He directed the spray to her clit again, teasing her with the pulse of the water pounding around it. He was rewarded by the quick, sharp intake of breath and the response flaring in her gaze as he glanced up at her.
“What do we need to clear up?” Her legs parted farther, just a fraction. It was an unconscious shift, a need rising inside her to get closer to the pleasure that was as much subconscious as it was conscious. A primal, instinctive need to get closer to the ecstasy each touch promised.
Rafe couldn’t blame her. He could feel it himself. It was the reason why no other woman would do. Why he would wait six months, a year, for sex with Cami rather than taking another woman.
After that first time, it had nothing to do with the sex act or just the physical sensations. It was about a pleasure that went so much deeper than flesh and a release that burned hotter, burned deeper, than simply emptying his tight balls. It was something that couldn’t be found anywhere but with Cami.
Her pleasure was his. Touching her, stroking her, was as exciting to him as it was to her. He could spend hours just touching her, just making her come. Hell, he could come with her without even being inside her, and that was something that had never happened with another woman.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered as he bent forward, laying a kiss against the gentle rise of her mound at the crease of her thigh. “Why like this?” She indicated him kneeling in front of her, touching her, just because he could.
“Because I love touching you.” Rising, he replaced the shower head before kneeling in front of her again. “Because I’ve spent too many nights wondering what it would be like, Cami. And regretting the fact that you always slipped out before I could.”
The heated water washed over them, keeping her warm as he let his hands cup the rise of her buttocks and clench gently.
Her breath caught in another sharp intake that signaled her pleasure rising. His fingers eased between her thighs then, finding the soft fall of her juices beginning to build there.
Slick feminine heat met his touch as her lashes fluttered in surrender and in acceptance of whatever touch, whatever hunger, he gave her.
He chose that moment to move.
Straightening, he quickly turned off the steamy water before jerking a towel from the heated rack he’d turned on earlier and wrapping it quickly around her. Picking her up in his arms, he was surprised there were no objections as her arms looped around his shoulders.
She was staring at him suspiciously, perhaps uncertainly. She didn’t know what to expect, but he knew what she sensed. She had to sense the intent rising inside him. The certainty that after tonight the rules would definitely change between them. If they didn’t, then he might have to just lock her in his bedroom and keep her fucked into submission.
“So many secrets,” he said as he laid her in the bed, took the extra towel he had grapped, and hurriedly dried himself. “I should have known you were hiding from me, Cami.”
Then he returned his touch to the lover he should have fully claimed long before now. If he had, then there would have been no secrets between them.
“I should have never given you the time I thought you needed to be free,” he told her as he used her towel to dry her gently from head to toe. “You’ve never been free, have you, Cami?”
Her tongue licked over her lips in a charming, nervous little gesture. “Whenever I was with you. I was always free with you, Rafe. I was always me.”
Until she had lost their child. Until there were secrets she had to protect.
Allowing her freedom had been the point of staying away from her, though. He had believed that to be free she needed to be away from him. That his possessiveness, his dominance, would restrict her, would bind her to him rather than allowing her to be certain what she wanted.
The truth was, even with the possessiveness, she would have at least had someone to hold on to. Someone who loved Cami just for herself, just for the compassion, the kindness, and the laughter she gave. Those were gifts she never expected payment for. She hadn’t even asked for the same compassion and kindness, let alone the laughter. And it was a good thing, because she damned sure hadn’t had it.
Tossing the towel aside, he came over her, his lips covering hers as she met his kiss with a soft, whimpering little sigh.
He loved the sounds she made as she loved his touch, reached for it, pleaded for more. There was something more exciting, something more intense, about loving Cami than there had ever been with any other woman.
The pleasure was sharper, more intense, and more heated than anything he had ever known before.
As her fingers speared through his hair, gripping the thick strands, Rafe could feel her giving herself up to each sensation, allowing it to immerse her, to swamp her with the ecstasy.
She gave herself to him, completely, and he loved every second of it. There were no pretenses, no simulated moans, arches, or faked responses.
It was all completely natural, completely Cami. It was a woman reaching for the pleasure she was owed, willing to pay any price for it but, even more, willing to love in return for it.
As she arched to him, her thighs spreading as he came between them, Rafe let his lips wander from hers, to her jaw, to the sensitive flesh beneath and then along the side of her neck. She tilted her head in response, allowing him access to even the most tender skin just below her ear and shuddering with pleasure as he kissed it gently.
Kittenish little sighs and rumbling moans met each caress, assuring him he was drawing her deeper and deeper into the pleasure he wanted to create for her.
He wanted her completely immersed in his touch, reaching eagerly for the rising rapture beginning to spread around her. Through her.
With his lips, his tongue, the rasp of his teeth over her nipples, the feel of them against his tongue, he pushed her higher. His lips surrounded one tight peak, drawing it inside and working the engorged, sensitive tip against his tongue as he pleasured the other with his fingers.
Her nails bit into his shoulders as she fought to hold on to him. Hips lifting, her mound pressing against his hip as he lay between her thighs, she rubbed the silky, slick flesh against him.
Each touch, each stroke, each kiss designed for the ultimate pleasure for her, the ultimate surrender.
It was that surrender he needed. That complete feminine submission to every stroke, every caress, ever naughty act. Only in that submission would the subconscious trust, the bond he needed between them, come. He wanted her to trust, to know, to instinctively understand that he was more than just her lover; he was her other half. The one she told her secrets to. The one she made secrets with.
“Rafe,” she whispered his name, the imperative hunger rising inside her as he continued to kiss his way down her body, stretching out between her thighs to taste the lush sweetness spilling from her sex.
Bright, wicked shards of sensation whipped through her senses as she felt Rafe’s lips brush against the mound of her pussy as his hands pushed beneath her, lifting her to the caress.
His tongue licked over the silken folds, slid into the narrow slit hidden by the swollen, flushed lips of her cunt.
Knees lifting, she spread her thighs farther, her heels pressing into the bed to lift her closer to him.
She could feel his finger at her rear, parting the curves and sliding into the narrow cleft to caress her entrance gently with the tip of his finger, erotic, an edge of the forbidden. Cami felt her senses awakening further, reaching eagerly for each new sensation. Fingers of electric pleasure raced up her spine, wrapped around her senses, and spread through the erogenous points of her body.