Turn and Burn

  He kissed her, pulling her shoulders from the door and walking her backward until the creases of her knees hit the mattress.

  “Crawl up on the bed and stretch out.”

  Tanna tried to tune out the warning voices in her head as she scooted into the middle of the mattress. She stared at the ceiling and then Fletch was on all fours above her, wearing that wicked, wicked grin. The man moved as fast and quietly as a predator on the hunt. And his very posture screamed that he intended to conquer her.

  “Think sexy thoughts, sugar twang. Try and stay still. And close them pretty eyes.” As soon as she did, the bed jiggled.

  She braced herself for the warm swipe of his tongue or a soft suck. Maybe his callused fingertips would dance across her body. Thinking about all the possible sexy scenarios had the desired effect. Her mind and body were primed.

  So where had he gone?

  She heard him breathing in slow measured breaths. Then she recognized the scratch of a dresser drawer being closed.

  “Do you know how fucking beautiful you look lying there waiting for me?” The location of his voice indicated he’d moved to the other side of the bed. Then she heard plop, plop, plop as pillows hit the floor.

  He jostled the mattress. First he tapped the inside of her calf, as a signal to open her legs wider. Then he placed feathery light kisses on the inside of her ankle and her anklebone as his fingers stroked the skin above and below where his mouth worked. “Now we’re getting to the part where you need to stay still, okay?”

  “Ah. Yeah. Sure. Piece of cake—omigod, what are you doin’?”

  Fletch performed the same teasing and caressing on her left ankle and she felt him hanging above her, his knees pushing against her thighs. His breath teased her lips. “Only thing you need to think about is my mouth on yours.” He brushed soft kisses across her parted lips. His hand circled her bicep and moved up the length of her right arm. He threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed before releasing her hand. Something soft circled her wrist.

  Before she thought to ask what it was, he cranked up the intensity of the kiss. Those wonderfully rough fingers stroked her left arm as his mouth controlled hers.

  She wanted him naked, feeling that skin-on-skin connection. She reached up . . . or she tried to but she could lift her arms only a few inches. She broke the kiss and wiggled more vigorously but nothing happened. “Fletch?”

  “Thought I told you to stay still,” he murmured and planted kisses down the side of her neck.

  “Why can’t I move?”

  “Because I tied you down.” He nonchalantly circled her nipple with his tongue, keeping his eyes on hers.

  “What!” Tanna attempted to lift her legs but they were immobilized too. “How . . . Why would you do that?”

  “Because you said you trusted me.” He suckled hard on the rigid point and her skin broke out in a mass of goose bumps. “Because I don’t want your hands or your knees shoving me out of the way when I’m tasting my fill of you.” He chuckled. “But first, test those knots.”

  Tanna saw that he’d trussed her arms up with a pair of nylon knee-highs. “Sweet Lord. Did you get these out of my dresser?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you tied me to the headboard?”

  “Yep. I warned you that hobbling is an effective technique. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  She watched his dark head moving across her chest.

  “I love this spot right here.” His cheek followed the inside curve of her right breast. “The skin is so soft and pale.” His mouth meandered across her ribs and she gasped. “Ticklish here too, I see.”

  “Fletch.”

  “Tanna.”

  She liked the different ways he said her name. Sometimes drawn out. Sometimes a short syllable. But she really, really liked when he growled it against her skin.

  He inched down her body, a kiss at a time until he had to stretch out between her thighs.

  She tried to squirm away, but between the ties and Fletch’s iron grip, she had little movement.

  And that amused him mightily. “Might as well relax and enjoy this because I’m gonna be here for a while.”

  At the first wet swipe of his tongue, she moaned. As Fletch pressed sucking kisses down the seam of her sex, she stopped trying to get away. She stopped thinking about being ticklish. Her body seemed to melt farther into the mattress with each soft suck. Her mind fogged at the delicate lapping. He brought her focus back to him with a sudden scrape of his teeth.

  Her pulse pounded in her throat. The ties binding her wrists weren’t overly tight, but she felt her pulse jumping there too.

  When that little tingle started at the base of her spine, she canted her hips and said, “So close.”

  Then Fletch made that sexy rumble against her sex, and his need to give her this pleasure freed her. She came in a gasping rush of fast contractions. His hungry mouth absorbed every one.

  Her hearing went a little wonky, like she’d left a loud concert. She forced air into her lungs because she’d stopped breathing. As soon as her eyes focused, she lifted up and looked down her body.

  The depraved man sucked her pussy lips and released them with a loud pop. He waggled his eyebrows. “Better when you can’t wiggle, huh?”

  “Cocky much?”

  “Only when it’s justified.”

  “Are you gonna tie me up every time so I can’t touch you while you’re blowing my . . . mind?”

  “Maybe. That mean you want me to untie you?”

  “Yes.” She added, “Please.”

  “Too bad.” He grinned and kissed the inside of her thigh. “Because you’re gonna go again.”

  “I can’t. It’s too much.”

  “It’s never too much. And I warned you I planned to get my fill of you.”

  “Fletch—” She ended on a short gasp as he blew a raspberry right on her clit. Odd as that was, it kind of felt like a vibrator.

  “Shut up, Tanna, and enjoy this. I sure as hell am.” He flattened his tongue and lapped at her pussy with long, slow licks. “Do you have any idea how many times I jacked off thinking about the night I spent in bed with you?” More thorough licks as the tip of his tongue rimmed the opening to her pussy. “I should check to see if the motel billed me for the lamp you broke.”

  “It wasn’t my fault . . . oh, God, do that again.” Fletch did some tonguing thing over her clit that made her insides and her outsides quiver.

  “Completely your fault. I had one hand pulling your hair and one between your thighs, so it wasn’t my flailing arms that knocked it over.”

  “Because you had me bent over the dresser! And you kept doin’ that twisty thing with your hips, which made me come so hard I couldn’t see. So it’s your fault I needed something to hold on to so I didn’t float into sexual unconsciousness.”

  He chuckled. “The sound of that lamp crashing to the floor as you started to come was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard.” He stopped nuzzling and teasing to look up at her. “Enough talking.”

  Her body erupted in gooseflesh at his very intense, very male look.

  Fletch dove back in, his mouth busy on her pussy.

  When she squirmed at the continual attention, he pressed down on her lower abdomen and pushed a finger inside her. Feeling how wet she’d become again, he added another.

  His fingers tunneled in and out of her as his tongue fluttered on her clit. Not constantly, but fleetingly, teasingly. Making her want the unbroken contact.

  He blew a stream of air across the sensitized tissues and then licked up one side of her slit and down the other. Stopping between to suckle her pussy lips.

  As her mind was chanting so so so close, the orgasm rocketed through her. Not as powerful as the first, but longer.

  Then his breath in her ear was as hot as his words. “Need it fast.” He untied her right wrist, then her left.

  Her hands were immediately on his head, her fingers diving into his hair as she tugged his mouth to hers
for a deep kiss. Tasting herself on his lips and tongue had never been sexier. Never made her hotter.

  Fletch must’ve untied her legs because she could wrap them around his waist and press her body completely against his as he impaled her. His hips were bucking so hard the headboard slammed into the paneling with every thrust.

  This man had so much passion. He showed every bit as he made love to her—in every way he’d shown her it could be the hottest sex of her life, if she’d just trust him.

  And so she did.

  Moving her legs from around his hips, she put her feet on the bed and raised her pelvis up, giving him a deeper angle.

  He broke the kiss on a groan, reaching his hands beneath to grab her butt, holding her there as he pumped harder, faster. He muttered, “Jesus, Tanna, so fucking good,” burying his face in her neck as he came with a harsh grunt.

  But as he lay there, catching his breath, squishing the air out of her lungs, she had a moment of panic. Remembering her accident and Jezebel’s weight on her for those few awful seconds.

  Fletch sensed something and moved off her. “You all right?”

  I’m just a freak. She smiled and kissed him. “I’m fine. You’re just . . . solid.”

  “Shit. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Mmm . . .” He nuzzled her neck. “There is a way to fix that.”

  “How?” She released a little shriek when he rolled them and grinned.

  “This time you get to be on top.”

  Something was buzzing on the nightstand.

  Stupid alarm. She forgot to turn it off. She didn’t have to work early. And she definitely didn’t want to move since she had a hot, naked man in her bed.

  The vibrating stopped.

  Thank God.

  Then four loud chimes sounded.

  Immediately the strong arms holding her vanished. Fletch lifted up and leaned across her. “Sorry. That was mine.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven.”

  Tanna groaned. The last time she’d looked at the clock, after a sweaty bout of sex in the shower that’d made her eyes cross and her throat sore from moaning, it’d read almost three a.m. “I need—”

  “Hang on just a second. I’m calling my answering service.” He pushed up and sat on the edge of the bed.

  She rolled over. His bare back faced her and she allowed a little smirk at seeing the scratches. Such a sexy, muscular back and the most gorgeous color—golden tan with the tiniest red tint. She wanted to run her lips along the scratches for a healing kiss. She wanted to drag her tongue from the base of his neck—starting beneath that silky hair—down his spine to the crack of his ass. She wanted to breathe in his morning scent as her mouth tasted his sleep-warmed skin.

  But she behaved when he put on his official veterinarian voice.

  “Larry? It’s Fletch. I listened to your message. Has there been any change? Uh-huh. Still bleeding or has it closed up? Uh-huh. No. If you think she’s savable, then I’m on my way. To be blunt, if there’s a chance she’ll be dead by the time I get there in two hours? You might wanna discuss it with Sharon. We’re on Sunday rates. With travel time.” A few more “uh-huhs” and he said, “Let me know. Sure. I doubt I’ll get another emergency call in the next fifteen minutes.”

  He dropped the phone from his ear and sighed.

  Tanna scooted behind him, wrapping her legs around him, and laying her cheek between his shoulder blades. “Duty calls for Dr. Fletcher?”

  “Not yet. My client needs to discuss treatment options with his wife, since they’d be facing a big vet bill, so I’m in limbo until I hear back.” He ran his hands over her bare thighs. “I’d hoped to get to spend more of the day with you. I’d like to say this never happens, but it happens a lot.”

  No apologies. This was who he was. Tanna knew he was turning this into a make or break moment.

  “I could pout because my playtime with you has been shortchanged. Or we could have a quickie to start your day out with a bang. You know. To kill some time while you’re waiting.” She kissed his spine.

  “A quickie, huh?”

  “I’ll even let you tie me up again.”

  “Can I spank that fine ass of yours?”

  “Umm. No.”

  “Damn.”

  She laughed. “Grab a condom.”

  After he rolled one on—he was already hard, big surprise—he stalked her across the mattress. “This isn’t a pity fuck?”

  “Fucking you is no chore, trust me.” Tanna wreathed her arms around his neck. “But if you want, I can try a pitiful wail and moan real loud.”

  Fletch said, “You’ll do that anyway,” and drove into her to the hilt.

  After he’d scrambled her brain and put a big smile on both their faces, she watched him, pacing by the side of the bed.

  While they’d been in the moment, skin to skin, mouth to mouth, Tanna knew Fletch hadn’t been thinking of anything else but pleasing her. Making her forget everything except how well he could make her sing.

  But now . . . his focus had shifted.

  It was weirdly hot and absolutely endearing.

  You can’t fall for this man, Tanna. Remember that.

  His phone rang. “Hey, Larry. No, that’s fine. I’m on my way.” He hung up and dialed another number. “Dr. Fletcher, 2295.” He paused. “Requesting addendum to standard message.” Another pause. “Due to remote site call, wait time for emergency response will be longer than four hours.”

  Fletch gathered his clothes. Jamming his feet into his socks first, then stepping into his underwear.

  “Too bad you can’t run your vet practice naked,” she murmured. “Such a pity to cover up your bangin’ body, Doc.”

  “Hilarious. That’s just what I need. A horse taking a bite outta my cock, thinking it’s a carrot.”

  “It is a big, juicy carrot,” she cooed. “And I know firsthand how good it tastes.”

  He laughed. As he dragged on his jeans, he asked, “What are you doin’ today?”

  Needing a physical connection with him after the intensity of the past few hours, she rolled out of bed and took over buttoning his shirt. “I have to work in the lounge at four. Split Rock shareholders meeting. What about you? If you finish your call early?”

  “I doubt that’ll happen. If we are gonna save the mare, it’ll require surgical repair. I’m wiped out after that. And if I have free time on Sundays, I stop by and hang out with my dad.”

  “Saving wounded ponies. Doting on your father. And you’re a beast in the sack? You’re too good to be true, August.”

  He retorted, “Hardly,” and blushed anyway. That reaction appeared to annoy him, so he trapped her face in his hands and kissed her. Her lips buzzed a little when he finally pulled away. “Not too good to be true, sugar twang. I’m just a man doin’ his job. And right now? I’m wishing I was a janitor so I could spend all day with you.”

  “Be safe.”

  “I will. I’ll be in touch. Soon, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Tanna waited for the door to close before she snuggled under the covers and went back to sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I need to speak with you, Dr. Fletcher.”

  Fletch’s gaze moved from his computer screen to Cora. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’d prefer to have this discussion in the reception area.” She spun on her orthopedic shoe and left his office.

  A summons on top of being holed up, browbeaten into dealing with paperwork he’d been putting off forever. This day wasn’t off to an auspicious start since it wasn’t yet noon. Fletch pushed his chair back and followed her.

  But Cora wasn’t in her usual spot, sitting primly behind her desk. She stared out the front door, a sheaf of papers in her hand.

  “All right, Cora, what’s up?”

  She turned around. “I’ve worked for you for nine years.”

  Crap. Was she giving notice?