Long Time Coming Page 4

  The heat inside me increased, made me feel like I was going to explode and I sat up straight, forcing all of his cock into me in one movement. He thrust up, deeper and again grabbed for my hips and by this time I was too lost to protest or force him back down.

  "Gray..." I’d intended to say his name but it came out in a low moan. "Gray."

  There must have been something in my voice to tell him how close I was because he pulled himself up, leaning back slightly, propped up on one hand while the other stroked my breast, the thumb flicking the nipple. "Say it." And he took my nipple into his mouth. The sensation of him sucking at me as I rode him was so intense I could barely think, let alone speak.

  "I’m...coming," I managed to stutter, grabbing the back of his head, forcing him to suck harder as I ground into him. "Oh God, I’m gonna come, Gray, I’m coming..." I pushed him back, forced him to lie down again and came hard, throwing myself forward, leaning on his chest, my entire lower body helpless; I couldn’t move it at all.

  "You." Gray held my hips to steady me as I collapsed onto him and gasped against his neck. "You are fucking amazing."

  "But... but what about you?" Suddenly shy after my loss of control, I felt better about murmuring against his skin rather than looking him in the eyes.

  "What about me?"

  "You haven’t come yet. And...and..." I took a few deep breaths before trying again. "I can’t control my legs. I can’t sit up."

  "Well then." He embraced me tightly with both arms and shifted his weight so that we rolled onto our sides, with him still inside me, still hard, sliding more easily now given my post-orgasmic wetness. "Looks like I’ll have to take over. And you," he said, stopping momentarily to nibble my earlobe, "will just have to lie there and take it."

  ~ * ~

  Something nagged at the back of my mind, disturbing my peace. I became aware of a weight beside me, a reassuring presence acting as a counterbalance against the insistent—

  Ringing.

  I groaned, rubbed my eyes and tried to ignore it.

  Turning over in bed, I reached over Gray—ah, Gray, of course—apologized and groped around on the floor for my handbag. We’d knocked it off my bedside table during our games the night before.

  "Oh don’t apologize," he said with a sleepy laugh. My breasts were squashed against his chest and I swore he had a gentleman’s early morning ‘problem’.

  "It’s my alarm. Shit, I forgot to switch it off last night. Sorry. Damn, I’m always doing that on my days off." I fumbled in my bag for the phone and when I found it, pressed the off button without checking for voicemails or texts. "There." I burrowed back under the covers. "Switched the whole thing off so we won’t be disturbed again."

  "Good."

  "We can go back to sleep."

  "That wasn’t why I said ‘good’."

  Opening my eyes again, I shivered at the smirk tugging at his lips.

  "Wouldn’t want to be disturbed, would we?" The smirk became a toothy grin.

  "Gray, it’s seven in the morning. Aren’t you tired?" Pause. "Again?"

  "Again. Besides, you know what happens first thing in the morning."

  "No I don’t, Gray Bradford." My attempt to look and sound innocent more than likely failed.

  "Ah, that’s right." At this his voice dropped to a whisper. "We’ve never woken up together before."

  "So why don’t you tell me what happens first thing in the morning?"

  "Better yet." He took my hand and guided it back under the duvet. "Why don’t I show you?"

  My muscles ached, pleasantly so, and my back felt like it had been twisted into a thousand different positions but when I gripped his erection, the moan from his lips immediately had me switched on again. It was more to do with his reaction to me and what I did to him.

  Seeing the look on Gray’s face when he came, listening to the sounds he made, hearing the words he hissed in my ear as his breathing built to a roaring crescendo, the thought of all of those conspired to turn me on and there hadn’t truly been a time that previous night when I’d thought, no, I’ve had enough. I’m done.

  "Aren’t you tired of it yet?" I asked, sliding my hand along the length of his cock, and it grew still harder as I stroked. "Tired of me?"

  "Hell no." He lay back, a smile on his face. "I can’t decide whether I want to take my time and enjoy every second or..." His voice trailed away and I wasn’t sure if he was lost in what I was doing to him, or fearful of completing the sentence. He bit his lip. "Or I could..."

  "Tell me."

  "I could fuck you hard. And fast."

  Nudging his lips apart with my own, I ran the tip of my tongue around the corners of his mouth and he leaned in, pressed his body against mine and this sign of his need for release flooded me with warmth and anticipation. Sore inside, I still wanted him. "I don’t think you could. You must be tired by now. Spent."

  He raised his eyebrows. "Is that a challenge?"

  Smiling sweetly, I batted my eyelashes. "You could say that."

  He pulled his head away from me, broke off our intermittent kisses and stared. "You have no idea how much you’re turning me on with that sort of talk, do you?"

  "I think I do." I indicated what I was doing to him under the covers.

  He ran a hand through my hair, grasping, pulling, and he made me cry out.

  "Piper." His tongue teased my own, forced its way into my mouth even as he pushed himself at me from the hips, groaning as I tightened my grip. I’d never met a man who appreciated a hand job like Gray Bradford; he made me believe I must be doing it so right. "I can’t take my time with you, not now. I get hard, I want to fuck you, I can’t control myself."

  "Then do it," I said between kisses and looked him in the eyes. Said it. "Fuck me."

  "Damn, I could come right here and now with you speaking like that." He pushed away, lay on his back, stared at the ceiling as he took a shuddering breath. "Okay, I need to see to this quick." Again, he opened my bedside cabinet drawer and fumbled for a little foil packet. As he held it to his mouth to rip the corner with his teeth, his hands trembled and I thought, that’s my fault. I’m the one doing that to him.

  His hands disappeared under the covers. "Come here, you." He slipped an arm round my waist, slid it over my backside and pulled my leg around his hip. With the same hand he guided himself, sliding into me slowly but easily. He looked straight into my eyes as he did so, smiling faintly and studying me as he moved, easing himself in inch by inch. "Are you okay?" he murmured. "Does that feel good?"

  "Uh-huh." I put my hand to the side of his face and ran my thumb along his bottom lip. As his thrusts became more forceful my fingers dug into his skin.

  "What about when I do this?" He squeezed my hip, pushed himself deeper still. "Do you like that?"

  All I could manage was a breathless, "Yes."

  Rolling me onto my back, he parted my legs even further by pushing one with his hand and nudging the other with his knee. Still staring, with his hands now in my hair, he rocked back from the hips then slid his cock back into me, once, twice, and again.

  I breathed into him, his parted lips on mine. We didn’t even kiss, just inhaled, exhaled together, in time with his movements, a back-and-forth of breath.

  Gray’s shoulder muscles rippled under my touch and with the exertion needed for such restraint. The tension made it clear he would die for me to give the word.

  There was something helpless in his exhalations, almost whimpering cries, showing he was close to losing himself and yet he kept up the same rhythm, pulling out almost to the tip and so damn slowly, sliding back in all the way, burying himself inside me.

  "Gray." I moved up to meet him, circling my hips in time with his. "Gray."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "No." I couldn’t stop my hips circling faster; this reaching, straining for something was all their own. "I just wanted to see you."

  "Oh Piper, baby, I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I want to come so badly I can’t
wait."

  I dug my nails into the small of his back and he yelped, thrust himself in deep, sharply.

  "I can’t wait..."

  "Gray. Gray. Don’t wait." Although he kept losing himself, nuzzling the side of my neck, I nudged him with my shoulder to make him look at me. "Fuck me. Now."

  The startled, wide-eyed look of disbelief on his face as his cock jerked inside me was the most erotic thing I’d seen while in bed with him. "What did you just say?"

  "I said I want you to fuck me. Hard."

  He thrust more violently, harder and deeper and I heard myself cry out as he told me again and again, "Piper, I’m gonna come inside you, baby, I can’t wait, I just love fucking you much—"

  I exploded under him, threw my head back and cried out, not knowing what sound would come out of my mouth next, not caring, only knowing that I never, never wanted him to stop.

  "Piper, look at me, I—" Gray’s voice cut off as he buried his head in the side of my neck, overcome from a fit of breathlessness from which he only recovered long enough to shout as he shuddered inside me, "Jesus, I love you. I love you, Piper Holt."

  Four

  Glad to get out of the cold and into the warmth of Kelleher’s, I still wasn’t sure it had been a good idea to leave the house that evening. Sure, I could still do myself some damage while painting my toenails and watching a DVD but at least I’d be warm and relatively sober and unlikely to jump into bed with someone who called my name and made declarations of love at the point of orgasm.

  Added to which, the wailing of a karaoke singer who couldn’t hold a tune with both hands had me wondering if my friend Marie had chosen this place specifically to punish me for not socializing with her in weeks, then hitting her with the ‘Gray bomb’ as she’d called it.

  We’d gotten together a few days previously to catch up over a bottle of wine and a takeaway pizza and I’d stunned her by blurting out the news.

  "Gray Bradford? That Gray?" she’d asked, wide-eyed with astonishment.

  "How many do you know?"

  She’d asked if we were going to see each other again, a question I had no way of answering.

  But his words stuck in my mind. His declaration. The words which had frozen me in my tracks, filled me with panic. By telling me he was in love he’d scared me whereas before I might have been prepared to have a casual fling. Now that was off the menu because I’d always be wary of him looking for more in every gesture or kiss or touch.

  Unless that was an excuse on my part, a smokescreen to hide the fact I didn’t feel the same way about Gray as he claimed to about me. But if he couldn’t help the way he felt, neither could I.

  The conversation between Marie and I had tapered towards the end of the evening. We’d confirmed Saturday before she left in a taxi and that was that. I retired to bed, strangely deflated, having expected the reassurance only a girly chat could bring but it hadn’t happened. Maybe the wine had killed the mood.

  The only solution to that was to try again at the weekend, with vodka this time.

  My priority, over and above texting Marie to check her E.T.A, was getting to the bar and ordering a drink. Entering licensed premises and drinking on my own didn’t bother me as long as I knew my solitude would be temporary and my companion was on his or her way.

  "Excuse me, excuse me," I muttered, making my way through an area of the bar littered with waist-high tables and bar stools. Even in heels, I felt like Gulliver in Brobdingnag.

  A group of guys stood around one table, too cool to sit, as they drank from their beer bottles and pint glasses and as I squeezed past a roar of laughter rose up from their group, drowning out the karaoke wailer, and one exclaimed in a far more musical Irish accent, "Feck off! I wouldn’t go near—oh shit, sorry love, am I in your way?"

  "No, it’s all right. I was just trying to get to the bar."

  "Hell, never let me stand between my two favorite things."

  I raised my eyebrows.

  "Women and alcohol of course." He looked me up and down, discreetly, but definitely looked.

  In the split second before I moved on I took in his dark eyes over which arched thick eyebrows, the barely-there moustache along his top lip, the smudge of goatee below the bottom one, his lightly-stubbled chin and jaw. A simple cross on a leather band hung in the V of his chest left exposed by the neckline of his white shirt, the cuffs of which he’d rolled up his forearms almost to his elbows. I had to tear my attention away, remind myself I was here to order a drink and wait for Marie. Not to eye up the local talent, although obviously not that local given his accent.

  Still, it would have been an impossible task to not look over my shoulder as I walked away, fighting my way through the thickening crowd.

  He caught me and winked.

  "Smirnoff Ice, please," I said when the barmaid acknowledged me with a smile.

  "How did you do that?" a guy to my right asked.

  "Order a drink?" I asked, checking his reflection behind the bar. Like Medusa he was probably best studied in a mirror. Okay, his hair wasn’t made of snakes and his skin wasn’t green, but the greased-back curtain of oily blackness and his narrow, ratty features combined with the smell of stale beer and the unsteadiness of the seasoned drinker were repellent enough.

  "No, get Grace’s attention so quickly. She’s—" He stopped when the lady in question placed the bottle in front of me, held out her hand for the money, said not a word and glared at my newly-acquired ‘friend’.

  If looks could kill or turn to stone, Medusa would have nothing on her.

  "Grace is legendary 'round these parts," he went on.

  "That so," I muttered, placing a fiver in her hand.

  She replied with an equally monotone, "Thanks, love," clasped her fingers round the money and continued glaring at the man.

  "Yeah, she used to be a prostitute before she bought this place."

  "And you were the client who put her off that line of work, I take it?" I asked, immediately wondering if I’d offended her.

  But to my surprise she burst out laughing, a sharp bark which drew the attention of several of the surrounding patrons.

  "Nice one, love. Here. Take your money back. This one’s on the house."

  "Are you sure?" But I pocketed the money before she changed her mind.

  "Bloody hell, you never give me a freebie," the man grumbled and I wondered if he was still talking about alcohol.

  "That’s because you don’t deserve it. Now," Grace said, pointing, positively stabbing the air in front of his face, "I don’t want to see you hassling this girl, right? You just bloody leave her alone."

  "I wasn’t!"

  "Was he, love?"

  "Me? Uh, well, he just said a few words, that’s all."

  "See?" She turned back to him. "That’s enough for you. Just leave it. Fancies himself as a bit of a ladies’ man, he does. Some chance."

  "Thanks for the warning." I took my mobile phone out of my handbag for something to do while I waited.

  "I’m really not as bad as she says, you know." The man leered at me with eyes as big as dinner plates. I wondered if alcohol was all he’d touched that evening.

  "Hmm." Turning back to my phone, my heart skipped when I saw a text message from Marie.

  Sorry, can’t make it 2nite, got migraine. Will b in touch soon. xxx.

  "Oh fuck." I slammed my phone shut, tucked it into my bag and took a huge gulp of my drink. Fantastic. I’d tarted myself up and come all this way for nothing. And she couldn’t tell me sooner, when she’d started to feel ill?

  "Been blown out, have you? Never mind, we could be friends—"

  "No," I interrupted. "Thanks. I already have friends."

  "I thought you came here alone? I didn’t see—"

  "I have friends, trust me. Over there. Very, very far away. On the other side of the room."

  "You didn’t—"

  "She means me." Pressure on the small of my back, a hand perhaps, and I looked in the bar mirrors again
. "There you are, darlin’. I told you you should have let me come to the bar, but you wouldn’t listen. Come on."

  One hand on my bag, the other on my bottle, I paused, inclined my head and he winked.

  Something in that conspiratorial action told me you’re safe so I allowed him to guide me away from the bar and the nameless drunk.

  "I hope you didn’t mind me doing that," he said, leaning down so I’d better hear him as we walked.

  "Um, no. It got me away from that guy, so... thanks." I started to wonder how I could politely take my leave; gratitude didn’t completely kill off the desire to withdraw although a few more seconds of drinking him in couldn’t hurt.

  "My pleasure." He grinned and his eyes crinkled up at the corners.

  Don’t look at him, Piper. You’ve just split from Andrew and you messed things up with Gray. Don’t do this.

  "Actually, I was just coming to look for you. Rescuing a damsel in distress from a barfly seems a pretty good way of finding you, I reckon."

  "Oh?" I frowned, took a sip of Smirnoff to give myself something to do. "What have I done?"

  "Nothing." He laughed, and I swear he laughed with an accent. "I assumed you came in alone to wait for a friend, so I figured I’d..."

  Lifting my eyebrows, I lowered the bottle and started to lick my lips. Realizing what I was doing, I paused, felt my cheeks heat up and looked down again while I finished wetting my lips. "Figured you’d...?" I prompted.

  "Figured I’d come and ask for your number before anyone else came and nabbed you."

  Surprise made me cough.

  "Unless you’re here to meet a bloke already in which case, I’ll be off—"

  "No, no, I’m not here to meet anyone as a matter of fact."

  "A woman who loves alcohol so much she’s willing to party solo. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven."

  Unable to smother a laugh, I explained, "No, no, I was supposed to be meeting someone tonight but I just got a text message. They’re not coming."

  "What sorta bloke would bin you?" He shrugged. "Ah well, his loss."

  "Her. Her loss. I was supposed to be going out with a female friend tonight and..." Why I felt the need to clarify this I didn’t know. "She got sick, apparently. So I’m just gonna finish this and go."