| |
SANDI FELT AS IF SHE’D run a marathon. Her breaths came in great gasps, her limbs felt like jelly, and the two of them were slippery with sweat.
“Holy fuck,” she said.
Jace started laughing, and she joined in, her giggles only increasing as he went, “Ow, ow, ow,” with each clench of her body, and withdrew hurriedly. He gave her a wry look, disposed of the condom, then collapsed back onto the bed, and pulled her into his arms.
“Mmm.” She snuggled up next to him and yawned. “That was good.”
He snorted. “The understatement of the year. That, sweetheart, was fucking amazing.”
“It was the best sex I’ve ever had.” She kissed his chest, too tired to lift up. “As I suspected, Jace Hart, you are a god in the bedroom.”
“I think you’re drunk,” he said.
“Maybe.” Her eyes drifted shut. “I need some matchsticks.”
“Just go to sleep. I’m about to pass out from exhaustion anyway.”
“It seems rude to just doze off,” she said with a yawn. “You want to go again?”
“For Christ’s sake, woman, are you trying to give me a heart attack? I’m nearly thirty.”
Smiling, she rested her hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall, and let sleep claim her.
*
SHE GOT UP ONCE IN the night, when it was dark, visited the bathroom like a zombie, peed for what felt like an hour, drank two glasses of water, returned to bed, and fell back into a dreamless sleep.
When she finally woke, the room was bathed in a pinky-gold light. She’d forgotten to close the curtains the night before. She rolled onto her back, stretched, yawned, and then her brain rebooted itself, and the previous night came back to her with full force, as if she’d been hit on the head with a mallet.
She turned, and looked straight in Jace’s eyes.
“Morning,” he said. He was lying on his side, his head propped on a hand, watching her.
“Er... morning.” She blinked a few times. When she’d gone to the bathroom in the night, she’d completely forgotten he was there.
Holy moly. They’d had sex. And not just sex, but great sex. She supposed she should be feeling regret right now at finally letting her guard down, but surprisingly, that emotion wasn’t rearing its ugly head at all.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Not too bad, considering. You?”
“Remarkably well, as you say, considering.”
“Oddly, I didn’t feel drunk,” she said. “I must have had... I don’t know... four, five glasses of wine throughout the evening? Maybe more?”
“Yeah. And I had a few whiskies.”
“But we were also drinking a lot of iced tea and water, and eating, of course... I mean, the room didn’t spin or anything, but I guess we were pretty wasted...”
Her voice trailed off. The rose-colored sunlight slanted across the bed, making Jace looked like an angel. An archangel, actually—he was too gorgeous for an ordinary heavenly being. He even had a halo, his brown hair gleaming gold around the edges. He’d pulled the duvet over his hips, but the muscles in his chest and his glorious biceps gleamed. Hymns had been written about this guy, she was sure of it.
“Did you really come three times last night?” he asked.
Ohhh... that wicked gleam in his eye brought him right down to earth. Or maybe even further south than that.
Her lips twitched. “At least three. There might have been a fourth in there somewhere.”
His eyebrows rose.
“What?” she asked innocently.
He shook his head, bemused. “I’ve never been with a girl who’s had multiple orgasms on the first date. And never like that, without me having to do a thing. I mean, yeah, if a guy goes down on a woman and gives her an orgasm, I’d expect—well, hope—that she’d come again during sex. But not like that, just one after the other.”
“I’m a freak of nature,” she said, and wrinkled her nose.
“Seriously?”
“No,” she scoffed.
“You’ve researched this,” he guessed.
She propped her head on a hand, the same way he had. This was a novelty. Brodie had hated her talking about sex like this. Although he’d been willing to try some of the techniques she’d discovered to help with his premature ejaculation, if she’d tried to talk about anything else, he’d accused her of draining all the romanticism out of sex, and told her he didn’t want to know.
“You sure you want to talk about this?” she asked Jace. “I thought men found it a turn off.”
“Not this man. I’m fascinated. Tell me more about how women come. As much detail as you like.”
She laughed and nudged him. “You just want to steal all my hard-earned knowledge for yourself.”
“Absolutely I do. I’m happy to admit it.”
“I don’t think you need any help in that area, Jace.”
“I’ve not had any complaints, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. I’m a lifelong student. And any knowledge I get will only benefit you.” He gave her a mischievous smile.
A quiver passed through her—he was talking about having sex again.
She shouldn’t. Even in the hazy state she’d been in the night before, she’d only meant for it to be a one-off.
But he’d been so good at it...
Her body felt as if it were blooming in the early morning light, and Jace was the sun. Just looking into his eyes warmed her through, and made her nipples tighten and tingles start in her lady parts.
It was obviously something to do with the wedding, but it felt as if some of the magic of the previous night still existed in this room, like finding glitter on the pillow when you’d worn sparkly eyeshadow the night before, even though you thought you’d removed all your makeup before you went to bed.
Or maybe it was just having Jace here, beside her, looking sexy enough to have for breakfast. He was a young, virile, gorgeous male, and he wanted her. She wasn’t stupid. Now was not the time to get on her high horse and declare she wanted to stay single.
“All right,” she said softly. “Most women are capable of multiple orgasms. We don’t have a refractory period like men—the time after ejaculation when you can’t be aroused. But there are different kinds.”
“Of orgasm?”
“Of multiple orgasms.” Her cheeks warmed—not because of the sensitive nature of the subject, because that didn’t bother her—more because of the gleam in his eyes. “For some women, each orgasm is fairly distinct and occurs anything from two to ten minutes apart. Their partner has to avoid the areas that are too sensitive, but continue caressing them until the hypersensitivity goes away. And like you said, going from oral to penetration, changing position, it all helps.”
“So what’s the other sort?”
“Serial multiple. Orgasms are barely separated—the woman just rolls through them.”
“And that’s you?”
She nodded. “I’ve never taken the twenty-to-forty minutes most books say women take to climax. It’s usually nearer five to ten. And when I’m on my own and don’t stop, they just keep on coming, so to speak. That’s the first time I’ve had more than one with a partner, though.”
He gave a short laugh. “I’m honored, although I don’t think I had anything to do with it.”
“It was everything to do with you, Jace. I can’t tell you how amazing you were.”
He smiled. “You know how to say all the right things.”
“I mean it. You didn’t stop. You just kept on going, hitting all the right spots. It makes me feel faint just thinking about it.”
“Why haven’t you had more than one with a partner before?” he wanted to know.
“Sex with Brodie became all about his problem.” She didn’t like thinking about it. “He always climaxed before me, right from the first time we made love, and eventually even before penetration. He always had to finish me off afterward, and to be honest I just felt lucky having one orgasm. I know I’m not alone in that. Time is definitely an issue when we all have busy lives, and we’re tired. Some guys find it a pressure giving a woman an orgasm, especially if it takes her forty minutes. The last thing they want to think about is having to give her more than one. And because it doesn’t take guys long to come, it means they have to have quite a bit of stamina to keep going long enough to let her climax repeatedly.”
She let her gaze slip down him, remembering the way he’d thrust so hard last night that the headboard had banged against the wall. Jeez, she loved enthusiastic sex like that. And the way he’d just kept going through each of her orgasms... It had felt as if he could have gone on for hours. What a treat, after all the problems she’d had with Brodie. Maybe there was a God, after all.
“You’re a very unusual woman,” he said.
“Well, maybe I’m more open than some. But I believe communication is essential to enjoyment in bed. And being multi-orgasmic definitely starts in the mind. Orgasm is all about letting go. Did you know that when you orgasm, the part of your brain that deals with fear shuts down? At that moment of climax, you become totally vulnerable and lose all your inhibitions. That’s why it feels so intimate with someone else—it’s not just about sharing yourself physically. The more a couple can work on this, lengthening foreplay, looking into each other’s eyes when they come, that sort of thing, the better their orgasms are likely to be. Not everyone has time for that, though, and for most people having one and then falling asleep is good enough.”
“You’re amazing,” he said. “I’ve never met a woman like you.”
She felt flustered at the admiration in his eyes. “I’m nothing special,” she protested.
“I beg to differ. It’s refreshing.”
“Not too clinical?” she asked.
“Well, maybe if you started quoting from a medical journal mid-coitus, I might protest, but no, I have no problem with talking about sex.”
“I like that,” she said.
They studied each other for a long moment.
“How many orgasms do you think you could have in one session?” he asked eventually.
Her heart rate increased at the implication that he wanted to have sex again. She gave a nonchalant shrug, though. “The most female orgasms observed under test conditions was 134 in sixty minutes.”
“Fucking hell.”
“I know. I bet she couldn’t walk for days afterward.”
He laughed and pulled her toward him, into his arms. “I don’t know that we could make that total, but I’m willing to see if we can get a decent figure.”
She cupped his face and stroked his cheek. “Honestly, I don’t care about numbers. It’s just being with someone who doesn’t mind taking time in bed. Who’s willing to talk about things. I can’t tell you how wonderful that is.”
Turning his head, he kissed the palm of her hand. Then he leaned forward and kissed her lips.
Sandi let him press her onto her back, and welcomed him in her arms as he deepened the kiss, sending sexy shivers down to her toes and all the way back to her earlobes, firing up all her nerve endings on the way. His hands slid over her skin, stroking, brushing, occasionally teasing, and she sighed, her eyes fluttering open occasionally to watch him, still bathed in the pinky gold of the rising sun.
This was heavenly. Ohhh... why had she kept herself apart from men for so long?
But it wasn’t just any old guy in her bed, she reminded herself as he kissed down her neck to her breasts and proceeded to pay attention to her hardening nipples. Jace was special. She was under no illusions about that.
He kissed her breasts for a while, brushing her nipples with his tongue and then teasing them with his teeth, and then moved back. He shifted on the bed, higher on the pillows, and gestured for her to roll away from him. She did so, and he pulled her back against his chest, keeping his arms tight around her. Taking her hand in his, he guided it over her breasts, down her body, and between her legs.
“Show me,” he murmured in her ear, making goose bumps pop out all over her body. “Show me how you touch yourself.”
She closed her eyes as he moved her fingers down into her folds. He kept his hand on top of hers, and as she began to stroke herself, he followed her movements, learning what pressure she liked, what speed. With his other hand, he teased her nipple, and when she turned her head to look up at him, he captured her lips with a kiss.
It was so leisurely, so quiet and warm in the room, she felt as if she were still in the magical dream world of the night before, as if there was no such thing as time, as if he’d be happy to lie there forever, just stroking her, until pleasure was the only thing in the universe that existed.
She came slowly, in sweet, short clenches, and he kept his hand over hers and captured her sighs with his mouth, only moving back when her muscles finally relaxed.
“Stay there,” he said, lifting up and moving over her. “You’re a goddess, Sandi Cartwright, and I’m going to worship your body until the sun comes up.”
