“Rylan?”
Torn from the fantasy, he looked down at her. She pressed a hand against his chest, not quite pushing him away but not far from it, either, and while there was arousal in her gaze, there was something else, too.
Fear.
The same fear he’d cursed other men for daring to put on her face.
He closed his eyes and filled his lungs, once, twice, then made his mouth and his hands both soft, holding her instead of gripping her. “Sorry. Just—” The emotion he’d felt, standing in the middle of a museum, listening to her as she described why an image of a man reading a book had moved her so deeply swept over him. A helpless smile stole over his lips. “You look so beautiful when you talk about the things you love.”
Her cheeks bloomed, and she glanced away, but he wasn’t having any of that.
Taking hold of her chin, he tilted her head up, all gentleness in his motions. He darted his gaze between her eyes. “You are,” he insisted. “The whole time you were talking, I wanted to . . .”
He’d wanted to stay there, listening to her forever. She was the exact opposite of him, full where he was hollow, caring so deeply while every choice he’d had stripped from him had fed a growing, gnawing apathy. Her vibrancy was shaking his soul to life.
But he couldn’t say that. Without the words to describe how she was confusing everything, he showed her the best he could, dipping down to capture her mouth. He’d wanted to do that, too, in the museum. Wanted to kiss Monet and Degas and Picasso from her lips, until they were nothing but brushstrokes and canvas and air.
Deconstructed, precisely the way she’d said. And reassembled by an artist’s knowing hands.
Feeling like he was the one being taken apart, he gripped her more tightly, with none of the possession of a few moments before but with an intensity that he couldn’t quite explain. She held him right back, though, curling her hand around his nape and threading her fingers through his hair. He took control of the kiss, trying to push all these thoughts she’d been awakening inside of him into the possession of his mouth.
She made him feel things, dammit, in places that had been so cold and empty for so long. Made him want to be better.
He swallowed down the lonely throb that thought evoked in him—the undeniable knowledge of all the ways he was lacking, especially now.
He’d left all of his responsibilities behind, had discarded the life he’d been forced into after his father’s bullshit had been exposed. He’d been directionless ever since. But here, with her, he had a purpose. Clutching at her hips, he crushed her closer to his chest, bending his will to the warm pleasure of contact. The needy thread of desire pulsing just beneath his skin.
She moaned and opened wide to him, letting him lick into her mouth. The scratch of nails against his scalp set the low burning inside of him thrumming hotter, and everything came into a sharp kind of focus. He wanted inside—wanted to fuck and touch, and be touched, but more than that he wanted to give her something.
With his heart hammering and his own need a dull, dense ache, he walked her backward toward the bed. He pressed on her shoulder until she sat, and then he dropped to his knees. Her legs fell apart with the barest of prompting. Dragging both palms up the curves of her calves, he licked his lips. Looked up at her for permission as he skimmed his hands up her thighs, rucking her skirt up higher. When he slipped his fingertip along the elastic of her underwear, her breath stuttered in her chest. The fabric was damp and hot, the perfume of her cunt a soft presence in the air, one that made him even harder.
He slid his thumb along the center panel of her panties as he stared into her eyes. “This. The whole time you were talking about art. I wanted to do this.”
“What?” She’d dug one hand into the hem of her skirt, clenching it in a fist so tight her knuckles paled. “Get between my legs?”
But it had been more than that. He shook his head and leaned down, kissed one knee. Then higher, on the inside of her thigh. With his lips still pressed to her flesh, he curled his fingers into the waistband of her underwear. Cast his gaze up the length of her body. “To thank you.” For so many things he wasn’t ready to say aloud. So instead he lifted his chin and smirked. “For teaching me about art.”
“Oh, really?” Her words and tone were all skepticism, but she lifted up when he prompted, letting him tug her panties down. He eased them over her feet and spread her legs again, holding them wide with his hands on her thighs.
“Really.”
He’d wanted to thank her for letting him see what she was seeing when she looked at ancient paintings, for helping him understand what she was trying to do in her own battered sketchbook.
For giving him this week and all of its diversions, and making him talk about himself, if only a little.
“Well.” It came out like a sigh. She was uncomfortable. Twitchy and nervous, and her thighs kept pressing against his hands as if she were trying subtly to close them. None of it was as bad as that first night, but he still wanted to shake her—to remind her that only good things were going to happen here. Her throat bobbed. “You’re welcome?”
“You can’t say ‘you’re welcome’ until I’ve finished with my thank you.”
“You weren’t done?”
He raised his brows. “Believe me. You’ll know it when I’m finished with you.”
He hadn’t even started yet.
With that promise in the air—with the scent of her driving him mad and with his ribs ready to burst, he slipped his fingers along the soft, pink folds of her. He held them open and ducked his head, transcribing his actions, looking up into her eyes before taking a first gentle lick.
Just like the first time, she was all sweetness and musk and the salt-sweat taste of sex against his tongue. She wasn’t as desperate—he hadn’t worked her up as hard, but he was cresting on his own desire, and he dug in, unreserved and unabashed. He worked teasing circles over her clit and then dipped down to lick inside. Her fingers wound themselves into his hair, finally letting go of the hem of her skirt, and he shifted the fabric higher. There was still something so illicit to it, though, even if he’d lost all sense of shame so many years ago. He knelt there, completely dressed, with his head up a girl’s skirt, eating her out on the edge of a bed. It was juvenile, and it was beneath him. And it was fantastic.
The noise she made when he pressed his fingers inside had his hand digging into the tender flesh of her thigh, his eyes closing as he sucked her clit between his lips. She’d shown him how and where to touch the night before, had taken the buzzing end of that vibrator and pressed it just—
Her knee jerked up, a sharp shock of impact against his shoulder, and her moan was the most uninhibited he’d heard. He caught her leg before she could do more damage, throwing it over his shoulder and swiping harder with his tongue, curling his fingers, trying to match the way she’d angled the glass as she’d thrust it home.
She jerked hard at his hair, and fuck, it hurt, but in the best way. She tried to let go, starting to stutter out some kind of apology, but he grabbed her hand and put it exactly where it had been.
He parted from her flesh just long enough to glare up at her. “Don’t you dare hold back.”
Not after all the progress they’d made, not when she was finally starting to give him exactly what he’d wanted.
Even if it wasn’t anything like what he thought he’d been looking for when they’d first begun.
It didn’t take long after that. As if a spell of her own inhibitions and all that ingrained doubt had suddenly melted away, she gave in to it, pressing her hips forward. He gave her another finger beside the first two, filling her up the way that someday—God, he hoped, someday—he was going to do for real. Kissed her clit wet and sloppy, lapping up the slick taste of her, and when she finally tensed, he locked in. Didn’t change a thing, kept pressing and pressing, circling right where—