Foreplay (The Ivy Chronicles #1)(38)

“You’re beautiful. All peaches and cream.” His hand skimmed my stomach. The sensitive skin there quivered under his warm palm. My lungs ached, holding in my breath, but I couldn’t make them function.

I brought my hands self-consciously to my chest. He was quick to act, peeling my hands free. With a bracing breath, I held them stiffly at my sides, wanting to be brave. Wanting to be someone that reveled in this and didn’t feel like a scared virgin even if that’s just what I was.

Heat crawled up my neck, bursting across my face. I waited, expecting to feel his hands there, on my breasts, groping like any other boy would do, but his touch never came.

He brought his face closer to mine, his lips brushing my ear with warm breath. I leaned up, seeking that touch. “You need to relax. You’re supposed to enjoy this.”

“O-okay.” My voice wobbled.

“Rigid and afraid isn’t exactly a turn-on.”

“I’m not turning you on then?” I blurted, mortified, feeling like I had somehow failed. I was here to explore, to learn, and I was doing an abysmal job.

“Oh, I’m turned on. Don’t worry about that.” His hand threaded through my hair, pulling it clear of my neck. “I’m just talking in general terms. If you’re messing around with someone else . . . he might like for you to be more responsive.”

As he spoke, his mouth settled at my cheek, just beside my ear. Someone else. The words rattled around inside my head like loose marbles. I couldn’t think of anyone else right now. Couldn’t imagine anyone but him and the way his mouth felt on my skin. The way his palm rested on my stomach, his fingers splayed wide, the blunt tips curled ever so slightly, lightly brushing my quivering flesh.

In this moment, I could forget all my fears. I could even forget the fact that I was exposed and vulnerable in a way that I had never been before. In a way I had never let myself be with anyone.

I squirmed on the bed, dying inside, waiting for his next move, waiting for him to touch me. Both hoping he did and hoping he didn’t.

His mouth hovered over my ear, his breath fanning hotly against the hypersensitive whorls. He made me ache for more. “He wants you to be just as hot for it as he is.”

Again, he referenced my supposed future lover, the guy I was doing this for. The insinuation of Hunter into this moment actually bothered me. He wasn’t here. Reece was. I didn’t want to think of Hunter right now. I only wanted to feel.

I turned my face to look directly at him, our lips not quite touching. “Is that what you’re doing? Making me hot?” I didn’t know where the question came from. It sounded throaty and seductive in my voice.

“You tell me. Am I?”

I swallowed and started to tell him yes, he had long since succeeded in that regard, but just then he bit down on my earlobe and I arched off the bed with a cry, unexpected pleasure knifing through me.

He made a deep sound of approval, and then he touched me.

It was one startling sensation after another. His mouth on my ear. His hand cupping my breast. I gasped at that, at the full heat of his palm caressing my flesh. “You feel so amazing. I love your tits.”

My head rolled on the bed and I grabbed his shoulders, forgetting my shyness. I curled my fingers around the solid muscle, my nails biting into the supple skin, silk on steel. It was a heady thing to touch him, to feel his strength, the muscles that contracted at the dig of my fingers.

And then he found my nipple. I sobbed as he traced the tip, teasing me. I writhed on the bed, the ache tightening between my legs. I wriggled, looking for a way to ease the squeezing clutch of heat.

His mouth found mine in a desperate fusion of lips and tongues. I kissed him back, my earlier uncertainty gone.

His lips broke from mine and his mouth went for my breast, claiming it with none of the teasing lightness of his fingers. He took me in his mouth, enveloping me in warm, wet heat.

I choked, the sound not quite speech, but something on the verge of words.

Suddenly my phone went off. I stiffened. He continued like he didn’t hear it. His mouth continued to devour me like I was some rare treat. Like we were the only two people in the universe. With no people in the bar below us. No phone going off in my pocket.

The ring tone soon died, and I quickly forgot to even wonder who was calling me. Although it was an easy guess.

Then a text vibrated in my pocket against the weight of his hip. We ignored it. Even the second time. And the third.

At the fourth, he lifted up with a growl. “They’re not going to stop.”

Sitting back, he slipped his hand into my pocket for my phone. I bit the inside of my cheek at his hand there, so close to the apex of my thighs. Even after all the intimacy of the last few minutes, that felt beyond intimate.

He pulled my phone free. Instead of handing it to me as I expected, he started typing.

“What are you doing?”

Finished typing, he tossed it on the bed above my head. He came down over me. I gasped at the sensation of his bare chest against my skin, pressing down on my nipples, moist from his mouth.

Words shivered from my lips: “What did you tell them?”

His breath fanned my lips. “That you’re staying the night with me.”





Chapter 13

Oh. My. God. His words shot a hot thrill right down my spine. A sensation only magnified as his lips smothered mine. He settled his body between my thighs and I marveled at the fit of him there, so natural, so right. His hands went for my waistband. He slipped his fingers inside, the backs gliding into my panties and low against my navel.