The Challenge Read online

  “I don’t want him to have a point,” Dean said.

  She smiled sadly, her mouth quivering. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? You’ve got someone you’re not sure you want, I have someone who doesn’t seem to want me.”

  To her chagrin, because Dean didn’t want to be the reason Katie cried, her tears spilled over her lower lids and traced their way down her face.

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t, okay?”

  He swiped the tear with the pad of his thumb and Katie shuddered, turning her face to press her mouth to his palm, holding his hand close to her face for a moment before looking up at him with still-sad eyes. A lot of women had cried on Dean’s shoulder over the years, but Katie never had. Looking at her now, all he could think was how good a friend she’d always been, and how much he didn’t want her to be unhappy.

  She murmured against his mouth when he kissed her but made no protest. Her mouth opened. She tasted sweet, the way she had the other day. His hand went naturally around the back of her neck to cup it, her hair a soft, thick weight on his fingers. Somehow she ended up on his lap, straddling him, their kisses turning from soft and slow to hard and demanding.

  She’d tricked him before, with the blindfold, but he didn’t need it this time. His mind put together the taste and smell of her with the memory of pleasure, and his cock responded. He pulled her closer, kissed her deeper, put a hand on the small of her back to grind her down a little harder against his dick.

  “Dean,” she murmured into his mouth, but his kiss stopped her.

  Dean favored men close to his size and build. Compared to that, Katie was so much smaller and softer, he had no trouble putting his hands under her ass and lifting her. She let out a small, strangled gasp but didn’t stop kissing him. Their tongues twisted, tangling, and fuck, it felt good. Really good.

  He didn’t try to make it to the stairs, much less up them. Her rug was soft and thick and deep, and he laid her down on it, settling between her thighs as he closed his eyes and sank into the sensations. The semi-desperate surge of pleasure coiling in his gut surprised him, making him think his cock really did have a mind of its own.

  Somehow she got him undressed, a feat he could only admire since they never stopped kissing and he was fumble-fingered about her clothes. In her bra and panties beneath him, Katie laughed softly as he tried to figure out how to unhook her bra and got it off herself.

  “You really never have done this,” she said.

  “Of course not.” Dean slid his hands up her sides but stopped just below her breasts to look into her eyes. “Did you think otherwise?”

  She got up on her elbows to look at him. “I guess maybe I thought I wasn’t that special.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” Dean told her before kissing her again and saying against her lips, “you’re special.”

  She laughed again into his kiss, and that was better than her tears had been. She lay back with him between her legs. Her hand found his dick and stroked it from half-hard to fully erect, and Dean shuddered at how good it felt. When she stroked her fingertips over his balls, he drew in a breath, holding it for a moment, before opening his eyes to look at her.

  “Oh no,” he said. “The challenge was to get you off.”

  “Sweetie, seeing you enjoy yourself goes a long way toward that.”

  Dean couldn’t argue with that, since he was a fan of such tactics himself, but he shook his head. “I’m going to make you forget anyone else tonight, Katie. I promised.”

  “Already done,” she breathed, eyes gleaming, and ran her hands up over his thighs. “Touch me.”

  He slid his hands up her sides again to cup her breasts. Her nipples tightened against his palms and she drew her lower lip between her teeth. She liked that, he thought, trying to imagine what a woman would like. The same things as a guy, probably if only he could figure out the right parts to focus on. If only he could find them, he thought as Katie parted her legs a little and arched her back.

  Fuck, this might be harder than he’d thought.

  He bent his mouth to a nipple, sucking gently. Not flat like a man’s, Katie’s nipple peaked and grew as he stroked it with his tongue. And wow, she bucked her hips up against his belly. Dean did the other nipple, too, until both of them were rosy red and hard.

  Dean had seen plenty of hetero porn–his college roommate had been addicted to the stuff, leaving skin mags around and playing a nonstop collection of VHS tapes he rented from the video store. It had all seemed sort of vague and mysterious, unlike gay porn in which everyone had erections and came in great, spurting jets of jizz, on camera. Katie wasn’t acting like a woman in a porn video. Aside from the lack of Lucite platform shoes, she was squirming only a little when he touched her.

  Kissing her, though, was getting better and hotter. She pulled him to her mouth, her soft body wriggling under his. She was an amazing kisser, knowing when to pull back and when to suck his tongue just hard enough to get him moaning.

  She shifted against his cock, hard on her belly, and ran a hand down his bare chest to tweak one of his nipples before pushing her panties down and wriggling until she got them off. She lay back, naked, her gaze bold but her chin lifted a little.

  Dean wasn’t stupid. “You’re beautiful,” he assured her.

  She raised a brow.

  He kissed her, hands stroking over her sides and hips, over her belly, then up again to cup her breasts so he could use his mouth on her nipples again. “You are.”

  “That feels good,” Katie murmured, laying back onto the rug and running her hands through his hair.

  It wasn’t going to give her an orgasm, he knew that much. Dean might not like pussy, but he wasn’t ignorant about anatomy. All those hours of trying to study while porn ran in the background might pay off now–at least he had an inkling of where to find her clit, something his college roommate never seemed to have managed if the sounds his girlfriends made in their bunk after lights out were any indication.

  He rolled onto his side, kissing her mouth again, as his hand slid down her soft belly and through the tangle of curls covering her pussy. His fingers stroked down. This was utterly foreign, completely unexpected…and absolutely erotic for all that. She was soft and hot and wet, and when he found a small, hard bud with his fingertips, she cried out.

  Bingo.

  Katie opened her eyes. “Right there. That’s good.”

  She put her hand on his wrist, shifting him a little, slowing his pace, but letting go as soon as he adjusted. Fascinated, Dean watched her sink back against the rug, her cheeks flushing as she closed her eyes. She bit her lower lip again before breathing in, lips parted.

  This was so unlike anything he’d ever done. Cocks came in a lot of sizes, but they were all big enough to grip. To stroke. Beneath his fingertips was the one small spot he had to keep his attention on. This was the real challenge, and Dean wasn’t going to fuck it up.

  His cock ached, his balls heavy, as he stroked her, but he didn’t move to do anything about it. He couldn’t afford to lose track of what he was doing. Female orgasms, to his knowledge, could be tenuous and easily lost.

  They kissed forever, and he didn’t care. The longer they went, the better it got. He found a rhythm that turned out not to be so different than what he was used to, and the way Katie reacted–moaning softly, rocking her hips, he thought she was enjoying it.

  She stiffened, her hand going to his wrist again, her mouth open beneath his but no longer kissing. “Oh…”

  Dean paused, fearing he’d somehow done something wrong. “Katie?”

  “Oh, god, so close,” she whispered, and looked at him. “Just…slow down a little. Make it last.”

  Dean grinned, slowing his circling finger. “Like this?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Oh, god…”

  The sound of pleasure suffusing her voice sent a throb from the root of his cock all the way through it. She moved against his hand. The flush on her cheeks had spread down her throat, across her breas