She tasted like honey mixed with the spiciness of cinnamon, and he couldn’t get enough of the taste. Couldn’t get enough of her.
Especially when she made those little noises deep in her throat, noises that were half moan, half desperate plea. They went straight to his cock—straight to his head—and he knew getting her off wasn’t going to be enough this time. He had to have more of her. Had to have all of her.
Keeping one hand on her ass, he slid his other hand up her back to the nape of her neck and tangled his fingers in her hair, then gently twisted until the pins holding it up started to loosen. It didn’t take long—there was so much of the stuff, and it was so heavy and full of body that it only took a few tugs before her hair was slipping its restraints and tumbling down over his fingers and her shoulders like a waterfall of rich brown silk.
He pulled away then, just a little, so that he could get a good look at her. She was breathtaking, her lips swollen with his kisses, her skin flushed, her eyes glazed. And her hair was a tangled, tousled mess falling in waves nearly to her ass. Her very round, very inviting ass.
“You’re so beautiful,” he told her, sliding his hands inside her jeans. He wanted to feel that ass under his hands, with no fabric to get in the way. Wanted to slip her jeans and panties off so that he could see her in the light of day. And then he wanted to bury his face right between her thighs and fuck his tongue deep inside of her. At that moment, he wanted it more than he wanted heroin—more, even, than he wanted things to work out with the label. The need to taste her was a razor scraping away at his insides, the need to watch and listen to her fall apart even more so.
But her hand was on his as he started to pull on her panties, her fingers tangling around his and stilling them even as her body arched toward him.
“We shouldn’t,” she told him, her lips moving against his.
“We should,” he countered, skimming his mouth down the slender column of her throat and over the top of her chest to press hot, open-mouthed kisses against the nipples he could feel pebbling beneath the thin fabric of her tank top. “I’ll make you feel so good.”
She moaned as his lips closed around one nipple and he started to suck. “We need to talk about the band,” she finally managed to choke out. But her hands were tangling in his hair to hold him in place as she arched her back and thrust her nipple more firmly into his mouth.
“We will.” He bit down gently on her nipple, relishing the soft, broken sound she made. “Later.”
“This is your career. You need—” Her protests were broken and her body hot as it arched against him. That, combined with her hands—which were clutching at him like a lifeline—was all it took to convince him she wanted him as badly as he did her.
“I need you,” he said, pressing his advantage as he dropped to his knees in front of her. “Please, Poppy. I need…” He broke off, clamping his jaw shut on the words that were swimming around in his head, just waiting to tumble out. He couldn’t say them, not now. Not ever. Not when what he’d already said had made him more vulnerable than he’d allowed himself to be in months. Years.
Fuck, maybe even forever.
As the thought washed over him, he closed his eyes, tilted his face down so Poppy couldn’t see. She wasn’t having it, though, her hands tangling in his hair and tugging at the stuff, hard, until he had no choice but to once again look up at her.
As their gazes met, locked, he tried to cover up all the shit he was feeling, tried to keep his face blank and his eyes veiled. But he could tell it wasn’t working, could tell she could see right through him, and for a moment, just a moment, he wished for a hit. For a drink. For something, anything, to keep him from feeling all the emotions currently battering around inside of him.
The shrinks at rehab had warned him about that, had told him if he kept using avoidance as a coping mechanism he was going to find himself right back where he’d started. But they didn’t get it. He didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to face everything that had happened all those years ago. If he did, he was afraid he’d unravel so completely that he’d never be sober again.
He waited for Poppy to turn him away, told himself the last thing he needed to be doing was using her to hide from his other, darker cravings. It wasn’t fair to her, or himself.
Besides, hadn’t he learned his lesson yet? Trust him to kick heroin only to turn around and get hooked on a whole different kind of poppy. He really was a fucking moron.
He started to apologize, to tell her to forget the whole thing. But then she was stroking a hand over his cheek, her thumb rubbing back and forth across his mouth, each swipe a little harder. A little more insistent. A little hotter. Even as he called himself every name he could think of, he parted his lips and nipped at the fleshy part of her thumb before sucking it inside of his mouth.
She gasped, shivered, but she never looked away from him. Never took her eyes off of his.
Watching her pupils dilate with arousal, watching those golden brown eyes of hers turn almost completely black, was the last fucking straw. It broke his control, broke him wide open, until all he could think about was tasting her, having her. Fucking her.
And then he was pulling her pants down, ripping her panties off and tossing them to the ground by her feet as he buried his face in her sex and just breathed her in for several long, perfect seconds.
She cried out then, a loud, desperate sound that made him want nothing more than to hear it again. And again. And again. That made him want nothing more than to spend the rest of the afternoon getting her off any and every way she would let him. Starting with her pussy against his mouth.
He darted his tongue out, swiped it back and forth across her clit until her breath broke and her knees trembled. They fucking trembled, and she fell into him, her hands clutching at his shoulder, her nails digging into his upper back.
He grabbed on to her, tried to hold her close, to steady her. But her hands were back in his hair and she was tugging at him, urging him to his feet even as he licked his way along her slit.
“My turn,” she told him, her voice husky but determined.
“I know,” he answered, pressing the words into the soft skin of her jaw as he licked his way toward her mouth. “I’ll take care of you.” He started to undo the delicate buttons of her blouse.
“No.” Her fingers were fumbling with his belt. “It’s my turn to take care of you.”
And then his jeans were open and she was on her knees in front of him.
It was so unexpected that for long seconds, he didn’t say anything. He just stared down at her, completely wrapped up in how goddamn beautiful she was with her flushed skin, her sparkling eyes, her kiss-swollen lips.
In that moment, he wanted her mouth on him more than he’d ever wanted anything—even smack. And still he cupped her cheek in his hand. Still he said, voice hoarse and more than a little strained, “You don’t have to.”
She grinned up at him then, and slid her tongue along the perfect bow of her upper lip. “Oh, I have to all right,” she told him, leaning forward to press a kiss against the tip of his very hard, very aroused dick. “I really, really do.”
And then she was pulling him inside her mouth, her tongue running along the underside of his cock. This time, his knees were the ones that shook.
Chapter Ten
She shouldn’t be doing this. She absolutely shouldn’t be doing this.
Every argument Poppy had given herself in the last three days—and especially the last thirty minutes, since Wyatt quit the band—went round and round in her head as she slid her hands around to cup Wyatt’s ass so that she could take him deeper.
She ignored them all—every argument, every worry, every consequence she knew would come from this—and concentrated instead on giving him as much pleasure as he’d given her. On making him feel as good as he made her feel.
Doing this was stupid; she knew it with every fiber of her being. Bad for her job, bad for her future, and—she was beginning to be more
than a little afraid—bad for her heart. But how could she not give him this after seeing the vulnerability in his eyes?
How could she not take him inside of herself when that one glimpse had let her see just how lost he felt? How desperately he wanted, needed, to connect with someone?
She would be that someone.
Not because of her job, not because of her ambitions or the label or any of the reasons why she’d come here. But because of Wyatt. Because of the way he touched her, the way he held her, the way—three times now—he was so determined to give her pleasure when the other guys she’d known had always only been out for themselves.
She wanted to make him feel good so badly, to get him outside of his head for a little while and show him that he was worth it. That after the hell he’d been through he deserved all the pleasure he could take. All the pleasure she could give him.
And so she sucked him deeper still, and as she did, she scratched her nails over the flat¸ muscled plane of his abdomen. Down his perfectly defined V-cut. Along the light happy trail that led from his navel to his groin. He was beautiful, so fucking beautiful, his skin pale, his hair soft and silky, his muscles long and lean.
For a moment, just a moment, she thought about how he’d gotten this lean, this toned, this hard. Thought of the drugs and the horrors of withdrawal and the hours he must have spent exercising just to keep from going out of his mind. It didn’t turn her off, didn’t make her feel sorry for him, though it did make her feel for him. As did the still fading track marks she could see ghosting along the veins that ran on the outside of his hips.
She wanted to touch them, to lick her way along them in an effort to soothe away all the hurt and ugliness they represented. But something deep inside warned her it would ruin everything if she did, and so she settled on letting him slip out of her mouth so she could press hot, open-mouthed kisses on first one hip and then the other. And if her heart broke just a little at all the pain he had suffered, well then, nobody had to know that but her.
Wyatt groaned, his hands fisting in her hair as she pushed his T-shirt up and out of the way so that she could see, touch, taste more of him.
She skimmed her way across his stomach, kissing every inch of exposed skin she could get her lips on. But then the shirt fell down, covering him up again, and she made a sound of frustration deep in her throat. She hadn’t been able to see him in that alley the other night. She wasn’t about to let that happen here.
He must have recognized the source of her frustration—or maybe he just wanted the shirt gone as much as she did. Either way, it took only a second for Wyatt to rip the offending garment over his head and drop it on the ground next to her torn panties. As he did, the muscles of his chest and stomach flexed and bunched, and it was all she could do to keep her tongue in her mouth.
Because, dear God, the man was sporting the first ten pack she had ever seen up close and personal. Hell, it was the only ten pack she’d ever seen, period. She knew drummers were ripped, knew they used their core more than pretty much any other musicians out there, but still. Wyatt had been toned when he’d gone to rehab. Now…now he looked like a god.
The marketing expert in her couldn’t wait to see what Tumblr had to say about this new development, while the rest of her just wanted to get her hands—and mouth—on him.
So she did, petting his chest and stomach even as she licked her way up the center of his torso as far as she could reach while on her knees. He groaned a little, his hand cupping the back of her head to hold her to him as she kissed and licked and sucked her way back down his stomach and abdomen to his cock. She paused right below his navel, sucked a small, round bruise into the skin to the left of his happy trail. Then she licked her way over and around it a few times, relishing the way his muscles jumped and flexed under her tongue.
He smelled so good, tasted so good—like lemon and sandalwood and dark, hot sex. She wanted to roll around in his scent, to pull it over her like a blanket. To wrap it, and him, around herself for long, lust-filled nights.
But they didn’t have nights, didn’t have anything but this one, sun-drenched afternoon, and she was determined to take advantage of it—and the freedom she had to touch him, to taste him, to take him. To let him take her.
And so she kissed and licked and sucked her way back down his abdomen as a late summer breeze whistled through the trees above them. When she got to his cock, she paused, her mouth hovering inches above his tip. He was big, long, and thick, and heavily aroused, and she was pretty sure if she pressed his dick against his abdomen the head would stretch past his belly button.
He was an arousing sight, no doubt about that, but she wasn’t sure she could take all of him—in her mouth or her body. So instead of swallowing him down as she longed to do, she chose instead to kiss just the very tip before pulling the head into her mouth and licking around and around it, her tongue flat and firm against the sensitive crown.
He shivered, his back arching a little in a desperate bid for more. He looked hot, so hot, his eyes hyper focused and electric blue as he put a little pressure on her head in an attempt to urge her closer. To get her to take more of him—and to give him more of herself in return.
Because she couldn’t resist the way he asked—any more than she could resist the way he looked at her—she gave in, widening her circles until she was licking halfway down his shaft. As she did, she made sure to pay attention to the sensitive area at the bottom of the tip, spiking her tongue and flicking against the spot.
“Fuck, Poppy.” Wyatt’s fingers tightened in her hair, holding her in place as he thrust his hips forward, forced his cock deeper into her mouth. “Baby, please…it’s been so long… I need…I need—” His voice, already low and gravelly and so, so sexy, broke on a groan as he pulled her into him at the same time he slammed his hips forward.
The movement caught her by surprise, but he felt so good and she was so turned on that it only made her hotter. Stretching her jaw wide, she took him deep. Took him all the way to the back of her throat and still that wasn’t enough. Still there was more of him.
She’d never done this before, never opened herself up to a guy like this. Never let him use her mouth—use her—the way she was letting Wyatt. But then she hadn’t understood how powerful her surrender made her, hadn’t understood that in yielding to him she got at least as much as she gave. Maybe more.
Because even as tears sprang to her eyes, even as she struggled to breathe, she realized this summer afternoon fuck wasn’t just about him. About what he needed. It was about her too. Because the more he took, the more she wanted to give him.
Considering the job she was here to do, it was a terrifying thought. Terrifying, and so, so arousing.
Her nipples peaked.
Her breath came faster and faster.
Her sex throbbed.
“Fuck, baby,” Wyatt groaned, his hands tugging her back this time instead of pulling her forward. “That’s so good. That’s so—”
She moaned and the vibrations had him breaking off, had his hips thrusting forward fast and hard. Suddenly she was taking all of him, his cock in her throat. Her nose buried against his skin.
It was a lot—he was a lot. Almost too much, really. But she wanted this for him, wanted it for herself, so she concentrated on breathing through her nose. On relaxing her jaw. On tamping down her instinctive need to panic at the dominance of his position.
On one hand, it wasn’t easy—she was a control freak who liked to be in charge of everything—and her heart was beating fast, her skin prickling with awareness, her body half-frightened, half-enthralled by the sensation of yielding control to him. But on the other hand, it was the easiest thing she’d ever done. Giving herself over to Wyatt, taking what he gave her in return. It had been a long time since anything had felt this right.
Because the knowledge scared her—she had to remember how wrong this was on so many levels—she shoved it away, ignored it. Concentrated instead on giving him as much pleasu
re as she possibly could.
Lifting her hands to his hips, she tugged his jeans down a little more. She wanted to touch the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, to hold his balls in her hands, to scratch her nails down his ass, his hips, the back of his thighs.
She wanted to experiment, to figure out what turned him on and what brought him the same kind of immeasurable pleasure he’d given her the night before.
With that goal in mind, she slipped a hand between his thighs, brushed her fingers over his testicles and then moved back, behind them, to rub softly at his taint. Wyatt stiffened, his fists going lax, and she pulled off of him slowly. She spent a minute sucking at just the tip of his cock, her tongue sliding over and around the slit as his breathing grew labored. Then she turned her head and rested her cheek against his hip as she pressed soft, sweet kisses to his abdomen. His navel. His V-line.
Wyatt relaxed slowly under her ministrations, his legs opening just a little bit wider in order to give her better access. As he did, his cock brushed against her cheek and she rewarded his gradual surrender by licking her way from tip to base and then back again.
Her name shattered on his lips, the pieces of it hanging in the air around them like stars as she began a slow, steady stroking of his taint that had sweat rolling down his abdomen and broken curses falling from his lips.
It was a really good sound, nearly musical in its depth and intensity, and it had heat shimmering through her all over again, had her sex clenching emptily.
“Poppy, sweetheart, please—”
The way he called her name, all needy and desperate, did it for her like few things ever had. As a reward—and because, suddenly, she felt as anxious as he obviously was—she swallowed him down, sucking so hard that her cheeks hollowed out and her throat ached.
Again and again she took him, relishing the broken sounds he made with each pull of her mouth. Relishing the urgent grip of his hands in her hair and the desperate way his hips moved against her. He’d lost his rhythm now, lost the smooth, sexual confidence that had been such a part of him last night. Now he was all about sensation, all about pleasure, all about the drive for release.