Holiday Sorrow (Christmas Romantic Suspense #9)
Chapter 1
Chapter
One
There were a million reasons why this was a bad idea.
Yet Ashlyn Davidson didn't tear her lips away from the man setting her body alight with a single kiss.
Maybe it was the fact that her brother was married now, while she didn't even have a man she could bring to the wedding as her plus one.
Maybe it was because in less than a month she would be thirty and she hadn't achieved all the things she thought she would by the time she entered her fourth decade.
Or maybe it was her new red hair color giving her extra confidence, but she was going to go for it.
Consequences be damned.
After all, what was the worst thing that could happen?
“You sure about this?” the man, with his hands firmly gripping her backside, asked as he pulled back enough to examine her expression.
Detective Grant Bull. Ashlyn wasn't so desperate that she’d have a one-night stand at her brother’s wedding and not even know the guy’s name.
They’d been chatting all evening, she knew he was forty, a widower with two kids, and one of her new sister-in-law’s colleagues.
He had a great smile, kind eyes, just the right amount of scruffy beard to be wildly attractive, had been attentive and respectful, and he’d made her laugh, something she thought she couldn’t do because she was so guilty about being jealous of her brother.
Donovan deserved all the good things in the world, and his new wife, Jessica, and stepson, Freddie, were just that. But she needed to do something wild and spontaneous, and a one-night stand with a sexy cop was just that.
“Never been more sure about anything in my life,” Ashlyn assured Grant.
“Thank goodness, because I've been dying to taste you since I laid eyes on you.”
With that, Grant spun her around, his knuckles trailing across her skin as he unzipped the back of her little black dress.
Letting it pool at her feet, he helped her step out of the material, then spun her again so she was facing him.
The arousal in his eyes was echoed by the tent in his pants, and her own arousal thrummed through her system.
Leaning in, his fingers skimmed her sides as he reached around her to unhook her bra. Ashlyn had always been a little embarrassed about her breasts because they were pretty small, but the way Grant’s gaze seemed to darken quickly chased the feeling away.
“Perfect,” he murmured as he grazed the calloused pad of a thumb over one of her nipples, making it harden.
“Can't help but notice things are a little unbalanced,” she said, her gaze traveling his still suit-clad body.
“Hmm, they sure are,” he said, amusement dancing in his eyes as he scooped her up and tossed her onto the bed.
Landing with a bounce and a giggle, Ashlyn had no time to think because Grant was right there, grabbing her panties and easing them down her legs. Her ridiculously high heels also came off, landing somewhere in the room, and she couldn’t have cared less where.
“Good thing your brother and Jessica decided to get married at a hotel,” Grant said as he nudged her legs apart and settled between them.
“Yeah, otherwise we would have had to get in a car and drive somewhere.” That would have been more than enough time to have talked herself out of this.
With the first swipe of his tongue across her already wet center, Ashlyn knew she would have spent the rest of her life regretting missing out on this moment.
Grant turned out to be some sort of tongue wizard.
She’d never really been all that interested in having a man’s mouth on her like that.
It wasn't bad, but it had never been good.
Well, this went from good to amazing in about half a second flat.
Using nothing more than his tongue and his lips, he licked and nipped and suckled her toward a lightning bolt of pleasure.
It zapped through her with strength she’d never felt before, and she hoped the room next door was empty because otherwise they would have for sure heard her screams of pleasure.
By the time she floated back down to earth, Grant had stripped out of his clothes and was rolling on a condom. There was something more than arousal in his eyes as he looked down at her, and she forced herself not to examine it too deeply.
One night.
That was all this was supposed to be.
All it could be, really.
“So beautiful,” he told her as he leaned down to ravish her mouth with a fiery kiss, before he grabbed her hips and flipped her onto her stomach. Climbing onto the bed behind her, his hands closed around her hips once again, lifting them off the bed, and she felt him nudging her entrance.
As though he wanted to give her one last chance to back out, he didn't press inside her, and as desperate and needy as she was, that just wasn't good enough. Pushing back enough to take his tip, she moaned in delight at the stretch as his rather impressive length edged inside her.
“Okay, beautiful,” Grant said with a chuckle, “I hear you loud and clear.”
This wasn't a position Ashlyn had ever tried before, and she was unprepared for the delightful sensations as the tip of Grant’s erection brushed across that magical spot inside her as he thrust into her.
His grip on her hips was almost bruising, not that she cared, and he set a relentless pace. One she was more than happy to meet, even if it did feel awkward at first, thrusting backward while on her hands and knees.
Their moans tangled together, heat flushed through her body, and when one of his hands left her hip to reach between her legs and press against her bud, she came with another scream that she was pretty sure had to have been heard by the whole floor.
Pleasure eventually faded, and her body, drowsy from two backto-back orgasms, sank down against the fluffy pillows.
Grant moved with her, still buried inside her, and the weight of his body pressed lightly against hers, had her worrying she’d made a major miscalculation on her ability to be a one-night stand sort of girl.