Page 462
Charm
Morning reaches Ryan’s bedroom in thin gray lines that slip through the blinds and stretch across his sheets.
I wake on my side with his chest against my back, one heavy arm around my waist, and his hand resting possessively beneath my breast. The heat of his body surrounds mine. His breath moves against the nape of my neck while one of his legs remains threaded between mine as though he spent the night preventing distance from finding us again.
Every part of me aches.
My thighs are sore, my lips feel swollen, and muscles I forgot existed protest when I shift beneath the blankets. The movement presses my ass against Ryan’s erection.
His arm tightens immediately.
“You’re awake,” I whisper.
“I’ve been awake.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to decide I like you in my bed.”
His voice carries the roughness of sleep, although nothing about the hand sliding down my stomach feels tired. His fingers spread across the softness beneath my navel before moving lower.
“I thought last night established that,” I say.
“Last night established that I can’t be trusted when you’re naked inside my apartment.”
“What does this morning establish?”
His mouth presses against my shoulder. “That I meant what I said about holding nothing back.”
Heat moves through me despite every sore muscle.
Ryan’s fingers reach the inside of my thigh and stop. “How bad do you hurt?”
“Enough to remember you.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was an excellent answer.”
He turns me carefully onto my back and rises over me. His hair is disordered from sleep and my hands. Shadows remain beneath his eyes after nearly ten hours of driving, but the exhaustion hasn’t weakened the way he looks at me.
“Good sore or stop touching you?” he asks.
“Good sore.”
“Tell me if that changes.”
“It won’t.”
His eyebrows lift.
“Fine,” I amend. “I’ll tell you.”
Ryan lowers his mouth to mine and kisses me without the violence that met me at his door. He takes his time, lips moving slowly while one hand cups my jaw and the other continues between my thighs.
I open beneath the first careful stroke of his fingers.
The tenderness doesn’t feel like restraint. Ryan isn’t monitoring me for fear or shaping his desire into something he believes I can survive. He touches me slowly because he wants to feel every response, and the patience carries its own form of control.
