It didn’t seem like he was looking at them anyway. Her nipples started to…buzz? There was a distinct tingling sort of sensation happening in each of them. He was definitely looking at her breasts. In fact, she might say he was leering at her breasts.
“See?” he rasped. “Perky.”
“Yeah, but they’re so small, they can’t help but be perk—”
“And perfect.” The bed was shoved up against a wall, and he scooted back on it until his back hit the wall. Then he curled his index finger at her.
Nora did not have bad self-esteem, generally speaking. But she’d meant what she said when she told him she was skinny but unfit. Yeah, she was petite, but she had jiggly bits.
He curled the finger again, and his eyes sparked in a way that suggested he did not see the jiggly bits the same way she did.
So she went. Crawled across the bed until she was kneeling in front of him.
He reached immediately for the breasts they had just been discussing. In another context she would have used the word groped, except his touch made her jaw go slack. An involuntary moan slipped out.
“Perfect,” he said again just before his mouth made contact with a nipple.
She was kneeling up between his legs, so his head was at nipple level, and he went to town. Holding, kneading, working the flesh up into a handful that he would scrape his fingernails over before gathering it again and putting it in his mouth.
“Jake,” she breathed.
He hummed with his mouth still on her. “Hmm?”
She hadn’t meant it as a question he needed to answer, had just been mindlessly saying his name as pleasure beat through her like a kettledrum being struck, over and over, too fast, so fast she couldn’t catch a breath. “I think I might come just from this,” she gasped.
“Why don’t you?” he said lazily, but even as he made the lewd suggestion, he let go of her with one hand, which he then shoved down the back of her panties. He squeezed her butt briefly and then came back around front and burrowed through her folds.
“Ahh!” She arched her back instinctively, and it had the effect of shoving her torso forward far enough that it hit his.
Which, in turn, had the effect of reminding her how much she had wanted to touch his chest before.
With her breasts, though. She wanted to touch his chest with her breasts.
So she kind of rudely removed his hand from her panties. He started to say something, which she was pretty sure was an apology. That wasn’t called for. But instead of telling him as much, she straddled him. Mashed her chest against his and ground down on his lap.
“Oh, damn, Nora,” he bit out.
She wanted to laugh. Not at him, but in triumph. He thought he was playing her so expertly, being the Minister of Sensations while she was the…ministeree. But two could play at that game. She writhed shamelessly until she got herself into a position where she could rock back and forth on him in a way that perfectly stimulated her clit.
“Oh, shit,” he growled. “I’m not going to last very long this time. I’m sorry.”
She laugh-moaned. “This time?” How much did she love that phrase? Because it implied that there was going to be a next time.
“Yeah, next time I’m going to beat off like twenty-five times before I see you.”
“Oh my God.” That was so…flattering. Filthily flattering. She rocked harder. “It’s okay. I’m not going to last much longer, either.”
They rutted against each other, and just when she was starting to get frustrated, when the pleasure was starting to tilt into get-it-over-already irritation, he kissed her.
On the lips. Which they had not done yet.
It was just a simple kiss. No tongue, even. But it tipped her over the edge.
It had been a long time. She came long and hard.
He came, too, with a growl and a great big buck of his hips.
Eventually she slid off him, her panties all sticky with her wetness and his come. She’d been vaguely intending to get all the way off the bed and find some clean clothes, but he lay down and tugged her down with him, arranging her against his chest.
Apparently whatever this was, this “I like you and we’re having sex, but we’re never going to be a couple” thing, it came with cuddling.
She was down with that.
They were quiet for a long time as their breathing slowed. The companionable silence had returned.
“You never took your underwear off,” he said, stroking her back.
It was true. She’d done all that grinding with a layer of cotton between them. She was playing with his hair, combing her fingers through it. He didn’t seem to mind, so she didn’t stop as she said, “So?”
“In retrospect that seems like a lost opportunity.”
She huffed a laugh. “Over the panties. Is that third base? Or just second?”
“I don’t know. You’re the baseball person. You tell me.”
“I’ve never actually known. First base is kissing, I think? But maybe that’s wrong? I really have no idea.”
“Well, everyone knows first base is rolling around nearly naked in a pink room. So we can check off first base. Good job.” He raised his hand for a high five, and she laughed and slapped it.
She wasn’t sure if she could or should return to playing with his hair, so she left her hand on his chest and forced it to remain still. “What’s second base then, do you think?”
“Sex on the beach. With condoms.”
She laughed again. She was doing a lot of that here. “In October? Brr.”
“Sex in a room overlooking the beach,” he said without missing a beat.
“Sex in a room overlooking the beach with condoms?” she clarified.
“Of course.” He paused. “If you want to.”
She smiled. “I want to.” She sighed happily. “Does friends-with-benefits second base come with grilled trout?”
Even though she wasn’t looking at him, tucked up against his chest as she was, she felt his smile. “Of course it does.”
Chapter Twelve
Oh, for God’s sake.
Jake hadn’t been kidding about his plan to beat off twenty-five times before he next saw Nora. Well, maybe twenty-five had been an exaggeration, but he had gotten in the shower an hour ago, after he’d cleaned both the cottage and the fish in preparation for her arrival, to take the edge off. Yesterday he had lasted all of forty-five seconds after she’d started grinding on him, and that was not a statistic he could live with on an ongoing basis.
But as he and Mick sat on the deck waiting for her arrival, it only took one glimpse of her as she rounded the outcropping in the boots he’d left on the other side for her earlier in the day—he’d picked up one of her discarded shoes to check the size before leaving her room in the inn yesterday and bought her a new pair this morning—for him to pop a semi.
Mick barked.
“I know, dude. I know.”
He got up, adjusted himself, and walked out to meet her. He’d instructed her to bring nothing, but her arms were laden with bags.
He wasn’t sure how to greet her. Should they kiss? He wanted to kiss her, but that was probably uncalled for. He’d meant what he’d said about not doing romance, and he genuinely believed they were on the same page about that. So he gestured for her to hand over her bags. “What’s all this?”