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Heather
Strong arms wrapped around me. Muscles, hard and formed, not suggested bumps, tightened as I nestled against his warm body. No sounds came to me. Not a smell, a sight, nor a taste.
All my senses were locked into just this one.
I felt him.
I felt it all.
The heat that poured off him and coaxed me to never let go. The firm solidity of his hard body, honed with fitness that he didn’t only ooze masculinity. He just was. All man. Formidable like a solid support that would never fail to keep me safe.
This deep, soul-satisfying comfort seeped through me. From the contact of his skin against mine, his limbs tangled with mine, and the promising pressure of that huge bulge poking into my stomach...
I was surrounded, but not suffocating.
I was embraced, but not confined.
For the first time in my life, in all my existence, I realized how much of a liar I had been all along.
I was a cuddler.
I sighed, deeply, burrowing closer as if no hug could ever be tight enough.
Hair tickled my face, but I didn’t want to brush it away. Angling higher, nestling closer and keeping this fit against this hot, hard body, I tried to fuse myself to him.
Never before had I felt this secure. Never before had I belonged, like a matching puzzle piece that just fit without explanation.
No. You’re dreaming.
The semi-lucid thought didn’t last. Vague and surreal, I refused to let that thought sink in.
He exhaled, long and slow like he wasn’t just a hulking, strong man but a lazy animal. A predator, for sure, but at rest, relaxing as I was.
One big hand lay on my back. Or was that the weight of the blanket.
You’re dreaming...
Again, the clear thought didn’t click.
Instead, seeking more of the delicious burn of his body under mine, his warmth pressing against my side, I surrendered to the exciting sensations like the tug in my belly, the pricks of awareness in my hard nipples.
Arousal.
That was what it was.
Images shifted in my hazy mind’s eye. Actions changed. Bodies moved, skin rubbed, bare in an exquisite friction. That hard prominence gave me some relief, but the more I ground against him, pressing my core there to get the full hit of contact, it cleared. The naughty but oh-so-good hints of arousal and pleasure seemed further from reach.
Like wisps, vanishing.
It had been too long. Relief was nonexistent in my life. Pleasure was a forgotten rarity. I’d only known hardships and abuse, mental torture and grievances.
No. Don’t go.
Nothing moved. His hot body stayed there, but mentally, I lost the sensation of this connection that threaded me to him through the night.
I want...
I slid higher, seeking him.
I want more.
I moved my head, searching for this hard lips that smirked at me too often.
I want you.
Pressing my lips to his, I moaned at the tipping point of caving. I gave up. I forfeited in this fight to resist him. Sluggish but charged by lust, I kissed him again.
And again.
Like the rest of him, his lips were firm. But also soft. Hard and unrelenting, but also so smooth and addicting.
More.
I sighed, turning my head to have a better contact without smashing my nose too hard.
With a jerk, he reacted. It was a knee-jerk impulse, and it kicked me into snapping fully awake.
What the—
I reared back slightly, wrenching my eyelids open. Finding him looking at me, with just as wide-open eyes full of surprise and confusion, he breathed hard.
What in the fuck?
My stunned shock didn’t last long. Embarrassment should’ve come kicking me into a blush. But it didn’t. It couldn’t.
The second he dropped his stare to my lips, the ones I’d just crushed against his, I was done for.
Too sleepy to be quicker, too hungry to care about what was right or wrong, I fell back to the lulling, drugging comfort I’d felt in my dream.
I crushed my mouth back against his. He’d moved in the same, synchronized effort, lowering his head toward mine. Again, I was treated to the shock of kissing him. Heat spiraled through me, not only from the arousal overtaking me but also the pure thrill of taking a risk like this, with him. Desire controlled me, and it was without thought, without conscious plans, that I lifted my hand to frame his face.
A deep growl ripped from his lips, but I didn’t stop. I swallowed his needy, guttural sound down as I parted my lips. I couldn’t break apart from him. A separation felt wrong. Clinging to him and desperate for more of his bold taste, I moaned and gave him access to slide his tongue into my mouth and explore.
Once more, he made that sexy sound. Of need. Of unbridled lust and want.
I kept my hand on his head, securing him right where I wanted him. The bristle of his beard was different. The dominating push of his mouth over mine was hot. And the urgency that he showed me rivaled how badly I needed him.
Rolling me to the right, encouraging me onto my back, he shoved his body against and over mine. Not once did our lips leave the other’s. Not for a second did we pause in kissing like there was no tomorrow, like oxygen mattered at all.
Underneath him, as he braced himself with his forearms pushing on the mattress, he kept me close and hovered over me. I was pinned. Sandwiched between the bulk of his body and the softness of the bed, and I couldn’t imagine giving up a moment of this pleasure. Of this security and comfort.
He lowered his left hand, down my side and over my ass. Every inch of his touch burned me. All his movements fueled me to letting go of all the common sense hidden in the back of my mind. As he cupped the top of my thigh, he hooked my leg higher to wrap it around his waist.
Oh.
Fuck yeah.
This.
I felt him everywhere. In my tingling lips he brushed his over with demanding pressure. In my aching breasts where my nipples beaded harder against his naked chest. My cami was so thin, and my sweater was gone, likely shoved off as I tossed and turned in sleep. Between my legs, parted wider now with him holding my leg up, I enjoyed that growing tension and pressure. He ground down, rubbing against me. And I reacted in kind, trying to dry hump him the best I could with the bulk of his body over mine.
We weren’t supposed to do this.
A dream was a dream. Not a prompt to reenact it in reality.
It was on me to analyze the sexy scenes I’d been waking up to, not project them on him.
But it was impossible not to.
We’d declared this “arrangement” to be simple and chaste. No touching. We’d agreed to that last night. When I got into bed with him, we’d started on that path, sticking to opposite sides of the bed with generous inches of a buffer between us.
Somehow, through the night, I’d gravitated toward him. Or perhaps he’d eased closer to me and I hadn’t woken. Regardless of how we’d come to the middle, we were entwined with each other. Arms hugging, legs wedged together, bodies flush, and now...
Our tongues dueling for a longer taste. Our mouths sealed together to prolong this kiss.
No.
You’re not dreaming.
This was me, letting my desire control my actions.
This was us, both lapsing in our mutual loathing for each other.
He growled, squeezing so his fingers dug into the flesh of my ass. The tip of his digits put that much more pressure on me, that much slower to my pussy where I felt the smear of my juices, so aroused that I was dripping.
Harsh, shrieking beeps sounded in my ear. To the side, on the nightstand, his alarm clock blasted an interruption.
Stop!
I wrenched back, panting and gasping at him with wild eyes. If his clock hadn’t gone off, I wasn’t sure how much longer I would have dismissed my rational thinking. I might not have wanted to stop at all, too carried away on this sudden lust attack.
“What the hell are we doing?” I screeched. I couldn’t accuse him of kissing me. Nor could I take the fault and word it as though I’d made this mistake on my own.
We’d declared each other the enemy. We were not supposed to kiss or cuddle or—
Argh! What the hell is wrong with me?
He reared back too as I stumbled out of the sheets and blankets.
“Wait—” He reached out to me as I frantically tried to escape at the same time he leaned over to smack his hand on the snooze button.
“No. No wait.” He couldn’t possibly expect me to hold on and want more. We shouldn’t have even started this at all.
“Caref—” He got onto his knees, crawling after me.
Too late. I wasn’t careful. I was freaked out at the fact I could’ve made such a colossal mistake of kissing him, all because I’d woken up horny from dreams about being in bed with a man. Caught up in the mess of the bedding, I fell to the floor.
“Are you—” He slanted over the bed, lower his hand to help me up.
“No!” I fought the sheets and blanket as he kneeled on the bed. If he touched me... I wasn’t sure if I’d slap him away or slink right back into his embrace.
“I— We had no business doing that.”
“I know. We shouldn’t have.”
I blinked, not strong enough to make eye contact with him in the face of my panic and horror. Fighting to stand and kicking his linens aside, I wrenched my sweater free from the blob, mildly surprised he was agreeing with me.
“I didn’t intend...” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“Never again,” I warned. Holding a finger at him, I checked that my phone was in my sweater pocket. “That is not going to happen ever again!”
I couldn’t believe I’d caved. Being caught in a sexy dream was no damn excuse. I knew better.
Ashamed that I’d surrendered and furious with myself that I hadn’t been stronger to resist him, I turned and ran out of his cabin. I was better than this. I knew how to show gratitude. He was owed at least a thank you for letting me stay the night, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t face him right now.
Outside, after I closed his front door after me, I sucked in a deep lungful of air. It shocked my system. It cleared my head. But as I let my shoulders sag and closed my eyes, I could still taste him on my lips.
Fuck.
I had no business kissing another man. I had no business kissing Roarke. Not so soon after all the hell David put me through.
Not ever again.
I started off from his cabin, walking as quickly as I could in the early dawn light. Fog hung close to the ground, but it was light enough that I could pull my phone from my pocket and see the text that had just come in.
Todd: You have a spare key in a small rock at the northeast corner of the cabin.
Todd: Sorry if this message didn’t come sooner.
I huffed a wry laugh.
I was sorrier my common sense hadn’t come sooner.
Kissing Roarke was the last thing I needed to deal with in my life.
Because now that I’d had a feeling of how good it felt, I wanted more.
