Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) (9 page)

“You want to come in, I mean farther than the entryway?” Interruption was the best distraction technique until she could get some control over her shameless thoughts of what to do with him next, and how she could get those fingers inside her once more.

“After you, miss.” With his hand gesturing for a house tour she smoothed out the dark fabric clinging even tighter as her increased body heat made the gown feel more like a snake skin she desperately needed to shed. She knew he was watching her every move, walking tightly behind her. Close enough to feel the swift flow of his exhale on her upper back when she slowed down or stopped to show him different parts of her home. Everything from the open kitchen with its remodeled marble countertops and open floor plan, to the living room’s deep couch and large fireplace.

From the far wall of the living room went an exceptionally steep, but wide, wooden stairway, up to the second story of the old house. There the soft coffee colored carpet had replaced the wooden floors from below, and led them both towards the master bedroom on the right and a smaller room to the left.

“What’s in here?” His body motioned in the direction of the closed door before she could stop him. “Oh, this is beautiful,” he whispered. “I never would have guessed.”

The smaller bedroom had for long been reserved as a temple of retreat when grief had knocked on the door and crashed into life as a dark hand, grabbing her by the throat in an attempt to suffocate her mind.

“These are… these are very colorful. Cheerful.” His fingers grazed the top of each and every painting leaning in rows against the wall. She had stacked them, just to make room for more, but the frequency of her production had lessened as time passed.

His fingers continued to graze each canvas dressed rectangle, moving them around, picking them up, studying each as their own masterpiece.

“There are so many,” he said. “Why don’t you hang them up? I’ll help you” His eyes went from painting to painting as someone in absolute elation finding a long lost treasure of Picassos or Monets.

“I paint as therapy, and when my session is over, so is my time with my painting. Some are finished, some are not, but they’re all still here.” Her shoulders shrugged and again her arms crossed her chest, hugging herself, shutting everyone else out.

“But these are – amazing doesn’t cover it. Remarkable. You,” he turned, holding a large square shaped painting of running, wild Mustangs in a large field of swaying yellow grass, “have an aptitude for capturing moments.”

“Oh,” a slight embarrassment tickled her cheeks and made her hand touch the blank, ready-to-go, canvas standing in front of her. “I’m sure most people can create things, or paint. Maybe you enjoy that too?”

“I merely want to paint you.” His lips played with amusement again, while he lowered the painting back onto the soft carpet, leaning it against the others.

“Using this?” She held a thin paintbrush between her delicate fingertips, grazing the empty white canvas with the other.

“No,” his voice a low purr.

“Then what?”

“Using this.” His eyes drilled straight into hers before he opened his lips and let the tip of his tongue flicker against his upper teeth.

She gulped, and no matter how hard she tried, that mouth of his was reeling her in like a bee to honey. She couldn’t take her eyes away from it. His tongue had left the smallest of dew at the middle of his bottom lip, and she wondered what it would taste like landing on her tongue.

Without noticing how it happened, her hair was suddenly tangled around his fingers, massaging her scalp. The moment she let her eyes fall shut, the warmth of his breath touched her skin, making delicious goose bumps break out across her body.

Then it touched her - his tongue. Painting the slowest of strokes from below her ear, slowly tracing the skin of her bared collarbone underneath the strap of her gown, down the fabric of her dress until it settled with a warm suckle right on her already hard nipple. He licked it gently at first, wetting the fabric, making it more visible to the world every time his tongue let up, until the dress was soaked enough for his teeth to gently nibble the erect peak.

His hands trailed down her back and pulled up the bottom of her dress with the same speed his tongue danced across her breast.

She felt him now; his fingers, cupping the naked skin of her bottom then pulling lightly on her underwear, allowing him to slide them down her legs until she stepped out of them. But he didn’t toss them away. Instead he placed them inside his back pocket, and with the other hand moved one of the dress straps of her nightgown down her shoulder until her taut nipples were the only things holding the fabric up over her chest.

She stood there, waiting. She just didn’t know for what. It had been years, she thought, since she had let a man touch her. Fully. And the last man had been her husband. A long time ago.

Her body craved what she knew was coming, but at the same time actions this seductive, this intimate, made her freeze. She was good at this, she knew she was, at least in her mind. She would know exactly how to drive Wayne wild, until he would beg her for release, for a chance to come. Exactly how to trace his body, and taste him in ways he could only imagine. Engulf his body the way she’d ambushed him downstairs a short while ago.

But this, the slow way he approached it gave her mind a chance to take it in and think it over. She was better at the quick and action packed seduction, not the soft and slow.

“Are we okay, Christine?” His voice was touching her lips. She hadn’t paid attention.

“Mhm.”

Slowly his hands moved up her arms, pulling the straps of her dress up with them. Placing them back on her bare shoulders.

“We can take it slow,” he said close to her ear, placing a soft kiss on her shoulder. “We don’t need to do this tonight.” A softness about his appearance made her believe he was telling her the truth.

“No,” she whispered, making his hands halt at her shoulders. Thumbs circling her skin. ”Take it all off. Just take it off, now. Don’t let me think about this any longer. Please.”

In a handful of seconds not only did her dress end up on the floor, but his clothes too. His naked body pressing into hers, moving them across the narrow hallway and into her bedroom, landing them both on top of her bed. His weight felt marvelous on top of her: a hard chest pressing down onto the swell of her breasts, one elbow holding him up, his other hand tracing down her chest onto her nipple, then cupping her breast in his hand, licking it slowly.

The moment he bent down to kiss her lips, her legs widened, allowing him to settle down between them. She felt him nudge her, making his hardness apparent.

“Don’t move,” his lips mumbled against hers as he started to climb back down the bed, a leg already on the floor heading out the door to his jeans.

“You don’t have to. Come back.” Her hands holding onto the top of his shoulders slowed his move for the condoms most certainly hiding in a pants pocket currently in the other room, and she pulled him back down on top of her.

Chapter Ten

“What are you saying?” he asked, his body covering hers once more.

“That you don’t have to worry about getting me pregnant.”

“Okay, because?”

“I’ve… I’ve had a hysterectomy.” Her voice suddenly turned into a whisper between them.

It seemed to take a few seconds for his brain to catch up with her words, but when it had, he lifted himself up slowly, away from her body, and looked down her stomach, then traced back up to her eyes.

“I understand if it turns you off, and I’m older and slightly bigger than your usual ‘escapades’. I was too… seduced maybe, to tell you earlier. I’m sorry,” she mumbled, beginning to pull herself away from underneath him, trying to exit the bed on the opposite side.

“No, come back. Please,” he stopped her. “It doesn’t bother me. It’s… it’s just a first, that’s all. What you just said is just textbook to me, I’ve never met anyone, been with anyone, that has had that done.”

His weight held her down and his body followed hers across the mattress until she was completely covered by him once more. His hands in her hair, fingernails scraping calmly at the skin of her scalp, pushing long strands of mocha colored hair away from her face.

His eyes looked deep into hers, but his lips said nothing. He seemed to be waiting.

“After my husband died grieving took up so much of my time I didn’t notice things changing within myself,” she said low. “Cervical cancer. Spreading. But not anymore. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t find the right time to tell you. You’ve got your free pass to leave, if you’d like.”

He halted. As if time stopped, her eyes fluttered from his to the deep seaweed colored walls cocooning the space around them. Time grew. Quietness held.

“Don’t worry,” he mumbled into the skin of her cheek, while his thumb ran a slow line across the bottom of her lips. “Are you okay, though? Now?”

“I am,” her face reluctantly found his, as his hands splayed across her forehead and fell into the deep softness of her dark hair.

“Well, then
we’re
good too.” Then he smiled a smile that melted the tension and nervousness that had been blazing like burning coal in the center of her chest.

“Thanks.”

His voice didn’t carry an answer. His body did. Words were replaced when he lowered his face to touch hers, and softly kissed his way around her face: the creases of her forehead, the rosiness at the side of her face, pecked close to her eye where the skin was the thinnest, down the length of her nose, until his lips finally reached hers. His mouth was melting into hers, and as their lips transformed into one solid softness she couldn’t help but think how wonderful this felt, how someone else’s mouth could taste so much better than anything she’d ever eaten. Her history might have made her seem vulnerable, but she was not someone to patronize.

“I don’t need your softness right now, Wayne,” tumbling her tongue inside his mouth. “I only need you to push yourself inside me, grunt loudly with pleasure, and breathlessly tell me how marvelous I feel around your cock. And don’t you dare stop until I am done.”

“I wouldn’t dare. God, I won’t stop for anything.” The machine that was his tongue vigorously played hers, forcefully tasting every spare inch inside her mouth, and she couldn’t help but imagine all the things it could do to her body.

“I want your thighs to open wide for me,” he mumbled, catching her bottom lip between his teeth. “Allowing my urge to fully express how much I want to be a part of you and delve into that secret you’re hiding between your legs. Let that flavorful spot be my next point on this treasure chest that is your magnificent body.” The slick feel of his tongue slid down the warmth of her neck and traced in circles down, down the length of her body.

“Save the poetry,” she huffed, “we both know who went to college and who didn’t.” That earned her a hard nipple pull and she suddenly noticed how much she missed sex. Not the soft caressing love making. The rough, take-me-hard, sex. “Just, do me.”

Before he even touched a part of her, before his breath even made it close enough to her skin for her to feel it, she shuddered, goose bumps spreading like wildfire across every inch of her body. Facing the ceiling, she didn’t see, but felt, his hands slide like warm honey along her thighs, prying open her legs, until she was as splayed as the wings of a butterfly resting on a leaf soaking up the sun.

Then she felt it. The tiniest touch from the tip of his tongue to her most secret place, and with that her hips bounced in the air, unintentionally nudging the unshaved chin of his face.

Fireworks. That’s what she saw behind closed eyelids. Fireworks. Rough, prickly hair brushing against her softness made everything feel so much better.

“Oh, finally there it is. My hidden prize, the one I’ve been dying to savor all night,” his breath felt cool against the heat he’d created. “Hidden away for everyone but me to see. To touch. To play with. To taste and to suckle between my lips. You might tease it when you’re alone, but right now it belongs to me. And me only.” His warm mouth settled right on her exposed clit, and when the vibration of his dark moan reached it, she gasped and grabbed the sheets beneath her. “Your fingers are not to disturb me, not to pull me in, not to push me away. My mouth wants to, no it needs to, taste this with the tip of my tongue, with the warmth of my mouth, until your breathing turns shallow, scarcely existent, until the earthquake comes, shaking you in pleasure.”

How could he talk like that? It was like porn, but with words. Syntactic porn was what it was.
Her mind twirled with anticipation of what was next.
He then continued.

“The memory of your hands scraping roughly through my hair, pulling strands, trying to push me away are things I will bring with me. But I won’t let you, so I pin your hands on top of your stomach, my strength fighting yours in this pleasure of ours. Me tasting you, you surrendering to my talent.”

His tongue stroked her then. Long and slow, over and over, until her hands did just that. Dark strands of hair worked their way between her fingers as her mind and body didn’t know what to do with him. Have him come deeper, or push him away?