Ton nudged his shoulder into Vic, almost causing him to fumble his grip on the controller and miss a jump. “She's back,” he said. But they'd gamed together for decades, and Vic was wise to Ton’s tricks.
He didn't bother to respond. He wasn't going to lose this round, and there was a tricky sequence coming up.
“You may as well jump into the lava now. You know you're not gonna get through this before she stops in for you.”
He nudged Ton back. “I didn't come here for her. It’s not like I’m gonna stop hanging with you because of her. And anyway, it's her girls night.”
“I know what night it is. And you know she stops by here when she's back to give me the gossip.”
Okay, yes, it wasn't the first time he'd been planted on Ton’s sofa when Gillian's monthly dinner with her friends concluded and she smushed in beside her brother. She pretty much ignored him all those times, so no reason he should expect her to reach out to him tonight.
Seconds later, her feet sounded on the porch, followed by her key in the lock. “Hey.”
Some kind of ingrained response to her voice had him whipping around to smile at her. Next thing he knew, Ton was laughing and the console was bleeping to him about his descent into the lava pit of death.
Great.
He didn’t dignify the loss with a response. He slid his controller onto the coffee table and ignored Ton’s gloating avatar taking a victory lap.
“Having fun?” she asked. And unlike every other time she came into Ton’s half of the duplex, Gill squeezed in beside him. Between her hand on his thigh and her kiss to his cheek, his defeat in the game didn’t sting much after all.
It wasn’t hard to lure Vic to join her on her side of the wall. She headed over first to straighten herself out while her brother and Vic went through their farewell routines. Some ex of Anton’s once said it was odd that someone as taciturn as Anton had so much to say to Victor. Just went to prove he wasn’t the right guy for her brother, since Anton talked plenty—or some version of plenty—to those he valued. Sure, the list wasn’t often longer than her and Vic, but it didn’t stop it being true.
By the time Vic let himself into her house, Gill was back to fussing at her nerves. Her friends’ assurances aside, she knew she and Vic being together risked changing his connection to her family.
Or maybe her fear stemmed from somewhere else. Like her life-long definition of herself as Anton’s sister. And protector, and translator, and friend. If she took Vic away from him, no matter how much she never intended to do any such thing, she would break so many of those self-appointed roles. And that? That would break her.
But Vic showed up with a gleam in his eye and mint on his breath and no shoes, since he apparently left them in her brother’s hallway. And who was she, she asked her brain gremlins, to argue with a barefoot Vic? She led him up to her bedroom and switched her appraisal from his gentle eyes to the torso he bared as he crossed the threshold.
She was for sure unable to argue with a shirtless Vic.
He bracketed his hands on her waist and said, “I wasn’t waiting for you.”
“Never said you were.”
“I went to Ton’s cause I always go to Ton’s if he’s in town and I don’t have a gig.”
“Noted. Which is all facts I knew from long ago.”
He flexed his fingers into the flesh between her hips and ribs, letting out a low growl. “Sass suits you. Makes me even hotter for you.”
Well, hell if she was arguing with a sex-smitten Vic. She scraped her nails along his scalp and pulled his mouth to hers. His beard growth scraped her cheek and chin as he nipped his way down her pulse line to the tender hollow of her neck.
“Fuck,” he groaned.
She gyrated her hips, and his swearing got more vehement. She backed them to her bed and they landed with Vic on his side, hand shoving his jeans down while she tugged off their shirts. They were getting downright efficient at stripping each other.
And she was far from accustomed to the sight of Victor Anthony, nude, flushed with passion, looking at her like he’d won a prize.
Or to the feel of his warm, calloused fingers tracing up her spine and cradling her nape.
Or to his taste. His tongue and lips, firm and gentle and tender and demanding. His fresh exhales and the ravenous way he inhaled her own breaths. How he hummed when her tongue twisted with his, and how his whole body was an extension of their kiss—flexing and teasing and rubbing as his devouring mouth explored hers.
His kiss stole her fucking soul.
She broke away to shove their clothes and her blankets to the floor. “I should gag you. You’re distracting me.”
Damn smug eyes. “I think I’ll decline, thank you.”
“So polite. How about a blindfold?”
“How about you tie me to the headboard, but you wear the blindfold?”
His voice was teasing, but she hovered over him, considering it. “Huh. Interesting. Why?”
“Well, the tying because I like it when you control the pace. I like knowing you can use me to get the depth and the motion you need to get yourself off. And the blindfold because every time we fuck, I get lost in your gorgeous eyes. It’ll free me up to stare at how your body takes from mine, and the way you’ll maybe have to use your hands on yourself cause mine are up here.” He patted the headboard twice.
Gill collapsed onto him. “You are such a toad-monger. Now I don’t have a choice, and it’s not like I’ve got handcuffs here.”
“No? Any scarves?”
“We live in Houston; my scarf stash isn’t so vast.”
“I can run next door and raid Ton’s closet for some ties.” He made to get up.
She shoved him back. “Shush. You can not. I need you on this bed.” Her damn clit was aching already.
“As the lady demands.”
“Oh, you listen to demands? Fine, then. You just hold on to the headboard without restraints, and I’ll put on my sleep mask. But the second I feel your hands on me, I’m taking it off.”
Vic scooted up and anchored himself against a couple of pillows. “Deal.”
Before he lost access to his hands, he wrapped a leg around hers and urged her close for another kiss. She wasn’t about to fight him on it, not when the position let her rock her pelvis into the muscled contours of his thigh. Each second she aimed to quench her thirst for him, it only grew. Finally she took his hands in hers and guided them to the spindles behind him.
His eyes burned at her, and she fought the impulse to turn off the light. Instead, she grabbed her mask and a condom, securing the second before she donned the first. The mask didn’t block all light, but it stopped her from seeing anything but a glow at the edges. She closed her eyes to steady herself, and in an instant, her senses transitioned. Vic’s indrawn hiss whip-cracked at her. The air played cool and naughty tricks on her tight nipples. Their mingled arousal was the most potent aroma in the room.
Slowly, she reached for him. Her palms flattened on his abdomen, and she drew them higher, to the valley made by his pecs. His bunched shoulders and the soft furze at his armpits exposed while he maintained his overhead grip. The bumps of his ribs down his sides and the gentle glide of flesh veeing towards his pelvis.
Another gasp. “Gillian.”
“Victor.” Was her voice always so full, so fervent? She straddled him.
“If I suggest this again, remind me how I’m a frog-monger.”
“Toad-monger.” She bit her lip with desire, and with joy, because rickety as the blindfold made her feel, his voice stabilized everything. She used his cock to tease her clit, dragging it through her folds and pleasuring her aroused bud with the hard shaft in her hand.
“Really want to grab your tits right now. Or your hips.”
“Hmm.” She wasn’t quite ignoring him, but she was having plenty of fun doing things her way.
“Gill.” Somehow he pulsed harder, and she could tell from the changing pressure behind her that he’d braced his feet on the mattress. He used the leverage for an insistent pelvic thrust. It caught her just right, a solid slide along her labia, and she couldn’t put either of them off any longer.
Everything in her was over-sensitized. She couldn’t tell through the buzzing in her ears if it was her groan or his that filled the room as she lowered herself onto his shaft. She could practically trace the course of the air filling her lungs and spreading through her body. The rush of blood making her head light and her sheath heavy with need. Each inch of him filling her, each contraction squeezing him. She tightened her thighs to his hips and arched back, giving herself the balance she needed so urgently to free her hands to race over her own torso. She cupped her breast, pinching her nipple between her fingers, and scraped the other hand down his flexing abdomen on her way to her clit.
“Fucking fucking yes. Gill. Those little circles, rub like that for me. I can see you getting wetter. Smell you.”
Feel her, too, she bet, from the way his words and her hands had her clenching that much harder around his cock. She sucked her fingers and moved to her other nipple, but never let up on her clit. Just varied the pressure some, in time to his withdrawals and the rise and fall of her hips. Arched back a touch more, just enough so his shaft rubbed harder against her inner walls, and then she was done. No more control. Folded her body over his, reaching for his head so she could plaster kisses on him while she shuddered and flew and her other hand pressed tight on her clit and she came all over him. All around him. And he ripped her mask away and grabbed tight to her ass and thrust and fucked up into her, his lips all over kisses and her name and kisses and curses and teeth nipping her shoulder and her name and his breath and her name.