Page 51 of Teach Me
Her taut nipples beckoned, and he grasped them, ever so lightly pulsing their hard lengths between his thumbs and fingers. The hot, explicit word that left Jess’s lips shot his arousal up a hundred notches.
“You can do careful, can’t you?” she asked. Her fingers drifted to the undersides of his thighs, tracing closer and closer to forbidden territory. “You can be slow. And careful. And—”
He nipped her ear, cutting off the seductive spell of her words. But he knew and she knew that he would give in. As he considered the safest way to please her, he circled her nipples with rough fingers, around and around until she moaned her pleasure into the steamy air. “No penetration,” he whispered against her hair. “Veryslow andverycareful. I mean it, Jess.”
“Yes.” Jess nodded cautiously, then seemed to abandon words for throaty mews and gasps, rocking her hips ever so slightly against his cock in a compulsive rhythm that matched his movements at her breasts.
Con stopped the motion of his hands. If they were going to do this, he’d do it right. No risk to her. “Be still.”
Jess froze.
“Absolutely still, Jess. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She drew the word out on a long, low breath.
Con reached down and gripped her inner thighs, pulling her legs up slowly to drape over his knees. His view over her shoulder showed her delicate slit, soft curls drifting with the movement of the water. His mouth went dry at the sight—what he wouldn’t give to taste her. Instead he tightened one arm around her rib cage, forcing her to stillness, and used the other to tug her feminine lips open even farther until her gasp and shiver told him she was wide open to the water’s hot caress. Allowing the heat to do its work, he once more caught her stiff peaks, and this time he rolled them between his fingers, gradually hardening his grip, squeezing her nipples with just the right force to make her sing for him.
“Conlan!”
“Shh, it’s all right, baby. Let it build.”
As desire rose, Jess began to writhe, too inexperienced to control the need to chase his touch. Con shifted, allowing the back of her skull to settle naturally in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, and leaned his chin against her, holding her head immobile as he resumed his torture at her breasts.
Panting and the gentle rippling of the water filled the silence for long moments. When Jess’s panting became moans, she arched, her ass alternately cushioning and squeezing his aching sac. “Conlan, please,” she whimpered.
Those two simple words, spoken with such desperate need, spiked his hunger with a suddenness that left him gasping for air. His balls drew up tight, hugging the base of his hard shaft, ready to spill at any moment. Determined she would go with him, he trailed his hand down to cup her intimately.
Jess whimpered his name again, laying her hand over his, her pelvis tilting to urge him on.
Keeping her head as still as possible, he plucked at her clit, teasing the hood down and up, savoring the burn in his sex as he waited for her. Water sloshed up the sides of the tub, but he couldn’t care less. As her cries became deeper, more needy, her muscles tightening against him, he moved lower, spearing two fingers into her tiny opening. His palm rasped her hardened nub with every thrust inside. One stroke, two, three and she was spasming around his fingers, crying out his name, her short, frantic movements grinding into his cock until he shot his seed along the delicate furrow of her spine.
In the aftermath, holding Jess, lax and warm, against him, he let his lips fall once more to her temple and whispered her name. His Jess. She’d changed his life and his heart forever. He might be the one with all the experience, but she was the one who knew how to love, how to risk it all for what she wanted. The pounding of his heartbeat was in his ears, in his throat, choking off his breath, a rhythmic claim ofmine, mine, all mine.
He couldn’t lose her. God help him, but he couldn’t.
Chapter Nineteen
Thesnapof a twig nearby had Con bringing up his gun, sighting, slipping his finger down next to the trigger, all in one smooth motion that stilled as a timid doe entered his gun’s sights. He hunched down in the predawn light, cursing the edgy feeling that had him up and roaming the woods around the lake instead of curling around Jess’s warm body in the middle of the big bed they’d shared for the last two nights. The doe swung her head in his direction, belatedly sensing danger, and with a running leap, escaped over the ridgeline to safety.
Con stayed down, still, waiting for the woods to quiet. The geese at the water’s edge, used to the antics of the deer, barely paused in their morning baths. They dunked and fluttered, telling Con no unusual human presence was nearby. The animals here knew him, were used to his scent all over these woods; hell, he’d played here years ago as a boy, he and Jack and Lee, learning to hunt and fight and become one with nature. As long as he was quiet, careful, they’d ignore him in favor of the water.
Continuing his slow, low trip around the cove, he couldn’t shake the itch along the back of his neck, no matter what the natural alarm system of the wild told him. All was quiet, normal, but something wasn’t right. He knew it, felt it. He just couldn’t find it.
Or maybe there’s nothing to find.
Maybe.
Maybe what he was sensing wasn’t coming from outside.
A thick stand of trees waited ahead. Con slid into them, maneuvering through dense brambles and underbrush and heavy, intertwining branches until he came to the area where the hill began its second rise toward the ridgeline. Buried beneath a mound of fallen leaves, Con found the latch for the hidden door and tugged it. The lock held. No one was getting into the house through the tunnel. Many of the safety features in the house, like the glass, had been part of the construction when he’d renovated, but he and Jack and his dad, Ben, had built the underground passage themselves, over several years, ensuring no blueprints or specs were filed in an office or government building somewhere, waiting to come back and bite him in the butt. Even if someone did realize the tunnel existed, its sophisticated locking mechanism could only be bypassed with his or Jack’s thumbprint. Otherwise, from the inside or the outside, no one was getting through this opening.
The knowledge eased some of his anxiety as he re-covered the door and his tracks, making his way around the far end of the inlet and around to the north side of the woods near the house, keeping his eyes peeled for anything that might spell trouble on its way. There was nothing. Everything was quiet. Untouched.
No, the problem wasn’t out here. It was inside his head.
He’d never been paranoid, but now, with Jess in his home, in his bed, he was jumping at his own shadow. Hunkering down between two boulders, he let the soft lap of the water against the sandy shoreline calm the faster beat of his heart, the frantic pulse ofnot safe, not safe, not safe.It wasn’t working. The words grew stronger with every breath he took, never letting up, over and over and over until he wouldn’t hear a bull charging him, much less a stalker in stealth mode. The pounding thoughts had nothing to do with an external threat and everything to do with his own fear.
He looked down at his hands. The faintest tremble shot through them.
