When she’s pretty sure her vision is restored, she cracks one eye open. James is taking savoring tastes like she’s an ice cream bar, then looking up to see her reaction.
“You’re watching me?” Her voice is rough, like a burst of static.
“I’m a scientist, Ripley. I observe.” He dips his mouth again, keeping his eyes on hers. It’s maybe the hottest thing she’s ever seen.
I’m the scientist.You’rean artist,she thinks as he does it again. The next time he dips down, his eyes dark and serious, she comes again in a sudden jolt, shaking like he’s found a fault line inside her and given it a good hard shove.
This time, she takes it all in—the surprised, pleased puff of his breath, the softness of his hair in her fists, the clench of his fingers underneath her hips. She can feel the rhythm of his desire as he presses himself into the mattress, eases back, presses again.
Helikesthis. He gets hot when he’s got his tongue between her thighs. Hot when she comes.
Oh, yeah, this is going to ruin her.
He stands up and tears off his pajamas in two quick movements. He’s so beautiful, Ripley can’t breathe for a second. So alive it’s almost unreal. The moonlight throws shadows on every muscle, dipping into the puckered edges of his scar and back out again. His dragon is a flicker of wings in the dark, visible and then not.
His eyes feast on her, his hand drifting absently to his hard, glistening cock. He comes back to bed on his knees, pulls the pillow from beneath her hips, and puts his thighs between her legs, nudging them up and apart. He kneels for a moment, looking down at her while he tugs once, twice, his face contorted.
“Will you…” He brings her hand around him, squeezing to show her how hard.
“This is what you want?” she asks, encircling as much of him as her smaller hand can manage. He’s big and hot against her palm, the crown of his cock flushed and shining. She swirls her thumb through the slick at his tip. Emotion cascades across his face: agony, longing, pleasure, amazement.
“Yes,” he grits out. “I want to be…here. Close to you. Above you. I want to kiss you when I…ah, Ripley.” He drops to all fours, his head hanging low, his face in the crook of her neck. He’s uncoordinated now, his breathing quick and uneven, and he’s making little gasping, hitching groans between a river of words:You taste so good you feel unbelievable it’s never been like this for me it’s like I’m fucking eighteen oh God Ripley God Ripley God.
She should stretch this out, make it last for him the way he wanted to for her. But the thought of him finishing fast and out ofcontrol is too tempting. She wants to unearth this echo of his past and study it. Know it.
Own it.
He gives a choked cry, and then his mouth is on hers and he’s coming warm and wet across her stomach, his body bowed and trembling. It lasts a long time, and when she’s not certain whether she should keep going, he kisses the corner of her mouth and says, “A little more, my darling, I’m still…yes,there,” and it’s like he’s reached down and given her clit a firm, electric swat.
She hopes he’s not too tired to stay up for another hour. Or two.
Afterward, he gets up for tissues and her bedding, brings everything back to his side, and makes them a cozy, generous nest of covers.
He turns onto his back and pulls her across his chest. “Seven weeks,” he says, and it’s a curse and a promise.
“Seven weeks,” she replies.
“I’m moving in,” he says.
“You’re goddamn right you are.”
“Every night, Ripley. Until we’re too exhausted to carry on. We get Beauty out of the ground and into the scanner and we do this.”
“Okay,” she agrees.
“I want…” he says, and doesn’t finish.
“I know,” she says. And then, because there’s too much to say, and they both know everything anyway, she says it again: “I know.”
Ripley tries to move quietly when she wakes up. She wants to look at him when he can’t be self-conscious. She wants to mapthe freckles on his forehead. Watch the wavelike movement of his ribs when he takes one of those deeper, sighing breaths. Memorize the exact not-quite-black shade of his eyelashes.
When he finally rolls over, she’s flipping through his sketchbook. This makes him groan and fling an arm over his eyes. “Those are garbage, Ripley. They’re embarrassing.”
“They’re amazing.” She climbs back in bed and snuggles into his shoulder until he wraps his arm around her. She holds up the sketch of the old man and his truck. “What made you do this one?” She plans to ask him this about every single piece.
He rubs his eyes, adorably grumpy. “I don’t know. It’s veryAmerica.”
“You don’t have farmers changing tires in England?”
