Claiming My Soulmate, page 12
I rewarded Gemma’s honesty by removing my fingers, replacing them with my mouth.
Her reaction was gratifying and sexy as hell as she swore under her breath and rotated her hips against my mouth.
I feasted on her hot flesh but also fed her reaction, listening to her cry out my name when I pushed two fingers up and inside her again while my tongue circled her clit.
She tasted like heaven, her scent intoxicating. Her sweet little noises. Her fingers gripping my hair. Her thighs crushing my head between them.
I loved it all.
Twisting my hand until I found the rough patch of nerves behind her pubic bone, I curled my fingers, stroking her there. Her legs trembled, and her body tightened, her pussy clamping down on my fingers like a fist.
Taking her clit between my teeth, I sucked it deep into my mouth, stroking the sensitive bud with my tongue, working her on both the inside and the outside until…
“Tanner!”
She exploded, and it was like a miracle to witness. To hear. To feel.
I kept licking, stroking, driving her through the orgasm, making it last until I could get her to another.
I was an animal, feasting on her flesh. Devouring. Making her mine.
She came again, this time screaming my name. Her hands pulling at my hair was an agony I relished.
“Need you…” The words were broken as I pushed away from her and tore my pants from my body. I found a condom in the nightstand and hurriedly rolled it on.
Her eyes met mine as I climbed up her body. “Tell me you want this.”
She was still panting, her breath warm on my face. “Want. This. Please. Now. I—”
She wailed as I drove inside her tight body, her nails coming down on my back, raking my skin. I didn’t care. The pain only added to the pleasure.
She was warm and tight and perfect, and I held perfectly still for a long moment, taking her in, searing this moment on my brain.
Gemma’s long legs wrapped around my waist, and when I’d stayed still for too long, she let me know by using them to move me against her, beginning the perfect friction between us that I knew would make short work of a mutual orgasm.
“Fuck, baby,” I growled as I began to move, feeling my cock slide over those delicate tissues. “You’re perfect. So fucking perfect.”
She pulled my head to hers and kissed me with a ferocity that surprised me as I moved harder and faster against her. I worried I might have been starting out too rough for our first time together, but the moans, groans, and claw marks on my back let me know I was doing exactly what she wanted.
Chemistry, baby.
I’d wanted chemistry, but even I didn’t know the pure definition of it… until now.
I felt the tension in her body growing, and I knew I wasn’t far, so I reached between us and found that magic bundle of nerves once again. Working her clit while we worked against each other, I slammed into her over and over.
Gemma went first, letting out a cry and gouging my back with her nails as she came unglued beneath me.
The tingle at the base of my spine let me know that I wasn’t far behind, and I let myself go, burying my face in her throat, biting on the tendon between her neck and her shoulder, sucking hard as I came. She squirmed and let out another cry as I did it, clutching me tight with her entire body.
Spent, I pressed another kiss to the soft spot on her shoulder and pressed my lips to hers.
“Don’t fall asleep,” I said as I got up and moved to the bathroom to toss the used condom.
We were only getting started.
***
Sometime after eleven the next morning, I opened my eyes and stretched my arms over my head, noticing that for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t alone in my bed.
I probably should have been freaked out about that, but seeing Gemma curled up into my side, I was actually pleased. In fact, I liked seeing her unguarded and even a little vulnerable next to me.
She was fascinating.
And sexy as hell.
We’d gone two more rounds before calling it a night when the exhaustion had been clear on her face.
Moving out of the bed as quietly as I could, I slipped into the shower in my guest room to avoid waking her, and when I was done, I went to the kitchen to get a pot of coffee going and stick some cinnamon buns in the oven.
Not long after the coffee was finished, Gemma appeared in the doorway, looking a little bewildered and conflicted. And fucking adorable, wearing my t-shirt and boxers.
Damn.
I was worried that she’d think too much into what we did. Into what we were going to do quite a few more times in the future if I had my way.
“Don’t do it,” I said, preempting any attempts of her saying anything that discounted how special last night had been.
She frowned. “What?”
“Don’t try to talk your way out of what we did,” I said, leaning back against the counter. “It was awesome and so amazing it’s going to happen again.”
It seemed to do the trick because Gemma smiled, and I got a chance to soak in the woman at her most unguarded, aside from the moments I’d just seen her asleep.
“Happening again, huh?” She walked into the kitchen and took the cup of coffee I was offering her. “You think so?”
She was smiling. That was good.
“Hell yes, it’s happening again.” I grinned. “I have marks all over my back verifying that you had a damn good time last night.”
Her blush was adorable and would have landed us back in my bed if I didn’t have cinnamon rolls in the oven.
“We can’t do this, Tanner,” she said. Her voice was light, and she was smiling, which didn’t match the negativity of her words.
“Why not?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Because my job is to find your soulmate.”
I laughed. “I never signed up for that service. I signed up for a little image rehabbing, which you’re doing, and a few dates with slightly insane women, which I’m nobly doing.”
A smile played at her mouth that she was unsuccessfully fighting. She lifted her mug to hide it, grumbling, “They’re not insane.”
“Okay, then let’s just say they aren’t my soulmate.” I took a sip from my own mug. “And there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing. We’re consenting adults who have amazing chemistry and happen to be really good at having sex together.”
She nodded in agreement, making my cock pulse in my pants.
“We are definitely good at that,” she murmured, her eyes far away — probably reliving our highlight reel. But then she was back and looking right at me. “But only while you’re unattached, Tanner. The minute you think you want to hook up with someone else — either your ex, or a woman I set you up with, or one of your own choosing — you let me know. Deal?”
Since I was one-hundred-percent certain that I wouldn’t be hooking up with anyone, how could I turn a deal like that down? Especially if it made her lighten up.
“Deal.”
Satisfied, Gemma relaxed, and we sat in easy silence as we finished our coffee and ate extremely gooey cinnamon rolls. My iPad beeped, signaling a message from my technical team.
I looked at Gemma with a lifted brow. “Mind if I do a bit of work?”
She licked icing from her thumb. “Go ahead.”
The email contained the latest mock-up and notes from my development team for the new app we hoped to launch later this year.
“Good news?”
I realized I was smiling, and the smile grew broader as I met Gemma’s eyes. “Yes. Take a look at my newest baby.”
I waved for her to come join me at the tablet and pulled her between my legs. I could have just had her slide her stool closer, but I wanted an excuse to have her body as close to mine as possible. I wrapped my arm around her and pointed out the different features of the True Friendship project while explaining the thoughts behind the concept.
“So, it’s like a companion app to your dating one?”
I nodded. “Exactly. Similar to our program that matches people up for love, this one tries to find good fits for friendship.”
She studied the notes carefully before meeting my eyes. For a moment, I thought she would laugh and tell me it was the most stupid idea on the planet. Instead, she said, “It’s brilliant.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so pleased.
I laughed. “Seriously? I thought you hated my dating app.”
Gemma had never come right out and said it, but I knew she was more like her grandmother when it came to modern dating and didn’t trust the internet or an app to find her a decent date. And I’d mentioned more than once that I was doing things the old-fashioned way through her grandmother’s business, and so far my matches hadn’t been exactly stellar.
“I don’t hate your dating app,” she said, turning around to face me. “I just wouldn’t trust it. But this? This is fantastic. Our lives can be so lonely with work and school and all of our obligations. Sometimes, I think I would love a new friend but wouldn’t have the foggiest idea where to hunt for one.”
I smiled at her praise and pulled her tighter against me.
“I’m glad you like it,” I said and kissed the very tip of her nose before moving my lips to her cheek.
She relaxed against me. “You can change the world with an app like that,” she said as she ran her hands through my hair. “Seriously, Tanner. It’s really cool.”
Her enthusiasm was catching, and soon, she’d distracted me into talking all about the app and my plans for it. Before long, it was after noon and her phone was going off.
“Shit.” She shut her eyes tight. “I forgot to let my grandmother know I wasn’t coming home. I bet that’s her.”
She looked a little panicked and ran from the room to answer the phone.
I looked back at my notes and shook my head, knowing that Gemma was going to have to leave soon, but dreading the moment she walked out the door.
What a novel feeling.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gemma
I was fine. This was fine. It was fine, right?
I repeated my favorite mantra to myself as I drove back to Nonna’s. I’d lied to her again when I told her I’d visited a friend and had gotten too drunk to drive home, but there was no way in hell I was going to tell her that I’d driven over to Tanner Jackson’s mansion at nine-thirty at night and hadn’t left until a few minutes ago.
Parking the car, I swallowed the hard, ugly truth that at twenty-four and a half years old, I was doing the walk of shame into my grandmother’s house in broad daylight.
Inside the house, George Clooney seemed more concerned with where I’d actually been than Nonna, who was getting ready for an afternoon drive with Francis, the gentleman she’d been watching movies with lately. At seventy-five years old, she called Francis her “boy toy” and had walked around the house the past couple weeks referring to herself as a cougar.
Yes, Nonna was too busy getting ready for her date to really notice much about me and the fact that I was dragging my carcass into the house well after lunch.
The only thing that gave me away, the only thing that hinted that I hadn’t really been at a “friend’s” house was on my neck.
“What’s that, Gemmie?” Nonna stuck her sparkly fingernail into my carotid artery while we were standing in the kitchen. Frowning, I moved to the mirror that was over the stove and hissed at the sight of a giant hickey right at the bottom of my throat, where Tanner had bitten me the first time he came.
I’d thought the move was super sexy, and when he’d sucked on it, I’d had the hazy thought that it might leave a mark the next day, but I hadn’t given a crap at the time.
Well, I should have given a little bit of thought to it because Nonna had her eyebrow raised at me and a grin on her face.
“You have yourself a love bite.”
I wanted to crawl down the drain in the kitchen sink and hide for the rest of my life at the rate this afternoon was going, but before Nonna could give me any crap, a honk sounded from the driveway, and her face lit up.
“Francis is here!” she sang, grabbing her handbag and a scarf to put around her head. “Don’t wait up, Gemmie! Nonna’s got a good time planned for herself.” She winked. “Might come home with a love bite of my own.”
Gross.
I made a face at that, despite knowing full well that I was in no position to judge. After all, I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes while sporting a golf ball sized hickey.
Still, I shook my head and looked at George Clooney, who squinted at me supercritically from his dog bed.
“Don’t you judge me,” I whispered to him before heading to my bathroom for a shower.
***
“A motorcycle?” I asked for the third time. It was Thursday night, and Tanner had insisted I meet him at his house again. But we hadn’t hooked up. Not right away, at least.
He’d decided that based on the women I’d set him up with, I had no idea who he was or what he liked, and in order for me to be a good matchmaker, I needed to go on a practice date with him, doing the things he liked and getting to know him a little better before trying to set him up for a third or fourth date.
It was all fine by me because, if I was being truthful, I wasn’t exactly excited at the prospect of setting him up on dates with other women.
Really professional, I knew.
“Yes.” One of his hazel eyes disappeared behind a sexy wink. “A motorcycle. It won’t bite, Gemma.”
I’d never been on one, and every time I saw a motorcycle in a movie, it got squished by a semi or ended up exploding in a ball of flames.
“No, but it might tip over and kill me,” I said, taking an unconscious step backward.
“I won’t drop us, I promise,” he said, holding out a helmet in my direction.
“You can’t promise something like that,” I said, planting my hands on my hips. “These things are death machines.”
He laughed. “I swear, sometimes you’re so uptight that I think your grandmother would be more fun to hang out with.”
He was teasing me, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t that far from the truth. Nonna was a riot.
That thought stopped me in my tracks. Did I want to be a Nervous Nelly? Or did I want to be a Nonna?
A Nonna. Definitely.
I eyed the bike nervously before letting out a breath. “Fine.” I reached for the helmet. “Let’s do this.”
“Good girl.” Tanner chuckled as he helped me into the helmet right after smacking me on the lips with a kiss. Every time he did that, he shocked me. This affection from him was dangerous and would make things complicated if we weren’t careful.
Before I could spiral into too many more logical, annoying thoughts, the bike roared to life, and I clung to him like my very life depended on it because, according to the logic in my brain, it did.
“Shouldn’t I take a class or something first?” I asked, chewing my bottom lip.
He grinned and gave me what felt like five seconds of instructions. Where to put my feet. How to lean into a turn. It felt like I should read a handbook or watch a video or something a little more detailed, but Tanner didn’t seem concerned.
“Let’s do this,” Tanner yelled over his shoulder as we left his driveway and headed out to the old state highway that didn’t get much use anymore. He said it was his favorite place to ride, and after a few miles whizzed past, I relaxed enough to understand why.
The sun was still bright up in the sky as it moved west toward the sunset and the air was mild as we flew down the road. After a few minutes of clinging to Tanner with every ounce of energy my body possessed, I relaxed a little and looked around at the passing countryside.
While I probably wasn’t going to go out and finance myself a new motorcycle, I could see the draw for a man like Tanner, who wasn’t afraid of hitting a pebble and ending up in a mushroom cloud of death and dismemberment.
It was peaceful, and I settled into the sensation of my body molded against the back of his.
When the ride was over some thirty minutes later, I was almost disappointed. That was, until I saw that he’d found one of the private coves on Lake Travis and pulled us down as close as the pavement would let us to the water.
As we dismounted the bike, he took my helmet and set it on the back of his bike before leading me down to a picnic table toward the water’s edge.
“What’s this place?” I asked as I took a seat.
“My happy place.”
I looked around as the water lapped at the shoreline and the trees swayed in the gentle spring breeze. I could easily see spending my free moments at a place like this after a long day at the office.
“It’s perfect.”
He nodded in agreement and pulled a can from his jacket pocket.
“I didn’t notice you’d snuck snacks for us on the trip,” I laughed as he handed me a soda.
“Only the best and fanciest for you,” he chuckled and cracked his open.
It was true, though, and I wasn’t ashamed of the fact that I was a soda and lake kind of girl. What I hadn’t counted on was that somewhere in there, he was a soda and lake kind of guy sometimes too.
The silence was comfortable between us as we sat, and it was a long time before he spoke. “Are you still seeing that accountant?”
The question hung between us for a long moment.
“How did you know about Mitchell?” I wasn’t even angry that he’d somehow dug into my personal life. I was more surprised that he’d bother, actually.
He chuckled. “After our second meeting, I decided that you were either the most interesting or the most annoying person I’d ever met, and I wanted to know more about you.”
“You were mad that I never answered your question,” I said with a laugh.
He didn’t deny it. “Yeah, that too.”
I shook my head. “Sneaky.”
Sipping his soda, he turned to face me. “You still went through with what we did, even while thinking I had a boyfriend?”
He shrugged and gazed out at the lake. “I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the possibility, but I also thought that any boyfriend worth his salt wouldn’t leave a woman like you home at her grandmother’s house on a Saturday night.” I tried not to grin too broadly. A woman like me? “But you still need to answer the question. Are you still seeing him?”
