Along Came Trouble(73)
“Are you going to take off your T-shirt, too?”
“Nah, I can’t do that until you massage around the neckline for a minute. Then after you’ve run your fingers about as far under as you can get them, I’ll nervously suggest it might work better with my shirt off.”
“You’re a stickler for the rules.”
“I am.” He smiled. So easy with the smiles, this man. She’d never known a man who smiled so much, and it warmed her to her toes each time he did it. He was infectious, and infectious was dangerous for a woman like her—a woman who’d been quarantining herself in the house, holding fast to all the routines that inoculated her against disaster.
On the other hand, if Caleb was a virus, she’d already caught him.
Ellen crawled into her spot behind him, straddling his back with her thighs, and laid her hands on his neck. “You don’t have any muscles here,” she said. “Just concrete.”
“Do your best.”
So she did. After ten minutes or so, Caleb ventured to say that he should probably take off his shirt, and she approved. His shoulders and neck began to warm and loosen beneath her fingers. Another ten minutes and the quiet pulse of her arousal became more insistent, the dial turning up with every small movement of his back against her stomach, every quiet, completely-not-sexual moan she coaxed out of his mouth with her punishing touch. She could barely see the TV over his shoulder, but she didn’t mind. All her attention was concentrated on the column of muscle bordering the knobs of his spine, the tiny radiating lines she made with her thumbs on his lower back, the trail of bronze skin that turned pink from increased circulation as she left it behind and turned her attention to a new area.
He had the sexiest body she’d ever touched. Ever been anywhere near. And then there were the sounds he made—the quiet, abrupt inhales when she hit a tender spot, the long, ragged exhales. This wasn’t a prelude to sex. This was sex. And her crotch knew it.
She massaged over the caps of his shoulders and down his upper arms, flattening her breasts against his back. Her nipples were so hard, they hurt. Turn around, she thought. Turn around and kiss me.
When she finally got up the nerve to run her hands over his pecs, down his stomach, to brush her fingers over the hard column she found between his thighs, he did turn around—so suddenly and fluidly that she couldn’t imagine how she’d ended up flat on her back with his tongue in her mouth and his hand clutching her hip, his erection pressing hard and perfect between her thighs. But she liked it.
“You skipped a date or two there,” he said when he broke the kiss. Something had happened to his voice. Something she liked very much.
“I’m dying.”
“Me, too.” He kissed her again, deep and desperate, and said, “Bed.”
Ellen went first. She left her shirt by the front door and kicked her shorts into a corner of the hallway, but when she turned in the doorway to her room, expecting to find Caleb right behind her, he’d disappeared. “Where’d you go?” she called with dismay.
“Just a sec.” He reappeared from the kitchen, and this time he had the syrup bottle, just like in her fantasy.
Ellen smiled and beckoned him closer with a crook of her finger.
She’d barely made it to the bed before he tossed the bottle of syrup onto the mattress and climbed on top of her. Kissing her deeply, he nudged his erection into the damp crotch of her panties, while one capable hand found a nipple and teased it through the cotton of her bra.
The pressure of his cock against her moist heat made her desperate. He was so close, right there, and all he had to do was push a strip of material out of the way and he’d slide home.
But wait. She was a liberated woman. She could take care of this problem herself.
When she reached between them, he captured her wrist and moved both of her hands above her head. Raising his face a few inches, he smiled down at her with that dimple and those friendly, sexy eyes and said, “Hi there.”
She made a noise that sounded very much like a whale call from some New Age CD.
“All my careful flirting has paid off,” he said, nuzzling her ear. “And after all that hard work, I don’t think we should be in a hurry, do you?”
He thrust against her, straining the fabric of her panties as he moved a few teasing centimeters farther into her body, and she wriggled helplessly, totally at his mercy. “Maybe we can hurry now and go slow later,” she suggested.
Caleb wrinkled up his forehead as if considering her offer, then shook his head slowly. “Nah. My way is going to be a lot more fun.” He released her hands and grabbed the bottle. “We’re going to find out how many times I can make you come in half an hour.”