In Name Only. Kat Cantrell
that alone, but then he slid one finger along her crease, teasing her core until she opened wider, begging him to fill her.
He did. Oh, how he did, one quick motion, then back out again. The exquisite friction burned through her core a second time and she cried out.
“Please, Jonas” dripped from her mouth with little gasping sighs and she whimpered as she pleaded with him for whatever he planned to give her next.
She didn’t know she could be this wanton, that the man she’d married could drive her to neediness so easily. It was so hot that she felt the gathering of her release before she was ready for the exquisite torture to end. No way to hold back. She crested the peak and came with hard ripples against Jonas’s fingers. The orgasm drained her of everything but him.
Falling apart at his hands was better than what she’d dreamed of, hoped for, imagined—and then some. And it still wasn’t over.
He nipped at her lace-covered sex and swept her up in his arms, still quaking, to carry her to his bedroom. Blindly, she tried to clear her senses long enough to gain some semblance of control. Why, she wasn’t sure, but being wound up in Jonas’s arms wearing nothing but wet lace while he was still fully dressed felt a lot like she’d surrendered more than she’d intended to.
But he wasn’t finished with the revelations.
He laid her out on the comforter and watched her as he stripped out of his suit jacket and tie. She shivered long and hard as he began unbuttoning his shirt, but she didn’t dare blink for fear of missing the greatest show on earth—the sight of her husband shedding his clothes. For her. Because she’d finally gotten him to see reason.
They were friends. What better foundation was there to get naked with someone than because you liked each other? It was sheer brilliance, if she did say so herself. The fact that she’d been racking her brain over how to best get to this place when the answer had been staring her in the face for a year? She’d rather not dwell on that.
Good thing she had plenty else to occupy her mind. That beautiful torso of his came into sight, still covered by a white undershirt that clung to his biceps and lean waist, and she wanted to touch him so badly her fingers tingled. But then his hands moved to his belt and she didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her lungs rattled with the need to expand. Slowly, the belt loosened and he pulled it from the loops. After an eternity, it dropped to the floor, followed shortly by the pants, and then came the pièce de résistance. Jonas stripped off his undershirt and worked off his boxers in the most spectacular reveal of all. Better than Christmas, her birthday and flipping the sign in Cupcaked’s window to Open for the first time.
Her husband’s body was gorgeous, long, lean. Vibrating with need that hungrily sniffed out hers as he crawled onto the bed and onto her, easily knocking her back to the mattress, covering her body with his.
And then she wasn’t so coherent after that. His arms encircled her as easily as his dominant presence did. His kiss claimed her lips irrevocably, imprinting them with his particular brand of possession, the likes of which she’d never known. Never understood could exist.
The sensuous haze he dropped her into was delicious and she soaked it in, content to let him take his time as he explored her body with his hands more thoroughly than she’d have imagined possible when she still wore the yellow lace. She was so lost in him that it took her a minute to remember that she could indulge herself, too, if she wished.
Viv flattened her palms to his chest, memorizing the peaks and valleys of his body, reveling in the heat under her fingertips. She slid downward to cup his buttocks, shifting to align their hips because the ache at her core had only been awakened, not sated, and he had precisely what she needed.
He groaned deep in his throat as she circled against his thick, gorgeous erection, grinding her hips for maximum impact. The answering tilt of his hips enflamed her. As did the quickening of his breath.
“I need to be inside you,” he murmured. “Before I lose my mind.”
Rolling with her in his arms, he reached one hand out to sling open the bedside table and extracted a box of condoms with ruthless precision. In seconds, he’d sheathed himself and rolled back into place against her.
His thumb slid into the indentation in her chin, levering her head up to lock his hot-eyed gaze onto her as he notched himself at her entrance.
The tip of his shaft tormented her, sensitizing everything it touched as he paused in the worst sort of tease.
“Jonas,” she gasped.
“Right here, sweetheart. Tell me what you want.”
“Everything.” And she couldn’t take it back, no matter how much of a mistake it was to admit that she wasn’t the kind of woman who could be in the midst of such passion and hold back.
Except she wasn’t entirely sure he meant for her to as he gripped her hip with his strong fingers, lifted and pushed in with a groan, spreading her wide as he filled her. The luscious solid length of him stretched her tight, and before she could question it, one tear slipped from the corner of her eye. It was a testament to the perfection of how he felt moving inside her, how wholly encompassing the sensations were that washed over her as Jonas made love to her.
And she was ten kinds of a fool if she thought she could keep pretending this was practice for her next relationship.
“Amazing. Beautiful. Mine.” Words rained down on her from Jonas’s mouth as he increased the tempo. “I can’t believe how this feels...you’re so wet, so silky. I can’t stop. Can’t hold back.”
For a woman who had never incited much more than mild interest in a man, to be treated to this kind of evidence that she was more than he could take—it was everything. “Give it all to me.”
Unbelievably, there was more and he gave it to her, driving her to a soaring crescendo that made her feel more alive than anything in her memory. No longer was this bed a proving ground to show she could be with a man and not pour all of herself into him. He demanded her participation, wrung every drop of her essence out of her body.
She gladly surrendered it. Jonas was it for her, the man she’d married, the man she’d wanted for so very long.
As they both roared toward a climax, she had half a second to capture his face in her palms and kiss him with all the passion she could muster before they both shattered. She swallowed his groan and took the shudders of his body, absorbing them into hers even as she rippled through her own release. Everything was so much bigger, stronger, crisper than she’d have ever imagined and his mouth under hers curved into a blissful smile that her soul echoed.
And as he nestled her into his arms for a few badly needed moments of recovery time, she bit her lip against the wash of emotions that threatened to spill out all over their friendship.
She’d told him their relationship could take this. Now she had to stick to her promise. How in the world she was going to keep him from figuring out that she was in love with him?
For the second day in a row, Jonas struggled to maintain his composure at work. It was for an entirely different reason today than it had been yesterday. But still. His wife swirled at the center of it and he wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Last night had been legendary. Off the charts. Far more explosive than he would have ever guessed—and he’d spent a lot of time contemplating exactly how hot things with Viv could be.
She’d surpassed everything he’d ever experienced. Even here in his somewhat sterile office that had all the hallmarks of a CEO who ran a billion-dollar global company, his loins tightened the second he let his thoughts stray. She’d made him thoroughly question what he knew about how it could be between a man and a woman. How it could be between Jonas and Viv, more importantly, because he had a feeling they weren’t done.
How could they be done? He’d