“I know,” he said. “I just figured you’d feel more comfortable if I wore a condom.”
She smiled. That was Nick, always thinking about her comfort first. She raised herself on her elbows to reach his lips with her own, rewarding him with a lingering lip lock. “I haven’t been with anyone since my last checkup. I’m clean.”
That ardent bar between his brows was back. “Same here.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
His fingers worked at the waistband of her panties, coaxing them down her hips to her knees. She struggled until she was free of them, then fought with the shell. No sooner had the air kissed the tips of her breasts than his mouth found them. With her arms still caught in the shell above her head, she arched her back to meet the promise of wet heat. Her heart fluttered beneath his ministrations as he dug his knees into the quilt and brought her up to sitting with him. He continued to suckle, nuzzle, until the yearning took up residence inside her bones and she was no longer herself.
“Look at you.”
She turned her head as he had and confronted the full-length mirror she’d moved. When she stiffened, he ran his hand from the base of her neck to the base of her spine, softening her again with the soothing stroke. “Look at my girl,” he said reverentially.
She saw them together. She didn’t know where her body ended and his began. They weren’t pieces that clicked. They had melded into one. Part of him. Part of her. “Look atus,” she returned.
He made an approving noise. Then he turned his attention to the sensitive underside of her chin, jaw, ear. She watched their reflection as he ran his palm up the length of her thigh before wedging his hand between them to grip his erection.
“Stroke it,” she murmured.
His hand pumped once, twice, again. She felt his body tighten against hers, heat.
“Again, Nick.”
He groaned, his arm working, obedient.
“Again,” she whispered.
He pressed his face against her throat, his neck red as poppies. She could see the outline of a vein. His jaw flared. “You’ve got me too excited. I might—”
She silenced him with a kiss, replacing his hand with hers. His moans filled her mouth. She echoed the strokes by sliding her tongue along his until he vibrated against her, on the brink of release. Relinquishing him, she planted her hands on his shoulders. “Watch,” she said, waiting until his head fell back and his eyes opened to meet hers. “Watch me,” she said again before she seated herself over him.
She parted over him, and his arm tightened around her to stop him from stretching her more. “Slow,” he ground from between his teeth. “I’ve never… This is a first for me.”
She tipped her mouth away from his. “Nick Malone, if you try to tell me you’re a virgin right now, I’m going to kick your ass.”
His unbidden laugh blew across her cheek. “No, baby. I’ve just never been…bare inside a woman before.”
“Oh.”
He kissed the curve of her cheekbone. “It feels right…you being the first.”
“Yeah,” she said, blinking at the wet sting behind her eyes. She’d never cried during sex. She wasn’t about to start now.
Even if this didn’t feel like sex. She’d had her fun. She knew what being with a man meant. But this… This felt like something else entirely.
A tiny ball of fear rolled through her, picking up speed. She ignored it when his hand closed around the back of her neck and the other settled on her hip, guiding her down over him. He filled her. She felt him pulsing inside her, and her thinking stopped abruptly.
“It’s your turn to watch,” he growled.
She steeled herself to meet his gaze and didn’t blink as he guided her through the first stroke. His dark eyes dilated, and his lips parted beneath hers. Sensation chased friction as they rocked together. She could barely breathe. She arched, he plunged and she cried out in pleasure. All the while, she watched what their joining did to him, the intoxication that painted his face. It made her feel drunk on him. She reveled in the sound of their bodies coming together over and over until…
The ecstasy of free fall again. Echoes of a dream.
Only, in her dream, she hadn’t been afraid to fall.
His body stiffened. She felt him spill himself inside her. They crashed to the quilt in an exhausted slump.
As they lay tangled like toppled branches, she realized the fall had already taken place.
