He stilled, his forehead pressed to hers, his hand cupping her breast. “Nothing’s ever felt so good as you.” The admission sounded like it had been dragged out of him unwillingly, and her heart cracked open just the tiniest bit more. By the time Charles was through with her, she didn’t think there’d be anything left of the organ. Because it wasn’t just her life her actions would be effecting. She was going to hurt him. She could see it clearly. And she couldn’t see any way to avoid it.
So she wrapped her legs around his hips and squeezed her inner muscles. Delighted in the groan that escaped his lips.
Now was what mattered. She could make him, make them both, feel good now.
He pulled back, every ridge and vein on his member seeming to hit each nerve ending in her quim, then drove back in.
“Charles!” She reached for him, wanting to feel the heat of his skin beneath her fingers.
“Hands back up.” He pressed them against the headboard. “Keep them there.”
His order sent a dark thrill through her body. She liked fusspot Charles. Methodical and orderly Charles. She liked him sweet and caring.
But when he became demanding Charles, well, that did things to her.
He rose to his knees, bringing her legs to his shoulders. She saw the outline of his jaw. A gleam in his eye. And then she saw nothing at all. She only felt. Felt as he hammered into her like he had something to prove. Felt as he made her stretch, bend to his pleasure.
His fingers found her nipple. Squeezed until the only two points of her body she was conscious of were that intense pressure at her hard bud and the stirring in her core. The rest of her might not have existed at all.
“You’re a woman and I’m just a man.” His breathing grew heavy. “Isn’t that what you said?”
She blinked against the haze clouding her mind. He was asking her questions? Now? She didn’t even know if she remembered how to speak.
He gave her nipple one last hard pinch before his hand disappeared. The sound of a slap rang out a second before the side of her breast prickled with heat. “Isn’t it?” he demanded.
“Yes.” She keened. She didn’t even know what she was agreeing to, but at that moment, she would agree to anything he’d asked.
“We fit,” he muttered. “You’re a woman to my man. My woman.” He dragged his hand across her abdomen and down into her nest of curls. “We can make us fit.”
His woman. The muscles in her core coiled tighter. Yes, she was his. And always would be. Even after he turned his back on her, she would belong to this man. He wouldn’t want her any longer, but he would own her heart just the same.
He circled his thumb around her clit, the glancing contact a tortuous warning of things to come. Her back arched and her hands scrabbled on the headboard for purchase. “Charles!”
“That’s right,” he murmured, his voice husky. “You’ll come for your man. Won’t you, sweetheart?”
And when he rubbed directly over her nub, she could do nothing else but obey. With a cry, she shattered. Blinding pleasure raced through her, from her toes to her eyelids. Her core squeezed his length, drawing him deeper, until it squeezed around nothing, and he was spilling on her belly, low, animalistic sounds tearing from his throat as he spent.
He collapsed beside her, both of them gasping for breath. Her body cooled until he grabbed her hip and dragged her close. His breath butterflied across her temple as he drew the tip of his finger up and down her abdomen, tracing patterns into her skin with his seed.
A month ago she would have been astounded by the situation. Now it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lie beside Charles Strait, painted in his essence.
She tucked her nose into the hollow of his throat and breathed him in. “Charles?”
“Let’s not ruin this night with questions.” He dipped his finger into her belly button, and an aftershock of her crisis pulsed through her. “One can reshape boxes to suit. Or build new boxes,” he said thoughtfully, almost to himself. “One can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Was he actually thinking there was a way to make this work? Make them work? Could there be a way? Her belly fluttered. If he was trying to make his rigid categories for people bend, could he bend on his ideas of justice, as well?
“Charles?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“If we catch the man who killed Lydia….”
“When we catch him.”
She smiled, her lips curving against his throat. Such a dear man. “When we catch him.” Her smile faded. “What…what if he’s not punished?”
His finger traced over her ribs. “He’ll hang. The courts will see to it.”
