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Her fingers bunched in his shirt, her eyes searching his. He didn’t pull away, and that in itself felt like a victory. “What do you want from me, Pree?” he asked quietly.
“I want you in my bed, Christian. I want you to make love to me because we both want it this time. Because we see each other. Because I can’t breathe for wanting you.”
His eyes were like twin blue flames, so many questions and demands still swirling in them. With one smooth move—which was a miracle in itself given how much she was shaking—she peeled off her pajama top. She didn’t let herself think or hesitate. Or pause. Because if she did, if she let the voluble silence get to her, she might stop.
The cool breeze from the ocean hit her bare breasts at once. A soft gasp loosed from her mouth and her dark brown nipples instantly puckered. Christian stared at her, only the granite tightness of his jaw betraying his reaction.
“Your shirt,” Priya demanded.
He grunted and she wondered for a second if that was a no. But then with an intensely masculine gesture, he held the top edge and plucked off his T-shirt in one movement. She was so lost in his nakedness that it escaped her for a second that it seemed he was agreeing. To all her demands.
The sparse hair on his chest shimmered almost golden in the orange light that filled the room. His chest was tight with definition, his belly rock hard.
All the boyish charm was gone. So much of his twenties just vanished in a puff of smoke. So many years they could have spent together. No, she couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t go down that rabbit hole again. Not when he was here now. With her. Watching her with such intensity that she felt claimed before he even touched her.
And she couldn’t act as if he’d lost some essential part of himself.
No, he was a better man now, even though she wouldn’t have thought that possible. Where there had been a brash, almost ruthless charm and will, now there was compassion and depth. Ambition had been tempered by a fierce fire to make each day hold more meaning than the last. It was as if the eight years he’d been gone had distilled the very best part of him into something stronger, more wonderful.
Her mouth dry, Priya licked at her lips.
“At some point, you’ll have to take over the wheel because I’ve used up all my courage,” she said with a shaky pout.
His gaze moved over every inch of her bared flesh. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples aching for his mouth. One dark brow rose in a silken question as he signaled at her shorts with his chin.
Priya pushed them off. She had nothing on but light brown skin-colored panties. Her fingers played with the waistband of the flimsy fabric, her entire being pulled taut and thin. Just one breath, one touch from him would break her. Or would it set her free?
That weekend at the cabin, she’d resolutely stayed underneath the sheets. And she’d kept him there, too. She frowned. Something about the last ten nights they’d spent sleeping together in the same bed clicked into place.
“What?” Christian demanded.
“You hate being swallowed up by sheets.” She looked around her, heat swarming her face. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but our bed is quite the battlefield every night. I pull the duvet up and you push it away. If not for the fact that you continuously give out enough warmth to fuel a village, I’d be cold.”
He grunted.
“That weekend at the cabin... I probably half choked you.”
He rubbed a brow, a grin tugging at those gorgeous lips. “I do have a vague memory of being out of breath. It was the most singular sex I’d ever had. I remember wondering if you were into pain-play and breath-play and just didn’t know it.”
Her gasp of outrage made him laugh. That deep, infectious sound that burrowed into the center of her, becoming a part of her.
She lifted her leg to kick him, stopping her foot an inch from his chest. Fingers wrapped around her ankle and pulled her forward until her foot sat flush against his chest. Even that simple contact lit her up from the inside. “But I wanted you so badly that I’d have rolled around in the snow, half freezing to death if you’d said that’s where you wanted to—”
Her toe touched his mouth, cutting off his words. When he’d have bitten her, she scampered away. But not far. Not tonight. Or ever again.
“You ask questions, Starling. But you don’t really want the answers.”
“I’m not running anymore, Christian. I just don’t want this to become a talking session instead of a doing-all-kinds-of-wickedly-delicious-things-with-my-husband session. A husband I’ve desperately missed.”
Heat flared in his eyes. And she realized it was because she’d called him her husband. As if she’d triggered it by saying it, something indefinable shimmered into existence between them.
Priya traced his throat, his pecs, his hard abdomen with her foot and then she brought it down, down, down, slowly, gently to his crotch. His erection pressed into the arch of her foot, and the solid length of him made her lower belly clench and release in agonizing emptiness.
She applied just a little more pressure and felt his immediate reaction. The faint thrust of his hips following her foot when she pulled back made her gasp. “Now, please, Christian.”
She watched as he shed his sweatpants. Took in his body. The hair that dusted his corded thighs gleamed copper. He prowled onto the bed, the very breadth of his shoulders her entire field of vision. His shaft nudged up toward his belly, hard and long.
“I want to return the favor now,” she said, scooting closer, pushing his chest back with her hand. His fingers touched her immediately, playing with the ends of her hair where it fell on her breasts. “Start getting my practice in. It’s going to be at least a decade before I get really good at it. In case you didn’t know this about me, I’m very stubborn.”
