She moved back slightly and found his cock with her hand. She closed around the rigid shaft. “This,” she agreed, stroking his length. He didn’t reply, but she’d felt the tension that leapt into his body at her touch. His face was shadowed as she stared up at him. Her lungs burned as her hand moved up and down on his wet cock. He felt wonderful in her hand, so hard. So vital. Maybe he was right. Here was a comprehensible truth, an amazing one: stark desire pulsing right in her hand. She slid down his rigid shaft and cupped his firm, shaved balls. She whimpered softly. Jesus. His masculinity was flagrant, even while the man himself was a shrouded enigma.
“Who are you?” she whispered dazedly, stroking his shaft to the succulent cockhead again, squeezing him firmly.
“Jacob Latimer. And that’s all you need to know,” he growled, and then was grabbing her wrist, pulling her hand off his cock. His demanding mouth silenced her sound of protest. He pushed his hand against her tailbone and kissed her deep, leaning over her so that her back bowed to accommodate his tall frame. He slid his hand over her ass, swooshing rivulets of water from her skin. He molded a cheek to his palm. Long fingers delved between her thighs. She started and moaned into his mouth when he surely found her slit and penetrated her with his forefinger. His rough groan twined with hers as he plunged in and out of her body. All the while, his kiss was deep, his taste delicious and dark.
Like she had earlier that evening when he kissed her, Harper recognized she was spinning. Slipping. Now . . .
. . . Free-falling.
This time, she was too far gone to save herself.
• • •
He hated to be out of control of himself. Despised it, in fact. But as he sunk his tongue into the taste of Harper McFadden and his finger into her warm, creamy clasp, he acknowledged that he was. Possessing her meant more than remaining safe.
His mind went blank with lust. His need rode him, goaded him, lashing at him. He’d almost come with her hand pumping and squeezing him. It was embarrassing. Humiliating.
It was like he was a stupid, fumbling teenage boy all over again.
He growled at the thought, angrily breaking the addictive kiss. He shifted his hand between their wet bodies, his fingers finding her cleft and her clit unerringly. She was gratifyingly creamy. At least he aroused her, even if she couldn’t possibly be as worked up as he was. She cried out shakily, and he felt her muscles tense. His hand pressed; his fingertips circled and tapped out a demand into her flesh.
“You’re going to have to come for me,” he said.
“I . . . what? Why do you say it like that?”
“Because I’m about to come,” he said, grim and bitter in his acceptance of the truth. She made a choking sound, and he knew that he’d confused her. But what else could he do, when he was as bewildered as she was? Despite it all, her hips gyrated firmly against his hand and she gasped in pleasure. There was so much to discover about her, so many things to relish. Yet here he was, bulldozing her into climax. As much as he hated the idea, he tensed with excitement at the prospect of feeling her shaking against him.
He lowered his head and brushed his mouth against her parted lips. Her soft moan enraptured him. Enraged him.
“You’re as wet and warm and sweet as I imagined you’d be while I was jacking off a minute ago.”
Her body trembled against him. Her hard, wet nipples poking against his ribs were a cruel reminder of all he was missing.
“You’re not going to try to convince me you thought of me,” she insisted shakily. He continued to agitate her clit while he plunged his middle finger into her pussy. She cried out sharply. He grasped a taut ass cheek and used it to apply a firm pressure for a counterstroke against his finger. “Oh God. Oh God, that feels good,” she moaned, sounding incredulous.
He snarled in triumph when he felt the tension in her break. Warmth rushed around his finger. She tightened around him, shuddering against him. It was too much. He released her ass and clutched at his cock, stepping back to give himself room.
Everything went black as he pumped himself. Pleasure ripped through him, trumping everything else for a blessed moment: Logic. Mastery.
Shame.
When he came back to himself, it was to the sound of the water beating on the stone terrace and her soft gasps. One of his hands was buried between her thighs, his finger still high inside her. His other squeezed his cock furiously.
Moonlight and distant outdoor lighting allowed him to see her upturned face and her dawning expression of disbelief. Wonder? He jerked viciously at his cock one more time. More semen streamed onto her smooth, glistening belly.
This is what it all had come to. Jacob Latimer was back to the beginning, once again no better than that helpless boy, bewildered and laid bare with a need he couldn’t comprehend, but which owned him, nevertheless.
He’d been dragged back against his will, back to those days and nights in the West Virginia wilderness, of moments of innocence and sweetness, of camaraderie and abiding trust, of the first knowledge of sexual hunger and jarring betrayal . . .
Of Emmitt Tharp. Of casual cruelty, and blinding fear.
Now he was going to have to make sure Harper continued to forget, even while he remembered with painful clarity.
2
make me
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