“Lydia,” Case said, his voice hitching around the word. “God, Lydia.”
“You said you were interested.”
“I’m unbelievably interested.”
She laughed, that flicker of momentary embarrassment morphing into a kind of breathless giggling instead. “More interested than in my underwear?”
“So interested that I’m not sure you should ever wear underwear ever again.”
“I’m never going to leave this bed,” she informed him, “so that won’t be a problem.”
It was a fantasy, obviously. She was responsible to Ruth and the rest of the pack, and all those obligations would weigh her down the second she stepped out of this little bubble of happiness they’d found together. But with Case looking down at her with a smile hot enough to make her melt, she could forget about all that. Fuck it. They could grow old together in this lodge, in this bed, and never get tired of each other, as far as she was concerned.
“That sounds like a plan,” Case said, and Lydia realized that she’d said that last part out loud.
He lowered himself between her legs and pressed a gentle, close-mouthed kiss against her hot, tingling skin. She was so flushed with arousal that at first his mouth felt almost cool, but then he licked a long stripe along her pussy and it was almost more heat than she could stand. But only in the best possible way. She felt like she had to hang on to the sheets for dear life.
It wasn’t the first time a guy had gone down on her, but it didn’t happen a lot. For some reason, this had always felt especially intimate to her, and she hadn’t always liked the idea of sharing it with a stranger.
But with Case ....
With Case, it wasright. Even if the calendar would tell her they hadn’t known each other for very long, he felt like the opposite of a stranger. He felt like he should have been in her life the whole time.
This was right. And when he lightly closed his lips around her clit and sucked at it, it was evenbetterthan right.
Lydia came so suddenly and sharply that it felt like her climax had snatched her off the ground and thrown her into theair. Maybe she’d instinctively known that it would be like that with him, and that was why she’d had to grab the sheets so tightly.
Her body jackknifed, and for a second, she was afraid she would break his nose. But Case moved with her, the pressure and wet heat of his mouth a glorious, throbbing constant, drawing her orgasm out and out and out.
She realized she was breathlessly chanting, “Case, Case, Case,” which wasn’t exactly helpful, but she couldn’t seem to make herself stop.
When it was finally over—roughly a hundred years later, according to her sex-drunk internal clock—Lydia felt like she might dissolve into the marshmallow-soft bed.
But she couldn’t be satisfied with that. She was relaxed, but she wasn’tdone. She needed him as much as ever, for reasons that went way beyond any desire for an orgasm.
“Come up,” she said, her voice hitching into a kind of plea. “Make love to me.”
She had never said that in her life. Never eventhoughtabout saying it. If she had, she would have ruled it out as too sentimental: it wouldn’t have fit in with the one-night stands that had, until now, been all she could afford to have.
With Case, it didn’t sound corny. She meant it. And from the look on his face, he wanted it as much as she did.
Maybe evenmore, considering how quickly he scrambled for a condom. He eased into her slowly, and the glide of his body into hers—thestretchof his cock opening her up—was incredible. She was grabbing the sheets again before she even realized it.
She heard herself calling his name again, too, but then she broke off. He was touching her cheek, looking down at her with those gray-green eyes that seemed like they had bottomlessdepths. But she could see through them, all the way to his soul. That was another thing she’d never let herself think before.
You get so unoriginal when you’re falling in love,she thought.You find out that all the cheesy stuff is actually true.
“You’re gorgeous,” Case said. There was an aching throb to the words, like it wasn’t quite what he wanted to say. “God, Lydia.”
She pressed her face into his hand and then turned her head to kiss his palm.
“You’re gorgeous too,” she said.
The words were muffled against his skin, but she felt like he heard her anyway. He moved faster, and so did she, the two of them making love almost frantically now. The loose-limbed sleepiness that had taken over after her first orgasm was all but forgotten now that she was on the edge of her second, chasing it with every pump of her hips and every curl of his fingers into his back. She felt like she could do this forever. God, she loved it.
She lovedhim.
16
