Page 15 of The Cowboy's Friendly Wake-Up Call

Lance slips his hand behind the loose fabric and shuts me right the fuck up-- well, except for the moaning.

All the foundation is built into the bodice of the dress itself, so there's nothing left to get in the way when his hand connects to my bare breast now.

My head falls back against the door that we're still employing for support. Whatever was left of my up-do gives up the ghost and my carefully curled hair falls around my shoulders and into my face.

"What twenty years?"

He said something back there, some joke about my not being easy, that he's been waiting... That was before his hand wrapped around my breath and he started teasing my nipple with firm little circles of his thumb until I'm ready to beg him to put his mouth on me as well.

Lance

Athousand thoughts crowd around the edge of my mind but I push them all back. Nothing is going to stop me from taking this all the way. Not with Mercy Jean moaning for me every time I touch her. Not with how she's clawing at the tacks of my dress shirt and pulling my bow tie loose till she has her hands on my bare skin same as I do hers.

"I've wanted you since we were teenagers, Mercy Jean," I confess. "You're the first girl that ever gave me a hard-on and you've been the only girl I've ever wanted since."

Two hands land on either of my shoulders, pushing me away just as I was about to get my mouth on the tits I've been fantasizing about forever.

"What?"

Mercy's a vision right out of my best fantasies, looking flushed and undone with her fancy dress hanging loose off her curvy frame, her hair tangled around her face and shoulders, and her lips swollen and red from all the hard kissing we've been doing without a trace left of the shiny lipstick she had on earlier.

She doesn't look mad, she looks confused.

"You're my girl, Mers. The only one in the world for me."

"We're twenty-eight years old, O'Leary, when were you planning on fessing up about this?"

"Never."

My voice shakes more than I like, worried about the way this is headed.

"You never saw me the same way I saw you. I couldn't risk our friendship."

Mercy's sky blue eyes have taken on a duskier hue, and she studies me with them while she works her lower lips between her teeth.

"Then what are we doing now?" She asks.

I want to make a declaration, stake my claim, pull her back to me and kiss her again till she sees how right this is.

"You tell me, Mercy. If you want to take this further, I'll go as far as you're willing-- but I'm not gonna be able to go back again. I'm in love with you. I wanna marry you, put babies in you, grow old together bickering about which way the toilet paper's supposed to hang."

Something flickers in her eyes. My hands are resting on her hips and I feel my fingers tighten involuntarily in anticipation that what was looking to be the best day of my life might end up being the worst.

Then Mercy's hands grasp the open edges of my shirt and she pulls me to her fast and hard.

"Can't believe you wasted so much time," she scolds when she breaks a kiss that I was willing to die for. "Now we have to go to your stupid dinner."

"Fuck dinner."

If Mercy actually thinks we're still headed to that stupid banquet now, she's in for a shock.

Bending quickly enough to break her grip on my shirt, I manage to catch her up in my arms, dress and all.

It's a short trip to the bed, with Mercy giggling in my arms before I drop her on top of the quilted duvet and spare not one more second getting underneath the layers of silky, red material that are keeping me from tasting heaven.

Fabric rips as I hastily push her skirt up, trying like hell to take time to appreciate the curve of thick, creamy thighs as they come into view.

The dainty little shoe she never got to buckle on falls off Mercy's foot as she bends her knees and widens her legs to give me space between them.

---