Emergency Engagement (Love Emergency) (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

Beau glanced at Savannah’s door as he climbed the steps to his apartment. UPS had left a letter-sized cardboard envelope on her welcome mat. He’d bet his last beer it contained the fellowship packet she was waiting for, including her travel stipend and airline tickets. He turned to his apartment, but then hesitated. Her doorstep seemed like a bad place to leave important documents.

A glance at his watch told him it wasn’t quite eight o’clock. She might work for another four or five hours. He could take the envelope to his place for safekeeping, but he knew she was anxious to receive the information. He could call and let her know it had arrived, but they’d called and texted enough in the past few days for him to know that if she was working she wouldn’t pick up.

Just drive over to the studio and deliver the damn thing
. It wasn’t as if he had plans for tonight, and he’d been meaning to take her up on her invitation to watch her work. When they had dinner with his parents tomorrow, he ought to be able to speak coherently about her process.

And he was spending a lot of mental energy justifying a simple decision. Yes, he liked the idea of seeing her this evening. So what? He turned and headed downstairs to his car before he could waste any more time debating this move like a thirteen-year-old girl.

The studio wasn’t far. He had a general idea of the location, but as the restaurants, grocery stores, and mini malls transitioned to more of an industrial district, the idea of Savannah working at night got a lot less appealing. The small parking lot in front of the studio was decently lit, at least. He parked his Yukon next to her Explorer, grabbed the envelope, and took the steps to the heavy doors of the two-story brick warehouse. Music ambushed him as soon as he stepped through. From invisible speakers, a deep-voiced singer begged someone to take him to church, loud enough to rattle the cement block walls.

Inside, a series of dormant utilitarian workstations divided the open space into sections. The north and south walls each held a pair of furnaces—one large, one smaller—and before one of the small furnaces stood Savannah.

He walked closer, the music obscuring the sound of his footsteps on the concrete floor. A pair of sunglasses shielded her eyes as she stared into the furnace. She had her hair pulled up in a bundle at the back of her head, and wore faded jeans that clung to her ass like a second skin, along with a snug white T-shirt bearing a Marble City Glassworks logo across the back with the words “Best Blow Job in Tennessee” emblazoned in big black letters below the logo.

The glow from the furnace turned her skin gold. She held one end of a long, narrow pipe in the round opening at the front of the furnace, twirling it at a constant rate. After a moment she stepped back, removing the length of pipe from the furnace, and bringing a molten glob of red-hot glass out of the heat. Still twirling the rod steadily, she brought the other end to her lips. Her chest rose as she inhaled. Then she blew into the pipe. The glob expanded like a lopsided balloon, but quickly evened into a sphere as she continued to twist and blow.

He watched her hands as she worked, and her lips, mesmerized by the assurance with which she finessed the delicate balance between air and gravity. Mesmerized…and turned on. Her fingers danced along the metal shaft, and he imagined those deft fingertips touching his skin. She closed her lips around the end of the pipe, pursing them slightly to ensure a tight seal, and his cock begged for the same treatment.

No complications
.

What’s so complicated about two consenting adults tearing the clothes off each other and fucking until they can’t stand
?

Uh-uh. No way. This was not an argument he was going to have with himself. She inspired a dangerous mix of gratitude, affection, and lust, but they’d both be better off not blurring the boundaries of their arrangement with a physical relationship. That was not the plan.

A bead of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades when she slid the rod from between her lips and absently licked them as she considered the glass. Apparently satisfied, she shoved her sunglasses up to the top of her head and turned toward a large table with a stainless steel top. Then she spotted him and lost her grip on the pipe. It clattered to the floor, and the molten mass at the end splattered on the concrete like a burst bubble.

He closed the space between them, to make sure she was okay, and apologize for scaring her, and yeah, to read her the riot act for working alone in an unlocked studio at this time of night. But somewhere around the moment he got close enough to touch her, his self-control shattered as irrevocably as the glass. All those plans fell away under the force of a different imperative.

Don’t…

He tossed the envelope on the table, sank his hands into her upswept hair, and kissed her.

Soft lips parted beneath his, and her half thankful, half desperate groan flowed into his mouth. Her hands grappled for holds on his shoulders, and her leg twined around his, the heel of her boot digging into his calf as she tried to climb him. The height difference worked against them, but he had a solution. He hauled her up and carried her over to the table.

She landed on the solid surface harder than he intended, because he had no finesse left in him. He’d tamped down on this need for too long, and now it owned him. But she didn’t seem to mind—simply pulled his head down and sank her teeth into his lower lip while her hands found his fly and tore it open. When she reached in to touch him, he intercepted. Later, when he wasn’t about to explode, she could touch all she wanted, but for now he moved her arms behind her, then grasped her hips and lifted them so she had no choice but to brace her hands on the table to support her weight.

The music ended, leaving them in an echoing silence. He dragged her jeans and underwear down to her knees, but that wasn’t going to be enough. “Your boots,” he muttered.

“Lace-ups. I can’t wait. Find another way.”

All right. He was nothing if not a problem solver. He pulled her off the table and spun her around. Her sunglasses flew off, skittered across the table, and landed on the floor.

“I owe you a new pair,” he ground out.

“I don’t care.” She gripped the steel sides, leaned over, and parted her legs as far as the jeans would allow.

The sight of her lifting that perfect little ass to receive him made any lingering hopes of mustering up some foreplay impossible. He curled one hand around the base of his cock, the other around her hip, and drove in.

The first thrust jostled a loud “Yes!” out of her, rocked her onto her tiptoes, and sent her hands scrambling across the top of the table for a more secure hold. She steadied herself and arched her back in time to meet his second thrust. Flesh slapped against flesh.

She cried out again, but he wasn’t so far gone or so out of practice he failed to realize he’d given her nothing yet except a rough pounding. He needed to do better than what had become his MO—a quick, mind-numbing release, followed by an immediate exit.

Make it good for her, so she’ll let you have her again
.

Again?

Hell yes, again. Your mind’s not numb this time, and you know damn well there’s no immediate exit
.

Instead of suffocating him, the realization grounded him. Focused him. There was an eventual exit, they both knew it, and the shared awareness made this recklessness okay. Repeatable, even, provided he did something worth repeating. A thousand ideas raged through his mind—touch her breasts and figure out if she liked a gentle stroke or a firm caress. Slide his hand between her legs and determine if she preferred the graze of his finger on her clit or a hard grind against his palm.

Unfortunately, they would have to wait, because the hot, tight hug of her body felt too good to do anything except thrust again.

Tension gathered in his gut, his balls. The backs of his thighs burned. Neurons fired at will, taking direction from some primitive part of his brain his conscious mind couldn’t touch, leaving him a passenger in his own body. His thrusts turned fast and reckless, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to slow the train down. Fuck. He was done for.

“Next time, Savannah. Next time, I swear to God, I’m going to rain orgasms on you until you drown in your own pleasure, but right now I have to—”

She threw back her head and screamed while inner muscles dissolved into a frenzy of contractions around him. They squeezed the orgasm right out of him in a rush so sudden and violent he would have collapsed if the table hadn’t been there to support him.

Holy shit
.

It took a minute for him to catch his breath and reestablish motor control. Then he braced his weight on his forearms, turned his head, and kissed the corner of her smiling mouth. The off-center smile got him every time.

“Sorry I interrupted your work.”

Her husky laugh tickled his skin. “Oh yeah. Me, too.” With that, she tucked her hands under her shoulders and started to push herself upright, but he didn’t budge.

“Don’t move, Smith. I’m not done with you yet.”

…

Not done with her yet? He’d just made her come so hard she might have broken something. She raised her head to ask what else he could possibly do to her, but he chose that moment to slowly drag his extremely effective cock from her pleasure-swollen body. She bit her lip and groaned as he withdrew, unable to stop herself from wringing a last few greedy spasms of satisfaction from the process.

When he finally slipped free, she sighed and started to straighten, but a big hand splayed across the center of her back and held her still. “Uh-uh. I told you not to move.”

He wanted her to just…lean over a table, half naked? She wasn’t especially shy, but the idea of lying there bare and trembling from aftershocks made her blush. She felt displayed. Exposed.

And yet the uncomfortable experience of holding herself still for his perusal made her so hot she could hardly keep still.

Where was he looking? What could he see?

Just when the tension of the moment became unbearable, warm, firm lips trailed over the vulnerable curve of her ass cheek. She nearly jumped out of her skin, but a hand at the small of her back kept her still while he scraped his teeth along sensitive territory.

“I’ve been fantasizing about kissing this ass since I saw it naked, in my bed, Friday morning.”

At the same time he delivered the revelation, his fingers delved between her thighs and searched out the still-quivering spot that reduced her to a slave with one featherlight touch.

Those nimble fingertips stroked again, and she pursued the fleeting caress in a blind effort to prolong the addictive agony. He rewarded her effort by sinking his teeth into her flesh, and her bones dissolved. She gripped the sides of the table to keep from sliding to the floor.

Sweet Jesus, Savannah. The man just bit your ass
. She loved a helping hand every once in a while. What woman didn’t? But who knew she’d be so susceptible to a good, sound biting? Now she had two competing punishments to withstand: the unbearable assault of his fingers teasing her clit, and the irresistible sting of his teeth against her unguarded flesh. Should she beg for mercy, or plead for more?

He gave her more, biting and stroking while she chased an increasingly crucial release, and yet for some reason she never saw the orgasm coming until those gentle fingers and not-so-gentle teeth shot her up and over a ragged crest.

Before her breathing evened out, his voice filled her ear. “Again.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond—not with words. Instead, jostled a gasp out of her when he flipped her over and laid her on the table again. She propped herself up on her elbows, and realized she’d just had two screaming orgasms with her shirt and shoes on. Hell, technically, she still qualified for service in finer fast-food restaurants throughout Atlanta. But Beau intended to change that. She watched as he knelt by her dangling feet and got to work on her laces.

The
clomp
of one boot hitting the floor reached her ears. Another
clomp
told her he’d tossed the second boot.

Then he peeled her jeans off and gave her a look that sent waves of hot and cold over every inch of her exposed skin. “Beau…I appreciate the effort, sincerely, but I’m not sure I’ve got more in me at the moment.”

“You’re wrong. Give me a minute and I’ll show you.” He propped her heels on his shoulders.

She gripped the edge of the table and decided the least she could do was let him prove his point. “Okay. I’ll give you a minute. I’m a giver.”

As a reward, he licked and bit his way to her navel, over her abdomen, shoving her T-shirt out of his way as he went. When he’d pushed the garment up to her armpits, he caught a handful of the front, pulled her upright, and jerked the shirt over her head. Her bra came, too, and ended up tangled with her shirt around her wrists. She tried to slip her hands free and realized she couldn’t. He’d fashioned an effective if unintentional restraint.

Or maybe not unintentional at all, she corrected when their eyes met. His hands cupped her breasts, lifting their weight, bringing one aching peak dangerously close to his mouth. “Can you come for me this way?”

And in that moment, she didn’t just want to come again. She wanted to come
for him
, while he alternated between kissing the tender undersides of her breasts and sucking her nipples until she felt the pull of his mouth in every last cell of her body.

“I don’t know. Usually I need more”—she broke off as he took her nipple into his mouth and drew on it hard enough to bow her spine—“God, maybe.”

Keeping the suction tight, he slowly drew back, millimeter by millimeter, until her breast popped free. Sensations spiraled through her, sharp and almost painful. She nearly cried out, but then his mouth returned, gentle this time. He kissed the soft, sensitive curve where her breast met her torso, slowly worked his way up the swell to where her nipple jutted, tight and throbbing. His lips barely touched the tip, and every muscle below her belly button clenched.