Southern Bombshell (North Carolina Highlands 5)

Nate hikes my skirt up my legs and pulls down my tights. Only when he curls a finger around my thong, his large first knuckle brushing against my pussy, do I realize his hands are shaking.

I try to break the kiss, to check in with him, but he’s relentless. He won’t let me go. He kisses me and yanks aside my thong and draws the pad of his thumb up my slit, a brisk exploration that makes me jolt, stars exploding behind my closed eyelids. He circles my clit without touching it. I cry out, but he captures the sound in his mouth, swallowing it.

Swallowing me.

Breathless, dizzy, desperate, I bite down on his bottom lip. He grunts. And then he’s falling to his knees and wrapping his hands around my thighs and pulling me to the edge of the bed.

He spreads my legs, and I moan at the gust of cool air that greets my swollen center. I open my eyes and see his head between my legs, our eyes locking.

The throb there intensifies as he looks and looks. His expression is hard and a little sad. With shaking fingers, I pull at the zipper underneath my armpit. It takes a couple of tries, but finally it gives, and I cross my arms over my chest and, gathering my blouse in my fists, I arch my back and pull the garment over my head. I wiggle out of my skirt.

Nate’s gaze roves over my bare belly to my tartan green silk georgette bra—a recent La Perla splurge—that matches the thong he just mangled. His eyes spark, and so does my pulse. He slowly—firmly—runs his left hand up my side, stopping to glide his fingers over the silk. The material is thin, mostly lace where it meets with my nipple, and Nate takes advantage of that fact and plucks the tight bud between his thumb and forefinger.

A fresh surge of arousal bolts from my nipple straight to my clit. I moan, my hips canting in a wild bid for release.

Nate meets my eyes and says, “You love it when I fuck with you.”

I half laugh, half gasp when, instead of waiting for a reply, he leans in and kisses my pussy. He has yet to touch my clit. I’m dying for it, rolling my hips against his caress, but instead, he teases me. He licks into my center, using his other thumb to open me up more fully. He laps at me. Tongue. Lips.

A scrape of perfectly placed, effortlessly gentle teeth against the place I want him most. He plucks my nipple again. Nudges it with the roughened pad of this thumb.

I seize, legs going stiff. Sensation winds so tightly in my core it hurts.

“Jesus Christ, Nate,” I say, grabbing a fistful of his hair. “This is hell.”

He presses a closed-mouth kiss to my clit. “You mean heaven.”

“No. Both. Yes. I can’t handle it.”

But he keeps teasing. Keeps taking his time. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he really is trying to memorize this. Draw it out. Make it last.

I want to hate him for it. But I don’t.

Nate presses the flat of his tongue to my clit before gathering it between his lips with a small, sweet suck. At the same time, he digs his fingers inside my bra, pulling down the cup. He palms my naked breast, gliding his fingers over my nipple. The sudden intensity of all this bareness sends a searing rip of white-hot sensation through me, emptying my body of everything but this.

The soft press of the mattress against my back.

His mouth.

My pounding heart.

He kisses my clit again, this time with his tongue, and I come. My hips jerk against Nate’s mouth, lifting off the bed as a sharp-edged orgasm pounds through me. The kind that shreds consciousness and makes every muscle in my body contract to an almost painful degree.

My hands are on his head, yanking his hair. I say his name, Nathaniel, and then he’s climbing over me, kissing my breasts, my neck. My lips. The lewdness of my taste on his lips wrings me out. I kiss him back languidly, savoring the intimacy of the knowledge that we can do this, that I’m safe here.

That he sees me, and he stays.

I love him.

Oh, God, I’m in love—

His body lifts off mine, allowing a rush of cold air to invade the space between our bodies, and I moan, blindly reaching for him. I’m still at that point when my eyes are screwed shut against the intensity of my orgasm, and I couldn’t open them if I tried.

My heart falls at a familiar metallic rip, followed by a muttered curse.

No. I want him. All of him. Nothing between us.

I’ve wanted that for a while.

Nate and I are religious about using condoms. Going bare would mean having a conversation. The conversation. It’d mean fessing up to feelings I haven’t been ready to name, much less talk about.