He . . . growls. Yep, music to my ears. Leaning back in the seat and drawing my back up against his chest, he grinds his hips up, thrusting into me as he reaches around to cup my breasts.
The combination of his chest, his hands, his beautiful cock . . . it’s too much.
“Oh my word,” I moan.
He bucks beneath me as I climax hard.
I quiver and shake. Loving every blissful second. Aware of how his hands are on my hips, holding me steady as he thrusts up into me.
Once. Twice. Ten times.
I lay my head back against his chest as a second climax builds inside me, catching me off guard. Turning toward him, our eyes connect. “Kiss me,” I gasp.
He shakes his head, then with a sharp “Fuck,” he lifts me high, almost clear off of him, then with a force so powerful I scream, jerks me down and embeds himself so deep I see stars.
I shatter.
In harmony with his body shaking beneath me as he climaxes hard.
For a few minutes, we stay like this. With me on his lap, my cheek pressed against his chest.
I feel the change in him before it happens. The slight stiffening of his chest. Before he sits up in the seat, breaking contact with me despite him still being rooted inside my slick wetness.
Withdrawing emotionally before physically.
As calmly as I can, I disengage myself, climbing off of him and carefully clambering out of the truck. My legs are liquid, my heart a pool of jousting emotions. Pleasure, sadness, disappointment. I grab hold of the door, trying to find balance.
Without a word, he steps out and away from the truck. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him remove the condom, carefully knotting the end like he intends to preserve the evidence of our lust within, before hurling it into the wheat stalks.
“Two minutes. Clean yourself up.” He disappears around the hood of the pickup. Disappears right before my eyes.
I tug my skirt back into place over my bare bottom.
And count out exactly two minutes as I stare off into the wheat field.
Whatever Dayton holds in store for me, one thing is clear. Like it or not, Declan isn’t as unfazed by what’s happening between us as he’d led me to believe.
20
Madelyn
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” I tell him, as I lick fudge off my plastic spoon.
To my surprise, he brought me to Dayton Creamery, an old-fashioned ice-cream shop on Main Street in downtown Dayton, where we now sit at a sidewalk café table. With me eating a hot-fudge sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top, and with him idly looking around, pretending not to be watching me.
I catch the flash of interest in his eyes. Until he shuts me out, leaving me wondering if I’m mistaken.
Not so fast, Declan.
I casually pluck the stem off the cherry and set the fruit along with my spoon onto a napkin. Sticking out my tongue, I position the stem horizontally across the tip before closing my mouth. It’s been years since I’ve done this, a sexy maneuver seen in a movie and repeated perfectly during a high-school cafeteria challenge. In order to tighten the knot, the trick is to brace the stem between your lips as you roll your tongue, twisting, turning, and tying the stem. My lips pucker into a tight moue as I suck and roll, suck and roll. Yeah, so much for sexy.
“Don’t.”
He stares at me, stone-faced. No telltale sign whatsoever what I’m doing has any effect on him. Not at all like the hero in the movie, who was overcome by lust over the heroine’s silly yet suggestive tongue action.
But I almost have a knot, just one more slide . . . there.
“Fuck,” he says, pausing briefly before demanding, “Show me.”
I stick out my tongue and display my tongue-work. And in a heartbeat, my insides twist into knots of pleasure as I watch him crack.
A smile, he’s cracked a smile.
Or perhaps it’s more than that, that my tongue trick’s somehow lightened to his spirit. Wishful thinking, that.
It feels like a blast of sunshine breaking through an Oklahoma rain shower. Transforming him into the handsome man from my fantasies. With his all-American good looks—which with him being so fierce, so bleeding intimidating, most people likely overlook—messy blond hair, and a light scruff of hair across his jawline. The high cut of his cheekbones seem less severe. He seems like a guy you meet on a San Diego beach, with a surfboard beneath an arm and a cocky, come-closer-honey air about him. Without his familiar tightly drawn lips, his smile’s an instant panty-wetter. His smile makes me think everything’s going to be fine: we’ll find my sister, we’ll see where this twisted road we’re on takes us.
And the unexpectedness of it devastates me. I’m tongue-tied. Overwhelmed by the immediate chemistry between us. No denying there’s something there. And he feels it, too.
I shouldn’t want him. He’s no easygoing surfer. Hell, he’s a hundred times more complicated than the knot I just tied.
But I do.
God, do I want him.
He stands and moves before me, plucking my cherry off the napkin.
“Get up, baby.”
I stand, nervous in a good way.
He squeezes my cherry between his fingers. Ever so slowly, he brings the squishy mess to my mouth, caressing first my top then my bottom lip, coating them with juice. When he pops the cherry into his mouth, I think we’re done. But we’re not. He steps in closer, running a thumb across the sweet trail he’s created on my bottom lip. Marking me with a sticky stain. Reminiscent of what he’d done with my homemade icing, all those months ago on my birthday.
Before he kissed me.
My first kiss.
The sweetest thing that’s ever happened to me in every sense of the word.
I lift my head, inviting him in for a taste.
Breathless seconds pass.
Until I realize a few things at once. I still have the stem in my mouth. And he’s not going to do it. He’s not going to kiss me. He’s freezing me out.
“Over there.” He turns away, nodding toward the red brick building across the street.
“What is it?” I mumble. The stem combined with my disappointment making it hard to speak.
“An apartment. She might be there.”
I spit the stem onto the ground. “All this time, we’ve been sitting idly across the street, like a new couple on their first Sunday date . . . like two people without a care in the world when it’s the farthest thing from true . . . and my sister might be across the street?”
“Probably long gone by now.”
“What? If you think she’s not in Dayton then why are we here?”
“Hedging my bets,” he replies, his words as ambiguous as I’m-going-to-not-kiss-you actions. Because he wanted to kiss me. That cherry trick of his is no lie.
“Hold my hand.”
“Hold your hand . . . ?”
Without waiting for me to act, he snatches my hand into his own. “Let’s go have a look.”
He tugs me along across the street, then randomly rings several apartment buzzers before someone unlocks the door. There’s no elevator in the lobby so we climb five floors, with him dropping my hand to lead the way. I huff and puff by the time we stop, then give a mental eye roll, noting how Declan is barely winded.
He’s built like a tank, with his lungs made of pure steel.