Page 48

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

It’s not easy to drive across town, navigate a parking lot, and climb three flights of stairs when you can’t let go of the person you’re with.

Leo and I are nothing but a tangle as we stumble and kiss our way up to his third-floor apartment.

He wrestles with his keys, missing the lock as he seeks out my tongue with his.

At last, we make it inside. The slam of the door and the clatter of keys on the floor hardly make me jump.

I’m lost in him, blind to the rest of the world.

It’s my first time in his apartment, but I couldn’t care less about my surroundings.

All I can think about is the man whose arms I’m in.

Between kisses, we strip off our jackets, leaving them where they fall, and mark a trail to his bedroom with our discarded shoes.

He backs me up until my calves hit the bed and braces me as I fall onto a twisted pile of sheets and blankets.

His swallow is thick. “We don’t have to?—”

He’s on all fours above me, his dark, anxious eyes catching the light from the hall. I brush back the strands of his hair that tickle my forehead. “I want to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” And just in case he needs the extra reassurance, I twine my legs around his, forcing him down onto me. He sighs as the fight goes out of him. I match the force of his kiss as I slide my hands under his shirt, feeling the smooth skin of his back under my palms.

He pushes up on his knees and whips the shirt off over his head, right in front of my hungry eyes.

Good god, all that corded muscle. I’ve felt it under his clothes, but to see it—?

I gulp as my hands splay across his abs, barely getting a taste of him before he’s tugging off my hoodie.

My amethyst has fallen between my neck and shoulder, but he finds it, pulling it along its chain until it’s resting on my bare chest. His gift of protection, directly over my heart.

With his lips he traces the V the necklace makes, lingering on the swell of my breasts. Teasing me. Driving me insane.

I wriggle to get my hands behind my back.

One snap of my fingers and my bra contracts, one swipe of Leo’s hand and it’s on the floor.

His eyes dilate and his tongue flicks across his bottom lip.

Holding me under my ribs, he draws me up, arching my back and thrusting one breast into his mouth.

Heat from his tongue surges to my core. My nails rake his shoulders as he draws a line of hot kisses from my chest to my belly.

He hooks his fingers in my waistband, and I lift my hips, making it easier for him to peel off my leggings.

He murmurs against my hipbone, “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

My heart chokes like it’s been grabbed and shaken. “Leo—” I reach for him, needing to be even closer to him. Needing him to soothe this burning ache in my chest.

He slides up to kiss me, but it doesn’t relieve my desperation. I push my hands down his hard flanks and lock my legs around him, holding him tight and sighing as he grinds his hips between my legs. I want him inside me. Now.

I start to unzip his jeans, but he takes over, standing upright and pushing them to the floor.

I reach for him again, needy and wanting.

Come back to me. Instead, he drops to his knees and tugs me by the hips to the edge of the bed.

Oh god. As I squirm in anticipation, he kisses me higher, higher, higher up the inside of my leg .

Over the ridge of my belly I can see his eyes, midnight dark and hungry. “I’ve been wanting to do this since that night I saw you wearing faerie wings.” I feel his smile against the crease of my thigh. “And a very short little dress.”

He sneaks under the elastic of my panties and teases me with a single flick of his tongue.

I whimper and writhe, fumbling blindly with the lacy straps around my hips.

He gets the message, yanking my panties down with both hands and tossing them god-knows-where.

In a breath, his mouth is on me, hot and firm, robbing my lungs of air.

With one strong, merciless arm across my hips, he pins me down.

I can’t arch into him or pull away. It’s too much and it’s not enough.

Let me go. No, hold me tighter. When I grapple with his arm, he kisses my hand and takes it captive.

I tremble and moan, coiling tighter and tighter.

Then he stops.

I whimper his name and my eyes, which were squeezed shut, fly open to find him right above me.

He’s naked and between my legs and he’s so beautiful.

I’ve never wanted anything, anyone, so badly.

Greedily, I reach down and wrap a hand around him, making a thorough stroke of his hard length.

Out of his mouth rolls a half-growl, half-groan.

When he drops his head against mine and pushes into my hand, my tongue grows thick.

How would he feel in my mouth?

I push on his shoulder, trying to tip him onto his back, but he holds firm. “I can’t.”

My free hand finds its way into the back of his hair. “Please?—”

“I won’t last.”

The wild, unseeing look in his eyes sets my heart racing, and for a moment I wonder if this is all a dream.

His mouth captures mine, the taste and feel of him so very real.

I draw my legs up his sides, ready to guide him inside me, when by the grace of some rescuing fate, I remember what needs to happen first. I gasp out the words, “Do you have a condom?” I’m not used to asking; I’ve been on the pill for so long .

Leo pushes up on his hands and blinks at me, and I swear, for just a second, I see confusion in his eyes.

But without another word, he reaches into his nightstand drawer and digs out a box.

It looks like it’s never been opened. He pulls out a packet and fumbles with it so much, I’m afraid he’s going to destroy what’s inside.

“Here.” I take it from him and carefully tear it open.

Is it possible? No, he can’t be. “Have you?—”

He bites his lower lip, but there’s no self-consciousness in his expression. “No, I’ve never used one before.”

Holy shit. “But you’ve?—”

“Yes.”

My only conclusion is that all his relationships have been monogamous and long-term, because he’s not the sort of man to be careless.

I offer him a smile. “Let’s see what you remember from high school health class.”

I soon find out that he’s all book knowledge and no practice. I try to guide him, only half aware that he’s let me take over, his hand covering mine, learning its motions.

“Thank you,” he whispers, his eyes hooded and glazed.

He slides his arms underneath me and shifts me further up the bed, placing me exactly where he wants me to be. Where our bodies are perfectly aligned.

Then he nudges my thighs further apart with his knees.

The moment he pushes inside me, my skin catches fire, and any worries I had that he was inexperienced fly out the window.

He stretches and fills me, slowly pulls back, and pushes again.

And again. Deeper and deeper, but still at that same agonizingly slow pace.

Each thrust sends a fiery wave of pleasure through me, melting me from the inside out. I moan his name as my spine curls.

His fingers dig into my thigh. “Betts, look at me.”

I try, but I can’t. My eyes won’t open, my neck won’t relax. I’m drowning in pleasure .

“Betts—” He slows his movements as he frames my head between his hands. “Please.”

It’s his kiss that snaps me out of my delirium.

As he draws back, my eyelids flutter open.

He’s peering down at me, his long bangs shadowing his eyes.

I reach for his perfect, beautiful face, palms sinking into the hollows beneath his cheekbones.

My heart slams against my ribs and my stomach leaps—like I’m in free fall.

He whispers my name again, then says something else.

A phrase that’s beautiful and lilting and foreign.

I don’t know what it means, but I feel compelled to reply.

I bury my fingers in his hair and answer him with a desperate kiss, one he returns with equal intensity.

All these emotions—both scary and safe, needy and content, too much and not enough—are crashing over me in waves.

And I don’t know if they’re Leo’s or my own.

Satisfied, he resumes his relentless pace, but he never loses his awareness or control. He caresses my neck with his thumb, plants kisses along my jaw, runs a warm hand along the curve of my hip.

I’m a whole person to him.

He leaves a trail of heat everywhere he touches me, and inside me? There’s an inferno. I cling to him as I writhe in its flames. “Oh god, Leo, please?—”

“Please what?” he murmurs. “What do you want?”

All I get out is another whimper.

“Tell me.”

I’m coming undone. My nails scrape his broad back, but he doesn’t even flinch. I tighten my legs around his hips and rise up to meet each one of his strokes. “More,” I plead.

“More what?”

“Harder. Faster. Please .”

With confident hands, he tilts my hips up, creating the perfect angle to plunge into me even deeper.

Harder and faster, just as I asked. He moans and his hands tighten into fists.

Our breathing is stilted. Ragged. And then mine flat-out stops.

He grips me behind one knee and pushes up.

One hard thrust and I shatter, the explosion racking my whole body.

Cries spill from my throat and a growl rumbles out of his.

He jerks once, twice, and drops his cheek against my head with a long sigh.

As we kiss, my chest squeezes tighter and tighter.

That first night at O-Chi, when I saw Leo in the kitchen and his eyes found mine, he lit a spark in me.

Four months later, that spark has become a raging fire.

I feel remade. I used to run from emotions or numb them in beer after beer.

Now I embrace them, harness them, in all their frightening intensity. I’m so much stronger than I was.