Page 59 of Merry Little Midlife Matchmaker

“You’re so beautiful, Lizzie,” I rasped against her skin, moving to the other breast.

Her laugh was shaky, but she didn’t protest. Instead, she reached for my shirt and tugged it up. When it landed on the floor beside her own garments, Lizzie shook her head as she watched her palms spread over my pecs and across my collarbones. “You’re the beautiful one,” she said.

When she looked at me like that, it became hard to think. I’d seen so many expressions on her face since we’d run into each other at the pharmacy. The soft joy of watching her kids play. The tight smiles around her family at Thanksgiving. The unbridled joy at decorating a Christmas tree or a gingerbread house.

But this look—the one that looked pleasure-drunk and a little greedy—was my favorite.

For the first time in years, my shoulders were free of the usual weight of responsibility and expectations. All the bitterness of my divorce and the years of struggle as my son’s primary caretaker took a back seat to watching a beautiful woman explore my body with soft touches and desire written on her features. She made me feel powerful. She made me want to lay her down and cherish her the way I knew she deserved.

As her fingers traced the trail of hair leading south from my navel, I sucked in a hard breath and wondered just how fast itwas possible to fall for someone—and if it would hurt when I finally hit the ground.

TWENTY-SEVEN

LIZZIE

I was living in a dreamland.A place where the hottest man in existence looked at me like I was some kind of supermodel. Where he touched all the parts of my body I’d spent years trying to hide like they actually turned him on.

And the crazy thing was, I believed it. When a rough palm slid to the back of my thigh and squeezed, a jolt of lust went through me because I could feel Sean’s harsh breath against my skin. If I followed the path of my hand just a little farther down, I knew I’d feel something hard behind the fabric of his pants.

There were so many reasons not to do this. He was my brother’s best friend. We both had kids. I was trying to set him up with someone else. Whatever lust had driven him here tonight wouldn’t last—it couldn’t. Not when I was Lizzie Butler, designated mom and babysitter extraordinaire.

But for right now, forthis moment, wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy it?

So, when Sean threaded his fingers through mine and tugged me across the room to the couch, I let him. When he pressed me onto the cushions and huffed a laugh as I extricated a kid’s toy from under my butt, I smiled right back at him and extended my arms for him to drape himself over me.

This would end; I knew it would. But it had been so, so long since I’d done something for myself. Since I’d done somethingbad.

This was bad. I knew it would blow up in my face. But it was also intoxicating, to have a handsome man run his hands over my hips and let out a shuddering breath like he’d never felt anything so good as my body beneath his.

And when he kneeled on the floor in front of the cushions and had me hook my knees over his shoulders, I was too far gone to push him away.

Truth be told, I wanted to see what would happen when his mouth touched my core. I wanted to feel the rumble of his groan against my flesh and reach the peak of another long-overdue orgasm. I wanted to be selfish, for once. To be seen.

The blaze of pleasure still took me by surprise, though. My fingers curled into the cushions as my back arched, and Sean used his lips and teeth and tongue to make me forget about everything other than the feel of my own pleasure. His hand slid up my stomach to my breast, and I placed my hand over his to keep it there.

My vision went white with pleasure, but I wasn’t ready for this to be over. On the heels of my orgasm, I found myself clawing at his pants and tugging them down. I sat on the edge of the sofa and took him in my mouth, and Sean swore above me and curled his fingers into my hair.

Just like I’d imagined—but better.

Pleasure sparked inside me as I sucked him, glancing up to watch the way his head fell back on a gasp. I loved the feel of him against my tongue, the flared tip, the throbbing veins. I loved the way his hand spasmed against my scalp, the breathless, desperate way he said my name.

This wasn’t a moment to think about consequences. It was a decade of repressed desire finally breaking free.

“Lizzie,” Sean panted. “Fuck, Lizzie that feels so good.”

I hummed around his cock and reached down to touch his sac. His groan was strangled, and I pulled back to grin at him. When he met my gaze, his eyes were wild, his cheeks flushed. I hadn’t had this much fun being intimate with a man in a long time. Truthfully, I’d forgotten that itcouldbe fun. That I could lose my inhibitions and get out of my own head. That a man could look at me the way Sean did and make me forget that anything else existed.

“Get up,” he commanded, then reached down to grab my hand. He hauled me up and wrapped an arm around my waist, then kissed me so deeply my head began to spin. Then it was my body that was spinning, my back to his front, his hands running down to stroke between my legs. I felt the press of his free hand on my shoulder, and I bent over to grab the back of the couch.

He entered me in a swift thrust, and I moaned in response. My legs began to tremble a minute later. A minute after that, I was shouting his name and feeling the hard grip of his hands on my hips.

Any control I might have had slipped my grip, and I lost myself to the pleasure, to the feel of him, to the moment. My consciousness was reduced to a series of snapshots. The feel of the couch’s fabric against my palms and shins. The trembling weakness that overtook my limbs. The way Sean stroked down my spine with a broad, hot palm. The feel of him stretching me as he thrust inside again and again and again.

My orgasm was a series of waves that ran into each other, shredding thought as it grew. I collapsed onto my elbows and sobbed into the climax just as Sean pulled out of me and moaned, his release warm on my ass and thighs. I panted wordlessly, body twitching, until Sean shifted behind me.

“Towel,” he gasped. He sucked in a hard breath. “Stay.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled back, collapsing onto my side. Full sentences were evidently beyond us. A moment later, the sink in the kitchen turned on, and a moment after that, Sean was wiping up the mess from my skin and collapsing onto the cushion beside me.

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