“My impressive appendage lives to please only one woman,” I say slowly, drawing out each word and making her eyelids flutter, her lashes tickling my cheeks.
“Lucky, lucky bitch she is.”
Maren kisses me again, and my body jolts like she shocked me with a zap of arousal to my nervous system. If we were still alone out on that blanket, I might even consider another round, happily pushing the boundaries of public indecency for her.
“I don’t want this night to end.” Her nose brushes along my jaw.
“Doesn’t have to.”
“Good. Because there’s something I want to do.” Her eyes dance under the moonlight beyond my windshield.
Intrigue swarms my bloodstream. “What do you have in mind?”
“Let’s go flying.”