Confessions in the Dark (18 page)

With an intensity in his eyes she couldn't read, he pulled her in.

She groaned as he licked his taste from her tongue. The kiss was deep and wet, his muscles lax from orgasm while hers still felt taut, every inch of her begging for touch. He settled a hand on her hip, thumb edging down toward where she was slick and soft for him, and she rocked into him, silently begging.

Scraping his teeth over her lip, he delved deeper. Two fingers traced along her opening, and she clamped her thighs tighter around his hips.

All that time she'd spent trying to figure out exactly how he ticked, and apparently he'd already mastered her.

“There,” he said as he pressed inside, curling his fingers up and rubbing deep within. Firing off sparks.

She nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck in some vain effort to be closer—to breathe his air and to surround him. To live in this moment when he was surrounding her. Filling her.

His thumb touched so gently at her clit. “And there.”

“Yes.” She sucked in a shattering breath at the wave of blistering heat, and it only flared hotter when he brought his other hand up to her breast.

And it took so little. He stroked and rubbed, making soft circles around her clit and firm, curving motions inside. Cupping her flesh, he pinched her nipple between his finger and his thumb, kissing wetly at her mouth until she was panting for it. All too soon, the heat was an inferno, making her tingle all the way to the curled toes of her feet, but she resisted. She wanted more, wanted everything.

But he shook his head, fighting the resistance in her body.

“Let go,” he urged. “I've got you, love.” And that endearment tugged at something that hurt too much inside of her, even as his fingertips pressed exactly where she needed him, as he rolled her clit just right.

Her climax washed over her all at once, dragging her under. The flames broke into cool, cool water, relief and ecstasy, and he did have her. He did.

But even as she fell into his lips, succumbing to the boneless aftermath of pleasure, that word echoed and panged inside her mind.

Love. It was such a casual endearment, such a British thing to say. But it was what she wanted, what she wasn't sure she could ever have.

And it was exactly what she felt for this man.

Y
ou know, there's a perfectly good bed like two feet away from us.”

Cole craned his neck in the direction of said bed, even going so far as to reach a straining hand toward it before collapsing back again. “Much too far.”

Serena rolled her eyes, but the curve of her mouth against his chest betrayed her smile. “Suit yourself.”

“I will.”

He hugged her closer, shifting to press a too-intense kiss to the center of her brow. He shut his eyes, just breathing her in for a moment. Finally, he loosened his grip, prepared for her to swat at him or get up or make some vague effort at putting on her clothes. But she didn't pull away at all. A light inside him glowed. Apparently the floor suited her as well as it did him.

Honestly, though, no one could expect him to move after
that
. He'd managed to strip the rest of his clothes off, but that was as much as he had in him. In the aftermath of climax, they'd collapsed to lie together, tangled naked on the hardwood, and it was cold and it was uncomfortable, and he didn't give a damn. All he cared was that he was here. With her.

His heart gave a restless pang, and he ducked to hide his face in her hair.

He didn't deserve her. Not the playful way she flicked clay at his face or made fun of his fumbling attempts to keep up with her at the pottery wheel. Not the tender way she touched him or the quiet intimacy that seemed to enshroud them every time they kissed.

The grace with which she'd sunk to her knees and practically worshiped him with her mouth.

Christ.

He didn't deserve her. Fuck him if he wasn't going to try to, though.

She shifted, tilting her head to look at him. A little line appeared between her brows. “I can hear you thinking, you know.”

Forcing a smile, he smoothed the crinkles between her eyes with his thumb. “Sorry.”

“Don't be. Just...anything in particular on your mind?”

So many things. His racing thoughts were the reason he could rarely sleep, why he had such trouble staying present. Focusing on the pleasure of holding a beautiful, naked woman in his arms instead of obsessing over all the things that would eventually go wrong.

For the time being, he pushed all those other competing ideas away. Ever so gently, he dragged a fingertip over the curve of her lower lip.

“At the moment, I'm mostly thinking about your mouth.” The soft, wet heat of it and the dark, seductive tease of her tongue on his flesh.

Her eyes flashed, and his prick, soft and sated, gave a waking twitch against his hip. Just as she had earlier, she parted those sinful lips and took a kitten lick at the pad of his finger. Fuck, could she taste herself on his skin?

“Funny,” she said, voice husky. “Because I can't stop thinking about your hands.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

Arousal was a slow, lazy hum radiating between them. A part of him wanted to ride it right into a second round of lovemaking, but a bigger piece was content to let it take its course. She seemed to sense that lack of urgency, pressing one more kiss to his fingertip before letting him draw his hand away.

Resting her face against his shoulder again, she trailed her hand across his chest, gentle arcs that left soft trails of heat in their wake, keeping the fire alive without stoking its flames. In the silence, his mind started to drift.

But it was her thoughts that beat too loudly this time.

“What?” he asked as she traced the bottom of his ribs again.

“I like these,” she said.

It took him too long to catch up, but when he did, the ink sewn into his skin flashed hot. “Oh.”

Her fingertips swept smoothly from the symbols at his abdomen to the star over his heart, then over to the lines that curled around his arm.

“Tell me about them?”

Warning sirens blared inside his mind. She asked the question so casually, as if it were nothing. If he deflected, she'd probably back off. The temptation ate at him. They'd already tread the burned out landscape of his past enough—couldn't he have one evening to lose himself? To ignore the echoes of the ghosts in his heart?

With a deep breath, he grasped her hand in his, too hard, and she startled, frowning.

“You don't have to—” she said.

And it was that very assurance that made him realize he did.

No matter how much of himself he revealed to her, she never pulled away from him. She'd coaxed out story after story until she had the most complete picture he'd ever allowed anyone to have of his life.

She didn't have to coax him anymore. Whatever she asked for he would give.

Loosening his grip, he swallowed. He intertwined their hands and dragged her back to the inscription just beneath his ribs. “This was the first one. I got it my second term at Oxford. Right after I accepted that I would always be alone.”

Her breath came out in a rush. “Oh.” She darted her gaze to his. “What's it mean?”

“It's an equation. It's for...” How did he explain it in a way that might make sense? He gave up and did the best he could. “A single particle, vibrating on a string. Unaffected by any other force or object. I...I thought that was how life would be for me.”

“But it wasn't.”

He shifted until he was looking her in the eye. “No. It wasn't.”

It wasn't as if she could have forgotten that he had been in love before. Serena's calm and Serena's hands and Serena's unrelenting, unforgivable, blessed, wonderful tenacity had been the things to pull him out of his patterns this time, but she hadn't been the first.

He pulled her fingers back to his arm. The lines of ebony ink were crisper where they wrapped around his biceps, the letters and symbols a part of him now. A reminder—one he'd forgotten for so very long.

“This was the second.”

“And when did you get it?”

“Princeton. My third year of my doctorate. After—” He stuttered, the name refusing to come to his lips. “After I wasn't alone anymore.”

“They're equations, too?”

“Yes.” It had seemed fitting, after all. He tightened his grip on her hand. “The ones for light.”

Four simple series of letters and symbols that taken together explained how every bit of brightness and color in the universe had come to be.

Because that's how it had been. A new start in a new country with a woman who had drawn him out of his shell, surrounded by the friends she had pressed him to make. It had felt like all the darkness in his life had been banished, like everything was different now. And it had been.

Everything except him.

He twisted his neck to stare at the ceiling, blinking hard. “After she died, I nearly blacked them out.”

Her touch against his skin went heavier, her fingers pressing in. “I'm glad you didn't.”

“So am I. Now.”

Because there was still light in his world. It had taken him so long to understand it, but there was. Serena had shown it to him again.

Closing his eyes, he brought her hand to rest against his heart. “Instead, I got this.”

“Oh.”

She didn't push and she didn't prod. Instead, she lay there, waiting, and he could have kissed her for it.

Because this was the hardest tattoo to explain. It was the reason he'd had to try.

“It's a nautical star,” he said, looking up into soft, kind eyes the very color of the sea.

Still so patient, she flexed her fingers beneath his hand, tracing the outline of the star.

The sting of the needle came back to him, nearly as violent and precise as the fire of his grief.

Throat raw, he pressed her palm in harder against his skin. “It was an inside joke.” Such dramatics they'd been prone to, way back then. Evoking an orator's tone, he began, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?”

And Serena was so smart. Those brilliant eyes of hers went wider. “Helen.”

At least she could say his late wife's name. It felt like his face was cracking. Serena's gaze fell. She moved as if to pull her hand away, but he held fast, keeping her there. Exactly where he needed her, where he wanted her, where she lived now.

“I spent some of the best years of my life with her.” But not the only good ones he'd ever have. A part of him was just beginning to understand that. “She's written on my heart. She always will be.”

“Of course, I would never—”

He shook his head, and her words cut off. Her gaze shuttered, though, and the idea that she didn't know this—that once again she could be putting herself and her happiness so low...

His voice broke. “But she's not the only one.”

There was more room in his heart than he had ever known. The empty, aching, hollow spaces, the ones he'd thought he'd never fill in the wake of so much loss...maybe they were for her.

“Cole...”

“You're in here, too,” he said, because no matter how this turned out—whether they pulled this off or he ended it in ruin—that much at least would always be true. “Serena. I told you, I can't promise you much.”

“I'd never ask you to.”

He soldiered on, refusing to let her derail him or interrupt. “I still don't trust myself.”

He probably never would. After the way he'd lost control, first as a child with his tormentors and then again and again. With the men on the train.

With Helen.

But Serena was so bloody insistent. “Do you trust me?”

He came up short.

“Of course.” More than he trusted himself.

“Then
trust me
.” The heat of her palm seeped deep into his heart, melting layers of ice and scar.

Maybe she didn't only fill the empty places there. Maybe she was making new ones. Better ones.

Maybe he'd thought that once before.

The seed of doubt came out of nowhere, but before it could take too deep of root, Serena pulled him back to her. She drew her hand from his heart to rest against his cheek, directing his gaze until he was staring, lost, into her eyes.

“Cole, I—” She cut herself off, words hanging heavy and unspoken in the air.

He could imagine them, though, and she was right to keep them in. Some things he still wasn't ready to say or to hear.

Desperate, he covered her lips with his own. In the span of a breath, she caught right up with him, and he could nearly taste the relief in her kiss.

Without hesitation, she opened for him, dragging him in closer. He rolled into her until they both lay on their sides. The cold press of the floorboards bit into his shoulder and hip, and fuck, shite, he should have listened to her after all about hauling themselves onto the bed, but it was too late now. He let his hands roam over soft skin, and his body couldn't help but respond. Her breasts pressed against his chest were tight, her mouth lush, and when she hitched a leg over his, he groaned aloud.

There were things they still couldn't say, but they could communicate all the same. He kissed her with all the passion she awoke in him, all the hope she had taught him he could feel again. The head of his cock grazed the hot flesh of her thigh, sending lightning up his spine until he had to pull back.

Desperate to give her at least some fraction of what she gave him, he slipped a hand between her legs to find her soft and slick. He rubbed at her clit and probed inside, devouring the sounds of need falling out of her lungs. He chased her pleasure, stroking faster and harder. Soaking his fingers, she tightened around him, so close, and he was blind to everything. Could think of nothing but taking her past the edge once more.

“Come on, beautiful,” he all but growled, “give it to me.”

But she shook her head, nudging his hand away. He missed the hot clench of her immediately, wanted more of her little whimpers and the tensing of her body, the rhythmic pulses as she squeezed him.

Until she curled her fingers around his cock.

“Serena,” he groaned. She'd made him come so hard not an hour ago, but it felt like days, he needed her so badly. Her touch felt so good.

She gazed clear into his eyes as she directed him home. “I want you.”

How could he resist?

Poised at her entrance, the head of him snugged up against wet heat, he threaded his fingers through her hair. Angled his neck to kiss her deeper.

He pressed inside in one long glide that stole his breath away. She accepted him so easily, took him in so readily. She gave him things he'd thought he'd never have again.

She was a miracle.

With all the reverence and awe a miracle deserved, he moved inside her. She met his every thrust, one hand at his jaw and the other at his hip, urging him on. With pleasure a brilliant ember, a glowing coal, they rocked together in rolling motions of spines and hips. He couldn't stop touching her, couldn't seem to keep himself from falling into her mouth, and it was too intense. Too much like those words she'd scarcely stopped herself from saying.

And it was impossible to picture—far-fetched to the point of insane—but it came to him all the same.

What if, someday, he said those words to her?

His heart threatened to pound clear out of his chest. As if she knew, she pressed her palm to the aching center of his ribs, and his gaze went blurry and damp.

Because she didn't try to cover that star. That symbol and that reminder that was sewn deep beneath his skin. She touched him right beside it. On clean and untouched flesh, and for a moment, he felt just that innocent. That clean.

He sped the pace of his hips, her name a prayer on his lips as the feeling threatened to crest over. She ground against him harder, and he snuck a hand between them to touch her where she needed it. On the precipice, he hovered, staring deeply into crystal eyes as her whole body went taut, spine arching.

“Cole, I—”

She clenched around him, slick pulses that dragged him right down after. As she shook apart in his arms, he let the pleasure take him. The connection to this woman who accepted him. Who
loved
him. He thrust deeply into the hot, wet clench of her until it overwhelmed him, fire spreading from his balls through every inch of his skin. He emptied himself into her with a force that left him shattered. Gasping against her mouth, he drove home one final time and stilled.