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“Watch out.” He slides his hands up from my knees. His thumbs press into my inner thighs. “I don’t think you’ve ever seen me when I have something to prove.”
I’m pretty sure Jay has always had something to prove. I shake my head. “So prove it.”
He gives me an intense, breath-stopping half smile. Then he bows his head and leans forward.
The first kiss against my inner thigh is tender. Then he pushes my skirt up and leans in, and the next kiss—a few inches up—is searing. My legs fall open. I tilt my head back.
He shifts, spreading my legs farther apart, hiking my skirt to my waist, and kisses me right between the legs—right on my clit.
The moan I make seems to reverberate in my chest. My toes. He glances up and his tongue flicks out, touching the bundle of nerves that makes up what is now my clit. It’s light, but sensation scatters through me.
The lights seem brighter. Hotter.
“Do you love it?” he growls.
“More.” My hands tangle in his hair, and he brings his mouth back to me. Licking. Caressing. Fingers spreading me open, petal by petal, tongue caressing my center.
I’ve held back everything I can, trying to close my heart like a fist. But I unfurl for him now.
If he was trying to prove that I was vulnerable—that after everything we’ve gone through, I’d open for him, soft and trembling—he’s done it. I can’t hold anything back. I let everything go, kiss by kiss, caress by caress. I let him know my secrets. Let him discover what makes me tremble.
“I love it,” I moan.
He looks up long enough to meet my eye with a knowing, triumphant smile.
I let him into me, one lick at a time, until my heart is beating in time with the rhythm he develops. Until it feels like he’s holding on to my soul. I let him in, and finally—I let go.
He holds me as I let out a little noise. Searing pleasure rushes through me on a wash of warmth. It overtakes me completely, wiping all thought from my mind. Then, it ebbs slowly away.
When I can finally focus again, he’s watching me. His eyes seem almost black.
My hands are tangled in his hair.
I smooth the strands back in place. I clear my throat, just to be sure my voice will work again.
Then I speak. “Are you done?”
“Not hardly.”
“Good.” I swallow. “Take me to bed.”
He does. I don’t really have a chance to see the house. It’s a blur of cream walls and exposed wood beams. His bed is low and long, white linen and turquoise pillow cases.
That’s all I notice before he catches me up and kisses me, pressing his body against mine. My eyes flutter shut. Our bodies fit together so perfectly when we’re standing. I can feel the hard length of his cock against me.
“Hey.” His voice is dark. “Maria. I want you so much.”
I let my hands fall to the button of his jeans. His hands encompass mine. We undo the snap together. He shifts the fabric over his hips as I undo the zipper.
I trace the length of his erection through the fabric of his boxers. His breath hisses out.
“Em. I’m so fucking horny.”
I take off his shirt. His chest is a light brown. The light gives it a hint of gold.
“How do I take off your dress?”
I turn around. “One zipper.”
His hands are warm on the nape of my neck. Cool air whispers against my spine as he unzips me.
I’m aware of the echo of my last orgasm, fading but still resonant. His fingers brush my hips. My shoulders. He undoes my bra.
I let my clothing slip to the ground and turn around.
That intensity in his eyes is dialed up. His gaze sweeps over me. I felt vulnerable before; now my breath is a hot miasma in my chest.
“Em.” His voice caresses me. “You’re…”
My eyes meet his.
“You’re utterly lovely.”
He pulls me to him and kisses me.
It shouldn’t be this easy to give up everything. To let myself relax against him.
It is.
It’s easy when he pulls me into bed. When he cradles me with his arms, making me feel safe. When he kisses my throat. My jawbone. The underside of my breast. I catch fire again when he kisses my nipple.
“Anywhere you don’t want me to touch?” I ask in return.
He shakes his head and kisses me again.
It feels so safe in his bed. So safe kissing him. Learning his responses touch by touch. Shifting his boxers down his lean frame, learning the way he clenches his jaw when something feels good.
He pulls away for a minute—to dart into a bathroom and come back with a condom and lube.
I roll the latex down his length. Let him push two slick fingers inside me.
I guide him inside me. “Shh.” I hold up a hand. “You’re big. Let me adjust.”
He kisses me. I lied. He’s perfect. It’s not my body that needs to adjust. It’s my heart. I’m not sure how it is that he’s fitting, but he is.
I love the feel of him inside me. Of him taking me. Of me opening for him. For the minutes when our bodies join, I love that I can almost let go of my lingering fears. I sink into the feel of his mouth on mine, his body on mine. I give myself over to the slide as we join, and the friction as he pulls out. He adjusts his hips so that he grazes my clit at the end of every stroke. I give myself over to the feel of him, the feel of us.
When he comes, I feel it.
I open my eyes first. His hair is damp, slicked back against his forehead. He lets out a shuddering breath. Then he opens his eyes.
I knew I couldn’t keep myself safe from him before. I knew I was going to care about him. That I was going to get hurt.
I was fine with it.
But right now, looking up into his eyes, having tasted perfection, I’m aware of just how much he can hurt me.
And I almost don’t care.
22
JAY
“Your bathroom is like a spa. Except that it doesn’t have any plants.”
I blink, and look around me with new eyes. To me, it’s just a bathroom. The one I use all the time. From Maria’s point of view, though…
Warm sandstone contrasts with an inlay of polished river rock. The sink is poured dark concrete, and glass shelves hold fluffy towels in white and green.
There’s a console by the entry that controls radiant heating in the floor, and another one low on the wall for the bidet.
“Alas,” I say. “I kill plants.”
“Your housekeeper could water them.”
I look at her. “I don’t have a housekeeper.”
Maria looks around. She’s appropriated a T-shirt of mine, and it hangs just at her hips. “Oh dear. That makes this worse.”
I struggle to explain. “Um, well. When I bought the house, it was kind of falling apart. So I hired an architect—”
She laughs. “No, not that. I mean, you don’t even have a razor out on the counter.”
I rub my chin. “Courtesy of the world’s slowest growing facial hair. It’s not quite nonexistent, but…”
“Replace razor with comb. It’s a general comment.” She looks back at me. “I’m beginning to suspect you’re a neat freak.”
“Ah, that. Guilty as charged.”
She looks away. “This is never going to work. I’m going to leave hair all over your bathroom. You’ll resent my toothbrush and all my hair things. I’ll try to put them away, but it’ll end up a massive cluttered drawer of tangled cords. We’ll start arguing about my toothpaste. We’ll hate each other in months.”
I feel one of my eyebrows rise. “Or,” I say slowly, “we’ll accept that we’re different people and we’ll figure out an acceptable equilibrium.”
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Sure, if you have to be all reasonable about it.”
She’s been a little withdrawn since we got out of bed. I look at her. She produces one of her aforementioned hair thingies and pulls her hair int
o a ponytail, and from there does something that turns it into a bun.
“I’m taking a shower,” I tell her. “And I’m going to bed. You’re welcome to join me for either activity.”
I step under the faucet. The soap stings my eyes. I’m washing Em away—her skin on mine, her sweat on me—and I don’t know what she’s thinking.
Not until I hear the door to the shower open. I turn my face up to the spray. Her palm lands on my hip.
“Speaking of reasonable equilibria.” Her voice is low and sexy in my ear. “I’m not good at this.”
I turn to her and blink water from my eyes. She’s shed her temporarily donned shirt, and she’s totally naked. Her breasts are small and rounded, her nipples erect in the spray off the shower. She’s let her hair down, and it’s collecting droplets.
“Not good at showering? I’d never have noticed.”
She gives me a mock glare. “Not good at…afterward. I’m always expecting things to end. I know I shouldn’t, but…” She sighs. “I started my blog partly as a way to make fun of myself. I figured if I was going to catastrophize everything, I might as well have fun doing it.”
