“Hey,” I tell her, moving my own hand to cup her cheek. “You didn’t do anything wrong last night.”
“I’m not a child. You don’t have to placate me.” She shrugs me off, starts to stand up. But I grab on to her hands, keep her in place.
“You’d been drinking, Tansy. I saw you with Luc, could taste the wine on you when I kissed you. I didn’t want to take advantage of that. I didn’t know how drunk you were and the last thing I wanted was for you to wake up this morning feeling like I took more than you wanted to give.”
“But you—” Her voice breaks and she clears her throat, starts again. “You went down on me.”
“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You’re gorgeous when you come.”
“Ash!”
She’s blushing yet again. This time, though, I don’t stop myself from leaning over and taking a little bite.
Tansy jumps at the feel of my teeth on the underside of her jaw, though I’m careful not to hurt. “It’s true,” I tell her after licking my tongue against the sensitive spot, taking away the sting. “If you’d been sober, I would have been more than happy to have you all over my dick, with whatever portion of your anatomy you wanted to put there.”
“Ash!” My name is a strangled sound in her throat, but that doesn’t matter, because I can see the look in her eyes. Can see the interest there, as well as the fact that the hurt is fading.
It’s enough for now, more than enough. I pick her up, settle her down on my lap, so that she’s straddling me, her knees on the bed and her pussy pressed right up against my suddenly very hard cock.
“Does that feel like I’m not interested to you?”
Her eyes go wide, but she shakes her head even as she rocks against me. I bite back a groan. Fist my hands in the bedcovers in an effort to keep from grabbing her hips and taking control of the whole situation. To keep from grinding her down against me until we both come with our fucking jeans still on. She might be inexperienced, but she’s a fast learner. I’ll give her that.
To distract myself—or maybe just to make the whole thing worse—I press hot kisses over her lips, her cheeks, her jaw, her neck.
She moans a little, her fingers clutching at my hair as I suck a bruise into the delicate skin at the hollow of her throat. I want to mark her up, to cover her in hickeys and love-bites so that Luc and every other guy at this fucking resort knows what she’s been doing—and who she’s been doing it with.
It’s a ridiculous thought considering the fact that I’m not in the market for anything permanent, but it’s a gut reaction. One I don’t even know how to fight.
When it gets to be too much, when the need to plunge inside her is a red haze in my brain, I force myself to lift my head. To try to slow things down a little. If Tansy thinks she needs to watch porn to learn how to give a hand or blow job, she doesn’t have much experience. Which means, if I don’t want to scare her, I probably shouldn’t come at her like a fucking sex addict.
“So,” I ask her, forcing the clawing need back down so I can think. “Did you learn anything from your, uh, research tonight?”
“Oh my God!” She pulls away, her face twisted in disgust as her voice goes higher and higher with each word. “I don’t know what kind of pervert my sister is, but the links she sent me were disgusting. I mean, I just wanted to see a guy and a girl and I pretty much got everything else. I mean, there were these guys and they used their fists. And then there was a Doberman. And then—”
I cut her off her panicked diatribe with a kiss. This time, I take my time, tracing her perfect bow-shaped lips with my tongue before slowly, gently, licking my way inside her mouth.
Fuck. She tastes as good as she did last night—all vanilla and brown sugar and sweet, sweet cream. I want to drown in her taste, in her scent, want to wrap it all around me and just wallow in it for a while.
Tansy moans a little, and I take advantage of her parted lips to tangle my tongue with hers. Her head falls back and I delve deeper, stroke the length of her tongue and along the inside of her cheek. I play with the sensitive skin behind her bottom teeth and the bumpy, slightly ticklish skin at the roof of her mouth. She gasps, laughs a little, but burrows even closer.
It’s all the invitation I need to kiss her harder, deeper. To tease and torment and tantalize her with memories of what I did to her last night. With promises to do the same, to do more, tonight.
We kiss for tens of minutes, for dozens of minutes, until she’s all that I can feel or smell or taste. Until everything that I am, everything I want, is tied up in her.
It feels good. So good, even with my hands shaking, and my cock is so hard that it hurts.
“Ash!” she gasps, ripping her mouth from mine. “Ash, please. I need—”
“I know, baby. I know.”
I roll us over then, so that she’s lying flat on the bed and I’m above her, resting on my forearms while my hips nestle between her legs.
Tansy’s eyes go wide even as her legs come up to tangle in mine, to wrap around my hips, and I can’t stop myself from moving against her just to see the way her crazy hazel eyes change from green to a desire-hazed brown.
“Oh, God,” she says as her body arches against mine. “I need—”
She breaks off again, just as she starts to tell me what she needs. Either she doesn’t know or she’s too embarrassed, and I find myself knocked a little off balance by either possibility. Or maybe it’s the suspicion that’s growing inside of me that throws me off, the one that tells me that no matter how unusual it feels for me to be this in tune with another person, that it’s even more unfamiliar to Tansy. Because—
“Tansy,” I say, lifting my head after what might very well be the most intense kiss of my life. Tansy’s lips are red, swollen, and for a second all I can think about is what it would feel like to have her deep-throat me. To shove my cock past those gorgeous, blow job lips of hers and blast straight down her throat.
There’s a wildness in the look in her eyes, in the hands clutching at my shoulders, that tells me she would let me. But there’s an innocence, too, a hesitance, that makes me wonder. That makes me ask what is probably a ridiculous question. “Tansy? Sweetheart?”
“Yes, Ash?” She sounds breathless, a little brazen and totally blissed out.
“I just need to know. You … I mean, have you done this before?”
She starts to turn her head, to look away from me, but I catch her chin between my thumb and index finger, force her to keep staring into my eyes. Which is why I see the embarrassment, the secret shame in the depths of her gaze that makes no sense to me at all.
At least not until she shakes her head and whispers, “No,” in a dark, husky voice that sends shivers running up my own spine.
“You’re a virgin?” I ask, incredulously, struck stupid by the very idea. I knew she was inexperienced, but there’s a difference between not having had much sex and not having had any sex at all. A girl who looks like her, who kisses like her … it’s a lot to wrap my head around.
“Is that a problem?” she demands, lifting her chin in a perfect impression of a haughty princess. I’m not sure why it makes me want her more.
“No.” I press kisses to her suddenly tense lips, over and over again until she relaxes. “Of course not. I just wanted to know.” Though there’s a part of me that thinks it is a problem. I’ve never been with a virgin before, not even when I was one.
“Yeah, well, now you know.”
Now I know. It doesn’t make me want Tansy less, doesn’t make me want her more, either. But it does make me determined to be very, very careful with her. To make tonight, and this thing between us, the very best for her that I possibly can.
Chapter 18
Tansy
God, could I look any more pathetic? Not only does Ash walk in on me watching porn, but now I tell him I’ve never slept with anyone? Ever? It’s amazing he’s not running for the door—or laughing his ass off.
Then again, he might be thinking
about doing just that. His kisses have suddenly become a lot softer, a lot more tentative, and I can’t help wondering if he’s pulling back because he doesn’t want me anymore now that he knows I’m not experienced.
I almost ask him, but I learned a long time ago not to ask questions if I don’t want the answers. That’s Survival 101 on the cancer ward at Primary Children’s. And while I know that keeping Ash with me is a far cry from life and death, that doesn’t mean I want to hear him tell me that he doesn’t want me again.
Not now, when his hand is sliding down my spine.
Not now, when his tongue is licking at my lips.
And definitely not now, when I have Ash exactly where I want him. Where I’ve wanted him since the moment I first met him.
But still, I’m nervous, the images from those videos seared into my brain while all my insecurities, all my fears, all my deficiencies run crazy through my brain.
I’m not what Ash is used to, at all. He’s used to sophisticated snowbunnies, to women who know the score. To beautiful bombshells with beautiful, flawless bodies and I’m—I’m just not like that.
Years of cancer treatments have had their effect on my body. I’m too small, too skinny, too scarred for anyone to call me beautiful. And though I want Ash—so much—there’s a part of me that’s terrified of what he’ll say when he sees the real me. The Tansy beyond the clothes and the wild hair and the easy smiles.
“Hey, you okay?” Ash murmurs against my lips, and I realize I’ve stiffened in his arms.
Afraid he’ll think I want him to stop, I wrap my arms tightly around his neck and pull his mouth down to mine. “I’m good,” I tell him in between kisses. “Great, actually.”
I want this. I really, really want this and I need him to know that. Partly because I want to lose my virginity, because I want to see if all those books I’ve read got it right in a way the porn movies I just saw didn’t. And partly, mostly, because I want to do this with Ash. With smart, sweet, sexy Ash.
Oh, he talks a good game, hides his true colors behind a lot of bullshit. But I see how he is with his brother, how he is with Timmy. I know how he’s been with me. Even when he’s annoying me, or bossing me around or making decisions for me, he’s still protective, still kind. When I think of all the guys out there I could pick to be my first, I can’t imagine any of them taking better care of me than Ash Lewis.
Which isn’t to say I’m not nervous, because I am. I really, really am.
Ash maneuvers us closer to the edge of the bed and I reach my hand out, turn off the lamp next to the bed.
“Hey!” he says, pulling back. “What’d you do that for? I want to see you.”
I want to see him, too. I really, really do. I want to study every inch of his beautiful, beautiful body. But I know if I leave the light on, I’ll be too worried, too self-conscious, to do anything but wonder what he’s thinking about my body.
“I just—I wanted—” Jesus. I can barely talk.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, even as he pulls out of my arms.
“Where are you going?” I stand up and try to follow him with my eyes, but it’s too dark. I can barely see my own hand in front of my face.
“I’ll be right back.” The bathroom light turns on, giving the room some illumination, and I watch as Ash crosses to the front door. He flips the light there on, too, then makes his way back to where I’m standing in the shadows.
“A compromise,” he says with a grin.
I smile a little shyly, even as I nod my agreement. Then I hold my breath as Ash lowers me slowly, gently, onto the bed.
I reach for him, try to pull him down with me, but he just grins at me before pulling his shirt over his head.
I gasp, literally gasp, at my first sight of him. Which is ridiculous and juvenile and I honestly can’t give a fuck right now because, ohmyGod, he is so, so beautiful. Even in the semidark, I can see his long, lean torso. His flat stomach. The impossibly sexy ridges of his six-pack.
Licking the sudden dryness from my lips, I reach out to touch—because I finally can—and nearly whimper at the feel of his hot, silky skin beneath my touch. “Can I—” My voice breaks a little as need, sharp and sweet and a little desperate, careens through me.
“Yes,” he answers instantly.
My eyes shoot to his heavy-lidded ones. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”
He laughs. “Doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want to me.”
It’s too much, and not enough, and suddenly I shudder, my whole body responding to the careless, crazy beauty that is this man.
I grab on to him then, my fingers digging absently into his hips as I bring my mouth to his stomach. I kiss my way across the flat plane of his abs, pausing to lick around his belly button, before trailing my tongue down the line of muscles that runs directly from his sternum to the light happy trail that disappears into the waist of his jeans.
Ash groans, his head falling back even as his fingers tangle in my hair. I smile against his skin, relishing his response—and the knowledge that I’m the one pulling it from him. High on the power, and the joy of it, I skim my mouth from his belly to the sharp jut of his hip as my tongue licks each and every inch of skin.
“Tansy, baby,” Ash says, his voice low and gravelly and urgent. “You should probably—”
“What?” I ask, my response muffled against his skin because I absolutely refuse to raise my lips from my prize. Because now that I’m paying attention to his hip and ribs, I see them. A string of beautifully wrought kanji tattoos skimming up his side from his hip to right below his armpit.
There are five of the stark, black symbols and I want to explore them all. My fingers tighten on his hips, turning him just enough that I can reach. And then I’m pressing hot kisses over his ink, my tongue licking over each and every delicate line, until Ash’s hands tighten in my hair. Until sweat runs down his body. Until he groans and tries to pull my mouth up to his.
But I’m not done yet, not even close. It seems like I’ve waited my whole life for this moment—have certainly waited for it since the second I first laid eyes on him—and I’m not ready to move on. Not yet. Not until I’ve explored my fill of him.
Tightening my grip on his waist, I tug sharply, pulling him down to the bed and over me. Then I roll until I’m stretched on top of him, my mouth skimming across the endless expanse of his glorious, gorgeous chest.
“What do these mean?” I ask, because I’m back at his tattoos. They’re so beautiful, so hot, that I can’t stay away. I want to kiss and tongue and play with them—and him—forever.
“What?” Ash asks, and he sounds like he’s drowning, all dark and rough and breathless.
“Your tattoos. What do they mean?” I nip at his side a little, at the slick ink of the third—and in my opinion, prettiest—of the symbols.
His breath catches in his throat, and then he’s tracing his hand over his side until he meets my mouth. For long seconds, his fingers tangle with my tongue and I lick at this new part of him, teasing him with slow, luxurious swipes of my tongue that run the length of his palm and fingers.
He chokes a little, his breath shuddering out of his body on a harsh and broken sound. “Snow,” he grinds out after a second, his hand moving jerkily from tattoo to tattoo. “Flight. Freedom. Strength. Mountain.”
I pause for a second, my lips resting softly against his skin. The meanings slay me, as wrapped up in snowboarding as they are. The sport means so much to him that he literally tattooed it into his skin, into his soul, and yet he’s willing to give it up for Logan. Because he loves him and wants to do what’s best for him.
It’s an overwhelming thought, a secret glimpse into the beauty of Ash’s soul, and I cherish it. Pull it deep inside myself and just hold it to me.
Except Ash is impatient, his body moving restlessly under mine, and though I don’t have any experience with this, instinct tells me that I’m running out of time. That I don’t have long before Ash seizes co
ntrol and I lose my chance to explore him.
Shifting slightly, I kiss my way back up the flat plane of his stomach to his heavily muscled pecs. I find a nipple, and for long seconds, I play with it with my tongue, relishing the sounds that Ash makes and the way he moves restlessly beneath me. Then, because I’m desperate for him, desperate to make him as hot and crazy and needy as I am, I nibble a little, just to see what he tastes like—and what he’ll do.
“Fuck,” he breathes, hands once again tightening on me. And then he’s pulling me up and over him, until I’m straddling his hips and the hard bulge of his cock is pressing against the apex of my thighs.
He yanks my shirt off with urgent hands, fumbles with my bra. And then I’m naked from the waist up. Naked and trembling and exposed.
Being nude in front of people is nothing new to me. When you have cancer, when you’re ill like that, your body becomes something that isn’t really your own. There are so many procedures, so many people touching and jabbing, poking and prodding—so many people looking at you like you’re nothing but another lab specimen—that you get used to the indifference. Used to the violation.
Being with Ash is nothing like that. His eyes are wide and dark and needy—so needy—as they skim over me that I have a hard time reconciling myself as the object of all that desire. But then his hands are there, his long, beautiful, calloused fingers smoothing over my ribs, my stomach, my breasts with a reverence I can’t miss.
“Tansy,” he breathes, as his hands come up to cup my small breasts. “You’re so beautiful.”
I know it’s not true, know that I have scars small and large that mar my skin in too many places. Know that I’m too skinny and too small and that my bones press against my skin in too many spots.
But as Ash looks at me, as his hands and eyes smooth over my skin, touching everywhere—learning everything there is to know about my body—I lose sight of everything that’s wrong with me and just revel in the joy and the heat that come from being this close to him.
And then it’s his turn to press kisses against my skin, his turn to learn me with his lips and tongue and teeth. I’m panting before he even gets to my breasts, sweat slipping slowly down my spine as he explores every inch of my exposed skin.