CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bea’s heart thumped like a gong as his utility belt hit the floor with a thud. Their gazes locked and her throat went as dry as the Santa Anas in September. He reached for the top button of his shirt and flicked it open before descending to the next and the next.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

How could she be standing so still and yet her body be in such an uproar? Everything heating and blooming and freaking melting. Bea was so damn hot, she wanted to tear her own clothes off.

Inch by glorious inch, Austin’s chest was revealed. Smooth for the most part, except for a sprinkling of light-brown hair over his pecs and around his nipples. A smattering headed southward, too—down, down, down—to his belly button and down again, arrowing into a single trail until the low-slung band of his pants cut off her view. He tugged his shirttails out, then shrugged out of the garment and tossed it on the floor next to his utility belt.

And now that she could see the whole, her throat went as dry as the freaking Mojave.

A shirtless Austin was something to behold. Acres of smooth golden skin, broad shoulders, and well-defined pecs. Prominent collarbones and that shallow little hollow where the two met. Easily traceable ribs and the dips in between. A ladder of slightly puckered abs bisected by just the right amount of hair.

And yep, there it was. Holy Adonis, Batman. V for victory. V for vice.

V for va-va-voom.

Oh, he wasn’t cut like a lot of guys who pranced around certain LA muscle beaches, and while his pants were sitting quite low on his hips, she couldn’t see what was below, but what she could see showed some muscular delineation going on between the hard ridges of his hips. And it was magnificent.

“So…” She dragged her eyes back to his face to meet his gaze. God, even her eyes felt hot, like they were boiling in their sockets. “That’s a yes, then.” Bea took a giant slug of wine. “You…work out?”

He teamed a slow, lazy smile with a slow, lazy shake of his head. “Ranch work is all.”

“Well…whatever you’re doing…” She flicked her gaze down again for another slow tour of his chest and abs. “It’s working.”

“Thank you.”

He slid his hand to his belly and drummed his fingers on his abs and, God help her, Bea’s gaze honed in on the movement, following it like he was tapping out some kind of code and the fate of the world depended on her cracking it.

“I’ve been told they feel pretty good, too.” His smile grew bigger as he lifted his hand from his abs and crooked a finger at her. “Why don’t you come over here and see for yourself?”

Bea would’ve liked to have been able to say in years to come that she regained her senses at that moment and politely declined his invitation. Alas, she was not that strong. It was like he’d opened the doors to Disneyland for a private tour, and Bea was a sucker for a theme park.

As if pulled by an invisible string, she gulped down the last of her wine and walked on unsteady legs to where he stood. The closer she got, the hotter things got, as if he was holding her in the beam of a laser. His smile faded as heat smoldered in his eyes and his gaze held and locked on hers. Bea’s heartbeat crashed in her ears and her breathing rasped in her lungs and rattled in her throat.

A small part of her couldn’t believe she was doing this—that she was daring. The rest of her surrendered to the burn.

She stopped in front of Austin, close but not touching. Heat radiated off his skin in waves, blasting over her like thermal steam from a geyser, tugging at her like the tide. A faint trace of his cologne tickled her nostrils as the earthier aroma of hot male flesh prickled awareness in that part of her brain that was all primal. All, You Tarzan, me Jane.

She wanted this man, damn it. And he wanted her.

With her head thumping to the pound of her pulse, she dragged her gaze from his, zeroing in on the warm bulk of his biceps at her eye level and, tentatively, she touched him there. It was only light, but the shudder of his breath was heavy, and her toes curled as her body swayed toward his. She traced her finger around his biceps, then kept going, moving around him as she trailed across his back.

Goose bumps stippled his flesh, and the honed muscles beneath her gossamer touch rippled in response. The pad of her finger found his opposite biceps, and she kept going, slowly circling his body till she was back at his front. Her finger trekked across his chest from one nipple to the other, more goose bumps following in its wake as her hand slid away and fell to her side.

They were close—so close—she could hear his heavy breathing, could see the sprout of his scruff along the hard ridge of his windpipe and the bob of his throat as he swallowed.

“Can I go lower?” she asked, her husky voice loaning a kind of desperation to the bold request. She didn’t look at him, her gaze transfixed by the thick thud of the pulse in his throat.

He made a low kind of noise in the back of his throat, somewhere between a growl and a groan. “Be my guest,” he said, his voice full of gravel, laced with the kind of desperation she recognized in herself.

Permission granted, she placed her shaking hands on his pecs and rested them there for a beat or two, liking the way her fingers looked curling into the cushion of muscle. She molded them, reveling in the soft prickle of hair and the brush of his nipples on her palms as the dizzying whisper of mine shot through her system like an illicit drug.

Slowly, she moved them down, watching her hands iron flat over his ribs, then her fingers tent and drift down his abs before just her index fingers brushed along his waistband, outward to the subtle furrow defining the inside edges of his hip bones.

She stroked her nails lightly along the grooves, feeling the muscles contract, the deep suck of his breathing the backing track to her little exploration. She glanced up, and his hot blue eyes blazed like twin lasers down into hers. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, because he was pure male perfection, and even if she never did more with him than this, she’d die a happy woman.

“No.” He shook his head, his hands sweeping up, furrowing into her hair at the back of her head, cupping it. “You’re beautiful.”

He lowered his head then, and nothing on earth could have stopped Bea from rising onto her tiptoes to meet his lips as they crashed onto hers, hard and probing and demanding, speaking of a hunger that had been building from the moment he’d ma’amed her and bloomed with every smile, every piece of pie, every Beatriss.

And in that instant, she knew that just touching him was never going to be enough. That if she died right now, she’d become a vengeful ghost roaming the earth, pissed that she didn’t get to know Austin Cooper in the most intimate way possible.

“Jesus,” he said, pulling away, his eyes glinting with a wild kind of fever, his mouth wet, his lungs working hard, and she took a mental picture because she had done this to him. Beatrice Archer—mild-mannered, play-it-by-the-book, ex–corporate sheep—had made this sexy man pant and yearn and lust. “I think my heart is about to burst out of my chest.”

Bea smiled, slipping her hand over his pectoral muscle again, feeling the brisk, hard bang beneath her palm. She grabbed one of his hands that was still cradling her head and pulled it down, placing it over the frantic beat of her own heart, his big hand cupping her breast over the fabric of her shirt. Her left nipple went rigid beneath his palm, and his thumb stroked over it, causing her to shudder.

“You like that?” he asked, his voice low and husky as his thumb continued its maddening tease.

She nodded. “I do.”

“And this?” His hand slid away, only to find the hem of her T-shirt and push under, sliding up the bare skin of her belly and her ribs to claim her equally bare breast, his thumb returning to taunt the nipple some more.

Bea’s throat constricted, and she had to lock her knees tight as a surge of lust turned everything liquid. “Yes,” she gasped.

His other hand pushed under her T-shirt, sliding onto the other breast, his thumb working that nipple, and Bea thanked all the sweet angels and evolution, she supposed, for opposable thumbs. She actually whimpered this time as a hot pulse shot like a flaming arrow from her nipples straight down her belly, hitting a target directly between her legs.

“What do you want, Beatriss?” he asked, his blue gaze boring into hers as he continued to wreak havoc on her body. “Tell me what you want.”

Bea had never been asked what she wanted. Normally, at this stage of the sexy times, it was fairly obvious, and one thing led to another and the P in V thing happened. It was usually accomplished in the standard missionary position, because frankly, it had been too damn infrequent to get particular.

But hell, if she didn’t know exactly how she wanted this to go down.

“I want to—” Bea stopped abruptly and swallowed, hesitant again as her gaze dropped to his throat. Could she actually go there? Sure, she’d declared she was going to say whatever crossed her mind, but could she say that?

“Tell me,” he murmured. Then he squeezed her nipples, and Bea’s eyes fluttered closed on a hot wave of ecstasy, her hand sliding to his hips for purchase as more flaming arrows found their mark. “Tell me how you like to be fucked.”

Bea opened her eyes, meeting his with frankness and purpose. That was the thing—she didn’t want to just lay there and be serviced by him. She’d been too damn passive in the bedroom. Letting men lead. Letting men do stuff to her, often to the detriment of her own pleasure. And enough was enough.

“I want to fuck you.” Yes. That’s what she wanted, damn it. She wanted to fuck him. Not the other way around. She was so freaking mad at herself for her passivity—she wanted to screw Austin very, very badly.

Clearly unperturbed by the idea, he grinned and said, “If you insist.”

Bea took a step back, and his hand slid from her breasts. He didn’t object, but her nipples certainly did. She quashed their rebellion ruthlessly with promises of an imminent orgasm. Planting a hand in the middle of his chest, she shoved him lightly, and he took a step backward.

“I want you to take off your pants and your shoes.” Bea gave him another light shove, and he retreated again. “I want you to lie naked in the center of my bed.” Another shove, another step backward. “And I want to climb on top of you and ride you until we both come.”

Her eyes fell on his hat on the coffee table, and she picked it up. Who needed to ride a horse when she could ride a cowboy? Or the closest thing to one she’d ever met. “That okay by you?” she asked as she plonked the hat on her head, still advancing.

He didn’t bother answering, nor did he stop retreating as he reached for the stud on his pants and yanked his zipper down. The metallic tearing was like a gunshot in the quiet of the room, racing down her spine and tightening everything from her belly to her vocal cords.

His boots came next, toeing them off and kicking them aside, yanking off his socks, without falling over or even halting his inexorable walk backward. The only thing that did was the mattress hitting the backs of his knees. He stopped then and so did Bea, probably about six feet separating them.

But then his hands got busy, his blue gaze holding hers as he reached into his back pocket, grabbed his wallet, and pulled out a condom. Bea swallowed at the sight of it.

Things were getting real.

He tossed his wallet on the ground and the foil packet on the bed, then slid his fingers inside the waistband of his pants at his hips and eased both them and his black boxer briefs down together. He broke eye contact to bend at the waist and push his pants all the way down his legs and step out of them, but then they were gone and he was straightening, standing buck naked in front of her, his gaze once again seeking hers.

Bea, however, was not returning his gaze. Her breath cut off with a strangled kind of gurgle in her throat as her eyes dropped to inspect Austin’s body in all its glory. Hell…the man was the full package—tall and broad and solid. Chest. Shoulders. Arms. Abs. Quads. The perfect symmetry of bone and muscle, of flesh and blood that ancient artists had captured so faithfully in paint and marble.

And that aptly named Adonis belt slung between hip bones and funneling down to a thatch of darker hair from which rose a magnificently solid penis, standing thick and proud and hard, taut and flushed, ready for action.

If Bea had been a virgin, she might just have been intimidated by the size of him. She was not, but it still didn’t stop her from swooning a little, and she had to curl her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching for it. She didn’t want to get distracted, and Austin’s cock looked like it was the ultimate weapon of mass distraction.

As per his instructions and without needing to be reminded, Austin sunk onto the mattress, disturbing an indignant Princess, who meowed loudly, jumped from the bed, and made a beeline for the kitchen. Austin, clearly not put off by the cat’s presence, shimmied backward on the mattress—a truly fabulous sight to behold. Bea, however, wasn’t sure what the rules were in exposing a pet to what she hoped was going to be explicit pornographic content, so she pulled the cheap plastic concertinaed divider across to keep Princess out.

“Here okay?” Austin asked as she returned her attention to the bed.

Bea blinked. She couldn’t be certain without getting out some kind of measuring device, but she was pretty sure Austin was lying dead center of the bed. Maybe it was the cop in him, but Austin was clearly a man who knew how to follow instructions.

And damn if that didn’t make her that much hotter for him.

She nodded. “There is just fine.” She took a moment to ogle his body again. How could a man in a reclined position look so damn ready? Like his muscles were primed to spring, like he was pumped for action. His dick, now resting on that swath of muscle between his hips, was fully cocked. And his balls, pulled in tight, looked locked and loaded.

The very sight of him lying there in such readiness made her sigh. “You’re just fine.”

He shot her a lazy grin—hell, even it managed to look eager—as he reached for the foil packet. “Want me to put this on?”

Bea nodded. Hell yes she did. “Please.”

He chuckled as if her manners had amused him, but Bea promptly forgot about that as he grabbed his shaft with one hand and lifted the packet to his mouth with the other, tearing the corner open with his teeth. She wanted to lecture him about the dangers of puncturing the condom using that technique, but watching him manhandle himself sucked every atom of oxygen from Bea’s lungs and her brain, plucking every thought out of her head. Seeing his big hand in such a private place was twisting her belly into knots.

“Wait,” she said as Austin went to apply the condom to the taut, flushed dome of his cock.

He stopped, his gaze flicking to hers. “Everything okay?”

Bea nodded. “Could you…” She stopped, swallowed. Her pulse fluttered madly. Dare she ask him that?

“Could I what, honey?” he asked, his voice gravelly, his eyes hot as blue flame as they captured hers in their heat, his chest rising and falling a little unevenly.

“Could you…touch yourself for me?”

“Christ, Beatrice.” He huffed out a kind of half laugh, half groan. “I’ll do anything for you.”

He dropped his hand with the condom to the bed and the other, the one that was already where she wanted it, changed purpose. It went from an impersonal, functional grip to a looser hold, his fingers curling all the way around his shaft, then sliding lazily from root to tip and back again. His eyes closed as his breath hissed out, and Bea had to lock her knees again to keep from melting into a puddle. Her nipples were two hard points against her tee, scraping erotically, causing the ache between her legs to become a throb.

“Like this?” he asked, his eyes flicking open, spearing her with a look so full of desire, Bea felt as if she could drown in it.

She nodded. Her throat too dry to form words. Exactly like that.

“How long?”

She swallowed, wet her lips. “How long can you last?”

“As long as you need me to.”

But the strain in his voice, the taut bow of his back, the bulge of the veins in his neck were telling. His hand was still a dirty, dirty spectacle, moving lazily up and down his shaft, but he was clearly fighting hard to keep his arousal in check. Bea was flattered by his need to give her what she wanted, and she admired his resolve, his stamina. For damn sure she was going to test it at some stage. But for now, she really just needed to be on him.

“It’s okay, cowboy, easy there,” she relented, still torn between the show and some action. “You can suit up now.” Then she removed his hat, whipped her T-shirt over her head, and crammed the hat back on again.

Austin neither removed his hand nor put the condom on as he ogled her breasts. “Holy shit,” he muttered, staring as hard at her as she had stared at him. “Beatrice…you are fucking sensational.”

Beatrice knew her boobs were a bit on the small side and were disproportional to her wider hips, butt, and thighs, but in this moment, she believed Austin 100 percent. In this moment, she felt like a freaking supermodel. It gave her the courage to push down her sweats and her panties, too, and kick out of them, just as Austin had done, and then to stand there in front of him and let him look his fill.

Until she remembered she hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about the state of her hoo-ha. Crap. A surge of heat flushed her cheeks, and it took all her willpower not to shove her hands in front of her bikini area and stammer out an apology.

Maybe he hadn’t noticed?

Jesus, don’t be an idiot, Beatrice. Of course he’d noticed. It could probably be noticed from space. He was staring right at her, and she had the Amazon forest growing between her legs.

She knew from her headful of useless advertising stats that there was an entire generation of men out there who didn’t realize women came with pubic hair, thanks to porn and the pressure from advertising, and Austin probably fell smack in that demographic.

Shooting her an impatient look as he quickly donned the condom, he said, “Saddle up, cowgirl. This stallion is champing at the bit.”

God yes, a stallion. Bea couldn’t have described him better had she tried. All fit and honed and lean, solid muscles rippling beneath taut flesh, nostrils flaring.

The hard length of his arousal proud and potent even confined in a thin layer of latex.

“Beatriss, honey,” he said on a low kind of growl, “you’re killing me.”

And he was looking at her—every single inch of her—from his hat to her knees and lingering at all the things in between, and he clearly liked what he saw, and it was just the liberation Bea needed. Suddenly, she didn’t give a rat’s ass about her lack of grooming. In fact, fuck grooming. Fuck…waxing and plucking and lasering and all the other painful, expensive hair-removal crap women felt pressured to do so their bodies were more palatable for men.

Yep—from now on, she was going the full bush, and men could take it or leave it.

With that decided, Bea put a knee on the bed and crawled, in what she hoped was a sophisticated, feline kind of way, toward Austin’s reclined form. She didn’t know if she pulled it off, but the way his eyes roved all over as she advanced led her to believe he appreciated it anyway, which, in turn, did funny things to her breathing. When her knee nudged his hip, she halted, sat back on her haunches, and barely stopped herself from undulating in a lazy feline stretch, pushing her chest out as his gaze settled on her breasts, her nipples reacting shamelessly to his ogling.

The air between them churned with the ragged noise of their breathing. Leaning forward a little, Bea raised her hand, bringing her index finger to his mouth. His lips parted, and she traced them, remembering how he’d tasted. Her finger trailed down his chin to his throat, his windpipe undulating beneath the caress as he swallowed.

Trekking lower still, she swirled the tip of her finger around the hollow at the base of his throat before tracing lower. She paused at the midpoint between his nipples, deciding which way to go, aware of his gaze on her, of the husky timbre of his breath—and hers—of the tension in his body as if he, too, was on a knife’s edge over her next move.

That kind of power was heady, and it flushed through her system, supercharging her arousal. Decision made, her index finger trailed left and turned lazy circles around and around and around the nipple.

He muttered a word that would have shocked her grandmother all the way to the roots of her hair as his eyes fluttered shut, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip, his hands fisting the sheet. A low hum of satisfaction joined the buzz of anticipation coursing through her system. It felt good to be able to touch his body like this. To be free to do as she pleased. To be unconstrained.

A few weeks ago, her life had been constrained in ways she hadn’t even realized, and now here she was, in the middle of the goddamn country—naked—with a guy—also naked—she’d known for a week, touching him freely. Causing him to mutter filthy-sexy words and his body to draw tight as a bow.

Her hand slid away, and she watched his stubbly face as his eyes drifted open. “You just going to play with me, honey?”

A smile hovered on his mouth, so Bea didn’t think he was objecting, but it did raise the question. “Could I?” Because seriously, while every nerve in her body was stretched taut in anticipation of the first orgasm she’d have with another human being in a very long time, this—just touching this man—was a climax of a different sort.

The tactile kind that was stimulating on a whole other level.

“Absolutely.” He swallowed, his gaze locking with hers. “I am at your disposal.”

His words, loaded with innuendo, slid in between the muscle fibers buried deep inside her pelvis and licked, long and slow.

“And as far as I know,” he added with a wry smile, “no dude’s dick has ever actually dropped off from a prolonged boner.”

Bea glanced at the dick in question, looking flushed and potent and all dressed up, waiting for her, and a hot wave of arousal surged through her system. Urgent SOS signals from her clitoris demanded she quit screwing around with the foreplay and just get on top already.

“Maybe not,” Bea said, returning her attention to his face. “But we probably shouldn’t press our luck. You know”—she smiled—“just in case.”

“Right.” He grinned. “’Cause that would be—”

“A tragedy.”

“Of epic proportions.”

Bea smiled. “You ready for this?”

“Honey,” he said, his gaze locking on hers, “I’ve been ready since the day I saw you eating ice cream outside Annie’s.”

And damn if her heart didn’t do a funny little triple tap in her chest. No twenty-five-year-old should have such a way with words.

With their gazes still locked, Beatrice rose from her haunches and slid her leg over him. His breath hissed out and his hands went to her rounded hips as the length of him slid between her slippery folds. His groan, deep and low, was followed swiftly by her own gasp as tissues screamingly sensitized by their foreplay reacted to the thick nudge of his head, and it took all her willpower not to rub it over her clit for a few moments as she lifted and notched him at her entrance.

With his fingers biting into her hips and his blue gaze boring a hole into hers, Bea sank slowly down, taking him inside her bit by bit. Her heartbeat roared through her ears and she panted hard, her mouth parted as his length disappeared, inch after delicious inch, watching his face intently as she swallowed him up. He slid in easily, and Bea took a moment to savor the stretch as he bottomed out.

She pulsed around him, adjusting to his girth, her entire body one giant throb as nerve endings flicked on like switches, sizzling and ready, humming in anticipation. When her eyes finally drifted open, Bea found him watching her, his blue gaze heated but lazy, like he’d been enjoying the show.

“Beatriss…” His fingers tightened on her hips again as his eyes took in his hat and her mouth and her breasts and her belly button and continued all the way down to where they were joined. It was a slow and thorough perusal, and Bea felt it all the way to the bottom of her heart. “You belong on top of me.”

It wasn’t said with brashness or bravado. There was no possession implied. It was just a quiet statement of the moment, and it turned Bea to mush.

Gah! This man and his words.

“Now what?” he asked.

Bea dragged herself back from the place where all his lovely words were being stored, because it was rodeo time. Using an index finger, she pushed the brim of his hat back a little and tossed her head. She smiled then, leaning in a little as she planted her left hand on his right shoulder. “Now I’m going to ride you long and slow.”

“Because you haven’t tortured me enough already?”

She smiled. “Lay back and enjoy.”

He gave an exaggerated, resigned sigh, but there was a wicked kind of glint in his eyes as he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

She almost laughed at his choice of phrase—like she needed to be any more turned on. Steadying herself for a beat, Bea rocked on top of him, her breathing sucking away at the potent stimulation.

“Oh, fuuuck,” he muttered, and Bea couldn’t have put it any better herself.

Gripping his shoulder harder, she rocked some more. Then, leaning into her hand for leverage, she lifted off him halfway, feeling every damn inch of it. “Oh God,” she gasped, staring at him incredulously as the tight, slick glove of her squeezed the hard jut of him before she lowered again, taking him all the way to the hilt.

Surely sex had never been this good?

“Yeah.” He grunted as she rocked on him a little to ease the delicious burn. “I know.”

It had been Bea’s plan to wring this out for as long as she could. To undulate like a belly dancer on top of him, like a snake charmer weaving a spell for a cobra, until Austin was begging her to come. But hell if she could do that now. Her months of abstinence had caught up with her in an instant, and the urge to come was a wild beat in her pulse, overriding all her fancy plans.

All she wanted was the shortcut to O town. Screw the scenic route.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t think long and slow is an option for me right now,” she admitted.

He gritted his teeth. “Thank Christ for that.”

Bea laughed. “Hold on to me tight—I don’t want to fall off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and his fingers splayed wide on her hips, caging her securely.

And then there was nothing else but to do as she promised and fuck him. No slow and long. No teasing. No belly dancing or snake charming. Just leaning into both her hands gripping his shoulders, rising up on her knees and flexing her pelvis, pumping her hips up and down his shaft, performing hasty withdrawals until he was all but out, then seating herself again, taking all of him in one smooth snap of her hips, sending a shudder through her pelvis and a fork of lightning up her spine.

He took it all—everything. Laying there with his body sprung tight as a drum, his jaw tense, denying his pleasure with a grunt at every snap of her hips, his breath quickening, his fingers rhythmically squeezing the flesh of her hips but holding her fast, his gaze fixed hungrily on the rock of her breasts and the wide gash of her mouth as she moaned and gasped. But still letting her call the shots, letting her use his body for her own gratification and hanging on for the ride.

Christ, who knew taking charge in bed could be this good? This…heady. No wonder men thought they ruled the freaking earth.

The hum in her pelvis built to a buzz, then to a sizzle as everything that had coiled and tightened started to melt and swirl. Darts of sensation fired like shooting stars from her clitoris, spreading through her pelvis and ass, furrowing under her skin to her inner thighs and her spine and her nipples. “Austin.” She clawed at his shoulders as the ground below her started to dissolve.

“It’s okay,” he panted, his hands sliding to palm her ass now. “I got you.”

He did, but it didn’t help, because the floor was shifting, and she could see a rainbow in a waterfall in her mind’s eye—hell, she could feel the mist from it on her face—and it was glowing bright, pulsing with promise, but she couldn’t quite reach… It was like there was a barrier between her and it and she couldn’t quite get her fingers there.

Rocking her hips faster, Bea chased the sensation, dragging a groan from Austin’s lips. But the ground just kept on shifting like quicksand beneath her feet and the waterfall shimmered like a mirage beyond her grasp and she cried out in frustration.

“Beatrice?”

His blue eyes blazed with fever, a dull flush to his cheeks betraying the degree of his arousal as their gazes locked. “I can’t…” she panted.

And then, as if he knew exactly what she needed, he lifted his head, his lips seeking and finding a nipple and sucking it into his hot, hot mouth. His fingers, just as deft, slid into the slickness between her legs, straight to the engorged bud of her clitoris.

“God, Beatrice,” he muttered around her nipple, “you’re so wet.”

She moaned at the dual stimuli. “I’ve been wet since I met you.”

But they were all the words she was capable of as his finger stroked in just the right place and his teeth pressed into the puckered ripeness of her nipple and the ground firmed up and she rushed headlong into the throbbing rainbow of light, her hips snapping to a halt as the colors burst into a kaleidoscope of hues, bathing her body in fat droplets of pleasure as she clenched hard around him, pulsing and shuddering through her orgasm.

He took up the slack then, taking over where she left off, one arm banded around her back, gathering her close as he relinquished his mouthful of nipple to bury his face in her throat and thrust. Bea gasped as he plowed through the undulating walls of her sex, stoking her excitement and her orgasm higher.

“Austin!”

She clung to his shoulders as he did it again and again, prolonging her pleasure and clearly stoking his own, his big frame starting to tremble as his pants grew rougher, hot puffs of air licking like tongues on her throat.

“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, his thrusts losing rhythm for a few moments before halting abruptly, the arm around her banding like a vise. “I’m coming.”

“Yes.” A bloom of triumph joined her dizzying heights of pleasure. “Yes, yes, yes.”

And her hips took over again, riding him through his orgasm and the last vestiges of hers, until they were both spent and gasping in each other’s arms, and Austin fell backward onto the mattress, taking her with him, knocking his hat off her head in the process.

“I hope you’ve got more than one condom,” Bea said, her breathing erratic, “because I’m going to want to do that again to make sure it wasn’t some kind of freak one-off.”

He chuckled, also breathing heavily. “There was nothing freak about that, Beatriss. That was divine. But never fear, I have two more to prove it to you.”

Bea, sprawled on top of him with her hair fanned out over his chest, smiled. He was still inside her and his hands were a solid warmth on the small of her back. Her nose was pressed into the hollow at his throat and her heart pounded over the exact same spot his was pounding. It felt good—right—here like this, but she wondered if she should get off him.

“Am I too heavy?” she asked.

One time, a guy—a one-night stand—had responded to that question with a bit before he’d moved in a way that tipped her unceremoniously off him, so she should know better than to ask such a leading question. But his arms tightened around her and his, “You’re perfect,” had Bea’s heart skipping a beat.

She smiled, pressing her lips into that delicious little hollow, her eyes shutting as his hand trekked from the small of her back to her hair, running his fingers through it, a wave of goose bumps prickling along her scalp and down her neck. She opened her eyes to a loose lock of her feathery hair falling lightly against his chest, and she felt a thrill all over again at her bold new color.

“You want to eat, drink, sleep, watch zombies with me, or…” She undulated her internal muscles against him. “Go again?”

He gave a half chuckle, half groan as his hand clamped down tight on the small of her back. “Definitely yes to the last one. I might just need a few more minutes’ recovery time.”

Bea made a pfft kind of noise. “I thought you young guys had all the stamina.”

Laughing, he said, “I generally need more than two minutes. In the meantime, I like all the other options. Although I had planned on asking you to go with me to line dancing at Jack’s tonight.”

Bea lifted her head with difficulty, given it felt as leaden with sexual satisfaction as the rest of her. Not trusting it to stay upright, she propped her chin on her curled fist so she could keep it in place as she regarded him. “That would require putting on clothes, right?”

He nodded, a smile on his lips. “Yes.”

She scrunched up her face. “Seems a shame?”

“Yes.” He leaned in and kissed her nose. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“So…how about…” She shifted, easing off him, shuddering a little as he slid free of her before settling on her side on the mattress facing him. “You go ditch that condom, I go pop some popcorn, and we watch TV and pet the cat for a while?”

“Mmm.” He inhaled deeply, the kind of inhalation that spoke of bone-deep content. “You had me at popcorn.”

Bea smiled and scrambled off the bed and to her feet. She went to reach for her clothes, as was her custom in front of a man she’d been intimate with only once, but then stopped herself. Nope. Screw it. He hadn’t seemed put off by her body prior to having sex with her, so she was damned if she was going to cover it up now.

Pie calories and all, this was her body. It carried her where she wanted to go, it performed complex tasks every day, it was strong and healthy. And she was done with wishing it was different.

“Meet you back here,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

“Uh-huh,” he agreed but didn’t move, obviously checking out her ass as she pulled aside the plastic concertinaed curtain and walked away. Bea made sure to put a little extra swing in her step.

“Tease,” he called after her.

“Pervert,” she replied, so freaking happy, she practically skipped.

…

Austin’s watch told him it was just after five the following morning as he woke in the best way it was possible for him to wake—wrapped around a soft, warm, naked woman. His nose was buried in the fluffy lightness of her hair, his arm was tucked around her waist, and his regular five a.m. boner was pressed into the soft cushion of her ass. Gentle light pushed in through the window over the sink as he lay cocooned in the smell of popcorn, clean hair, and dirty sex.

They’d done the wild thing twice more last night, burning up the sheets and scandalizing Princess, who looked at them like they were the animals. And he’d like nothing more than to go again—clearly, he was up for it—but he had to be at work in an hour, and he had to head out to the ranch for a clean uniform first.

After contemplating just slipping out and leaving Beatrice a note, Austin decided to wake her instead. He wasn’t sure how she was going to feel about this in the cold light of day—she seemed like the kind of woman who analyzed everything to within an inch of its life despite her protestations of turning over a new leaf—and he didn’t want her to think he’d freaked out and left.

“Beatriss, honey,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck, dropping a string of kisses down her nape, inhaling deeply, determined to take the scent of her neck with him wherever he went today.

“Mmm,” she murmured all low and sleepy, shifting against him, which caused a delicious jolt to his groin as her ass slid against his erection.

“I have to go,” he whispered as he continued to nuzzle the point where her neck sloped to her shoulder.

“No,” she muttered sleepily, her hand sliding up and anchoring around his neck, her fingers laced into the hair at his nape. “Don’t want you to go.”

Austin chuckled, more than happy with the possessive feel of her arm. He didn’t want to go, either. He never wanted to leave this bed. “I start work in an hour and I need to go home for a clean uniform first.”

“Stay for a bit longer,” she cajoled, snuggling back into him, rubbing her ass against his morning glory. “I have somewhere you can put that.”

His eyes fluttered closed, inhaling sharply at the delicious kind of torture. “There are no condoms left,” he said and smiled at her low, disapproving growl.

She rubbed against him some more. “That is a shame. I am exceptionally horny right now.”

Austin almost groaned out loud at her sleepy pronouncement. His dick surged. He could certainly relate. Glancing at his watch again, he did a quick calculation. There wasn’t time for the full smorgasbord his body craved, but maybe there was a way he could help her out. “Oh yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” she said on a sigh.

“How horny?” he asked, his lips trekking up the side of her neck as the hand on her belly moved south.

“Let’s just say I have a new appreciation for rabbits.” And then she murmured, “Mmm,” and arched her back as his hand crept lower and breathed, “Oh god,” as his fingers slid between her legs.

“How fast can you come, Beatrice?” Austin whispered in her ear.

Her hand tightened around his neck and she whimpered. “Austin…you don’t have to… It’s fine.”

He grinned. “I want to.”

“In that case—” She gasped and arched her back as Austin found the hard nub of her clitoris. “I doubt it’ll take long at all.”

“Then relax.” He swiped his tongue against the bony prominence behind her ear. “And allow me.”

She made an indistinct kind of noise before going boneless in his arms except for her top leg, which she abducted, resting it against his top thigh, opening herself wide for him. Austin took complete advantage of the invitation, sliding two fingers inside her tight, slick heat as his thumb worked her clit.

Her long, low moan was all the encouragement he needed, and soon, true to her word, she was panting and squirming and riding his hand, her ass against his rock-hard dick the sweetest kind of torture as his fingers rubbed and plundered. There was a drumbeat in his chest and a cyclonic roar inside his head and a furnace between their slicked-up bodies, and Austin felt like the Lord of Orgasms as she flew apart in his arms.

He reveled in the cries of ecstasy torn from her throat and the way she shuddered and the sharp sting of his scalp as she twisted her fingers into the hair at his nape. He felt fucking invincible as he stroked her until her leg flopped down and she begged him to stop.

Austin smiled, his lips nuzzling between her shoulder and neck. “And my work here is done.” He pressed a kiss to the spot as he eased his arms from around her and rolled onto his back. “I gotta go,” he told the ceiling.

He was going to be late. Arlo would be pissed. But with the long stretch of her naked back open to his view, Austin’s give-a-damn was temporarily busted. This sight was worth an ass-chewing from his boss any day.

“If I could move even one muscle, I’d try and stop you again.”

He chuckled, sliding his hand onto her shoulder and squeezing it one last time before kicking back the covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, because if he didn’t make a move, he’d be here all day, and he couldn’t leave all the bad-guy catching up to Arlo. “I’ll see you this afternoon after work.”

“Mmm,” she said sleepily as she snuggled on her side. Austin pulled the covers up over her, wishing like hell he could climb back in there with her. “Sweet dreams,” he whispered.

“Are made of cheese,” she replied in a drowsy voice, and he chuckled as he reached for the plastic curtain and dragged it open to locate his clothes, which still lay strewn on the floor.

Princess, who had decided his shirt was a good spot to curl up, meowed at him indignantly as he shooed her off it and grabbed it up. It was wrinkled and covered in cat hair, as were his pants, but they would have to do for now. He dressed quickly before locating his wallet, keys, phone, and hat—which would forever remind him of Beatrice going all cowgirl—all while the cat meowed and wound itself around Austin’s legs.

“Fine.” He shook his head at the insistent animal as he grabbed a can of what he knew to be a very expensive brand of cat food from the stash Mrs. Jennings had given him. “But if I get fired, I’m blaming you.”

He quickly dumped the fishy-smelling contents onto a saucer he found in the sink, leaving the open can by the saucer so Beatrice would know the cat had been fed. Austin crouched down and stroked along the cat’s back while she ate. “You might be the Princess around here, but she’s the mistress, you hear? You look after her, okay? Or I’m only going to buy you the cheap stuff when this runs out.”

Princess stopped eating and glanced up at him, regarding him with her one good eye before she meowed what Austin was fairly sure was her consent and went back to her breakfast.

With one more pat, Austin stood, casting a last look at a sleeping Beatrice, suddenly insanely jealous of a cat who would get to spend all day with her…