My Not-Yet Mate and the Thirty-Day Trial novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Night One

With the bond silent, Laney kisses Joss first in her kitchen and has his fingers inside her on the counter, then takes his hand and walks him to her bedroom door.

My kitchen looked smaller with him standing in it.

He set his duffel by the door and took off his canvas jacket.

He hung it on the back of a chair.

Then he stood very still, with his hands at his sides, and let me decide what happened next.

I had a speech planned about the spare room and the clean towels.

It did not come out.

"Okay," I said instead. "I'm going to kiss you."

"Okay."

"Don't move."

The corner of his mouth went up.

"Yes, ma'am."

I crossed the kitchen in my barn boots and took two fistfuls of his grey henley.

I had to go up on my toes.

I kissed him once, hard, to see what would happen.

Nothing flared, and nothing pulled.

There was only his mouth, warm and a little rough at the corners, and the low sound he made in his chest.

My own heartbeat was louder than the refrigerator.

I pulled back an inch.

He had not moved, though his breathing had changed.

"Again," I said.

I kissed him again, slower, and this time I opened my mouth against his.

He tasted like coffee and cold air.

His tongue touched mine, and a hot jolt ran straight down the middle of me.

I knew the jolt came from me.

There was no moon in it and no old law, only a woman in a kitchen wanting a particular man.

That made it so much better than I had been told it would be.

I walked him backward until his hips met the counter, and I kept kissing him until my hands were shaking.

"Laney," he said against my mouth. "My hands."

I thought that over for a moment.

"On the counter. Both of them. Flat."

He put them there, on either side of his own hips, and gripped the edge.

The muscles in his forearms stood out.

"Stay there until I say."

"Understood."

His voice had gone rough.

I opened his shirt button by button, then pulled the henley up over his head, and I looked.

He is built to carry weight.

His chest is wide and dark with hair, and his stomach is hard and flat under a scatter of old scars from the saw.

A long pale one ran across his ribs on the left.

I put my mouth on it and felt him shake.

"Jesus," he said. "Laney."

"You said you've wanted this."

"I have."

"Then keep your hands on the counter and let me."

I dragged my tongue across his ribs and up to his nipple.

I bit it lightly, and his whole body jerked.

The counter creaked under his grip.

I was suddenly so wet that I could feel it through my coveralls.

I wanted to be touched so badly that it scared me a little.

Nobody was making me feel it.

I stepped back and unknotted my sleeves from my waist.

I pushed the straps off my shoulders and let the coveralls fall to my knees.

I kicked them off with my boots.

I stood in front of him in a white tank top and plain black underwear, with cow still faintly in my hair.

He looked at me as if he had never seen me.

"Come here," he said, and his voice cracked on it. "Please."

"Hands."

"They're still on the counter."

"Good. Now you can use them."

I boosted myself onto the other counter, the one by the sink, and pulled him in between my knees.

He didn't need to be told where.

His big hand slid over my hip and up under my tank top.

It crossed my bare stomach, and I shivered from my scalp to my toes.

"Take it off me," I said.

He pulled the tank over my head.

He cupped my small breasts, and his thumbs found my nipples at once.

"God, you're perfect," he said.

"I'm built like a fence post."

"You're built like exactly what I wanted."

He bent and took one nipple in his mouth.

I put my hand in his hair and held on.

His mouth was hot and slow and wet, and I heard myself make a sound I have never made in front of anyone.

"Lower," I said.

His hand went into my underwear.

He found me, hot and slick, and he made a sound.

"Laney. You're soaked."

"Yes."

"For me?"

"For you. Nobody else is in this room."

"Nothing's helping us," he said, awed. "It's just us."

"Isn't that the point?"

He circled me with two fingers, right on my clit, slow and heavy.

My head fell back against the cabinet.

"Like that," I said. "Right there. Don't stop."

He didn't.

He kissed my throat while he worked me, and when I rolled my hips against his hand he pushed two thick fingers up inside me.

I gasped his name.

He curled them, found the place on the first try, and pressed.

"Fuck," I said. "Joss."

"Say it again."

"Joss. Right there. Harder."

He gave me harder.

His thumb stayed on my clit, and his fingers filled me, and his mouth went back to my breast.

I could hear how wet I was, a slick obscene sound in the quiet kitchen.

I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled him against me.

His cock was a hard, hot ridge against my thigh through his jeans, and I ground against his hand while it throbbed.

The pressure climbed fast.

I had been alone for a long time, and I had never once wanted to hold back.

"I'm going to come," I said. "Don't you dare stop."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I came with my fingers locked in his hair and my forehead pressed against his.

It rolled through me in long hard waves.

I shook, and I heard him murmur, "That's it, that's it, there you go," while his fingers kept pushing me through it.

When I stopped, I was panting against his shoulder.

He eased his hand out of me and rested it on my thigh, and he held still.

I could feel him shaking too.

He had not touched himself, or asked me to.

"Joss."

"Mm."

"You haven't even touched yourself."

He laughed, low and unsteady.

"I'm about to come in my jeans from watching you."

I slid off the counter.

My knees were not entirely reliable, so I held on to his belt.

I picked my tank top up off the floor and did not put it on.

"Not here," I said.

"Not here?"

"I'm not doing the rest of this on a kitchen counter."

I took his hand, the big scarred one still slick with me, and I laced my fingers through his.

I walked him down the hall in my underwear.

He followed without a word, the cord on his wrist brushing the cord on mine.

My bedroom door stood half open at the end of the hall.

I stopped in front of it with my hand on the frame, and I looked at him.

"Last chance to sleep in the truck," I said.

He smiled slowly.

"Don't be ridiculous."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend