“Hey. It’s okay.” She patted his back with a shy, nervous hand. He was usually so calm, so controlled. It unnerved her to see him agitated.
He didn’t seem to hear her. “And the worse it gets, the worse I want it,” he went on, his voice harsh. “Which makes me feel like a jerk, and a user, and an asshole. Promising to protect you—”
“You did protect me,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, and I told you it wasn’t an exchange. You don’t owe me sex. You don’t owe me anything. And that really fucks me up. Because I can’t even remove myself from the situation. I’m scared to death to leave you alone. And that puts me between a rock and a hard place.”
She put her finger over his mouth. “Wow,” she murmured. “I had no idea you could get worked into such a state, Mr. Supermellow Liam Let’s-Contemplate-the-Beauty-of-the-Flower Knightly.”
His explosive snort of derision cut her off. She shushed him again, enjoying the feel of his lips beneath her finger. “You’re not a jerk or a user,” she said gently. “You were magnificent. Thank you. Again.”
He looked away. There was a brief, embarrassed pause. “That’s very generous of you,” he said, trying to flex the wounded hand. “But I’m not fishing for compliments.”
“I never thought you were.”
She placed her own hand below his and rested them both gently on his thigh. Her fingers dug into the thick muscle of his quadriceps, through the dirty, bloodstained denim of his jeans. Beneath the fabric, he was so hot. So strong and solid.
She moved her hand up, slowly but surely, stroking higher toward his groin. His breath caught, and then stopped entirely as her fingers brushed the turgid bulge of his penis beneath the fabric.
Here went nothing. “I think I know what you mean, about the hard place,” she whispered, swirling her fingertips over it. Wow. A lot of him. That thick, broad, hard stalk just went on and on. “Or was this what you meant when you were referring to the rock?”
His face was a mask of tension, neck muscles clenched, tendons standing out. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, his voice strangled.
Aw. So sweet. Her fingers closed around him, squeezing. He groaned, and a shudder jarred his body. “I can’t seem to stop,” she said.
“Watch out, Nancy,” he said hoarsely. “If you start something now, there’s no stopping it.”
She stroked him again, deeper, tighter, a slow caress that wrung a keening gasp from his throat. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
He reached out, a little awkwardly and clasped his arms around her shoulders. He stared into her eyes as if expecting her to bolt.
He pulled her close, enfolding her in his warmth, his power.
Suddenly, they were kissing. She had no idea who had kissed whom. The kiss was desperate, achingly sweet. Not a power struggle, not a matter of talent or skill, just a hunger to get as close as two humans could be. He held her like he was afraid she’d be torn away from her.
She tugged his shirt up, and he wrenched it off. She almost purred when she saw him half naked. His skin was pale, and his lean, sinewy muscles were sharply defined in the dim light that dangled over the kitchen stove. So hot. He smelled like soap, sweat. Then he pulled her tight T off, and she was just as exposed as he was, blinking through her mane of tangled hair. She was goose-pimpled by the chill that hit her skin, scorched by his eyes, his roving hands. Her nipples tingled where they touched his chest.
Shyness gripped her, but it was nothing like her usual cold feeling when the iron-plated doors slammed shut in the distance, shutting her lover out and her own small, numb self deep in. No, this was altogether different. She wasn’t numb. She was shaking apart. About to fly into a million pieces. It was marvelous and unbearable. She crossed her arms over her chest, eyes squeezed shut. “Can we turn off the light?”
He froze for a few seconds. “Don’t hide from me,” he said.
“Oh, I won’t, I’m not,” she assured him, through trembling lips. “It’s just that I’m…it would be easier for me.”
He started to speak, and she cut him off before he could ruin it. “I don’t want to stop, I swear,” she said forcefully. “Just the light.”
He hesitated, as if trying to read some secret language in her face.
“It’s because I really care about this,” she blurted. “I’m trying to…I’ll use every trick I can think of not to shut down with you.”
Ooh. Smooth move, Nance. Big turnoff, laying out her sexual problems to a prospective lover before she even made him come.
But Liam didn’t look put off. “All right,” he said. “First, let’s put down the bed, though. I don’t want to do that in the dark.”
Oh. She’d forgotten that detail. A few deft tugs and wrenches with Liam’s big muscles, and her rickety old futon bed was flat and ready for business. The mattress was already dressed with a sheet beneath the couch cover, which he tossed away. Then he went to the stove and yanked the string. The room was plunged into a million shades of gray.
The darkness hid nothing. The grays took on subtle meanings, shaded nuances, and he was a fulcrum of deeper gray in the midst of them, an enormous, brooding presence. Every hair prickled on her body at his proximity, every sense was attenuated to its limit: eyes straining in the dark, lungs pulling in deep breaths for his scent, ears attentive to the pad of his bare feet. Hungry to touch his skin, to taste his salt.
He unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, shucked pants and briefs and socks with quick businesslike movements that the darkness loaded with pure eroticism.
She stared at his body, the curves and angles and contours in the shadows, the jut of his big penis. She shoved down her own jeans, peeled them off her ankles, and waited for him, her legs shaking.
She sensed him moving closer, but it was still a shock when his arms circled her. She convulsed with delicious shivers. His chest pressed to her breasts, the stroke of his hand trailed down the curve of her back, the swell of her hip, fitting her against him.
His cock prodded her leg. She could hardly breathe.
He bent his head, kissing where her neck met her shoulder. “You’re not going to shut down,” he said, part command, part triumph.
“No,” she replied, astonished to realize that it was true. She wasn’t. In spite of the terror they’d just been through and her tedious list of hang-ups. Usually, the harder a lover pounded at her stone walls demanding to be let in, the thicker her walls became. With Liam, there was no wall. Or there might be, but it didn’t matter, because he was miles inside, and driving her ever deeper into her own self, deeper than she’d ever been. Every sensation, every emotion was a revelation. The thrill of leaping into a star-studded nowhere and the pleasure of coming back to a home she’d never known she had, all at once.
He pulled her down onto the bed and arranged her so she was wrapped around him, perched on his thighs, arms looped around his shoulders. Her nose buried in his sweat-stiffened thick, spiky hair. His cock pressed against her belly, his arms were tense and shaking.
Tenderness for him melted her inside, a hot shimmer around her heart that just got brighter and hotter. She slid her hand down between them and curled her fingers around his cock. She stroked, greedily exploring, teasing, milking him.
“Slow down,” he whispered. “I don’t want to come yet.”
She let up her grip, just slightly. “When, then?”
“You first.” He slid his hand down, tracing the divide of her bottom and stroking the wet, exquisitely sensitive places with an unerring fingertip while he situated her just…so…so that his penis was rubbing against her clit, while his fingers delved tenderly inside, and that slow, throbbing pressure, that slick, swirling caress turned her inside out, making her shudder with rapture. She almost fainted.
Liam hung on to her, lungs hitching. Trying not to let his fingers dig in too hard, leaving marks on her perfect skin. So soft. A marvel of nature, every detail graceful and perfect. Naked in his arms.