Pride practically exploded in his chest. “Babe, that’s awesome.”
“Well, thanks for confronting me about it.”
“It’s all you. All I did was give you one little nudge.”
“Yeah, but…it was a nudge no one else would give me. And you did way more than that.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“I know I can be sort of a closed book sometimes. You get me to open up. You aren’t afraid to do that. It means a lot, that you would make the effort. At that moment, it was like you knew me and what I needed to hear better than anyone else ever has.”
Again, she was able to put something out there that strangled his heart in a chokehold and tied his friggin’ tongue up in knots. So he did the only thing he knew to do—pulled her in his arms and put his mouth on hers. If he couldn’t use it to speak to her right then, he could use it to make her feel good. To get closer to her.
A sigh escaped her, and he drank it up, drank her in, sliding his hands down to her ass to pull her tight against his aching cock. She whimpered against his lips, and her tongue slipped between his teeth, teasing and tempting his until he plundered her back. Her body trembled and heated against his, and when she pulled away to look up at him, her eyes were a little brighter, her lips a little fuller.
“Why didn’t you kiss me the first night we were together?”
Seriously? “Couldn’t give you everything up front.”
Her fingers curled around the back of his neck, warm and tantalizing. She wet her lips, and the knowledge that she tasted him there made his hands clench on her. “You gave me everything later.”
He leaned in, sliding his lips across hers. “Not everything.” When she parted her lips to invite the invasion of his tongue once more, he eluded her, instead trailing his mouth down her jaw and her sweet-smelling neck.
“Tease,” she chided, but he heard the tremor in the word. Chuckling, he reluctantly let go of her and stepped back, leaving her panting gently and staring at him in bewilderment.
“Undress for me,” he told her.
“What about you?”
“In due time.” He sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard. “Do it.”
Expression unreadable, she regarded him for a few seconds, and he wondered if she might refuse despite the fact he’d seen her nak*d often enough.
“You’re feeling like a bad girl today, remember,” he prompted her. “You’ve run away from life to meet up with your clandestine lover in a distant city, and no one knows where you are. You’re his for the night. It scares you a little, doesn’t it.” Her quick intake of breath caused her br**sts to swell briefly, beguilingly. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, watching the effects of his words soften her body. “But it also gets you hot.”
“Sometimes I think you know me a little too well.” Even as she said it, her hands slipped under the bottom of her shirt. Agonizingly slowly, she peeled it upward and over her head until her hair came free of it with a soft swish and settled back around her creamy, nak*d shoulders. His mouth ran dry at the sight of her lacy red bra, cut so low if she but moved, he might catch the slightest glimpse of the upper edge of her areola.
Aw fuck.
“You’re wearing the red panties, aren’t you?”
Her head fell back, and she giggled in a way that made him think of a demonic seductress. She should have a red devil tail twitching around her feet. Then, giving him an impish glance any p*rn star could learn from, she popped the button on her jeans, lowered the zipper and slid them down over her h*ps with a slow wiggle. Kicking them free, she shook her hair back and looked at him, waiting for his next move.
He knew what he wanted that move to be. Pinning her sexy ass down on the bed and having it six ways to Sunday all night long. He wanted to tie her up, take away the control she so desperately needed in her life, make her give it all to him.
Instead, he said, “Come here.”
She wet her lips and obeyed, h*ps swaying hypnotically. If he were a lesser man, the mere sight of her advancing on him would be enough to make him come all over himself.
He’d known from the first time he’d seen her—freaked out and practically cowering in the parlor—that underneath the demure exterior lurked a passionate, confident and devastatingly sexual woman. She’d never disappointed him.
“So if I’m yours for the night, what are you going to do to me?” she asked. He let his gaze roam her body. She was within reach now, standing at the side of the bed; he just didn’t know what he wanted to reach for first.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
Never taking her eyes from his, she unhooked her bra and let it slide from her arms. He swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat. Suddenly there was no question what he wanted to reach for first.
Sitting up and turning toward her, he grasped her h*ps and pulled her in between his legs. Her breath hitched and shuddered and her skin felt like warm satin underneath his palms as he pushed his hands up her belly to cup the firm weight of her br**sts. “Fucking gorgeous,” he murmured, leaning forward to catch first one nipple and then the other in his mouth. Her knees quaked where they were pressed between his thighs, and her hands grasped fistfuls of his shirt as she whimpered.
He loved the sound of that. He drew her deeper, sucked her harder, circling her hard little nipple with his tongue, all in an effort to send her moans to a crescendo. Her head fell back, a movement that only bowed her lithe body into him more. The scent of her arousal flared his nostrils, and if his erection had been threatening to bust his fly before, the situation was twice as dire now.
Hooking his wrist under her knee, he hauled her leg up until her bent knee rested on his thigh. She gasped and immediately rolled her h*ps toward him, wordlessly begging for him to touch. He didn’t keep her waiting, slipping his fingers between her parted legs but making sure to stay on top of the damp fabric for now. He moved his attentions from one wet, beaded nipple to the other one he’d been mostly neglecting.
“Oh, Seth, please,” she panted, angling her body so that his fingertips brushed her clit. A jolt went through her; her hands clenched him tighter. Any more and she was going to tear off his shirt. He didn’t give a shit.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said against her puckering flesh.
“Wha…?” The breath left her as he sucked again. He didn’t let her have it back for at least another minute, teasing her nipple, strumming her clit.
“Why you came here. I asked, you never said.”
“To see you.” Her voice was lower, fuller, desire-drenched, and damn, he got off on it.
“To f**k me.”
“Not just…no, I…oh, God.” His fingers had just bypassed the fabric barrier between them and her p**sy. So wet, so soft. In one frenzied motion, she put all her weight on her knee and lifted her other leg until it rested on him too, opening herself more.
“No? So if I stop, then—”
“No, don’t stop!”
He chuckled. She was lying to herself if she thought she didn’t need this. Maybe he was lying to himself to think she needed anything more than this.
What if he loosened her up sexually only for the next f**king bastard who came into her life to reap all the benefits?
Oh, goddammit, no. He snatched his hand away, grabbed her by the h*ps and threw her on the bed sideways, rising up over her and damn near ripping his shirt off as she watched him with a kind of feral apprehension in her eyes. It didn’t stop her from grabbing his jeans and working them until she held his c*ck in her hands. Fuck, he was hard, so hard it hurt, and sweet relief was only a few inches away. Between her legs or between her lips, he didn’t much care, only knew he had to get in one place or the other, and he had to get there fast.
“Are you on the pill?” he rasped.
Her eyelashes flickered as she looked up at him. “No. Sorry.”
And so his dreams of sinking uninhibited into her wet heat and not leaving until he came died a screaming death. It was all right. He just wished he’d had the foresight to get the condoms out and have them close at hand. By the time he returned to her with the little foil packet, he was no less ravenous for the pause. She wasn’t either, apparently, because she grabbed it from him and had it opened and his dick sheathed in latex almost before he could blink.
“Panties off,” he demanded, and she made even quicker work of stripping them. He shucked his jeans. Her hungry gaze roved over him, and she stretched her arms above her head, already knowing what he liked without him having to ask.
“I thought you liked them on,” she said huskily.
“I don’t want a f**king thing keeping me from touching every inch of you I can.”
A sigh shuddered from her. Jesus Christ. Her long, nak*d body gleamed in the dim light. All his. Her gaze dropped to his cock, she licked her lips, and that was the last thing his dangerously thin control could take.
He hadn’t slid his fingers inside her, hadn’t stretched her, hadn’t prepared her. He wanted the sweet shock of her impossible tightness, wanted her squeezing him until he couldn’t breathe, wanted to see the answering sensations pass across her face.
He spread her knees wider. Let the head of his c*ck slip through her gathered moisture and thrust once, hard. Her fingers wrenched the bedspread above her head. Her lovely face pinched in agonized ecstasy. He made it only halfway before he couldn’t take any more of the friction, drew back and thrust again to ease his entry.
A dozen curses must have fallen from his lips, but he was beyond knowing or caring what he said. Only when she’d taken him all did he stop for a moment, breathing harshly while her legs trembled around his hips. She shivered all over, in fact, even inside where he could feel every movement magnified a hundredfold around his too-engorged shaft.
Scared, hurt, tuned on…whatever she was right now, he was right there with her. It was all from the possessiveness that had bubbled up at the thought of her with some other a**hole’s hands all over her. Some other a**hole’s dick where his was right now. He opened his mouth to say something…what, he had no clue. Something to reassure her.
He never imagined she’d be the one to reassure him. “Baby, come here,” she said, disobeying his unspoken request and holding her arms out to him. He’d have been the dumbest son of a bitch alive not to go into them.
It wasn’t too hard, in that moment, to almost understand where Brian was coming from now in his need to stake a claim with his woman, to make her his and his alone. Truth of the matter was, though, that it made no difference how much you gave her, or how many rings you put on her finger; there was always a motherfucker around the corner just waiting to try to entice her with a better deal. Didn’t he f**king know it.
Even as he relaxed into her embrace, despair ate a hole in his gut. It couldn’t last. But he couldn’t fight it. As much as he liked taking her control away, her arms around him and her soft body welcoming his stole away every last bit of his own. With only a few words, a touch, she’d brought his ragged beast to heel under her own gentle command.