I was done talking. She was almost naked, she was beautiful, and she had come to me. I had every intention of kissing her and taking her backward to the bed, but she circumvented me by lifting her hands higher on my back, pulling herself up straighter, and sealing her mouth over mine. She tasted oaky and intoxicating from the booze, but under that she tasted tart and sweet, like the best treat I could ever ask for. My thoughts from earlier rang even more true now. I wasn’t done with her by a long shot, and at this rate I was doubting that I ever would be. I was more than willing to fall for her, and as she leaned backward and pulled us both down onto the bed, I literally fell for her, and nothing could’ve made me happier.
Chapter 13
Brysen
MY INTENT HADN’T BEEN to seduce or to tempt. But when I saw him standing at the gate, a perfectly composed, gleaming gold, and shining light in a place that was so dreary and dark, my motivations had instantly shifted. There was something about how effortless he was in both the skins he wore—the one of a stunningly handsome young blue blood, and the one he more typically wore as the ruthless and broken king of the streets. They both just got to me.
There were so many unanswered questions and so many obstacles that seemed to stand between us. Really, when I broke it all down in my head, as I stripped on my way to the barren little room that now felt more welcoming and more like home than the house of lies I had been living in for the last year¸ I could see that Race was the only person who had been unfailing in his honesty with me. He was also the only person in recent memory who’d gone out of his way to do something for me, instead of expecting me to swoop in and hold it all together for him. I could no longer deny that this alone had me ready to crawl all over him and wind myself around him so tightly neither one of us could ever get loose.
I was impatient to get him at least to the same level of undress as I was, but when his shirt came up and off over his head, instead of admiring all the ripped and corded muscle pressing me down into the mattress, I got caught up skimming hands over bruises that had mottled to an ugly yellowish-green color. It was always there under his polished and glossy veneer. The ruthlessness of who he really was. The dual parts of the man that made Race Hartman who he was. I shifted my legs apart as he nudged them with his knee and gasped a little as he settled his hard body more fully into mine. I twined one arm across the breadth of his shoulders and let the other one snake between the very limited space between us so that I could go to work on his belt and the front of his pants. I could feel him pulsing in time to our racing hearts and could feel how hot and ready he was. When the backs of my fingers got inside his waistband, I heard him groan as they immediately encountered eager and willing flesh. Nothing ever thrummed and burned with life and vitality the way Race did. I wanted to eat them, and him, up.
He shoved the shoulders of the shirt I had commandeered off of me and bent his head so he could lick from one side of my collarbone to the other. He repeated the process back the other direction and stopped in the center at my breastbone. When he lifted his head and flashed that sexy dimple at me, I felt a full-body shiver overtake me. I could tell by the way the green in his eyes darkened that he felt my reaction as well. I needed to get his pants out of my way before he rendered me mindless, which I was pretty sure was his intent, when he lowered his head and captured the tip of one straining breast in his mouth.
It wasn’t just the heat of his mouth or the swirl of his tongue around my nipple that had my entire spine arching off the bed. It was the way he touched the other one with reverence and hummed against my already tingling skin like I was some kind of delectable dessert he had been deprived of until now. It was like he was going to use every sensory tool he had to savor me, and it made my hands shake, which had getting that throbbing erection free from its denim confines harder than it should have been.
“Race?” His name was a question and a plea.
He just grunted in response and pulled his head up off of my breast as he levered himself up in a one-armed push-up so that he could help me shove the rest of his clothes out of the way. My arms were still tangled in the sleeves of his shirt, and when I went to wiggle out of it, he shook his head, sending gold strands of hair into those eyes that were gleaming dark with arousal.
“I like you all twisted up in something of mine.”
He caught both of my legs, which were splayed on either side of him, and lifted them up so that they were wrapped around his lean waist. When he leaned back down on the bed over me, everything about him that was hard and hot was pressed up against everything in me that was warm and melty. I wanted to lift my hips up to force him inside, but he put a hand on the side of my face and used his index finger to trace over the curve of my eyebrow, which was arched in question.
“That’s not how we’re going to do this, Bry.” He bent his head and kissed the high curve of my cheekbone and then my temple. I ran my hand up and down the sides of his ribs, careful of his still-healing body.
“What do you mean?”
He moved to the other side of my face and repeated the gentle, lulling kisses at the same time as my body involuntarily arched into his. I could feel how ready he was, evident by the beads of arousal, wet and warm against the inside of my thigh, but for some reason, he held himself just out of reach.
“Get in, get off, and get out. We aren’t going to do that to each other. I don’t give a fuck what the reasons end up being, in the long run all I care about is that you are here, and when you are, I’m not going to ever give you a reason to regret it.”