Текст книги "Seven Nights to Surrender"

Автор книги: Jeanette Grey

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

chapter THIRTEEN

Rylan set the key to their hotel room on the table beside the door with a heavy hand. The quiet slap of plastic on wood echoed more loudly than it had any right to. Kate had entered ahead of him, and she stood with her back to him, gazing out the window as she lifted her bag over her head, sending the loose tumble of her hair falling across her shoulders. His mouth went dry.

In the past wasted year, and in all the time before, he’d chosen his conquests for a variety of reasons. Most he’d liked the look of. Drawn to full breasts or sultry lips or legs that went on for miles, he’d introduced himself. Turned on the charm and flashed his credit card around.

And then there was this woman. She was beautiful enough, but she was smart and funny and she saw the world in a whole different way than he ever had—talking about art like it could save the world. She was trying to do something with her life, and if they’d met on another continent, in another universe, he would have run screaming from the way she made him feel.

Love was a weapon. People used it against you to get you to do things you didn’t want to do, to steal from you. They took it and they threw it away.

But this wasn’t love. This was a few days of connection. This was lust, for her mind as well as her body, but lust all the same.

He wanted her so much it hurt to breathe.

“Come here.”

She turned at the sound of his voice, and the low roughness of it took even him aback.

“Come here,” he repeated.

She quirked one eyebrow up, but as she twisted her hair between her fingers, she did as he’d asked, advancing on him. She’d taken off her shoes, and God, even her feet were dainty and lovely, and the lines of her legs from under that skirt made him even harder.

As soon as she was within reach, he struck, reeling her in and pulling her tight against his body. He’d been so patient with her the past two nights, and part of him was aching to take what he really wanted. He could bend her over the mattress the way he had so many girls before, and shove her skirt up and—

“Rylan?”

Torn from the fantasy, he looked down at her. She pressed a hand against his chest, not quite pushing him away but not far from it, either, and while there was arousal in her gaze, there was something else, too.

Fear.

The same fear he’d cursed other men for daring to put on her face.

He closed his eyes and filled his lungs, once, twice, then made his mouth and his hands both soft, holding her instead of gripping her. “Sorry. Just—” The emotion he’d felt, standing in the middle of a museum, listening to her as she described why an image of a man reading a book had moved her so deeply swept over him. A helpless smile stole over his lips. “You look so beautiful when you talk about the things you love.”

Her cheeks bloomed, and she glanced away, but he wasn’t having any of that.

Taking hold of her chin, he tilted her head up, all gentleness in his motions. He darted his gaze between her eyes. “You are,” he insisted. “The whole time you were talking, I wanted to . . .”

He’d wanted to stay there, listening to her forever. She was the exact opposite of him, full where he was hollow, caring so deeply while every choice he’d had stripped from him had fed a growing, gnawing apathy. Her vibrancy was shaking his soul to life.

But he couldn’t say that. Without the words to describe how she was confusing everything, he showed her the best he could, dipping down to capture her mouth. He’d wanted to do that, too, in the museum. Wanted to kiss Monet and Degas and Picasso from her lips, until they were nothing but brushstrokes and canvas and air.

Deconstructed, precisely the way she’d said. And reassembled by an artist’s knowing hands.

Feeling like he was the one being taken apart, he gripped her more tightly, with none of the possession of a few moments before but with an intensity that he couldn’t quite explain. She held him right back, though, curling her hand around his nape and threading her fingers through his hair. He took control of the kiss, trying to push all these thoughts she’d been awakening inside of him into the possession of his mouth.

She made him feel things, dammit, in places that had been so cold and empty for so long. Made him want to be better.

He swallowed down the lonely throb that thought evoked in him—the undeniable knowledge of all the ways he was lacking, especially now.

He’d left all of his responsibilities behind, had discarded the life he’d been forced into after his father’s bullshit had been exposed. He’d been directionless ever since. But here, with her, he had a purpose. Clutching at her hips, he crushed her closer to his chest, bending his will to the warm pleasure of contact. The needy thread of desire pulsing just beneath his skin.

She moaned and opened wide to him, letting him lick into her mouth. The scratch of nails against his scalp set the low burning inside of him thrumming hotter, and everything came into a sharp kind of focus. He wanted inside—wanted to fuck and touch, and be touched, but more than that he wanted to give her something.

With his heart hammering and his own need a dull, dense ache, he walked her backward toward the bed. He pressed on her shoulder until she sat, and then he dropped to his knees. Her legs fell apart with the barest of prompting. Dragging both palms up the curves of her calves, he licked his lips. Looked up at her for permission as he skimmed his hands up her thighs, rucking her skirt up higher. When he slipped his fingertip along the elastic of her underwear, her breath stuttered in her chest. The fabric was damp and hot, the perfume of her cunt a soft presence in the air, one that made him even harder.

He slid his thumb along the center panel of her panties as he stared into her eyes. “This. The whole time you were talking about art. I wanted to do this.”

“What?” She’d dug one hand into the hem of her skirt, clenching it in a fist so tight her knuckles paled. “Get between my legs?”

But it had been more than that. He shook his head and leaned down, kissed one knee. Then higher, on the inside of her thigh. With his lips still pressed to her flesh, he curled his fingers into the waistband of her underwear. Cast his gaze up the length of her body. “To thank you.” For so many things he wasn’t ready to say aloud. So instead he lifted his chin and smirked. “For teaching me about art.”

“Oh, really?” Her words and tone were all skepticism, but she lifted up when he prompted, letting him tug her panties down. He eased them over her feet and spread her legs again, holding them wide with his hands on her thighs.

“Really.”

He’d wanted to thank her for letting him see what she was seeing when she looked at ancient paintings, for helping him understand what she was trying to do in her own battered sketchbook.

For giving him this week and all of its diversions, and making him talk about himself, if only a little.

“Well.” It came out like a sigh. She was uncomfortable. Twitchy and nervous, and her thighs kept pressing against his hands as if she were trying subtly to close them. None of it was as bad as that first night, but he still wanted to shake her—to remind her that only good things were going to happen here. Her throat bobbed. “You’re welcome?”

“You can’t say ‘you’re welcome’ until I’ve finished with my thank you.”

“You weren’t done?”

He raised his brows. “Believe me. You’ll know it when I’m finished with you.”

He hadn’t even started yet.

With that promise in the air—with the scent of her driving him mad and with his ribs ready to burst, he slipped his fingers along the soft, pink folds of her. He held them open and ducked his head, transcribing his actions, looking up into her eyes before taking a first gentle lick.

Just like the first time, she was all sweetness and musk and the salt-sweat taste of sex against his tongue. She wasn’t as desperate—he hadn’t worked her up as hard, but he was cresting on his own desire, and he dug in, unreserved and unabashed. He worked teasing circles over her clit and then dipped down to lick inside. Her fingers wound themselves into his hair, finally letting go of the hem of her skirt, and he shifted the fabric higher. There was still something so illicit to it, though, even if he’d lost all sense of shame so many years ago. He knelt there, completely dressed, with his head up a girl’s skirt, eating her out on the edge of a bed. It was juvenile, and it was beneath him. And it was fantastic.

The noise she made when he pressed his fingers inside had his hand digging into the tender flesh of her thigh, his eyes closing as he sucked her clit between his lips. She’d shown him how and where to touch the night before, had taken the buzzing end of that vibrator and pressed it just—

Her knee jerked up, a sharp shock of impact against his shoulder, and her moan was the most uninhibited he’d heard. He caught her leg before she could do more damage, throwing it over his shoulder and swiping harder with his tongue, curling his fingers, trying to match the way she’d angled the glass as she’d thrust it home.

She jerked hard at his hair, and fuck, it hurt, but in the best way. She tried to let go, starting to stutter out some kind of apology, but he grabbed her hand and put it exactly where it had been.

He parted from her flesh just long enough to glare up at her. “Don’t you dare hold back.”

Not after all the progress they’d made, not when she was finally starting to give him exactly what he’d wanted.

Even if it wasn’t anything like what he thought he’d been looking for when they’d first begun.

It didn’t take long after that. As if a spell of her own inhibitions and all that ingrained doubt had suddenly melted away, she gave in to it, pressing her hips forward. He gave her another finger beside the first two, filling her up the way that someday—God, he hoped, someday—he was going to do for real. Kissed her clit wet and sloppy, lapping up the slick taste of her, and when she finally tensed, he locked in. Didn’t change a thing, kept pressing and pressing, circling right where—

“Fuck!”

Her walls clamped down around his fingers, thick waves of pulses squeezing him tight as she arched backward, the hand in his hair yanking hard, sending a shock of pain and need straight down to the roots.

And he was dying for it. Was desperate to rise up over her and get himself right up in all that slick, shove himself home and take what he wanted.

Except before he could even ask—before she could give him that look again, the one that turned all thoughts of his own pleasure to ash and dust, she was urging him upward.

He parted from her sex, tugging his fingers free, and then she was kissing the wetness from his lips.

“You’re welcome,” she said. It was breathless and harsh, needy in a way he’d yet to hear from her.

And practically before the syllables were out, she was shoving him over. Getting him onto his back on the bed, and straddling his hips, and he was so ready he could scarcely think to slow things down.

But he didn’t have to.

Before doubt could creep in, she put his hand where he was aching for her and cupped him oh so perfectly through his jeans. Her face was flushed and mottled, her hair a mess, and she was beautiful.

She rose up over him and said, “Now it’s my turn to thank you.”

Kate’s body was still pulsing with aftershocks and she was kneeling there, bare beneath her skirt with her hand on a man’s cock. He’d made her come, and it had been so easy. In these few short days he’d stripped her of her inhibitions, and without them, she’d had nothing left to do but spread her legs and hold on to his hair and let him.

And she was so grateful it hurt.

She didn’t have any condoms—she hadn’t come to Paris planning for any of this—but she bet he did. Ignoring the taste that lingered there, she kissed his mouth and closed her eyes. She planted one hand beside his head while with the other she worked at his fly. These past few times, she’d scarcely touched him, and he’d seemed fine with that, but it was time.

Fear closed the back of her throat, but she pushed it down.

Goddammit all.

She was sick and tired of her own hang-ups, of letting the past taint the present the way she always did, in her life and in this bed. This time, sex would work. It had to work.

A little of the fog of orgasm cleared as she got her hand into his boxers, curling it around hard flesh. He was big, but she was as ready as she’d ever be. It probably wouldn’t hurt. And she’d be glad she had, later. When she was back in New York alone, remembering the only man who’d ever made her feel like this, and he was here, doing whatever he’d done before he’d decided to do it with her.

A noise of distress fought its way past her throat.

“Hey. Hey.”

A warm hand cupped her jaw, edging her away. She sat back, and he grasped her wrist, stilling it against his flesh. His eyes were dark with need, and he was hard in her grasp. She gazed down at him, confused. “What?”

He shook his head. “You seemed a little . . .” He trailed off, but she could hear the words, and her skin felt hot. Frigid, scared, stiff. He stroked his thumb against her cheek, and his voice went softer. “I want you. So much. But we only do what you want to do, and if you’re not ready . . .” He shrugged, but he let go of her wrist, sliding his hand up her arm to her shoulder.

God, this was so frustrating. She wanted to be ready. He’d made her feel so good, and if she was ever going to love sex, it would be with him.

Except, in the end, a voice in the back of her mind whispered no.

Forget the fear of physical pain.

Her heart clenched just looking at him. The sharp corners of the jaw that had drawn her in in the first place, and then the things she’d come to love about him since then. The wavy, dark strands of his hair and how they stood up on end once she’d had her hands in them. The subtle cleft of his chin.

The depths behind the piercing blue of his eyes.

He was beautiful and wounded, kind and gentle and so guarded that when he let her see even a fraction of himself, it took her breath away. Already, she felt too much. If she let him inside of her, if he made it as good as he had promised to . . .

Her ribs squeezed so tightly it ached.

If she let this happen between them, how would she ever stop herself from loving him?

The answer pulsed its way through her chest: She couldn’t.

She couldn’t go through with this.

He must have seen her decision slide across her face, because the questions around his eyes smoothed away. He pulled her down for another kiss. “It’s fine.” The words washed warm against her lips. He grinned. “I may die a little, but it’s fine.”

And she couldn’t help it. She laughed. “I wouldn’t want that.”

“A little death never hurt anybody.”

She chuckled at the pun, unsure if it had been intentional or not, but then it didn’t matter anymore, because his mouth was warm and soft, the kisses tasting of heat, and of a fire barely banked. His hands traversed her spine and sides, slowly coming to rest on her hips. A shiver moved through her. Her body hummed with satisfaction, but want still pulsed through her veins.

She wanted to give him something.

With her eyes closed, she parted from his mouth to kiss down the line of his throat, rasping her teeth against the stubble on his jaw. It was rough, his skin salty and male, and the little spot of boldness in her grew.

“Kate . . .” He threaded his fingers through her hair, neither pushing her up nor down so much as holding on.

There was something more than want or need or even boldness going on here. Something like power.

Her reservations slid away as she undid one button of his shirt and then the next. There was still the cotton layer of his undershirt beneath it, but she kissed her way along the center of his chest regardless. When she reached the bottom of his rib cage, she shoved the fabric up. His abdomen was firm and smooth. She nosed the lines of muscle, flicked out the tip of her tongue to taste the flesh beside his navel.

With a deep breath, she pushed aside the open denim of his jeans.

His fingers tightened against her scalp. “You don’t have to.”

She looked up the length of his body, and God, his eyes. The sensation of power in her hands swelled. “Do you want me to?”

He threw his head back, exposing the line of his throat, huffing out a sigh of laughter that sounded pained. “Fuck. More than anything.” He looked at her again, lifting his other hand to draw a fingertip along the edges of her lips. “Your mouth would look so good around my cock.”

Her heart felt like it skipped a beat, and even sated as she was, her sex throbbed. She lowered her head, resting her brow against his hip.

Then, before she could stop herself, she tugged the waistband of his boxers down.

She’d seen him before. Touched him and let him come against her, but being so close was another thing entirely. He smelled like sex, and he felt like silk beneath her fingertips, searing hot and wet at the tip. When she skimmed her thumb down the length of him, the foreskin shifted, uncovering more of the dusky flesh beneath.

Sated as she was, a tickle of arousal moved through her, and she was tempted to dive right in. To find out what noises he made when she was the one bringing him to the edge. But he’d been so patient with her, had taken the time to find out exactly what drove her mad.

She barely recognized her own voice, deepened by lust, as she asked, “What about you? What do you like?”

“Your hands on me.” His breath cut off when she curled her fingers around his base. “Fuck.” As she took a slow stroke up the shaft, his eyes slipped closed, his head tipping back. “Everything you’re doing feels good.”

He looked amazing like this, the tendons in his neck straining, abdominals tensing.

Heat spread through her. And suddenly she got it. Why he looked at her the way he did, why he seemed so desperate to touch her and make her come.

A hot spark of understanding lighting off inside her, she tightened her grip, and fluid beaded up at his tip.

“Everything you’re doing feels really good,” he revised, biting back a groan.

Triumph echoed behind her ribs, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more.

She let him go, drifting a hand over his thigh. She felt too hot all over, while at the same time prickles of cold dotted her skin.

She dropped off the bed and sank to her knees between his legs.

His moan was loud this time as she took him in the circle of her fist. “Whatever you want to do,” he said, sounding earnest, and like it was killing him not to tug her down and guide himself between her lips.

So she turned it on him. “What do you want me to do?”

He cursed aloud, fisting his hands into the bedspread beneath him. “I wanna fuck your mouth.”

Lightning blazed through her abdomen and up her ribs. How would that feel? Part of her remembered exactly how it felt to be used that way, but this was different. Rylan was different.

Rylan would make sure it was good.

Still, she shook her head. “What do you want me to do?”

“Lick it.” There was no hesitation. “Right at the head—yeah.” A noise punched from his lungs when she did just that. “Fuck, that’s perfect. Get your tongue all over me. Nice and wet.”

He tasted like salt, marred by a hint of bitterness, but the warm feeling in her sex and in her chest more than made up for it. He put one hand on her shoulder, light and stabilizing. Just heavy enough to ground her to the earth.

His thumb stroked over her collarbone. “Now open up. Let it slide inside. That’s it. Oh.”

She knew this part. But it had never felt so good to her before. The way his hips flexed and the noises he made all fed the fire deep inside. Taking a deep breath, she wrapped her lips around the solid flesh, taking him in.

“Jesus. Looks better than I thought it would.” His other hand came up, fingertips soft against her lips where they were stretched around him. He stuttered out a long breath as she took him farther. “Fuck looking good. You feel . . . oh shit . . . wet and warm . . .”

She remembered this—the weird shame of his praise and how it turned her on in spite of herself. She squirmed, pressing her thighs together.

“You like sucking me?” he asked.

Desire burned through her as she popped off long enough to nod.

His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “So good . . .”

He trailed off, letting silence fill in around them, pierced only by the soft, slick sounds of her mouth on his flesh. By his breathing and by how much she liked this. How much she loved it.

“Move your hand,” he urged.

And she loved that even more. The motion was easy, a wet glide as she followed her mouth with the tight curl of her hand, up and down. His hips rocked up into it, not enough to choke her. She followed his pace, and she was lost in it. Wanted so much for him to—

“Baby—” he started. The muscles of his legs were coiled, his abdomen tight, and the way he sounded . . . “I’m gonna—” His fingers threaded through her hair, a light tug of warning as his voice cut off, the desperation in it making her burn.

She stayed right on him. Let the first hot pulses coat her tongue, swallowing what she could. When he twitched and pushed her off, she swiped her wrist across her mouth and he growled.

“Holy hell, Kate.” He hauled her up bodily, sitting up as he got her on his lap. He kissed his own release from her mouth, practically devouring her as he slid his hand back under her skirt.

No easing in this time, thank God. His thumb pulsed over her clit, and she was too sensitive—he’d just made her come with his mouth, but when his fingers pushed inside, she all but sobbed against his lips.

“Beautiful.” He broke their kiss to stare right into her eyes, his lips parted, gaze fiery as he worked her faster, pressed deeper.

Her climax shocked her with how suddenly it came over her. Hot liquid boiled inside, and when it burst, she dug her nails into his skin. Buried her face in his neck and screamed.

All she could think, as he held her, was that she’d never known.

Twenty-two years old, and two partners under her belt, and how, how, how had she never known?