Chapter Three #2
He kissed me and the world went liquid. His mouth was warm and sure and he tasted faintly of coffee and I made a sound into his mouth that I would deny in court and under oath.
My hands found his chest, solid and hot through the cotton.
His arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me flush, all of me against all of him.
I could feel exactly what I was doing to him pressing hard into my stomach through his jeans.
The knowledge that Wade Bishop was this hard because of me — because of my skin and my curves and my voice — sent wet heat flooding through my hips that buckled my knees.
His free hand slid up my back, into my hair, and he tugged the floral scarf free and dropped it without breaking the kiss.
His fingers wound through my hair and he kissed me deeper, one hand in my hair, one spread wide across the small of my back.
The low throb between my legs turned urgent, and my hips rocked forward into him before I could decide whether I was the kind of woman who did that.
Apparently I was.
He broke the kiss just far enough to look at me. His breathing was ragged. “Layla. I need to be clear about what’s happening right now because if we keep going I’m not going to be able to think.”
“Good,” I said, and pulled his mouth back to mine.
He lifted me onto the edge of the stage and I gasped at the sudden height, my knees bracketing his hips.
He stepped between my thighs and his hands went to the buttons of my blouse, slow, his eyes on mine the whole time.
Each button was a question. I answered by pulling the fabric off my shoulders and letting it drop behind me on the stage floor.
His gaze moved over me — my breasts in the plain cotton bra, the freckles scattering down my chest, the soft curve of my belly — and he wasn’t politely appreciating me.
He wasn’t being nice. He was looking at me with his lips parted, his chest heaving, raw hunger darkening his face.
I felt it land in my body — nipples tightening, thighs pressing together around his hips.
“I have been thinking about this,” he said, his voice rough and low, “since you walked into this Saloon yesterday with your camera and your scarf and those hazel eyes.”
His finger caught my bra strap and eased it off my shoulder. “You sat down across from me and opened your mouth and sang, and I haven’t stopped since.” His focus never left me. “All of you. I want to see all of you.”
He unhooked the clasp and my bra followed the blouse.
The air hit my bare skin and I shivered, not from cold, because the space was warm, the light low and close, but from how he was looking at me.
He was looking at me the way I looked through a viewfinder when I found a frame I wanted to keep.
His gaze traced the roundness of my breasts, the dip of my waist, the swell of my stomach, and I watched him look at me and did not cover myself. I let him see.
“Beautiful,” he said, and the word landed in my chest with a weight I’d never felt before, because no one had ever said it while proving it this much.
He cupped my breast, his thumb brushing across my nipple, and I arched into his hand with a sharp breath.
He kissed my throat, the collarbone he’d been photographing ten minutes ago.
He trailed lower, and when his lips closed around my nipple and sucked, I stopped thinking in complete sentences.
His other hand cupped my other breast, his thumb rolling my nipple in lazy circles.
The twin sensation of his mouth on one and his hand on the other sent a pulse of heat straight to my clit and I gasped.
“You have no idea,” he said against my skin, “what you sound like right now.”
I had some idea. I sounded unhinged. The quiet photographer who couldn’t manage four words at breakfast was moaning on a platform.
Every sound was echoing off the rafters.
I was past the point of caring because his mouth was moving lower, his hands sliding down my ribs, over my hips, reaching for my jeans.
I lifted my hips and helped him pull them down.
His lips followed, kissing my stomach, the curve of my hip, the soft skin of my inner thigh.
Every kiss was deliberate and warm. I could feel his breath on my skin, the scratch of his stubble, and I was shaking.
He knelt on the floor and I was sitting on the edge of the stage with my legs open and Wade Bishop between my thighs, and this was actually happening to an actual person who was actually me.
He pressed his face to me through the cotton of my underwear and I jerked hard enough to plant both palms on the stage behind me.
His breath was hot through the thin fabric.
His hands gripped my thighs, spreading me wider.
When he hooked his fingers in the waistband and pulled the underwear down I helped him with a desperation that would have been embarrassing if I’d had any shame left.
I did not. My shame was on the floor with my blouse. They could keep each other company.
“God, Layla.” His voice was wrecked. He was looking at my pussy with the focused intensity of a man who had just found exactly what he wanted and intended to take his time with it. “You’re so wet.”
“Your fault,” I managed.
He grinned against my thigh and the dimple pressed into my skin and then his mouth was on me and I cried out.
He licked me slow and thorough, his hands anchoring my thighs, and the sounds I was making echoed off the Saloon rafters and I could not bring myself to care.
He was good at this. He was devastatingly, unfairly, life-alteringly good at this.
His tongue circled my clit and flattened and flicked, learning me, finding where my breath caught and then doing it again until my thighs were trembling at his ears.
He slid two fingers inside me and curled them and found a spot that made my vision go white at the edges.
“Right there,” I gasped. “Wade, right there, please don’t stop—”
He didn’t stop. His tongue worked my clit in steady circles while his fingers stroked deep and I shattered. The orgasm tore through me hard and bright. I grabbed a fistful of his sandy hair and held on, and the sound I made was not a word in any language.
He gentled but he didn’t pull away. His tongue kept circling, his fingers still buried inside me, easing me through the aftershocks.
Then he groaned into my pussy and the vibration sent a sharp bolt through me that arched my spine.
He sealed his lips around my clit and sucked, and his fingers curled again, and the second orgasm hit before the first one had finished.
I came saying his name with my head thrown back and the light blurring above me.
Somewhere in the back of my wrecked brain I thought: three years of a celebrity crush did not prepare me for this.
He stood up, dragging the back of his wrist across his mouth, and the look on his face was destroyed.
His eyes were dark, his chest heaving, his hair wild from my hands.
The ridge of his cock strained at the front of his jeans, and my mouth watered.
I wanted him with a ferocity that surprised me because I had never wanted anything this much in my life.
I reached for his belt. My hands were shaking and he covered them with his and helped me work the buckle free.
I pulled the zipper down and freed him and he was thick and hard and hot in my palm.
I stroked him and he groaned, low and rough, his head bowing toward my shoulder.
I ran my thumb over the head and he jerked in my grip and swore under his breath and I felt powerful.
I felt drunk on it. I, Layla Rigsbee, ranch photographer, owner of an embarrassing number of saved photos of this man, had Wade Bishop swearing and shaking in my hand.
“Your turn,” I said, and slid off the stage to my knees.
I took him in my mouth and his hips jerked forward and the sound he made sank into the ache between my legs that hadn’t stopped since he’d first touched me.
I wanted to take my time. I wanted to savor him as he’d savored me, with the same careful attention he gave a melody he was writing for the first time.
I sucked him deeper, hollowing my cheeks, my tongue working the underside, my fist wrapped around what my lips couldn’t reach.
He tasted of clean skin and salt and want, and he was heavy and warm on my tongue.
His fingers tangled in my hair and his thighs were trembling under my palms. I took him deeper and he shuddered.
I did it again because his voice catching on my name was rapidly becoming my favorite sound on earth, and I intended to hear it as many times as possible.
I looked up at him. His head was tipped back, his throat working.
He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I never wanted to stop.
“Layla.” His voice came rough and shattered above me. “God, Layla — you need to stop or this is going to be over before I get to feel you.”
I pulled off with one long drag of my tongue along the underside, and the strangled noise he made was going into my personal archive along with the concert clips.
I stood up and kissed him and we tasted of each other and his hands locked on my hips, possessive and tight.
His cock was hot and hard between us, and I rolled my hips into him and watched his eyes go dark.
“I want you inside me,” I said, and the words came out sure.
He paused long enough to look at me. “I don’t have anything with me. Are you—”
“IUD,” I said. “And I’m clean.”
“Same.” His thumb traced my hip. “You’re sure?”
“Wade. I just had you in my mouth. I am sure.”
He lifted me back onto the stage edge and pulled me to the very lip of it. I wrapped my legs around him. He gripped himself and ran the head of his cock through my wetness, slow, teasing, and the sound I made was not dignified.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, and pushed inside me.
Slow and deep, inch by inch. The stretch and the fullness and the heat of him filled me completely and I tightened around him and his breath caught and we both went still.
He was big, and I was swollen and sensitive from his mouth, and every nerve ending I owned was reporting for duty simultaneously.
He pulled back and pushed in again, deeper, and I moaned. He did it again and my head fell back. He did it again and I dug my fingers into his shoulders because the feeling of him was so intense it needed an anchor.
“Look at me,” he said.
I met his gaze. His blue eyes held mine and he moved inside me with a rhythm that was slow and intentional, and I felt every inch. I was soaked and sensitive and each stroke sent heat pulsing low and tight, building on the last. His palms pinned my hips, tilting me so that each thrust hit deep.
“This,” he said, his voice strained. “You, right now, looking at me. This is what I see when I look at you. This is what I’ve been seeing since Monday. The most gorgeous woman on this ranch and she doesn’t even know it.”
He was still talking to me the way he’d talked to me through the camera — telling me what he saw, refusing to let me hide from it — except now he was inside me and his words were ragged and every one of them carried the same force.
“Wade.” His name came out broken. “Fuck. Please.”
His control snapped. He drove into me harder, faster, his grip on my hips tightening, and the wet sounds of our bodies filled the Saloon and I was beyond caring about anything except the pressure building low in my belly that was about to end me.
I pulled him closer with my legs and he angled deeper and my back bowed off the stage.
“That’s it,” he said at my ear, rough and low. “Let me hear you.”
His hand slid between us and his thumb found my clit and I tightened around him so hard his rhythm faltered. He circled my clit with his thumb and fucked me deep and I was right there, right at the edge, every muscle drawn tight.
“Come for me,” he said. “I want to feel you come around my cock.”
I came so hard I saw stars. The orgasm crashed through me in waves and I cried out his name and my whole body clenched around him.
He groaned into my throat and followed me over, his hips stuttering, burying himself to the hilt, my name ragged and broken in his mouth.
I held him while his body shook and the Saloon hummed with silence and lamplight and the two of us breathing.
We stayed like that for a long time. His forehead pressed to mine, my legs still wrapped around him, both of us spent.
His hand trailed up my spine, slow and warm, and his thumb brushed the back of my neck.
The lights swayed overhead in the still air.
My pulse was coming down from somewhere in the stratosphere.
My legs were trembling. I was fairly certain I would never walk normally again, and I did not care.
Eventually he eased back, and the grin that broke across his face was just Wade. No stage, no charm, just him.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
He glanced down at the Saloon floor. My floral scarf lay in a crumpled heap near his boot, next to my blouse, my bra, and what remained of my dignity.
He bent down, scooped up the scarf, and draped it over my bare shoulder with the careful deliberation of a man accessorizing a woman who was sitting half-naked on his stage.
“This is a good look,” he said.
I laughed. The sound startled me. Bright and loose and free. Because forty minutes ago I had been terrified of being seen. Now I was sitting up there in a floral scarf and nothing else, and the laugh that came out of me felt like the first full breath after a long time underwater.
He kissed my forehead. Then he helped me find my clothes, which had distributed themselves across the floorboards with an ambition that suggested they’d been trying to escape.
My bra had made it to the edge of the second stool.
His t-shirt was hanging from a mic stand.
We dressed in the quiet, bumping into each other and not minding.
The Wednesday night show was three hours away. The Saloon I was standing in would be full of guests, noise, lights, and I would be up there with a guitar and my voice and nothing between me and sixty strangers.
The dread was still there. I could feel it at the edges, the old freeze crouching in the wings. But it was smaller now, sharing space with a new warmth that hadn’t been there yesterday.
He picked up his hat from the stool and set it back on his head, and just that fast, performer-Wade slid into place. He caught me watching the transformation and gave me a half-smile that belonged to the man underneath.
“See you out there tonight,” he said.
I picked up my camera. The strap settled across my chest, familiar weight, and for the first time it wasn’t a wall between me and the world. It was mine.
“See you out there,” I said.