What Happens In Vegas…
Jodi Lynn Copeland
Anya Bast
Lauren Dane
Kit Tunstall

www.spice-books.co.uk

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HOT FOR YOU

Jodi Lynn Copeland

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to:

P. G. Forte and Katie Bryan, who encouraged my muse on her first-person flight of fancy; Val Dorr, Denise Pattison, Jenn Wilkins, Devyn Quinn and, again, to P. G. Forte—dear friends who are always there and always care; and my family, without whom life would be tragically mundane.

Chapter One
Carinna

As much time as I spend at The Liege, between working in the casino’s Taboo Tequila Bar as a cocktail waitress and visiting the progressive bingo room on Sundays with my grandmother, I’d never had the desire to play cards there until tonight. I can only guess that what propelled me through the door of the twenty-four-hour poker room and to the last available seat at a table filled with men and reeking of testosterone and cigar smoke was Hank’s deception.

The bastard had lied.

We’d agreed the first time we hooked up that we were in it for two things: sex and more sex.

So what the hell was he doing proposing?

I liked Hank, but—Christ—proposing?

If he’d gotten to know me at all the past three months, he’d know I didn’t do relationships, documented ones or otherwise. He clearly didn’t know me. Not beyond the way I liked my martinis and men—both dirty as a girl could get ’em. Not beyond the fact that, unlike many women, I didn’t have a problem sucking a cock bone-dry. In fact, I loved it.

The taste of hot, salty fluid sliding down my throat. The feel of a man’s stiff shaft thrusting between my lips. The knowledge he was under my complete and total control. There was no better feeling in the world.

Or so I was telling myself when I eased my chair up to the poker table with a little hip-scoot shuffle, and discovered Jack Dempsey sitting three chairs away.

From the thick, wavy black hair that matched his mustache, to the graceful slide of his long fingers across the table’s green felt as he pushed a stack of nickel chips into a fast growing pot, to the rasp in his voice as he confirmed the bet, Jack was de-fucking-licious. That I could say the same about the body beneath his clothes, and that being laid by him beat any mouth job I’d ever given, amounted to the biggest mistake of my life.

Four months ago, following the death of my father and one martini too many, I’d given in to the lust I’d felt for Jack since puberty and jumped his bones. He’d put up a marginal fight, saying it would ruin our friendship, and then jumped mine right back.

The way nearly every guy at the table stopped what he was doing to check me out said I could end tonight on a bone-jumping note, as well.

I’d changed out of the tit-popping top and barely crotch-covering miniskirt the tequila bar called a uniform, but—along with my Latina appearance—I’d inherited the body of a centerfold from my mother, and my snug black jeans and midriff-baring white tank top weren’t hiding that fact. Having 34 Cs, a trim waistline and thirty-three-inch-long legs was a blessing when it came to pulling in tips at the bar. It was a bitch the rest of the time.

I couldn’t make the trek from my apartment five blocks from the Vegas strip to The Liege without hearing speculation I was either a showgirl or a hooker. I gave total props to those who worked in either profession, but I didn’t and I got sick to hell of the assumptions—and the lewd looks that were often accompanied by propositions of the open-legged variety.

The balding guy next to me—who was obviously going through a midlife crisis, from his orange rapper-style jacket and enough bling around his neck and on his fingers to get him taken out in the seedier sections of Vegas—pulled his gaze from the football game playing on the jumbo flatscreen television on the wall behind the dealer to send me one of those lewd looks. Since I wasn’t about to make a scene in my place of employment by telling him I’d rather screw the seventy-year-old dealer than do his slimy ass, I feigned an oblivious smile, slid my bills to the dealer to cash in for chips and glanced down the table.

Jack’s gaze met mine and I swear his blue-green eyes flashed a look as predatory as the one he’d given me four months ago, when he’d been buried cock-deep and screwing me to nirvana. Then again, since Jack and I had barely talked since that night, it was probably the cigar smoke messing with my head. That didn’t stop moisture from gathering in my panties and my heartbeat from kicking up.

Hank had never been able to stir either reaction with a mere look. For all our deal had been based on sex alone, Hank had hardly known the right places to touch to make me climax. Chalk it up to over two decades of friendship and, up until four months ago, frankness on our sex lives, but Jack knew all the right spots. Knew I liked my loving fast and hard, then slow and easy. Knew I was greedy enough to expect to climax twice before my lover came. The lone night we’d been together, he’d doubled that rate by delivering four of the most stunning orgasms of my life.

Jack nodded at me. “Carinna.”

Stacking my chips on the table in front of me, I shivered with the deep timbre of his voice. So cool. So classy. That was Jack. Till he got his hands on your body and then he was hotter than a four-alarm fire. Fitting, since he put out fires for a living.

Was there anything sexier than a man in a uniform? Given, a man out of a uniform, but other than that? Hank for damned sure wasn’t as sexy as Jack, and he had a history of modeling. Mostly sock commercials, but even Jack’s feet were hotter than Hank’s.

For Jack, I might just walk down the aisle.

I bit my tongue over the thought as I slid the big blind chip into the center of the table. If I walked down the aisle with any man, it would be under the influence of something narcotic and illegal.

Ignoring the thunder of my hormones and the hungry pulsing of my pussy, I smiled. “Jack. Good to see you.”

I might have imagined the predatory look, but there was no mistaking the surprise that flickered in his eyes. I’d been convinced he blamed me for propositioning him with sex that, just as he’d forewarned, had led to the decline of our friendship. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe he still thought I was pissed at him. So he’d ditched my bed in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye note. I knew he had a job to do and he did it with pride. He’d waited three days to call and explain it was indeed a fire that had pulled him away, but so what? I’d never wanted anything more from him that night than a comforting shoulder and a good, long fuck. I’d gotten both.

Now, all I wanted was our friendship back.

After checking my hold cards, a deuce of spades and a seven of hearts, I folded with a silent snicker. I did want our friendship back, but with the addition of fringe benefits of the sexual kind.

Hank was history. Looking at Jack, registering the heart-slamming, panty-wetting way he got to me, I knew no other man would do for my next lover. Before this night was over, I was going to erase the biggest mistake of my life, by regaining my friendship with Jack and, in the meantime, getting laid by a guy who understood no-strings sex as completely as I did.

A half-dozen more junk hands came my way and I was seriously considering quitting the table, despite the mouth-watering view three seats away, when I checked my hold cards to discover pocket queens. I’d never had the desire to play cards at The Liege until tonight, but I’d played a shitload of poker in my time. Back before I’d gotten sloshed on martinis and given in to my Jack craving, I used to play Texas Hold ’Em with him and his younger brother, Ryan, every Wednesday night. Jack took almost as much pride in his poker skills as he did in his firefighting ones.

Not about to scare off the competition, I made a small bet, which half the table called, and I waited for the flop. The eight and nine of spades and the queen of hearts. Three lucky ladies in my favor.

Anticipation kindled as an idea formed. I put in a moderate bet this time; the two players between me and Jack called it. Jack hesitated a few seconds, then raised my bet. Thankful he had a hand, or at least the urge to bullshit me, I eagerly called him, the balding slimeball to my left and the forty-something family man next to Jack following my lead. The turn showed a fourth queen for my hand, spades this time, and my pussy gushed with liquid excitement.

Only four hands could beat me and the odds of anyone having them were slim. I was going to have Jack back, as a friend and a lover.

Struggling to hold in my grin, I pushed my chips into the growing pot. “All in.”

Slimeball and the guy next to Jack folded. Jack tapped a finger against his hold cards. My belly tightened. If he folded now, I was screwed. But no, I wasn’t. In order to be screwed, he had to call me one last time, then agree to a side bet of the high-stakes sexual kind.

Five seconds passed. Ten seconds. Fifteen.

His voice deeper than ever, Jack uttered, “I’ll call you.”

My heart slammed against my ribs as he pushed in all but two ten-high stacks of red chips, matching my bet. Before I could speak the next words, the ones that would land him in my bed, he said them: “Interested in a side bet?”

The sudden, raw heat in his eyes said he wasn’t talking about chips. He was on the same page as I was. I practically quivered with excitement. Outwardly, I didn’t dare allow such an obvious tell. Inwardly, my pussy thrummed with anticipation for the long night of loving ahead.

Giving him a dirty-girl smile, I challenged him. “Name the stakes.”

Jack

I couldn’t believe my luck. First a nut flush draw that had become a straight flush on the turn, then Carinna’s agreeing to my every fantasy. True, she hadn’t agreed yet, but she would. With the cards showing on the table, she couldn’t beat me, and that meant I was as good as fucked in all the best ways.

I’d been convinced she hated me after the way I’d walked out on her four months ago. The lame excuse I’d given about responding to a fire had obviously been enough to pacify her. But it had been an excuse. The only fire I’d gone up against that night had been the one burning in my gut with the realization I’d fallen hard for Carinna. I’d always known I loved her, but until that night I hadn’t realized how far beyond friendship it went.

I’d lost my father to fast-burning flames and had seen too many others lose their loved ones the same way to consider a relationship while working full-time as a firefighter, so I’d bolted from her bed. And paid the price of knowing she’d been screwing some other guy for the past few months. A guy that my brother, Ryan, had informed me Carinna had kicked to the curbside just this morning.

I couldn’t have asked for better timing.

A lucky run of cards had recently allowed me to turn my poker hobby into something more serious. Tonight I was playing for fun. Every day for the past week and a half, I’d gone up against some of the biggest names in the game. With four days left to go in the tournament, I was third in the chips lead. If I could hang on to a top-five position, I’d finish high enough in the money to turn my career focus onto starting up the classic car restoration garage I’d dreamed of for years and my personal focus on making Carinna mine permanently.

My cock had been hard since Carinna had joined the table and sent me her sultry smile. It gave an anxious twitch now, over the thought of having her again. And again and again. All that stood in the way of losing myself in her lush body tonight was a futile river card; all that stood in the way of making her mine in the long run was her cast-iron commitment issue.

Pulling my mind above my belt, I concentrated on the unfolding hand.

The aging dealer was looking at us like we were a couple of half-wits. He spoke slowly. “You can’t make a side bet when you’re the only two playing, or with a player who has all of their chips in play.”

I glanced back at Carinna and gave her a quick perusal of her ample cleavage, hugged to testosterone-tormenting perfection in a navel-baring tank top. Lifting my attention to her face, I found she still held on to the remnants of the X-rated smile she’d flashed me moments ago. Out of respect for her job with The Liege, I relied on a naughty smile of my own to convey that we’d work out the finer points of the side bet later.

I nodded at the dealer. “Sorry. I was joking about the side bet.”

The old guy continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Now, you both need to turn your cards over.”

I almost snorted over the way he was babying us, probably two of the most skilled players in the room. Instead, I looked back down the table at Carinna. Her grin covered the lower half of her face, her full, sensual lips tinted with pink. She slipped her tongue out, moistening the soft flesh and my cock throbbed with the memory of my own tongue lapping at another area of her body that was just as soft and moist and pink.

The thought of her warm pussy sucking at my tongue had me returning to that fateful night four months ago. I wished it hadn’t taken her father’s passing to bring us together and show me our intertwined destiny, but, hell, her old man owed her for the way he’d messed with her head about relationships being the devil’s handiwork, so maybe in a twisted way his death bringing us together was a latent form of justice.

With Carinna’s husky laughter, I returned to the present to see she’d uncovered pocket queens. She flashed a cocky grin. “Sorry, Jack. But you can’t win ’em all.”

I let out a low whistle, almost feeling sorry for her. Almost. I couldn’t feel too bad for a woman I planned to spend the night providing with ecstasy. “Four ladies. Nice. But you’re right. You can’t win them all.” I turned my hold cards over, revealing the ten and jack of spades. “But you put up an admirable fight.”

Her cocky grin faded to an appreciative smile, as the dealer turned the river card: the seven of diamonds. “Still got the touch, Dempsey.”

While the rest of the players at the table congratulated me and shared their sympathies with her, I shot Carinna a wicked grin that said she would find out before the night was through just how good my touch still was. My hunger for her reflected in my voice as I said, “What can I say? Some things never die.”

“They just get better with time.” The sap who was sitting next to her, weighted down by ten pounds of gold jewelry, intruded on our conversation.

Carinna gave the guy another of the fake-as-hell smiles I’d seen her aim his way earlier. Raking in my chips, I didn’t bother with a smile but gave him a look of displeasure.

I played three more hands of cards, so as not to piss off the rest of the players by winning and running, then changed in my small chips for a short rack of fifties and hundreds. Carinna had stayed to watch the last few hands. I took that as a good sign. Grabbing the chip rack, I stood from my seat and moved behind hers.

Past the stench of cigar smoke, her scent hit me, a vanilla musk undercoated with something sweet and sexual that had my already stiff-as-stone cock ready to burst from behind the zipper of my jeans. “I’m taking off. Want to join me for a drink in the bar?”

“And spend time in my favorite place on my day off?” She pushed back her chair and stood. At five foot nine, she was a handful of inches shorter than me and right now her lips were so close it took almost more willpower than I had to resist their lure.

I lifted my gaze to her eyes to find their typically gray shade turned to smoke—a sure sign she was hot for me. Blowing out a breath, she pushed a tangle of wayward brown curls over her shoulder. She hated how thick and uncontrollable her hair was. I loved it, and my fingers itched with the need to get wrapped up in it. All it would take was a yes…

Finally, she said, “What the hell. I could use a drink after having my ladies dusted.”

Resisting the urge to punch my fist into the air, I made my way out of the poker room, cashed in my chips and followed Carinna as she headed toward the tequila bar.

Damn, the woman had an erotic sway to her hips. Each bounce of her curvy ass beneath her tight black jeans had my cock jumping against my zipper, ready to push between her supple butt cheeks and explode.

Unlike Carinna, I hadn’t indulged in sex since we’d been together. If I was going to be the orgasm guru she remembered, I had to get my mind on something other than fucking her in the ass. “I was surprised to see you in the card room.”

Without breaking stride, she lifted a slim, naturally golden-tan shoulder. “I’ve played poker on Wednesday nights since I was twelve. I wasn’t going to stop just because we were too wrapped up in life to find time to play together.”

“You’ve been coming here since I left…” I droned off with an inward groan. She’d boxed up the past four months of virtually no talk into a neat little “no time to play” package and I’d been about to unwrap that package to reveal a mess of shit.

Carinna stopped walking to turn back. Her astute look said she knew what I’d been going to say. The way her hip jutted out said she wasn’t as fine with my leaving and not calling for three days as she’d led me to believe. “I’ve been playing with the girls. Tonight I wanted fresh competition.”

“And instead you got me,” I teased, hoping to lighten the conversation.

Her gaze lost the shrewd edge. The heat I’d witnessed in her eyes at the poker table returned as she swiveled back and started walking. She might not be as fine with my departure as she’d let on, but she was glad I’d been in that card room tonight. Damned glad she was going to get me time and again before the night was through.

I resumed walking as a fresh wave of sexual adrenaline cruised through my bloodstream. Ten steps before she would have opened the frosted glass doors of the tequila bar to release the steamy beat of Latin music, I quickened my pace and walked past both her and the bar’s entrance. Almost instantly, her fingers curled around my upper arm, sending shards of heat dancing up to my shoulder. She tugged and, ignoring the curious looks of the passersby, I let her pull me around.

Her lips pushed into a sexy little mew. “I thought we agreed to a drink?”

Carinna never pouted. That she was doing so now, coupled with her potential ongoing anger over my actions four months ago, gave me hope it was more than sex she wanted from me. Of course, sex was the starting point. That being the case, I gave her a smug smile and went for it. “We can have a drink. Or you can get started on paying off that side bet the way I know your juicy-wet pussy is aching for you to do.”

A hot puff of air shot from between her lips. Her eyes narrowed. For a second, I thought I’d read her wrong, that she didn’t want me. Then she grabbed my other arm and pushed me hard up against the wall, her breasts rubbing my chest while her thigh moved between my legs to press none too gently against the swollen bulge of my cock.

“I have four words for you, you arrogant bastard.” A feline smile of elation took over her mouth. “Your bed or mine?”

Chapter Two
Carinna

Your bed or mine?

I couldn’t believe I’d asked Jack that question. My pussy was dripping so badly with the need to feel him inside me I’d never be able to make it to my apartment. The rental house he shared with his brother, when one or both of them wasn’t on the clock and sleeping at the firehouse, was even farther away.

“Something the matter with the family bathroom down the hall?”

Hearing the desperation in his voice, I laughed. “I don’t trust the locks, and I’d never forgive you if some kid walked in and caught us.” I darted a glance around. We were already getting enough looks—both disapproving and lustful (only in Vegas would a stranger hope for a sex show in the hallway)—standing the way we were. Getting it on anywhere nearby was out of the question. That didn’t rule out upstairs.

Sweet relief jetted through me, coming to rest as liquid warmth between my tingling thighs. As much as I wanted to kiss him, I remembered how thoroughly and incredibly he wrecked me with that masterful tongue and I knew it would only tempt me to take more here and now. “Give me two minutes.”

Having connections with the front desk crew had its advantages. I was back in one-and-a-half minutes with two key cards for a suite on the seventeenth floor. Even with my employee discount, the suite was pricey, but tonight was about indulging, while getting back my friendship with Jack. I’d gladly dip into my “Dream B and B” piggy bank for that.

“Race you to the elevators,” I teased.

For the twenty seconds it took us to get to them, we were the bosom buddies of our youth, totally oblivious to raging hormones and the pleasure to be found in horizontal mambos. Then we reached the elevators and one of the cars pinged open. An older couple dressed to the nines in head-to-toe black stepped out, leaving the car empty. Jack yanked me inside, jabbing the “close door” button, followed by the “17” button.

He was on me the instant the doors slid shut. His mouth slammed over mine, his tongue pushing past my lips, devouring me with hungry little suckles I felt all the way to my throbbing core. His hands went to my waist, popping the button on my jeans and jerking the zipper down. I feverishly met each lap of his tongue, whimpering into the moist cavern of his mouth as the cool air of the overhead AC hit my hot, wet folds.

One big, rough finger parted my pubic curls to pet my slit from clit to perineum.

One stroke.

Two strokes.

My pulse spiked as warmth coiled low in my belly and chased its way up my torso. My pussy flooded with cream.

Three strokes.

Four strokes.

His tongue left mine to start a wicked dart and thrust game, and my toes curled expectantly in my heeled sandals. His finger pushed past my slit, lightly entering my sheath. The change in action pulled me from the hedonistic haze I’d sunken under the moment his lips touched mine, forcing me to acknowledge we were in a Liege elevator. And I was naked from midway up my thigh to nearly my belly button.

Wondering when Jack had inched my jeans and panties down, I lifted my lips from the sinner’s heaven of his mouth and managed in a throaty voice, “Jack! I work here.”

“Want me to stop?”

His finger sank into my creamy pussy, finding and fondling just the right spot—a spot whose existence Hank had been oblivious to—and I screeched out my bliss. “Fuck, no!”

His mouth returned to mine, consuming me with his lips and tongue and teeth as if going four months without me had left him starved. Another finger joined the first, thrusting into my sheath with hard, sure strokes meant to deliver me to happy land good and fast. Just the way he’d known I needed it the first time.

My mind spun as liquid fire licked through my body, pulsing a river of wet need deep in my pussy. My sex contracted around his skilled fingers. My hips bucked wildly, without any set rhythm. Tension barreled the length of my spine, shaking my legs. Orgasm was about to take me over.

He pulled his fingers out before it could.

“Jesus, Jack!” I wanted to slug him.

He laughed loudly, his eyes shining with arousal and amusement, then cut the sound off sharp to turn me around and push me up against the rich mahogany wood of the elevator’s side. The soft jingle of a belt buckle and the whisper of material against flesh registered seconds before he plowed into me from behind, his big cock finding its mark and delivering me to climax in a rush of dizzying sensation. I cried out, unable to keep my mouth shut no matter the risk of being caught.

He started thrusting then, driving his cock deep inside my pussy, igniting the sort of exquisitely intense pleasure only rear entry could accomplish.

“When you say ‘all in,’ you aren’t kidding,” I moaned, as sensation after heady sensation tore through me.

Rich male laughter reverberated inside the elevator car, while one of his hands cupped my breast through my shirt, finding and pinching my nipple. Hot need shot from the straining crown to my quivering sex. I curled my hands into fists against the side of the elevator as orgasm built anew.

Jack pulled free of me before I could erupt a second time.

I was ready to slug him for real, when he said in a voice thick as lava and twice as liable to burn me for the way it destroyed my ability to think straight, “We’re here.”

I looked over to discover the elevator doors open to reveal the pale gold shot with red and orange wallpaper of the casino’s seventeenth floor. Thankfully no one was standing there watching us. Not that I had a problem with exhibitionism, but I wasn’t ready to lose my job, not even over mind-blowing sex with Jack.

“Race you to the room.”

He made the suggestion this time, not in a teasing voice as I had but in a rough, strained one that said how fast he’d be inside me once we reached the suite. My clit fluttered with the thought and I tossed back, “Last one there owes me oral sex.”

“Can’t wait to see you go down on yourself,” he commented wryly, then started screwing around with tucking his cock back into his jeans.

I checked the hall and surmised no one was around. Pulling my jeans back up without bothering to shut them, or straighten my panties, I dashed to our suite and slid the key card through the lock mechanism. By the time the door was open, Jack was at my back. His hands came around my waist, lifting me an inch or two off the floor, and hurried me inside, kicking the door closed before setting me back against the wall next to it.

Eyes flashing with dark arousal, he shoved my jeans back down my hips, taking my panties with them. Pulling the lips of my pussy apart, he thumbed my clit. “You cheated.”

Trembling with his errant stroke and the way his sexy, raspy voice increased the hedonistic sensation, I buried my hands under his navy polo shirt. I pushed the shirt up and over his head to reveal mouthwatering, hard-packed muscle owed to ten years as a firefighter. Hoping I didn’t look too much like the proverbial Pavlovian dog, I splayed my fingers over his killer torso and laved my tongue across his small nipple, making it go erect. “You can’t wait to eat me out.”

Shivering with the damp swipe, he went down on his knees and blew on my parted pussy. Beneath his mustache, wicked intent curved his lips. “Then why bother waiting?”

My heart skipped a beat as his warm, rough hands cupped the sensitized flesh of my ass. In the next instant, his mouth covered my sex. He licked down the length of my slit, then back up again to circle my bloodred clit. My heart stampeded and I bit my fingernails into his shoulders, dying just a little with the raw way he made me feel, both physically and emotionally.

Christ, he could get to me.

Tears of ecstasy filled my eyes as he tormented me with the rough scrape of his mustache and then pushed his tongue deep inside me, fucking me fast again, hard again, knowing I’d want it that way, just one more time before the slow sweetness started.

Shudders of erotic pleasure built within my belly and worked their way to my pussy. I pinched my nails harder into his flesh, loving the idea of marking him as my lover, hating it all the same.

What the hell was I doing here with Jack?

Or maybe the better question was, “How could I have forgotten the way he’d made me feel the last time we’d been together?”

The emotions he’d surfaced in me that night were the real reason I’d stayed away from him for so long. Because I truly could see myself shacked up and tied down with Jack. After all the two-timing sleazebags I encountered on a daily basis at the bar, and hearing my father’s firsthand accounts of the way commitment ruined every one of his relationships and ultimately made my mother leave us, that scared the hell out of me.

Clearly that reality also scared the logic out of me because the next words out of my mouth were, “I missed you, Jack.”

Jack

You would have thought I’d won the World Series of Poker championship tournament for the frenzied way my heart thumped against my ribs. Along with a title and the respect of most of your peers, winning the championship came with a six million-plus cash prize. I’d have paid that and more to hear Carinna admit she’d missed me.

My mind spinning with hope and expectation, I pushed my tongue inside her pussy a last time, loving the musky scent of her arousal and the way her hot, soft sex hugged my tongue tight, like it hated to let it go, and then spread her swollen labia wider and closed my lips over her clit.

I tugged at the bundle of nerves mercilessly. She bit her nails into my skin so hard I could feel it as pleasure pain all the way to my balls. Surrendering my grip on her butt cheeks, I coated a finger in the juices at the rear of her sex. With a second tug on her clit, I sank my damp finger into her crack, finding and fingering her ass bud.

“Holy shit, Jack!” she cried out with the rapid entry.

Climax rippled through her in the next instant, making my abdominal muscles tighten and my cock ache for its own much-needed release. My cock would have to wait. I’d spent the past four months fantasizing over this moment, and I’d be damned if I was coming until I was buried inside her sweet body.

She panted out hasty breaths as her limbs shook and cream leaked from her spasming pussy. I wasn’t coming yet, but I could sure as hell savor.

Releasing the pearl of her clit, I lapped at her silky essence, relishing the hot, sexy taste of Carinna until every last drop of cum was cleaned from her pretty pink folds.

To the sound of her rasping breaths and the thundering of my own wild pulse, I slowly rose, coasting my hands up her lush curves until I stood at my full height. Her eyes were back to the color of smoke and her lips swollen with passion. I’d more than enjoyed feasting on her cream, but it was nothing compared to consuming her full lips.

Sinking my tongue inside her mouth, I shared her cum in a tangle of lips and tongue and slow, unhurried sucking that fogged my mind with raw desire.

Placing a hand on the wall on either side of her head, I pulled back to give her a smile of pure conviction. “I missed you more.”

Something indefinable flashed through her eyes. “Show me.”

If not for the words, I would have wondered over the fleeting look. The words stopped me from doing so, in that they were one-hundred-percent Carinna. She wasn’t a greedy lover by definition but merely one who knew what she wanted, as did I. After the hard, fast tongue fucking she would want it slow and sweet. Since I also knew she’d make sure I was generously rewarded, I was only too happy to see to her every demand.

Nipping at her earlobe, I skimmed my hands beneath her tank top. Slowly, I pushed up the shirt, dropping my mouth to the soft flesh of her flat belly, peppering it with moist kisses. Meeting with the front clasp of her bra, I used my teeth to gently unsnap it. Her breasts sprang free, full and firm and tipped with large, dusky nipples that had filled my dreams more than a couple nights these past months. Hell, more than a few thousand nights since I’d hit puberty and realized what a knockout I had in a best friend.

Praying that we’d be best friends again, as well as a whole lot more, I loved each supple mound, suckled at each nipple. Carinna fisted her hands in my hair and sighed loudly.

The throaty sound pulsed through me as desperate need straight to my groin. Straightening, I lifted her in my arms and carried her into the bedroom. With each brush of my tongue and lips over her sweaty flesh, my cock felt ready to explode. Still, I lay her on the plush gold-and-red blanket and undressed her with care, making sure no part of her remained uncaressed. I wanted every nerve in her body on end with anticipation. To see her as wild with her need as I was with mine.

Her hands gripped my bare shoulders and the muscles beneath my tongue tightened as I teased the sensitive flesh just above her pubic curls with damp circles.

“Enough, Jack!” She sounded as desperate as I felt. “I can’t get any hotter. I need you to fuck me now.”

Make love. She needed me to make love to her. The time for corrections would come later; now I stood from the bed and hastily stripped off my clothes.

Carinna leaned up on an elbow, sending her long, dark curls to play a tempting game of peekaboo with her hard nipples. My attention automatically moved to her pussy. She purposefully bent her right leg, exposing every one of her feminine secrets. My mouth went dry and pre-cum leaked from the head of my cock as I savored the site of her labia splayed wide, her center dripping fresh cream. And then she moved a hand down her body, past her navel and between her thighs.

She rubbed two fingers back and forth, up and down her glimmering pussy lips with torturous slowness and then thrust her first finger into her opening so hard the breath lodged in my throat. Her labored breathing and the slurp of her building juices sounded like a roar between my ears as she finger-fucked herself with an abandon I’d never before seen in a woman.

She added a second finger and rode them together all the way to the edge, to the point her juices ran in rivulets down along her thighs, and I could see her pussy muscles pulsing around her fingers, gripping with a hungriness that said orgasm was seconds away. And then she stopped, pulled her fingers out and brought them to her nipples, wetting the straining tips with her essence while I did all I could to stop from coming on the spot.

With supreme effort, I pulled my gaze back to Carinna’s flushed face, found her eyes dark as night with commanding lust. Sliding her tongue along her puffy lower lip, she ravenously eyed my cock. “I want to suck you, Jack.”

I knew she wasn’t going to go through on her want. Still, a fresh spurt of pre-cum seeped from the head of my shaft and my cock bobbed like a broken pendulum, only capable of moving in her direction. “But you’re too far gone to do the job as good as you’d want to do it.”

Some of the lust left her eyes. She stopped fingering her nipples to frown and lay back on the bed. “You know me too damned well.”

I didn’t like the frown any more than her tone. She sounded annoyed with my ability to read her. And that made me think I was up against a virtual impossibility when it came to winning her over to the relationship side.

Climbing onto the bed, I stretched over her, until my throbbing cock pressed against the welcoming wetness of her pussy. I forced a carefree smile. “That goes both ways.”

“Trust me, knowing that’s my only salvation.”

She was never cryptic with me. Despite the overheated state of my body, I considered gambling on ending the night without her in my arms by pushing her for clarity. Before I could make a decision, she tilted her hips and thrust upward, driving my cock halfway into her pussy.

Slow and sweet was how she would want it now, but four months of nothing but jerking off in a solo shower while fantasizing it was Carinna’s moist, pink lips wrapped around my shaft made that impossible.

Twining her fingers in mine, I reclined back, raised her hands above her head and pushed the remainder of the way inside her hot body. She gasped with the speed of my entry and all trace of annoyance left her expression, returning to the look of commanding lust I knew was reflected on my face.

One lone thrust inside her slick sex and my balls snugged tight against my body and I could feel the tension of orgasm gathering at the base of my spine.

Shit, I was going to be the worst lay of her life.

Hopefully not, but I definitely wasn’t about to be the best. I’d make it up to her. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go slow this time. It’s been too damned long.”

I slanted my mouth over hers and pushed my tongue inside as I set a frantic pace. She didn’t speak denial but curled her fingers tighter in mine and met me, with both tongue and body, thrust for hasty thrust. The only sound was that of our harried breathing and the slap of flesh against sweaty flesh, for all of thirty seconds, and then I cursed aloud my lack of staying power as climax rippled through me.

The coupling was fast, hard and nothing like she’d wanted. Yet I heard her cry out and felt her clamping down around my cock with her orgasm as my own shook through me as a tumultuous wave of sensation stronger than anything I’d ever experienced.

For long seconds I lay there gasping for breath, listening to the erratic play of my pulse, feeling the remnants of her release milking my deflating shaft. Then I realized I was probably squashing the shit out of her.

Since we’d entered the suite, I hadn’t been acting like my usual, admittedly cocky self. In many ways, Carinna was acting off, as well. From our last time together, and the many times we’d shared details of our sex lives, I knew she was a loud, vocal lover. It was probably a bad sign she was being so quiet. I should’ve said something to make her talk, but my gut told me pretty much anything I said right now would have her going on the defensive. I wasn’t ready for her to pull from my arms or my body, so I rolled us onto our sides and stayed limp but embedded inside her.

She yawned, in a way that was obviously feigned. I took it as legitimate, anyway, pulling the portion of the covers we weren’t lying on over us and switching off the light on the nightstand next to the bed.

Inhaling her sexy vanilla scent, now mingled with the smell of our lovemaking, I brushed my lips across her forehead. “G’night, Carinna. For the record, I’m not working this week and I plan to be here in the morning.”

“That makes one of us.”

Her tone was light, teasing. I wrapped my arms a little tighter around her all the same. From her mind to her body to her suddenly unpredictable behavior, Carinna was the hottest flame I’d ever encountered and I’d yet to go up against her high-burning commitment issues.

Carinna

There was a reason I’d never worked first shift until two months ago. Before ten in the morning and a pot of black coffee, I was a total bitch. Bitchiness was not the mood to be in when dealing with men who’d lost their asses at gambling and now hoped to pick up a cocktail waitress to help lick their wounds, along with their cocks.

If I was going to lick anyone’s cock this time of the day, it would be Jack’s. Since I’d left Jack in the suite upstairs over three hours ago, that wasn’t on the agenda.

“Hey, baby.” The drunken idiot at the table I currently served punctuated the words by grabbing my right butt cheek.

I growled under my breath, resisting the urge to upend the tray of partially empty glasses balanced on the fingers of my left hand over his lap. Sometimes it really blew working for tips. Sure, I could have the guy tossed out for sexual harassment, but it would cost me the twenty I’d seen him slide under his empty rocks glass for me to find when I bussed. If I was going to forgo making money, I might as well have stayed in bed with Jack. Let him use those dynamite hands on me a little longer. Not to mention that tongue that could get me climaxing in seconds, or his impatient cock that had strayed from my choice routine and still had me coming for a third time.

I shifted, realizing my pussy was moist from just thinking about the way he’d gotten me off last night. Spotting Jack at a table across the bar didn’t help matters.

I gave the drunk a sympathetic smile. “Sorry,” I said loudly, to be heard over the salsa music blasting over the speaker system, “but my boyfriend’s watching and he doesn’t take kindly to my sleeping with other guys.” I sent a pointed look Jack’s way, who in return shot my assgrabber a glare.

Ass-Grabber squinted, as if he was having trouble making Jack out—given his state of inebriation, he likely was. “Don’t look too big from here. Bet I could take ’em.”

“Probably.” In his dreams. Jack was twice the man this schmuck was, in both size and character. “But since I happen to love him, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try.”

I loved him?

I nearly dropped my tray when the words left my mouth. I loved Jack, sure, but in the sort of way that had to do with being friends since we were old enough to pee standing up. I snickered to myself as I made my way to Jack’s table. At nine, he’d bet me I couldn’t master the fine art of vertical urination. I have no clue what the stakes were, but I’d won and without a stray trickle.

Jack’s words cut through my reflections the moment I reached his table. “You’re still ticked about the way I took off without saying goodbye last time.”

Apparently he’d taken my flippant good-night words to heart and believed I’d ditched the suite early this morning as a form of payback. After the sappy-ass way I’d confessed to missing him last night, and the even sappier way my heart had warmed with his response he’d missed me more, the thought had crossed my mind, but that wasn’t the reason I’d left.

I rolled my eyes. “Flatter yourself much? I had to work the morning shift. I didn’t bother leaving a note because I was running late and I knew this would be the first place you’d look.”

“Since when you do work mornings? You’re not even nice to yourself before noon.”

“Since Tammy went on maternity leave two months ago. They needed someone to pick up a few extra shifts every week, and it just so happens I’m saving up for something special. You’d be surprised how that kinda thing motivates a person.”

He smiled knowingly. “Still holding out for the Sudsbury property?”

My heart gave a funny little kick. I would have liked to have passed it off as arousal, but I could never lie to myself that effectively. Others knew about my dream of buying the Sudsbury property—a three-acre parcel located on a private lake ten miles outside of town—and turning it into a B and B. Not one of those others had inquired on my progress in months. I liked it too damned much that Jack had been back in my life less than twenty-four hours and was already asking over my dream.

I tried to dismiss it with a shrug. “Sooner or later it’ll happen.”

“How close are you?”

“The dip in the economy helps, but I’m not buying a welcome mat anytime soon.” So he wasn’t ready to let the conversation go; not a problem. After all, I wasn’t the only one with a dream. As much pride as Jack took in fighting fires, his true career goal was to own a successful classic car restoration garage. “What about you?”

“Someday.” He looked like he wanted to say more but then glanced over at the table I’d just left behind and frowned. “Do you always let guys grab your ass at work?”

A warning sounded in my head louder than the dinging of the slot machines coming in from the casino’s main gaming floor.

Why the hell was Jack acting possessive?

He understood no-strings sex as much as I did. At twenty-eight, he’d yet to have a real relationship and had no desire to do so as long as he was a firefighter. Those were the reasons I’d known it was safe to try for sexual fringe benefits while renewing our friendship. If he’d changed course on me, was even now thinking of ways to get into my heart beyond friendship, I was going to have to kick his ass.

I gave another shrug. “He brushed my butt and I gave him a dirty look for it. What’s it to you?”

“Nothing. I just don’t like the thought of you being taken advantage of.”

My insides tightened. I believed he didn’t want to see me taken advantage of, but the “nothing” part of the equation was a bold-faced lie. Survival instincts had me jutting my hip out. “Are we okay?”

Jack’s gaze narrowed—yet another testament to how well he knew me, that with just a little hip action he could tell I wasn’t happy. “We’re fine.”

“Then it won’t hurt your feelings when I tell you I don’t want you here.”

He smirked as he stood. “You are still ticked.”

“No. I’m on the clock. Standing around shooting the shit with you isn’t exactly raking in the dough.” I uncocked my hip and grabbed the nearly empty glass from the table in front of him—obviously he’d been drinking soda because he never touched alcohol before dinner. “See you later, Jack.”

His fingers settled on my arm, staying me when I would have turned and run away like the chickenshit his uncharacteristic behavior had me feeling like. His smirk was gone, replaced with a sensual tilt to his mouth that gave a glimpse of his tongue and immediately had my thong damp all over again. “When later?”

I’d meant the words as a figure of speech, and I should have told him so. But I couldn’t stop thinking about those three incredible orgasms he’d given me last night or how amazingly good it had felt to fall asleep in his arms, and so I proved I was one card shy of a full deck by saying, “I’m working doubles the next two days—”

“In other words, you’ll be too tired for sex.”

“In other words, you’d best plan a full-body massage into your foreplay. I get off at seven.”

His mouth curved fully, into the cockiest grin I’d ever seen him wear. “And eight, nine, ten and eleven.”

I liked my bad boys, and I liked his arrogance so much that if it wasn’t for the tray of drinks and the glass shower that would ensue if I dropped it, I probably would have said to hell with my job and slid onto his cock there and then.

Since I did have that tray and I really needed this job, I somehow managed to stand my ground. “If you plan to use me that much, you’d best add a bottle of gin and an extra-large jar of olives to the schedule.”

Chapter Three
Jack

Though I knew my brother had today and tomorrow off work, I held out hope Ryan would be gone when I arrived at the rental house we shared. No such luck. His Jeep was in the garage and when I opened the door that led from the garage into the kitchen, Ryan was less than a foot away, looking ready to kill.

Green eyes narrowed in a death glare, he stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his sweatpants. “I didn’t hear any emergency backup calls come over the fire scanner last night, so I’m guessing a piece of ass would be the reason you never made it home.”

I almost laughed at his tone: a mix of concern and anger. I’d experienced the same feelings too damned many times when we’d been teenagers and Ryan had failed to come home by curfew. Back then, Mom had been working nights on a stamping production line and, with Dad gone, I’d taken it upon myself to see that Ryan didn’t end up in a jail cell. As fate and his miscreant ways would have it, he had ended up in the slammer a handful of times, but never for anything more than misdemeanor offenses.

Although he still had his narrow-minded days, my brother had come a long way since then, was a valuable member of the Ladder 19 fire crew and a guy in whose hands I’d put my life more than a few times while on the job. That didn’t mean I wanted him tracking my every move. I sure as hell didn’t want him referring to Carinna as a piece of ass.

Since he knew about Carinna’s relationship phobia, and I could guess he would think I was a hopeless fool to still be making a long-term play for her, I didn’t want him knowing I’d hooked up with her again.

I dismissed his words with a shrug. “You’re the one who’s always saying shit happens. Besides, how was I to know you’d be spending the night home playing curfew cop?”

Dressed as he was, in baggy gray sweats and a faded black T-shirt with a picture of a bunned hot dog and the words Bite Me beneath it, Ryan didn’t look like a ladies’ man. The endless string of females that crossed our threshold on his arm and proceeded straight to his bedroom proved he not only cleaned up well but knew how to work his year-round tan, dark good looks and muscles honed on the job to their best advantage.

“That wasn’t the plan,” he said dryly. “I had a blind date that five minutes in had me wishing I really was blind so I could trip over a rock and fake my death. I got in around ten, watched a couple movies, then headed to bed around three, wondering where the fuck you were.” He gave me the death glare a few more seconds, which was pointless since I was the one who’d taught him the look fifteen years ago in an effort to get a schoolyard bully off his back. Finally, he let the glare go and gave me a conspiratorial smile. “So, how was she?”

The best of my life.

I might not have liked the way our talk had gone in the bar that morning, but memories of loving Carinna and holding her well into the night had a euphoric smile tugging at my lips. I knew Ryan would see it and know damned well who was behind it, so I pushed him out of my way and headed for the coffeepot.

Thankful to see the light was still on, which meant it hadn’t been brewed too long ago, I poured a cup before turning back. I was shitty at lying, but attempted it anyway. “She was a poker table down at The Liege. I was hot as hell last night.”

Ryan settled at the kitchen table, reclining back in one wooden chair and propping his bare feet up on the seat of another. “Did you see Carinna?”

“Should I have?” I groaned inwardly as I slid onto a chair across the table from him. Shit, I’d sounded defensive.

The amusement that passed through Ryan’s eyes said he hadn’t missed my reaction. “Like I said yesterday, she dumped the foot-fetish dude, model, whatever the hell he is. I checked in on her last night to see how she was handling things and she was about to head out for The Liege. She wasn’t dressed in that itty-bitty-titty costume, either.”

In the midst of sipping my coffee, I winced at the mention of Carinna’s uniform. I hated the way the black sarong-style top spangled with gold sequins was cut so low her cleavage risked spilling out. The matching miniskirt was a waste of about three inches of material, given every time she moved it threatened to expose her entire ass. In the twenty minutes I’d been in the tequila bar that morning, I’d caught a glimpse of the black thong sheathed between her firm butt cheeks three different times. I’d been hard with the first glimpse, aching with the second and ready to throw her over my table and fuck her in front of every patron in the place with the last. The knowledge most every other guy in the bar was experiencing the same reaction killed that urge.

“I didn’t see her.” My disapproval of her uniform came through in both my voice and the way I slammed my mug onto the table, sloshing coffee over the rim. I mentally calmed myself before adding, “Like I said, I was in the card room all night.”

Ryan snorted out a laugh. “Nice try, bro. But you can’t lie any better than I can. You saw her. You were probably just too much of a pansy to talk to her.”

There were times I hated living and working beside my brother 24/7. It made it impossible for him not to know exactly what buttons to push. Calling me a pansy was a pretty damned big one. “Fine. She was in the card room. I talked to her. Happy?”

He smirked. “Was that before or after you bent her over her bed and tapped her ass?”

Damn, I should have known I’d never be able to get last night with Carinna past him. At least he wasn’t mocking me for wanting her. Yet. “You’re pushing it, Ry.”

“You deserve it for not calling. So what’s the status quo? Friends again, or just fuck buddies?”

“I don’t know. We don’t fuck.” We had tidy, missionary- style sex. Okay, so that wasn’t true, but I hated the way the word fuck made sleeping with Carinna sound so detached from emotions.

“Maybe you don’t, but I’ve heard too many of Carinna’s tell-all sex stories to believe she doesn’t. Hell, that time I stopped by her house last summer to see about borrowing her Crock-Pot, I could have heard her shouting about what an amazingly big dick the guy with her had even if the windows hadn’t been open.”

I knew Carinna’s track record, as well as she knew mine. It shouldn’t bother me to hear about her past lovers, but my gut roiled in a way that made it seem my one sip of coffee had been toxic. “Are you trying to get your ass kicked?”

Ryan narrowed his eyes astutely. “What I’m trying to do is get your ass in gear. You know how Carinna works. She’ll have a new fuck buddy by the end of the month and I’d just as soon see it be you. Why don’t you invite her over for poker tomorrow night? It’s been too long since we played together.”

“She’s working a double.”

“That never stopped her before. Make it a late game, and I’ll make it a point to be home.”

“Planning on a threesome or chaperoning?” Or why the hell was my brother pushing the idea so much?

“Neither. I just know you well enough to suspect you didn’t walk away from Carinna with a simple goodbye this morning. You probably did or said something to freak her out and the odds of her seeing you again so soon will be that much better if she knows I’m part of the equation.”

He was mistaken about her seeing me again. She would see me tonight, and in her own apartment, no less. At the same time, since I was liable to do exactly as he’d guessed, and do or say something to concern Carinna come tomorrow morning, I kept my mouth shut and accepted that the reason Ryan was pushing the idea so much was simply because he was my brother and, as such, he wanted to see me happily laid. It was simply chance the woman doing the laying would be Carinna.

Jack

Carinna and I had exchanged keys years ago, when we’d first moved into our respective places. I took advantage of that tonight, slipping into her apartment ten minutes before I expected her home from work, in order to prep her bedroom.

She’d suggested I add olives to tonight’s schedule and while I was reasonably sure she’d meant for her martinis, I’d spent the four hours since today’s tournament play had ended imagining a hundred-and-one olive-enhanced scenarios that had nothing to do with drinking alcohol and everything to do with dirtying her pristine-white silk sheets.

Hearing her enter the apartment, I popped the lid on the olives and tucked the jar between her dresser and bed. She appeared in the doorway of the bedroom seconds later. Any fear I might have had about looking guilty faded the instant I saw she hadn’t changed out of her cocktailing outfit.

I hated the scanty getup as a uniform. But I loved it as a vice to get me hard on sighting

Tonight, the uniform looked naughtier than ever. At some point during her double shift, she’d added black stockings to the ensemble. Seductively sheer nylon hugged her shapely legs, ending in a lace band a few inches shy of the miniskirt’s hem.

My cock pressed rigidly against my jeans as I rushed to the door and tugged Carinna into my arms. If I was in the mood for tact, I would have taken the time for a long, hot welcome-home kiss. Between having a bad run of luck in the tournament today, dropping me to eighth place, the way Ryan’s warning Carinna would have a new fuck buddy by the end of the month kept eating at me, and now those damned sexy nylons, I wasn’t in the mood for tact. I was in the mood to fuck the beauty in my arms, show her exactly how much we belonged together, so I turned her around, grabbed her around the waist and hurried her to the bed.

With a touch of my hand at the small of her back, she bent over the side of the mattress, splayed her fingers on the baby-blue blanket and wiggled her round ass in my face.

Little tease. She knew good and well the throbbing effect that wiggle had on my cock.

I gave in to my fingers’ restless urges for a moment, caressing the backs of her smooth legs, from thigh to calf, then journeyed my hands up to her inner thighs, teasing the soft, naked flesh for seconds before her body ignited with shivers and my need became too great to bear.

Tossing up the tiny hem of her skirt, I fisted the rear of her thong, until my fingers and thumb met at the hot divide of her buttocks. Then I jerked the thin cotton from her body with a twist of my wrist.

My shaft jumped with the primal sound of shredding cotton. Carinna jerked on the bed, her breath catching. “So much for the massage and martini.”

Her appreciation for my feral behavior rose from between her thighs to color the air with the hot, musky scent of her arousal. Cream dripped from her sex, seeping down her toned inner legs to catch in the lace band of her stockings. My fingers were restless again, and I couldn’t resist coating one with her juices and sucking it between my lips.

Fuck, she tasted so sweet. I could barely stand the thought of pushing an olive into her plump pussy and eating it back out dripping in her cum. “I didn’t forget the olives.”

If she thought the comment odd, she didn’t say so. Then again, it could be she was too busy gasping as I yanked my zipper down and rammed into her from behind.

Carinna dug her nails into the blanket, her knuckles going white in stark contrast to her naturally golden-tan skin. “You could warn a girl,” she panted out, already rearing back to meet the second thrust of my glistening cock.

I laughed thickly as I lifted her hips higher and stroked into her deep. My eyes all but rolled back into my head with the feel of her hot pussy pulling me deeper yet. “Like you want the warning. You like the surprise. You like it dirty.”

“You don’t know me that well, Jack.”

If she’d meant to sound convincing, she’d failed. She was holding out hope I didn’t know her as well as I did, and that meant she was beginning to understand what I wanted from us was more than a sexual friendship. That also meant she didn’t want anything to do with that particular want of mine.

She would.

There would be no new fuck buddies for Carinna. We were it, meant to go the distance. If she couldn’t see that truth in how suited our bodies were, then somehow I would convince her of it in words, prove to her we were worth risking a relationship. That somehow eluded me right now, so I concentrated on the moment, on pumping into her delectable pussy and losing myself in each moist, hungry grip until I could feel her orgasm clenching tightly around me, drenching my cock in her juices, and finally I gave in to my own climax.

Carinna

Jack didn’t forget the olives. He’d told me as much twenty minutes ago, before he’d given me one of the fastest, hardest, most incredible fucks I’d had since our first time together.

I’d been too caught up in pleasure, as well as concern over his continued need to point out how well he knew me and what exactly that said about his state of mind where our friendship was concerned, to get his meaning until two seconds ago—when he’d pushed my thighs wide and buried a pimento-free, green olive in my slit.

The ends of his carnal grin disappeared into his mustache as he bent his dark head, used his thumbs to pull my slick pussy lips so wide they burned with wicked pleasure and skewered the center of the olive with his tongue.

My fingers pushed savagely into his hair. Sizzling heat pooled in my blood and shot from my center to my freed, bouncing breasts. Keeping my hips from thrusting against his face was an impossible feat. I could feel the push of the olive inside me, mini-fucking me with each of his forceful strokes, but even more arousing, I could see it.

The closet at the foot of my bed was finished with mirrored doors and Jack had been careful to position me at an angle where I could view his every sinful move.

My hips bucked on the bed and my blood pumped wildly as I watched his expert tongue work in and out of my hot, wet body, licking at the slippery folds of my pussy and the cream-coated olive, then go racing toward my clit.

The bastard never touched my clit.

He just kept teasing, both with his tongue and the slow circling of his fingertips along my swollen labia. Always coming so close. Making me ache so badly I hurt with my need.

It was the sweetest of slow, sensual treats and, given he’d already supplied me one fast orgasm, it should be the last thing I wanted. But I did want it, wanted it to go on all night long. Only, the increased tempo of his tongue and the way he turned his teeth on the olive, attacking its tender, tart meat in seconds to expose my dripping sex, told me it was about to turn into a fast orgasm, after all.

Hell, at this rate, I would be lucky to last a minute.

Keeping the exquisite pressure of his thumbs on my spread lips, he cupped my ass with his fingertips, lifted my center more fully to his mouth and twisted his tongue, French-kissing my pussy. My nipples stabbed with throbbing sensation. My toes curled. Sweat gathered between my breasts.

“Is it nine already?” I sang out as orgasm approached in a dizzying rush that had me forgetting the erotic sight in the mirror to release Jack’s hair, fall back on the bed and dig my nails into the blanket.

His tongue kept up its tender assault, licking, twisting, lapping at the walls of my sex until climax took me over, and then he pulled from my body to devour my juices.

I came back down from a happy little orgasm cloud to find him sitting at my feet, his lips glistening and his grin huge. “Eight-thirty,” he finally responded to my question. “And I didn’t forget the gin either.” He winked one of those devilish blue-green eyes. “Just wait till nine. We’re going to play a round of The Disappearing Bottleneck.”

I laughed hard and long, while my pussy gave an eager flutter and exploded with a fresh burst of arousal.

Despite my claim to the contrary, Jack had been right. I did love my dirty sex and he knew exactly how to provide it. It was just one of the many reasons I loved him.

I loved him.

My laughter stopped short. I dragged in a steadying breath. Why did I keep coming back to those damned words? Could I actually love Jack beyond friendship the way I was coming to think he might love me? And what did it matter if I did? I didn’t do relationships. I knew too well how they ended in ruins and heartache.

No, I couldn’t love Jack that way. And even if I did, I wasn’t about to admit it to him.

Carinna

We were back to being bosom buddies. When Jack had left my apartment that morning—after giving me an open-mouthed kiss that had left me wet and horny and an adoring look that had left me fearful that I could end up breaking his heart if I kept letting him sleep with me—I had never thought that possible.

But here we were, sitting around Jack and Ryan’s kitchen table, dressed in our oldies but goodies, tossing chips into a poker pot and shooting the shit like the three of us had done every Wednesday night for nearly fifteen years. It was Friday, but the scenario still felt more like a homecoming than anything I’d ever experienced. These guys were my family as much as, and probably more than, my parents had ever been, and I belonged here with them, as a friend and the sister they’d never had. And that meant I needed to stop sleeping with Jack. Forgetting how quickly and thoroughly he got to me wouldn’t be easy, but for our friendship’s sake, I could do it.

Or so I was trying to convince myself when Ryan grabbed a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips and another of pretzel rods from on top of the fridge and tossed them on the table. The pretzel rods were my favorite, the salt-and-vinegar chips Jack’s favorite. I knew even before Jack pulled the bag open and popped a chip into his mouth I was in deep trouble.

It wasn’t the way Jack ate his chips that bothered me. It was how he licked the residue from his fingers, so as not to get grease on the cards or poker chips. One at a time, starting with his index finger, he trailed his damp tongue from knuckle to knuckle, onto the next finger, the next knuckle. Lick. Lick. Lick.

His gaze flicked to mine without warning, far too fast for me to stop my ogling or close my slightly open mouth. A cocky grin curved his lips. Wicked intent sizzled in his eyes. His licks turned to a fervent suckling of the sensitive web of flesh connecting his thumb and first finger.

My heart raced. My pussy pulsed. I stifled my moan, just barely.

I could feel that suckle straight to my core, like he was slurping the juices from my sex, eating the cum clean from my body the way he’d done that morning, after delivering me to ecstasy by way of the vibrator he’d found stashed under my bed. Feeling the flesh-colored dildo quivering inside me had always felt good. Knowing Jack had controlled its every move had tripled the sensation, until I hadn’t been able to stop from writhing on the bed and grinding my pussy against his hand while I’d screamed out my pleasure.

“What’s up, Carinna?”

My breathing coming too fast, I glanced over at Ryan, aware he’d spoken but not sure about what. “Huh?”

“You calling or what?”

I grappled for the pretzel bag and yanked it open. Stuffing a salty rod in my mouth, I sucked on it hard in an attempt to dislodge the totally arousing and completely unwanted thoughts from my head. “Yeah. Sure.”

Ryan laughed so obnoxiously I looked back at him. Humor curved his lips and gleamed in his sea-green eyes. “I oughta hold you to your word and make you give me all your chips, but something tells me your mind isn’t on the game.”

And something told me he was right as rain. Speaking of rain, I felt like a major downpour had let loose in my sweatpants.

Pushing aside the urge to shift in my seat, I glanced at the table in front of Ryan and then at the pot and realized he’d gone all in. A look at my hold cards had me inwardly cringing. Nice. I’d called him on an off-suit two and nine.

Not about to admit I had a one-track mind that revolved entirely around getting Jack naked, I stuck out my chin and narrowed my eyes. “I have cards.”

Ryan’s smirk said he wasn’t buying it. “Then put your chips in the pot and prove it, sweetheart.”

“Do I look like an idiot? You already made it clear you have a winning hand.” I folded my hold cards into the deck, giving it an absent shuffle just in case Ryan decided to look. Too much of a chickenshit to meet Jack’s eyes or look at his mouth again, I stood. “I need a beer. Anyone else?”

“Please,” Jack said as I made my way to the refrigerator.

“Okay.” Just stop licking your damned fingers. Not that the deep timbre of his voice was any less lethal. “Ry?”

“You know it. There’re longnecks in the crisper bin.”

Longnecks.

Without thinking, I slanted a look at Jack. His eyes had been teasingly wicked, now they smoldered with a sensual heat so forceful it guaranteed he shared my thoughts. Those of how he’d lived out his promise and used the bottle of gin on me last night, fucking me with its neck. Not to orgasm, just long enough to have me trembling on the edge. And then Jack had been there, his big cock filling me up while his tongue delivered my mouth to an erotic palate paradise.

Did Ryan know we were sleeping together? Did he know how Jack had used that bottle on me? Is that why he’d brought up the longnecks? Why he’d gotten out those damned torturous potato chips?

One thing was certain, I wasn’t up to handling a longneck. Hell, I was barely up to playing Texas Hold ’Em.

I opened the fridge door and basked in the coolness that greeted my hot body. Several long seconds was all I could risk without raising questions. Then I grabbed two bottles of Bud from the crisper and a can of Bud Light for myself from the top shelf and returned to the table.

Ryan had the dealer chip, which meant Jack’s hands were free to roam. Any relief I’d gotten from the cold air of the fridge was forgotten the instant his hand went into the chip bag. The damned chips went in his mouth. He started chewing. Any moment now he would be licking. Sucking. Slurping.

Popping the tab of my beer with one hand, I stuffed a fresh pretzel rod in my mouth with the other and attempted to suck my stimulation away. That proved as ineffective as trying to steal my gaze from Jack’s mouth to look at my hold cards.

Right on cue he started in on the licking. Right on cue my pussy let loose with juice. Right on cue a husky moan barreled up the back of my throat and attempted to push free of my lips.

Jack’s mouth opened. I waited for his tongue to escape, to start in on the next round of silent but sensuously deadly torture. Instead, he said, “Carinna?”

“What?” Christ, could I sound any more breathless?

“You’re bleeding all over the freaking table, that’s what,” Ryan answered.

“What?” I looked down to find blood oozing from the tip of my index finger to pool on the table’s wood surface. “Shit.”

“You probably cut it on the rim of your can,” Jack supplied. “There are Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.”

Squeezing my finger with my good hand to staunch the blood flow, I stood and then realized where he’d instructed me to go. The master bath, which was hooked to his bedroom. Feet away from his bed. Where he slept naked. The same way he’d slept the past two nights. Naked and with a monster hard-on prodding against my ass crack. A monster hard-on I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of. But, Jesus, how could I not?

“I’ll help you,” he said, as if he honestly thought following me up to his room was a good idea.

“And I’ll see you two in the morning,” Ryan put in smugly as we exited the kitchen and headed straight to what I was sure would be more carnal temptation than I could possibly resist.

Chapter Four
Jack

“He knows,” Carinna said the instant we stepped inside the master bath directly off from my bedroom.

After taking a Band-Aid out of the medicine cabinet and handing it to her, I shrugged, surprised she cared. “You know how shitty I am at lying. Besides, Ryan’s thrilled for us.”

Downstairs, she’d looked pretty damned thrilled herself, in a way that had to do with being wet between the thighs. Now, she appeared to be walking the thin line between worried and pissed.

She ran her finger under the faucet until the water ran clear, then put the Band-Aid on and turned to face me. Her hip shot out. “Let me guess. He thinks we should have been sleeping together years ago?”

I ignored her irritated tone to consider the question. Did Ryan feel that way? I’d always presumed he’d laugh in my face if I admitted I had plans for Carinna of the commitment kind. Maybe I’d been mistaken. Maybe the reason he’d pushed for tonight to happen wasn’t because he wanted to see me happily laid but, rather, just plain happy. “Pretty much.”

“What do you think?” The temper left her stance and her lips pushed together in a thoughtful pucker.

“That fourteen hours is way in the hell too long to go without seeing you naked.”

Poker-night attire consisted of sweats, T-shirt and an optional ball cap. Apparently, Carinna considered underwear optional, as well. The warm, supple skin of her backside filled my palms when I pulled her up against me and shoved my hands down the back of her sweatpants.

“Jack…” Warning rang in her voice.

Ignoring that warning, I cupped an ass cheek in each hand and ground against her pussy. I thought I’d caught a whiff of her arousal earlier in the night. Now, there was no thinking required. Her excitement rose up, rich, musky and tinged with vanilla, to play a number on my senses. “Don’t tell me you weren’t hot for me downstairs. Hot, and teasing the hell out of me with every one of those pretzel rods.”

Surprise passed through her eyes. But, no, it couldn’t have been. A woman with Carinna’s knowledge of the male anatomy and how to torment the shit out of it would know exactly what she’d done to me.

As if to prove me right, she slid her hands beneath my shirt and ran her nails over my chest with teasing light pressure. “Fuck, yes, I was hot for you! But like you have room to talk.”

“I wasn’t eating pretzels.”

“No, but you were certainly having a good time licking the salt-and-vinegar residue off your fingers.”

That hadn’t been purposeful seduction. I hadn’t even realized she was paying attention, until she’d taken too long responding to Ryan’s play. The moment our gazes had met and I’d registered the smoke color of her eyes, I’d known what I was doing to her. I had thought to make tonight about friendship, at least until the poker game was over. Seeing her raw desire, knowing she was as hungry for me as I was for her, the idea of unsettling her even further had been too tempting to pass up.

Speaking of tempting…

“Licking?” I slid my hands from Carinna’s sweatpants and hers from beneath my shirt. “Like this?” Taking one of her hands in mine, I brought it to my mouth and dabbed at the end of her first finger with the tip of my tongue.

A tiny sigh escaped her and I ran my tongue the length of her finger. Down. Back up again. Her pupils dilated and my own internal fire kicked up several notches. Slowly, I pulled her finger into my mouth, let my tongue circle for several long, teasing seconds and then sucked hard.

“Oh, God, Jack,” she moaned. “That’s more than a lick.”

And her moan was more than a sound to echo off my bathroom walls. It coasted down my spine and past my ass crack to come to rest between my legs, making my cock throb and my balls tighten.

I could stick with Carinna’s choice routine and take her fast and hard, relieving myself quickly in the process. Or I could show her just how incredible it felt to step outside the norm into uncharted terrain and give her a dose of slow, sensual loving both the first and last time around. I wasn’t much for metaphors, but I couldn’t help note how the second option metaphorically fit with my quest to get her to give uncharted terrain a try by entering a relationship with me.

I glanced at the Jacuzzi tub that dominated the right side of the bathroom. “Ever do it in a hot tub?”

“You already know that answer.”

My gut tightened because I did and I wasn’t pleased about it. I let go of my jealousy of the men who’d come before me to concentrate on the present, on driving Carinna so crazy with passion she’d forget she’d had past lovers. “But never with me. I promise it’s an experience you won’t forget.”

She looked to the tub, to me, back to the tub. She wasn’t a woman I associated with hesitancy where sex was concerned, but when she again met my eyes it was with lust and uncertainty warring in her own. “What about Ryan? We can’t just leave him downstairs.”

“Trust me, he was serious about seeing us in the morning. By now, he’s long gone to find a piece of ass. Too bad for Ry he doesn’t stand a chance at finding one as fine as you.”

Shit. Thanks to Ryan’s observation yesterday and planting the crude phrase in my head, I’d made it sound like Carinna was nothing more to me than a piece of ass. I would have clarified my meaning if she hadn’t chosen that moment to give in by reaching for the hem of her T-shirt and yanking it over her head. Her bra matched her panties, in that it didn’t exist. Her lush breasts were bare, and my mouth watered with the desire to latch on to a dusky erect nipple and suck. Knowing that route would deliver us to a fast finish, I stood my ground.

Teasing flashed in her eyes. She glanced toward the hot tub. “Race you into the water.”

I’d never been able to resist her teasing or her challenges. I sure as hell wasn’t starting tonight. “You’re on.”

I stripped in seconds and, without a hint of finesse, jumped into the tub like the sex-crazed man she made me.

Carinna

Jack thought of me as a piece of ass.

Relief cruised me even as my heart gave a nasty little bump I hated to acknowledge was disappointment. I didn’t want a relationship with any man, but I loved waking up in Jack’s strong arms.

Too much.

It was good that I’d been mistaken about his feeling more for me than friendship. And not just because it meant I could safely give in to my lust and sleep with him tonight. Though, I will admit that was the biggest reason on my mind at the moment. How could it not be when all that beautifully defined sinew and sun-bronzed skin was winking my way?

Jack stretched across to the far side of the tub, muscles rippling in his back as he turned on the jets. Bubbles churned to life within seconds. He pushed a second button that released soap into the water, which foamed the surface and stole my view of everything from his waist down. I almost pouted. He’d concealed some of my most favorite parts.

The scent of the soap hit me then. Something light, floral. Possibly lilac. Not even close to Jack’s style. Had one of his previous lovers given the soap to him?

My belly ached a little with the thought. I mentally eased the sensation aside, aware it had more to do with the idea of some other woman giving him better sex than me than the thought of his actually being with someone else. Maybe he’d had better lovers up to this point, but that was about to change. I knew Jack in a way some random woman paying his body a night or two of homage never could.

I knew about his fetish.

It wasn’t just the sleek, hot body styles and the growling thunder of the engines that fueled his love for classic cars—he had a serious chrome fetish. A fetish that extended to the moldings and fixtures of his Jacuzzi tub. A fetish that was about to grab him by the balls.

Flashing an X-rated smile, I stepped free of my sweatpants and climbed over the side of the tub. Jack’s eyes were dark with carnal anticipation. He expected me to sink into the tub, or plop in, the way he’d so inelegantly done—and knowing I destroyed his grace gave me no small pleasure.

And it was no small pleasure on his face when I bypassed his expectation and lowered myself onto the arm of the tub’s faucet. My pussy lips opened around the glistening shaft. Cold chrome kissed my hot folds, splintering ache deep in my core.

I’d never honed my contortionist skills, so I couldn’t take the shaft inside me, but the drooping of his eyelids and the gradual parting of his lips said it didn’t matter.

Well able to imagine the throbbing of his cock, I closed my eyes, tossed back my head and ground my pussy up and down the length of the shaft. My clit hit hard with each pass. I didn’t bother to hold in my throaty sighs. Jack’s moan punctuated the third one, the hot, husky sound bringing to standing attention every sexual neuron in my body.

My belly warmed, tightened. Heat spread up my torso, making my breasts feel heavy and achy. I blinked open my eyes with the intensely fast-building orgasm.

Jack’s lips were pressed in a firm line, his eyes riveted on my crotch and his right hand working beneath the water. I couldn’t see past the damned bubbles, but I easily imagined his long, strong fingers petting his cock, fingering the plump head, squeezing when he was about to blow it because he wanted to save his orgasm for when he was buried inside me.

My legs shuddered, a cross between fatigue from the way I was squatting over the shaft and thrill to know Jack would soon impale me with his own much bigger, longer, thicker shaft.

“How’s that chrome fetish working for you now, Jack?” I taunted, as I brought a hand to my sex and spread my folds wider, wanting to ensure nothing blocked the show of my pussy exploding with cream.

“Never better.”

He sounded strung out, pushed to the edge and ready to snap. I took mercy on him and increased the pumping of my hips, applying my full weight as I ground the sensitized pearl of my clit hard against the chrome shaft.

Once.

Twice.

My clit throbbed. My pussy spasmed. Pleasure pain erupted deep within my core. I worked the fingers that separated my folds in a quick and carnal up-and-down rhythm. Orgasm raced through me so intensely it threatened to topple me into the water. Jack stopped that from happening.

His hands holding my thighs in place, he bent his head and feasted on the juices seeping from my body. The lash of his tongue up my center and against my clit started a second wave of tremors, even stronger than the first. These ones I couldn’t stop from crying out over.

I screamed my ecstasy. “Jesus, Jack! I love your tongue! Never stop licking me! Never ever stop!”

Jack

I should have felt languid and highly sated after first watching Carinna masturbate and then feeling her ride my cock until we both climaxed with the sensual friction of the hot tub’s many jets surrounding us. But all I could think about was giving her the slow, sensual loving I’d intended to provide before she’d rubbed her pussy along the tub’s chrome shaft and destroyed any chance I’d had at maintaining control.

I quickly finished drying off with a large green bath towel, then spread the towel over the shower curtain rod to dry. Carinna stood naked in front of the bathroom sink, finger-combing her wet hair. I met her reflected gaze in the mirrored medicine cabinet. “Come downstairs with me.”

She stopped brushing to glance down at her body, still warm and flushed from our lovemaking. “Now?”

“Now. I have something to show you.”

She looked indecisive for a few seconds, but then crossed to the hot tub. With her back to me, she reached to the tiled floor for her sweatpants.

I groaned with the sight of her curvy ass right there in front of me, the rosy hole all but begging me to sink inside and take her hard. Tonight I wouldn’t be having her that way, but soon. “Don’t get dressed. I’m not.”

She straightened and turned back, frowning. “What if Ry—”

“I told you he’s gone out.”

I still wanted to set her straight on my earlier slipup, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized doing so would reveal the depth of my feelings and she wasn’t yet ready to accept them. My gut tightened with the knowledge she might never be.

How concerned she seemed over my brother catching her in the buff registered then. That had to be a good sign.

I tested the waters with a cocky smile. “Right. As if you’d care if Ryan saw you naked. C’mon, Carinna. I know you too well not to think you’d be turned on by the idea of him watching us fuck. Or joining us.”

Lifting a slim shoulder in a shrug, she smiled a little too brightly. “Hey, I’m all for threesomes and Ryan’s definitely doable. I just didn’t think you’d feel comfortable if the third party was your brother.”

Despite the fact her smile looked artificial and I probably deserved her remark for laying the words out there, jealousy grabbed hold of me. The truth of it was there had been a time when I was as open to a threesome as Carinna claimed to be, but that time had long since passed. Now, it wasn’t just the thought of my brother sleeping with her that made me feel uncomfortable, but the idea of anyone but me touching her in such an intimate way.

Because I didn’t trust my voice, I left the bathroom. Not giving her much choice but to follow or be left alone, I made my way downstairs and through the kitchen to the garage. My jealousy eased up when I discovered Ryan’s Jeep missing. Even if she didn’t want him, I could see Carinna fucking my brother, just to show me that being tied down in a relationship with one man could never work for her.

I was inhaling the much-appreciated cooler air of the garage when Carinna padded barefoot and equally bareassed through the kitchen door less than a minute later. Admiration flashed in her eyes and she parted her lips in an O the instant she caught sight of the 1950 Mercury Coupe Lead Sled dominating the right side of the garage. Without a word or glance in my direction, she went to the car, stroking her palm along the red-and-black flames that licked across the hood. “Pretty.”

I felt like a prime stallion, for the way her what-should-have-been innocent stroking had my recently deflated cock back to rock solid. It was my chrome fetish back at play. She wasn’t touching anything chrome at the moment, but she was close to the trim and wheel rims and apparently, in this case, close counted.

Moving up beside her, I ran my hand along the hood next to hers. “Pretty damned incredible is more like it. It wasn’t in great condition when I bought it. While you were too wrapped up in life to talk the past few months, I needed a distraction to fill the time we used to spend together. This was it. And it felt great. I haven’t solely restored a classic since the ’67 Cougar I gave Mom for her fiftieth birthday.”

Carinna looked like she wanted to comment about these past months. Instead, she gave me one of those luminous smiles that covered the majority of her face. “You did great, Jack. Whenever you get your garage going, it’s gonna be a huge success.”

I basked in the glow of her compliment. I’d brought her down here to drive her wild with ecstasy, but, just as much, I’d wanted her praise. Now that I’d gotten the latter, it was time to get down to business on the former.

“I have something else to show you.” I reached into the coupe’s open passenger-side window to the bench seat. My cock throbbed when my fingers came into contact with the red fur-lined handcuffs I’d found in a floor compartment when I’d done the initial detailing. I’d nearly thrown them out. And what a waste that would have been.

Pulling the handcuffs through the window, I lifted them in front of her and gave in to a wolfish grin. “Look what came along for the ride.”

Carinna’s smile went from luminous to naughty in a heartbeat. She took in the rigid state of my cock and then nodded at the handcuffs. “Hoping to break those in, were you?”

“Maybe I’ve already used them a few times.” Shit, I didn’t know why I’d said that. But, yeah, I did. Just once I wanted her to be the jealous one. To think that between when we’d slept together four months ago and again this week I’d been with at least one other woman, if not a couple dozen.

“Maybe you’d better get to putting them on me, if that’s your plan. Otherwise, I can always use my beauty sleep.” Her smile went just a little brittle at the edges, her tone not even coming close to sounding nice.

My grin turned arrogant, my hope for us fueled by her response in a way I’d never seen coming. It was no longer enough to drive Carinna crazy while making slow, sweet love to her. Now that I knew she might feel jealousy over me, I had to show her she didn’t need another man or two men in her life or bed because no other man knew her as well as I did. No other man knew what her dirty-girl side craved.

Truthfully, Carinna had never even hinted at the idea she would enjoy playing the part of the submissive. After all, where would it fit into her usual routine? Nowhere, since surrendering her control so completely meant both giving her absolute trust, and opening herself up emotionally. Just as I knew she would bask in the pleasure pain I was about to inflict, I held on to faith she would let her emotions free.

Grasping the handcuffs in my left hand, I moved behind her and palmed her breast with my right hand. I tugged her back against me, until my cock nudged between her thighs to rub along her pussy lips from behind. All the blood left in my head threatened to shoot to my groin with the sensual slide. I fought the sensation off and took my body’s anxiously aroused state out on Carinna by pinching her nipple and rearing back to rub along her slit a second time. A shallow cry slipped from her lips. I rubbed some more, playing with her nipples, pinching, rolling, pulling, letting her arousal build slowly.

Her breasts rose and fell heavily beneath my touch, her breathing heightened. My own breath drew in on unsteady rushes as silky cream seeped from between her folds to coat my cock and tinge the air with her hot, musky scent.

With the next thrust, I angled my shaft to brush against her clit but not come close to piercing her opening. I didn’t dare enter her, not if I wanted this to continue. Carinna didn’t seem to care about it lasting. One of her hands moved to her pussy, her fingers spreading her labia, shamelessly exposing her clit to rub against my cock as thoroughly as possible, while she moaned and reared back, pumping her ass into my groin.

She was already so close to climaxing. Already so close to making me come, as well. Too close for either of our sakes.

I let go of the straining nipple I currently toyed with and pushed her toward the front of the coupe. “Lean against the hood,” I ordered in a dark voice, “with your forehead touching the metal and your ass in the air.”

She didn’t turn back, or comply, just flung a haughty, “Feeling dominant, Jack?” over her shoulder.

Her disobedience fit my intentions perfectly, made me feel just a little high with the control she was about to submit to me. I pushed my knees into the backs of hers, forcing her to go weak-kneed. A subtle shove had her legs plastered up against the chrome grille. “Get on the hood, Carinna. Now!”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” she said in an amused voice that suggested she thought I was teasing, that I would let up any minute now and sink inside her slick pussy.

Eventually I would do that. But not until her emotions had a chance to fully rise to the surface. Not until she wanted me so badly she begged.

She planted her hands on the hood and reclined against it slowly. Too slowly. I pressed my hand against the small of her back and pushed her down. Her breasts plumped against the decades-old metal in a totally erotic display that would be forever engrained in my mind. Her supple ass pushed up in the air, her puckered hole inches from my mouth.

My tongue ran over my teeth with the raw urge to sink inside and tongue-fuck her asshole.

Had any man ever done that to her? Probably. I couldn’t remember her sharing the experience and didn’t want to.

My need to command her grew with the thought.

“Having fun yet, Jack?” Carinna tossed over her shoulder.

Her voice was still light, airy. And that just pissed me off. This was no game. This was a voyage into uncharted terrain for her. A place where she came to terms with the depths of her feelings for me and shouted them aloud.

“Don’t say another word unless I tell you to speak.”

As I knew she would, she said another word. “Just remember what comes around goes around, Dempsey.”

I gave in to a hard laugh. She was out of her mind if she thought I’d take the words as a threat. I’d play the submissive for her any day. Just not today. Today I was the dominant one. And I’d never felt more like I fit the part.

“I warned you, Carinna,” I allowed, and then slid my hand over her bare bottom, which only made her push it out farther.

She wiggled her rear end, just daring me to give her more. I gave that more gladly, pulling my hand back and letting it fall hard across her buttocks. Her startled gasp echoed through the garage, along with the sharp sound of my hand spanking her soft flesh a second time. Then a third.

My cock throbbed a little more with each whack. My blood warmed as red flared across her backside to rival the red of the flames licking beneath her prone body.

Her ass had to sting, but Carinna didn’t say a word because, as I’d instinctively known, she basked in the sinfully carnal sensation rioting through her with each slap.

I struck her ass four more times, the fourth whack finally earning a small throaty gasp. It was enough to egg me on. “Put your hands behind your back and spread your legs wide.”

Her breath came faster with the order, heavier. Still, she didn’t say a word, just moved her hands behind her back and bridged her fingers together like a good little submissive. And that was so unlike the Carinna I usually knew, I almost ruined the whole thing by giving in to amused laughter.

I didn’t laugh, but took her wrists and locked the cuffs around them, making her as vulnerable as I hoped she’d ever been to a man. Squatting behind her, I ran my fingers up her legs slowly, from ankles to inner thighs, barely skimming the outer edges of her pussy lips before retracing the path back downward. I made the journey again and again, only relenting when her juices streaked down her legs and she quivered with her need.

Still, I didn’t give in to her want and the mad thrashing of my own heart. Just stopped the torture of my fingertips, so my hands were free to grip her thighs and push her legs wider.

I crawled between her legs and blew upon her wet, parted folds. Her clit trembled and a squeak broke from her lips to do a number on my overly hardened body. I went with the raw need gripping me to the core, let it dominate my voice. “Your pussy is so sexy this way. Spread wide open and dripping cream down your thighs. I’d like to keep you this way the rest of the night. Would that bother you? If I kept stroking your legs and thighs, kept blowing on your hot pussy? You may speak, Carinna.”

“Fuck you, yes!” she bit out.

I tsked. “Not a very nice way to talk to your master. And here I was about to be kind and give you my cock. Don’t worry, I’ll still give you my cock, just not in your aching pussy.” Grabbing her by the manacled wrists, I pulled her off the coupe’s hood and pushed her to the garage floor, careful to see she landed on her knees on the slide of carpet I’d used while working under the car and not on the hard cement.

“You’re an asshole, Jack,” she vented. “I never knew that about you.”

I laughed again, deep and dark and wickedly. “I find it hard to buy you believe that when your voice is so thick with lust I can barely understand you.” I rounded to her front, enjoying the way her shackled arms thrust her breasts right up into my face. I wanted to go down on my knees and lick first one generous globe and then the other. Instead I stood my ground and forced a hard edge into my voice. “Shut up, Carinna, and put your mouth to good use.”

Fisting the back of her hair, I guided her lips to my jutting, pulsing cock. She kept her full pink lips sealed for an instant and then devoured my shaft nearly to the hilt. I closed my eyes with the intensity of her warm, moist mouth surrounding me. Her lips closed tightly around my cock then, her tongue stroking with a divine technique that showed just how many men she’d blown through the years.

The reality she’d been with so many others should have been enough to quell the tension gathering too fast at the base of my spine and the heat building in my groin, but apparently not even that was enough to thwart Carinna’s stunning mouth performance.

My hips thrust toward her lips of their volition. My heart beat madly. I curled my fingers tighter in her long, thick curls. It was damned tempting to let her finish the job, to fill up her lovely mouth and throat with my seed, but that wasn’t the point of our being in this garage.

I used my hold on her hair to tug her mouth free of my cock. “Enough!”

Passion and trust glazed her smoky eyes as they met mine. Earning her unconditional trust was one half of the reason she was in the position she was in, but not the whole reason. I had to see the rest of that reason through, so I pushed her head back down again, unable to meet her eyes without driving into her pussy immediately. “Don’t look at me unless I tell you to.”

This time she gave in to my order without comment. I rewarded her gladly. Moving back behind her, I placed a hand at her belly to brace her, and bent her forward, so that her ass was raised high in the air and her face hovering centimeters from the carpet slide.

I brought my fingers back to her ankles, started the slow, sensual upward journey once more. This time when I reached her junction, I didn’t move back down to her ankles. This time I bent my head, gripped one thigh and demanded, “Fuck my tongue, Carinna! I want to feel your tight asshole contracting around it. I want you to love it as much as you love feeling my tongue eating at your pussy.”

As much as you love me.

Before I could give voice to the dangerous thought, I licked up and around her puckered hole and then shoved my tongue just inside. Her asshole opened and closed around me, waiting, wanting. She whimpered as if to ask for more. I pushed my tongue farther inside. She reared back without hesitation, gliding the length of my tongue, slowly at first and then faster and faster as her lubrication grew. Like everything else I’d done so far, tonguing her asshole was clearly a major turn-on for Carinna. Her breathing came in fits and starts and her abdominal muscles tensed beneath my hand, a foreshadowing of her impending orgasm.

Too bad for her it wasn’t time to come. Not just yet.

I pulled my tongue from her ass and sank it into her pussy, licking at her rich cream with slow strokes meant to keep her on the edge. Strokes that had me on the edge, as well.

Realizing how likely it was I would come before she either gave in and begged for relief or let her emotions free, I layered my words with conceit. “I love the taste of your pussy so much, I could go on eating you for days. And you’d let me, Carinna, because I’m a master with my tongue.”

She heaved out a huge sigh. “What you are is an arrogant bastard and if you don’t stick your cock in me soon, I promise I’ll never forgive you. Fuck me already, Jack. Please!”

I stilled my licking with a massive sigh of my own. Thank God. Finally words. Finally begging.

Grabbing her around the waist, I lifted her off the carpet, hauled her back over to the coupe and reclined her once more on the hood, sunny-side up.

“You wouldn’t want me any other way,” I vowed and finally gave her what she’d been wanting for so long now.

What we’d both been wanting for too damned long, I knew with the first push of my cock inside her dripping sex. All it took was that one shove to have her pussy muscles clamping down around me. To have her crying out, “Holy Jesus, Jack! I love it when you’re a bastard. Love it!”

And all it took was hearing her confession to have orgasm seizing me hard, making me come in the throes of carnal sensation so acute my vision swam and I nearly gave in to my own words of love. Only not just about her attitude, but the whole entire packaged deal.

Chapter Five
Jack

Carinna hadn’t confessed to loving me as I’d hoped by pushing her to the edge last night, but she had used the L word several times. For that reason, I wasn’t surprised when she rolled from my arms to the side of the bed and started soundlessly across my room.

I rose up on an elbow, enjoying the erotic sway of her ass and the memory of the appealing red left behind from my spankings, before asking, “Sneaking out?”

She stiffened on a gasp. Then went soft again to toss over her shoulder, “Going to the bathroom.”

Maybe she had been. Maybe she hadn’t. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to lie around and find out. The tournament play started early today and, since my and Carinna’s future was riding on it, I wasn’t about to show up late.

I was pulling on my pants when she came out of the bathroom, wearing the T-shirt I’d had on last night. I’d never seen Carinna in my clothes. It was endearing in a way that had me wanting to shout my love for her even more than I had wanted to do so last night, after granting us both the right to come.

Thank God for the stricken look on her face or I would have probably done so and ruined any chance I had with her.

She frowned as I pulled on a shirt. “What are you doing?”

“Getting dressed. I have to be somewhere by nine, and it’s already half past eight.”

“Oh. I should check in on my grandma, anyway. Make sure we’re still on for bingo tomorrow.”

From her deflated tone, she really had been on her way to take a leak when I’d woken up. Probably had planned to crawl back into bed and make good on last night’s threat, by turning those handcuffs and God only knew what else on me.

Damn, how I wanted to let that happen. Tomorrow, if I was lucky. And many, many days after that, if I was even luckier.

I went to my dresser and pulled out a pair of socks. “I’m planning on taking the guys lunch at the firehouse today. Just pizza, but there’ll be plenty to go around. You should stop by. I know they’d love to see you.” I crossed to the bed and sat on the end of it. “Vernelli keeps asking when I’m going to bring the hot chick with the big tits back around,” I added jokingly.

“He’s cute. Any idea what kind of hose he’s packing?”

I was thankful to be looking down, tugging on a sock. If I hadn’t been, Carinna would have seen the rage on my face.

Had my attempts at surfacing her emotions last night been completely lost on her? Or how the fuck could she still be thinking about screwing some other guy, and seconds after she’d been thinking about screwing me, no less?

“I don’t make it a point to check out other men’s hoses,” I said as calmly as possible. “Besides, he’s half your age.”

She snorted out a laugh and whacked me on the shoulder. “Thanks for the compliment, dickhead. Always nice to know when my tits and ass have sagged so much I could pass for a fifty-year-old.”

I shouldn’t have touched her when I was about to head out the door, but the idea she might be serious about wanting Vernelli had me anxious to stake a claim. This time, one that went beyond the emotional. One that was right there out in the open for all to see and recognize Carinna as mine.

I slid my hands up her sides as I stood, dragging the T-shirt along for the ride, until her breasts were bared and her pussy peeking out from its curly brown hiding place.

The age crack was pure irony. Her ass and breasts were both as tight as could be and her skin flawless. That latter made me feel a little guilty over what I was about to do. Assuring myself the mark wouldn’t be permanent, I pushed aside her hair to expose her neck to my mouth. I brushed my mustache across her skin until I heard her laugh, and then I sucked her skin into my mouth and applied enough pressure to bruise.

I stuck my finger in her mouth with her sharp inhale, moments later replacing it with my tongue. Morning breath didn’t appear to be an ailment that plagued Carinna. She tasted as hot and heavenly as ever.

By the time I was done kissing her, my hands had found their way to her breasts, pinching and fondling the nipples, and my cock was so hard I could only hope it would be flaccid by the time I reached the tournament casino.

“So, what do you say?” I asked, wondering if I should rescind my offer, knowing Vernelli would be at the station. The hickey already surfacing on her neck eased my tension enough to continue. “Lunch at eleven-thirty?”

She looked uncertain for just a moment, but then gave me an amused smile. “Better make it twelve. I’m gonna need at least an extra half hour to fix this aging disaster of a body.”

Carinna

I’d considered covering the hickey on my neck—silk scarves were fashionable enough these days. In the end, I’d chosen not to cover it, since I didn’t want Jack to think it bothered me.

It did bother me because I knew he’d done it on purpose. It concerned me a hell of a lot more to think what he’d been after last night, with his little dominance show, was more than my admission over how much I loved it when he acted like a bastard. Despite his referring to me as a piece of ass, his behavior resurfaced my concern he had feelings for me that went beyond friendship and, by pushing me to the emotional edge, he’d hoped I would own up to feeling the same way about him.

My concern—both over how he felt about me and that for a while there last night I’d considered once again that there was a very real chance I could feel the same for him—was great enough to have me tossing the cabbie a twenty and jumping out of the taxi the moment it reached the firehouse to run inside in search of Vernelli.

Landen Vernelli was younger than me, but only by two years. While he was good-looking in a cute blond sort of way, he was no Jack. But then, no man would be Jack but Jack himself. I had to accept that and move on.

Vernelli was the perfect guy to move on with. Jack couldn’t possibly hang on to romantic feelings for me when he heard about my sexual exploits with another guy on a regular basis. And Vernelli would talk—of that I had no doubt.

My heart squeezed painfully when I spotted Vernelli alone in the apparatus bay just off from the truck garage. It was a pain I could easily guess was guilt.

Fuck, I hated hurting Jack. But it just wasn’t avoidable.

Having planned this before I left my apartment, I’d worn my Liege uniform. If Jack asked, I planned to use the excuse I had to work at two and figured that lunch might last till then. The reality was the uniform made me look and feel like a piece of meat and I was counting on Vernelli not being able to resist so much temptation.

I took a few seconds to plump up my breasts so they risked the confines of the tank top even more than usual—the miniskirt was already as sinfully short as it could go—then I sashayed my way toward Vernelli, a naughty smile in place.

He spun around fast when I slapped his ass through his tan canvas shorts. His blue eyes warmed with sensual invitation and a grin slid into place as he gave my barely clothed body a lingering once-over that didn’t do a damned thing for me.

His eyes met mine. “Hey, beautiful. Where’ve you been all my life?”

Accepting my hormones would kick in when the time was right, or at least once Vernelli was pumping away inside me, I flattened my hands on his chest and practically purred, “Waiting for you to come along and sweep me off my feet.”

“I’m here.”

I wet my lips tauntingly. “Then start sweeping.”

“You got it.”

With more finesse than I would’ve thought he possessed, he bent and lifted me into his arms. For a moment, I considered he might think this was all a joke. Then I noted the very real hard-on pressing against my hip.

“Where to? My bunk, or do you wanna see what it’s like to go crazy on the top of a fire truck?”

“Definitely the truck.” I’d never screwed that high up in the air. Once we got started, the possibility—slim though it was—of getting a little too wild and rolling off the truck would have to appeal to my kink factor and get my pussy wet.

With an eager grin, Vernelli exited the apparatus bay and started for the trucks.

“Put her down!”

Jack’s growl echoed through the firehouse so loudly, I jumped in Vernelli’s arms.

Vernelli didn’t seem as fazed. He kept walking, tossing over his shoulder as he went, “She seems to like it where she’s at just fine.”

Jack appeared past Vernelli’s shoulder in an instant, his forehead creased with small lines and his face red with fury. He grabbed hold of the sleeve of Vernelli’s T-shirt, whipping him around so fast I let out a screech and clung to his neck for dear life.

Jack fixed him with the death glare he’d perfected as a twelve-year-old, thanks to my help. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t something to be so proud of. “I said, put her the fuck down!”

Vernelli looked to me for answers. As much as I thought this had been the right approach to convincing Jack I didn’t want a place in his heart beyond friendship, seeing the very real threat in his eyes, I started to second-guess myself.

I nodded at Vernelli. “Better put me down.”

He set me down. Spreading his hands out in front of him, he eyed Jack regretfully. “Sorry, man, I didn’t realize you had a claim on her.”

Where I didn’t want Vernelli getting his ass kicked, I didn’t have any qualms about personally taking on Jack. “He doesn’t. We’re friends.” I moved into Jack’s personal space, got right up into his face the way I knew he hated, unless it was for sexual reasons. “Got that, Jack? Just friends.”

Nostrils flaring, Jack sent Vernelli another hard glare. He looked back at me, his blue-green eyes iced over, and then stalked across the garage to the end of the row of fire trucks.

I should have left him alone to work out whatever the hell it was in his head that said he had a right to try to put a claim on me. Only, I couldn’t. Because up until last night, when he’d temporarily made me believe he didn’t have intimate feelings for me, I’d seen this coming all along. If there was a chance of our friendship continuing after this, I had to set things straight immediately.

I followed Jack’s path to the last fire truck in the row. He leaned back against its side, cursing a blue streak in between hauling in deep breaths.

I cocked out my hip and landed into him. “What the fuck is your deal?”

He glared at me, speaking none too gently. “I don’t like seeing you get taken advantage of.”

“That’s what you said two days ago. I thought you were full of shit that time, too. News flash, Jack. Vernelli’s not half my age and he wasn’t taking advantage of me. I wanted to fuck him.”

He smirked and pushed away from the fire truck, took a menacing step toward me. “Now, who’s full of shit? You want to fuck me. Not Vernelli. Not Ryan. Not any other goddamned man or a set of men. Only me.”

I gasped at his arrogance. I liked my men cocky but, Christ, he was seriously pushing it. “I don’t want to fuck only you, you arrogant bastard. If I wanted to be with just one man, I’d be engaged to Hank.”

He laughed uproariously. “Liar. Even if you weren’t scared shitless of relationships, you would never have agreed to marry Hank. He was wrong for you in every way possible.”

And what? Jack was right for me in every way possible?

Even if I wanted to ask the question, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t have had a chance to get it out. He covered the few feet between us in an instant, then spun me around and pushed me face forward toward the fire truck.

As it had when he’d pushed me against the car hood last night, the breath whooshed out of me. Only this time I had farther to go and the landing was that much harder because of it. My hands hit first, bracing for impact, so I didn’t do a complete face-plant. Then I made the mistake of taking the time to steady myself. It was all the time Jack needed to get his hands back on me and show me exactly how kind he’d been in his handling of me last night.

One hand coiled around my forearm, fingers biting into my flesh, while the other moved beneath my skirt. The warmth of his fingers brushed my rear end, and then he was yanking aside my panties, exposing my ass to the kiss of the air.

My eyes widened with the hiss of his zipper. Fear and—Christ, there was obviously something wrong with my head—uncontainable excitement coiled in my belly as the plump head of his hard cock pushed against my crack. He jammed two fingers inside my pussy, which had been ridiculously and shamelessly wet from the moment I’d witnessed his possessive rage. He fingered me just long enough to get his fingers coated in my juices and then shoved them in my asshole. I sighed with the forceful entry. Sighed louder as he started pumping.

Once.

Twice.

He pulled free and shoved inside again. Only this time not with his fingers. His cock filled me in a violent thrust.

Tears spilled from my eyes as pleasure pain so exquisite I could barely breathe rippled through my body. I curled my fingers tight, gripping on to the truck’s side rails as he pounded into my ass like some feral beast.

“Jesus Christ, Jack!” It was all I could say. It was all too much. Too forceful. Too raw. Too damned good.

Past the rage of a blossoming orgasm that promised to be one of the best of my life, I became conscious of voices. Men talking. Men laughing. Every guy in the firehouse was probably watching Jack take me in the ass.

Like the dirty girl I was, I’d never been more excited in my life. Or shouted so loudly, as my pussy contracted with spasms and I came in time with Jack’s cum spilling into my ass.

He pulled out of me seconds later, spinning me instantly in his arms. Regret over his behavior filled his eyes and I had no doubt the same would come out of his mouth if I gave him the opportunity. I wasn’t about to do that. I didn’t want apologies from Jack. The naughty part of me wanted a repeat of the violent coupling. Fortunately, the girl that knew when to walk was back to calling the shots.

I pushed my palms against Jack’s chest and sent him stumbling backward a few steps. Without another look his way, I started for the front door, settling my drenched panties back into place and managing to strum my still aroused clit in the process. I wasn’t quite able to stop the moan that slipped from between my lips, so I simply went with it.

I gave the dozen or so guys—thankfully Ryan wasn’t among them, though I knew he’d hear all about it soon enough, along with every other person on the crew not present—who stood ogling and more than likely sporting some major wood, my dirtiest smile. “So, what do you say, boys? Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

Leaving them to stare and grin and give childishly inane wolf whistles, I walked through the firehouse door in search of the nearest cab and then a bottle or two of Bombay Sapphire, hold the vermouth.

Jack

As days from hell went, this one topped the charts.

I’d thought my possessive explosion over Carinna and subsequently taking her in the ass in front of the bulk of my coworkers had been bad enough. But that had been only the beginning. Shortly after arriving home from the tournament play that night, I’d gotten an emergency backup call.

I watched in abject horror as the members of the Ladder 19 crew still inside the blazing chemical plant raced out as it exploded for what had to be the eighth time since we’d made the bad call of going inside. A sick sense of foreboding had been with me since the first explosion, when I, along with several other members of the crew, had been lucky enough to get out. That foreboding threatened to overtake me as I counted heads through the billow of wind-caught black smoke turning the early-evening sky dark as night.

I came up one short and my stomach went queasy.

Ryan.

No, I couldn’t make that assumption. Dressed in the heavy, yellow protective fire gear the way they were, it was nearly impossible to distinguish one person from the next.

I yanked off my helmet and face mask. Others followed suit. Ryan’s face came into view and, though I hadn’t realized I’d held it, my breath came whizzing out.

It sucked back in on a painful note when I realized who was missing. “Where the fuck’s Axe?”

A few guys shook their heads, their faces revealing a mix of loathing and unshed tears, but no one offered words.

Finally, Ryan approached, sorrow filling his eyes. He laid a hand on my arm, speaking quietly. “He didn’t make it out, Jack. The roof gave away when he was on the middle of it.”

Bile rose up in the back of my throat. I gulped it down and drew in a hard breath.

Didn’t. Make. It. Out.

They were the words every firefighter feared and the ones no one would voice. Until the time came when you had no other choice. Even now, only Ryan had been able to get them out.

I shook my head, not wanting to accept that possibility, refusing to believe it. The undeniable grief in my brother’s eyes told me it was a stark reality.

My throat burned in a way smoke inhalation could never replicate.

Jesus, Axe. Tony Lorent to his family.

His family.

He had a wife. Kids. He was fucking thirty-two years old.

My tears came fast and hard. I swiped at them with the back of my hand, wiping soot into my eyes that had them stinging like a bitch.

“Goddammit!”

I loved these guys, they were my family, but that didn’t change the facts. I had to get the hell out of this job. My father had been a fireman, as had his father and so on. My father had been killed in the line of duty when I was four and Ryan one. I wouldn’t let that happen to my kids. And I would have kids. With Carinna.

Maybe I hadn’t been successful in surfacing her emotions last night, but what happened at the firehouse today, how she’d been able to find pleasure in a moment that should have been humiliating for her, proved how thoroughly we were involved. It proved, despite everything she did and said, she loved me.

One more day in the poker tournament and I could put this life behind me. Unlike every other facet of the day, my luck in the tournament had been better, brought me back up to fifth place. All it would take was a few good hands to come out the winner, or at least close to it. I would get those hands and get the fuck off of a fire truck.

Right now I had to get to Carinna. Had to lose myself in her kiss, feel the welcoming warmth of her sweet body. And she would welcome me inside, of that I held no doubt.

Because she was mine. Even if she wasn’t ready to admit it.

Carinna

With the jiggle of a key in my apartment door lock, I looked up from the couch, where I sat watching a Bermuda Triangle special on the Discovery Channel. Jack stormed in seconds later. The acrid smell of smoke clung to him and his face and clothes were dusted with soot. Some women might have been turned off by his appearance. I was hotter than the blaze he’d clearly just put out.

I’d forgone the gin and gone to work at two as scheduled. I’d spent the afternoon being bitchy to my customers and pissed at Jack, nearly as pissed at myself. I’d planned to ream his ass the next time I saw him. Catching the glint of raw need in his eyes, I knew I wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it.

When he opened his arms to me and silently begged with his eyes, all I could do was stand from the couch and go to him. Yelling, accusations, my need to move on—they could all wait. Right now it was clearly physical warmth he needed.

I pushed my hands beneath his dirty white undershirt and attacked his mouth with my kiss. He buried his hands in my hair and kissed me back with a hunger I felt from the rock-hard points of my nipples all the way to my toes.

Even as my pussy swelled with moisture, my heart squeezed tight for whatever demons filled Jack’s head. It made me want to speak words I had no right saying. The kind of affection-laced words I knew would give him hope.

He’d spent years making me believe he was on the same page relationship-wise as I was. In the end, he’d turned out to be just as big of a liar as Hank. The difference was Hank had never been my best friend. And with Hank it had never been anything more than fucking.

With Jack, no matter how rough or wild or kinky it got, it was lovemaking. I tried to deny that truth, but I couldn’t do it any longer. At least, not to myself.

Before we could become victims of our emotions and say words one or both of us would regret, I pulled free of the kiss and went down on my knees. I made quick work of freeing his shaft. Then I took his cock between my lips and savored his salty male hardness with my tongue, in a way he hadn’t allowed me to do last night.

His fingers had eased from my hair as I moved. With the stroke of my mouth around the velvety flesh of his rigid staff, they returned, holding on so firmly to my unruly brown curls, it was as if the caress of my mouth was his life source.

Using my hands on his balls, cupping and massaging their heavy weight, I licked the underside of his cock, trailing the swollen blue vein that ran the length of it.

Jack moaned and his fingers curled tighter in my hair. “Yes. I need this.”

His words were soulful, as if he felt he owed me an explanation for giving in to my silent offer. I knew why he would feel that way and it went beyond what had happened at the firehouse today. It was because I was a greedy bitch about my orgasms. I’d always thought that okay. Why shouldn’t I expect to come a couple times as advance payment for all my hard work getting a guy off?

Only it had never felt like work bringing Jack to climax. And, right now, I didn’t care about coming myself. I didn’t care about anything but making him feel good and, in doing so, chasing away the demons that haunted him.

I pulled my mouth free of his cock to look at his face. His eyes were as soulful as his voice, revealing—what before I could only guess at—his love for me so keenly it stilled the breath in my throat. My heart went from squeezing to a chaotic beat of desire for things that went well beyond the flesh and the pleasures to be found in it.

I pushed my storming emotions aside and gave him a reassuring smile. “I want to give you this, Jack. And I don’t expect anything in return.”

The gratitude in his eyes said more than words could. Before my own eyes gave me away, I returned to my goal of making him feel good.

Sucking the meaty pink head of his cock between my lips, I circled his length with my tongue while I continued to play with his balls, alternately gripping the sensitive sacs and teasing them with little taps. His shaft pulsed in my mouth. His groin pistoned against my face. The deliciously masculine scent of his arousal lifted on the air, filling my senses and making my inner thighs tingle with sensual ache.

I increased the pace of my mouth, loving him quickly, with firm, solid strokes. Stopping when I could feel his sex quivering beneath my tongue, telling me he was on the verge of climax.

Because I knew this had to be our last time together, I wanted to give him the orgasm of his life, push his control to the brink again and again before it finally wore thin. I did so with little licks of the pre-cum oozing from the tip of his cock. Teasing touches of the sensitized skin and the black hair that surrounded his proud member. By drawing his balls into my mouth one at a time and loving them with my tongue and the gentle scrape of my teeth.

Jack’s full-bodied groan and the shaking of his thighs told me when he’d reached the limits of his control. Eagerly, I returned my mouth to his succulent cock, slid my lips down his length and fucked him in earnest.

His hips joined the lightning-fast pace, his shaft thrusting between my lips with exquisite pressure that had the head of his cock tickling the back of my throat and my panties growing unbearably wet despite this moment not being about my pleasure.

He lost control on the fifth thrust. I nearly came as his cream filled my mouth with the hot, salty, delectable taste of Jack.

Gripping my hair with tightly clenched fists, he cried out my name, something I’d always thought of as cliché, but with Jack I loved hearing my name in his deep, rough voice.

I loved.

There were those forbidden words again.

I tried my damnedest to forget them as he slipped his cock from my mouth and sank to his knees on the carpet in front of me. He pulled me into his arms and buried his face in the crook of my neck.

I forgot about my fear of those nasty, niggling words to concentrate on Jack. His emotions had been all over the map today. I’d never seen him as angry as he’d been at firehouse and I’d never seen him act as needy as he was acting now. His cocky side appealed to my inner dirty girl, but this needy side spoke to an even bigger part. He was giving me a trust I hadn’t realized he’d previously held back. My face burned with the want to accept that trust, along with everything else he had to offer.

“I love you, Carinna.”

Everything but that.

My stomach pitched. “Jesus, Jack.” I’d guessed how he felt. Still, hearing it aloud made it feel like he’d poured a gallon of liquid smoke down my throat.

I pulled from his arms as gently as possible, which wasn’t all that gentle, given I wanted to hail a cab to some little Podunk town he wasn’t liable to ever find me in.

I came to my feet and, clinging to survival instincts, jutted my hip out. “You don’t love me. You’re just strung out on emotions. What happened tonight? I thought you weren’t working this week.”

Jack stood. He focused on righting his clothes; still, I could hear the catch in his breath. He looked at me, eyes that were soulful a moment ago now filled with unshed tears. “I wasn’t supposed to be, but an emergency backup call came in.” His tone softened. “There was a chemical explosion. Tony fell through a four-story roof. The crew couldn’t get to him. He’s dead.”

I blinked with the force of the words. My heart gave a painful squeeze. Not over the loss of Tony—although I felt terrible about that—but the idea it could have been Jack who’d been killed.

I couldn’t risk giving in to the bitter ache the thought triggered, or pulling Jack into my arms to comfort him. If I did, the odds were slim I’d be able to release him without confessing my belly-cramping concern that I just might have fallen for him, too. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful, horrid. I know he was a good friend of yours.”

“I’m through with fighting fires, Carinna.”

Thank God. But no, not thank God. It was selfishness that made me think that way, fear of losing him forever. “That’s crazy talk, Jack. Firefighting has been in your family for five generations. You love it. It’s your emotions making you think otherwise.”

The sheen of tears left his eyes. “Damn it, it isn’t my emotions!” he barked out, then gentled his voice. “I’ve wanted to quit for a long time. It’s a good job, an honorable one, but it’s not where my future’s at. You know how long I’ve wanted to open a restoration garage. All I needed was the money to make it happen. I’m one day away from having that money.”

“How?”

A small smile curved his lips. “Poker. I’m in a tournament at the Rio with some of the best in the industry. Tomorrow’s the last day and there’s a good chance I’ll win.”

I should have been happy to know he wouldn’t be risking his life anymore, yet still doing a job he loved. And truthfully I was, but I was also jealous as hell to think he would be living his dream while I’d probably spend the rest of my life having my ass grabbed at the Taboo Tequila Bar while I saved for mine.

I forced a smile. “That’s killer, Jack. You’re going to realize your dream.”

The subtle twitching of his lips told me he hadn’t bought my bogus smile. He stepped toward me, lifting his hand to my face and caressing my cheek before I could stop him. “That garage isn’t my only dream, Carinna. Not even close to my biggest one.”

My heart missed a beat, only to start back up as a wild tattoo. “Don’t say it.”

“I love you. And I want to marry—”

He’d fucking said it!

I covered my ears and jerked from his touch, uttering a na-na-na chant to make any seven-year-old proud.

Jack had come here in his moment of need, much the way I’d relied on him after my father’s death. I wanted to be his comforting shoulder, as he’d been mine. But I couldn’t do it at the cost of what he was asking. I couldn’t even allow him to finish his proposal, for fear I’d listen to my heart and respond in the affirmative.

“Get out!” I screeched. His crumpled look wouldn’t allow me to stick with the harpy tone. I uncovered my ears and softened my voice. “I’m sorry, Jack. I know you’re a great catch, but I don’t want to be the one who catches you. I don’t do relationships and not even you can change that. Just go. Please.”

I thought he would try to change my mind—he’d never been one to give up easily—but Tony’s death had obviously taken all the fight out of him. He didn’t say another word, just turned and walked out my door.

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