My lips curl as a brow hitches. “A stud, huh? Gonna ride me?”
“That was the not yet part.”
I stare down at her before rubbing my nose along hers again. “Are you hoping to get something from me?”
“Whatever you’re offering,” she says, her voice dropping with an edge of seriousness. What am I offering her? I’m an ex-con without a job, living with my brother. I don’t know what she could see in me.
“Should we finish talking about what we were discussing before the phone rang?” I ask, not wanting to return to a conversation about her ex but also not wanting her to think I’m blowing it off.
Rita’s eyes focus on my mouth, and she shakes her head.
“Good,” I state. “Because you have a riding lesson. Right now.” With that, I scoop her up, and she squeals again. Reaching awkwardly over at the oven, I turn it off and carry Rita to her room on the upper level.
14
Rita
It should have felt strange to have Jake in my bed. I’d lived in my parents’ home until I moved out in my thirties to live with Ian. Their house was large, and we didn’t get in each other’s way much. My parents moved their room to the first floor when my father had his first heart attack, and I moved home to help them out. Ian never spent the night here, never slept in my bed with me, so this was a new experience—just like everything else with Jake.
I hadn’t ever had sex at a project site, and I certainly never had sex against a fire pole. I didn’t make out under a covered bridge or kiss between fishing casts. Jake didn’t keep his hands or his lips off me, and it was a new sensation. Ian and I weren’t reserved, but PDA wasn’t something he often did. He had a reputation to uphold, and I respected his position.
Impressionable young minds are watching, he’d say if I went to a school function with him.
Jake was everything opposite Ian. For one, the way he moved over my body, especially in my bed, made me feel cherished. It was a reminder he’d been locked up for seven years, but was his solitude any different than the prison I’d put my own heart in? I didn’t want to feel things for him like I felt. I didn’t want him to be that rebound May mentioned, but there was no denying I wanted him.
His mouth moved over my body, sucking at my jaw, down my throat, and along my collarbone. Commenting about the purple color of my undergarments, he quickly undressed me, and now I lay naked and sprawled out on my bed. His mouth moves to a breast. My legs spread to accommodate his body between them as he traveled down my middle, licking and nipping at me as he goes. Eventually, his teeth scrape at my inner thighs, and he spreads them wider.
“God, sweet,” he groans, rubbing his nose over coarse hair before dipping lower with the tip of his tongue. I almost sprang from the bed at the first lap. He outlines slick folds before his lips clamp over my clit and a finger joins the ministrations. He retreats to delve deep with his tongue and then returns to that nub with his lips while two fingers thrust into me. My hips buck, and my head tips back. I don’t remember the sensation of oral sex. The wetness. The slurping. The licking. It is too much and not enough, and I rock into his face as he lavishes me with that wicked tongue of his.
When I finally break, Jake redoubles his efforts, sucking me harder, working those two fingers faster through my soaked entrance.
“Another one,” he demands against my lower lips, and I nearly scream as my body bows, and I release just as powerfully as the first time. Silver speckles dance before my eyes, and I’m not convinced I didn’t pass out for a second. Jake tenderly bites the inside of my thigh before he brushes his scruffy jaw against the opposite one and crawls up my body. His mouth covers mine, forcing me to taste myself on him, something I’d never done before. It’s dirty and delicious, and I realize my previous sex life had been slightly refined compared to Jake.
He pulls back, and I fear he’s read my thoughts. Scooping his arm under my