The Fifth Favor (34 page)

In reply he reached behind his head, grabbed a handful of his T-shirt and drew it up and off in one strong sweep.

His hands went to his button fly, his lashes shielding the fire in his gaze as he glanced down and slipped the buttons swiftly through their holes. The jeans slackened on his hips and he pushed them down, took his briefs with them, stepped free and kicked the clothing aside.

Billie held her breath, the only sound in the room the thud of her own hammering pulse. She had tasted his mouth and skin and manhood, swallowed his essence; held his head as he suckled her naked breasts, taken his fingers and tongue inside her…and yet none of it had been as telling or intimate as this moment.

He was lean and sinewy without being bulky, every muscle sculpted by an ethereal hand. The epitome of male beauty…and he wanted her. His body said so. His eyes, black anthracite, burned it into her soul.

“Oh,” she said at last, her gaze volleying between his body and his reflection in the mirror to examine each delectable side of his physique. “I’m speechless.”

Amusement softened the stern lines of his face. “Turn around.”

She did as he directed, and felt his hands rest on her shoulders, his lips brush the nape of her neck. The pins slid from her hair; her bun loosened and uncoiled, tumbling free. Against her back his naked body radiated heat. She stared ahead at their reflection, watching him, the fine curve of his brow, his dark lashes and sensual mouth, the rise of his bare shoulders behind her, the way his blunt-tipped fingers curled against her hip.

His hand slid around to her stomach, rubbing in slow, sinuous circles as he dipped his head and caught her right earlobe between his teeth.

Billie tilted her head to the left to give him better access, shivering as his warm breath sent chills along her sensitized skin.

His mouth grazed and nipped at the tendon on the side of her neck. The circular stroke of his hand moved lower, until it rested at the juncture of her thighs. Rubbing, rubbing, sliding desire-dampened silk against her yearning flesh, while behind her, his erection burned and prodded.

The slide of her zipper sang in the silence, and the radiant warmth of his body seeped into her naked back. When Christopher slipped the dress from her shoulders, released her bra and bared her breasts, goose bumps spread anew over her skin, tightening her nipples until they ached.

Watching her reflection, he caught her wrists, brought them behind her back and held them captive with one hand, the motion jutting her breasts forward. “You’re beautiful.”

187

Shelby Reed

“Thank you.” Her words shook. “But don’t compare me to the women you’ve seen.”

“There’s no comparison.” His free hand captured her chin and forced her to face the mirror. “When I look at you,” he said against her cheek, “I see the beauty of a life I never should’ve left behind.”

Instant reality whipped out to sting her, but she shook it aside.
Don’t think, Billie.

Just feel. Feel.

Behind her, his erection brushed against her captive palms. Her fingers curled around him, blindly reading his tumescence, but then he stepped to the side, out of her reach, and cupped her breast with a gentle hand. Capturing her nipple with thumb and forefinger, he enticed her with tugs and flicks, like the soft, sinuous workings of a mouth, until she cried out in divine frustration. He released her wrists and shoved the wrinkled dress to her feet, then delved inside her panties, feeling for her wetness as his black, sleepy eyes stared at their mirrored image.

Pleasure coiled tight in Billie’s muscles and stripped her inhibitions. She didn’t like to look at her naked reflection; the mirror at home showed a lonely girl locked in a thirty-three-year-old, less-than-perfect body. But the woman in this mirror was oddly beautiful, flushed, trembling, her dark hair wild against her shoulders. Christopher’s easy worship lit a flickering flame inside her, and she glowed with the luminescence of a woman adored.

He watched too, mesmerized, his fingertips circling, circling, slippery wet and unerring as they sought entrance to her body. He slid one finger inside her, then two, testing her.
How much can you take?

Until her head dropped back and she uttered a half-human cry.
Enough.

Then it wasn’t enough. She wanted him inside her. More than his fingers. More than the slow, measured thrust he now offered, the heel of his hand brushing her swollen clitoris with each deliberate rotation.

Desire weighted her eyelids and she struggled to keep them open and trained on that dark hand buried inside her panties. To oblige her, he tugged the lacy bikinis down to her thighs, baring her to both their gazes.

The short, harsh breaths that escaped her escalated into whimpers. She turned her face sharply aside, riding the edge of orgasm, every muscle tight and quivering.

“I’m going to come,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his forearm as it flexed with the thrust of his hand.

“Open your eyes.” Christopher’s voice came rough, feral against her neck. “Watch yourself, Billie.” His fingers spun magic inside her body, dancing against that electric place deep within her.

In the back of her frenzied mind, Billie saw the explosion before she felt it. Wide-eyed, she stared back into the mirror and watched the stranger there as the shudders began. They started small, radiating out like ripples from the point of a pebble’s impact, coasting with the pitch of her cry as it built in her throat and burst forth.

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The Fifth Favor

“Oh, oh, oh!” The tidal of pleasure swept her consciousness far out to sea, where a riptide caught it and held it, suspended, until she drowned in it. The strength dissolved from her knees and Christopher held her upright, his mouth at her ear, whispering, his hand playing the rhythm, playing her body, relentless, until all she knew was wet, hot, thrusting ecstasy.

When the surge ebbed away, he turned her, limp and drained, in his arms, and whisked her panties to her feet. His erect penis brushed her stomach, so hot and hard it stirred her from hypnotic stupor. Immediately her fingers went to it, caressed the firm, fiery head, slid around the drop of moisture that had gathered there. While she touched him with hands that still trembled, he kissed her mouth, drew out her tongue and suckled it, stealing her breath. Then pleasure seemed to get the best of him and his head listed to the side, eyes closed, captive beneath her rhythmic touch.

“Ah, Billie. That’s so good…” Abruptly he made a violent noise in his throat and jerked her fingers from his flesh. “Too fast,” he said breathlessly. “Where’s my control?”

Encouraged, her hand slipped down again and sought him, a fresh wave of heat flooding her cheeks when she found his penis impossibly harder, like satin-covered stone. It throbbed in her fingers, a rhythm of warning. “You feel like you could burst.”

“I might, if you keep that up.” Backing away, he caught her hand and led her to the four-poster. “This is my bed,” he said, his voice low and strangely hollow. “You’re the only woman I want here—” he guided her hand to his heart “—and here.”

Quicksilver joy stole her reply. Holding tight to his hand, she climbed into the bed, where the soft linen was cool against her feverish skin. Christopher paused long enough to retrieve a condom packet from the night table drawer, then followed her, graceful, sinewy, exquisite. Hers.

Kneeling before her, he caught her chin, his thumb stroking her bottom lip, then inside it, against her teeth.

“Billie,” he said, his words thick with want, “put your hands on me again.”

But the frantic push toward sexual union had stilled within her, smoothing into sultry need that fed itself on sweet, torturous delay. She closed her lips around his thumb and drew it into her mouth, flicking her tongue over the short, smooth nail the way she’d caressed his erection in the woods at Rock Creek Park. When she released his thumb, she looked up at him. “More.”

In wordless reply he offered his palm, and she kissed the center where the skin was tough, tasting salt and heat. Her lips moved to his wrist, and her tongue traced the rigid veins that throbbed with the ferocity of his pulse. There his skin was soft beneath her lips, vulnerable. Farther up, his muscles were tightly strung, and she sank her teeth gently into his biceps, her fingers brushing the soft hair beneath his arm.

When she reached his shoulder, she trailed a line of slow kisses to the base of his throat, which moved as he swallowed and said, “My God.”

Billie drew back and met his hot, piercing eyes. “Where else?”

189

Shelby Reed

Sliding down on an elbow beside her, he slipped a hand beneath the heavy hair at the back of her neck and pulled her forward to meet his lips. It was a moist, open-mouthed kiss, tongues sparring, rapid breaths exchanged.

But she wasn’t yet done. With a gentle palm to his chest, she pressed him back against the pillows, and when he acquiesced, folding an arm beneath his head to watch her, she shifted to kneel beside him.

Her breath caught and held as she skimmed a single fingertip down his throat, over his hard-muscled torso, to the tough, flat terrain of his abdomen. The muscles there contracted when she dipped into his navel and followed the faint path of hair that encircled it and trailed to his groin. His penis jutted from the coarse, dark thatch, surging slightly with every beat of his heart.

“Chris Antoli is beautiful,” she said softly. “I’m so happy to know him at last.”

His throat moved, but he didn’t speak, just watched her with suspiciously bright eyes.

Swallowing the lump of emotion in her own throat, she wrapped her fingers around his shaft, stroked him; counted the rhythmic throb of his pulse as she leaned to kiss the engorged tip of his arousal. But there were other parts of him she didn’t yet know, and she wanted to learn all of him before these euphoric, fleeting moments dissolved into cool reality.

Moving to kneel between his legs, she nudged them further apart, slid a hand up the inside of each muscled thigh, and gently cupped his testicles. They, too, seemed to throb in her palm, and she studied them, their resilient texture, so at odds with the concrete solidity of his penis. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she leaned forward, skimmed her lips along the taut, hair-roughened skin of his inner thigh, and then carefully drew the soft orbs into her mouth, first one side, then the other. Suckling.

Stroking with her tongue. Testing their weight. Marveling at the physical beauty of a man, this man. His taste. His texture. His rising passion.

Christopher was silent, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes, his quickened breaths escaping between slightly parted lips.

While she tongued him, Billie reached up and closed her fingers around his steely erection, and found it so hot and hard, it burned her palm. Her other hand slid under his buttock, paused to explore the firm anatomy of him, to read the restless shift of muscle as his hips thrust hard and instinctive into the cradle of her touch, into the suckling heat of her mouth. Lifting her head, she touched a careful fingertip to the stretch of tender skin beneath his testicles, and smiled when at last a soft sound rumbled in his throat and he let his head drop to the pillow.

“Please,” he said.

“Please what? Please stop?” She stroked that sensitive spot beneath his balls, sliding lower in increments, to the crevice between his buttocks. Wondering how far he would let her go.

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He was trembling now, his skin gone damp under her hands. “Don’t,” he whispered, fists twisting in the sheets.

“Don’t stop? Or don’t do this?” Her fingertip found and circled the tight opening, so rich with sensation, so illicit and promising.

He groaned, one knee falling wide to grant her access.

She’d never touched a man so intimately. Her heart pounded with the recklessness of it, with the power of giving such personal pleasure. Watching his face for any sign of discomfort, she carefully, slowly slipped her fingertip inside him.

His body was on fire, and yet chill bumps raised the fine hairs on his torso, and he shuddered.

Breathing erratically, she tightened her right hand on his penis, gave it a slow pump, down to the base and up to the head now pearled with seminal fluid. At the same time, she moved her finger inside him, a gentle flicker, and leaned to close her mouth around his testicles again, to suckle and lick and stroke.

All at once.

A series of hard shudders vibrated through Christopher, warnings of an impending orgasm. “Not yet,” he whispered, a tormented plea. “Please. Not yet.”

Quickly releasing him, Billie crawled up his body and into his desperate embrace.

He rolled her beneath him, damp body arching into her, mouth hungry and searching as it opened over hers. “What are you doing to me?” he groaned against her lips, his voice feverish and hoarse. “Whatever it is, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop touching me. Don’t ever stop loving me…”

“I can’t stop,” she replied, her words shaken as she clutched his hair and stared up into his eyes. “I don’t know how.”

His hand blindly fumbled for the condom on the bedside table, knocking over the brass lamp with a resounding crash, but neither of them looked to measure the damage.

Trembling, Christopher knelt in the middle of the bed, ripped into the packet, and together they rolled the condom over his erection. Then easing back against the pillows, he drew Billie toward him until she straddled him and her knees sank into the soft give of the mattress.

Need rushed between them, beaded their skin with perspiration as she held his head against her heart and his lips found her nipple, pulling, sucking, sending jolts of pleasure to the aching place that rode the tip of his penis.

“Take me inside you.” His fingers dug into her hip while the other grasped her hand and led it to him. Together they found the slick, hot portal where her body opened for him, and with a sharp inhalation, Christopher thrust up inside her.

Instantly it was more pleasure than Billie could stand. The idea that they’d only just begun nearly frightened her. A climax from this—the kind only Christopher could give her—would kill her.