ThisTimeNextDoor (39 page)

He kicked the door shut, threw aside his own towel. His eyelids fell as he gazed at her. “No more talk. Only do.”

She stepped backwards until she felt the mattress hit the backs of her bare calves. The late afternoon sun was pouring clear winter light onto the bed, onto her naked body.

Illuminating the welts on her stomach, her ribs, her collarbone. When she saw the way Mark flinched when his gaze raked over her, she reached for a burgundy throw blanket.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“I just didn’t want you to, you know, feel bad.” She draped the blanket over her chest.

He moved closer, captured her face in his hands. “You don’t trust me.” Kissing her forehead, he gently pushed her down onto the bed. “But you will.”

Smiling at the erection now in front of her face, she wrapped her fingers around his cock, squeezed, stroked. Then, with a naughty glance up at him, she licked the very tip.

His jaw tightened. Encouraged, aroused with power, she slipped her mouth over the head and sucked him deeper into her mouth. He was hard, velvety, thick. She felt herself get wet. Hungry for him.

“You like that?” he said through this teeth.

Nodding, she sucked him harder. Her left hand glided around his muscled thigh to his ass, pulled him closer.

But he put his hand on her cheek and pushed her away. “I like it too.”

“Then why do you want me to stop?”

He sat down on the bed next to her and kissed her. As he sank onto his back, he pulled her on top of him. They both kicked their way up the bed, tongues tangling, hands exploring each other, the playfulness erased in a wave of hot, sudden need.

“I want you so bad,” she gasped. “I’ve always wanted you.”

“You’ve got me.” He licked the underside of her chin, the corner of her mouth, kissed her eyelids one after the other.

“Touch me,” she said. “Touch me everywhere.”

“Promise?” His hand reached between her legs, stroked the curls, but didn’t push into the wetness.

“Oh, yeah.” She was on top of him, knowing she should worry about crushing him, knowing she shouldn’t. She spread her knees, inviting his hand deeper. His cock was hard, poking her stomach; she reached down, fisted him, pumped him up and down as she licked his face.

His fingertip teased her folds. Up and down, just a tiny, maddening stroke.

“Please,” she said, but his fingers stayed agonizingly distant. To encourage him, she kissed her way down his neck, and followed the hair down his chest and navel to the hard cock in her hand. While her hand squeezed, her mouth slipped over him, took him deep. She bit him with her lips, so turned on by the way he got harder and bigger in her mouth.

He groaned, plainly enjoying her efforts, but again he put his hand on her mouth and moved her face away.

Confused, she pushed herself up to look at him. “Why not?”

“Exactly,” he said softly. His face was flushed, strained, but he managed to raise a mocking eyebrow.

Suddenly understanding, she exhaled, annoyed. “That’s—but—”

“What?”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“All guys like blow jobs,” she said.

He smiled slowly. “And some girls like giving them.”

“How do you know I’m not just trying to make you happy?”

“I can tell.”

She licked her lips. “All right. So?”

“You may suck my cock,” he said, arching his back, shifting his hips upward, “as long as you’re facing the other direction.”

Her temperature rose another few degrees. “You want to look at me?”

He sat up, took hold of her, rotated her torso away from him. Fingers splayed, his hands caressed her ass, pushed up her spine to bend her over.

Now she was facing away from him, her bottom was up in the air, her elbows digging into the mattress, her face next to his knee.

One of his fingers slid to the cleft of her ass, glided down to her exposed pussy. Again, he only teased the folds, not entering. “Closer.”

Gladly, she crawled backwards, willing him to slip those fingers inside where she was wet and aching for him. His cock was hard, twitching with his own arousal; she wrapped her fingers around him again and bent down to suck him.

He gripped her left knee and lifted it over his body, spreading her wide so she was straddling his shoulders.

She ached, how she ached. She moved over so her left hand was on the other side of his hip and began sucking him in earnest, deeper and harder, afraid and not wanting and so, so desperate for him to—

His powerful arms pulled her down onto his face. She cried out, eyes closing, his hard cock sliding up her cheek as his tongue swept deep into her.

For a long moment, a paralyzing minute, every one of her senses was fixated on the feel of his mouth kissing her. He lapped at her, deep, hard. His fingers separated her folds and then, while she cried out again, his tongue flicked over her clit, over and over, around and around. Blinding pleasure shot through her. A shrinking voice inside her reminded her she didn’t allow this, she didn’t like this, and then it faded into silence.

He pulled her lower, dug his fingers into her thighs. The sounds were sexual, kinky, so hot; she wanted more. More of him. She let the pleasure travel up her body to her mouth and, sharing it with him, taking more for herself, she sucked his cock deep into her throat, tasting the saltiness of him.

Pleasure spiraled low in her belly. Her knees trembled. Yet he continued to suckle and tease her, and she him. Mindless, happy, loving, sexual, it went on and on until she was so high and tight inside she simply couldn’t support herself any longer. His cock slipped out of her mouth, her forehead fell to his thigh—and he, seeming to sense she was at her peak, touched her in just the way she wanted and needed and then she was over, exploding,
there
.

“
Oh
,” she cried, letting her hips fall to the bed.

He sat up and climbed on top of her. When he kissed her on the neck, she smelled herself on him. She wondered vaguely if she should mind, because she didn’t.

He settled himself between her legs, breathing heavily, and kissed her, open-mouthed. Then with a slow, steady thrust, he pushed into her. A groan was ripped from his throat. She sighed, closed her eyes, and shifted her hips to meet him.

Scattering kisses along her neck, face, and throat, he built up a steady rhythm that was gentler than their other times together. The moves were slower, more graceful, deliberate. She felt like he was touching her everywhere, inside and out, always keeping his torso lifted from hers in the middle, protecting the soreness there.

After a little while his movements lost their luxurious, lazy pace. With building speed, he pounded harder, his breath coming ragged, and she tightened around him, encouraging him, her own pleasure building again.

She dug her nails into his shoulders and he came with a shout. Throwing his head back, he moved roughly inside her one more time, twice, and then he collapsed on top of her. Then quickly to the side. He dipped his head against her temple, breathing heavily, and closed his eyes.

She smiled and watched him. When his breath slowed back to normal, the long eyelashes fluttered upward, and eyes like the ocean, not quite green or blue, regarded her.

After his breath had gone back to normal, he propped himself up on an elbow, brushed the hair out of her eyes. “I love you, Rose,” he said. Serious, not smiling at all.

Her breath didn’t come for a moment. “I love you, too, Mark,” she whispered.

Frowning, he shook his head. “You don’t have to say it just because I did.”

“I know.”

“I should’ve waited. I’ve really put you on the spot.”

“Fine. Tell me later.” She played with the lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes again. She wondered if it got blond streaks in the summer, cheerfully confident she’d find out.

“I will,” he said.

“I know.”

Chapter 31

“THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE I SHOULD tell you,” Mark said.

“Oh, God,” Rose said. “What now?”

“It’s nothing bad. At least, I think you’ll understand.”

“Let me guess—you own Google.” She shifted onto her side to face him. “No. A cable news network.”

He closed his eyes, laughing softly.

She tweaked his nose. “A small island in the Pacific?”

“Nothing like that.” His hand slid up her thigh and around her hip to caress her bottom. “It’s just—I had a little help getting you here today.”

A few odd moments fell into place. She sorted through them in her mind. “Blair’s not really that depressed.”

He nodded.

“That bitch,” she said affectionately. “I didn’t know she had it in her.”

“She’d been depressed, but John helped her through it. She’s got a therapist, John’s promised—he begged her, apparently—to stay at her side,” he said. “In fact, using Blair to get you up here was John’s idea.”

She thought back to his arrival at the house, the way he provoked her into joining them at the cabin. “That bastard,” she said, less warmly. “Not that I’m surprised he could be a sneak.”

“He’s really not that bad.” The sun outside was setting, and pale warm light slanted across his smiling eyes. “I kind of like him, actually.”

She sat up, dislodging his hand. “
That’s
why he was coming on to me last night. I thought he was trying to make Blair jealous—you know, snap her out of her cloud of doom—but—” She laughed. “He was working on
you
.”

With a scowl, Mark pulled her back down on top of him. “You didn’t seem to mind.”

She smiled coyly. “Were you jealous?”

“If I’d had a chicken, I would’ve put it in the dishwasher.” He took her face in his hands, kissed her roughly. “I take it back. I hate that guy.”

After a little more heavy petting and giggling, they reluctantly got out of bed to wash up and pull on fresh clothes to prepare for a sociable Christmas dinner.

Just as they were in the hallway, ready to head upstairs, Mark slipped one hand into her rear jeans pocket and another over her breast. She stumbled, unable to move, and he laughed into her ear. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, groping and squeezing. “I seem to have slipped.”

She tried to push his hands away, unsuccessfully. “Let’s see if Zeus is okay. Help out with the dinner.”

“I can’t decide.” His hand roamed over to her other breast.

She managed to grab the banister at the stairs. “Decide?”

He hopped in front of her, ran his hands down to her ass, pulled her against him. “Which part I like best—the T or the A.”

They were still kissing on the lowest stair when John and Blair came through the front door.

“I can’t believe you pushed me!” Blair said, stomping her boots on the rug. “What kind of boyfriend are you? I was on the bunny hill because I
don’t know how to ski
.”

“You weren’t moving. I thought you needed help,” John replied.

“You were laughing!”

“Not as hard as you were,” John said.

The bubbly sound of Blair’s giggles filled the cabin. “At least I got even, dude, when you were flapping your arms like—” She cut herself off. They must’ve noticed Mark and Rose. “Oh!” Blair squeaked, then let out a loud sigh.

“Get a room, you two,” John said.

Blair shushed him. “We’ll just tiptoe by—”

Smiling against Mark’s lips, Rose turned her head, waved a few fingers at them. “Welcome back.”

Blair’s eyes were bright and happy, her cheeks pink. Clasping her hands at her chest, she looked between the two of them with her head slightly tilted to the side, smiling.

John clapped his hands together, strode up the hallway, Blair hooked under his arm. “I’m starving. You guys cool with a seven o’clock dinner? I’d hoped for six, but we were having too much fun out there today to come back earlier.”

“Eight would be a little better, I think,” Mark said. “It’ll give everyone else time to get here.”

“Everyone else?” Blair asked. “Oh, right. Your sister.”
 

“
You’re
cooking?” Rose asked John.

“Blair cooks, I help,” he said.

“We practiced the day before yesterday,” Blair said, beaming.

“I’ve never had anything that tasted so good in my life as that roast beef, babe,” John said.

Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Like, from a cow?”

“Dropped the vegan thing. I’m more paleo now—you know, caveman-style.” John lifted Blair off the ground with one arm. “Blair’s got me into gourmet cooking. I was thinking about taking classes with her. Maybe—it’s a longshot, but”—he smiled down at her—“I can totally see us owning a restaurant together. I’ve got the capital, she’s got the talent…”

Blair’s face lit up like an energy-inefficient halogen light bulb. She met Rose’s gaze and nodded enthusiastically.

Just then Liam and Bev blew into the cabin, brushing snow off their hair, talking and laughing.

“April’s right behind us in the driveway,” Liam said.

Zeus bounded down the stairs and tore across the floor to greet the newcomers, Europa and Luna at his heels.

“He’ll obviously need a long recovery period,” Mark said dryly in Rose’s ear. He kissed her cheek, nuzzled her neck. “I’ve got one more surprise for you,” he whispered.

His tongue tickled the nerves of her neck, making her shiver. “I don’t know if I can take any more surprises,” she said.

“You’ll like this one,” he said.

Rose sensed from the way the others had fallen silent, staring at each other with smiles on their faces, that they were all in on it.

Whatever it was.

She brushed away any curiosity about their smug secret with the mellowness only profound happiness can bring. If they wanted to play their games, whatever; her soul was bursting with contentment, rosy with peace.
Let them have their little crumb of joy
, she told herself, turning to go upstairs and get to know Trixie a little better. Though she had the impression she’d have years to do so.

And then the door popped open and her own mother walked in. Big and beautiful, a royal blue velvet cape over her shoulders, Kim Devlin threw back her hood and shook out her long, blond hair.

“I made it!” she cried, snow cascading around her head. After tossing a bright smile at Rose, she turned to April, who’d come in behind her stomping her feet on the mat. “That’s Mark, right?”