A Five-Minute Life

“Oh my God…” I gasped, arching back as he unclasped my bra and let it drop.

His hands reached around to cup my breasts, to pinch and tease the nipples while he gave open-mouthed kisses across my back. I reached behind to stroke the erection straining against his jeans but he dropped to his knees, his kisses blazing a trail down my spine. He turned me around to face him, fingertips toying at the edges of my panties while his eyes worshipped me with a hungry, reverent gaze. He pressed his lips to the center of me, over the panties, and I cried out as he tongued the silk and sucked. Teasing. Wet and hot but not enough.

“Jesus…”

“All of you,” he growled and tugged my panties down and tossed them aside. “Every inch…”

I sucked in a breath as he put his mouth on me, delving in deep immediately, his tongue working until I was dizzy and my legs weak.

My breath came short. “I can’t…”

Never breaking his hold on me with his mouth, he gripped my hips and eased me down on the bed. He pressed my thighs apart, and I cried out louder at the intense thrust of his tongue and the maddening brush of his short beard over my most sensitive flesh.

Senseless words and mindless sounds fell out of me as he took me higher and higher. Every muscle pulled taut, back arched, as I climbed. My hands made fists of the bedsheets as Jimmy plunged into me, sucked and licked and nipped until I crashed over. Wave after wave shuddering through me, wracking my body with an orgasm I felt everywhere and left me boneless and breathless. My limbs trembling with aftershocks.

God, Jimmy,” I gasped. “What are you doing to me?”

I reached for his shoulders to pull him up, but he moved slowly, taking his time, dragging his tongue over my skin and then biting the delicate skin beneath my navel. Slowly, his mouth journeyed up my body, between my breasts. He was over me now, his jeans rubbing against my nakedness, raw and hard. The first orgasm throbbing between my legs. I tilted my hips for more, writhing, as he took one nipple in his mouth.

“Please.” My hands scraped his shoulder blades. “Oh God…”

His mouth took my other nipple, bit it to the point of pain and then sucked the ache. Up higher, he ventured up my neck, my chin, and finally my mouth.

“Thea.” He kissed me deep and slow, braced over me. His hands sunk into my hair. “You’re beautiful. So fucking beautiful.”

“So are you,” I said. “We take care of each other. Always.”

He nodded, and I pushed him off of me to climb on top of him. My nakedness against the rough denim of his jeans. I kissed him softly, letting my hair fall around us to tickle his bare chest. I moved down his body, kissing the warm skin and then took his small nipple in my teeth and sucked. Jimmy made a sound deep in his chest and his hand gripped my hair.

I was memorizing him too. Every taste of skin, every sound, every movement of his body under mine, I took and kept. Locked them all away somewhere deep. The way he looked at me, his voice when he said my name, the emotion in his words when he told me he loved me.

He stripped out of his clothes and rolled me to my back again, his body wonderfully heavy over mine. I memorized that too—the weight of him as he slid inside me. He began to move, and I moved with him, our eyes locked, our kisses slowing down. His hands never left my face, forearms braced, his dark eyes holding mine.

“Stay with me, Thea,” he whispered. “Please. Stay.”

“I’m here,” I whispered back, as the pleasure grew between our joined bodies. “I’m right here, Jimmy.”

For now. But now was all we ever had.

I clutched him as the wave crashed again. Jimmy shuddered in my arms, his release spilling into me just as mine tapered.

We lay entangled for a long time, wrapped tight in each other, neither of us willing to let go.

Chapter 36

Thea

We’d spent the night bringing one another to the heights of pleasure again and again in the dark, desperate to keep the thoughts out. Now the morning was here, and the sharp light of day slanted across the sheets. Jimmy stirred and woke as I disentangled myself from him and slipped out of bed. He blinked at the clock. 9:23 a.m. Two and a half hours past the time I was supposed to take the Hazarin.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“For our morning coffee,” I said and reached for my discarded underwear and bra.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes. “Hold up. I’ll go with you.”

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling his T-shirt over my head. I wanted to take his scent with me. “I’ll be back in fifteen.”

“Thea…”