“It’s okay,” he whispered into her neck. “I get you.”

The strangest sensation filled her head, and she realized too late it was impending tears. She tried to turn her head away but he caught her mouth with his, and the feeling of being vanquished died with his taste and trust and understanding.

When he pulled back, he stared at her in a most incredible way, like she was The Answer. His massive erection grazed her inner thigh. She could definitely take care of that. Slowly, she peeled off the rest of the dress and then unhooked her bra. Naked, her chest rose and fell, but he looked only at her face.

“Protection?” he asked.

She nodded. “Condoms. In the drawer by the bed.”

She started to rise, meaning to head for the darkened bedroom, but he rocked to his feet with ridiculous power and told her, “I’ll get them.”

Them?

With a half smile and a jerk of his head toward the jagged city vista, he added, “When I come back, I’d really like to see you standing against that window.”

As he turned for her bedroom, he unbuttoned and stripped off his shirt, the muscles in his back doing acrobatics underneath his skin. The V created by his wide shoulders and waist made her legs quiver all over again.

And because he’d proved to her that control wasn’t always necessary for pleasure, she went over and stood by the window. 

Chapter

16

Naked from the waist up, his jeans already unzipped, Leith hurried back to the living room from the bedroom, box of condoms in hand. One thought alone played on exuberant repeat in his mind: I’m about to have sex with Jen Haverhurst.

When he came out of the hall, he thought he knew what to expect. After all, he’d been the one to tell Jen he wanted her up against the window. But the truth was, no amount of preparation or fantasizing could have set him up well enough for the actual sight. Jen’s curved silhouette cut an erotic shape against the rectangles of the city lights. Her hair swung at her shoulders and she stood with her legs apart, far enough that he could trace the lines of her inner thighs all the way up to the place he most wanted to be. Though he couldn’t see her face in the shadows, he knew the moment she saw him, because she raised her arms and flattened her palms against the glass.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, hoping Da’s ghost would forgive him for such a curse in these circumstances. “Look at you.”

He sauntered toward her, forgetting he’d been in a rush only a minute ago. As he got closer, the city lights let him see her wide-eyed, openmouthed expression. The look of expectation and anticipation. Of lust. She breathed deep and even, her nipples rising and falling, the shadows shifting across her chest.

When he finally touched her, it was to take her cheek in his palm. There were too many words to say, so he kissed her. It was a slow, deliberate stroke of his mouth over hers. Her lips were so smooth and soft, and even though they’d kissed countless times in their lives, even though he’d just gone down on her for the very first time and had made her come in a way that still left him happy and dizzy, this kiss felt much, much different.

He inched closer. Close enough that her nipples grazed his bare chest. Just a brush, a tease, but it sent waves of sensation over his skin. God, she was so, so soft. She leaned back against the window, her warm hands sliding around his waist and dipping into the back of his loosened jeans, curving around his ass. Slowly, she pushed his jeans to the floor and the sound of the denim hitting the parquet heightened the kiss. The air-conditioning felt wonderful on his hot skin, but the cotton of his underwear weighed heavy as chain mail. When her fingers slipped beneath the top elastic, he sighed. When she shoved the underwear down to his ankles, he groaned.

With a long swipe of her tongue against his, she released his mouth from the kiss and trailed a slow, hot gaze down his bare body to his erection.

Stepping out of his jeans, he said, “Touch me.”

Her lips quirked at the order because she was already halfway there. She wrapped her fingers around his dick—sweet, sweet girl—pushed them all the way to the root—holy fucking God—and gave an agonizingly slow, gentle pull all the way to the tip—whatever you do, just keep doing that. Just like that.

Darkness fell as he shut his eyes and concentrated on the way she stroked him, how she managed to build his need when he hadn’t thought it could go any higher. He’d gone willfully blind, every stroke of her hand a torture. Her mouth found his chest, and he could feel her smiling against his skin.

He wasn’t smiling, though. Hard, short breaths left his open lips. He had one fist planted on the glass, his forehead grinding into the curl of his fingers. At last he pushed away from the glass and encircled the wrist of her stroking hand. “Enough.”

She stopped. He saw the little vibration of her pulse, the live beat dancing in her throat.

“I want in you,” he said.

Without words, she slipped the box of condoms from his hand and took one out. Ripped open the packet. She lifted her face to him as if to question what they were about to do, just as she’d done all those years ago in the back of the Caddy. As if this were their first time or something.

It was, actually. It was their first time as the people they were now.

He thought about all she’d revealed to him earlier that evening and kicked himself over how his eighteen-year-old self should have guessed there was more beneath her surface. He cringed at how cock-blind he’d been. How he could have been helping her instead of trying to get in her pants all the time, and then getting pissed off that she left him.

He thought about how he’d done such a bang-up job at convincing himself he was steady and fulfilled these past three years, but how sad and alone he truly felt, thinking himself abandoned by the two people who’d meant the most to him.

He had to stop thinking like that. Like Da had died on purpose. Like Jen had been laughing as she’d gotten on that plane. Neither was true.

Though she stood gorgeously bared before him now, she’d never been as naked to him as she’d been in the lounge, her story on her lips. It made his heart hurt. After all this time, she still had the ability to do that.

She touched him again, bringing him back to the present, and a playful light came to her eyes as she rolled the condom down his cock with an efficiency and care he refused to think about.

As he slid his arms around her rib cage and lifted her up against the glass, an echo of his thought, and her words, in the lounge returned: I really did love you. And if I’m not careful it’ll happen again.

Her legs folded around his waist, heels on his ass. Her narrow arms wrapped around his neck and he found her mouth again, holding her with shaking thighs in that position.

The tip of his cock nudged against her, and even that part of her felt different and exciting to him. A whole new woman, a whole new experience. She was trying to grind against him, trying to get him inside, but the position restricted her movement.

“Wait,” he said against her lips. “Let me.”

“Hurry,” he thought he heard her say, the word shredded.

He flexed his arms and pushed back slightly, holding her body away from him. Together they looked down as he positioned her over his cock. Just the tip of him went in, a wet, tight pressure covering his most sensitive place. At the same time, their heads snapped up and they looked at one another. This moment was only the beginning of the most powerful physical and emotional connection in existence, and he was already lost.

Bending his legs and leaning her back against the glass, he got better leverage. He pushed in a little more, watched himself slip inside. He refused to let his eyes close. He wasn’t missing a millisecond of this. He drank in her gasp as he slid in even further. He watched with awe the dilating of her pupils, the string of staccato, musical moans that punctuated each of his thrusts, until he was fully inside her.