He leaned back to put a breath of space between them and cupped her face in his hands. Before he could get a word out, her gaze turned fierce. “If you tell me no after the day I’ve had, I’m never going to feed you tofu fritters again.”
He laughed. “Um, sweetheart, listen to yourself. Tofu fritters, not an incentive.”
Her hands came up to tighten on his wrists. “Gabe, please just take me away for a little while.”
He knew what it was to want that so very badly.
He bent down and kissed the pillowed bottom of Cassandra’s lower lip. “Sweetheart . . .”
“Just keep calling me that,” she said, her voice infused with a sexy huskiness. “Just keep kissing me and touching me . . .”
He pressed a tender, prolonged kiss against her mouth, and something tight inside him eased. God knows he’d been a failure before, but Cassandra knew about that now, knew him better than any living person, and with the truth between them, he could focus on something else. Focus on her.
With her, with this, he’d be damned if he provided anything less than success.
“I’ll do my best, Froot Loop,” he promised.
“You know how much I hate when you call me that.” She frowned.
He kissed it off her mouth, then took her hands to draw her toward the bedroom as he walked backward. “C’mon. Sweet and juicy? What’s not to like?”
Her lips curved and he could tell she was trying not to laugh. “Sure. But that means that though it provides an intense sugar rush, you’ll be hungry again soon after.”
They were crossing the threshold to her bedroom, lit by a small lamp at her bedside. He raised his eyebrows and gave her a wicked look. “Exactly.”
She laughed.
He used it as a distraction to release her hands and reach for the hem of her sweater. Its softness caught at her hair and when he tossed the garment to the small chair beside the bed her cheeks were pink.
The tops of her breasts over her bra matched their color. Did any woman ever look more like a dream? He reveled in the freedom he had to take in that wealth of flesh with his gaze. To stroke the back of his fingers over that hot skin. “You’ve been making me crazy with these for way too long.”
She looked at him through the veil of her lashes. “Your resistance—”
“Until recent times has been mighty.” He brushed the shoulder straps of her bra off her shoulders and then tucked his forefingers into the top of the cups to edge them below her nipples. His breath caught. “Obviously.”
She was trembling again, which made her breasts quiver as he looked at them. Her nipples were already hard, their color darkened, and he thumbed them, watching closely as they stiffened further. Lust shot through his body, bouncing around like a pinball, only to settle in the hard spear of his erection. He let out a long breath.
His hands were shaking—shaking!—as he moved them around to her sleek back and found the clasp of her bra. Someone was looking out for him, because he didn’t fumble. The clasp released without any reluctance. The garment itself fell to the floor, landing on top of Gabe’s shoes.
There was no glance to spare for it; his attention was wholly engrossed by her truly incredible breasts. He cupped each in a canoe made by his thumb and forefinger. Weighing them, lifting them, appreciating them. A quiver ran through her body and her flush deepened. He smiled again. “So . . . am I in trouble for thinking I am really, really lucky right now?”
She swayed into his touch. “Only if you’re going to just talk about it all night.”
“As the lady wishes,” he said, releasing her flesh and then taking a moment to throw off his shirt. Bared above the waist, he grasped her ribs and jerked her close. They both gasped as their skin met. Her hard nipples burned brands into the skin beneath his pecs. Without his will, his hips ground forward, and his hands slid down to her ass to press her mound against his erection.
He groaned at the goodness of it, his head dropping back. It was inconceivable to him that he could have forgotten the incredible feel of this, no matter how drunk he’d been. Swear to God, there was no way he wouldn’t remember the sleek burn of his flesh against hers, the soft give of her sex.
“I never dreamed . . .” Cassandra murmured.
The whisper pierced his arousal-fogged brain. Eyes narrowing, he inched back, despite the protest of every cell in his body, to get a clear shot at her face. Her eyes—big, blue, dazed by the same kind of wonder he felt shooting through his body—met his.
“We’ve never done this before,” he said. A declaration of fact.
She hesitated, then capitulated. “We’ve never done this before.”
He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or grateful or pissed off that he’d been such a fool. But then he realized he was only glad that he hadn’t forgotten even an instant of such potential pleasure. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “The other night you didn’t object when I thought I owed you that org—”
She put her fingers over his lips. “You did owe me that, for being such an idiot to think I’d hop in the sack with a guy who—”
His palm clapped over her mouth this time. “Never mind. But I also wondered . . . Never mind that either.” She didn’t need to know he’d worried—feared—she carried his child. There were places he didn’t need to go to make this a success. “However,
you
are in trouble.”
She kissed his palm, ran her tongue along its center, sensitive skin, so that he had to drop it in order to touch her lips with his own. “You’re in big trouble,” he said, lifting his mouth from their latest kiss.
Her hands slid up his chest, and the edge of her thumbs brushed over the hard points of his nipples. He sucked in a sharp breath. She smiled. “Trouble? What does that mean, exactly?”
He cupped her breasts. “It means I’m going to make you crazy. Make you wait.”
She huffed out a breath as he pinched the tight crests of her nipples. “I’ve waited long enough,” she murmured.
That’s right. There was that whole celibacy kick of hers. He took her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers again. Squeezed with light pressure. Her spine went rigid.
He squeezed a skosh harder, curiosity compelling him to discover the details. “About that. Exactly how long have you gone without?”
Her breaths came fast and light. Her pupils were black discs trained on his face. “Wha—?”
God, she was beautiful. He tightened his fingers again. “I’m interested. Exactly how long have you been celibate?”
She licked her lips, her mouth going slack as he continued playing with her sensitive crests. “Uh, well. A long time.”
“Yeah?” He bent to run his tongue along her neck. “How long is a long time?”
Her pulse rioted. “A really long time,” she answered, her voice faint.
He froze.
A really long time
? Shit. Shit! Was she . . . ? Could she actually be . . . ? He couldn’t form the words, because he’d never even considered the idea. Straightening, he gazed into her face again. “Cassandra?”
She was looking back at him, but he could tell it wasn’t her brain that was running the show at the moment. Good. Leaning down, he took her mouth, thrusting deep to put her even more off balance. When he lifted his head, he swiped his tongue across her bottom lip, then framed her face with his hands. “How long have you been celibate?” he asked.
She didn’t blink, her gaze now fixed on his mouth. Then she answered, and what she said confounded the success of his goal.
“Uh, almost thirty years?”
Eleven
Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
Gabe groaned out loud. Cassandra wasn’t celibate, she was a virgin, for damn sake, and for all his talk of success, wasn’t that just a recipe for failure?
“What’s the matter?” she asked, her hips still pressed against his, her naked torso still warm against his bare flesh. Her tight jeans rode low on her hips and cupped the curve of her ass like he wanted to.
He glanced down, taking in the lush fullness of her breasts, the jut of her hard nipples, the curve of her waist and the sweet hollow of her navel. A shudder ran through him as he thought of laying a ring of kisses there, of tonguing that intriguing well, of letting the head of his cock take a shallow dip into that narrow pool before heading down to hotter, wetter territory.
He groaned again. “The matter is you’re a virgin.”
“Gabe . . .”
“I’m too old for this, Froot Loop.” A virgin! It kept hitting him like a slap to the forehead.
“Me, too,” Cassandra said. She slid her hands up his chest and linked her fingers behind his neck. “So let’s do something about that.”
“But don’t you want—”
“Tonight I want you,” she said. “I want you, and you want me, too, right?”
As if he could lie about it when the evidence was poking her in the belly. “Maybe we should talk . . .”
She sighed. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be sentimental and schmaltzy about this, are you?”
He frowned. “That sounds like an insult.”
“It’s insulting to me that you think I don’t know my own mind, Gabe.” She tugged his head down to insist on the next kiss. “I haven’t had sex before. I want to now. What will it take to get you to cooperate? An exchange of mushy notes in math class? Do I have to write your name in pink gel pen in my school binder first?”
Her teasing annoyed him, which only added to the heat bubbling between them. “No, damn it.”
“Just be a pal, then, okay?” Twining her arms tighter, she pressed another kiss on him.
Be a pal and take her to bed? Take her virginity that she’d been saving for twenty-nine years? Take, take, take. What else was new when it came to him and the best friend he had in the world? He couldn’t take more from her. But he couldn’t back away, either, not when she was needy and bare and breathless and . . . Cassandra.
“Pink gel pens, my ass,” he muttered against her mouth, tucking an arm around her hips to draw her even closer against his throbbing cock.
“Gabe, please,” she said, squirming against him.
“I’m going to give to you, baby,” he promised. “All for you.”
Her skin burned hotter as he pushed her mouth wider with his tongue, starting a rhythm that was heavy thrust and keen demand. Soon she was chasing his tongue back into his mouth with her own, and he bit lightly down and sucked on its firm, velvet wetness. She moaned, crowding closer to his body, and he kept her tongue trapped in his mouth as he worked one hand at the button and zipper of her jeans.
She moaned again, not helping at all as she rocked her hips, trying to ride her mons against the pressure of his knuckles. Her obvious need sharpened his lust and he felt his balls yank tight to his body. Christ! She could make him come just by the sound of her deep-throated moans and the roll of her pelvis.
Gritting his teeth against his own urgency, he slid his hand into the vee of open denim and over silky panties. She pressed against his palm and he broke their carnal kiss to catch his breath and slow the speed of his pulse. Cassandra pressed her mouth to his neck and he thought about his beard stubble—and then about the ever-groomed almost-brother-in-law of hers and of that pretty boy drummer she’d dated in high school.
Her tongue flattened against the side of his throat and he tossed away any thoughts that didn’t have to do with Cassandra and her mouth and her incredible breasts and that melting heat between her thighs. He walked her backward to her bed and then pushed her down, not even letting her bounce before he was on her body, her thighs opening around his hips.
“Oh,” she said. “Yes.”
Oh,
yeah
. Rolling to the side, he hooked his fingers in her jeans and caught her panties, taking them both along for the ride. They pooled at her ankles, prevented from going anywhere by the short boots she wore on her feet. She jackknifed, reaching toward them, but he pressed her back down on the mattress. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “Just lie back—”
“And think of England?” She thrust out her bottom lip to blow a lock of hair from her face.
“Think of how good I’m going to make you feel,” he corrected, leaning down to catch her little pout between his teeth.
He suckled the soft skin, savoring Cassandra’s flavor as she squirmed against the length of his body. His head felt light, and he figured that was due to all the blood pooling in his southern hemisphere, so he moved south himself, trailing his lips over her chin, down her neck, across her collarbone. She was arching upward, asking for other touches, other kisses, and he smiled against her bare flesh, knowing that while she might have had years of anticipation, she didn’t really
get
anticipation.
She made a frustrated sound and he glanced up to grin at her. “Is my earth goddess a little impatient?”
And maybe this was the benefit of sex with someone who knew your worst moods. Because she didn’t hesitate to show him hers. With a little flounce, she tried turning to give him the cold shoulder, and he let her, distracted by the incredible sight of her naked, peachy ass.
His cock twitched as he palmed the sleek skin of her haunch and when he nipped a tempting spot high on her rump, she jerked. Her squeak was the absolute funnest, girli est, cheeriest sound he’d heard in half a lifetime. He pushed her all the way onto her belly, and pulled back so he could stroke his hands up her thighs to the taut thrust of her butt. She wriggled under his touch, but he didn’t relent as he continued his caresses, exploring every creamy inch from the nape of her neck to the backs of her knees.
She buried her face in the pillow, but he grabbed a fist of waving hair to turn her head so he could lean down and take a kiss. Her cheek was hot as he tickled the corner of her lips with his tongue.
“Gabe.” She was panting a little. “I asked for sex.”