Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

indication for her to climb off him. She turned to face him and started to lie beside him, but he shook his head and smiled.

“On your knees,” he murmured, remembering an especially erotic passage from her journal. He spoke the same instructions to her that her imaginary lover had whispered to her on those pages. “I want you on your knees, babe, shoulders down, cheek pressed to the floor, legs spread wide.”

Her eyes widened when he said it, her cheeks flushing even darker than they already were. Without a word, she turned her back to him and bent forward on all fours. Then she lowered her shoulders and face to the floor, spread her legs wide. Cole very nearly came right there. Instead, he gripped her hips in his hands and knelt behind her. There was something so erotic about a woman’s naked back and ass, something so arousing about such an uninhibited position.

Before entering her, he opened his palms on her back and skimmed them upward, then back again, his cock moving between her legs and against her sex with each forward and backward motion. The next time, he leaned forward even more, catching her breasts in his hands and holding them for a moment, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her stiff nipples, generating a long groan from somewhere deep inside her. When he pulled himself backward this time, he settled one hand on each hip and thrust forward, pushing himself into her waiting heat.

Her groan of anticipation became a moan of satisfaction as he took his time to fill her, and he muttered something hot and profane under his breath, another quote from the lover in her journal, about making her take all of him, even if he split her in two. And as she took him, he told her other things, too, in his own words now, all the things he would do to her before the day—and the night—were finished. His promises seemed to enflame her even more, because every time he thrust his body forward, she cried out louder, uttering steamy words about how good it felt to be so full, and murmuring a few explicit plans she had for him, too.

Cole had never known a woman to speak so frankly during sex, to be so open during sex, to respond with such a lack of inhibition during sex. Lulu opened herself to him in ways no other woman had before—physically and otherwise. She rode astride him, lay beneath him, took him kneeling, sitting, and standing. It was in that last position they finally surrendered to the climax they’d just barely been keeping at bay. Lulu’s back was pressed against the wall, one leg wrapped around Cole’s waist as he pummeled her. They came at the same time, crying out together, their bodies going rigid as they rode out the waves of their orgasms. Then her arms tightened around his neck as the rest of her went limp, and they both eased back down to the floor together.

For a long moment, they lay entwined on the tarps where they had begun, neither saying a word. Lulu opened her hand over the center of Cole’s chest, noting how the rapid-fire beating of his heart mirrored her own. Gradually, it slowed along with hers, too, until both of them were thumping along in happy, contented rhythm.

Only then did Lulu say, “You read my journal, you bastard.”

She waited for him to deny it, to say that was ridiculous, that he’d obeyed all her notes and had never gone near anything he wasn’t supposed to. To do the typical guy thing of sweeping it under the rug and pretending it never happened before changing the subject to something more important, like baseball statistics or the latest thing in socket wrenches.

Instead, Cole told her, “I went through your underwear drawer, too.”

She closed her eyes and wondered why that surprised her. Hadn’t she known from the beginning what kind of man he was? The kind who did what he wanted, took what he wanted, got what he wanted. Case in point, Lulu Flannery.

Not that she hadn’t gone along perfectly willingly, even after realizing he’d read her journal. That was exactly the point. Even knowing he’d violated a trust like that, she’d given herself to him completely. Because she couldn’t resist him. The more time she spent with him, the more of herself she would lose to him. Until there would be nothing of her left that he wanted.

“Double bastard,” she said in response to his underwear confession.

“I ate some of your M&M’s, too,” he said. “And I didn’t replace them.”

“Don’t make light of this, Cole.”

He sighed heavily in the dim light. “I’m not making light of anything, Lulu. On the contrary, I want to be honest with you. I need to be honest with you if this thing between us has any hope of working.”

She battened down the swell of hope that rose inside her at his words. “There is no thing between us,” she told him.

He turned onto his side, pushed himself up on one elbow, and gazed down at her. Even in the sparse light of the torch, she could see his expression was incredulous. “You’re joking, right?”

Now Lulu was the one to be incredulous. “Hey, you hired me to be your buffer, remember?” She had hoped she wouldn’t sound hurt when she said it, but no such luck. “I wouldn’t call that a thing.”

His expression softened at her words. “The only reason I hired you to go out with me was because I knew you wouldn’t if I just asked.”

She wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. Until she realized the truth in his words. Despite that, she asked, “Really?”

He lifted his hand to her hair and coiled a damp curl around his finger. “What happened here, Lulu…What happened in the car last night…That’s something, all right. Something major. Something massive. Something neither one of us seems to be able to control.”

“Which is why we