Not hard—but not so gentle, either—and I’m learning that I like that. I gasp, arching into him, and Alex swallows the gasp, mouth moving against mine. It isn’t a sweet kiss. It’s an explosion of relief, frustration, pressure, reprimand. Desire. My hands track up his chest, greedy, squeezing his shoulders, nails skating over his scalp. He shivers.
I tug the bill of his ball cap. “I hate how hot I’m finding you in this hat. Why is it so sexy?”
“Welcome to my world,” he mutters roughly against my skin, punishing me with bites, then soothing them with his tongue. “Everything about you. You’re a real fucking tease, and I like that, too.” He raises his arms so that I can tug his shirt over his head. “Wish I didn’t.”
I trail a finger from his lower lip down his chin, throat, chest, stomach, which jumps back from my touch, muscles constricting. He watches me fathomlessly for a moment, then returns his mouth to mine again, hot and demanding, tongue sliding me open. We kiss like we want to destroy each other, take over the other person’s body. “Lying on your couch, thinking about the two of you in bed,” he’s saying, crumpling the hem of my shirt in his fist, riding it up. “Torturing me on purpose.”
I palm him between his legs and he moans, pressing closer. I squeeze. “Get down here and touch me,” I command through clenched teeth.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to do whatever it was you were thinking about while lying on my couch.”
Alex picks me up and hauls me over his shoulder, so fast that all I can squeak out is an “Oof,” then jumps down from the truck. Carries me into the field and lowers me onto the long, soft grass.
Alex rolls my shirt over my head, unclasps my bra. Pins his hips against mine and slowly thrusts upward. He fills his hands with my breasts, eyes dark with frenzy, the hard length of him insistent against the seam of my shorts. I unzip them and shove them down a few inches, and he makes another deep groaning noise. My hands slip into the back pockets of his jeans to bring him closer, closer, riding him against me to the rhythm I want. “Yes,” I sigh. “Yes.”
His tongue swirls around one of my nipples. I hold his head in place, unbearably turned on by the sight of his tongue gliding over my flesh, beading the pink crest until it’s hard and swollen. His other hand is at work on my other breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers. Then he’s sucking, and I see stars, his hot mouth torturously slow, dragging it with careful teeth into the cooling night. Goosebumps scatter. Then he’s sucking deeply again, timing his thrusts so that he notches his hard length against my clit right when I’m already delirious with pleasure.
He cups me through my panties where I’m throbbing, making my legs jump, go watery. “Please,” he rasps. “I’m dying to watch you come.”
I can’t think, undulating.
He grits out another “Please.”
“Yes.”
“Hands or mouth?”
I barely hear him, I’m so narrowed in on chasing the pleasure. “Yes.”
Before I know what’s happening, he’s rolled us so that he’s beneath me, guiding me astride him, lifting me higher up his body, fingertips digging into the backs of my thighs. I raise a questioning brow when my legs are clamped around either side of his neck.
“Come here,” he says, pitch low, sliding the wet cotton strip of my underwear aside with one finger, another dragging up my center. He carefully inches me forward, guiding my body down, down, until I’m hovering over his mouth. “You’ll come here.” I don’t want to apply all of my weight but he demands it, and the first lick of his tongue has me concerned I may not survive this night.
“Don’t you dare be gentle,” he orders when I rise back up so he can spread me with his fingers. “I’ve waited for you, for this. You’d better ride me like you mean it.”
His hooded gaze falls between my thighs, where the heat rushes, and I do what he says.
I seat myself on his mouth and begin to move, and it’s a good thing we’re hidden by the grass, by the night, because I might be too far gone to care if we’re visible from the road. My nipples are achingly hard where his mouth made them wet and then exposed them to the cooling air. A breeze stirs, ears freezing, lips full, warm, and roughed up from his stubble, clit throbbing. I don’t think, don’t see, don’t hear. There’s only Alex and his tongue, the pleasure he wrings, his hands guiding me up and down, back and forth.
When I’m close, I clench, and stop. Ease off.
“What are—” he begins as I tear my underwear off and turn around, unbuckling his pants. He jerks involuntarily when my hands skate across the hard ridge in his jeans. “Romina.” He can barely speak. “If you—”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes, if you want to. But you don’t have to. I don’t want you to feel—”
I unzip him, shove his jeans down to his knees, and take him into my mouth.
Alex hisses. Thrusts. Moans. I suck, and his tongue finds my body again. He adds a finger. I work faster. We turn onto our sides.
Another finger.
I wrap a hand around the base of him, silky and pulsing. Alex pumps gently into my mouth, as restrained as he can achieve when I know he wants to go deeper, faster, while I rock against his tongue and hand. He’s thick and hard, so hard, I can feel he’s ready, trying to hold it back.
Three fingers, and I nearly black out.
My lips are a tight seal around him. I hear his heavy breathing as he bumps the back of my throat; his fingers curl deep inside me, hitting that spot with wonderful rhythm as he begins to suck my clit, steady and relentless. I swirl my tongue around the head of his shaft one last time and he tenses, then shudders. Releases. Knowing I made him come is what sends me over the edge completely. We’re gripping each other’s bodies tight, tight, pressing so hard, oh that pressure is delicious, I am tethered to him, I am floating.
His eyes are fever-bright when I twist to face him again. He stares at me, then up at the stars. There’s a deep pang that sparks alive in the center of my chest, radiating outward. He catches my hands when I sway dizzily, interlocking our fingers. I have missed him terribly, I have expended so much energy suppressing it, and I can’t suppress it anymore. Emotions dear and tender and carried close to the heart are flowing over uncontrollably, streaming everywhere, from me into him.
I swallow, blinking back tears. Alex says nothing, only watches. Lifts a hand to my cheek, stroking softly. “That escalated fast. What are you thinking now?” I ask, voice a little wobbly.
“That I was going to sell this truck,” he replies, “but now I can’t. We put a dent in the roof.”
I laugh. He grins.
Slips his fingers into my hair. “That you’re beautiful,” he says, delicately. “That what we’re doing is probably illegal because we’re naked on private property, and I’m pretty sure there’s a speed trap by the bar a mile down the road.”
Nothing wakes you up quite like the prospect of a cop shining his flashlight at your bare tits. I remove myself from him and go hopping around for my bra. “I am so out of shape,” I lament. “My butt muscles are going to be feeling this for a while.”
He has the nerve to look proud.
I shove his jeans at him. “Look at us, in the middle of nowhere, getting each other off. Who’d have thought?”
“Anybody with eyes. Leave the underwear,” he says.
“In a field? Why?”
He snatches my underwear before I can step into them, stashing them in his jacket pocket.
“You’ve turned into a real deviant, King.” I shiver, wishing I’d brought a cardigan to dinner. “It’s gotten cold.”
“All of my blood supply went to my dick and now I can’t feel my hands or see colors anymore.” He ties his shoelaces. “If you ask me what my middle name is, chances are I can’t tell you.”
“Louis.”
He hauls me against his chest, chin on top of my head, and I reach up to pat his face, feeling the skin stretch with a smile. “Tell me what you’re thinking about,” he hums against me.
“I’m thinking about how good I feel. What a fan I am of your arm muscles. That I’m freezing.” I full-body shiver. “The last time I was this cold, it was when Luna, Morgan, Trevor, and I went camping, and the floor of my tent turned out not to be waterproof. Woke up at three a.m. soaking wet.”
“I can’t imagine camping with Trevor.” Alex’s tone is grim.
“Nah, it’s a lot of fun, actually. I mean, he never comes prepared with the usual camping equipment, completely forgets food and bug spray and all that. But he’s the first person in a situation to jump into a lake with all his clothes on, first person to explore a random cave that may or may not be safe. Never a dull moment.”
“And Morgan,” he adds dryly. “Camping with Morgan, mm?”
“Oh, don’t be jealous, we’re just friends. Besides, I’m sure you’ve been camping before. You know there isn’t anything sexy about mosquitoes and the smell of dead fish in the air.”
“It would still be sexy for me,” he says, eyes sweeping my face. Regarding me like I’m a star that fell to Earth and crash-landed in his backyard. “Name any condition, and I would still want to be all over you.”
“Okay. Imagine we’re in a sewer.”
Alex barks a laugh. “Yeah, sure. Bring a few candles and the dripping water sounds could almost be romantic.” He taps my nose. “Nobody makes me laugh like you do. You know?”
I do.
“Remember when it started to rain while we were doing the scavenger hunt?”
His eyebrow lifts a fraction. “Yeah?”
“You were looking very delicious, and I was mad about it. I wanted to lick the raindrops off you.”
Alex’s hold on my waist tightens. He blinks, leaning away slightly so that he can gather his bearings. “Wow. That is . . . that is hot.” He pauses. “I would not have stopped you, if you’d tried. I wanted to kiss you so bad, Romina. It was physically painful to hold myself back. Even in the bakery, when you were trying to antagonize me, I would’ve happily had my way with you.” He gestures, envisioning it. “Rolling all over the cupcakes.”
I take it a step further, trying to make him smile again. “I would have mauled you on Lovisa Coe’s grave.”
Success! His roaring laugh makes me swell. “With Millicent Halifax watching.”
“She needs new material to gossip about, anyway. And it might scandalize Lovisa enough to get her to stop disrespecting everyone’s windows. She loves to slam them.”
He toys with my hair, my necklace, the strap of my bra beneath my shirtsleeve.
With our sexual frustration blunted, I think we’ll climb back into the truck, but he grabs me by the hips, straddling me over his thigh. Kisses me slowly.
“I like this,” he murmurs. I can tell it costs him to admit it. That he’s afraid of my reaction, maybe a little bit afraid of me.
“What took you so long?” I reply, and he punishes me with a nip of my earlobe.
Kissing Alex is unbelievable, in more ways than one. I’d thought the Alex chapter of my life was long-closed, never dreamed I’d have his skin on mine again, feel the brush of his mouth. This is right, this is right echoes neon in my bloodstream. My palms coast up his jaw; his eyes shine, heart jumping. I can see traces of the boy I fell in love with, but the man he’s grown into has spun my heart like a top. He’s so good at handling me, it’s scary. I might be a little afraid of him, too.
The break in our timeline hasn’t dulled what we had together. If anything, it’s left me ravenous.