One Reckless Summer Read online

  “God, honey, that’s nice,” he groaned. Then, “Aw, God yeah,” when she took him even deeper.

  Continuing to pleasure him that way, she grew aware of how in control of their sex she felt in this moment. In the woods that first time, she’d wanted him to take control, make the decision for her—but now she was making the decisions, doing what she wanted to do deep down inside, not letting anyone’s ideas about her being a good girl color her actions.

  She’d taken down a picture, painted a wall, put up curtains, chosen to protect a man who she didn’t feel was doing anything wrong—and now she was choosing to pleasure that man as deeply as she could. She’d never felt more vital, alive.

  She was completely, vigorously into her task, loving the way Mick ran his fingers across her scalp as she worked—when suddenly he rasped, “Stop, baby,” and gently pulled her up, off him.

  She blinked her surprise at him in the moonlight. “Why?”

  His voice dropped lower. “I’m about to explode here.”

  She didn’t understand. “Isn’t that the idea?”

  Their gazes locked in the near darkness, and his moved all through her. Her lips felt swollen, her breasts too, as she waited for his reply. Finally, he said softly, “I want more. Of you.”

  “Oh,” she breathed, and despite the rawness of what she’d just been doing, she’d never felt more…beautiful.

  “Always,” he added then. “No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m wanting more of you.”

  She nearly clambered up his body to get to him, to kiss him some more, and they made out like starved lovers, his mouth devouring hers again and again. And only when he let his kisses drop—over her throat, onto her sensitive neck—did she realize she wasn’t yet done wanting to be in control here. She knew what she wanted in this moment, and she remained ready to take it.

  Kissing his mouth once more, then touching his face, she met his gaze, sensually bit her lower lip, and whispered, “Take off my panties.” Her whole being seemed to pulsate as she drank in the heavy way he breathed as he pushed her underwear down, far enough for her to kick them off. After which she moved her body higher up on his, straddling his torso—and then his chest.

  A hot sigh left him as his hands closed firm over her ass and she realized he understood exactly what she was doing. So she kept going, until she was sitting fully upright, her hands clamped around the wooden headboard, her parted thighs balanced over his mouth. It was, by far, the most aggressive thing she’d ever done with a man, but she didn’t feel shy—she felt adventurous, and truly worthy of being Mick Brody’s lover.

  When she gingerly lowered herself, Mick’s tongue sliced through her, delivering a pleasure so intense that she gasped and had to clutch tighter to the bed to keep her balance. “Oh God,” she murmured, letting her eyes fall shut.

  Mick’s mouth on her was scintillating, and each stroke of his tongue sent a fresh frisson of tingling heat through her whole body. Oh God, yes—so hot, so good. Without exactly planning it, she soon began to move against his ministrations, unable not to clench her teeth against the permeating pleasure. “Yes,” she heard herself whisper. “That’s so good, Mick. So good.”

  As the sensations threatened to overwhelm her, she realized her position allowed her to peer out the window above the bed, across the dark lake, the moon and stars showing her a silhouette of the tree line. Looking into the vast heavens teeming with a zillion stars, she realized it was perhaps the first time she’d gazed into them without yearning for something more than she had in that moment. It was the first time looking into those stars made her thankful to be exactly who and where she was. Because she didn’t feel so small or meaningless right now, and she didn’t have any troubles to escape right now—right now she knew the greatest pleasure she’d ever experienced: physical, emotional, all of it. She was right where she wanted to be.

  “Oh Mick,” she murmured as his mouth lifted her closer and closer to the precipice of orgasm. It would happen soon. “Oh God, yes, good.”

  Her gaze dropped down into the dark trees below the stars then, and she realized that a place which had always seemed mysterious and forbidden before felt…much less so now. It was Mick’s home. And even if he’d once made her feel endangered, now the opposite was true—now being with Mick made her feel safe. And so, so alive.

  “Oh God, Mick, now!” she cried as the climax broke over her, vibrating through her body in hot bursts of sensation that echoed through every limb. She’d never before in her life announced when she was coming, but she liked when Mick did that, liked knowing the precise moment she’d taken him there, so she’d returned the favor. “Oh Mick! Oh God, Mick! Oh God!”

  When finally the pleasure faded to normal, her whole body went weak, limp, and she moved to collapse on the bed next to him. Meeting his eyes reminded her of what she’d just done, how bold she’d been, and she sighed a dreamy, “Thank you.”

  A wicked smile formed on his handsome face. “Trust me, pussycat—it was my pleasure.”

  And the next thing she knew, she was under him, his hard body covering hers as he firmly kissed her, rubbed his erection between her legs, massaged her aching breasts in strong, work-roughened hands. She tasted the remnants of his affections on his mouth, tongue, and it made her feel even headier, wilder. She kissed him back fiercely, and thrust upward against his hard-on. She’d just come, of course, but his sudden urgency, the roughness that reminded her of earlier couplings, drove her now, exciting her all over again.

  A moment later, he pinned her arms to the bed on both sides of her head, his grip tight on her wrists. And his gaze on her was downright feral. “I want to give it to you so hard, pussycat.”

  Unh. The words moved through her like liquid heat. “Let me have it,” she whispered.

  And then he was plunging inside her, deep, slick, making her cry out, and soon nailing her to the bed in brutal, unyielding strokes. She rose to meet them, hungry, reckless with lust, no thoughts in her head about anything except how her body felt right now, how there was no room in her brain for anything but consuming pleasure, raw and unbridled.

  He kissed her lips hard, then dropped to kiss her breasts, harder. He suckled first one, then the other, the pull of his mouth so intense that he turned her nipples sore—in a way she relished. She lay beneath him, soaking up every slick, gliding thrust—until Mick pulled back slightly to slip one hand between their bodies, between her thighs.

  She gasped at the fresh pleasure, stunned, a little confused. “But I already…“she began helplessly, trailing off.

  His gaze on her shone dark, hungry. “I’m gonna make you do it again.”

  She sucked in her breath. And knew she probably looked surprised by the very notion. She’d always heard about multiple orgasms, of course, but she’d never experienced them. She’d somehow imagined them being reserved for other women, the kind of woman bold enough to proposition a guy in a bar, the kind of woman who’d never had a sexual inhibition in her life, the kind of woman she…was not.

  But Mick raked his thumb across the sensitive nub there over and over as he continued to drive into her, and she realized her upward thrusts were becoming more pronounced, rhythmic, that her breath had gone shallow, that everything inside her was growing hot and feverish and a little bit frenzied. She kept her eyes on his the whole time, gazing up at him even as she moaned, even as she gritted her teeth, even as she heard herself whisper to him, “Oh…oh God. Almost, almost…”

  She sobbed as the second orgasm exploded through her, more intense than the first, more intense than anything she’d ever experienced. She cried out over and over as the waves of pleasure buffeted her, making her feel as if she were drowning in them, being swallowed by sensation. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  Oh wow. She truly hadn’t known she could do that. She lay beneath him, spent and astonished.

  “Damn, pussycat,” Mick whispered, looking gratified and sexy as hell—just before he held her down once more and began to pou
nd into her again, hard, hard, hard. And it was in that moment when she realized: Oh God, I’m suddenly not so in control here anymore.

  When had that happened? But then, maybe it didn’t matter. As good as it had felt to be the one orchestrating their sex for a while, she couldn’t deny that perhaps, at some moments, control was overrated.

  “Aw God, baby, I can’t hold back,” Mick said, voice heated, breathless, just before delivering the last and most powerful, punishing strokes—and as Jenny willingly absorbed them into her body, she loved knowing she’d just made Mick lose control, too.

  Mick woke up with her in his arms, naked, soft, warm. She felt so good that he never wanted to leave—but that thought forced him to glance around the room until he found a digital clock on a bedside table. Okay, good—he’d only been here about an hour, so he could stay awhile longer. He refocused on the woman in his embrace.

  He hadn’t woken up like this often—he usually ended up with women who…didn’t inspire him to sleep over. He liked his sex quick and easy—like he wished he could have kept it with Jenny. But his secrets and the need for her trust had complicated things from the start.

  Of course, it wasn’t the first time sex had turned into something more. He’d dated plenty of women for a month or two, even had a couple who’d lasted longer and who he’d actually thought of as his “girlfriend.” But then, on both occasions, the woman in question had told him she loved him. And he hadn’t wanted to hear that, hadn’t felt the same way—he didn’t think he’d ever been in love and had long since decided that his screwed-up upbringing had probably made it so he just wasn’t cut out for that. So he’d ended the relationships and moved on.

  As for Jenny, what they shared was…indefinable to him. She wasn’t his girlfriend. But she wasn’t just a quick lay, either. Although he hated the moments when words slipped out that might let her know that. Wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, I’m wanting more of you? He let out a sigh. Damn it, what had he been thinking?

  He wasn’t stupid—he understood how he felt for her. He felt…more needful of her than he should because she was the bright light in a world of darkness right now. He got that.

  But he didn’t want to let it show, because it would…make her think this was something it wasn’t. By the end of the summer he’d be gone, long gone, and he never planned to look back. He didn’t want Jenny to get hurt by that—because she’d been nothing but good to him, better than most people in his life had been, especially people from Destiny. So you have to cool it, damn it, on saying shit like that. You have to keep this exactly what you told her it was: hot sex.

  “Hey,” she whispered then, and he looked down to see her smiling sweetly up at him.

  Despite his last thought, he smiled back. “Hey, pussycat.”

  She bit her lip, looking like a woman who had a secret she was about to tell. “That was…the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  He couldn’t lie. “Me, too.” Aw shit—what happened to not telling her stuff like that? She was just too open, too earnest, and ever since she’d found out about Wayne, he’d found her too easy to talk to.

  She let her hand drift from his chest over to his arm, running her fingertips across his tattoo. “So about this—why’d you get it?”

  She’d already asked him about this once. “Haven’t we already discussed—”

  “Besides wanting to be a bad-ass, I mean,” she added with a laugh. “Why else?”

  At first, he laughed, too—why did anyone get a tattoo?—but then he actually thought about the answer, and about the fact that Jenny seemed to know there was more to it. “Truthfully,” he said, “I probably did it because Wayne got one. I was about nineteen or twenty, I guess, and Wayne made tattoos seem cool.”

  “He has more now,” she commented quietly, a little sheepish—because she’d noticed that when peeking in the window of his house, he supposed.

  “Mostly from prison.”

  “But you stopped at one,” she pointed out.

  He glanced down at her. “Guess I quit looking up to him so much after a while.”

  “Do you smoke?”

  He flinched and gave her a look. That was kinda out of the blue.

  “I just wondered because that day I met you when we were teenagers, you were smoking. Now I’m not around you enough to know, so I’m curious.”

  Oh. “No,” he said. “Quit a long time ago.” Another thing he’d probably started because his brother had.

  “Do you drink?”

  He laughed now at how inquisitive she’d suddenly gotten. “I’d take a beer if you offered me one, but…now that I think about it, I haven’t had anything to drink since I came back to Destiny. What’s with all the questions?”

  She perched her chin atop her hands on his chest. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve just started to…wonder things about you. I mean, we have sex like crazy animals—is it awful if I want to know a few things about you?”

  Well, when she put it like that…“No, not awful. Just…new.”

  “Tell me more about your life in Cincinnati.”

  He tried to sum it up. “Like I told you, I work as a bricklayer and stonemason.”

  “So how’d you learn to do that?” She sounded truly interested, which for some reason caught him off guard.

  He just shrugged. “When Wayne went to prison, I realized I needed to clean up my act, live better.” As for why he’d picked that particular trade…“And I always just kind of…admired good brickwork and nice stone walls, you know? So I thought it would be a good thing to learn, and a job people would always need done.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  He nodded against the pillow. “It makes me feel good to…build something I know is gonna be around awhile.”

  “Do you…have a girlfriend or anything?”

  He looked at her in response to the pointed question. “Nobody special, pussycat. If I did, I wouldn’t be here with you right now.”

  “Good,” she said. “I don’t like cheaters. For obvious reasons.” Her cheating husband. When he’d first met her, he’d felt bad for her about that in a general sort of way. Now that he knew her better, he wanted to pound the guy into the ground.

  “So, Miss Twenty Questions, what about you?”

  “What about me?” She looked surprised he would ask, and he was surprised, too—but he could do this, talk to her like this, without saying romantic shit, so it would be okay.

  What could he ask her? “You like being a teacher?”

  She pursed her lips, looked undecided. “I like teaching a subject I love, like astronomy. But I never really planned on teaching middle-schoolers—it just worked out that way. And some of them are great—but it can be hard to hold their attention, and sometimes I feel more like a babysitter than a teacher.”

  Just then, he noticed a print on the wall, illuminated by the moonlight—an artsy-looking painting of a black cat with long whiskers and a curling tail. “Did you ever get another cat after that white one?” he asked, just because it popped into his head.

  She shook her head, appearing a little dismayed by the question. “No. In fact, someone actually offered me one today and I turned it down. Why?”

  “I don’t know—you just seem…like a cat sort of girl.”

  She smiled softly, clearly pleased he could figure that out. “I am, actually—I love cats.” Her smile faded just as quickly, though. “But they die.”

  In that moment, he could suddenly hear the silence all around them—right before he reminded her, “Everything dies. Everybody dies.”

  Their gazes met and he knew what they were both thinking about: Wayne. And her mother. They both knew about death coming. “But cats die faster,” she whispered. “I couldn’t help thinking about that today, when my friend offered me the cat. Maybe…that’s why I like stars so much. They all eventually die, too, but it takes them billions of years.”

  “Stars die?” He guessed he’d heard of them exploding occasionally, but he didn’t know
much about what went on in space.

  She nodded. “Yep. You were right when you said everything dies—even the very biggest things in the universe die sooner or later.”

  “So if you love the sky so much, why aren’t you…some kind of fancy scientist or something?” He couldn’t help thinking she’d probably be good at that sort of thing since she seemed pretty much obsessed with stars and planets.

  What he hadn’t expected was for the question to make her look…almost ashamed in some way. “I…wanted to be. I dreamed of being an astronomer, maybe even a physicist.”

  It left him to ask the obvious. “Why didn’t you?”

  She swallowed visibly and looked uncomfortable. “When I met Terrence, he thought being a teacher was more practical, more attainable. He wanted to be a teacher, so he kind of talked me into being one, too. I could kick myself for listening to him. And I feel angry at him for it sometimes. But I really have no one to blame but myself. I gave up on my dream. I let it get away from me.”

  “Show me,” he said.

  “Show you what?”

  “Show me what’s so great up there. What you look at with that telescope of yours.” He couldn’t believe he was saying it, because he wasn’t even sure he really cared about seeing—but he’d rather be a guy who encouraged her dreams than one who took them away. And letting her show him seemed like a nice thing to do.

  As for when he’d gotten to be such a nice guy—he had no idea.

  “I’d love to, but I can’t—here. Too many trees—they block too much of the sky.”

  “Let’s go across the lake then.”

  Her eyes lit, even if a bit cautiously. “Really? Right now?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, pussycat.” She already knew his secrets, after all. And it had made him feel bad to think of her wanting to do something as simple as look at the sky but having it be sort of…just beyond her reach. That was how he’d felt about this side of the lake his whole life.