He freezes.
It’s like a switch flips.
My hands run through his hair. I don’t know when I put them there. They move down his neck. To his shoulders. I fist his shirt and pull. Never looking up, he grabs the bottom of his shirt with his free hand. It goes over his head in one motion. It hangs in a circle around the arm he is still using to apply pressure to my leg.
“Move your arm and let the shirt fall.”
His breath hitches. I’m shaking. I hope he can’t tell. His shirt lands next to my pants, and he returns to my thigh.
“Surely you are familiar with the saying…kiss and make it better?”
Slowly—oh, God, so slowly—he leans in more and presses his lips to the bottom of the scrape near my knee.
Oh, yeah. I’m feeling no pain. Then his warm lips move up and press again.
Then again.
And up again.
If my knees don’t buckle out from under me, it’s going to be an unqualified miracle.
Near the top, after a dozen plus ongoing kisses, I touch his arm and bring it to my hip. To steady myself. I hope it seems like a reward.
His arm wraps completely around me. My hip at his shoulder, his palm pressing along the small of my back, stopping when his fingers encircle the other side of my waist.
I indulge myself. I run my fingers through his hair. Silk. Slide them over his shoulders. Satin. Trace the indents and sinews. Stone. The planes of his shoulder blades. Oak.
He hums.
I drag my fingers up his back, lightly scratching with my nails. Very lightly.
He moans.
It drowns out mine.
Here is a crossroads. A bridge. A defining moment. Run or succumb. Lead or be led. Live or be dead.
I want a lot.
I want to be more like the women he dates. The polished women. The ones on his arm.
I want him to not just be a fuck hot pretentious wanker who should drink pineapple juice so I can blow his beautiful cock more often.
Or something less whorish.
I want him to scoop me up in his arms and carry me to his bed and tell me he sees me for who I am and wants me and respects me, and he is only a hardass to get the job done and he will be the most patient and wonderful man on this green earth if I will only give us the chance.
But at the end of the day, I’m a practical gal.
He’s practically the sexiest thing I have ever encountered, and I am going to practically do whatever I practically can for as long as he is willing.
He reaches the top of the red line.
I want him to cross it.
“Mmmm,” I hear myself say. “I bet your lips would make everything feel better.”
With my words, he bows his head against me. His grip tightens around my waist.
“Isn’t there something in your way?” My voice sounds suddenly lower to my own ears.
“Yes,” he whispers.
Oh, my…why is this actually working?
“What do you need to do? Want? Tell me.” Slowly, I run a hand though his hair again and again.
“I need…to take off your clothes. I want…I want to…” he breathes into me.
I run my hand up under his jaw. “Want what?” My voice is low, slow. “Tell me.”
His hand at my thigh moves up and twists around my panties. “I want to take these off and spread you open and taste you and tongue you and feel you come apart.”
Gah. Thoroughly outlined. Well done, Canon.
I wrap a hand around the one he has at my waistband and encourage him to pull down. His other hand slides around to help, and I move my hands out of his way.
The panties fall into the ever-growing pile. I feel his breath. He kisses and slides his palms up my sides.
There is probably something I should say now to keep this little scene going, but I’m rather focused on not doing a header onto the sofa.
He presses his lips to my inner thigh, his breath swirls inward, and I pull his hair reflexively. He angles and does it again before he speaks. “Let me take you to bed.” I think my ears trick me into hearing a “please.”
The light hairs along his arm graze my palm as I travel from shoulder to forearm to hand. My fingers drag over his lifeline to reach his fingers, their tips. I curl and hold his fingers, and they curl into mine. Though I wish he would put himself out there, pull me, I pull him and step toward the bedroom, and I feel him shift and rise to follow me.
A half-naked Alaric Canon is following me to his bed. Forget buckling knees or not doing a header, this…this is a bona fide miracle.
I’m afraid to breathe. Afraid to upset whatever astrological alignment has set this in motion. Wherever you are, dear butterfly, keep flapping your chaotic wings. Flap them. Flap them like your little life depends upon it…or at least my little death.
Save for moonlight filtered through the curtain, the bedroom is dark. His feet pad along the carpet behind me.
Next to the bed, I stop; I need to turn and face him. Face this.
I’m not able to make myself turn.
I reach back behind me and find him. Stretching until I feel his arms, then sliding down them until I can feel his wrists and hold them.
I can’t get over the feel of his skin on mine. Warm. Smooth. Real.
I pull forward, and he steps flush against me, his every breath pushing against my spine. My hands travel to cover his, palm to back, and I place one on my abdomen and hold it there while I guide the other beneath the front of my shirt and drag it up my body until it brushes under the swell of my breast.
His breaths burn my neck. I press his hands into my flesh, then leave them there as I arch back and bring my arms around his shoulders and bend until I feel his hands stir. He twists to cup my breast as his lower thumb traces where my thigh ends and the rest of me begins.
As if I think he’s asking needlessly for permission, I grant it. “Yes.”
If I thought we were flush before, I was wrong. He pulls me against him, into him. Palms my breasts.
Yeah, just palms. I’m not big enough for his whole hand. Few would be. His hands are big. Huge.
Big hands include long fingers, a fact of which I’m reminded when the cupping between my legs turns to delving.
Oh, yeah, well, hey now…there. Right there. Oh, please—keep going…or there…up there. Yeah, that works, too…Jesus, I…whoa…I guess there works too…I concede, you know better than…more…holy…wow…All those times my knees threatened to give, to stop supporting me, they weren’t crying wolf; I would collapse if I didn’t have my fingers entwined behind his neck.
I need to lie down. Before I fall down.
I break away and sit back on the bed, and he seems almost worried, but I pull him to me and he drops and hits the floor and ends up looking up at me, hands roaming my skin.
Beautiful. He is gloriously, scandalously, incandescently beautiful.
I want to hold him.
And never let go.
It scares me.
Get back on task. I find a word. “Now.”
He descends into the shadows.
Oh. Okay, so that is what we’re doing. I can barely see his outline. Um, all right. I bless the darkness and hope it hides whatever shows on my face.
“This is not something I have ever been into,” I hear myself say. That is a bit too real. A trip down a memory lane of lame lovers. Wow, over-share much? I know I need to cover my slip. Distract him. “Convince me.” I pull his hair without reason. It spurs him.
Oh, holy night…I have been wondering about this. A niggling. Rooting around in my brain. Why would he need pushing? Act like he needs it? The concern has been there, but I have not wanted to consider it. It would be unfair to have such a pretty package and nothing inside. To look like a sex god but be sans skill set.
Not. An. Issue.
I don’t know exactly what he’s doing down there, and I don’t really care just so long as he keeps doing it for a long, long time and—
Then he adds fingers into the mix. Where was I…what was I thinking?
Each pass and pull works together to remove and erase the fumbling of past visitors who should now, in whatever clouded corner they inhabit, hang their heads in collective shame. Adam with his kitten licks. Paul rubbing out a fire.