Echo, p.4
Echo, page 4
I replaced my tongue with a finger, sliding the digit deep inside, and concentrated my tongue on her sensitive button, teasing, licking, and sucking until her strong legs were clamped like a vise around me. Her hips bucked off the bed and I held her still, with a hand flat on her belly, as I continued to lick her through her release. Her inner channel clenched around my finger, and I sucked on her again, and again, and again, until she let go of my hair and clutched at the sheets, screaming my name again.
When I gently withdrew my finger, kissing my way up her body, I was throbbing painfully, but all I wanted ever in my life was to see that look of complete and utter bliss on this woman’s face over and over and over again.
Before her legs even stopped shaking, I tugged off my shirt. My jeans went next. With my clothes gone, I lay down on the bed, sliding alongside her body again.
Echo
* * *
My skin was too hot, and I was breathing too hard to keep kissing him. His lips moved to a spot on my shoulder, his teeth pressing into it as he rocked against me, and I gasped. And what was with my heart? The rapid thud-thud of my pulse, combined with the blood rushing in my head made me wonder if I was having a freaking heart attack.
Then he pressed his thumb to my clit again, and my head whirled and spun, making me crazy, and I whimpered.
I wanted him to press harder, to bring me another release, but he wouldn’t. Instead, he slipped two fingers into me and curled them, stroking my inner walls, making me arch against his questing fingers. I writhed on the bed, clutching at the sheets. I was like a worm on a hook as I panted under his ministrations, parting my knees wider, as though that was hindering him.
He chuckled softly beside me and stopped, withdrawing his fingers, giving my clit one last stroke.
“Don’t stop,” I begged, turning my head towards him, seeking his kiss.
“Not so much fun, is it?” he said, teasingly.
“Please, I need—” I begged as my hips rose.
He bent his head to nip at my shoulder again, but put his hand back where it had been, this time using his thumb until I cried out, “Oh God, yes.” It didn’t take long for my body to shudder as the wave of anticipation I’d been riding broke through me, flooding every nerve ending.
Wave after wave crashed into me, and I bucked against him.
Holy hell, I couldn’t move. I could die just like this. Body limp, thighs parted. Cole and his cocky grin flashing over me. He dipped his head and kissed me softly before whispering, “I could watch you come every day.”
He rolled away and pulled a condom from the bedside table, making quick work of the foil and latex. When he settled between my thighs, it was the most natural thing in the world to raise my hips. It was only when he slid to the hilt inside of me that I gasped. My body stretched to accommodate him, and I breathed deep through the initial discomfort.
God he was big. Too big.
He muttered a low string of curses. “Holy shit, you’re tight. So fucking tight.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then held himself still. When he opened them again, he kissed me softly and asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah, you’re just bigger than I imagined.” Way to go, Echo, you couldn’t pick someone with a smaller dick your first time?
I caught a quick, self-satisfied smirk flash over his lips, before he again nuzzled my neck. “We’ll go slow, okay?”
I nodded. And then he began to move. Oh, wow. He filled me completely. Within seconds, the bite of pain receded, and all that remained was a delicious electricity as he rocked into me. He arched above me, his full weight on his locked arms.
Cole took his time, the pace he set reverberating through my hips and up my spine. I looked at him, the sheen of sweat on his brow, and knew he was using all of his control, that he was taking his time.
Suddenly, it was as though a switch had been thrown inside me, and my body responded automatically. Each thrust of his hips elicited an echoing cry from me. Every muscle in my body seized on him, to try to hold him deep within me. My legs locked on his hips, my hands reached down to his ass and pulled him deeper, holding him firmly.
The edges of my vision went grey again with another wave of bliss. “Cole, oh, my, God.”
With three deep thrusts, his eyes slammed shut, and his arms trembled with the force of his release, before he lowered himself gently onto me, and pressed a kiss to my collarbone. “Jesus, I think you nearly killed me.”
We lay entwined for some time, his head nuzzled in the hollow between my neck and shoulder, his breath cool on my sweat-dampened skin. He withdrew from me carefully, then made a quick trip to the bathroom. When he returned, he turned me so my back rested against his chest, then settled down with his arm draped over me. My hand found his, and we twined our fingers together as we drifted into sleep.
6
Echo
I woke suddenly, and took a quick personal inventory. The room was quiet and dark, Cole’s deep, even breaths the only sound. My body was sore, but in a delicious, good pain kind of way. I wondered what time it was. I craned my neck, but still couldn’t see the clock. It was blocked by something on Cole’s nightstand. Still, I supposed it was as good a time as any to figure out how to extricate myself from the apartment and make my way back to Jen’s.
First things first, I had to use the bathroom and locate my clothes. Clothes would be good.
Cole’s arm was draped over my waist, holding me against him. I gently lifted it and slipped free of the blankets, shivering without the warmth of him at my back. I tripped over one of Jen’s shoes in the dark as I felt my way along his dresser, remembering it ended just near the doorway to the bathroom. Closing the door and turning on the light, I realized I should have collected my clothes and brought them in with me. There would be less danger of my movements waking him if I changed in the bathroom, than if I stumbled around his room in the dark, trying to tie that ridiculous top back onto my torso.
Sleep had made it harder to slip back into the Cece persona, and to figure out how I would handle this part of the night.
“Are you okay in there?” Cole’s voice called from the other side of the door, startling me.
I came back out to see that he’d turned on a lamp by the bed and was rubbing his eyes.
“Yeah, I uh…just had to…you know,” I babbled, crossing my arms over my chest and wishing I wasn’t quite so…naked.
“Yeah, no. Of course. You coming back to bed?” He yawned.
“Actually…”
“I’m not going to jump you again. Not yet, anyway. We could talk, or I could hold you.”
“Talking wasn’t really the point of tonight, was it?” I asked.
Cole laughed. “Okay, it wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t.”
I didn’t want to talk. Because talking meant lying, and I didn’t want to have to lie to him. I liked him more than I should. When I didn’t budge, he stood, apparently completely at home in his nakedness, took my hand and led me back to bed.
“I’ll go first, then. Uh…so I have a younger brother. We were pretty close growing up, but you know that already. I took the job out here to pay for his college. It’s just me and him, so I need to make it happen for him.”
“What happened to your parents?”
Cole swallowed hard. “They died three years ago. Car accident.” Cole shook his head in disgust. “Sorry, that got depressing quick. Tell me about you.”
“Uh,” I said, fidgeting. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry about your parents. I guess my parents are supportive. Just not of what I really want to do.”
“You said something about designing, right?”
The tension eased out of my shoulders.
“I want to be a designer. I got into design school. Classes start in just a few weeks.” I knew I was walking a fine line. I wasn’t lying the way I knew I should to keep up the Cece illusion, but I wasn’t creative enough to pull such intricate lies off. At the same time, there was no way in hell I was going to confess the truth of who I was now.
“Hence your eye for fashion,” he remarked with a lopsided grin.
“Yes. But…I’m not sure I’ll be able to swing it right now. Design school, that is. Stuff has come up with my dad’s health and… My parents rely on me for stuff. Mostly running interference with my brothers. I know how much they’re going to need me through this, and…I don’t want to let them down. I mean, it’s frustrating as hell to have to keep waiting for myself all the time, you know what I mean? I keep putting off taking those steps for myself because ‘they need me’, and I do like being needed… But now I’m getting to a point where I want it to be my turn.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your dad. It sucks not having a say over yourself or your future,” Cole agreed. “This new job I’ve got starting. It can be a huge opportunity, and for that, I’m excited. But it’s…I’ll be working for exactly the kind of people I can’t stand. Whiny and rich, don’t have the first clue about what it’s like to work for something or give up anything for anyone else. I hate that my future career could be decided by people like that.”
I swallowed hard. People like my family. “But you’ll make the best of it, right?” When he nodded slowly, I added, “Sometimes you need to readjust feelings or expectations. My friend J—Emmalee says I should be able to figure something out so I don’t have to give up design school. Take classes part time or something. Defer my acceptance. Whatever happens, I’ll keep on designing, that’s for sure.”
“So…show me something. Show me what one of your designs looks like,” he urged.
I flushed and looked down at my naked body. “Uh…and where do you think I’ve been keeping my sketch pad and pencils, exactly?”
Cole laughed and rolled out of bed. I looked away, then kicked myself for doing so. Cece wouldn’t have done that. She would have made sure he saw her looking.
“A-ha,” Cole yelled, triumphant. He returned with a small lined steno pad, and a stub of a number two pencil. “Materials. Now…design me a suit. A superhero suit.”
I laughed and shook my head, but took the paper and pencil before moving the pile of clothes to the floor and perched on the chair instead. I watched from the corner of my eye as Cole lounged across the bed to stare at me while I worked.
I sketched the outlines of a generic form. Starting with the broad shoulders and straight waist I usually relied on when designing for men. But as I moved to design the pants, I got distracted. He was much more fascinating to me like this. I frowned and flipped the page, leaving the suit design unfinished.
Cole
* * *
I watched as Cece turned the pad of paper the other direction, so it was longer horizontally. Then she grinned and sketched in earnest, the pencil noisily scratching across the surface of the page, her eyes taking time to caress my form before returning their attention to the drawing at hand.
“What was wrong with the last one? What are you doing now?” I asked.
“Can’t really design an outfit when there’s no color scheme to work with,” she explained. “So I’m going to practice figure drawing.”
“You’re drawing me? Like this?” I asked, glancing down at my body. I enjoyed the way she’d been looking at me, like she had more than a few ideas in mind for what she’d like to do to me, but now that I knew she was drawing me naked…
“Designers have to understand and appreciate the body in order to clothe it properly. We need to be aware of all the curves and planes, the underlying musculature. Otherwise, people won’t be able to move or breathe or live in the clothes we design,” she elaborated, her focus on my body and her hand rather than the words she said. “They can’t just look good on the page or function well in theory. They have to come to life and work.”
I watched, entranced, as Cece’s self-consciousness faded away and she relaxed. She’d made a point of trying to cover herself before, but now, as she drew, she seemed to forget she was as naked as me. In fact, the way she was sitting, I had a largely uninterrupted view of all of her. I could just make out the dark patches on her breasts where my mouth had left marks. One leg was raised to brace the notepad on which she drew, while the other leg was opened at an angle. If I stretched, I might be able to see her petal-soft lips. But probably better I didn’t have an unrestricted view. I’d get distracted.
She was so toned and trim. She had very little fat on her limbs, and I could see the cords of muscle in her arms and her powerful thighs. The muscles across her stomach were pronounced, too. She was strong. I fucking loved strong. She had a runner’s body. Probably jogged or ran the treadmill compulsively.
The more I watched her, the more I ached. She was more than just beautiful. She was smart. She had a dream. And that body. Damn. But I liked her, too. There was something innocent and determined about her. Unlike Missy. I shoved the unwelcome thought of my ex aside.
The scratching of the pencil stopped. When I opened my eyes, her gaze was fixed on me…or rather, my cock. Yeah, well, that’ll happen when I think of you. You keep looking at him like that and you’re not going to finish. It was difficult to tell over the sound of my own breathing roaring in my ears, but I was pretty sure she was just as turned on as I was.
She set the pad aside and stood from the chair with grace. She crossed back to my bedside table and searched the top for something I only recognized when she tossed it in my direction. A new condom. Hell, yes.
“Come here, Cole.”
Echo
* * *
I liked the new, bossy her.
Cole watched me intently in the mirror. He didn’t say a word as he smoothed a hand over my back. There was none of our earlier desperation, as he slid into me from behind and we began moving together. I could feel the weight of him deep inside me, as his mouth moved from my jaw to my neck, his tongue and lips leaving marks on my skin.
Each thrust of his hips added to a growing tension that stretched from my lower abdomen through my legs in one direction, and through my belly and up my spine in the other direction, only to snap when the tension exceeded its boundaries.
This time, there was something different building. Gentler, but just as powerful in the end. Our movements were languid, but the intensity built and peaked, regardless.
He muttered dirty words in my ear, but as he watched me in the mirror, I knew we were making love.
It was in the gentle trace of a finger along my spine. His palm pressed against the small of my back. His hand reaching down my body to skim lightly over my clit.
It was in the way that he watched me. This wasn’t some random night. There was a connection, and I knew he felt it, too. I arched against Cole with a quiet gasp as I shook, before he jerked his hips once, twice, three times with more force, and sighed as more of his weight pressed against me.
He tugged me back to bed, and once again, we fell asleep, our limbs entangled.
The next time I woke, I didn’t want to leave. Fantasy over. Time for real life. Then why did it hurt? This time, I was able to slip free of Cole and his bed without waking him. I grabbed my pile of clothes from the floor and dressed in the hallway just by his kitchen, the light from the clock on the microwave the only light to see by. Then I quietly left his apartment and drifted down the stairs, calling a cab while I put my heels back on. Get out of Dodge before you fall hard.
7
Cole
Fuck me, she hadn’t left a note.
I woke up to find myself alone. I knew there’d been a connection that second time—I hadn’t imagined it. So it bothered me that she could just leave the way she did. Not like I had time for anything right now, but hell. I’d felt something. Cece had been the first woman since Missy to get past the outer shields. It was what it was. Forget her.
Easier said than done, though, as my body bore the marks of our night together. I couldn’t help but grin, as I checked out the scratches on my shoulders from when she’d ridden me. Fuck if I wasn’t sore, too. I’d used my knee more than I usually did. It was a small consolation, but I knew I’d left my mark on her, too. I just hoped I hadn’t left bruises. That third time, I’d been holding onto her so tight when I’d gone off like a rocket.
The kind of marks I hoped I left involved burn on her breasts and between her thighs from my five o’clock shadow. Just thinking about her taste, fuck…and the way she’d called my name over and over. I was fucking rock hard again. Shiiit.
That was the last thing I needed. I was meeting with Brent Coulter to check out the athletic facility of the Country Club where the Coulters wanted Echo to train. I wouldn’t be meeting her for another couple of days due to some scheduling things.
I knew where my mind should be. But that didn’t matter, because right now, it was filled with Cece, and how the scent of her clung to my skin. Someone that was supposed to be a one-night stand had somehow burrowed her way into my mind. Fine, whatever. I’d figure it out. I’d find her again. How hard could it be?
Pulling on a pair of boxers, I looked around my apartment for any trace of her, but found nothing. No excuse to look her up to return something she forgot. If I wanted to see her again, I’d have to find her. And I was surprised by how strong that impulse was.
I’d hooked up a lot, but I’d never had a one-night stand that had gone quite like that. But then, I rarely woke during the night, and so I’d never taken the time to talk, let alone like I had with Cece. Or maybe we’d overshared. I wondered if that was what had run her off so easily. I shook my head to force the thought aside. Not with what had happened between us after our little talk. I wouldn’t believe that we’d been able to connect so strongly physically, if the personal things we shared were what had made her run.
I’d never felt a connection like that before. Maybe her friend had dropped digits. If I couldn’t find her, that was it, I’d let it go, but I at least had to try.
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