Page 51

"Come here," she says.

Not a question. Not an invitation. An order. Using the same words she said to me in the workshop with her legs around my head. I close the distance in one step. Far too eager.

My hand cups the side of her face. Her cheek is warm against my cold, wet palm. She leans into it anyway, tilting her head into my hand. I can feel the whole shape of her jaw in my palm. My thumb reaches her mouth, and my fingers reach past her ear. She stares at me with so much more trust than I deserve.

I don't kiss her. Not yet. I just stand there, breathing, with her face in my hand and the rain on the roof, and for the first time since the workshop, I'm not telling myself to stop.

So I don't stop.

I kiss her. Not like the doorstep, not like the workshop. Slow. My mouth on hers with my hand still cupping her jaw, tasting toothpaste and underneath it her, and the rain is so loud on the roof that the sound she makes when my tongue slides against hers disappears into it. She opens her mouth wider. Her hands come up flat against my soaked shirt and press there, warm palms on cold wet fabric.

She pushes my jacket off my shoulders, and it hits the floor with a slap. Then she starts yanking on my T-shirt and I practically have to fold myself in half so she can pull it over my head. It joins the jacket immediately.

Her palms land on my bare chest and she stops.

"God, you're freezing."

"Yeah."

She doesn't take her hands away. She spreads her fingers wide and runs them over my shoulders, down my arms, back to my chest, to my stomach where every muscle tightens under her touch. Her hands look small against me. They are small against me. She's mapping me out like she's got a task and her fingers are warm and steady and thorough, and every inch of skin she touches wakes up and wants more.

I pull the hem of her shirt. "Off."

She lifts her arms. I drag it up and over her head and toss it. She's bare underneath. No bra. No panties. Nothing. Just Vanessa standing in the light with her damp hair loose and her breasts gloriously full and soft. The fading stubble marks on her collarbone from three hours ago and her nipples peaked tight from the air or my eyes or both.

I stop breathing.

She's watching me not breathe. "Aiden?"

"Give me a second."

I need more than a second. I need several years. My hands are at my sides and they're shaking while I'm looking at her bare breasts, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips. I’ve wanted to see this exact thing since the morning she showed up at my yard in heels that didn't belong on gravel, and now I'm seeing it, and my brain has left the building. Abandoning me to my task.

She hooks her fingers into my waistband. I catch her wrists.

"Not yet."

"Why not yet?"

"Because I'm barely holding it together right now, and if you put your hands on me, I'm done."

She tilts her head. "Is that supposed to make me want to stop?"

My grip tightens on her wrists. Her pulse jumps under my thumbs. She’s barefoot, fully naked, looking up at a man who could pin both her wrists with one hand, and she doesn't look scared.

She looks like she just won the biggest teddy bear at the State Fair.

I let go of her wrists and take her face in both hands and kiss her hard. Her hands immediately go for my belt. I let her have it this time. She works the buckle, the button, the zipper, and her knuckles drag against my cock through my briefs as she works. My hips jerk forward into her hand, involuntary, shameless.

"Off," she says against my mouth. "Everything."

I bend over to pull off my boots, then I shove my jeans and briefs down and kick them off and away. Her eyes drop. Her lips part. She stares long enough that my cock throbs under the attention, thick and hard and desperate for the hand she's already reaching out.

Her fingers wrap around me. Bare skin on bare skin. Warm grip, firm, sure, and my whole body goes taut, every muscle locking.

"Jesus, Vanessa." My hand slams flat against the wall beside her head. My other hand is on her hip, and my fingers are digging in and I'm trying to breathe.

She strokes me. Base to tip, slow, her thumb dragging over the crown where I'm already leaking. The sound that comes out of me is guttural, animal, nothing I'd want witnesses for. She does it again. Her eyes are on my face, watching what she's doing to me, and she's got this expression, focused, intent, the same look she gets when she's solving a problem, and it makes me want to laugh and come and die all at once.