I throw my head back against the beam I’m still leaning against as tendrils of fire roar through me. Cliff does incredible things to my breast while I keep trying to shimmy my jeans down my legs. They’re just below my knees now, and I sense the impending victory, so I keep working at it. Thankfully, he doesn’t stop doing dirty, delicious, god-like things to my breasts with his tongue while he pushes his jeans down and steps out of them at around the same time I finally free myself from mine.
When we press together again, I’m amazed the spark shower we set off—like the combustion of fire and gasoline—doesn’t light the whole barn on fire.
Cliff raises his head and suckles my neck gently. We’re both naked now except for my panties and his boxers. He presses up against me, warming me, and I can feel the huge, hard bulge contained in his boxers. When I say huge, I mean, it feels really, really big. With a capital B.
I cling to him, one hand tangled in his hair, the other already digging my fingers into his perfect, broad shoulders.
“Are you cold?” he rasps against my neck. “There are other places—better places for this than here.”
If there are, I can’t think of any, but then again, my mind has pretty much gone completely and totally blank. I feel like Cliff is a magician. He’s sure as hell creating magic with my body.
“No,” I whimper right near his temple. “No, I’m not cold. If I am, I can’t feel it, and even if I could, I wouldn’t be worried about it.”
“You don’t think this place is too gross? Uncomfortable? Is this too much?”
In my current state of need, I’m pretty sure it’s not enough, but I’m not going to come out and say it. “It would be awesome if there was hay up in the hayloft still. Unrotten, fresh hay.”
“It would be itchy.”
“It would still be cool in the clichéd kind of romantic sort of way.”
“We could always save this for the backseat of my car. Or I could take you back to my place, and we could—”
“No. I like it here. It’s nice. It kind of reminds me of camping, actually, since I can see the stars through the cracks in the roof, and we also have a fire going.”
Cliff sucks at my neck again, biting down gently, and I see stars inside the barn. “I have a condom in my pocket.”
“Oh,” I snort. “That’s kind of convenient, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t come with any expectations.” Cliff raises his head, his face and tone of voice totally serious. “Really. I was not planning on this. I did think ahead to how frustrating it would be not to have it, though, so I threw it in there as an afterthought.”
“Was it a good afterthought?” I involuntarily swivel my hips into his erection, trying to ease the ache building between my thighs at the thought of him slipping out of his boxers, slipping on the condom, and slipping into other, choice places instead.
“The best,” he whispers huskily before he slides down to his knees.
His fingers work my panties off, pulling them gently down my legs before his hands curl around my hips. He drags me to him, and when his tongue hits me, I know for sure that I was right. He really is a magician.
CHAPTER 13
Cliff
I don’t think rational thoughts when I taste Rowan there. I should be thinking about how amazing she tastes. Believe me, I am. Because she does taste incredible. My head is spinning as I worship her, and while she whimpers and grinds her fingers through my hair into my skull and bucks her hips into my mouth so I can taste her better, my thoughts keep attacking me.
This. This is the first instant—the first second. But no, if I’m honest, I think it happened a while ago. Sometime between the first time I ever saw Rowan and the fake date where she was telling me off. Or maybe it was the ice cream after that. Well, I have no idea when it happened, but I know this is just the beginning of the descent. The falling. The spiral downward into losing parts of myself. Like my heart. I wasn’t really loved the first time, and as a result, I was scared to try the whole love or other sentiments far tamer, but I was also scared of ever being loved again.
And now, suddenly, I’m on my knees without really even understanding why or how I got to this point. I mean, I do know how it happened—the logical steps. I just can’t comprehend what’s going on in my chest. It’s squeezing and clenching and being a general nuisance. I don’t just want to worship Rowan’s body. I want to worship all of her. All the parts she can’t see. All the parts that have been hurt before. I know I can’t just erase it away. The pain is there. It is real, just like mine. We both had shitty hands, and we were both taking a break from this. But no, I never would have taken a break from this or anything close to this if I had known what this was. This is nothing like I’ve known before. This is everything. I want to make
