Merde, no, don’t think about that! Not
now
.
He brought the warmth of his body back over hers, pressing his forearms in close as he braced over her, giving her warmth everywhere he could without the intimacy – yet – of being able to just cuddle her all up until she was entirely wrapped in him.
The chill of leaving the cooling shower had let her brain shiver back awake a bit. Damn water heater. He had still barely kissed her, and yet her lips were all bruised and soft looking as her dark eyes searched his, that little crease between her eyebrows that did mad things to him, that wrapped one fist around his heart and the other around his dick and turned him into a jibbering mess.
She was so
small
under his body. He loved it. God, he loved it. He loved the chill of her skin, the fact that he heated her. He loved the fact that she had already come once for him, that whatever happened – like, he let his conscience wake up – she could never take that back. He loved that straight black hair, and the fact that it was
down
and
soaked
, that he was seeing it in a way that she would never let anyone else see.
Even if she probably hadn’t meant to let him see it that way either.
She slipped a hand under the pillow above her head, and he wanted to just run his jaw down that pale stretch of her inner arm, drive her mad with him. He reached, planning to hold her wrist still for the sensual torment, and she pressed one of the packets from under the pillow into his hand.
That jolted right through him. Oh, now,
that
was a yes. But…
“In a little bit,” he murmured, and set it aside on the cover. She was still cold. And maybe he had a streak of masochism, because he didn’t mind driving himself completely insane. He’d been doing it for months; now that some appeasement of the need was in sight, he could restrain himself twenty more minutes. Turn
her
into a writhing mass of desire at least one more time.
She pressed the packet back at him.
“I know, Sarah.” What, did she think he was just going to fall on her like some self-absorbed asshole? “I’ll take care of it.”
Yeah, where would she get the idea he was a self-absorbed asshole? The ghost of annoyance slid off him, and he thought:
Of course she has to care. Of course she has to worry and make sure I won’t forget.
His hand curved around her cheek, a wave of tenderness and possessiveness swamping him. “It’s all right, Sarabelle. I won’t forget. Trust me a little bit. I’ll take care of you.”
Haven’t I always, Sarah? Every single minute of every day?
Her eyes widened and got caught by his. Her body under his was so still for a moment. She shivered once and nestled her face just a fraction – just a hint – into his hand, her eyes closing.
He traced her cheekbone and that perfect mouth of hers. He petted his hand over her wet hair, then pulled the towels in closer over her to keep her shoulders warm as he slid down and kissed one proud nipple. Her breasts were small, like her, and he loved that, too.
And he loved the way her hands slid into his hair and the careful way they explored down over his shoulders. Not tentative, exactly, but not sure, either. “You can’t get me wrong,” he murmured to her breasts. “I’m sure there are ways we can get more and more right, but there’s really not any way you can touch me wrong.”
But she didn’t believe him. Of course she didn’t. That was so exactly like her. Her touch got maybe a fraction firmer, but it was still careful as she stroked over the broad muscles of his back.
He wanted suddenly to break a lifetime policy, to beg her to touch him more, to kiss him, to let her know what he liked and how desperately he wanted it and trust her not to withhold it just to control him. It was a wild, unexpected urge, and he didn’t yield to it.
Given what she reduced him to already, he would be insane to give her even more power.
He danced too close to the edge of letting her figure him out already, with that brilliant brain of hers that he was quite positive never turned completely off. If she had been paying him anything like the attention he paid to her, she would probably see right through him by now. But she had insisted on focusing on her work instead of him, and despite how maddening that had been, it left him a measure of protection.
Her hands slid all the way down to the tip of his spine, and then just –
just
– shy of his butt, retreated,
merde
. His hips surged against her thigh, but he fought, and he controlled himself, and he didn’t beg.
Her hands came back again and again retreated shyly. It was like being the sandcastle that the foam never quite reached, the waves never, ever, ever letting the towers just crumble. And she had that crease of concentration between her eyebrows, and it was
all for him
, not some damn dessert she wanted to get just right, but for
him
, and he slipped one hand between her back and the mattress and walked his fingers down that taut spine of hers.
She arched in a startled pleasure that displayed her breasts and torso in such a delectable way. He dug his hands into
her
butt, firm and deep, just the way he would like her to do to him, and watched the pleasure of that run all through her.
She was so easy for him, like tumbling a house of cards. He had always kind of thought she would be hard.
That in itself was fascinating, how easy she was, but all his will to make this last was dissolving in it. The need to take her, just
take her, you’re mine
, drove at him, trying to shatter patience and control and that easy façade that was so much more effective and comfortable than letting people see how much things mattered.
Instead he smiled at her and slid his hand around to cup her sex again. All his muscles wanted to snap like tortured rubber bands at the creamy, soft feel of her.
I want you to get all creamy and soft like that just when I walk in the room.
He wanted her to spend the day like that, just because she worked down the line from him – to spend her days as mad with arousal as he had for the past five months.
He slid his hand against her, in the place of what he really wanted to slide against her, and she slipped her hands around to his chest, shivering at what his hand was doing and fighting to keep her frown of concentration. On him. On trying to get him right.
He wanted to tell her again, more clearly, that he liked everything she did to him, but then…what if, when she wanted to control him, she withheld – everything? So he kept his mouth shut and concentrated on making himself something she got so much pleasure from that she would never want to shut him out.
And she arched and shifted and pressed those pretty black eyebrows together to try to concentrate through her pleasure, running her hands over his chest with such careful attention that he started to break apart. Just break, like a vibrating sugar sculpture that was suddenly going to shatter.
“You’re right.” He grabbed the condom and rolled away from her. “I need to put this on.”
She rolled up onto her elbow after him. Probably to make sure he got it on right, he thought with a flicker of wryness, but her carefulness just aroused him all the more. Everything about her sparked more craving. He had gone so far off the deep end, so long ago, that he was shaking with it now.
“Touch me first?” he whispered suddenly, the condom poised. “Just once? Before I…cover up?”
He couldn’t believe he had just asked her that.
Putain
, when it came to letting someone see how much
control
she could have over him, how badly he wanted something…
But her eyes and mouth rounded, as she touched her tongue to her lips in concentration, and he bit back the sound that surged through him, so that it came out only as a muted bruise.
Flushing very deeply until those claws of arousal ran all over his skin and
tore
at him, she rubbed her hand slowly down his stomach. It flinched and went concave under her touch, his breath releasing on a long hiss, and her fingers sifted through the nest of his hair and – and – and–
She touched him. Oh, God. That little, tense, always-wanting-to-do-everything-perfect hand made a slow, careful fist around him as she pressed those eyebrows together and watched his face.
Shit, she was going to see far too much on his face.
She stroked her clasp of him up to the tip, and,
merde,
but he wanted her. And she said, very low, almost inaudibly: “I wish I had practiced this more.”
What?
“So I could get it right.”
He wrenched her hand off him so fast he actually hurt himself and locked his fingers with hers, too hard, their knuckles grinding. “No.”
“I just – I just – usually I’m trying to slow the guy
down
,” she said, excruciatingly embarrassed, as if the fact that she didn’t know what to do with his penis in her hand was somehow a failing on her part, that she should have corrected before she ever met him.
Fuck, now he just wanted to kill…anybody. Anybody she had ever tried to slow down.
Mine. She’s mine.
“No. No.” He sounded like a caveman. “No practice. Only on me.”
Oh, that was so articulate and laid-back, all right. He rolled over onto her, pinning the hand he held above her head. “
Only
on me,” he insisted. “Sarah. Me.”
Great, was he going to grunt next? You Sarah, me Patrick?
Her eyes had gone wide again, so dark, so impossible for him to read,
please tell me what’s going on behind your eyes, I
– he kissed her suddenly, on that mouth he craved so much, and brought his hips to hers, because this practice idea was the last straw, she was
his
, and he wanted to make her his
now
.
She made a startled sound, and her free hand shot down and covered her sex.
Grazing his bare erection, and –
fuck.
After all that, and after he promised her she could trust him, he had almost forgotten.
He rolled away again, finding another packet because he had crushed the first condom too much in his hand to count on it. Thank God for hands that could make miracles in a second. He could get a condom on faster than the speed of light. That was one damn thing he could do.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said as he came back over her, as if it confused her beyond belief.
He could see why thinking he was beautiful would be confusing to her, all right.
He caught her hand and pressed it into the mattress again, trying to control himself. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said. Didn’t she know that? How could she not know that? Hadn’t he just told her, earlier?
Even veiling his hand in the kitchens, even pretending he was just being friendly, in a tangled confusion of self-protection and protection of her – how many more presents could he offer her, how many more bits of food slide in front of her to make her eat or just to make her mouth melt with delight, how many more times could he slip in and shield her, save her from Luc or her own tendency to break herself on her desire for perfection?
But she blinked at him incredulously, and started to speak, and so–
He just pressed her thighs apart and slid right into her. There. Home.
There.
You’re pinned, you’re mine, I’ve
got
you.
And then, the triumph twisting into incoherence as arousal surged past victory.
At-last-at-last-at-last-at-last.
She gasped, and her wrist twisted in his hold, the nails of her free hand digging hard into his butt.
Finally got to my butt.
He wanted both hands there, but he liked so much, too, holding that wrist captive. He trailed his free hand down the vulnerable length of her trapped arm, over wrist and elbow and down to cup her breast. Oh, she
loved
that. She loved his nails and his calluses grazing down her arm. Her sex clutched around him, and her free hand dug even harder into his butt, and he thought,
We have to do this so many more times. So I can have all of it. Both hands caught, both hands free, breaking too fast or letting her focus that little frown on me until she’s got me out of my mind…
He kissed her before he could tell her something very, very rash, three words that would have laid him out there raw and destructible. Instead he surged deeper into her, oh, that clutch, that clutch of her body around him, that was so–
And he had to let go of that captive wrist, because he wanted her clutching even more. He found that little nub that he had learned already, that he had made it his first priority to control.
Oh, and he made her clutch.
Everything slid off him, at the feel of those muscles squeezing around him: self-protection, conscience, thoughts of tomorrow, even thoughts of her. Just him, just them, just that feeling, over and over and over
and over
Until he grabbed her head in one hard thrust of his fingers and pulled it up to kiss her with everything in him as he came.
Chapter 12
“Sarah. Sarabelle.” The name plumbed deep, deep, deep into the ocean, down past the reach of light, catching at her conscience like a fish and dragging it backward, heavy and resistant. “Sarabelle. You have to wake up.”
The hook was wriggling her, insistently, a shake coming from her shoulder. Oh, God. That was Patrick’s voice. She forced her eyes a bare millimeter open. And closed them again immediately. Because his face was only a foot from hers, unshaved but shower-fresh. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Oh, God. She tried to roll over.
His hand kept shaking her shoulder and wouldn’t let her. “Sarah.
Allez, réveille-toi.
You can’t be late to work.”
Work. Under Patrick. All day. Patrick. Who had been in her body. Who had done things to her body that–
Oh,
God.
Work with him. Minute after minute of failure while he added her to one of the balls he could juggle half asleep. Maybe that was why he was unshaved so much, rolling out of some woman’s apartment last minute in the morning, no razor.
“I quit,” Sarah said flatly, pulling her sheet over her head. The vista of impossible, perfectionist work stretched out before her, all her flaws as clear to her as they were to Chef Leroi or Patrick in one glance. And then, add to that…Patrick. The dread of it crushed her. “I can’t do this anymore.”