A tiny, muffled
oh
. She grabbed his hand and pressed it.
Well, hell. Maybe he wasn’t going to screw this up.
Stunned at how much faster this had all happened than he had ever imagined it, how much more real it felt, how it had a
scent
and a texture and the sounds of her breathing, and how she wasn’t doing one single thing the way he had imagined it but it was all
so much better because it was real
, he began to play with that spot where she had pressed his hand. Ah, yes, there it was, that tiny, sneaky part of her that hid like a secret treasure but that he had now found.
She’d let him. She’d helped him find it.
Her hand relaxed, so he must be getting something right. Her head tossed on the pillow, her breasts lifting and falling, her hips twisting. She clutched at him again, any random part of him she could reach, her hands sliding and gripping.
And he got to watch her.
See everything
,
as she just lost it, her body jerking, her hands grabbing at him and falling away, as she shuddered and shuddered until she fell lax against the mattress again.
All her muscles seemed to abandon her, as if she was this breath away from falling into deep, pliant sleep. He eased his hand from between her legs and curved it gently around her thigh, almost afraid he’d lost her.
“Joss.” She blinked her eyes open, dazedly, her hands coming back to stroke weakly over his arms and chest.
He braced his arms on either side of her, and she liked that, her hands came to his biceps and squeezed, making almost no impression on their tautness.
“Célie.” His breathing had gone ragged, and all the tension he’d tried to slow down, tried to contain, gripped him, this too-tight, too-desperate hunger that was going to rend his muscles to shreds. “My turn now?”
“Yes,” she murmured, running her hands over his back. They didn’t grip the same as they had before, more lax, this sweet dreaminess to their stroking. “Definitely yes.”
He pulled her leather pants and her panties off so fast. And her bra—oh, yeah, she took off her bra herself, and he buried his face in those soft breasts, his heart pounding out of control. She pushed at his jeans for him while he was buried there, tugging them down over his hips.
So he had to help her with that. Yes. Damn. Rearing up, getting the damn things out of the way. Oh, hell, he’d just thrown the condoms in the back pocket all the way across the room. He dove for his jeans as they landed on the edge of the window and jerked them back before they could slide off the other side and down into the street six floors below. Thank God. Although—“I think your pillow might be on the sidewalk down there.”
Célie laughed a little.
He came back to stare down at her, naked and laughing, curves and strength, reddened, damp lips, the mark of his stubble on her breasts. Hell, she marked easily—all those little red prickles just from his kisses there.
He rubbed his jaw. But he didn’t have a razor here in her apartment, and
hell
but he didn’t want to stop.
“Okay?” he said, pulling the condom on.
Thank you
, his damn dick said at the feel of the latex tightening on him.
So that means this time is for real?
“Yes. Joss, come here.”
He was literally vibrating with tension as he came down over her, flicks all over his body. His muscles felt like elastic about to snap. He pressed his hands into the sheets on either side of her head, fisting handfuls of the soft cotton, staring down at her.
She bit her lip. She looked just a little scared.
“Tell me.” God, his voice sounded hoarse. He sounded like an animal. He
was
an animal, reduced to absolute, primitive need. He had to keep some control. “If you need me to slow down. Or … stop.”
Oh, hell, not stop, please.
“Okay.” Her eyes had gone very wide. She stared up at him in a way that made him feel as if he was betraying years of her trust in him, years of being the guy she could count on not to take advantage of her.
I’m not taking advantage. I’m your hero now.
So I earned this.
Oh, hell.
“Joss,” she whispered. “Are you
thinking
? Because this isn’t a fantasy. You don’t have to think this one through. You get to do it.”
“I’m savoring. I’ve wanted this a really long time.”
He lowered his hips enough that his penis grazed against her sex, and the touch jolted through him. Hell. Yes. This was happening.
“Me, too,” she whispered. “But it’s a lot more real and, and … bigger, in real life.” She ran her hand over one of his taut arms, caressing the bulge of his biceps in a way that made him gloatingly proud of that bulge. “It’s got sweat on it.”
“Sorry,” he managed.
“No, I … wanted you to become real. At least, I would have wanted that, if I ever thought it was possible.”
“I’m real.” His voice sounded almost like a growl, dragged out of his chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more real in my life.” After five years of intensely physical demands, he knew exactly how to glory in his own body. And yet the moment was also so packed with fantasy come true that he was about to explode with it.
She stroked her hands down to his butt as she rocked her hips almost
shyly
up against his. “Joss. I’m not saying no.”
Right. He’d picked that much up.
Her fingers kneaded into his butt muscles. “I’m not saying stop.”
Arousal geysered through him, as he realized what she was repeating.
“I’m not raising a hand to push you back.” Her fingers tugged on his hips.
He wet his lips.
She looked so damn … sweet there, against her sheets, with her little uptilted nose and her wide mouth and her pointy chin and those brown eyes that were such a window into her warm, irrepressible, resilient soul.
“Joss. If I’m the stop button … I say go.” She wrapped her thighs around his hips.
“Oh, hell,” he said, and just surged into her.
Way
too hard. Just like that.
She gasped, tightening around him, probably to try to squeeze him the hell out of her, and his brain just went black and hot and starry with pleasure.
“Célie,” he tried. Her name, the only word with meaning that he could find amid the black hot stars in his brain, her name like
I’m sorry
or
Oh, my God, do that again, that feels so good.
“Wow,” she whispered, shifting her hips, trying to adjust, her fingers flexing into his butt again.
“I can’t—I want—you’re so—”
He couldn’t think or speak. All his brain had zeroed in on that sensation of himself inside of her. This pounding, pulsing of himself, as if his entire being had packed into that one length of his body, trying to explode its way into hers.
“
Here
,” he managed. “You’re
here
. You’re true. You feel so damn real.”
“You don’t,” she whispered. “You feel incredible.”
Yeah,
that
sounded like one of his fantasies, all right. Her telling him how incredible he was, while he moved in her. And he couldn’t stop moving. Movement had taken over his brain, all he could think about, all he could focus on, just the slide of his body into hers, the way her muscles tightened on him and she tried to hold on. Shells could have started falling, the building could have crashed down around his ears, and he wouldn’t have stopped.
“Mine,” he might have said, tightening his hold on her too hard. “Mine at last.” He had to ease off, he couldn’t hold her this hard, he was too strong, she was too little, he had to—he had to—
Press into her as deep as he could.
Hell
, that felt good. And out. Oh, yeah, and back in, this long drive of possession.
Her head tossed, and her hips flexed up. “Joss.”
He slipped his hand between their bodies, in case his thumb against that favorite spot of hers would help him hear his name in just that tone again. But he couldn’t keep track of that thumb. His mind was too utterly subjugated by the sensation of himself inside her, swirling down and down and down into it. Vaguely, he was conscious of her grabbing his hand and pressing it harder. Of her crying out again.
But when he felt her convulsing around him, muscles tightening and tightening, he lost himself.
He gave himself up to her.
And it was better than any fantasy he’d ever had.
It was worth the wait.
“Célie?”
She started, tightening her arms around her knees, looking up at Joss as he came up onto his elbow in her bed.
“Célie, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.” She kneaded her upper arms, feeling embarrassed and stupid. “I thought you were asleep.” He’d seemed to be, when she came back from the bathroom and suddenly found herself too scared to climb back into the bed.
Joss stretched out a hand from the low bed to graze callused fingertips over her folded arms, gently. “I was faking it. Harder to kick a man out if you think he’s asleep.”
“I know,” she said and winced. She probably shouldn’t have said that. But she did know. The first time she had tried to be normal, to move along and have a healthy, happy love life and forget her stupid teenage crush, the guy had fallen asleep. She’d hated it, having him there in her bed all night. The whole thing had been awful.
“Damn you,” she muttered.
Joss pulled his hand back, his expression closing.
“You made me try all this out on
other men
! Try and try to make it work and not really understand why it didn’t work or why it always left me feeling like I had this big hole in my soul. You made me feel like there was something wrong with me! And all the time it was you!”
“Célie—”
“I needed
you
.” She wanted to pound his chest in a flurry of stupid Scarlett O’Hara fists. “It was supposed to be with
you
.” Wanted him to pull her into his chest while she pounded on it, like Rhett did, taking the blows and making it right.
“I loved
you
.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “Damn you, Joss. Couldn’t you have at least told me before you left that you wanted me to wait?”
“No,” he said flatly, obdurately, and she grabbed the spare pillow, crushing it between her knees and her face, and smothered another scream in it.
“I could ask you to wait for the man I am now,” he said, “if I needed to be gone again.”
She whipped her head up, shocked through with fear. “Joss, don’t—”
“But I couldn’t ask you to wait for the man I was then.”
Her hands tightened on the pillow until she couldn’t stand how damn yielding the thing was anymore and slammed it against the bed. Stupid, wimpy pillow. She needed a three-kilo pack of chocolate to slam right about now. She needed something
hard
, that made
noise
, that she could beat to smithereens. “I’m going to hit you, Joss. I swear I’m going to hit you.”
“I’d prefer it. Over the words. But I suppose that’s not fair, since you can’t really hurt me with your fists, to ask you to use the thing you do the least damage with, instead of your strongest weapon.”
Oh. Did her words hurt that much? She bit at her lip, unhappy. “I’d smack my head against yours instead, except it wouldn’t work. I’d break my head open on you, and your skull would just stay there, as stubborn and unyielding as ever. It drives me
mad
.”
He gazed at her a moment, and then he lay on his side amid the sheets again. Maybe he was trying to make himself look yielding. It didn’t work
at all
. It did make him look sexy, though, that hard body, brown from so much sun, the white sheet pulled across his hips and otherwise totally naked. Hers. In her bed.
“Damn you, Joss,” she said weakly. She couldn’t hit a man lying down. She could only touch him. Stroke him. Feel him.
Curl up next to him, that heat she had always dreamed of in her bed, and fall asleep, and not have to hide between her bed and the wall, not even in the darkest hours before dawn.
Until he disappeared again.
“I’m sorry about the words.” She bent her head. “I just—” She broke off, unable to explain better than she already had.
“I’m sorry about the nights you curled up on the floor between your wall and your bed. I’m sorry about the other men. It’s okay about the words, Célie. If you didn’t care about me, they’d never come out of you that way.”
“Joss.” Célie clutched her knees. Her eyes tracked over him, up to his eyes watching her in the low, warm lamplight. She’d bought that lamp and that bulb so that she could have something that would gently diffuse the darkness, if a woman couldn’t stand it anymore at three in the morning. She’d bought a night-light first, one that cast stars on the ceiling, but gazing at them, she’d imagined Joss out under some Afghanistan sky, and she’d started to cry.
She sighed that memory out, very slowly, and let herself focus just on him. The him he was now. That powerful body, the rugged strength and ability to do anything that he’d forged … for her.
“You did something incredible.” She touched his chest, carefully, trying to think past fear to concentrate on just what a precious treasure had been offered to her. Her hand slipped to his arm and stroked over the words
Honneur, fidélité.
“Utterly amazing. I’m proud of you. I’m sorry to keep making it all about me.”
“Well, it was all about you,” he started, and she closed her eyes tight and fisted her hand against his chest.
“But we can pretend otherwise,” he corrected himself, expressionlessly. “If that’s better for you.”
She opened her eyes to stare at him, so gorgeous and so focused, there in her bed in the soft lamplight. God, he was beautiful. Just utterly beautiful, there and alive and in her bed and …
there
.
I love you. I’ve always loved you.
“Now why are you on the floor right now, Célie? You can’t tell me you’re
scared
of something with me right here?” Sheer incredulity in his tone, that there might be any fear she had that he couldn’t kill with his pinky finger.
She tightened her arms on her knees again, foolish and stubborn. “It’s all very well for you,” she muttered. “Your fantasy was easy. An inflatable doll could have done that—”