Ride with Me

She burst out laughing, and he grinned back at her, utterly gorgeous. That smile knocked her for a loop every time. There was nothing she liked better than to see Tom happy.

“It’s nice to know chivalry isn’t entirely dead,” she joked, and he shifted her weight onto the wall so he could free one hand to smack her on the butt.

“Enough of your lip. It’s my turn to be in charge.” He wheeled around and dropped her on the end of the nearest bed—the one free of cupcake crumbs—and then, climbing on top, hooked his hands beneath her arms to drag her up the mattress. She had to hand it to the satin bedspread: it sure made it easy to move around.

Tom kissed her neck, his hands lightly cupping her breasts. Already taking charge. She remembered her resolution to make the most of his invitation to use her imagination. “You can only be in charge on one condition.”

“What’s that?” He ran his tongue slowly around her nipple, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth.

“You have to talk to me while you’re … you know.” She loved it when he whispered in her ear during sex, but she’d never told him that before. And she’d certainly never been bold enough to ask him to do it.

The smile broadened into a grin. “You want me to talk dirty to you, Marshall?”

Her cheeks got hot, and she wondered how she could possibly be embarrassed with Tom after everything they’d done together. “I want you to tell me what you’re thinking. If that just happens to be dirty, well, so much the better.”

Tom chuckled. “Only you could manage to sound prim as a schoolteacher while making that request sprawled out buck naked in the bordello room.”

“I am a schoolteacher.”

“Don’t I know it. A very hot schoolteacher who’s already got me so hard, it’ll be a miracle if I can make this last longer than two minutes.”

She moved her hand between his legs and wrapped her fingers around his cock, giving him an experimental squeeze. “Gosh, you are hard. Maybe we should just put you out of your misery and try again later.” She stroked him a few times, loving the way his erection swelled and strained toward her, but he knocked her arm away and captured her wrist above her head, bringing the other arm up to meet it.

“You’re a wicked woman.”

“I didn’t used to be. I think it might be your fault. I seem to be getting wickeder all the time.”

He rocked back to sit on his heels, pinning her hands above her head, and took a long look at her, top to bottom and then back up again. “I like you wicked. With your hair all spread out on the pillow and your lips swollen like that, you look like a wanton thing.” He dipped one finger between her legs and exhaled, a sound of pure male satisfaction. “And you feel like a wanton thing.”

She smiled lazily and let her eyes drift closed as he slowly traced a finger around the lips of her sex, spreading her body’s moisture until she was slippery and swollen all over. She did feel like a wanton thing. The static electricity from the satin turned her hair into an enormous nimbus that stuck to the bed. When she shifted, strands flew up to plaster themselves against her neck and cheeks. She could probably shoot sparks from her fingertips if she wanted to. “Nobody’s ever called me wanton before.”

“We’ve already established you’ve been going out with all the wrong guys.”

Lexie tried to let that statement skim right over the surface of her mind. It didn’t bear thinking about whether Tom was another wrong guy or finally the right one or somehow both. Not now, not when he was looking at her like that, running his hands slowly from her shoulders over her breasts, letting her nipples catch between his fingers and then continuing on down her stomach until his palms framed her hips just inside his knees. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Another flush of heat rose to her cheeks, and she smiled uncertainly. “Let’s not go overboard.”

He caught her eyes. “You want to know what I’m thinking, I’m going to tell you. But if you give me a hard time about it, I’m sure I can find something to gag you with.”

He didn’t appear to be kidding. “Right. I think I can manage to keep my mouth shut.”

“Let’s try it again, then.” He leaned down to plant a kiss above the swell of her breast. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Dropping to his elbows, he slid his knees down until he was pressing full-length against her, and then he moved his hands underneath her shoulder blades to curve around her shoulders. He still carried most of his own weight, but he’d framed her with his body, his fingers bracketing her shoulders, his elbows outside her arms, his hips over hers, his knees bordering her legs. And when she looked up, all she could see was his face inches from her own, his eyes hot and liquid.

“You have a cog mark imprinted in grease on the back of your right calf,” he said. “You got it yesterday, and it didn’t come off completely in the shower. I notice it every time you ride in front of me, and I can’t decide if I want to help you clean it off or to grind the grease deeper into your skin like a tattoo.”

He lowered his mouth to kiss behind her ear. “I love to get you naked when you’re still all dirty from the ride like this. Sometimes when we’re on the road, I think about what you’re going to taste like later here”—he ran his tongue underneath her jaw—“and

down here”—he pressed his erection into her belly—“and I get myself so worked up wanting you I have to count telephone poles for a distraction. It doesn’t work, though, and I find myself thinking about those tanned legs of yours, how the color of your skin shifts from brown to white where your shorts stop at mid-thigh, and if I were to put my tongue there and trace a circle all the way around, I’d have to throw your leg over my shoulder to get the part underneath. When I made my way around to the inside, you’d gasp the way you do when I’m doing something shocking”—he plunged his tongue into her ear, and she gasped—“just like that, and I’d know you were getting wet for me.”

He paused and kissed her on the lips, then on the chin. “So I come to my senses, and I have to think about something else again, and I end up smiling about all the freckles on your arms and across the bridge of your nose and all the other places I want to kiss.”

Lexie was reeling. When she’d asked him to talk to her, she’d expected a few naughty words as he brought her to a climax, not this glimpse into his thoughts. It was almost too intimate, not to mention unbearably arousing. Closing her eyes, she dug her nails into his back, wanting him to know what he was doing to her.

Tom brushed his stubbled cheek over the sensitive skin along the side of her neck, which made her shivery. “You have to understand, this is just a typical day I’m talking about. I could fill a book with all the fantasies you’ve inspired in Missouri alone.” He removed one hand from under her shoulder to grasp behind her knee and pull her leg up until her foot rested on the bed. Then he did the same on the other side, spreading her wide open. With his hands back underneath her shoulders, he began working his way inside her with shallow, teasing thrusts.

“Christ, you feel amazing,” he said, his voice even lower now. “All swollen and wet and slippery. When I feel how much you want me, it’s like the best Christmas I ever had.” He drove a little deeper and groaned, lowering his forehead to rest against her shoulder as he moved in and out, in and out, still not giving her as much as she needed. She wrapped her legs around him and pressed her hips up hard on the next thrust, burying him to the hilt with a sharp, triumphant cry.

“Don’t move, sweetheart,” he murmured in her ear. “This is my favorite part. The way you feel all wrapped around me when I’m finally inside you, quivering and sucking air into your lungs like you can’t possibly take in enough oxygen to feed the burn.” She whimpered, and he bit her earlobe. “I think I could make it last if it weren’t for those noises you make. You want me to tell you what those noises do to me?”