Page 24 of The Spice Is Nice

“The rules, Calhoun. We didn’t talk about this.”

“Well, Wylde, we’re two people who, I think, are really attracted to each other, trying to help each other out, and I don’t see any reason we couldn’t add a few more benefits to the arrangement. You in?”

I stopped thinking of all the reasons we shouldn’t when his other hand slowly gathered my skirt until his calluses brushed my skin. My breaths came out in shallow pants. His fingers feathered along my panties at the apex of my thighs. I squeezed them together for relief.

“Right here, Colt? What if Seth comes back?” I made one last effort to keep my sanity.

“Then we had better hurry—and be quiet about it.”

The adrenaline did wicked things to me. The fear and the dark and the danger and the steady drum of his heart against mine were mixing into some chemical that bypassed every rational thought.

I arched my back, my ass pressing against his cock, involuntarily, instinctively, like my body that had been starving for contact and refusing to admit it.

He groaned in response, and it went straight to my core. The sensation traveled through me like a lit fuse.

His mouth found the curve of my neck in the dark. My head tipped sideways, giving him more access.

“Need me to stop?” His breath feathered against my skin. His palm cupped me through the lace of my panties. The pressure of his hand and the hard press of him behindme and his breath against my ear created a feedback loop that shut down every higher function I possessed.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

“Yes?” he breathed against my ear. Asking. Even now, with his body rigid against mine and my hips rocking into his palm, he was asking.

“Yes.”

He pressed his palm in a firm rhythm against my clit, and I dissolved as the sensation built, layered on adrenaline and months of denial and the intimacy of being held in the dark by a man who asked before he touched.

I bit down on my lip to keep the sound in. His other arm tightened across my ribs, hand cradling my breast, and his hips moved with mine in a rhythm that was instinctive and desperate and nothing like the controlled, careful man I knew. He was losing himself the same way I was, and knowing that, feeling that, pushed me closer to the edge.

“I’ll bet you’re wet and wild for me.” His knee gently urged my thighs apart. My panties pushed aside, his fingers pressed into my wet seam. He played with me, strumming my clit, pumping a finger or two in and out of me, so good. My arms braced against the frame of the closet door, giving me more leverage for my hips to join his rhythm. “That’s it, Wylde. Get yourself off for me. I can’t wait to taste you.”

“You act all good guy, when really you’re a dirty-talking cowboy who sneaks up on a girl in the closet,” I teased.

“Never said I was a good guy. Why I should spank you for not waiting for me before you entered this room.”

I sucked in a breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.” The thought of him taking me over his knee… I whimpered, never knowing before how much Imight like that. He added a third finger inside of me now, pulsing, driving me crazy, almost there. “We either do things together, Wylde, or not at all. Because I don’t pretend halfway.”

“Then this is hardly fair. You’re getting me off. What about you?”

He chuckled. “When you come, I’ll be lucky if I don’t explode in my jeans.”

That I’d turned him on so much he could come without his cock even leaving his pants did it for me. I pressed my face into the crook of my arm and hid a sound swallowed by the dark. My body quaked head to toe against him, his arm held me through it, and his mouth stayed against my neck, breathing hard, his whole body taut behind me as my trembling slowed and my breath came back in ragged pieces.

The silence afterward was enormous. The closet held us in it like an embrace, and the only sounds were our blended breaths, the faint buzz of the motel’s neon sign outside, and the television too loud in the room next door. His hand had gone still and slipped out of me. He gently put my panties back into place and let my skirt fall.

“Let’s have a taste.” He brought his fingers to my mouth first. I moaned, licked, and sucked at my sweetness. Then he got the rest, tasting me and growling, while my arousal soaked my panties.

Neither of us spoke for a minute as we calmed down. I was afraid that words would break whatever this was, when I needed to remember we were pretending, with an expiration.

“We should leave now, carefully, quietly,” Colt ordered,his voice raw and a whisper. He hadn’t found his own release from what I could tell; his body still rigid like the tension collected there. He eased back from me, just enough to reach the closet door, and pushed it open.

The room was dim and empty, the curtains still drawn, the maps still on the table. The real world waited on the other side of whatever had just happened between us.

I stepped out of the closet on legs that felt unreliable. Colt followed with a quick glance around the room.

“Did you find anything?” He continued to keep his down.