Long Shot

Chapter 15

His statement pulled Jen toward him with a tender insistence. Her gaze dropped to his lap, where he was sporting a mighty proud hard-on. “I am?” she asked.

“Yes. You’re going to kiss the hell out of me, and I can’t fucking wait.”

He wore the barest hint of a smile, but it was full of cocky assurance. And his eyes . . . oh, man, his eyes. Sparkling circles the color of their drinks, hard and penetrating, bored into her. She hated being told what to do, but he knew—he knew—that for him she was putty.

Their gazes connected and held, tightening an invisible chain between them that not even his giant-ass truck could drive through. He licked his lips. Flashback to that tongue working her nipples and trailing down her belly. Flashback to the shivers he’d drawn on her skin before Olsen had shown up.

A hot burst of desire radiated out from between her legs, knocking her knees out, making her instantly wet. The delicate friction of her thong rubbed in such a powerful way that it seemed impossible to hide, like she was broadcasting her desire to everyone in the lounge. She let herself peek around. The two of them were tucked into an intimate corner. No one was watching. No one cared. Except Leith.

He settled deeper into the armchair, pressing his shoulders against the leather and widening his legs.

“Get on,” he said with a grin.

“You’re so crude.”

“No. I’m honest.”

She loved that honesty. Always had. As she stepped between his legs, she wanted to lick the knowing look off his face. Placing her hands on his armrests and letting her hair swing forward, just shy of brushing his cheeks, she slid one knee between his hip and the soft leather. Without breaking their mutual stare, his hand dropped off the armrest and his fingers curled around the back of her leg. The jersey of her favorite dress, the one that fit her just right, bunched in his palm. There was possession in that grip. Possession and need. Pressing one hand on his shoulder, his muscles tense and warm under his shirt, she slid her other knee around his opposite hip.

“Come ’ere,” he murmured, but she was already going. Already leaning down, her mouth covering his the same moment her ass dropped and she straddled him. Clung to him with every limb. The whiskey made their kiss spicy, their tongues entwining in slow surges.

This was Leith MacDougall she was kissing. Leith. Though the feel of him burned her everywhere, his presence undeniable, she still couldn’t believe that he’d been returned to her after how she’d treated him. She couldn’t believe that they were together at all. It defied logistics or chance.

This was Leith MacDougall she wanted now more than food or water, and the depth of that need scared her . . . and fueled her.

With a low groan that made his chest vibrate, his hands spread across her back and tugged her closer. She collapsed onto him, arms wrapped around his neck, the weight of her body sinking them deeper into the chair.

Leith. This was Leith. How did this happen? Again? The wonder of it all made her head so very light.

Then his hands were in her hair, tilting her head so he could kiss her in new ways, with new strokes. He demanded a deeper kiss, and there was absolutely no resistance left in her. Underneath, his thighs flexed, pushed up against her, shifting her. The wrap of her dress parted over her legs. With a sharp, surprising sensation, he settled her against his hardened cock, the bulge and rigid line of his zipper hitting her right where she wanted him most. This was borderline obsession. If she didn’t get him inside her right fucking now she’d die.

In the back of her mind she knew they were making out like drunken twenty-year-olds in a public place—a shadowy corner of a dim bar, but a public place nonetheless—but she just didn’t care. It was so very unlike her, and it was fantastically, deliriously freeing.

Close by, someone cleared his throat. The sound made her drag her mouth away from Leith’s—the sting of her lips and tongue aching with loss—and she looked up to see a group of men assuming the big chairs at the next table over. They weren’t looking directly at Jen and Leith, but their eyebrows were raised and they smirked at each other.

Public place. Right.

Embarrassed, Jen pushed off Leith and scrambled to her feet. He was looking up at her with a deeply furrowed brow, like her absence pained him. Like he didn’t know what to do with what raged inside him. His fingers dug into the armrests.

He was still the Leith she’d known since she was a kid, but the emotions shooting through her and driving her body to such extreme need were anything but childish.

The other night, back in Gleann, they’d been physically attached to the past: shooting darts in the pub they used to work in, strolling down the streets they’d walked hundreds of times, kicking through the grass of the central park they knew so well. That night, it had been nearly impossible to separate their past selves from all the stuff that had happened to them since. It had created this big jumble of memories and feelings, old images mixing together with the current, and she had had no idea how to parse them out. She had had no idea what to feel or how to react, and for someone who had so carefully planned her life, it had been more than disconcerting.

But here, in New York City, they were Leith and Jen. Two distinct people. Adults. Drowning in desire. She touched his lips, loving how she made them fall open, how she’d made them all wet.

Someone else cleared her throat and Jen turned slightly to see Shea setting their bill in an upright V on the table. The lounge owner didn’t look at them as she sauntered away to attend to the new gentlemen customers who grinned giddily up at her.

Leith scooted to the edge of his chair, the creak of the leather giving away his movements. Jen looked down to see his legs encasing hers. Her thighs quivered, her head swam. His hand came up to curve around her waist—a gentle pressure, the slightest of squeezes. The question implicit.

“Yes.” She nodded vehemently. “My place.”

That almost-pained look returned, deep grooves gouging into his forehead, only this time, he sighed in clear relief. As his chest pumped, he smiled up at her. She felt herself sway and she reached for his steadying shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked. “Something affecting you?”

She should have known the vulnerability wouldn’t last. At least his teasing broke the spell enough that she could open the bill and see she owed Shea close to ninety dollars. Leith didn’t touch Jen as she waited for the hostess to run her card through. He didn’t touch her as they exited the Amber and not as they stood on the curb, hailing a cab.

Only when they’d fallen into the white taxi that smelled faintly of patchouli did he reach across the seat for her. He touched her first on her knee, running his finger over the hem of her dress, nudging it higher with patient little jerks. Then, in one swift movement, he slid his hand under the jersey and up. All the way up.

Jen rolled her head toward him on the cracked vinyl headrest, but he was staring at where his fingers had found the slick, swollen place underneath her dress.

“What are you trying to do to me?” she whispered, attempting to weasel out of the touch, with the cabbie less than two feet away and all. And the fact that they were in the back of an NYC cab.

He held her tight as his eyes flipped up to hers. “Not ‘trying’ to do anything. I just do.” Then his mouth found her ear, his whisper filling her head. “And I’m going to do you.”

Maybe not the most romantic thing to say, but she didn’t care. Not now. Not when her entire existence had spiraled down to her clit and the emptiness she was dying for him to fill. The dirty, honest words made her eyes shut, and she was a little horrified by the sound of surrender that escaped her throat. So un-Jen-like.

There were four other people in the elevator on the ride up to the twenty-first floor of her building in the Village. Leith wedged himself into the back corner and pulled Jen into him. His huge forearms wrapped around her shoulders, cradling her gently. It was strangely intimate, there in a metal box being shot into the sky. Her head fit perfectly against the firmness of his chest. The top, inward curve of her ass pressed against the erection that hadn’t died, just felt even more imposing, if that was possible. The need to kiss him made her shake from withdrawal. Could this elevator go any slower?

The other people got off on the twelfth and twentieth floors. The second the last person stepped off, the intimate embrace ended. Leith flipped Jen around to get at her mouth, but she’d already tilted her face up and was going in. They kissed like they hadn’t kissed in ten years, sloppy and hard. They were still kissing as he walked her backward out of the elevator on the twenty-first floor. She lost her bearings, and when she hit the wall opposite the elevator, the force knocked some of the breath from her lungs.

When she ripped away and he began to lick up her neck, she found the ability to say, “We’re not doing this in the hallway.”

“No.” He raised his head to show her that wicked grin. “We’re doing it in your apartment. Which one is it?”

She fumbled for her keys and stumbled on legs drunk more on lust than whiskey down to the end of the hall. It took three tries to get the key into the two locks because Leith was covering her from behind, one hand skimming over her chest, the other painting a light line up and down the front of her thigh.

At last she got the door open and they fell inside, tripping over each other’s feet. He was trying to direct her deeper inside, but this was her place and she knew where she liked to have sex. She got him swung around, turning the tables, and pinned him between the small table where she usually dumped her keys and the beach prints she’d bought in Cabo San Lucas. His lips curved up in what she guessed to be surprise and amusement—and something else she couldn’t quite name . . . a dare, maybe?—and then he buried his hands in the hair behind her ears and pulled her into him. She was practically climbing him already, so when he grabbed her legs and hoisted her body higher onto his, she felt like she was flying.

He peeled away from the entrance and lumbered into the living room at a speed that spelled disaster. He didn’t know the layout of her apartment, couldn’t see where the furniture was in the dark.

“Watch out for the—” she began. Too late.

He hit the low couch that was set near the floor-to-ceiling windows, lost his balance, and dropped her onto the firm black leather. As she bounced, he tripped and fell on top of her. Not the most graceful of entrances into sex.

“Thanks for the warning.” He was laughing, but his hand found her face, searching.

He must have mistaken her squirming for discomfort, because he tried to shift his weight off her, but she wrapped one leg and one arm around him. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not.” He hooked his hands under her arms and pushed her farther up the couch, moving her as easily as a pillow. Pausing, testing the leather with his palms, he frowned at the long, low couch with no sides or back. “What is this thing?”

“I have no idea. A really big ottoman? Leith, I don’t care.”

He pushed up on his elbows and angled his head so he could look at the thing under the city lights streaming in. “No sides. Close to the floor. I could get you in just about any position on this thing. And you, me. Jesus, Jen, it’s a sex couch, is what it is.”

She laughed. “It is not!”

He fell back on top of her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth and setting her on fire. “It is now.”

“We’ve got all night to use it.”

At that, he rose above her, huge and glorious in the city glow, his hair mussed. He didn’t reach for her, just touched her with that eleven-ton stare.

“Yes,” he said. “We do.”

A few long, agonizing seconds later, he reached down and toyed with the hem of her dress, flipping back the flap to expose her parted thighs. He fingered the outer tie of the dress and set it free with a tug, then he released the inner clasp that held the whole thing together. With a gentle sweep, he opened the dress and bared her. She lay there, loving it.

He opened his mouth, took a short breath. Yeah, he wanted to say something, and it was troubling him, because his eyebrows pinched together and the finger running painfully slowly back and forth across the tendon in her upper thigh paused.

She refused to let him stop. She dug in her heels and arched her back, thrusting herself up into his touch. He caught his breath, shook his head as though coming back into himself.

His gaze wandered a path up her body. “God, you’re sexy.”

All she could think was: God, I’ve missed you. I was such a fool to let you go.

Where had that come from? It wasn’t like she’d been sitting here in her apartment, pining for him these ten years and moaning, If only, if only. Except . . . she’d missed him. There’d been a hole in her life where he belonged, and she’d been stepping over and around it for so long that she’d completely forgotten how that negative space affected her life.

She needed to be naked. With him. She hooked thumbs under the straps of her thong and started to push it down, but his big hands clamped over hers, slowly plucking her fingers off.

“I’m going as fast as I want to,” he murmured.

“But—”

She struggled, but even in his light grasp, she couldn’t move her hands from the couch.

“Stop thinking,” he said. “Stop trying to direct. Just . . . let me. Please.”

Those were the last of his words. He dragged her underwear down her legs with one stroke, and then he was staring down at her spread legs with an open mouth and the return of that grave, passionate expression. He pulled off her high heels without looking away from the place she could feel getting more and more slippery by the second.

Quick as a flash, he shimmied backward off the couch to kneel at its edge, simultaneously dragging her with him. He pushed her legs apart. The angle was perfect, the position heavenly. Through her legs, he gave her the king of wicked looks, and they shared an unspoken moment. He licked his lips.

Long ago, they’d taken each other’s virginity, green and fumbling but still exciting. Many men had gone down on her since then, and without a doubt Leith had done it to other women, but it was new to the two of them and there were simply no words to describe this excitement, heightened by maturity and history and the blaze of emotions that roared through her.

He bent his head, his eyes the very last thing to turn down. And then his mouth was on her. A wet, open kiss that sucked in her clit and swirled it with his tongue at the same time. She bowed off the couch, just her shoulders and heels digging into the black leather. Her loud, surprised, fantastically aroused shout filled her apartment and bounced from wall to wall.

Good Lord, the man knew how to use his mouth for something other than just grinning and flirting. His arms slid under and around her thighs, his fingers digging into their upper crease. He clasped her to him, held her in place, and feasted. In between the sparkly bits of pleasure he fed her, she could sense his greed and also how he restrained himself. The sounds he was making, those tiny groans in the back of his throat—fuck—they were the most erotic thing she’d ever heard.

And she was doing that to him.

He pulled everything from her. The orgasm was coming fast, faster than she’d ever experienced, and she didn’t know why it was scaring her so much, why it was making her panic. But she was shaking already, and he hadn’t even made her come yet.

“You . . . can . . . stop,” she stuttered, frantically grabbing for his head. Handy, that hair now.

He shook his head, refusing, and the motion had his lips and tongue hitting all sorts of new spots, striking new chords.

He put two fingers inside her. Just slid them in, no resistance, all soft and surrounding and beyond sensitized. Absolutely ready. She’d never been so aware of herself before, and yet completely out of her own head. Usually she went into things like this with scenarios and fantasies at the ready, just in case things didn’t go like she wanted. Just in case she needed a little mental push.

Stop thinking, he’d told her. And because he was doing such an amazing job of convincing her, she did.

Suddenly he hit the perfect spot deep inside. A secret, magnificent, hidden place that she suspected all her other partners had never reached because she’d been so intent on steering them to her clit. Involuntarily, her legs clenched around his neck. He breathed harshly through his nose. The pressure from his fingers and tongue increased, turning much harder than she ever thought she’d like. But she did.

She loved it.

Tremors catapulted through her. There was no stopping them, no barricades they couldn’t break through. All sorts of nerves and wirings and emotions were strung up to where his tongue circled and his lips sucked and his fingers stroked. She went stupid in the head and limp of body. Even when her orgasm finally crested, shaking her entire body like a leaf, pushing high, short gasps and cries up and out of her lungs, he never let up. Not until her body had calmed and her legs released his neck.

He lifted his head. Smiling, he breathed almost as hard as she did. “See?” He touched his shiny lips. “A sex couch.”

She came up on her weak elbows, then reached out to tousle a wave of hair that had flopped over his forehead.

He gazed back at her quizzically, the pattern of city lights making him look exceptionally mysterious and sexy. “You actually wanted me to stop? Before you came?”

She didn’t respond, because he already knew what she would say.

“Scared of not being in control?” The question wasn’t accusatory or frustrated.

He pulled her up to sit. Sliding his arms under the dress that still dangled from her shoulders, he held her like a fragile thing.

“It’s okay,” he whispered into her neck. “I get you.”

The strangest sensation filled her head, and she realized too late it was impending tears. She tried to turn her head away but he caught her mouth with his, and the feeling of being vanquished died with his taste and trust and understanding.

When he pulled back, he stared at her in a most incredible way, like she was The Answer. His massive erection grazed her inner thigh. She could definitely take care of that. Slowly, she peeled off the rest of the dress and then unhooked her bra. Naked, her chest rose and fell, but he looked only at her face.

“Protection?” he asked.

She nodded. “Condoms. In the drawer by the bed.”

She started to rise, meaning to head for the darkened bedroom, but he rocked to his feet with ridiculous power and told her, “I’ll get them.”

Them?

With a half smile and a jerk of his head toward the jagged city vista, he added, “When I come back, I’d really like to see you standing against that window.”

As he turned for her bedroom, he unbuttoned and stripped off his shirt, the muscles in his back doing acrobatics underneath his skin. The V created by his wide shoulders and waist made her legs quiver all over again.

And because he’d proved to her that control wasn’t always necessary for pleasure, she went over and stood by the window.