He touched her face. “Nothing. Everything. Just more.”
She grinned and took his crown once more, this time she sucked until he groaned, determined to make him beg.
It happened quickly. He wasn’t able to stop the small thrusts. She did everything her mouth could do to him, her fingers playing the counterpoint. It was greed that kept her so busy, to make him thrum in her mouth, to force his gasps.
“Stop, Christ, stop.”
She pulled away her lips, although she couldn’t let go altogether.
He made her when he leaned forward to capture her arms. “Come, now. Where’s the goddamn thing.”
She grabbed the condom before he could haul her up. Slipping it on his moist erection made him hiss and the second it was in place, he practically lifted her to her feet.
“Here,” he said, letting her know he wanted her on top.
She hesitated, but he wasn’t having any of it. He had her on the couch a second later, her knees on either side of his thighs.
“God, I need—” He rose up to kiss her, his tongue fierce as it thrust.
It was both of them she tasted. Even as Paul kissed her savagely until she was poised above him. One hand disappeared from her lower back, and then he grunted and thrust up.
A moment of hesitation, making him strain for more, and then she gave in, not a surrender at all because she wanted him inside her. Filling her.
She rode him, controlling the pace, blessing her Pilates for giving her the strength she needed. His kisses urged her to move faster, harder, but she wouldn’t give in, not yet.
Her movements were purposely slow, but quick wasn’t the goal. Not when she could make him go insane with her squeezes, with the maddening tempo.
His hands were everywhere. Her back, her breasts. A brief grasp of her hair to steady her, then back to her nipples, where he twirled and flicked, ruining her strategic assault.
Hell, it was no use. All her finesse was gone, and it was all about the finish. Cunning man, he reached between them and found her clit. It did the trick. She was riding him now, full out.
With a suddenness that shocked her, he stopped. “Gwen, look at me.”
She shook her head as she squeezed him, urged him to get on with it.
“Look at me,” he said, and this time he took hold of the back of her hair. “Please.”
His face flushed, he stared at her, into her, as he kept her perfectly still while he thrust again and again until she thought her heart would beat out of her chest.
She watched his expression contort into a mask of pure tension, the fight between his cock and his desire to hold back one more second.
As he lost control, he drew her to him, his staccato thrusts rubbing her clit into an explosion of her own. She held on to him as she trembled, as her body spasmed. He kissed her face, all over, just mad kisses until he found her mouth.
They held each other until their hearts calmed. Until the kisses gentled.
Chapter 11
PAUL COULDN’T TALK YET, although he was in a lot better shape than five minutes ago. Gwen had settled next to him, dragging a soft throw over their bodies. He had his arm around her and her head was in the hollow where his chest met his shoulder.
“Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do,” she said.
He chuckled, never having heard that as an aprés-sex comment before. “Appropriate, though,” he said, feeling that he knew a great deal more about her than before.
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” he said, lacking the verbal and mental skills to explain. “Don’t expect me to be coherent.”
“Fair enough.”
“I have to say, for a couch, this wasn’t so bad.”
“What do you mean?”
He let his hand smooth down her arm. “It didn’t scratch up my ass.”
He felt her lips curve into a smile.
“First thing I checked out in the department store.”
“Dropped trou, did you?”
“It was a major purchase.”
His head lifted as he grinned, but he couldn’t really see her face so he let it flop back again. “Popcorn and a treat. Best movies ever.”
“It’s not what I expected.”
“No?”
“We were supposed to be friends.”
He lifted his head once more. “Aren’t we?”
“We hadn’t exactly discussed the benefits package.”
He really needed to see her face. He lifted her chin, which upset the balance of things, but had to be done. “Are you sorry?”
The look she gave him was honest, if not quite as satisfying as a whimper and instant denial, but that was Gwen. “I don’t know. I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. God, I did. But—” she sat up, tugged the blanket a bit to cover her lap “—I’m not sure where it leaves us.”
“Does it have to leave us anywhere in particular?”
Her shrug said as much as her troubled gaze. “I’d like to say no, but that’s not how I operate. I’m not a casual sex kind of person.”
“Nothing about you is casual.”
She poked him lightly with her elbow. “If that was supposed to be a compliment, it sucked.”
“It was.” He ran a hand over his face, then sat up a bit straighter. “I admire it, though. I like that you have high standards.”
“I suppose—no, I don’t understand that, either.”
“Case in point,” he said. “But I’ll try to explain. You don’t settle, and you expect the best from me. Which makes me want to give you my best. I’ve never had that with a friend before, benefits notwithstanding. The truth is, somewhere during the past few weeks, I realized I wanted more.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I kissed you.”
She sighed in the nicest way. “Yes, you did.”
“And as I recall, you kissed me back.”
This time, he got a nod.
He stroked her face with the back of his fingers. “What do you want?”
She captured his hand and held it there for a moment. “I don’t know. I was just getting used to the friendship part.”
He thought about that. About what being friends with Gwen had started out as, and how different it was from anything he’d experienced before. It had never occurred to him that he was moving too fast. In his life before Gwen, these things tended to happen quickly, skipping over the friendship altogether. The only exception in recent memory had been Autumn, but she didn’t seem to count anymore. It felt as if meeting Gwen had forced a spotlight on Autumn’s game-playing, and in that glare, it had lost all its charm.
“Hello?” She looked him in the eyes, waiting.
He wanted the sex. It balanced things for him, but he skittered away from that thought. No, he’d wanted her. “I should have waited.”
“Please don’t feel bad. I was right there with you. I could have said no.”
“That’s