I stepped into him, erasing the space between us. “Another gentle reminder that I kissed you. Which is why it’s your turn.”
Jake caught my chin in his thumb and forefinger, angling for my lips. “I don’t have a clue how much trouble I’m in, do I?”
“None whatsoever, but do it anyway,” I joked.
And with a passing smile, he did.
The last kiss we’d shared was hot and hard, a frantic, fleeting moment. A meteor streaking through the night sky, burning out in the atmosphere.
This kiss was altogether more.
It was a press of lips, both timid and firm, his mouth against mine, both unsure and absolutely certain. I could feel the fight leaving him with every flex and release of his lips, with every sweep of his tongue. I felt the moment he gave up the ghost. It rode a deep inhale through his nose, lived in his tightened grip on the back of my neck. His body curled around me, and he was everywhere—every slide of his hands, every heavy breath another consumption. We were as close as we could get, our bodies flush, mine held in place with his arm snaked around my back.
I stretched up on my toes to thread my arms around his neck, wanting to be level with him where I could appreciate the sweet heat of his mouth. A squeeze closed the circle of my arms, and he took the cue, picking me up by the ass. My legs wound around his waist to lessen the burden, and I held on tight when he blindly turned us, the world spinning before he marched us toward his bedroom with a hand out.
I heard the thump of his foot opening the door, felt gravity shift as he laid me down. He took advantage of the spread of my legs to press his length against me. When his hand trailed down my leg and found my rubber rain boot, he chuckled into my mouth and broke the kiss so he could reach the heel of one. I watched him as he pulled off the first, then the second. He was lit only by the rectangle of glowing light from the threshold. The silhouette of his long body as he reached over his shoulder and pulled off his shirt. The line of his profile, the light kissing the rolling curves of his shoulders, his biceps, the swell of his pecs and square planes and deep valleys of his abs.
The vision was gone when he descended again.
His skin radiated heat through my tank, and every brush of skin-to-skin contact triggered a frantic wave of desire. My legs locked around his hips again, my hands roaming his chest, his waist, the curious mounds of muscle on his back, but my attention was fully engrossed in charting the path his hand made on my body. His fingers on my neck, his thumb along my collarbone, the sweep of my tank over my shoulder so his fingertips could taste the curve without interruption. The graze of my breast when he trailed down my ribs tightened my legs, set a whimper in my throat. At the sound, his hand stopped, backtracked, brushed the curve as I willed him to touch me.
He granted my wish with his palm cupping my breast, testing its shape. Learning the feel of me in his hand. Thumbing the peak with nothing between his skin and mine but a slip of cotton. At the sound of the moan low in my throat, I earned an answering sound and a squeeze that shot a bolt of electricity to the place our hips connected.
And I lost my patience. I’d gone too long without him, without this, to appreciate anything short of naked.
I tugged at the hem of my tank, and he leaned out of the way, watching his hand slide up my torso as my skin was revealed, pausing when my breasts were exposed. I was too busy pulling it off to notice he’d stilled, his eyes drinking in what they found. For a handful of heartbeats, I didn’t move, only watched him watch me. And then I reached for him.
His lips found me first, then came the glorious press of his flesh against mine. I fumbled for his belt, pushing his pants over the swell of his ass. I felt him before I saw him, the weight of his length resting between my legs. With a satisfied sigh, I slipped my hand between us, held him in my palm as best I could, learned the shape of him with hungry fingertips. Another moan from him, a flex into my hand.
That sound—the sound of his pleasure—the feel of him against me, and my core pulsed once against nothing, anticipating him. And then it was him who couldn’t wait.
A shuffle and a yank of my shorts, and there was nothing between us at all. He settled his hips between my thighs, kissing me still as his hands roamed, circled, stroked. And his lips followed. He rolled to his side, our legs tangled, gaining access to my neck, the dip of my throat, the tight peak of my nipple with the warmth of his mouth, his hand holding my breast where he wanted it. My hands didn’t stay still either, finding his length again. I couldn’t think with his mouth on me like that, with his fingertips that wandered south again, tracing the curve of my ass, my hip before slipping between my legs to return the favor.
And then there was nothing to do but hold him in my hand and feel his in me. He traced the rippling flesh between my thighs, taking his time with the tip of my desire, knowing where to stay by the unrecognizable sounds I made. I felt the creeping tingle of heat spread from low in my belly, up to my heart. Racing up the column of my neck, down my arms and legs, and I leaned back, laying a hand on his heaving chest. Because this was not the way I was going to come, not the first time.
He didn’t stop as I panted up at him, my lids fighting to stay open as my purpose flitted in and out of conscious thought, which had been slim to start.
“Mmm, wait,” I whispered.
His hand paused in its track. Mine found its way back to him.
“This. Not that,” I mumbled, shifting to bring a knee up and angling him for me.
That goddamn smile. “Let me get a—”
He started to move for his dresser, and I stopped him with a stroke and the shake of my head. “Safe. And if you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to come without you.”
It wasn’t a lie, and he didn’t fight me, just kissed me with those smiling lips and let me do what I would. I charted the line of my core with the tip of him—the kiss stopped. He breathed against my lips, his hand gripping my hip as the cleft of his crown slid over that aching peak, then down again, to the dip that longed to be filled by him.
With a long, slow flex, he slid into me.
I sighed, rolling my hips, arching my back until only his crown remained. And I took him again until he was fitted in me, grinding to press that place, the key to my pleasure.
A moan, and he rolled us onto my back. I urged him closer as I raced to the edge, wanting to feel the weight of him pressing me into the bed, wanting to feel all of him as my senses climbed, my awareness rushing to the point where we connected. I wanted him, all of him. His pleasure and his pain, his trust and his heart. Because no one would care for him like I could. No one could heal him like I would, this broken man with everything to give and no one to give it to.
I felt the longing, the need, the relief in him with every thrust of his hips, with every drag of his lips against my skin. He wanted all of me too.
As far as I was concerned, he could have me.
A hard thrust and a shift. I was caged, my pulse quickening. Lungs locked, chin tipped to the sky, eyes pinched shut.
And with a fatal flex, I came unraveled beneath him in a long, sweet shudder.
But he didn’t slow. Didn’t stop. Rode the rhythm at the pace I’d set, but with new intention. He rose so he could see me through hooded eyes, braced himself with one hand so he could grip my waist in the other. I could feel him close in the force of his thrust, in the surge of him inside me. He gasped, buried in me, pausing for a frozen heartbeat, and he came with a deep moan and a new, slow retreat and advance, drawing out his pleasure as if to feel every inch of me with every inch of him, strictly for appreciation’s sake.