He’s already on top of me, his knees trapping my thighs, his massive chest and shoulders blotting out the sky. He cups my face, running his fingers over my damp cheek. I have his total, undivided attention. As soon as our eyes lock, I’m lost in his dark depths. It’s the way he’s looking at me. With so much awe and tenderness. He’s not frustrated by seeing me like this. He’s amazed. I’ve never had anyone look at me like I’m their entire world until Maverick.
As I fall into his endless warm gaze, as dark as the sky and as soft as all those stars should be, he’s seeing past my face, down into the depths of my soul.
It grounds me.
Literally, I’m on the ground, the grass all along my back, tickling the nape of my neck, the damp cold seeping up through my clothes, but I’m warmed by Maverick’s heat above me. He’s not just blotting out the sky. He stopped the panic. He’s put himself between me and the world again, and just having the pressure and weight of his body makes it possible to breathe.
I take in every bit of his glorious face, from tousled hair that the breeze keeps ruffling, to the shadow of stubble on his hard jawline. His brows are drawn together, his lashes as dark and thick as his hair. He has a small scar along his temple, level with his right eye that I’ve never seen before. It’s just a tiny little divot. There’s the slight bump at the bridge of his nose and the perfect curl of lips so sinfully artful that they’re distracting, even in the moment. Even out here.
A rush of peace sweeps through me, easing my constricted lungs and stopping the churning in my stomach. With Maverick above me, I’m safe. It’s like we’re one body. I don’t have to just exist alone. Not now. Not just because our bodies are so close. Our hearts are beating so very near each other’s. Our souls can be one.
He can see the moment that the panic attack recedes. I feel my face relax and my body go limp, but it’s more than that. His eyes aren’t just dark either. They light up with something that makes my blood sing hot and every bit of me aware of the long, hard planes of him bearing down around me.
I tentatively free a hand and snake it along his shoulders. The breeze ruffles along the hair on the back of my arm as I brush his shoulder and then bury my fingers at the nape of his neck, beneath his soft hair.
A sound tears out of Maverick’s throat, raw and guttural. His eyes shutter against it, like he’s waging a war inside himself.
I cup the back of his neck and guide his face down to mine until our foreheads touch. He keeps himself hovering above me until I trace his backbone, right down to the small of his back. I apply pressure there, but when he remains stubbornly poised above me, I wriggle until I can raise my hips up to meet him.
This time, the groan is long and feral, a warning of sorts, that I’m about to unleash something he’s trying very hard to cage because he wants to be gentle and a gentleman, and out here isn’t the place or the time.
I let out a hiss of breath as the hard bulge in his jeans jams straight into the juncture of my thighs.
The sound is immediately stifled as Maverick digs a hand under my head and lifts me to his mouth. His lips are warm, scalding against the cool night. He doesn’t kiss me gentle or slow like he did in the kitchen. He devours my mouth, not so much kissing me as possessing every ounce of me.
He crushes me down, down into the ground. His hand brackets my head, keeping me safe from the ground, even while he plunders my mouth. I give as good as he takes, eating at his lips, sighing, writhing against the hard cage of his body. My hips keep angling up, trying to find just the right friction, but there are too many clothes in the way for me to angle myself exactly where I need to be. All I can do is channel all my frustration and feed it back to him in the ravenous kiss.
His tongue strokes mine, diving and delving deep into my mouth. When he goes to pull away to get air, I nip his bottom lip. I do it a little harder than I intended and I can tell it stings because Maverick responds with another dark growl.
Like we’re not outside at all, he shifts, tugging my legs out from beneath him and arranging them around his waist. I let him, only too willing to shape me like a doll, to get me exactly where he wants me.
Before I can think about exposed limbs, he drops his lips to my neck and fastens them at my rapid pounding pulse. He kisses me there, sucks at my skin, tastes me with of drags of his tongue.It drives me mad, but he’s still got me trapped. Our clothes still have us both caged in.
Like he’s thinking the same thing, his hand slips from behind my head and traces down my back, down to cup my ass. He does it through my pajama bottoms and underwear, but his touch is still shockingly hot.
I want him to rip off my clothes and trace every bit of me with his tongue. I want him inside of me, thrusting and groaning, sweating and aching until we both find oblivion.
We can’t do that out here.
Even if I had no fears, there are still houses on either side of this one, and the fence isn’t all that high. It’s the middle of the night, but if someone happened to be up, all they’d have to do is look out the window and they’d probably see us. I doubt that’s the kind of phone call Scythe wants to get. He can’t just pick up and move. The last thing I want is for some scandalized neighbor to call the cops.
“Take me inside?” I frame it as a question, but Maverick lifts his head.
In the next instant he nods. He sweeps me up, my legs wrapped tightly around his waist and carries me so fast to the backdoor that my panic doesn’t even have time to rear its head. There’s too much sensation. Too much heat and want, lust and red raging desire. That’s my shield against the world.
Maverick slams the door behind us and rams the lock into place.
He lurches down the stairs, me clinging to him, peppering his jaw, neck, and cheeks with hot kisses.
I bite his earlobe as he gets to the bottom of the stairs, plying my teeth against it. He doesn’t make a sound until I move to the juncture of his neck and shoulder and sink my teeth into that tender spot.
“Watch out for cats,” I warn him.
“I’ll be careful.”
“Not for them. They’ll get out of the way. Just… have you ever seen those movies where they attack naked bits?” I don’t know why I say it, except that I’m worried that if there’s a feline disaster involving swaying objects, Maverick might never forgive them.
Pumpkin sometimes can’t help his orange cat energy.
