Long Shot (Hoops 1)

Maybe for women like me, after what we’ve lived through, what we almost died through, love is harder to come by. But it can come. August is living proof that it can come. Truly. Richly. After all I’ve been through, August is my reward.

When he sees me at the door, he startles a little, then grins and puts a finger to his lips, shushing me. He walks to the hall and closes the bedroom door.

“Don’t shush me,” I whisper-hiss with a smile.

“I don’t want you to wake her up.” He turns me by my shoulder and pops my bottom, making me squeak and jump a little. He urges me ahead of him down the hall. “I have plans for you.”

He walks behind me toward his bedroom, and I’d know his footfalls anywhere.

They say I’d follow you to the ends of the earth. When he pauses, they say I’ll wait until you’re ready. And he has. August has asked me to marry him three times in the last year, and every time I’ve said no. It has nothing to do with not trusting him, and everything to do with not trusting myself. I know that sounds weird and I can’t explain it, but these are the issues I work through in counseling.

“Plans?” I ask teasingly, turning to face him and walking backward. “What kind of plans, Mr. West?”

He gives me a gentle shove into his bedroom, closing and locking the door behind us. I’m immediately pressed into the door, crowded in the most delicious way by his big body. I’m crowded by his affection and pressed by his love. His hands, commanding and gentle, skim my sides and mold to my waist. He lifts my breasts with his thumbs. My breath hangs in my throat while I wait for a stroke across my nipples that never comes. He knows, damn him, grinning, his hands melting away. His fingers meet when he splays them across my back. He’s so much bigger. Someone standing behind him wouldn’t even see me on the other side of his broad shoulders. He’s a wall and a fortress. He’s twice my size, but I feel no fear. Only trust. Only sheltered.

“Road trips suck.” His chin, a sexy scruff of bristles, scrapes the curve of my neck and shoulder when he kisses me there. “I missed you.”

Cradling my head, he sinks his fingers into my hair and lowers his head to hover over my lips. For a few seconds, our breath mingles. We share the very air keeping us alive, and then our tongues touch, tease, and tangle. We torture each other with tiny licks and half-kisses until I need more, need to hold and clutch and grip him. I roam the hardness of his chest, caress his biceps, trace the strong sinew in his forearm, and search for his hands. I thread our fingers together, our palms fused by a connection as electric today as it was the night we met. He coaxes my off-the-shoulder sweatshirt completely off my shoulder, so my naked breast comes into view.

“Hmmmmm.” The hungry monosyllable rumbles in his chest, rattles behind his lips. He frees his hands to scoop under my arms and lift me until my feet leave the floor. The wet, velvety warmth of his mouth surrounding my breast, the tantalizing bite of teeth and suction at my nipple, leaves me boneless. I’m limp and suspended in the air while he drinks from me like a man dying of thirst.

“August.” My hips move reflexively, seeking friction, satisfaction. “Baby, come on.”

“What?” he mumbles around my breast, the vibration of the word tightening my nipples and causing my core to clench.

I lift and curl my legs around his waist, thrusting slowly, deliberately. I burrow my nose through the thick curls to whisper in his ear, “Fuck me.”

His mouth drifts to the other breast, swiping the areola lovingly with his tongue. With his hands sliding down to cup my ass, he walks us to the bed and lays me down gently. He stands there, watching me with the same protective reverence he watched my daughter, only there’s also lust in his eyes. Passion. Hunger.

Not releasing his gaze, I tug the sweatshirt over my head and work my arms free of the sleeves. My nipples peak in the cooler air, and he fixes his eyes there, a hard swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple.

I lift my hips an inch or so, just enough to hook my thumbs in my yoga pants and push them past my knees and over my toes. I toss them across the room and wait for his smile. He traces a finger over my purple and gold boy-short underwear.

“You little traitor,” he says with husky humor.

My reply is a throaty chuckle.

We both stop laughing when he grabs the panties at my hips and jerks them off, throwing them to join my discarded yoga pants in some corner. His face sobers, and there are embers in his eyes. I want to stoke them—to blow on them. To enflame him the way he burns through me, like gasoline in my veins. A blaze in my heart.

Slowly, I bring my knees up and dig my heels into the mattress, opening my legs wide. He bites his lip and presses me open more.

“God, Iris. Yes, baby. Show me.”

He palms my pussy. His huge hand covers it, possesses it. One long finger caresses me in the divide between the lips where I’m swollen and throbbing. The thickness of two fingers invades, presses, and hooks inside me. My back arches off the bed, straining against the pleasure. My hips thrust in time with his fingers fucking me. He’s a conductor, and my body sings for him, my cry of release a note sustained, held.

I close my eyes and bunch my hands at my sides, holding onto this perfect sensation for as long as I can. When I open my eyes, August is staring at me, and the look on his face brings tears to my eyes. To have someone look at me like that and to have someone feel the way he does—it’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever had. Every time he touches me, he restores my faith and reminds me what pure love feels like.

“I love watching you come,” he says, one finger tracing the sensitive skin inside my thigh.

“Why?” I catch his hand and pull him toward me until he’s up on the bed between my legs, and I move to my knees, facing him.

“You’re so vulnerable.” He tugs on a strand of my hair streaming around my arms and shoulders. “I love that you trust me with that, that you’re so unguarded.”

“That’s because when I’m with you, I’m not unguarded.” I kiss the back of his hand, blinking at tears. “You guard me. I know you’ll always protect me.”

“But I didn’t. I missed what was happening, what he was doing.” There’s a sheen of tears over his stormy eyes, gray skies and rain. “You’ve been through so much, Iris. You can protect yourself.”

“But when I’m with you, I know I don’t have to.” I lick my lips and taste my own tears, but now they taste like joy.