“I don’t want to like you either,” she admitted, as well.
“But you do?” he asked. His eyes met hers, uncertain and unhappy and still hoping that she would say yes.
“Women don’t like men like you,” she said because she knew that unhappily hopeful was bad. Very, very bad. It spoke of vulnerabilities, and wounds, and manly suffering that had plagued women for thousands of years.
“What sort of man is that?”
If he were any other man, she’d have thought he was fishing, needing a stroke to his ego, but he didn’t have those insecurities. Tragically like every other woman before her, she was falling for it in spades. “You want some three-point analysis that sums you up in fifty words or less?”
“Yes.”
She chose the less dangerous answer. “You’re brilliant and hurt and your writing draws you into humanity, but humanity repels you at the same time, and you can’t reconcile those two aspects and it frustrates you.”
“Do you know what frustrates me?” he asked.
“What?”
“How badly I want to kiss you. I hate your mouth. I love your mouth. When you talk all that blather, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Why don’t you kiss me?”
“Because it won’t stop.”
“I know,” she said with a smile.
Then his lips covered hers, and she could feel the frustration in his mouth, his tongue, in the way his fingers anchored her face.
Her blood started to simmer and heat, and the feel of his tongue inside her mouth, and its furious demands, was the very best sort of pain. His hands fumbled, pulling her closer, her breasts to his torso, and her fingers tangled in the dark silk of his hair. Her phone, her prized phone, fell uselessly away, and once again Jenn was swept up in the very things that were bad.
Oh, but this. How could it be bad? He was whispering to her, using words that were neither pretty nor poetic, but the unfocused rasp in his voice, the hard pressure of his touch was hitting the spot right between her thighs.
Her shirt was open, and his mouth was on the thin silk of bra, licking and sucking, and telling her how tempting she was. The hungry pull was like shocks of electricity direct to her chest, and she heard her own moan. Impatiently he shoved the fabric aside, touching her, his mouth on her nipple once again, and Jenn was glad for the cover of darkness, for the cloud of the moon.
Mistakes I Made on Summer Vacation, Part VI. The One with the Great …
She reached for his fly, stroked him through the thick denim fabric. She knew there would be a Part VII, VIII and IX to the movie.
He thrust into her hand, and the movement was so marvelously wicked, so raw. Then he pulled at her own zipper, restless fingers sliding low between her panties, lower still. One finger flicked at her, long, insistent and aiming to please, and she stopped worrying, stopped thinking, focused on the pleasure.
The stars watched as he turned her, pulled her back against him, and she lay on him, his body cushioning her from the rock. His erection prodded her against her ass, and she wiggled against it, against him, but he stilled her, because apparently Mr. Wilderness Adventure had other ideas.
Soon she realized what they were.
His hands brushed her shirt off to the side, pulled at her bra until it hung off to one side, and then he slid her jeans low on her hips, and all her pertinent parts were exposed to the air. While his mouth nuzzled her neck, his hands roamed over her like an explorer and she was his map.
Once again his finger thrust inside her, plunging deep, slick with her desire. Her pelvis tilted up into his hand, and her ass rode against him, and it was exquisite.
“You see the sky,” he whispered low in her ear, “the moon, the stars.”
She opened her eyes, blinked the world into focus and whimpered a yes.
“You don’t need a phone for this,” he said, pushing into her once again, and she wanted to laugh, but it was too hard to breathe, too talk, to do anything but ride with his hand.
Back and forth his busy finger slid over her slit, finding her clit, stroking there, circling there, her body weeping with delight. She bucked against him, feeling the hard ridge at her ass, and he moaned, but she was pinned against him, his hands keeping her down, and the hard torture continued.
He seemed to like watching her squirm, liked to hear her whine and complain. Part sadist, that’s what he was, because his hand was destroying her. His movements were faster, and she could feel him grinding against her ass, which only infuriated her, but all she could think of was chasing the high, chasing the feeling, chasing the stars.
She closed her eyes, her body arching, and her hips tilted up, and he laughed at her, and she wanted to make him pay, but not right now.
Right now, she only wanted to …
Come.
There. Instantly her breathing resumed, and her body fell against him, sated and sleepy, and she wanted more. She wanted him inside her. She wanted this.
Morning-after regrets be damned. Hell, great sex would probably inspire her to write a better story. Snag the Pulitzer. Show Little Lizette exactly how it was done.
With ethics. With integrity. With the feel of a hard man thrusting inside her.
Happily she turned, attacked his mouth with all the excitement building inside her.
But then he pulled back. The man who was going to help her secure her job pulled away.
Bastard.
She was furious that he was able to stop. That he had the discipline, the ability. And once again, she was left to find her focus.
Angry at him, at herself, at the way her jeans were unzipped, and her shirt was half torn, she stood and picked up her phone, because frankly, at the moment, she preferred it.
“I have a job. It’s very important to me, and it depends on me pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and I don’t even know if I can do it, but I have to try. If you sidetrack me, I will spend the next two weeks flat on my back, screaming my lungs out in orgasmic ecstasy. I don’t need that. I have to spend the my time searching out whatever godforsaken newsworthy truths abound in these hills. I will not do this.”
“You’re right,” he agreed easily, much more than she wanted. His eyes were shadowed in the dark, and she wished she could see them, wished she could see whether this was truth or a lie.
Not that she cared.
“I know I’m right. Now go,” she told him because this was her rock. This was her place. He didn’t want the stars or the night. He wanted his mangy cabin in the woods, so he could have it. But right now, he was going to have to prove to her that he could leave her. That he could leave the promise of sex, the promise of the human touch that she wanted to badly.
Slowly he got to his feet, the moon casting him in silver, and he shoved an unsteady hand through his hair. At that moment, she thought she had him. She thought he would admit defeat because he kept staring at her mouth, at her face, and his normally aloof eyes were still fogged with desire, and it was the most romantic thing she’d ever seen.
But in the end, he turned and swore, and she was alone on her rock, exactly as she’d asked.
After he disappeared, Jenn picked up her phone, prepared to get lost in the stars. Sadly after he had gone, the stars seemed to disappear, as well.
BACK IN HIS CABIN, Aaron pulled off his shirt, dragged off his jeans and stalked out to the lake. It was a rare moment when he yearned for the privacy of a