Текст книги "When the Stars Align"

Автор книги: Jeanette Grey

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

They weren’t going to run into anybody, so it didn’t matter. Still, he scooped up their discarded clothes and held them in front of himself before gesturing for her to go ahead.

Sure enough, the coast was clear as they retreated to his room. While he tugged on a pair of boxers, she went to the window to turn on the fan, then flopped down on his bed, legs and arms spread out to either side.

And…

It didn’t seem too much to presume, but he still didn’t want to reach too far.

“Are you staying, then?”

She lifted her head. “Do you mind?”

“No.” The crack of light spreading its way through his ribs put pains to the understatement. Did he mind? He shook his head. “No, not at all.”

Chapter Nineteen

Jo gazed up at the ceiling for a long moment. She didn’t actually think it was about to cave in on her, didn’t think the walls were going to close in or that the world was set to shake apart. But it seemed smart to keep an eye out, just in case.

It wasn’t all that big of a deal, was it? Sleeping over in a guy’s room? People did it all the time. So what if it happened that she’d never done it on purpose before? No BFD.

She took a deep breath. It was just that she was tired, wrung out, and she didn’t feel like getting up or dealing with all the people at her house. Adam’s bed was comfortable.

And when Adam put his arms around her… it was like all the jagged pieces grinding around inside her, always spinning, always hurting—their edges dulled. Things went this tiny bit quieter in her head. And she didn’t want to let go of it quite yet.

It didn’t have to mean anything.

Except Adam was standing on the other side of the room, trying and epically failing to hide the fact that his eyes were lit up like fucking Christmas. That probably did mean something. She’d worry about that some other time.

Finally, once the silence between them had officially dragged on for way too long, Adam cleared his throat. “Do you want to, like, borrow some clothes or something?”

Probably not a bad idea. “Sure.”

The sound of drawers opening and shutting filled the space, followed by soft footfalls. The mattress dipped beneath her as he sat on the edge of the bed. He offered her a balled up T-shirt and a pair of boxers. “Sorry. They’ll probably be really big on you.”

“Whatever.” She shifted her gaze to meet his. “Wore your trunks all day, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” He held the boxers up. “But these don’t have a drawstring.”

She accepted them and set them down beside her. “They’ll be fine. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He dipped to press a soft, brief kiss on her lips before sitting up again. Leaning back against the headboard, he nudged her with his knee until she shifted over enough for him to stretch out his legs. “You want me to look away or something while you put them on?”

“Please. I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?”

“Maybe.” His smile went warm and soft, and it set off an answering glow behind her breastbone. He resettled his legs so his foot rested against her thigh, a single point of casual contact that was anything but. “Just don’t want you to think you’re obligated to show me your breasts because I’ve seen them before.”

“Chivalrous.”

She fingered the edge of the towel where it lay stretched across her chest. The fabric was damp, which should’ve been kind of gross, but the air was warm enough she didn’t mind. Plus, the towel smelled like Adam. Hell, after using his soap and his shampoo, she smelled like Adam. That probably shouldn’t have been as okay with her as it was. After a moment’s hesitation, she dropped her hand to the side and stayed like she was.

“So,” Adam said. “Did you want to… talk? Or anything?”

“About what?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He moved to run his fingers through the wet strands of her hair. “Maybe any of the hundred unusual things that have happened today.”

He didn’t specify further, though she didn’t have any doubt what he was angling for. After the tantrum she’d thrown, he had every right to demand an explanation. Only he wasn’t demanding anything, just giving her an opening in case she wanted to talk. Chances were, she could start in on chicken fights or public indecency and he’d roll with it.

And that was what made her tongue and chest both loosen up. Not quite all the way, but enough.

“I don’t know.” She inched her hand a little farther up the bed until her knuckles grazed the hem of his boxers. The solid, lightly haired skin underneath. “Not a whole lot left you haven’t heard already.”

She’d told him more than she’d ever told anyone else.

“Tell me again, then. If you want to.”

Where to even start? A darkness rumbled inside of her. The beginning was probably the most logical. Her throat tried to constrict against the words, but she pushed through it, an old pain mixing with the story she always told herself.

But when the confession came out, it was flat. Lifeless. “I killed my mother.”

His fingertips didn’t even pause against her scalp. “No, you didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Bastard. “Fine.” She turned her head to the side, looking at his leg because it was easier than looking at anything else. “‘Complications due to childbirth.’ Or at least that’s what my dad told me.”

“I’m so sorry, Jo.”

She shrugged. What was she supposed to say? “I try to be cool about it. Rationalize it. But I don’t know if my dad never got over her, or if he was just always that way. If I was just—” She cut herself off, because it was bullshit. Self-indulgent ridiculous bullshit, but she was so worn out, it was hard to censor.

If I was just that disappointing.

She picked back up again once the lump had passed from her throat. “He wasn’t around much, and when he was, he didn’t want a whole lot to do with me. I spent all this time trying to do things to get his attention. I got the nannies to dress me up pretty before he came home, but he’d be late or he wouldn’t notice.” She’d seen the pictures, and she’d been fucking adorable. How the hell could he not have noticed? “Then when I was seven, I got it into my head… You see, he always said he’d wanted a son.” When Adam’s whole body went tense beside her, she clarified. “He never said he didn’t want a daughter. And maybe it was just that ‘a man is the king of his castle’ crap that guys from that generation like to say. But he talked about a son like…” Like it would have made him happy.

She frowned, tracing a series of birthmarks across his thigh. “And he had these graduate students. He’d have them over for parties he threw at the house a couple of times a year. The nanny tried to keep me away, but I always found a way to sneak down, because he was different with them, you know? All those guys. He’d laugh. Pat them on the back.” All the things he never did around her. “I decided maybe if I were a boy… maybe everything would be better somehow.”

“That’s a terrible thing for a kid to have to decide.”

“You’re telling me.” The worst of it was, it had almost worked. Sort of. Cutting her hair off had gotten some attention, and her math and science tests ended up on the fridge the way her drawings never had. But at its heart, she’d still been the same lonely girl, rattling around an empty house. Wishing her dad would give her a hug for once. She swiped her wrist across her eyes, but they were dry. Apparently there weren’t going to be any more hysterics tonight. Thank God. “It actually helped a little, but not enough.” Underneath it all, she’d still been the thing he’d never wanted.

The child who had killed his wife. The error of genetics that had robbed him of a son.

“I took it so far, too,” she said. Past junior high, going into high school and beyond, and it had been good, hadn’t it? Her short hair and her ugly boots and the clothes that covered all her curves. They’d kept people exactly where she’d wanted them.

Because after growing up alone, she hadn’t known how to be anything else.

To make matters worse, she’d been good at it, too. Being the bitch, the tomboy, the one that nobody could ever get close to. Science had started as a desperate ploy for her father’s attention, but her first trip to an observatory with a program after school and she’d fallen in love. With the stars. The sky. This vast universe where she could just be.

A quiet place in the night that was just for her.

Adam trailed his fingers down her cheek, caressing the edge of her jaw. “Did you ever talk about it with him?”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud.

Frowning at her, he gave her leg a nudging kick. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” She caught his hand in hers and interwove their fingers. “I barely managed to get a ‘How was your day?’ out of him most of the time. You really think we were ever going to have that kind of conversation?”

“I don’t think he’s ever going to start it. But maybe you could. It might… make you feel better about things, you know?”

Now he was being obtuse. “I doubt it.”

“I don’t know.” The lines around his mouth had gone strangely somber. “I mean, I don’t want to overstep or anything here. But earlier…” Right. When she’d completely freaked out on him. “It seemed like maybe you’d been bottling some stuff up. If that’s how you deal with things, okay. But it doesn’t seem healthy.” Determination flooded his eyes. “It doesn’t seem like it’s been making you happy.”

Happy. Until this week, here with Adam, she hadn’t even known it was something she could aspire to.

This week when she’d made herself open. Let him peel down her barricades, inch by painful inch.

He must have seen her resolve faltering. He sat up straighter and pulled at her hand until she sat up, too. She folded her legs underneath her, trying not to flash him too much when the edge of the towel rode up her thigh.

“Come on,” he said. “Try it. Pretend I’m your dad.”

“Oh God, no.” She shook her head. “Role-playing is a hard limit for me. I mean, maybe if one of us is a naughty schoolgirl or something, but—”

“I’m not joking around.”

She dropped his hand. “Neither am I.” Her voice went small, and she hated it. “I can’t.”

“You can. Please?” His gaze had an earnestness to it that had her resistance yearning to melt, only—

The very idea that this was a conversation she could have, one that she should. It was hot and uncomfortable inside her throat and behind her eyes.

He put his hand on her bare shoulder, warm and broad. “Just try it. Here, I’ll start you out. ‘Dad, I feel like…’”

“Fucking hell.” She wanted to cover her face. “We’re both almost naked and you want me to call you Dad?”

“Jo…”

It was the same way he’d said her name out on that street. The same way he’d said it the night at the observatory when she’d told him about her mom.

It wasn’t sexy. It was real.

“Try. ‘Dad, I’”—he hesitated, but then went ahead—“‘I wish you would’ve…’”

And wasn’t that cutting a little too close to the bone?

For a second, she closed her eyes. What if her father really were here? What if she could tell him, ask him, anything she wanted to?

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t look at Adam, so she focused on a point to the right of him. A smudge on the plaster of the wall.

Dad, why didn’t you love me?

Dad, why did you leave me all alone?

Dad, I…

Her chest felt like it was cracking open. “Dad, why were you so disappointed in me?”

Adam’s palm on her shoulder went heavier, his grip tighter. He dipped his head, putting his eyes right in her field of vision, fierce and beautiful and real.

“I wasn’t. I never, ever, ever was.” With that, their role-playing session was apparently over, thank God. He drew her up in a crushing hug, and she let him, curling herself into his strength and his heat. Trying to pretend she wasn’t shaking. Rocking her back and forth, he murmured in her ear, “And if he doesn’t tell you that, you just point me at him.”

She laughed, a sad, low sound that was more choked than it had any right to be. Wrapping her arms around him, she buried her face against the solidity of his shoulder, hanging on. “Please tell me I can stop calling you ‘Dad’ now.”

“God, yes.”

“Phew.”

“You were so brave, baby. So brave.”

Hardly. But it felt so nice to hear.

His hands traveled up her spine, one coming to settle at the nape of her neck, and he dug his thumb into the muscle there. “You’re so tense,” he said.

“Imagine that.” Her eyes stung, and the wrung-out, exhausted feeling from before had magnified a hundredfold. “Almost as if talking about all that shit stresses me out.”

“Almost as if,” he echoed. Releasing her, he shifted to the edge of the bed and gestured at the empty expanse of mattress. “Lie down. Let me take care of you.”

Whatever resistance she would’ve normally had to that sort of thing was officially on vacation. She flopped forward, landing on her stomach. Moaning, she petted the surface underneath her. “Mmm, bed. You’re my best friend.”

“I know where I rank in this situation.”

“Shh, I’m trying to have a conversation with your bed.”

“Well, don’t let me get in the way.”

“I won’t—” she started to say, but the words cut off when he put his hands on her shoulders. The warm pressure, gently kneading at the precise place where so much of her tension always lived had her eyes squeezing shut, a noise escaping her that she’d never admit to later.

“Is this okay?”

“I think I can manage to put up with it.” She was such a liar. It felt so good.

And it was uncomfortable, too. Clearly he meant for her to lie there and let him give her a massage or a backrub or whatever he wanted to call it, but that was weird, wasn’t it? Her skin prickled with self-consciousness, a guilty selfishness at accepting that kind of gift.

“Shh. Just relax.”

“I’m trying.”

He leaned in closer so his breath was in her ear. “That’s the problem.”

The mattress rocked as he moved. Heat to either side of her made her breath suck in as he straddled her thighs. His hard-on wasn’t touching her, but she didn’t doubt it was there. The guy got aroused at the drop of a hat, but somehow this wasn’t about that. His hands drifted lower on her shoulders, one of his thumbs finding a knot, and he shifted to dig his knuckles in. The deeper pressure was too tender, too hot—

Until it released.

“Holy shit,” she groaned.

“I’ll take it that was nice?”

“So nice.” A part of her was melting, but another part felt all the more aware of the one-sidedness of this act. “Want me to do you, after?”

“If you’re still capable of it by the time I’m finished with you, I won’t have done my job correctly.”

Another little stab of guilt ran through her. “But—”

“Shh.” He dipped to kiss the nape of her neck. “Enjoy this. Okay?”

His reassurances didn’t change the squirminess inside her, the sense of being looked at and on display. Of taking something she wasn’t sure she could return. But he went about this with such an easiness, touching and caressing with sure hands.

Gradually, her muscles loosened, and she sank deeper and deeper into the mattress. Some of his quiet confidence seeped into her bones.

“That’s right,” he said, soft and low.

By the time her shoulders had officially been reduced to jelly, she was almost calm. When he tucked a finger into her towel in question, she lifted up.

He peeled the fabric from her slowly, exposing her flesh to the breeze coming in from the fan. She was damp with perspiration and the water that had clung to them after their shower. He pulled the towel out from under her and then guided her down to lie flush against the mattress again. Naked. His bare thighs brushing the outsides of hers, the whole long line of his torso a radiant heat from above.

“Adam—” His name spilled out from between her lips. She didn’t want him to stop, didn’t want anything but for this to go on and on, her flesh faintly giving off sparks as a new sort of anticipation banked and built. A low arousal settled warm and patient in her abdomen.

“Shh.”

He shifted, hands making their way down her sides. He kissed her sacrum and gripped her hips and then—Oh. A cool rush as he blew a low stream of breath across her spine. Her skin prickled, gooseflesh coming up, but then he was soothing it, massaging her with heated palms.

He worked the whole length of her back over and over before edging even lower. Thumbs dug into her thighs and teased the insides of her knees. Her calves rippled with the best kind of achiness as he rubbed them. One at a time, he took her feet into his hands. And that was really weird, except when he ground a knuckle into the arch, she just about came off the bed.

“Too much?” he asked.

“No.” Fuck, no. “It’s fine.”

And she was so glad she was on her stomach like this—that he had no way to see her face.

Because it was more than fine, more than not too much.

It was perfect. Too perfect, and her heart panged.

She didn’t know if she would ever, ever get enough.

Suddenly, she felt every inch of her nakedness all over again, and Adam was too far away. She stretched her arm out toward him, trying to tell him without words that she needed him closer, hot and real and pressed against her.

“What?” he asked.

“Just… come here.”

He rose up easily enough, climbing higher on the bed, but of course the asshole had to do it all sweet and fond, laying a line of kisses up the backs of her legs and along her spine. He kept that careful space between their bodies, too, and she wanted it gone, wanted to be blanketed by him, protected from all the things today that had left her shaking. From her own mind. From herself.

She lifted up onto one elbow, craning her neck and reaching to get a hand on his skin. She couldn’t look into his eyes, but she could drag him in—in and in until their lips met. Opening for him, she held him against her and licked into his mouth, suddenly desperate.

She didn’t want to think anymore, didn’t want to be taken care of. She wanted to lose herself.

“Jo.” He broke away enough for air. He sounded dazed but still too cautious. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I just—” What? Everything inside her felt like it was cracking apart. Deep in her gut, it hurt. I just felt really vulnerable. I needed you close. She swallowed and gripped him tighter. “I want you.”

“I want you, too,” he said, and how did he make it sound so simple? Admitting that? “But—”

“No buts.” She pulled him to her mouth and kissed him with another level of need, hot and dirty. Fumbling, she took him by the hand and led him to her breast, the one with the piercing through it, and that never failed to get him going.

Sure enough, a filthy noise fell out of him as he rubbed the metal between his finger and his thumb. Her nipple perked up, going hard and swollen as lines of heat shot straight to her clit.

“Isn’t that good?” She ground her hips into the mattress, squeezing her thighs together. “It feels so good when you touch me like that.”

He cut off a curse, sagging lower against her until finally his cock dragged against her ass. He moved into the contact, flesh bobbing through the thin layer of fabric still separating them, and his throat worked like he had things to say but had lost the words. “But I was going to…”

Right. Take care of her. Treat her right. She shook her head and kept him close. “You’re taking such good care of me now.”

And that seemed to do the trick. He melted into her at last, letting her bear some of his weight. She wedged her legs apart until he fell into the space between them, and fuck, maybe someday they’d do this bare. Someday when they’d done the whole going and getting tested thing, and she’d had her implant checked out.

She pulled away and buried her face against her own arm. Shit. Shit. They were never going to get that someday. No way in hell they were begging a ride to a fucking clinic, or waiting around for results from someone who might not speak English.

They had a few more weeks. That was it.

And it made her feel empty in a way she’d never imagined it would.

Adam pulled back, sounding startled as he shifted his hand from her tit to her side. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She would be, goddammit all. “Get a condom?”

“Already? Don’t you want me to…”

She shook her head, collapsing down onto the bed and slipping her fingers between her legs. Momentary jag of sadness or no, she’d just been rubbed and stroked and petted for longer than she would normally be able to stand. She was ready.

“Just want you in me,” she said, and her voice faltered. She squeezed her eyes closed, going for broke. “Want you close.”

He hovered for a long second, and she was going to lose her mind if he put her off or tried to make them talk some more. They’d already talked; they’d talked until she was hoarse.

She forced herself to look at him. Gritted out the word, “Please.”

A shudder went through him, and he kissed the tip of her shoulder, a closed-mouth press of lips that felt like a balm. “Okay. Okay.”

Running his palm down her flank, he pushed off and opened the drawer of his nightstand. While he got himself ready, she turned her face into the bedding and played with her clit. When he came back to the bed, he was gloriously naked, all hot, smooth flesh sliding against hers.

“Like this?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She wouldn’t be able to look at him, but the urge to be surrounded by him hadn’t faded at all.

“Okay.” Kneeling between her legs, he nudged her hand out of the way and replaced it with his own. He’d gotten so good at working her body in the time they’d been together, but it all felt like a tease.

With a little growl of frustration, she bucked her hips, only to be pinned down. A hot palm at the base of her spine. More of his weight bore into her, and she was ready to throw him off, to climb on top and take what she wanted the way she always did, only…

Only…

So many times already tonight, Adam had asked her to let go. To let him care for her, to let him… She blinked hard against the warmth surging through her. There were other words for what he was doing here, the way he was treating her, and she wasn’t prepared to hear or think or say any of them. But she could accept him.

She could give him the chance to offer her this moment. This safety.

Shutting her eyes, she buried her face against the mattress and breathed out long and slow. His fingers slipped through her lips and over her clit, then dipped down to press inside, and she groaned his name.

His erection throbbed against the back of her leg, hard and hot even through the layer of latex. “That’s it, baby. Just let me—”

Something inside her went suddenly, achingly soft. A warmth blooming through her cunt and in her heart, and maybe they were both the same.

Maybe they were both about making room for him. Letting him in.

Then the warmth was a heat, was a fire just waiting to ignite, and she shook her head. Reached out a hand behind her until she connected with his skin. “No, not without… I need…”

His fingers drew away, leaving her empty and alone and hanging over the edge until his hips settled between her thighs. Until the blunt head of him slid wetly across slick flesh.

And she didn’t beg. She didn’t plead. But she shut her eyes.

“Adam…”

He sucked in a breath, bracing himself with both arms over her, and she thought, Finally.

Then he sank into her, so slowly she could’ve cried.

She kicked out hard, foot connecting with the mattress. Fuck, she was so full, and it felt so good—the way his weight pressed her down and held her. The soft kiss of his lips against her shoulder and her neck, and she whined.

There was something untethered in her, something frantic, but he had her. He wouldn’t let her float away.

He murmured her name against her temple, and it was a word and a prayer. She turned into it, and he dipped down to meet her lips, driving even deeper and forcing choked groans out of them both. His mouth was hot, the angle all wrong, but she didn’t care. It was just the rasp of his teeth over her lip and the softness of his tongue. They were one circuit, every part of him touching every part of her, electricity zipping up and down her spine. Life.

And then he started to move.

Her eyes flew open as he thrust back in hard. She’d been so close before he’d even gotten inside, overwhelmed by his touch and his kindness, and now he was hitting this tender hollow deep inside, winding her higher. She pushed into his thrusts, but his weight pressed her back down, and she gave in to it. She took it.

Sneaking his hand beneath her body, he got his fingers on her clit again. The quick circling strokes shot lightning through her, and orgasm was right there; she could taste it—

But it wasn’t until his own unsteady breathing went shallow, the strain making his kisses harder, that the pleasure gathered into a storm. For what felt like an infinite moment, they hovered there on the edge together, and she wanted it to come crashing down, and she never, ever wanted it to end.

He bit down on her lip and choked on her name, hips stuttering against hers. One more rough rub against her clit—

The feeling exploded out of her, too much and not nearly enough as it dragged her under. Blackness washed out her vision as wave after wave of it overtook her. Adam took a final, punishing thrust forward and stilled, mouth hot and open against her cheek, and the low pulsing of his body in hers wrung another surge of pleasure from her that blanked her thoughts all over again.

When she came back to herself, he lay half slumped over her, heavy torso barely supported by the shivering columns of his arms. She clenched around him, and it still felt good. But he twitched, a pained sound slipping past his throat before he withdrew. She gave a little whimper at the emptiness.

How was it possible she still wanted more?

“Yeah?” he asked as he climbed off of her, and there was intent there, for all that he was shaking. An offer. Blessed air swept in to fill the sweaty gap between their bodies, but it didn’t help to clear her head.

“Don’t think I can move,” she said. It wasn’t quite an answer, but it was somehow, too. Yeah, she could go again—she kind of wanted to go again—but she didn’t have the strength left. He’d pulled it all out of her. Left her feeling weak and shimmering and amazing.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt so good.

With a low, rumbly laugh, he put a hand on her hip and rolled her over. The new stretch of mattress was deliciously cool against her burning skin. She blinked her eyes open to find him kneeling beside her, all the dips and rises of his musculature gleaming, damp strands of hair framing his face.

Ridden hard and put away wet. She probably looked even worse.

And then he eased her legs apart and moved to lie between them. Her sex gave a hot pulse, but she stopped him—fumbled a hand toward his shoulder when he spread her lips and stroked his thumb across her clit.

“You don’t have to.” It would’ve been more convincing if she didn’t groan out loud at the heat of two fingers pressing inside.

He smirked, lopsided and beautiful. “Believe me. I’ve been dying to do this for a very, very long time.”

Then he was sliding down the bed, and all the breath left her lungs.

She’d partied with some cunning linguists in her time, but it wasn’t usually a part of her sex life. It felt too intimate, and besides, she probably tasted like latex, and with one orgasm down, this second one wasn’t going to come quickly.

Except the first hot swipe of his tongue had her hands going to his head. With the second she closed her eyes. His mouth was warm and wet, and apparently the guy could still surprise her. He knew what he was doing, coaxing the barely simmering embers of her last climax right back up into a pressing need, something too big to fit within her.

She arched her spine and surrendered. He licked and sucked and filled her with hot fingers, and something inside her threatened to shatter. Curling his hand up, he hit this perfect place inside, and his tongue sped, flicking over her harder and harder, and she couldn’t hold herself against it… couldn’t hold back—

When she broke again, this time, tears trickled from her eyes. But they were good tears. Amazing tears.

He climbed back up her body, worry written all over his face. She pulled him into her and kissed her desire from his lips.

She was still herself. But somehow, in that instant, everything was different.

And she wished—God, she wished—that she could keep it.