Full Throttle (Fast Track) (9 page)

Or rather, she was feeling it too much.

It was almost impossible to sit still next to Rhett, where she could hear him breathing, could feel his thigh touching hers, and watch a couple having way more fun than she was. Shawn bounced her foot rapidly. Bit her nails. Cleared her throat. And finally jumped up.

“I need a glass of water. Can I get you anything?”

His smile was slow and suggestive, and while he didn’t say anything, his expression told her exactly what he was thinking.

“No,” she told him sourly.

He laughed.

He didn’t protest, but when she sat back down, his hand started at her knee and ended up under her dress dangerously close to the end zone.

Shawn pushed it back down as something exploded on the TV screen. Or maybe that was her resolve going up in flames.

He switched tactics. He shifted sideways and pulled her against his chest, so that she was resting between his legs, her butt nestled on his crotch. Yeah, that wasn’t helping. Because he either had a hair spray can down his jeans or he was happy to see her.

By the time the movie ended, she was a hot, aching mess, and he looked as calm as usual.

“I’m going to bed,” she announced, flipping the TV off. “I made up the guest room for you. See you in the
morning
.” Just in case there was any doubt that she was not letting him into her room, her bed, or her vagina. Tonight anyway.

He didn’t respond. He just watched her as she retreated to her room and closed the door with a sigh. Then she went straight to her nightstand drawer where she kept her vibrator. This was an emergency situation.

 • • • 

RHETT
knew that Shawn was well aware of how much he wanted her. She was choosing to ignore that and her own desire. He was willing to let her. For now. Because it was obvious that she was an impulsive person, and all it would take was the right moment, a certain look, the perfectly placed touch, and she would forget about her irrational need to win a no-stakes bet, and she would open herself up to him. He could be patient for a little longer.

The payoff of having her come to him desperate and ready would be worth it.

He might be in a bit of blue-ball hell in the meantime, but he could handle that.

What he could not handle, though, was the realization that Shawn was in her room touching herself. He knew she was because when he walked past her room to the bathroom he heard the very faint sound of something battery-operated and her anxious breathing. Damn it, those walls were thin, and now he had an image he just couldn’t shake. Pausing, he listened for another second, which confirmed his suspicions, his mouth growing hot, cock thickening with need.

She hadn’t even waited five minutes.

There was something immensely satisfying in that. Not however, as satisfying as pounding her would feel.

Rhett knocked on her door. She gave a tiny squawk from her room, then called out in a shaky voice, “Yes?”

Peeling his shirt off, he dropped it on the hallway carpet before shucking his jeans as well. “I want to take a shower and I can’t find a towel.”

“They’re in the hall closet,” she said.

“What? I can’t hear you,” he lied, and he opened the door. It was a dirty trick, but then again, he’d never claimed to be a Boy Scout, and they were married after all.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t come in here!”

“I couldn’t hear you.” He moved closer to her bed, hiding his amusement over the fact that she was clutching her covers to her chin. But there was still the faint sound of her vibrator humming away under the blanket.

“Hall. Closet.” Her teeth were clenched, and her hair was looking a little wild.

Had she been rolling around under there, rocking herself onto her vibe? Rhett pulled his fingers into fists at the notion.

“What’s buzzing?” he asked her.

The hall light was strong enough to illuminate the horrified expression on her face. “What do you mean?”

“I hear buzzing. What is that?”

“I don’t hear anything,” she said, voice high, grip tightening on the comforter. Her gaze dropped down to his lower half. “Oh! You’re not dressed.”

“I was going to the shower. Are you dressed?”

“I’m wearing a T-shirt.”

Somehow that was even sexier than if she were totally naked. It meant she was secretly pleasuring herself in the dark from under the hem of her shirt.

It also meant he could flip that comforter back.

“Seriously, what is that? It sounds like . . .” And Rhett peeled the side of her comforter back, not exposing her, but exposing her little friend. Who was not so little. It was a healthy-size purple sparkly vibrator, with rabbit clitoral stimulation. Fuck yeah. “A vibrator.”

Shawn screamed, “Rhett! Get the hell out of my bedroom!” She tried to flip the comforter back over the sex toy, only he had a firm grip on it, and they engaged in a brief tug of war over the fabric before she gave up and changed tactics, grabbing the vibrator and stuffing it under her pillow. “Go. Away.”

He would, if he could walk. But he was afraid he might injure himself if he tried to move. “Shawn. I’m going to ask you a very serious question. Why are you getting yourself off with a vibrator when I could do that for you? We are married, you know. Married people have sex.”

She finally let her death grip go on her comforter. She wasn’t lying about the T-shirt. It was a ginormous hot pink number, with a pocket over her breast. It said, “I love Mr. Darcy.” Who the fuck was Mr. Darcy and did he need to be jealous of him?

“It’s the principle,” she told him. “I don’t want you to think I’m easy.”

Rhett raised his eyebrows. “With all due respect, sweetheart, I’m not sure how your date with the purple pussy eater is making you look disinterested in sex.”

“Uh!” Color rose in her cheeks, and she picked up her pillow and smacked him with it. “I thought you were decent enough to respect my privacy and not enter a room with a closed door! And didn’t your mother tell you not to mention to a lady that she is using a vibrator? It’s rude!”

That made him laugh. “That is not a conversation I’ve had with my mother, no. Generally speaking, we steer clear of politics and battery-operated sex toys in our chats.”

She hit him again, harder this time, the pillow making a nice thumping sound in the quiet room.

Rhett ripped the pillow out of her hand. “Knock it off.”

“Fuck you.”

“I wish you would.”

Shawn grabbed another pillow and hit him with it, right across his face this time.

“You’re really pushing it,” he told her, wanting to give her fair warning that he wasn’t above a pillow fight with a girl if she started it. She packed a serious punch to her swings.

“So are you.” Her eyes were snapping with anger and lust. She swung again, nailing him in the chin. The pillow exploded, a cascade of feathers raining over his chest and down onto the bed. Shawn’s expression changed to one of amusement, her mouth twitching as she started to laugh.

So she was going to laugh at him? Rhett grabbed the pillow she had hidden her sex toy under and hit her in the chest with it.

“Hey!” she said, but she was giggling now.

It was a look he liked on her. He enjoyed the way she couldn’t hold on to anger, the way she was so easily amused. The pillow fight wasn’t having quite the same effect on him. He was just getting more and more aroused.

She hit him again, grinning, more feathers escaping the hole in the seam of the pillow, coming up on her knees to get more leverage and put more bite into her swing. Rhett whacked her on her ass with his pillow. He could see her thighs but not her panties, the T-shirt still covering them, but it was enough skin, enough to know that there was very little between him and her sex, that her breasts were bare under the shirt, to stir his desire even more.

“You can’t hit me there,” she said, breathless, whacking his arm and sounding more aroused than indignant.

“You hit me in the face.” And so he hit her right between her thighs.

“Rhett! You can’t do that.”

He wasn’t sure how the rules went if she was allowed to do whatever she wanted and hit him anywhere, but he had restrictions.

When she raised her arms again for another assault, he pulled the pillow out of her hands and tossed it on the floor. “Now what?” he asked with a smile.

She went for a backup pillow behind her, but he tore that out of her hands, too. So laughing, breathless, she tried to strip him of the one he was holding.

“I don’t think so, little girl.” He kept a tight grip on it.

“Little girl?” she asked with a snort. “I’m eight years older than you.”

For which he was definitely grateful. She was hanging in way better with him than the younger women he’d dated.

“You’re right. You’re a woman. But you still can’t take this pillow away from me, no matter how hard you try.” He knew she would. He’d already pegged that aspect of her personality, and he found her tenacity admirable. And he had to admit, he enjoyed baiting her.

“Oh, yeah?” She lunged for him, and she was faster than he expected.

He almost lost the pillow to her nimble fingers, but he clamped down harder on it and raised it high above his head so that she had to stretch for it.

“Oh!” She glared at him in frustration, but there was a definite twinkle in her eye.

Then she did something he never in a million years would have predicted. Nor was he at all prepared for it.

She reached out with her left hand and stroked right across the front of his boxers, down the length of his cock. He was so shocked that he loosened his grip on the pillow. Which she snagged and then scooted backward on the bed, laughing, removing her hand from his erection.

Rhett was stunned. And turned on. And filled with a new respect for her quick thinking.

“Oh, so that’s how you want to play it, huh?” he asked, nudging his knee between her legs and pushing on the pillow so that she fell backward onto the bed on her back. He dropped his forearm onto the pillow, pinning her.

She squirmed, trying to push him off her, but he wasn’t budging. They were going to finish this to both their mutual satisfaction. Rhett leaned down and kissed her, but she turned her head to avoid it, so he ended up kissing her cheek. Frowning, he pulled back to gauge her mood. She was still giggling, a nervous reaction that she seemed unable to control.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“It just popped into my head that you’re about to go Dom on me, and it makes me laugh.”

“Why?” He didn’t bother to correct her that he wasn’t a Dom. Not technically.

“Because it’s funny. Sex is funny.” She looked up at him innocently, like she genuinely believed her words. “It’s so dorky when you think about it.”

“Not the way I do it,” he assured her most sincerely. He had never once thought of sex as dorky. Or funny. “Who the hell have you been having sex with that just the thought of me fucking you makes you giggle?”

Shawn’s eyes were a dark amber, but now they seemed lighter, almost glassy as she looked up at him, her chest heaving beneath the pillow. “I don’t know. I guess mostly I have buddy-buddy relationships with men. I don’t think I’m their sexual fantasy any more than they’re mine.”

He had to admit, that surprised him. No wonder she always looked at him a little nervously, yet determined. She must instinctively know that it would be different with him. Which it was going to be. He was going to show her exactly how she’d been let down by the men she had dated. Then again, maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault. Attraction was a mysterious thing.

“You’re my sexual fantasy. When I’m here, with you, in bed and naked, you can trust that you’re the only woman I’m thinking about, that you’re the only woman I’m interested in.” Something deep and intimate and territorial rose up in him.

She stared up at him, her smile smoothing out into something thoughtful, curious. “I want to believe you. But I also still want to giggle.”

It was a start. “Go ahead and giggle if you want, and get it out of your system. But trust me.”

That was, after all, the key to a healthy and satisfying relationship, particularly given his tendencies. She needed to trust him to pleasure her, to let him steer the ship. Rhett eased up on the pillow and watched Shawn, waiting for her answer. If she resisted, he would leave her bed tonight. He wanted her all in. He wanted her acquiescence, her eventual surrender.

He knew he would get it.

The question was just if it would be tonight or not.

SHAWN
looked at Rhett, unnerved by his calm, by the way he was doing it again—staring steadily at her, making her the entire focus of his attention. She’d never really experienced that kind of intensity. She had been telling the truth in that most of the men she’d dated had likely been picturing supermodels when they’d been in bed with her. Obviously Sam had, given his wandering eye. She had never been in love with a man, had never emotionally connected on that level with someone. She’d had laughs and good times and respectable sex. But never all-consuming, earth-shattering pleasure.

Never had she looked up and felt like a man wanted to consume her, to eek every last drop of desire out of her body and swallow.

Until now.

Did she trust him?

She did, though there wasn’t necessarily any logic to it.

He was borderline rude, definitely bossy, and determined to get his own way.

But he was also honest, straightforward, fair. And most important, he never pushed her.

So yes, she did trust him. And even if it meant she was going to lose a little face by caving five days early, a mere forty-eight hours into their marriage, she knew beyond a doubt that his goal was to make it worth it for her.

“Okay,” she whispered, well aware that she was giving in to a course of action that would change the way they interacted over the next six months. But she wanted this. She wanted him. Inside her.

Then he smiled and it was so beautiful, she sucked in her breath, her heart beating almost as loudly as the vibrator that was still buzzing a few feet away from her right ear.

The least she could do was try not to laugh.

So when he bent over to kiss her again, his arm pressing into the pillows, she tried, she honestly tried not to think about the fact that her arms were contained beneath white linens, like a mummy. Or that if she wiggled her hands, they would pop out the bottom of the pillow like T-Rex arms. She twitched, a snort coming out as she tried to contain her nervous laughter.

Rhett paused. “Really?”

“I can’t help it!” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, I’m good. Sorry. I’m fine now.”

But she really wasn’t, because when he stroked his thumb across her bottom lip, she squirmed from need. Not sexual need, but the hysterical urge to reach out and snap at him with her teeth. Suppressed laughter made her nostrils flare and she knew she was about to totally lose it.

She was in no shape for sex clearly.

Rhett sat back, giving her a dark look. When he retreated off the bed, she was disappointed and annoyed with herself. Why couldn’t she be normal and artfully pose and come on to him? Why did she have to act like a ginormous goofball and ruin her chances of actually having an orgasm?

Sighing, she rolled over and turned off her vibrator. No sense in wasting the batteries, and she didn’t think she could go back to it with the right attitude once he was gone. But Rhett didn’t leave her room like she thought he was going to. Instead, he yanked open her dresser drawer and started rooting around. Hello. Her panties and bras were in there.

“What are you doing?”

He turned back to her, a pair of her tights in his hand.

Wait a minute.

He wasn’t going to . . .

Oh, but he was. Rhett crawled on the bed and lifted her head so he could put the tights behind her and around her jaw. For a second, she felt a flash of anxiety, but before he gagged her, he kissed her softly. “Trust me.”

Unable to speak, her mouth thick with saliva, she nodded. She’d never been gagged before, but it had certainly robbed her of the obnoxious need to snort with laughter.

Rhett wasted no time in tying off the tights so that she couldn’t open her mouth. It was a strange sensation, not nearly as vulnerable as she would have thought. It was actually sort of . . . freeing. She didn’t have to say anything. She could focus on the pressure of the spandex pushing against her lips and breathing through her nose. It calmed her down, and when Rhett slid his hand up her thigh and under her T-shirt, his lips caressing her neck with soft, seductive kisses, she had no desire to laugh. Instead, she sighed, relaxing back against her mattress.

Rhett brushed over her thighs, her belly, the underside of her breast, his other hand pulling stray hairs gently free that had been caught under the tights. His callused thumb moved across her cheek, tracing her mouth under the tights, his eyes on her facial features, like he was studying each inch of her.

There was something almost worshipful about the way he touched her, like she was fragile. Or beautiful.

She suddenly remembered that legally he was her husband.

It was a very, very strange thought.

The pillow had fallen off her chest and he hovered over her, his bare chest tantalizingly close. He was muscular, like any man on a pit crew should be, free of tattoos and covered in a light dusting of caramel chest hair. Shawn wanted to touch him, both to explore that hard plane, and to keep a slight barrier between them. To hold on to control.

But he clearly sensed that because when her hands came up, he shook his head, cupping them to push them back down. “No. Lie still.”

The question was, did she do as he told her, or did she do what she wanted? Given that she would still be chortling like a donkey if he hadn’t taken charge of the situation, she realized that while it went totally against her every instinct as a competitor and an independent businesswoman, there might be some value in doing as he said. At least this once, to see if it brought her a different experience, if it allowed her to experience pleasure from a new perspective.

So she left her hands at her sides where he had placed them and waited further instruction. The very idea of that actually brought a rush of warm desire to her inner thighs, the heat pooling deep in her womb. His hard masculinity trapped her beneath him, and though she couldn’t feel it, she knew his erection was mere inches from her. Part of her expected him to shove her shirt up and push into her hard, claiming her before she changed her mind.

But that wasn’t what he did. Instead he ran his hand up her thighs, slowly and steadily, slipped under her shirt to brush over her breast, then descended again. He caressed her inner thigh, but never moved over the front of her panties, and after three passes up and down the length of her body, Shawn no longer felt the urge to laugh. His feathery touch was pulling goose bumps from her skin, and she quieted down, her body relaxing as he coaxed a simple awareness of her body from her. She wanted him to touch her more intimately, to push her panties back and bury his finger deep inside her wet body. That was what she expected, an aggressive dominant approach of going straight for the gold. He would use his finger, then his cock to get her off, and it would be over and done in a hot burst of ten minutes of passion.

That wasn’t what he was doing, clearly.

He was taking his time.

And it was driving her nuts.

She couldn’t even complain because her mouth was covered.

“Your skin is very soft,” he told her, eyes trained on her.

It didn’t require an answer, though under usual circumstances, Shawn would have said something in response. She would have most likely made a crack about having a boyish figure or how winter brought on alligator-skin syndrome, both of which would have however unintentionally and however minutely altered the mood, never allowing either of them to fully surrender to pleasure.

It was an interesting realization. As she was forced to lie still, which was not her most coveted or easy position, there was no running commentary of words from her mouth to distract her. There was nothing but her skin and an awareness of her rising desire that she had never experienced before. She could feel the prickle of each goose bump rising on her flesh, hear the soft rush of her breathing out of her nostrils, smell his masculine scent as he lay over her, his knee wedged between her thighs. Rhett played a little with her nipple, just teasing his thumb and forefinger over its hardness, his lips brushing across the delicate flesh under her ear.

When he pinched her nipple, unexpectedly, Shawn was stunned at the sharp kick of desire that she felt acutely in her stillness, her body quiet, able to process in its entirety the sensation of pleasure through the sting. She had never kept her hands at her sides, had never understood that if she did, she would feel the distinct ache in her womb, feel the slow trickle of hot desire easing out of her to soak the front of her panties. Her breathing grew more anxious, and she reveled in the new experience at the same time she started to panic. Involuntarily, her hand came up to push against his chest, to pull off her tights.

Rhett pushed it back down. “Shh. Not yet. Just give me a few more minutes. But if you really want me to stop, I will. I won’t hold your hands down.”

Did she want him to stop? Given that his thumb was now stroking against the skin at the apex of her thighs, so tantalizingly close to her clitoris, she decided she could keep it together for at least a few minutes. If he didn’t tie off her hands, she could also escape. She did trust him.

As long as he didn’t demand she crawl across the floor, she was okay with what they were doing. In fact, she was more than okay with it, and that’s where the fear sprang from. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been quite this aroused from so little actual contact.

“Are you okay with this? I need your permission. Nod your head.”

So she nodded her head.

“Good girl.”

Rhett kissed her on the lips, the nylon tights between them. It was an odd sensation, one that made her yearn to feel his taste, his tongue inside her. She moaned a little, the sound muffled, her nostrils flaring. Then his thumb slipped under the satin of her panties and slid up and down in her slickness and she arched her head back, closing her hands into tight fists so she didn’t move them, reach for him. It felt so odd, to be a non-participant, but more involved and attuned than she had ever been. She wasn’t sure how that was possible, but as Rhett massaged up and down her swollen lips with his thumbs, his tongue teasing into her ear, she marveled at that reality. She was agonizingly turned on, and she could already feel an orgasm building, and from what? A few finger strokes? She usually required the launch-to-orbit setting on her vibrator or a man who knew how to use his tongue for extended periods of time.

She didn’t come from a single finger, nowhere near her clitoris.

Without realizing she was doing it, she started to squirm, wiggling her hips.

“No moving,” he told her, pinching her swollen labia, his stroking ceasing. “Or you won’t get my tongue.”

Oh, God. Shawn’s chest heaved, her breathing anxious and frantic sounding to her own ears as she desperately tried to quiet her body, the thought of his tongue motivating her to follow his directives. If his finger could do this, what could his tongue, his lips, his
teeth
do down there? The thought prompted a rush of liquid desire, soaking over his thumb, trapped by the barrier of her panties. She knew if she looked down, she would see the satin stained with her arousal, and he knew it, too. He was looking at it. He had bent over to study her, pausing to wait for her compliance.

It almost killed her, but she relaxed, letting her legs drop apart, keeping her head back on the bed.

Her reward was him removing his hand entirely. Aghast, she tried to cry out in protest, but the words were lost behind the tights.

But he shook his head in disapproval. “Trust me. Or I’ll leave you here like this, wet and aching.”

Shawn wasn’t sure she could do this. She didn’t know how.

But neither did she want to be left alone feeling like she was on the cusp of something, like she was about to be treated to intense satisfaction, only to have it denied to her because she couldn’t relinquish control.

It was an ironic paradox and she fought with her emotions, while Rhett startled her by pulling up her T-shirt and gently lifting each of her inert arms through the holes, then lifting it up and over her head, leaving her gloriously free and bare to his gaze.

“See?” he told her. “That’s what I was going to do. I wasn’t trying to torture you.”

Oops. Hey, how was she supposed to know? Shawn felt the cool air of her bedroom on her naked skin, her nipples pert, her breasts rising and falling rapidly with the urgency of her breathing. There was nothing between her and Rhett’s gaze, his touch, but the wet scrap of her thong that he had bought and she had worn to torment him. Funny how the tables had been turned.

He peeled the tights back long enough to surprise her with a hot kiss and a plunge of his tongue, before he was gone again, his mouth descending on her breast. She gasped, her eyes fluttering shut, her heels digging in to the bed, her hips squirming again before she realized she wasn’t allowed to do that. Knowing he would stop if she did, she immediately stilled her actions, sliding her hands under her ass so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and claw at his briefs to free his penis.

This time her reward was him reaching down and with both hands, snapping the strap on the side of the thong so that the satin front panel fell away, exposing her entirely to him. That was definitely worth sitting on her hands. The move was so hot she felt her mouth fill with saliva, excitement rushing through her like a shot of whiskey on a cold night.

It was just the beginning. When he bent down, he traced the inside of each of her thighs with his tongue, a teasing caress so close to the core of her desire.

“This is how this works,” he murmured against her skin. “You only come once I give you permission. If you’re getting too close, you can move your hand to tap my head to let me know you don’t have control over yourself and need a pause. But I
will
give permission, and you will come when I think you’re ready, so don’t worry about that . . . I don’t get off on leaving you unsatisfied. I want the opposite.”

Shawn wanted to protest that his rules weren’t particularly fair, but she didn’t want him to withdraw his touch, nor did she want to waste time worrying about particulars when he was essentially promising to bring her to orgasm.