*
Geoff left the bathroom then, carrying the Krispy Kreme bag and coffee cups with him. His footsteps told Sam he was headed for the kitchen. It was unexpected, his leaving them like that, but the postclimactic numbness of her brain didn't allow her to think about it right now. Chris was still watching her in the mirror. She parted her lips, feeling like she needed to say something, but he shook his head. Curling his fingers in the front of the towel, he got rid of it once more, letting it drop.
The heat that expanded in his gaze, the primal tension of his body, took any words she might have said. Her stomach tilted as he lifted her off her feet to carry her naked in his arms. It was a breathtaking feeling, being carried by a man who obviously intended to have her body in whatever way he desired when he put her down.
He took her to her room. She hadn't been sure which he'd choose, his space or hers. "Why here?" she asked quietly, hoping not to disturb the mood but wanting to know.
Laying her down on the bed, he leaned over her. "Because I want you to remember me here, even if I'm sometimes on the other side of the wall."
He left her there to go to the door. For a distressing moment, she thought he'd changed his mind and was going to leave, but he stopped. When he put his hand on the panel, Sam understood what he was debating. Closed or not closed? In the end, he pushed it open, looking back at her. She smiled, agreeing with him, and lifted her arms.
He pulled off his shirt as he came across the floor. He was wearing painter's pants today, a secondhand pair he considered his run-out-early-and-get-donuts wear. Because of his size, his muscled thighs and heavy bone structure, most jeans didn't fit him comfortably and well unless he bought the more expensive brands. With his job he didn't see any point in buying pricey clothes, except for a few items in his closet when he needed to dress up more. She had no objections. His camo pants and the painter's trousers fit his ass nice and snug and made the groin area, particularly when aroused, all the more noticeable.
He unhooked the top button. She remembered how the zipper had pulled loose yesterday because of the size of the erection beneath. A strategically located damp spot on the trouser fabric made her realize, with a suddenly dry mouth, he wasn't wearing any underwear.
When she lifted her gaze to his face, his expression made everything inside her yearn and go still at once. Dropping to one knee beside the bed, he grasped her bare foot and bent his head, kissing her insole with lingering tenderness. Then he kissed her ankle. His gaze swept down her body like a meandering breeze. Everywhere his gaze touched tingled with its passage.
"Stay there," he said. He left, and she heard him in his room, opening a drawer. As he came back, she saw he carried the canvas belt he'd worn with the camo pants yesterday. Leaning over her, he held out a hand, palm up. She laid hers in it, mystified by the almost courtly gesture. He waited, and she realized he wanted both her hands. When she complied, he wrapped the belt around her wrists, threading the end through the rings. He pressed her arms up above her head, looping the end on her headboard, cinching it so her arms were lifted even farther, her elbows by her temples. She forgot how to breathe, especially when he sat a hip on the edge of the bed and continued to stare at her.
"You're trembling," he said. "Are you afraid?"
"In a way." She moistened her lips. "The good way."
"It's kind of Geoff's thing."
"Is it your thing?" She didn't want him doing things in imitation of Geoff, thinking that was what he had to do to please her. But his thoughtful expression and response reduced her concerns.
"Don't know. Think I have some of it inside me, because I sure like how you're shaking. Maybe it's how you respond to it that works for me. When you took off your clothes because I told you to do it, it twisted something hard inside me. Bringing me water and ice to clean me up because you wanted to do it, wanted to care for me like that, opened up something inside me, too. In a good way."
As he handed her words back to her, his fingertips slid down her abdomen, played with the tiny pewter bear in her navel piercing. "I almost didn't give you this," he continued. The sexy timbre of his voice, the manner in which his eyes kept coursing over her bound and stretched body, were playing havoc on her senses. She was restless, hot, needy, even though she'd just climaxed. She also wanted to cling to every word he spoke.
"I thought it might be too sexual and intimate," he said. "But you were so pleased with it. You took off the one you were wearing right away and put this one on. When you were playing with it, stroking your skin, holding the hem of your shirt up, your jeans low on your hips, you gave me a hard-on that took half a day to get down. I about blacked out, I jerked off so hard in my room that night."
Her breath was erratic, noticeable in the quiet of the room. "I wish my hearing were as good as yours. I would have snuck into your room and watched you." She couldn't speak over a whisper.
"I'll bet." He smiled wryly. It was the kind of expression that made her see his vulnerability and strength both, because with Chris one was inseparable from the other. Then the strength took over, his gaze shifting to hers, mouth firming. "I don't want you to talk for the next bit. Just feel, okay? I want you to feel what I'm feeling."
She nodded, her fingers curling in the belt. Moving back down to her feet, he placed his mouth there. A surfeit of emotion filled her as his hand forged a path ahead of his mouth, exploring her skin as if he was discovering a woman for the first time. The ceiling fan turned, moving currents of warm air over her, his heated mouth adding to the sensation. He worked his way up over her knee, to her thigh. His hands slipped under it and her calf, and he adjusted her leg outward.
When he lifted his head, met her gaze, she understood what he wanted. She shifted the other leg so they were spread equally, and the shivering came back. Geoff could say Spread your legs and make her cream instantly. Whereas when a look from Chris demanded the same thing, her reaction was just as intense.
A strangled moan came from her as he bent and pressed his lips against her cunt. Not teasing or licking. He tasted her as an explorer would, learning her body, the secrets it held. Secrets she didn't even know, because her reaction now was new to her as well. He lifted his head again, lips pressed together and moving, obviously savoring her taste.
"You look so aroused and hungry, so hot. I want to make you come over and over, even as I want to keep you just this way, because it makes me so fucking crazy to see you like this. All tied up, waiting for me. Maybe Geoff isn't the only one who likes that."
That seemed to bemuse him. She thought she might start whining if he didn't go back to kissing her again. Fortunately, he obliged her before she embarrassed herself. He spread kisses over her hipbones, over ticklish spots that made her squirm and him chuckle. He traced the curves of her breasts with his tongue, played over the nipples until she was lifting off the bed toward him. Then he moved to her neck.
"Turn your cheek to the pillow and keep it there."
She did, and he spent endless moments kissing her throat, setting his teeth to the delicate combination of tendons, veins and muscles there. Nuzzling beneath her ear, he kissed the tender spot between her collarbones. Cupping her face, he turned the opposite cheek toward the pillow and did the same to the other side of her neck.
As he broke her mind into fragments with that, he slid his other hand up her arm and clasped both her wrists, digging his fingers into the belt and reinforcing the bond holding her. Her legs were still spread as he'd left them, and her tied state tilted her breasts up. Everything about her position suggested a desire to be taken, but Chris wasn't a man who let himself be rushed. She'd never been so frustrated and aroused at once.
"Please . . . Chris."
As he lifted his head, inches between their faces, her gaze latched on his mouth, wet from kissing her, from tasting her pussy. "Please, what, Sam?"
"I need you."
"How?" At her discomfiture, he closed his fingers around her jaw. Though he didn't hurt her, he made sure she fel
t the strength in his grip. She couldn't move her face at all.
"I don't consider them dirty words, Sam. There's nothing pure and real as the earth. Damp, rich soil tumbling between my fingers always reminds me of a woman's cunt. I want to bury myself in yours, Sam, but I want to hear you say that's what you want as well. I want to hear it come from your mouth. What do you want me to do to you?"
"I want . . . you inside me. Fuck me. Make me yours. Please. I think I'll die if you don't do that, right now." Yes, it was ridiculously dramatic, but every throbbing cell wanted her to be dramatic, over-the-top. No room for misinterpretation.
He stood, opened his pants and pushed them off his hips. Her gaze slid down the heavy layers of muscle. Chris had the burly bulk of a deep-sea fisherman, a construction worker, a bricklayer. Muscle layered tight and hard on large bones was molded by firm, tanned flesh. She'd seen him shirtless and in shorts in the summer, but it was the first time she'd had the gift of seeing him naked and aroused.
The skin below his hips was lighter. His cock matched his size. It was thick and curved up against his belly, the tip glistening with more fluid. His testicles were a heavy sac against the cradle of his thighs, and bore a light layer of fur, like the rest of him. He was a sexy male animal, one with liquid brown eyes that bore the colors of flame and earth and a young man's lust, powerful enough to fill her with a thrilling fear.
Not a fear that he would hurt her, not that way, but that he would take what he wanted, fuck her beyond exhaustion into euphoria, her link to him the only way to come out on the other side without losing herself. But she'd willingly cut herself loose inside that euphoria, willing to trust everything she knew and loved about him.
"Chris," she repeated. "I need you."
He put his knee between her legs, paused, then slid back off the bed, bending to search in the pocket of his pants. Apparently the belt wasn't the only thing he'd retrieved from his room.
"If you haven't . . . in a while, you won't need that."
She knew she should probably let him wear it to avoid disrupting this with a revelation of a meaningless, or not-so-meaningless, hookup he might have had. But the words were out before she could take them back.
In the semidarkness of the room, the morning light filtering through her blinds, his face was shadowed, though his eyes found hers and pierced deep. "You know," he said with deceptive mildness, "the last time you had a date, Geoff and I played a drinking game where we had to come up with last-letter insults about the guy."
She blinked. In her aroused state, it was hard to switch gears, to follow his meaning and how it connected to this. "What?"
"If I said he had a little dick, Geoff had to come up with the next insult starting with the letter k. If he couldn't come up with something we both agreed wasn't lame, he had to drink. And vice versa."
She coughed over a half chuckle. "Bet it was hard to beat him. He has a pretty extensive vocabulary."
"But I work around contractors all day." Chris's teeth flashed. He deliberately set the condom down on the nightstand and gazed down at her. "Do you remember who that guy was?"
She stared up at him. "I don't even remember his name."
"We do. John Howard. We remember every one of them."
She swallowed. "Who won the drinking game?"
Meditatively, he slid his fingers over her breast as he stood there, naked and erect, less than a foot from her. She gasped as he shifted his grip back to her throat, his hold strong enough to push her jaw up, make her look into his suddenly impassive face, his mouth set in a line.
"I drank him under the table," he said. "Geoff's more civilized than I am, sometimes. I'm just now realizing that."
Her eyes fluttered closed as he bent and put his mouth over hers. His touch on her legs, her breasts, her cunt and her stomach had been questing, sensual. This started that way, but his fingers tightened further, stealing her breath as he parted her lips and invaded, tongue tangling around hers. She whimpered into his mouth, and he growled in answer, shifting so his knee was between her legs and then all of him was, his other hand sliding beneath her buttock to lift her as his cock found her wet entrance.
He didn't thrust into her like a jackhammer. Chris might be less civilized, but he wasn't a beast, and she'd never felt anything from him but care for every cell of her being. Even now, when it was clear he'd shifted from explorer to conqueror, he pushed into her slowly, stretching her, giving her the chance to work her hips over him, help them find their way to the right fit. Yet the moment it was evident they'd achieved that, he took the last several inches with determination, purpose and an impact that told her he was putting his claim right there with Geoff's.
Make her ours. The words resounded in her head as she emitted a little cry against his lips. She turned her face into his hand as he tunneled his fingers through her hair, palm against the side of her face. She set her teeth to the heel of his callused hand as he began to work her, hips rising and falling, her own lifting to his. Her body caught fire instantly, because he'd already brought her up to the point where she couldn't control a single response. He had all the control.
"Chris . . ."
"Scream for me again, Sam. Scream for us. You know he's listening."
She had no choice. The shriek wrenched from her throat as the orgasm hit her like a lightning strike, jolting her body against the power and weight of his. He was able to pin her down, increase the intensity, keep her shooting toward the moon as his thrusts intensified. His face was tight, eyes locked on hers, watching her lose herself in what he could do to her. He gave her the same pleasure, because as her cries escalated, he shot over that edge with her, his seed jetting into her, her legs locked over his pumping muscular ass, her body open and straining to give him every ounce of ecstasy he was giving her. They rode that ride well past the climax, both wanting to milk every ounce of sensation out of it, such that when they came to a stop, they were both breathing heavily.
She pulled against her bonds. "Chris . . . I want to hold you. Please. Don't move yet."
"I'm too heavy." But he stayed where he was and loosened the belt from her wrists, letting her slide free. Her hands immediately found his broad shoulders, the sides of his throat as she stared up at him.
"Please . . . let me hold you. Just for a minute. Please. I've wanted to, for a really long time."
"Ah, Sam." Blowing out a breath, he put his forehead on hers and curled his arms around her as she wrapped hers over his back. They'd done it. Made the first steps. The problem would be where and how to go from here. Sex was the least of it, she was sure. But as he let himself rest on her, that didn't matter. This was everything.
She ran her fingertips down the valley of his spine and out into the corrugations of muscle, up to his nape and the dark hair that curled over her knuckles. With as much time as he spent in the sun, his hair should have been coarse, but it was always thick and silky, burnished like it had captured sunlight in the brown strands.
Though he was softening, she still felt enough of his presence inside her that she could constrict her internal muscles on him, earn another push from his hips as he responded to the aftereffect, a ripple that went through both of them.
"That's enough. I'm going to crush you." He withdrew, but he kept her securely in his arms as he rolled. She shifted to his side so she could lie on her hip and prop herself on her elbow. Indulging herself, she ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, teased his nipples, moving down to his navel and skating through the trimmed hair at his cock. It surprised her that he groomed himself there, rather than letting his pubic hair be an unruly, bushy tangle, but maybe that was Geoff's influence. There was no telling what men did or didn't talk about.
Her fingertips grazed the damp head of his cock, the folds along the shaft as it returned to its resting state. She moved onward to the crease between thigh and hip and back up his side. It was easy and natural to touch him. While he'd proven irrefutably he did have some topping qualities, he didn't have t
hat clear Dom vibe Geoff had that would have made her hesitate to touch him without permission.
"You're so different, yet some things are the same," she murmured.
"They always are. No matter what most guys claim."
She smiled at the drawled response that hadn't come from Chris. Lifting her attention to the doorway, she met Geoff's gaze. He was leaning against the frame. Her heart thudded at the look in his eyes. How long had he been standing there? Had he watched the flex of Chris's body as he thrust into her? He hadn't been there when Chris restrained her hands, because she'd been able to see the door at that point. Maybe he'd given Chris quid pro quo by making this first time a private moment, as it had been for her and Geoff.
Yet it wasn't a surprise to see him there now. What held her motionless was how his gaze moved over both of them. Thoroughly and possessively. His attention lighted on her thighs and breasts, her expression, the hand she had on Chris's chest. He moved from there to a perusal of Chris's big body, to the relaxed thighs and genitalia between them. Despite the intensity of the climax she'd just experienced, additional sensation pulsed between her legs when she saw no abatement in desire as Geoff's focus shifted between her and Chris. She'd told Madison, the owner of Naughty Bits, that she thought Geoff wanted to top them both, but she hadn't been sure. Seeing the look in his eyes now, she was.
While Geoff was more sexually experienced, she didn't think he was any more experienced when it came to relationships than Chris was. Neither of them gave their heart lightly. She had a private theory that the reason they'd never had a meaningful romantic relationship outside the bounds of their friendship was because that friendship had always been stronger than the pull of anyone else. Until now.
She wouldn't have pursued this if she hadn't been sure they both felt more than friendship for her, so that revelation wasn't ego driven. If anything, it summoned uneasiness. The direction this could take might be miraculous or catastrophic. But it was too late to turn back now. She thought of what Flo, her friend, coworker and a Mistress, had asked her when she'd gone after Geoff so aggressively.
"Can you live with it staying how it is? The three of you just 'friends' who are fantasizing about one another but not doing anything about it?"