Tools of Engagement Page 22

  His thumb traced the slit of her pussy and he watched it blossom open. “I know, baby.”

  Her laugh was a combination of incredulity and arousal. “Please. Please, j-just—”

  A hard, thorough lick of his tongue stemmed the flow of her words, her whimper fueling his drive to please her. Sweet Lord. The flavor of this woman. He’d have chased her for fifty more decades just for the knowledge that she tasted like warm vanilla and turned-on woman. He’d only just buried his tongue in those folds and he was already worried about when he’d get the chance again. Fuck, her smooth texture was going to haunt him until the next time she let him get inside those designer panties.

  In his periphery, he could see her hands settle on the comforter for purchase. His goal was to make her grip twist. That’s when he’d know he’d found the right spot, the right speed, the right pressure. Jesus, though. It was a challenge to keep his eyes open and watch for those signals, because the taste of her drugged him.

  Wes used the V of his fingers to keep her open for his ministrations, occasionally teasing her entrance with his thumb. Oh yeah, she liked that. Those hissed breaths confirmed it. So he trailed his tongue lower and tucked it inside her entrance, twisting his mouth to hit every one of her nerve endings. There. Her hands turned to claws in the bedclothes, more wetness slicking her pussy.

  “Yes. There there there. Please.”

  He hummed to let her know they were on the same page, bringing his thumb to her clit and delivering light, massaging circles while his tongue continued to twist inside of her. That’s it, baby. She couldn’t stay still. Her thighs alternated between hugging the sides of his face and dropping open, little spasms against his tongue telling him she was already close. Where her words had been intelligible before, now they were nothing but syllables in between wails of his name.

  His gaze devoured the sight of her heaving body, the fact that she was still wearing her dress while he ate her pussy making him so horny, he could only follow the urges of his body, humping the bed, slamming his hips against the edge repeatedly, rubbing when he found a decent angle. Don’t come. Don’t come.

  Easier said than done when she was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. The fact that he knew this woman, that she knew him, and they’d both continued to gravitate toward each other despite fights, flaws, and firings, only made giving her pleasure more of a privilege. Throw in the obscenely delicious taste of her cunt and he was pushing the limits of his control. She had him on the edge with his jeans still on.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered choppily, then louder. “Oh my God, I’m coming.”

  Wes pushed his tongue deeper inside of her and worked her clit with his thumb, groaning when he encountered a new flavor. The best one. Her satisfaction. It made his tongue and lips slippery while she thrashed on the bed, her fingers ripping at his comforter.

  She was limp and shaking when he managed to tear himself away from the place between her legs. Standing at the edge of the bed momentarily, he retrieved a condom from the nightstand before kicking off his pants and moving over her. He planted his knees on the bed between her legs and slid them wide. Opening her again, but this time for his cock.

  There was a light sheen of sweat on Bethany’s body, giving her the appearance of a glowing goddess. It rocked him. Humbled him. So much so that he almost fell on her like a starving man without putting on protection. Her fingers danced up the fronts of his thighs, her breath still coming in gusts, watching him with dazed eyes. “Wes,” she murmured, shifting like a temptation. “Take me hard. Take me messy.”

  Thank God he’d gotten the condom in place when she issued that reminder, because he was reasonably sure he’d have thrust in bare. As it was, he dropped down on top of Bethany at the speed of sound, latching onto her neck with his teeth and entering her for the first time with a brutal drive.

  He caught her scream at the last second with his left palm, but that was his last sensible action. Animal instinct took over and he was all feeling, all urgency. The viselike grip of her pussy made him thankful for the condom, because he would have busted immediately without it. She was slick, hot, and pulsing around him, making his balls fill with unbearable pressure. Best of his life. Best of the next life and the one after it and he hadn’t even properly fucked her yet.

  Time to fix that.

  Bethany’s nails raked up his ass, yanking him into movement and he went. Furiously. “It’s a good thing this house has thick walls,” he grated against her mouth, slap-slap-slapping his cock into her. “You a little screamer, baby?”

  “No,” she gasped.

  He positioned her legs over his shoulders and bore down hard. “You are now.” Jesus. The way she fit him was criminal. He continued to grind down into her hard, searching for spare space to get his whole cock inside of her, but there was none to be had. Didn’t stop him from folding her in half, trying to find it—and there. There. She was taking all of him now, so wet and welcoming and snug. “Feels like I’ve waited my whole life to wreck this pussy, baby,” he rasped thickly into her neck. “You have no idea. Knew it would feel like mine.”

  “It is.” Their mouths collided in a series of hard, moaning kisses. “It’s yours.”

  “I feel like yours, too?”

  “Yes. Oh my God, yes.”

  Possessiveness had his teeth snapping at the pulse in her neck, had him throwing her legs back down and open on the mattress, his lower body pistoning, his mouth everywhere he could reach. Raking her neck, sucking at her nipples, on her mouth.

  “What was that shit you used to worry about?” He licked a path between her bouncing tits. “Is the guy present during sex? Fuck yes I am. So are you. Your lighting makes me want to eat you alive. And I don’t have a dog.”

  At the way he repeated back the words she’d spoken to him at the wedding, her eyes flared and he saw love in them. He saw it, goddammit, and he reeled it into his chest, braiding it with the love he felt for her. The amazing weight of it made him weak for a split second and Bethany used it to her advantage, rolling him onto his back without breaking their connection.

  “You really do listen when I speak,” she said breathily. “Now you’re in trouble.”

  He lifted his hips and watched in awe as Bethany stripped off her dress, giving him the view of the fucking century. Bethany Castle, beautifully naked, sitting on his dick. Not to mention looking at him as if he’d been a very good boy. Someone up in heaven loved him. “I don’t mind this kind of trouble.” He rolled his lower back, lurching her up and back. “Ride it, darlin’. Make us come.”

  Using his shoulders for balance, she slid her sex up and down his shaft, testing the pressure, once, twice, oh . . . fuck. And then she fell onto his chest and started bucking her hips, stirring up that final kind of pressure at the base of his spine. “Ah, Christ. I’m not long for this world.” He slapped his hands down on her ass cheeks and aided her movements roughly. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

  Bethany, ever the overachiever, did that thing he’d only ever seen in porn. She curved the tops of her feet around his knees and worked him like a fucking pogo stick—and he couldn’t last longer than ten seconds. Not with her mouth open with pleasure, her breasts shaking, and her pussy quickening around him, like she was going to come agai—

  There she went, her fingernails scoring his chest, her body dropping down to rub and grind its way through her climax. It was too much, seeing her get outside of her head and take. Take from him.

  He went hurtling through the sky, though he couldn’t see any of his surroundings with blind eyes. Only knew he was wrapped in never-ending vastness and his body was a slave to relief. Fuck. Fuck. God. The draining of his need seemed to go on forever, ripping at his muscles and throat. Was that him growling like an animal?

  Yes. And that was Bethany moaning brokenly into his neck, her sweaty body depleted on top of him. He was back down on earth again, but he was somehow still in heaven, too. Because she was there.

  They lay there
like that for long minutes, their breathing and heartbeats synced, bodies reshaping to fit each other. Finally, responsibility knocked and Wes eased Bethany onto her side, kissing her shoulder before disposing of the condom.

  Moments later, he returned to the bedroom to join Bethany, wondering how fast she’d climbed back into her head and already eager to help her crawl back out.

  She was on her side, watching him with wide, unblinking eyes. “Hey.”

  Wes got into bed, pulled the woman into his chest, and kissed her hard on the forehead. “Hey. You were incredible. I’m a ruined man. I’ve never come that hard in my goddamn life. And you can go back to overthinking everything in the morning.”

  Her tension remained for another six seconds, then she wrapped herself up in Wes, like he was her favorite blanket, and passed out cold.

  Afraid to shatter the perfection of the moment, the night, he whispered, “I love you,” into the darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  For the first time in her adult life, Bethany woke to the sound of a child’s voice. It was distant at first, kind of muffled—and then it was very loud and right in her ear.

  “Elsa!” shrieked the child. “Uncle Wes, did you have a sleepover?”

  Oh my God.

  Oh my God.

  Bethany’s eyes flew open, determining from the shafts of sunlight painting the wall that it was well past her usual wake-up time of six A.M. Morning yoga: missed. She’d fallen asleep last night in Wes’s bed. No, wait. What was that? An arm draped over her hip. Her naked hip? Those fingertips were dangerously close to the Promised Land and there was a child in the room. His niece. How were they going to explain this to her? How was she going to explain this to herself?

  Wes set loose a smoky laugh in her ear, and abruptly, the building funnel cloud inside of her disintegrated. She let herself feel the flannel sheets—such a male choice—against her skin. She let herself enjoy the protective way his chest pressed to her back and the waft of pleasure that traveled up her spine when his fingertips brushed her tummy. One by one, her muscles relaxed and her pulse slowed.

  “Before you turn over,” he whispered into her ear, “I don’t care about your smeared mascara and morning breath.”

  A smile had only begun to curve her mouth when Laura demanded her presence be acknowledged—by jumping on the edge of the bed.

  “Uncle Wes, can we get a cat? Megan and Danielle have two cats and we don’t have any. What are we doing today? What did you do at the sleepover?”

  Wes’s body vibrated against Bethany’s, his low, scratchy morning laughter instantly becoming one of her favorite things about him. A thing she never would have known about unless she’d taken a leap. “Kid, can you do me a favor? There’s a lollipop in the kitchen junk drawer. If you can find it, you can have it.”

  She was already sprinting down the hallway.

  Bethany rolled over onto her back and got her first glimpse of sleep-mussed Wes. Wowza. Definitely worth missing yoga. Talk about a feast for her feminine senses. His strong, rangy body was outlined by sunlight, leaving his face shadowed but highlighting the pop of his shoulder muscles and triceps, the out-of-place hair. In a word, he was glorious. Perhaps the best part of all was Wes cataloguing the sight of her, the same way she was doing with him. “Lollipops for breakfast?” she managed.

  He kissed her shoulder with a delicious scrape of morning beard. “I don’t want to rush you, darlin’, but we have about forty-five seconds to get dressed before she comes back.”

  They both sprung out of bed in a flurry of single-footed hopping and limbs thrown through openings in their clothes. They laughed when their eyes met across the bed and they were still laughing when Laura walked back into the room with a Dum Dums stick poking out of her mouth. “What?”

  Wes sighed. “Bethany tooted.”

  She sputtered. “I did not!”

  “What’s the rule, Laura?”

  “If you denied it, you supplied it,” she said, giggling around her sucker. “Elsa tooted.” The little girl sobered, whispering, “Did ice come out?”

  Wes collapsed backward onto the bed in stitches and his niece took that as her cue to climb onto his shaking form. He immediately turned the tables, tossing the child sideways and tickling her ribs until she screamed.

  Was Bethany seriously smiling over being accused of an ice fart? Growing up, being accused of a fart was grounds for assault among her siblings. Being accused as an adult was unheard of. But she was giggling uncontrollably now and she couldn’t stop. Her vanity was on the couch requesting smelling salts, but she couldn’t really find it in herself to care.

  “Should we let her have pancakes, anyway?” Wes asked Laura.

  “Pancakes,” Laura hollered, flying back down the hallway toward the kitchen. As soon as they were alone again, Wes rose from the bed and padded toward her in nothing but jeans and sunlight—and all sorts of visions from the night before rolled in like sexy hot rods. Best sex of her life? Um, putting it mildly, maybe. If her notions about sex were baseballs, Wes would have smacked them out of the park last night, into the lot where they’d shattered several windshields.

  She’d definitely never had an orgasm from cunnilingus. Until last night, she didn’t even like it. Not for me, she used to say with a mental shrug. So what?

  The way he’d gone about it with such confidence and relish, like he’d been dying for the opportunity to pay her the sexual favor . . . that alone aroused her to a fever pitch. But then. God. What he’d done with his tongue. Inside of her.

  “Bethany.”

  And then his penis.

  “Bethany,” Wes prompted again, stooping down until they were eye level. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve got a five-year-old on the loose. Put that blush away before I start crying.”

  “Got it,” she rasped, accepting a sweet kiss on the mouth, the forehead, the side of her chin. “Do you have chocolate chips for those pancakes?”

  “Damn right I do.” He snagged her hand and pulled her from the bedroom, like they’d done it a million times. “But be prepared for the fallout.”

  There was indeed fallout, not only from the sugar-high-inducing breakfast, but also from their night spent together. And that fallout was . . . happiness. It was kind of like trying on a brand-new pair of shoes at the store. She was walking around in them and they looked fabulous, but there was a little buzz of worry in the back of her mind that as soon as she wore them to work, they’d give her a blister in a place she wasn’t expecting. Then where would she be? Hobbling around in a pair of deceptive shoes with blood oozing from a nasty cut.

  Still, being with Wes in his kitchen felt so good. They laughed out of sheer silliness and came up with new ideas for the next tea party. When Laura eventually passed out on the couch from her sugar-induced hysteria, Bethany sat on Wes’s lap in the backyard, wrapped in a blanket, and talked about the final-stage ideas for Project Doomsday.

  Now that the layout and structure of the house had taken shape, she wanted a built-in banquet just off the kitchen and a skylight in the dark hallway. She was confident and talking to Wes about her ideas was so easy. He didn’t discount anything she said, but he didn’t yes her to death, either. He was genuine and insightful and they were dating.

  That’s what this was.

  Her former enemy was now kind of on the way to being her boyfriend.

  Actually, it seemed like more than that, somehow. “Boyfriend” sounded trivial compared to the way Bethany felt snuggled to his chest in the backyard or accepting a forkful of pancakes from him while leaning against the kitchen counter. The way he’d kissed her when they said good-bye on Sunday afternoon had been a stamp of definite ownership from which she was still reeling.

  Now, on Monday morning, Bethany stood in the backyard, watching Slade film promos through the giant space that would eventually contain a sliding glass door leading directly outside. Around her, the landscapers were hard at work, sectioning off flowerbeds and laying down
sod. They’d arrived over the weekend to cart off a forest’s worth of dead foliage and the results were amazing. Who knew they’d find an actual yard under all that excess nature?

  To keep the job cost effective, Bethany had chosen stamped concrete for the back patio and it had just been poured. Two men were on the far side of the freshly dumped concrete smoothing it out with metal tools. Ollie was walking around the yard, shadowing one of the landscapers, with his wife on speakerphone giving what sounded like a whole lot of unsolicited advice about planting azaleas. Carl, as usual, was picking through the craft service table.

  The job was coming along at a breakneck pace. Saturday they would announce the winner of Flip Off. She had no idea if it would be her and Wes. None whatsoever. But little by little, she was no longer feeling like a fraud.

  “Hey, darlin’,” Wes murmured, approaching from the side of the house where he’d been sawing lumber for her banquet. He gave her a long, hard once-over that made her nipples pucker inside her tank top. “God Almighty, I almost forgot for a second how beautiful you are. What’s your policy on kissing in front of the cameras?”

  “I already told you,” she breathed, backing up.

  He kept coming until the tips of his work boots bumped hers. “I forgot.”

  “My parents are going to watch this. Everyone is. They’re not going to take me seriously if you’re mauling me when we should be working. I can hear them all now if we lost. ‘Well, maybe if they weren’t so distracted, they’d have won.’”

  “We’d win regardless,” he said quietly, seemingly memorizing her features. “What are you doing standing out here, anyway?”

  She pointed a toe at the house. “They kicked me out so Slade could film his update. Hopefully he’ll be done soon; I really need to get back to sanding the master bedroom walls.”

  Wes grumbled a little with mock irritation until she poked him in the ribs to make him stop.