One-Two Punch (7 page)

Harry grinned and grabbed another towel for himself, watching as Beth finished drying off.

“Can I borrow your comb?” she asked.

“You could if I had one.” He ran a palm over his head. “Don’t really need it—this is the longest my hair’s been in years.”

Beth finger-combed her damp curls, making a mental note to bring a few necessities from her apartment the next time she came over to Harry’s place. She glanced at him uncertainly—there was going to be a next time, wasn’t there?

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she mumbled, hiding behind the fall of her hair.

“Sure?”

She nodded.

“Want to eat?”

She nodded again.

“Good.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her out of the bathroom.

“Let me wear your t-shirt,” she ordered, grabbing at the doorframe to redirect them back toward the bedroom.

“No. I like you naked.” Harry ran a hand over her hip in emphasis, raising goose bumps across her skin.

“Not while cooking—it just isn’t sanitary,” she objected. “Besides, what if there’s grease spatter? That could be painful.”

He paused at her last statement. “I should probably put something on.” Reversing back into the bedroom, he yanked on a pair of shorts. Pulling a clean t-shirt out of a drawer, he tossed it to her.

Beth pulled the shirt over her head. It enveloped her, falling to mid-thigh. Harry watched with a cranky expression.

“I like you better naked,” he muttered, swinging her up into his arms.

“My legs are going to atrophy into useless lumps if you keep carrying me around like this,” she told him, although she didn’t make any move to get down.

“I like carrying you around. You’re wrapped around me like a little spider monkey.” Wrapping an arm under her hips, he headed for the door.

“A monkey?” she repeated, offended.

“Pipe down, woman. I’m busy hunting our dinner.” He smacked her lightly on her ass cheek, making her shiver.

“Like that, do you?” Harry looked down at her, eyes alight. “That’s interesting.

We’ll have to…experiment with that later.” His hand ran under his t-shirt and across the sensitized skin where he had just spanked and Beth quivered again.

His eyes went hot. “Or maybe…” he began, the raspy edge back in his voice. But then he shook himself, a full-body movement like a dog after a bath. Beth squealed and clung to him so she wouldn’t be shaken loose.

“No more sex until after food,” he told her, or maybe himself, firmly. “Otherwise, in a few weeks, they’ll just find the empty husks of our bodies in that bed.”

“We would be
smiling
husks though.”

Harry laughed. “Definitely smiling,” he agreed, striding into his kitchen and plopping her down on the marble-topped island with a kiss on the nose. Reluctantly, Beth untwined her arms and legs from around him and watched him rummage in the fridge.

“Italian, Chinese or Greek?” he asked.

“Irish, actually. Well, half. The other half is Swedish and Spanish and even some Luxembourgian.”

Eyebrow raised, he smiled at her over his shoulder. “Good to know, but I was talking about food. You’re rather a mutt, you know.”

“Melting pot, that’s me. Oh, and Chinese would be fabulous. Well, depending on how old it is—you seem to have a whole world of leftovers.” She peered around him doubtfully, trying to see into the refrigerator.

“Fresh from…yesterday?” His voice was a little unsure and it was Beth’s turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “No more than the day before, I’m positive.”

“Uh-huh,” she said skeptically. “Do you always have this much takeout or is this just part of your break-up recovery?” Immediately after the words left her mouth, she wanted to suck them back in.
Oops.

Harry paused, white food cartons dwarfed in his hands. “How did you know that I just broke up with someone?” he asked curiously.

Beth blushed a little, pretending great fascination in his kitchen tile. “Oh, well…hmmm. So, I sort of saw you…” Her voice trailed off. Setting the cartons on the island, Harry bracketed her lap with his arms and leaned toward her, his mouth stern but his eyes were twinkling.

“Are you stalking me, little girl?” he mock-growled, moving even closer. Beth’s heart sped up in a mixture of arousal, excitement and adrenaline, with a touch of embarrassment thrown in.

“No,” she said a little sulkily. “I was there first.”

Harry nipped at her pouting lower lip. “Where?” he asked, although he sounded distracted now, his stare fixed on her mouth.

“Tony’s,” she admitted breathlessly.

It took a moment for her answer to sink in but when it did, Harry jerked back.

“Tony’s?” he repeated, startled. “So you saw…” Breaking off, he rubbed a hand over his head and glanced at her ruefully. “You saw the whole drink-in-the-face thing?”

Beth nodded, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

Groaning, Harry let his head fall back for a moment and then looked at her. “Yeah.

That was one of the less smooth break-ups I’ve ever participated in.”

“We were wondering—” Beth stopped, afraid that it would sound tacky.

“What?” he asked, his voice resigned.

“Well, what instigated the whole…” She mimed the drink toss.

Sighing, Harry turned and boosted himself onto the island next to her. “She said that she had put too much effort into arranging our future for me just to break it off,” he told her, glancing at Beth from the corner of his eye. “Just for the record, I usually don’t spend the first date talking about my ex.”

“Sure you don’t,” she teased, then laughed when he gave her a wounded look. “No, it’s okay—I’m interested. Were you guys engaged or something? What do you mean,

‘arranging our future’?”

Spreading his hands palms up in a baffled gesture, Harry shrugged. “I have no idea. We were definitely not engaged. We had just been dating for two months—less, actually. I wouldn’t have kept it going for that long but…” He looked a little sheepish.

“It was easy—no, I don’t mean
she
was easy,” he clarified when Beth gave him a sharp look. “She’s my sister’s friend, so everyone in my family was happy with it and her family was happy and so…I just let it drift on. My mistake. I didn’t realize until I got that unexpected martini shower that she was thinking long-term.”

Beth looked thoughtful. “Oh. The consensus at our table was that you had cheated on her,” she told him, startling a bark of laughter from Harry.

“Christ, we really entertained the bar that night, didn’t we?” His cheekbones were flushed and he scrubbed his hand over his severely cut hair again. “Nope, no cheating—unless
she
had something on the side. I doubt it though—she didn’t really seem too excited about sex.” Reddening even more, he glanced sideways at Beth. “In fact, just tonight, we’ve—”

Breaking off abruptly, Harry jumped down from his seat on the island. “Enough talk about Candice—there’s something wrong about talking so much about an ex with the new girlfriend. Let’s eat Chinese.”

Pleased, Beth couldn’t hold back a grin. The new girlfriend. Well, that definitely sounded like an extension on the one-night stand.

Harry eyed her suspiciously. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

Shrugging, Beth just grinned. “No reason. Now hurry up with that Chinese.”

He snapped a salute and popped the cartons into the microwave.

“That looked professional,” she commented, throwing a salute back at him when Harry glanced at her, a questioning eyebrow raised. “Military?”

Nodding absently, he dug in a drawer and triumphantly pulled out two pairs of chopsticks. “Army. Up until a couple years ago, actually.”

“Really?” As she thought about it, Beth wasn’t too surprised. He did have that…commanding presence about him. “Were you in Iraq?”

“Afghanistan.” His short tone did not encourage any further questions, so Beth decided to change the subject.

“What should I call you?” she asked instead, drawing another puzzled look from him. “Sergeant Harry? Lieutenant Harry? Special Agent Harry? Oh wait—that last one is for the FBI, isn’t it?”

He laughed. “Captain.”

“Cap’n Harry. Oh, that’s even better. Can I say ‘Aye, aye, Captain’? Or ‘Captain, Captain, O my Captain’?” Beth squealed as he wrapped a quick arm around her waist and pulled her off the island with a growl. Wrapping her legs around his ridged waist, she was reminded vividly that they were both still half-naked.

Harry buried his face in the curve of her neck, rubbing his rough cheeks against her delicate skin and making her giggle. He pushed the oversized crew neck of the t-shirt to the side and nipped her newly bared shoulder and Beth’s laughter turned to a sigh as her skin heated next to his. Her legs tightened and moisture began to dampen her pussy, open against his hard belly. She knew that Harry felt the wetness of her desire because his stomach rippled beneath her and he groaned.

Beth could feel his skin heating, his heart accelerating, his breathing shorten and catch. His need for her fueled her own lust and she pressed her body against his, wanting to be closer still. She would have climbed inside him if she could have.

Harry kissed and licked his way up her neck, sparking shivers of arousal down Beth’s spine. He ran the point of his tongue along her jawline and tugged her earlobe with his teeth. Beth shook and melted, all rational thought driven away by the rush of sensation shooting across her skin as his tongue traced a circling path into her ear.

His calloused palms slid down her back and under her shirt to cup her ass, curling around the round cheeks to let his rough-tipped fingers explore the furrow between.

Dipping lower and lower, he teased her with delicate touches, dancing around her tight rear entrance before moving around to her swollen, hungry flesh. Beth held her breath as he barely brushed the lips of her pussy with a fingertip, wanting to grab his hand and force his fingers into her, assuage this wild ache building in her dripping folds.

She groaned in disappointment when his hands slipped away, easing along her thighs to her knees and calves. Harry unhooked her legs, gently pulling them from around his waist and easing her down until her feet touched the floor. He pulled her shirt off over her head and kissed her hard, a short, deep kiss, before flipping her around to face away from him. Beth didn’t have a chance to recover from that quick movement before he was lifting her again.

She was facedown across the island before she realized what was happening. Her hips balanced on the edge of the cool marble and she couldn’t reach the floor with her feet, leaving her legs to dangle helplessly. The cold countertop pressed against her nipples, the contrast between the hot, hard, prickling tips and the chill of the unyielding stone intense, bordering on painful. Beth jerked away, pulling her breasts from the cool surface. Contrarily, she missed the searing sensation and pressed back against the marble, harder this time.

Harry’s hands were tracing the muscles running parallel to her spine, gliding past her shoulder blades, moving along her waist and dipping into the dimples at the base of her back. Beth’s pussy clenched as his hands brushed her ass and her flesh quivered beneath his fingers. His grip grew firmer, squeezing, massaging, separating and pressing the cheeks back together. She jumped when she felt his teeth—not biting, but threatening, nipping the sensitive globes and then soothing them with the flat of his tongue.

Harry kissed the very base of her spine, a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and Beth felt a flush of sweat break from her skin despite the cool surface of the marble. As Harry licked downward, Beth’s ass cheeks clenched beneath his palms and he kneaded her flesh reassuringly. She felt the tip of his tongue circle her anus and she shook as the nerve endings awoke again, pleading for more. Harry plunged the tip into the tight hole, working his way in, thrusting against the resistance of the ring of muscle.

Beth’s breath sobbed in and out and her juices coated her thighs as he licked at her opening. She scrabbled for purchase with her feet but there was just air. Harry stilled her flailing with a firm grip on her thighs. He pushed her legs apart, opening her to the cool air and his invading tongue, which had moved to lap the wetness smeared across her thighs.

Suddenly, Harry pulled his face away and stood behind her. Beth sobbed at the loss, needed his thrusting tongue and scratching cheeks between her thighs.

“Patience,” he scolded and a hard hand smacked against her ass, the sound echoing in the kitchen. His hand fell again, this time on the other cheek, hard enough to shove her forward, her pelvic bone bumping the edge of the island, sending a flash of heat across her lower belly.

Beth held her breath, hoping for more as moisture trickled from her inflamed pussy.

Ever since she had first noticed Harry, especially after she had seen him up close and saw his hard, square hands, Beth had wanted this. It was especially sweet to be spanked as she was sprawled helpless across the island, at the mercy of his calloused hands.

When he paused after the second smack, Beth couldn’t resist wriggling and tilting her hips up toward him.

“Like that, do you?” Harry’s voice had gone as rough as his hands. “I know it turns me on like crazy to see that beautiful ass jiggle and turn pink when I spank you.”

She moaned at his words, twisting her hips desperately against the cold stone countertop. Laughing shortly, he complied with her wordless pleas and swung his hand against her bottom again. “Greedy girl,” he rasped, sliding two hard fingers into her slippery pussy with a suddenness that made her gasp and then groan again.

He continued to spank her with one hand while fucking her with the other. Each time his hand smacked against her flesh, she tightened around his fingers. Harry’s breathing grew erratic as her wet, sucking pussy pulled at the thrusting digits and he pulled his hand from her as abruptly as he had entered.

Shocked by the withdrawal, she turned her head and saw him pull a condom from a drawer next to the sink.

“Dominic stocked your kitchen too?” she managed to croak.

Harry gave more of a groan than a laugh. “No. That was me.”