Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

“I need a glass of water. Can I get you anything?”

His smile was slow and suggestive, and while he didn’t say anything, his expression told her exactly what he was thinking.

“No,” she told him sourly.

He laughed.

He didn’t protest, but when she sat back down, his hand started at her knee and ended up under her dress dangerously close to the end zone.

Shawn pushed it back down as something exploded on the TV screen. Or maybe that was her resolve going up in flames.

He switched tactics. He shifted sideways and pulled her against his chest, so that she was resting between his legs, her butt nestled on his crotch. Yeah, that wasn’t helping. Because he either had a hair spray can down his jeans or he was happy to see her.

By the time the movie ended, she was a hot, aching mess, and he looked as calm as usual.

“I’m going to bed,” she announced, flipping the TV off. “I made up the guest room for you. See you in the morning.” Just in case there was any doubt that she was not letting him into her room, her bed, or her vagina. Tonight anyway.

He didn’t respond. He just watched her as she retreated to her room and closed the door with a sigh. Then she went straight to her nightstand drawer where she kept her vibrator. This was an emergency situation.

* * *

RHETT knew that Shawn was well aware of how much he wanted her. She was choosing to ignore that and her own desire. He was willing to let her. For now. Because it was obvious that she was an impulsive person, and all it would take was the right moment, a certain look, the perfectly placed touch, and she would forget about her irrational need to win a no-stakes bet, and she would open herself up to him. He could be patient for a little longer.

The payoff of having her come to him desperate and ready would be worth it.

He might be in a bit of blue-ball hell in the meantime, but he could handle that.

What he could not handle, though, was the realization that Shawn was in her room touching herself. He knew she was because when he walked past her room to the bathroom he heard the very faint sound of something battery-operated and her anxious breathing. Damn it, those walls were thin, and now he had an image he just couldn’t shake. Pausing, he listened for another second, which confirmed his suspicions, his mouth growing hot, cock thickening with need.

She hadn’t even waited five minutes.

There was something immensely satisfying in that. Not however, as satisfying as pounding her would feel.

Rhett knocked on her door. She gave a tiny squawk from her room, then called out in a shaky voice, “Yes?”

Peeling his shirt off, he dropped it on the hallway carpet before shucking his jeans as well. “I want to take a shower and I can’t find a towel.”

“They’re in the hall closet,” she said.

“What? I can’t hear you,” he lied, and he opened the door. It was a dirty trick, but then again, he’d never claimed to be a Boy Scout, and they were married after all.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t come in here!”

“I couldn’t hear you.” He moved closer to her bed, hiding his amusement over the fact that she was clutching her covers to her chin. But there was still the faint sound of her vibrator humming away under the blanket.

“Hall. Closet.” Her teeth were clenched, and her hair was looking a little wild.

Had she been rolling around under there, rocking herself onto her vibe? Rhett pulled his fingers into fists at the notion.

“What’s buzzing?” he asked her.

The hall light was strong enough to illuminate the horrified expression on her face. “What do you mean?”

“I hear buzzing. What is that?”

“I don’t hear anything,” she said, voice high, grip tightening on the comforter. Her gaze dropped down to his lower half. “Oh! You’re not dressed.”

“I was going to the shower. Are you dressed?”

“I’m wearing a T-shirt.”

Somehow that was even sexier than if she were totally naked. It meant she was secretly pleasuring herself in the dark from under the hem of her shirt.

It also meant he could flip that comforter back.

“Seriously, what is that? It sounds like . . .” And Rhett peeled the side of her comforter back, not exposing her, but exposing her little friend. Who was not so little. It was a healthy-size purple sparkly vibrator, with rabbit clitoral stimulation. Fuck yeah. “A vibrator.”

Shawn screamed, “Rhett! Get the hell out of my bedroom!” She tried to flip the comforter back over the sex toy, only he had a firm grip on it, and they engaged in a brief tug of war over the fabric before she gave up and changed tactics, grabbing the vibrator and stuffing it under her pillow. “Go. Away.”

He would, if he could walk. But he was afraid he might injure himself if he tried to move. “Shawn. I’m going to ask you a very serious question. Why are you getting yourself off with a vibrator when I could do that for you? We are married, you know. Married people have sex.”

She finally let her death grip go on her comforter. She wasn’t lying about the T-shirt. It was a ginormous hot pink number, with a pocket over her breast. It said, “I love Mr. Darcy.” Who the fuck was Mr. Darcy and did he need to be jealous of him?

“It’s the principle,” she told him. “I don’t want you to think I’m easy.”

Rhett raised his eyebrows. “With all due respect, sweetheart, I’m not sure how your date with the purple pussy eater is making you look disinterested in sex.”

“Uh!” Color rose in her cheeks, and she picked up her pillow and smacked him with it. “I thought you were decent enough to respect my privacy and not enter a room with a closed door! And didn’t your mother tell you not to mention to a lady that she is using a vibrator? It’s rude!”

That made him laugh. “That is not a conversation I’ve had with my mother, no. Generally speaking, we steer clear of politics and battery-operated sex toys in our chats.”

She hit him again, harder this time, the pillow making a nice thumping sound in the quiet room.

Rhett ripped the pillow out of her hand. “Knock it off.”

“Fuck you.”

“I wish you would.”

Shawn grabbed another pillow and hit him with it, right across his face this time.

“You’re really pushing it,” he told her, wanting to give her fair warning that he wasn’t above a pillow fight with a girl if she started it. She packed a serious punch to her swings.

“So are you.” Her eyes were snapping with anger and lust. She swung again, nailing him in the chin. The pillow exploded, a cascade of feathers raining over his chest and down onto the bed. Shawn’s expression changed to one of amusement, her mouth twitching as she started to laugh.

So she was going to laugh at him? Rhett grabbed the pillow she had hidden her sex toy under and hit her in the chest with it.

“Hey!” she said, but she was giggling now.

It was a look he liked on her. He enjoyed the way she couldn’t hold on to anger, the way she was so easily amused. The pillow fight wasn’t having quite the same effect on him. He was just getting more and more aroused.

She hit him again, grinning, more feathers escaping the hole in the seam of the pillow, coming up on her knees to get more leverage and put more bite into her swing. Rhett whacked her on her ass with his pillow. He could see her thighs but not her panties, the T-shirt still covering them, but it was enough skin, enough to know that there was very little between him and her sex, that her breasts were bare under the shirt, to stir his desire even more.

“You can’t hit me there,” she said, breathless, whacking his arm and sounding more aroused than indignant.

“You hit me in the face.” And so he hit her right between her thighs.

“Rhett! You can’t do that.”

He wasn’t sure how the rules went if she was allowed to do whatever she wanted and hit him anywhere, but he had restrictions.

When she raised her arms again for another assault, he pulled the pillow out of her hands and tossed it on the floor. “Now what?” he asked with a smile.

She went for a backup pillow behind her, but he tore that out of her hands, too. So laughing, breathless, she tried to strip him of the one he was holding.

“I don’t think so, little girl.” He kept a tight grip on it.

“Little girl?” she asked with a snort. “I’m eight years older than you.”

For which he was definitely grateful. She was hanging in way better with him than the younger women he’d dated.

“You’re right. You’re a woman. But you still can’t take this pillow away from me, no matter how hard you try.” He knew she would. He’d already pegged that aspect of her personality, and he found her tenacity admirable. And he had to admit, he enjoyed baiting her.

“Oh, yeah?” She lunged for him, and she was faster than he expected.

He almost lost the pillow to her nimble fingers, but he clamped down harder on it and raised it high above his head so that she had to stretch for it.

“Oh!” She glared at him in frustration, but there was a definite twinkle in her eye.

Then she did something he never in a million years would have predicted. Nor was he at all prepared for it.

She reached out with her left hand and stroked right across the front of his boxers, down the length of his cock. He was so shocked that he loosened his grip on the pillow. Which she snagged and then scooted backward on the bed, laughing, removing her hand from his erection.

Rhett was stunned. And turned on. And filled with a new respect for her quick thinking.

“Oh, so that’s how you want to play it, huh?” he asked, nudging his knee between her legs and pushing on the pillow so that she fell backward onto the bed on her back. He dropped his forearm onto the pillow, pinning her.

She squirmed, trying to push him off her, but he wasn’t budging. They were going to finish this to both their mutual satisfaction. Rhett leaned down and kissed her, but she turned her head to avoid it, so he ended up kissing her cheek. Frowning, he pulled back to gauge her mood. She was still giggling, a nervous reaction that she seemed unable to control.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“It just popped into my head that you’re about to go Dom on me, and it makes me laugh.”

“Why?” He didn’t bother to correct her that he wasn’t a Dom. Not technically.

“Because it’s funny. Sex is funny.” She looked up at him innocently, like she genuinely believed her words. “It’s so dorky when you think about it.”

“Not the way I do it,” he assured her most sincerely. He had never once thought of sex as dorky. Or funny. “Who the hell have you been having sex with that just the thought of me fucking you makes you giggle?”

Shawn’s eyes were a dark amber, but now they seemed lighter, almost glassy as she looked up at him, her chest heaving beneath the pillow. “I don’t know. I guess mostly I have buddy-buddy relationships with men. I don’t think I’m their sexual fantasy any more than they’re mine.”

He had to admit, that surprised him. No wonder she always looked at him a little nervously, yet determined. She must instinctively know that it would be different with him. Which it was going to be. He was going to show her exactly how she’d been let down by the men she had dated. Then again, maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault. Attraction was a mysterious thing.

“You’re my sexual fantasy. When I’m here, with you, in bed and naked, you can trust that you’re the only woman I’m thinking about, that you’re the only woman I’m interested in.” Something deep and intimate and territorial rose up in him.

She stared up at him, her smile smoothing out into something thoughtful, curious. “I want to believe you. But I also still want to giggle.”

It was a start. “Go ahead and giggle if you want, and get it out of your system. But trust me.”

That was, after all, the key to a healthy and satisfying relationship, particularly given his tendencies. She needed to trust him to pleasure her, to let him steer the ship. Rhett eased up on the pillow and watched Shawn, waiting for her answer. If she resisted, he would leave her bed tonight. He wanted her all in. He wanted her acquiescence, her eventual surrender.

He knew he would get it.

The question was just if it would be tonight or not.

SHAWN looked at Rhett, unnerved by his calm, by the way he was doing it again—staring steadily at her, making her the entire focus of his attention. She’d never really experienced that kind of intensity. She had been telling the truth in that most of the men she’d dated had likely been picturing supermodels when they’d been in bed with her. Obviously Sam had, given his wandering eye. She had never been in love with a man, had never emotionally connected on that level with someone. She’d had laughs and good times and respectable sex. But never all-consuming, earth-shattering pleasure.