Out of the Dark

His mouth breezed along her jaw to her chin. His teeth nipped softly, just the right amount of pressure. His breath, hot in her ear, sent more shivers trembling through her, peaked her nipples, pulsed her clit. Her thighs opened wider, the soft fabric of her dress shifting against her bare legs as he pressed harder against her. The hand on her hip slid down, beneath her ass, to lift her the few inches onto her hood. She clung to him with another gasp at how easily he lifted her even that short distance, at how their tongues tangled and teeth clashed.

Breathing hard, she broke the kiss. “How long will you be in town?”

He licked his lower lip. “Not long enough. We go in tomorrow, take some samples. In and out fast, so we can get them back to the lab and see what’s there before anyone else does.”

“Where do you live?” It was against hope that he’d say Harrisburg, a forty- minute drive from her house. Or Philadelphia, just over an hour.

“Pittsburgh,” he said.

“Shit,” Celia muttered. Four hours away. A little long to drive for a coffee date.

The front doors banged open, spilling light into the parking lot, then a gaggle of bachelorettes followed. Dana was with them too, at least there was that. Lisa cupped a hand to her mouth.

“Wooooo hoooo! Celia! Cuz! Where you at?”

“I guess you have to go.” Luke kissed her again before pulling back to help her get off the hood.

Celia shook the folds of her dress around her thighs and used her pinky to wipe the corners of her mouth. Her thumb pressed the pad of her lower lip, kiss-swollen and wet. She could still taste him.

“Maybe…you’ll be back?” she asked hopefully, but before Luke could answer Lisa had spotted them and was stumbling across the gravel toward them.

“Cuz! Celia! What are you doing?” Behind her, Melody and Brit were helping a staggering Dana, who tripped and dragged them down with her. The three of them went to their knees in the gravel.

“Ouch,” Luke observed. “That will sting. Let me help you get them in the car, anyway.”

Her stomach muscles had gone tight with anticipation while they were kissing, but now everything in her sagged, disappointed at being denied such a sweet treat. “Thanks.”

When she dug in her bag for her keys to use her remote to unlock the doors, Celia noticed how much lower the front of her car had settled compared to the back. She took a step back, then another, barely registering that she’d pushed against Luke. The right front tire was completely flat.

“Shit!”

“What? It’s time to go, Celia. Seely, seely, seal. Ceila. Oh, hi, it’s a cowboy.” Lisa blinked up at Luke, who put out a hand to steady her. “My Denny is not a cowboy. He’s an accountant!”

“He’s not a cowboy either.” With a scowl, Celia kicked the tire. “He’s a geologist.”

Luke threw up rock horns with both hands. “Rock on.”

Lisa didn’t get it, of course, but Celia bit back laughter. “I’m flat.”

“What? No, no, no.” Lisa shook her head. The other women were on their feet again. Barely. “You’re not flat, baby, you’re like Dolly Partons! Get it? Partons, because she has two—“

“Do you have Triple-A?” Luke asked.

“Yeah.” Celia sighed. “But that doesn’t do me any good getting these lushes home.”

“Call Denny!” Lisa waved her cell phone at Celia. “He’ll come get us! He will! Because he loooooooves me!”

Denny, as it turned out, was more than happy to come get his drunk-off-her-ass fiancée and her friends, because he was just that kind of guy. Celia had always liked Denny, even if she’d found him a little too…accommodating…for her tastes. Not that she was the one marrying him, and besides, look what falling for a bad boy had done for her in the past. Nothing but a set of divorce papers and a brand-new mortgage. Now though, she adored Denny for no other reason than he showed up in twenty minutes with a van big enough to cart everyone home—including her, if she needed a ride.

“I’ll drive you home,” Luke said quietly. He’d shaken Denny’s hand but said little beyond that while they herded Lisa and her friends into the van. Now he looked at Celia with some of that earlier heat. “If you want.”

“Sure. That would be great.” She kept her voice light and steady without the tremble of desire to give her away.

Denny looked doubtful. “You sure?”

“I’m sure. I’m fine. I’ll get my mom to run me out here tomorrow. No problem.” She fixed him with a bright grin that seemed to satisfy him.

Then she let Luke drive her home.

And she invited him in.

Two steps inside the front door, she had her mouth on his, pushing him against the wall so hard the pictures rattled in their frames. His hand again cupped the back of her head. The other went between her legs. Celia moaned into his mouth, her nerves on fire from that touch. From everything, all of it. The months of nothing, the years before that of her failing marriage.

But most of all, the past few hours she’d spent with Luke.

His hand twisted, palm pressing her as his thumb settled unerringly against the front of her cotton panties. His tongue slipped slowly into her mouth as his thumb pressed her clit and the hand that had been cupping her head moved down to grab her ass. Celia broke the kiss so she could get a breath.

“Luke—“ That was all she could manage. She wasn’t even sure what she’d meant to say, whether that simple, single syllable had been meant as plea or command or prayer.

His gaze didn’t waver from hers. His thumb pressed, released. Pressed again. Her knees were going weak with the pleasure seeping from that tiny motion into every nerve.

“I want you,” Celia said.

“Good.” He took his hand from between her legs to lift and turn her at the same time.

This time, he pinned her to the wall. She hooked her ankles behind him, his belt buckle taking the place of his thumb, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He kissed her again, her mouth already open for him. Something jabbed at the base of her spine—the light switch, she thought when the overhead hall light went out, then on again. Celia wriggled against him, the kiss going on and on even as he pushed back from the wall still holding her so tight she didn’t worry about falling.

“Where?” Luke bit out between kisses.

“Living room,” Celia managed to say against his mouth. “Straight back this hall.”

He got them both there in a matter of moments. She thought he might tumble them onto the sectional sofa, which was surely wide enough to fuck on, though she’d never even had a guy over to sit on it. Instead, he moved past it, through the archway to the dining room, where he settled her on the dining room table. It creaked under her weight, and Celia laughed into his mouth.

He kissed her again, softer this time. When she put her hand on his chest, the thump of his heart pounded hard on her palm. This physical evidence of how she was affecting him bumped up the beat of her own heart. Then she wondered if these kisses had made him hard for her already, and another bolt of arousal teased between her legs.

Luke was pushing her back onto the table, and Celia let herself be pushed. She let him slide her dress up over her thighs. Higher, to reveal the plain panties she wished were sexier. Then higher still to show a sliver of her belly. He kissed her there, and her body arched again, involuntarily. Her low, muttered gasp was louder than the table’s creak. When he hooked her panties at the hips and pulled them slowly off, a thousand thoughts whirled, most of them incoherent and only one or two making any sense.

Oh, God. Oh, yes. I should make him stop, tell him to get a condom…shit, do I have any condoms?

Breathing hard, Luke looked up at her before sliding her along the tabletop toward him. He kissed her mouth again. His hand moved between them, fingers dipping inside to find her already slick. Her clit already hard. She jerked a little when he pinched it lightly with his thumb and finger. She made a noise. A fucknoise, no way to disguise it as anything else, and her nails dug into his shoulder.

“Want to watch you,” Luke murmured into her ear.

His fingers moved, slowly but just right. Stroke, stroke, tug. His lips sought hers as his hand slipped a little lower, his fingers moving inside her in an echo of his tongue in her mouth. Then out again, wet, to slide along her clit with a perfect pressure, perfect pace that had her moving toward the edge so fast she couldn’t believe it.

Things like this didn’t happen in real life. Not to her, any way. One-night stands? This would be her third, and you’d think she’d have learned her lesson after the first two. Celia wasn’t hung up on sex, but she was particular, and it always, always took her a few times with a new partner before she came.

Chalk it up to Luke’s superior technique or her body’s overeager response to what it had gone too long without, but either way, Celia wasn’t going to complain. Her nails dug deeper, not even earning a wince from him as he kept up the slow and steady stroking against her without ever letting his gaze waver.

She wanted to look away—how intimate this was, too much for a first encounter. Too much, almost, for someone she loved, much less a stranger. Yet something kept her eyes fixed on his as his touch inched her closer and closer to orgasm. Something kept her from tensing, from chasing away the rising pleasure before it could crest…and break.

Celia cried out, low, as her back arched and at last her eyes closed, impossible to keep open with her climax boiling through her. It struck her like lightning, the aftershocks like thunder a moment later. She shook, suffused with the sort of ecstasy only a truly stellar orgasm brings.

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