“Okay, I give.” Gray’s smile was audible through his light panting.
Maya dragged the blindfold off, and the sight of him slammed into her. Mussed hair, lazy smile, blue eyes that burned with a heat that should have singed her from the inside out instead of warming her all over.
She’d pushed too far. She had to pull back, had to put some barriers between her sensation-drunk brain and the intensity of the world. But the temptation was too much. She reached down and traced his lower lip with one trembling fingertip. “You’re beautiful.”
His smile didn’t fade so much as it melted into something warmer. More intimate. “So are you.”
God, she loved that smile. She traced his upper lip, unguarded enough to admit the truth. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Touch takes so much trust for me, and the last time I got to know someone well enough to want it…” Her breathing hitched, but the dark memories couldn’t intrude. Not with Gray so warm beneath her. “I’ve never tried again. I never wanted to.”
“And now?”
She let her fingertip trace up his nose, lingering over the little bump, then higher to caress his brow. His face was stern and serious, all the easy humor and warmth subdued and locked away. But not for her. Never for her. She knew where to find it—in the subtle quirk of a brow or the way his eyes crinkled just a little whenever laughter sparked in their Gothic, brooding depths.
Knowing him made the craving so much fiercer. “Now I just … want. All the time.”
Gray sat up, heedless of her knees pinning his arms to the mat, and caught her easily when she slid down his body. “But you’re not ready. It’s okay, neither am I.”
A shiver claimed her, followed by a warning throb in her temples. Would pleasure overwhelm her the same way pain could? She’d never had to worry about it before. Her inexperienced explorations with Simon had been joyous and exhilarating but not exactly intense. And the pleasure she gave herself was gentle and easy.
Straddling Gray’s thighs with their bodies pressed together so tight she could feel the pounding of his heart might feel joyous and exhilarating, but the hunger it sparked sure as hell wasn’t gentle or easy.
She dropped her forehead to his shoulder and closed her eyes, but her deep, steady breath only dragged the scent of him into her lungs. Sweat and coffee and just a hint of pine, because he must have washed his hands with the soap in the kitchen. She inhaled again and let it go on a shaky laugh that sounded intoxicated. “You smell good.”
His hands clenched on her hips, then immediately relaxed. “Yeah?”
“Mmm.” The urge to squirm closer was nearly overwhelming. Maya locked her body with effort, her fingers twisted in his shirt. “I think I’m drunk on you.”
“I know the feeling.” His lips brushed her jaw, featherlight, a caress so fleeting she might have imagined it—except for the desire that rocketed straight to her core.
Then she was moving, Gray’s hands lifting her as if she weighed nothing. “Time to knock off for the day.”
I’m sorry. She bit her lips before the reflexive apology could escape. Instead she relaxed into his arms and whispered what she really meant. “Thank you.”
He murmured something against her hair, his voice vibrating in her bones, but she couldn’t turn the sounds to words. Sensory overload had never hit her like this before. It wasn’t the familiar painful drip of sensation wearing down her stubbornly reinforced mental protections but a distracting cacophony sweeping her away on a wave of scent and touch and sound.
Gray’s footsteps on the hardwood floor crashed like meteors plummeting to earth. She could taste him even with her lips pressed firmly shut—the tang of salt on her tongue as if she’d given in to temptation and kissed his throat. The scent of pine grew forests in her imagination, so vivid she cracked open her eyes to make sure they were still inside.
The light hurt. She flinched, and Gray’s arms tightened protectively. The brush of fabric across her skin was overwhelming. She tried to block it out, but the heat of his body remained, burning her everywhere he was touching her.
It vanished abruptly. She gasped—in relief. In loss. Her fingers curled and found the familiar soft weight of her heavy quilt, and she realized he’d carried her to her room. She swayed, then stiffened her spine, desperate to not fall over.
“Maya.”
Oh, that voice. Low and smooth, but with a rasping undertone that could have been tension or worry. He didn’t touch her—he knew better, he always knew better, but she could imagine him standing just in front of her, his hands hovering on either side of her shoulders, ready to catch her if something happened.
“I’m okay,” she lied. “I just need a second.”
“Should I get Nina or Dani?”
“No. No—” She forced her eyes open, and the sight of him hit her low in the gut. Oh God, she wanted to touch him. She wanted to cling to him, drown in him. If her brain had to shatter apart, this was how she’d want to go. Falling into him and riding the pleasure down into oblivion.
Maya gripped her quilt and managed a shaky smile. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”
His fingers grazed one of her braids. The gentlest touch. His smile warmed her to her toes. Then he was gone, and she collapsed back to her bed, arms splayed wide, too raw to even put on her music.
Shit was seriously dire when even the empty, safe rhythms of FlowMac Pop might push her over the edge.
It was hard, gathering her thoughts back into coherence. Usually the discomfort was its own motivation, but she didn’t hurt this time. Her thoughts were like a litter of enthusiastic puppies, and chasing down one to corral it into order gave the others free rein to scatter in every direction.
She’d been waiting for the drop. The inevitable punishment for using her brain to its full capacity, for letting go of that precious control. That was what she’d been promised—an inevitable, painful crash.
This was the opposite. A high, every bit as incapacitating but anything but painful. She could feel the warning flashes at the edge of her senses. It would hurt, if she didn’t pull back. But right now she felt wild. Invincible. And oh, she could see the lethal danger in that. How easy would it be to make reckless decisions right now?
Her senses were razor-sharp. Her mind encompassed whole universes. She could traverse Southside blindfolded and never falter. Her fingertips itched for a tablet. She wanted to do something. Reorganize their metadata system. Figure out a new automation system for scanning their backlog. Hell, she had some manuals on robotics, maybe she could build a system …
“Stop,” she whispered. She forced her eyes open and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. Nina had helped her paint it black in her first months here, a project that had given her a sense of ownership over the space. Maya had reconstructed the stars that she’d never been able to see from the roof of their penthouse across the inky-black canvas, constellations hidden by the light pollution of Atlanta.
Polaris. Ursa Minor. Cassiopeia. Perseus. Ursa Major.
She listed them in order, spiraling out from Polaris, then listed them backward as she spiraled back in. Her breathing slowed to match, inhaling as she expanded into the universe, exhaling as she contracted back down to the center.
To the North Star. The way home.