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“I’ve got that.” He took one step towards her and she was in his arms, pressed against his length. “I’ve got you. Breathe.” There wasn’t enough air in the world to fill her lungs. “Listen to my voice.”
She could do that. She nodded against his chest.
“It’s you and me. No one else. Whatever happened before, that’s not going to happen now. Let it go. Be with me. You know I want you. I’ll take care of you. We’ll take care of each other. I’d carry you out of here but our luck right now we’d end up in the kitchen or I’d give you concussion on the doorframe.”
He said that last bit while he backed them out of the bathroom. She didn’t let go of him, just said the word, “Left,” to orient him.
He missed the bedroom doorway, thudding into the hallway wall. He spun her, backed her up against it and pressed in on her like he had before she got the front door open. This time she was facing him and he wasn’t wearing all those clothes. This time he was kissing her, breaking off to tell her how they’d take their time, how he had nowhere else he wanted to be, no one else he wanted to make love to, sleep next to, wake up with.
If he wasn’t holding her up, she’d have been a panting puddle at his feet. She had both hands in his hair. She was not letting him go, not letting him think long enough to figure out what a bad idea doing it with the crazy woman was. She was barely letting him get more than a few words at a time out and yet she clung to them too, clung to his beautiful voice and the stories he told to make her believe this would turn out all right.
When there was no bone left in her legs for the surgeons to reconstruct, he did lift her. His shoulder to her stomach giving her the perfect view of that wonderful backside she dare not touch. Did he have any idea how well constructed he was, how built for sex? How entirely dazzled she was?
He got them through the bedroom door telling her how much he wanted to be with her, that he was going to keep her in bed all the next day. When his shins hit the bed, he lowered her to the mattress and stood over her, his eyes down on her. Did he have any idea how much she wished he could see her? Because when he looked at her like that he made her feel beautiful.
Her turn to speak. “I can’t stop staring at you.”
“Probably good I can’t see that.” Full force dimple. “Go right to my head.”
Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was surprised not to see it making her skin jump. She touched his leg tentatively with her toe, flattened her foot on his thigh and he took it in his hands.
“You have great legs.” He’d had his hands up and down them as he’d carried her. He pressed his thumbs into her instep. “Tiny feet, good fit for my hands.”
Sore feet from the heels. His touch hurt and she flinched. He stopped immediately, held still. Showing her how this was going to be. “Nothing you don’t like.” She brought her other foot to his other thigh, she could show him too, and he moved his thumbs again, this time long strokes from heel to the base of her big toe. “Everything slow from here; everything easy.” Hands to the other foot, thumbs probing, stroking. “You can stop me anytime.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
“We don’t have to hurry.”
But it was late, after 2am. “You don’t have to treat me differently to anyone else.”
He put a hand to the inside of her ankle then ran his palm up her calf to her knee. She sucked in a breath as he moved it down along her inside thigh, stopping at the elastic edge of her underwear. “There is no one else. Only you.” His hands moved to her feet, her ca
lves. “For a long time there’s been no one I cared enough about to want to be with for more than one night. I’m treating you differently, because you are different and this is not one night.”
“I don’t want you to—”
“What, make you feel special? Make you happy? Just try and stop me.” The words pity me shrivelled up on her tongue, got deleted from her mental dictionary. “Besides you make me feel happy, so it’s only fair to return the favour.”
“I do?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. She was such a dummy, didn’t know when to shut up.
He laughed, then did something really alarming. He went down to his knees on the rug. She sat up so quickly she surprised him, her feet stomping the floor either side of his hips, her thighs skimming his shoulders, her stomach brushing his head.
He sat on his heels. “Okay.” He smiled. “I’m going too fast.”
It shouldn’t have been too fast but it was. She’d been calm, ready, for all of fifteen minutes. “I’m sorry. I’m no good at this.”
He moved, put his hands to her shoulders and pushed her back, climbing up her body, dragging her further up the bed till they were both lying sideways across it and she was cradled in the spoon of his bent knees, her back against his front.
Being shifted like that was a shock, more so than when he’d rolled her or picked her up; it punched out of her in a squeal. His physicality was a wonderful thing; he was strong, he could be fast, he could move around her, with her, with such ease. That’s not something Hamish had ever done.
Damon kept talking. Telling her he loved her hair, particularly the little random curls she could never keep off the back of her neck, the ones that annoyed her for their failure to be tamed in place by pins or spray.
He spoke against her neck, a hand caressing her arm, but was otherwise still, just being there with her, teaching her to trust him.
“Your skin is like nothing else I know. Not velvet, not silk, not satin. I thought the freesias were in your soap, from a bottle, but that smell is in your skin. It’s wild and sweet.” He kissed the back of her neck. “It excites me.”
She turned to face him, pushing him over onto his back, coming up on her elbow to study him up close. He had his eyes closed, the dimple in his cheek packed away, his far arm bent at the elbow, palm under his head. His posture was relaxed but there was a tension in his body, a hum he couldn’t silence.
