“Tell me,” he says again in a voice that makes it clear I can’t escape.
“It’s…my body.” As sunset descends, the shadows outside pass by like a crowd in motion, except we’re the ones moving. The limo glides left, then right, and Declan and I float with it, micro-movements sending waves of grinding want through me as the pressure of his fullness in me touches little fragmented spots that send my body thrills I didn’t know I could feel.
“Your body is…” His voice drifts away as his eyes rake over me, methodical and appreciative. I’m not used to this. Sex is frantic groping in the dark, where I’m glad for the cover of the obscurity of darkness. What Steve or other lovers felt when they touched my skin was so much easier to handle than imagining them look at me. When they touched me under covers or in the grey night, I could just feel and enjoy.
I’m watching Declan look at me and feel my self-consciousness melt away, like a layer of skin that sheds gently. His eyes are hooded, filled with craving, and as his gaze lands on my br**sts I can almost feel him, his eyes like fingertips searching for truth and love.
“Your body is beautiful,” he says gruffly, as if contradicting someone who said otherwise. And, actually, he is. All the voices who tell me I’m imperfect. The moments when Steve looked at rail-thin women in public, or the harumph of telling a store clerk I needed a size sixteen.
The internalized, yappy-dog chatterer that has taken up residence behind my ear and that lets loose a steady stream of thoughts and feelings about my loose skin on my belly, the lush br**sts that never fit quite right in my bra cups, the pants that don’t smooth neatly across my waistband, the thick, muscular calves that rub against the finely tailored wool of his pants.
That voice.
“Beautiful,” he says with a tender thrust upward, pulling me down for a kiss. His tongue slides between my lips and he’s telling me again how beautiful I am, except this time with the topography of his mouth. Yearning pours through me like molten lava and I’m fused to him, inside and out, as a wellspring of emotion overwhelms me.
“Who told you otherwise?” The sad tone that escapes between his lips isn’t sad for me. Carrying a distinct sound of disapproval, he’s correcting the distant critic who put it out there, the one who planted the seed of inadequacy inside me.
The guy who made me feel like I wasn’t enough – because I was a little too much.
“They were wrong.” The emphasis on the last word makes me shudder.
“Perfect and ripe and warm,” he whispers, making me melt more.
The feel of his tanned skin under my own palms, how his eyes seem so interested and captivated, the play of his words on those lips as he misses me and says more that I can’t really understand because oh—oh!—now he moves in a pattern that takes me to places where words are mere formalities.
Where sensation is the language of choice.
One finger trails a line between my br**sts and he plants a kiss in the valley. “You’re everything I want,” he whispers, tension in his voice stretching his words out as he begins his own tipping point. He takes one pebbled nipple in his mouth and the rush of warm wetness makes me clench, which in turn makes him groan.
No words. The leather seat presses against my knees and he brushes my hair away from my face, tucking it behind an ear with such precision as he tongues my breast and makes me stop. Stop thinking, stop wiggling, stop the world—stop time, because I am everything and nothing in his arms.
My own body moves in long, even strokes against his, and then without warning he’s above me, out of me, leaving me with a hollow ache that cries out for more. Declan’s arm wraps around my waist and he spins me effortlessly under him, the limo seat so wide we can fit comfortably, our thighs slick with sweat and more, his face filled with passion and a tantalizing seriousness that brings back a handful of words.
“You’re beautiful, too,” I whisper, looking up at him as anticipation is poised between us in that timeless moment before we break through the invisible wall. The wall that separates every couple before they knowingly – willfully – breach it to connect two separate beings, making one flesh, one desire, one need.
One cl**ax. Giving yourself to another person is one thing. Truly letting go as you lose yourself in them is quite another.
“I didn’t know there were men like you out there,” I add, reaching up to push a lock of hair out of his face. He’s so intense, so purely centered on me, eyes alive and fully in the moment. We’re on a threshold, and I have so much bursting inside me that I want to say.
“You make me feel like it’s okay to be me, Declan. No one’s ever done that before.” Our breath mingles in the small space between us, my legs tightening around him, my body and heart wanting to be as close as possible. I’d have to crawl inside him to be any closer, and I’m shaking with an all-consuming force that is so much more than anything I’ve felt.
“I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else, Shannon.”
I smile wide as he drives home inside me, his face dipped down to kiss me, his mouth fire and ice as he thrusts, my body filled with a kind of madness that makes me seek release at the same time that I can’t help but cling to him.
His hands rest on my waist as he tightens, his face hot over mine, our bodies half clothed. This feels so illicit, so naughty, and as the limo comes to a pause at a stoplight a massive plume of boldness blooms in me.
This is who I am. Declan is who I want. His face shifts as he pushes over and over, my legs shaking and my hands seeking whatever skin he has exposed, the connection morphing into something so illicitly primal.
And when he leans down, still in control, his hand between my legs and giving the slightest butterfly touch where I need it most, I utter his name in a fevered moan, my cl**ax hitting without reservation, all restraint gone, my mouth full of whispers and groans, my fingers digging into his shoulders as he tells me to come, to come, to come.
I do.
He joins me, torso and chest tense and hands digging into the leather seat on either side of me, my legs wrapped around his waist, his murmurs in my ear as he bites the lobe and shudders like he’s captivated by a series of prayers to a god I can believe in. The air around us is hot and spicy, like woman and man mingling together, the scent of sex and sweat and perfume and cologne burning into my brain.
This is the scent of mind-blowing sex. Yankee Candle needs to patent it.
“You,” he says with a hiss, pulling out of me and turning around. He ties off the condom and throws it discreetly in a small trash can with a little swish lid that makes me laugh. I don’t know why. The giggles descend on me and I cannot stop.