Page 71

“It changes everything.” One hand came up to brush a wavy strand away from her face, the gentle gesture at odds with the rigidity of his pose. “And you need to be prepared for that. Because I’m through fighting it.”
His words hung in the air, as tangible as the heat between their bodies. Reese wanted to reject them, but then his mouth found hers, and logic receded. Her mind went blank in a brilliant burst of light before sensation crowded in, demanding and edgy. There was a basic carnal pleasure to be had in the mingling of breath. The clash of lips, teeth, tongues. She returned his kiss with just a hint of the wildness chugging through her veins while struggling to claw back logic. Found it surprisingly difficult to summon.
The softness of his lips was an intriguing contrast to his muscled strength. It would have been easy to suspect that he was all hard angles and steely resolve. But he’d shown her the chinks in his armor, the tattered pieces of a troubled childhood that had shaped the man he was today.
Hayes pulled her closer, one arm a solid band across her back, the other going beneath her hips to lift her when he stood. Reese wrapped her legs around him and reveled in angling the kiss, tracing the seam of his lips with the tip of her tongue and being rewarded when his came in search of hers.
She wasn’t aware of movement until he dropped her on her bed, his body immediately following her descent. Reese finally realized what stepping away from her this morning must have cost him. A long inert need was rising, whipping her pulse with demand. Giving in to it, she pressed nearer. Felt her heart give a bump of delight at the contact. He was shirtless, and her breasts flattened against the muscled wall of his torso. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of spare flesh on him. She urged him to his side so she could stroke a hand along the spot where his pecs bisected his chest. Stayed to explore the peaks and hollows where bone met sinew.
Hayes nipped at the corner of her mouth before strewing stinging kisses down the cord of her neck. He found the pulse beating madly at the base of her throat and bathed it with his tongue. She understood hunger, but not this rollicking through her system, dimming thought and belying reason. The longing to immerse herself in the taste and feel of him could be dismissed as a simple physical need if another could sate it. If it weren’t limited to this man. This moment. If she’d been capable of thought, it would have terrified her.
He slid a hand under her shirt and trailed it down her spine. Heat bloomed in its wake. Reese had the tantalizing mental image of bare flesh against bare flesh. His hair-roughened chest touching her smooth skin. And the vision lingered. Beckoned. Until he dragged the hem of her shirt over her head to toss it carelessly aside.
He visually feasted on the flesh he’d bared, his fingers smoothing a path across her skin, each an individual brand. The stamp of desire in his expression ignited an answering fever in her blood. Reese pressed close enough to brush her nipples against him in an exquisite sensual assault. His hands settled on her hips, bare except for the wisp of panties. The air sizzled with sexual tension, the energy humming and leaping betweenthem. Every sensation felt new. Exhilarating. But when his arm banded across her back to bring her closer, the evidence of his impatience was even headier.
Her hands mapped his chest, before she moved one lower to brush against his belly. When she felt the muscles jump, she smiled and slowed her touch. His desire stoked hers, summoning a long, slumbering sensual power that could heighten the moment for both of them.
He drew a crooked knuckle over the curve of her breast, and her breath hitched once before catching again in bated anticipation. She released it in a delighted gasp when he caught one nipple in his fingers and rolled it gently. Her back arched in a silent invitation, one he heeded.
Cupping her breasts, he leaned in to take a nipple in his mouth, batting it gently with his tongue. One thumb stroked its twin before giving in to an appetite for flesh and suckling strongly from her. Sensation arrowed a path straight to her womb. The world abruptly spun away until there was only this man. This moment.
Buffeted by sensation, Reese clung to Hayes’s shoulders. The effect he had on her was foreign. He made her feel too deeply. There was risk in wanting too much. She’d learned to navigate life in the narrow parameters she’d erected. If there was less pleasure in allowing in only the expected, there was security, too. But somehow she knew that missing this night with Hayes would have left a nagging void she would never be able to fill.
When he lifted his head, she stared at him with heavy eyes. The shadows turned his gaze dark, molten. The intensity in it should have brought a scamper of nerves. But the frankly carnal passion between them wasn’t so much frightening as intoxicating. She slid a hand to his biceps, as she moved closer, pressing her mouth to his shoulder, before testing a hard muscle lightly with her teeth. She brushed her fingers over his back,feeling the skin punctuated by vertebrae. The muscles beneath her touch quivered like an impatient stallion.
The thrill of stroking him was intoxicating, eliciting a craving in her blood. But knowing that she could please him in return, make him shake and want, held a tantalizing allure.
The shroud of shadows heightened the sense of intimacy. Reese’s hands went on a quest of discovery, finding all the places that made him shudder. The soft, velvety skin beneath his arm. She could sense the tremors coursing through his body. Feel his fraying restraint in the pressure of his kiss. A bolt of exhilaration twisted through her as she realized that she’d never caused such raw, unvarnished need. It ignited an answering hunger in her and a determination to push him further. Her fingers meandered lower to trace the silky line of hair descending from his navel.
His thumbs made lazy circles that drew her nipples into taut, sensitive buds. She trailed a finger along the skin on his belly where it met the waistband of his shorts and smiled when she felt the muscles bunch beneath her touch. As if realizing something between them had shifted, he stilled in what Reese recognized as tacit male approval. She rolled down the waistband, tugging at the fabric until he raised his hips and she could remove them and push them down his legs. He kicked them aside. His hands were fast and urgent when he peeled the panties from her, flinging them over his shoulder.
She wanted to laugh at his urgency, but the sound turned to a gasp when his fingers found the dampness between her thighs. He began to stroke as his mouth moved over hers. Hot. Wet. Raw and visceral. The tight leash on his control had slipped. His free hand explored the dip of her waist. The curve of her hip.
The taste of him whispered of promised pleasure, a devastating dive into sensation. Heat, a quick, stabbing spear of it, arrowed up her spine. Her bones went to water. When heparted her folds and slipped one finger inside her, her senses fragmented. Colors wheeled against her closed eyelids. Need fisted in her belly.
Reese tore her mouth away, her breath coming in short, ragged little pants. She wasn’t used to this rollicking in her pulse. The fierce compulsion to cover his body with hers and explore him one inch at a time. She jerked in his arms when his thumb circled her clit, rubbing it in a rhythm designed to drive her to madness. Her hand slipped between them, her fingers closing around his cock. She traced the length of him with dancing fingers, had time to encircle him and stroke once, again. Was rewarded by the sound he made, something between a curse and a groan. The leash on his restraint snapped, and he moved over her, fitting his straining erection to her moist heat. He pressed his face into the curve of her throat as he buried himself in her.
She opened her eyes. Found her vision blurred. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Hayes began to thrust, and conscious thought scattered. Sensation layered over sensation. Every surge brought her a little closer to a release just out of reach. Even as she strained for climax, a primitive alarm bell shrieked across her mind. Reese was used to casual mutual pleasure. It was easily attained. Simple to walk away from.
But sex with Hayes wasn’t casual. And he wouldn’t be discarded. The realization brought a flutter of panic to her chest.
As if he could feel her hesitation, he slowed, his arms shuddering as he stilled above her. “Don’t hold back. I want it all.” The demand—plea—nearly undid her. He couldn’t know what he was asking. Didn’t realize what abandoning her inner guard could cost her. Already, control was a vortex, spinning out of her reach. “Look at me.” His voice was ragged. “Focus only on us.”
She shivered at the timbre of his voice, embraced the passion that churned in her blood. His words jackhammered throughher defenses, smashing them to bits. Nerve endings spiraled to concentrate where they were so intimately fused. Reese wrapped her legs around his hips as his movements quickened. Rivers of desire sang beneath her skin.
And when the climax shattered her, it was Hayes she saw. Hayes she clung to as she was catapulted over the brink.
32
Reese’s head was on Hayes’s shoulder, her hand on his chest, waiting for their breathing to steady. Even as her body still quivered and her senses remained steeped in him, the first whispers of unease were creeping along nerve endings recently satiated. She’d known he was a threat to her internal defenses. But he hadn’t had to smash through them—Reese had willingly dismantled them for an act that she couldn’t bring herself to be sorry for. And she was beginning to fear that they wouldn’t be so easily rebuilt.
The thought spiked her muscles with tension. As if sensing it, Hayes slid a slow, languorous hand down her back. Up again. “Reese.” There was an unmistakable note of lazy, satisfied man in his voice. He bent to kiss her hair. “Tell me you’re not regretting this.”
“I’m not. Exactly”
“That heavily qualified answer isn’t particularly comforting.” His ironic tone brought a slight smile to her face.
“Do you have regrets?”