Chapter 17 #2
Swallowing hard, Stevie’s eyes never left his as she eased her legs apart on a husky exhalation. The movement set off a deep muscle flutter and it took all of her effort not to moan.
He dropped his gaze then and zeroed in on the aching heart of her. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said on a roughly exhaled breath. ‘Real pretty.’ His nostrils flared as he lifted his gaze again. ‘I can smell how ready you are.’
Stevie did moan this time, her toes curling as sensation rolled from her belly button to her feet. She could smell her arousal, too.
Knocking his hat off his head, Clay palmed her closest leg, lifting it and ducking under as he moved to settle himself between her legs, using the breadth of his shoulders to push them wider.
Stevie’s stomach clenched as she looked down her body to him, anticipation lighting his features.
Her own anticipation fibrillated like an electrical charge just thinking about how his mouth would feel against her already screamingly sensitive flesh, how those whiskers would feel scraping against her inner thighs.
‘You might want to lay back.’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m pretty sure your elbows are going to collapse the second my tongue touches down.’
Ooof… the man had a way with words.
Licking her lips at the sudden dryness of her mouth, she shook her head. ‘I want to watch.’
She didn’t want to miss a minute of this.
‘Fuck,’ he groaned as he dropped his forehead to the top of her thigh for a beat or two before lifting it again. ‘I don’t think you could have said anything hotter right now.’
‘Really?’
The knowledge went straight to her head. Stevie hadn’t ever made a man groan like that just from something she said, and she liked it. It was empowering. It was dizzying.
He chuckled and shook his head. ‘Such a monster,’ he muttered before turning his attention to what was right in front of him.
Lowering his head, he ran the flat of his tongue straight up her slick, aching centre, his eyes meeting hers over the top of her mons as she bucked at the hot jolt of electricity.
It sparked along the nerve endings buried deep inside the muscles of her pelvic floor, zapping to her buttocks and innervating the base of her spine, shooting tentacles of sensation straight to the hard tips of her nipples.
‘Too much?’ he asked, a smile on his mouth as he planted his hand firm on her belly to keep her grounded.
‘No.’ Stevie panted. ‘It’s…’ It was what? She didn’t have the words for the soft, wet pleasure of his tongue. It was like he’d poured hot honey over the tingling heart of her, dousing it in a viscous liquid caress that ended in a potent zap of chilli. ‘Don’t stop.’
She would die if he stopped now.
‘Stevie girl.’ His expression turned reproachful. ‘I’m not going to stop until everyone in Redemption can hear you calling my name.’
He went back then, doubling down, his tongue a constant back and forth, wet and warm and slippery, licking and sipping and sucking greedily, noisily exploring her, the bob of his head and the scrape of his whiskers on her inner thighs adding to the heady intoxicating rush.
Then, with his hand still firm against her belly, his tongue spliced her apart, finding her clitoris, and Stevie gasped as she collapsed onto the blanket, her fingers curling into the fabric, her eyes shutting as he circled and circled and circled in a maddeningly slow rhythm that contracted the muscles in her belly tighter and tighter and tighter until her body was a taut, thrumming throb.
Her nipples were two painful points now, their rub against the fabric of her shirt a particular kind of torture and, of their own volition, her fingers unwound from the blanket, sliding to her breasts, her palms flattening and pressing hard, easing the burn and yet somehow cranking it even higher.
Then his tongue lashed across the taut swollen bud it had been circling, flicking once, twice, three times before the cinch of muscles quivering between her hip bones released in one mighty surge, catapulting her to orgasm.
‘Claaaaay!’ she cried out, her eyes blinking wide open, her fingers burying in his hair, her voice lost in the endless vastness of the landscape and sky, the lazy wheel of an eagle overhead morphing the hot needles of glowing pleasure into an almost transcendental experience.
Pinioned by his hand, like a bug to a board, her body bucked and thrashed and he took full advantage, his tongue relentless, wringing every last pulse of sensation from her body until Stevie was panting and gasping and begging him to stop, knowing her body had no more to give.
When he finally lifted his head, Stevie thanked God she was lying down because the world gave a crazy little tilt.
She shut her eyes to block the sensation, her entire body humming to the reverb of her heart rate as blood whooshed to every part of her, flooding her with a glowy kind of warmth and a bone-deep satisfaction.
She wasn’t sure how long it took to catch her breath and for her heart rate to settle but eventually she came back to herself and opened her eyes.
‘Hey there,’ he murmured, his voice all rough and lazy, his chin propped just below her belly button, a smile on his lips like he’d been watching her and enjoying the show.
She almost laughed at his degree of smugness. ‘Hey.’
‘You okay?’
She did laugh then, noticing he wasn’t asking her if it was good for her because she was pretty sure they had heard her in Redemption and that was confirmation enough. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this okay.’
And they hadn’t even got to the sex bit yet.
‘Looks like my work here is done,’ he murmured with a grin.
Then, as she watched, he wiped his mouth on her bare belly, back and forth several times, holding her gaze the entire time. It was indescribably dirty. And he knew it, grinning at her again as he dropped a kiss on her skin before pulling her skirt down and rising to his hands and knees.
Looming above her, he manoeuvred himself off, dropping down beside her on his back and scooping her close, his fingers sifting through her hair.
His heartbeat thudded below her ear strong and steady as Stevie admired how good her hand looked splayed against his chest despite the troubling presence of her purity ring putting a dampener on her post-climax buzz.
She didn’t know why she was still wearing it considering she had no intention of following through on its promise.
She just kinda forgot it was there most of the time.
And she was worried if she did take it off she might forget to put it back on, which would raise questions with her mother she did not want to answer.
Stevie didn’t feel bad about her decision to break the pledge. It had been right at the time and she wasn’t mad that she’d made it or been true to it. But she wasn’t sixteen any longer.
And she’d never met a guy like Clay Calhoun.
She’d been holding out for the one and she knew as sure as God made little green apples, Clay was that guy.
Was he her forever one? She didn’t see how that could be possible despite the mad flutters in her chest whenever she thought of him.
She had a contract and her mother was busy with touring plans.
But he was the one for now and that was okay, too.
No matter what her mother thought.
Her gaze drifted aimlessly south as his fingers tickled her scalp, making her deliciously drowsy. Down, down, down it drifted over the plaid of his shirt to the denim of his jeans and the thick outline of his erection – his cock, as he had so bluntly put it last night – pressing against his fly.
Oh God. Stevie cringed, realising she’d done it again. Laid there like a starfish and let him pleasure her without any sort of in-kind reciprocation. Yes, she had lost complete control of her thought processes but that was no excuse.
Especially as she wanted to get some of that action.
Without conscious thought, Stevie’s fingers trailed down his body, feeling light and floaty, almost as if they weren’t part of her hand.
In stark contrast, Clay’s body was tense beneath the inexorable brush of her nails and when her finger lightly brushed the zipper of his fly, she could hear his groan rumbling through his chest two beats before it met the air.
‘Can I touch you?’ she asked, repeating her request from last night. He’d denied her then; would he do so again today?
‘Stevie,’ he muttered on a jagged release of breath.
Lifting her head, she propped herself up on her elbow, looking into his rugged cowboy face. ‘You’ve now given me two orgasms and you’ve had nothing.’
He smiled as his fingers brushed her temple, pushing the hair back over her shoulder. ‘This isn’t a quid pro quo situation.’
Stevie blinked, momentarily surprised by his choice of words, then she laughed. ‘Rides a horse and speaks Latin.’
‘What?’ Clay grinned. ‘You think cos I’m a cowboy, I don’t have a second language?’
She laughed again. ‘I thought cussing was your second language.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that. I blame those ten years on the circuit without my mama around to whoop my ass.’
‘No need to apologise.’ She shook her head. ‘I like it.’
‘Yeah.’ His voice dropped suggestively as the hand in her hair moved to her ass and squeezed. ‘I know how you like it, dirty girl.’
Warmth suffused Stevie’s cheeks at the thought of how much Clay Calhoun had corrupted her and how very much she did not care. ‘And how do you like it? Show me.’
He sighed, his hand moving for her ass to her hip. ‘Soon. We really should be getting back now.’
‘Clay.’ She didn’t mean it to sound whiney but it really, really did.
Amused by her frustration, he just smiled and said, ‘Good things come to those who wait, Stevie girl.’
‘I know I’m inexperienced but it looks self-explanatory and… I’ve read books, I’m not a complete ingenue.’
‘Oh, you have, huh?’ His eyes sparkled with a lazy kind of interest. ‘What kind of books?’
More heat rose to her face. ‘Yolly was an avid reader of smutty books. They are quite… educational.’
One black eyebrow winged up and his lips quirked for a beat.
‘Then maybe you’ll understand that as soon as you wrap your fingers or, God help me, your tongue, around my bare cock, I’m going to want to put it inside you real bad.
And I don’t want that to be rushed or have your first time be in a hayloft, or out in the open.
I want to lay you on my bed and take my time and I want it to be private – just you and me.
No risk of bears happening upon us or your mother calling or my mother sending out the cavalry to look for us if we lose track of time and, trust me, we will. ’
Both Stevie’s heart and other bits much lower contracted at his words. How they could be both dirty and romantic wasn’t something she’d expected from a cowboy.
Maybe he should be writing smutty books. Or love songs.
‘Okay, fine.’ She rolled her eyes in exaggerated patience. ‘But just so you know that when I do finally get to play inside your jeans, I’m not going to want to stop so that thing you’re packing better be hardy.’
Her words weren’t exactly dirty and definitely not romantic, nor were they something she’d ever imagine would slip from her mouth, but they hit their mark, Clay’s pupils dilating, his fingers tightening on her hip. ‘It has the stamina of ten men.’
‘Good.’
That might just satisfy her.