And just when she was sure it couldn’t get any more intense...just when her whole body felt like one big ball of tension...he leaned down. He leaned down as though he were going tolickher there. He even turned his head a little and parted his lips, tongue peeking out to wet the top one—like a goddamnhint, like asuggestion.
But thank Christ he backed away.
She didn’t know what would have happened if he’d actually done it.
And then he just went ahead and fuckingdid it. He mouthed at her through the material, so soft it should have felt like nothing. Only it didn’t, it didn’t, Lord in heaven it didn’t. She felt every inch of those plump lips pushing against her pussy. She felt the flicker of his tongue dragging over that flannel in a way that was somehow more unbearable than if she hadn’t been wearing anything at all.
It was almost like getting a double touch—the hint of wetness and heat from his tongue, and then the maddening pull of damp material as he eased it over her clit. She didn’t know how to take any of it. This time she did tell himno, don’t, stop, but as she had a hand in his hair at the time—and that hand was definitely not pushing him away—it didn’t have quite the desired effect.
Instead he laughed, to hear her saying no while pulling him closer. “Are you sure about that?” he asked, and for one horrible moment she was sure he was going to torment her with her indecision. She went rigid waiting for it, waiting for him to pull back a little and tease her until she died. It would have been easy. She was half-dead already.
So it was a relief when he chose a different path. He held her gaze, as mischievous and devilish as she’d ever seen him, and then he licked again. He covered her pussy with his mouth and henuzzled—which sounded like nothing on paper but felt like being on fire in practice.
She had to tighten that hand in his hair just to get through it. Her whole body stuttered, as if he’d attached her to the mains. And thesoundsshe made...the moans and grunts and incoherent encouragements... They were just beyond anything she’d ever heard from her own mouth.
At one point, she was pretty sure she told him torub her clit. Of course it came outmmm mm mmmmmm, but the sentiment was definitely there. Maybe more than the sentiment was there, because once she’d pushed those semi-words out he did just that. He used his tongue and his lips and finally his fingers, stroking over her in this insanely intense exploratory way when the other things weren’t quite enough.
He found the exact shape of that stiff little bud, circling and circling until she wasn’t sure how she hadn’t come yet. She’d been on the edge for what seemed like forever, yet still nothing. It almost felt as though she were waiting for something, though she couldn’t quite figure out what that was.
More of this? More of that?
Nothing seemed quite right—until he moved back up the bed. Until he said,I want to kiss you as you come.Thenit was enough. He pressed his lips to hers, eyes open all the time and just looking and looking as he stroked her into that first surge. The one that always took her by surprise, before petering off into nothing.
It didn’t peter off into nothing here, however. Another one followed that first spike of pleasure, far stronger than any she’d ever known. It would have forced a gasp out of her, if there hadn’t been a third delicious wave to contend with. If she hadn’t been drowning in everything that was already happening, struck dumb by the intensity and the force of it and his gaze still locked with hers.
Oh that gaze of his...
Did he understand what that did to her? That it was those eyes of his that took her breath, that made her silent, that pushed her orgasm to new heights? It was the way he looked at her that forced a sob at the last second, full of all the helplessness she suddenly felt. She had to grab hold of him and hang on, and part of her hated him for that. Mostly because she knew then that she loved him.
But also because he quite clearly knew it too.
Chapter Nine
It took her a moment to realize what she was hearing. For one sleep-fogged second she was sure she was still dreaming, because reality didn’t usual come with an ’80s electro-synth soundtrack of the kind her mum used to love so much. It was only when she was unconscious that Kyle Reese decided to save her from killer robots from the future, while Brad Fiedel thundered in the background. Usually when she woke up, those things faded away.
But not today—no, on this particular day her home was flooded with it. That haunting theme rolled up the stairs and thrummed through the bedroom, so sweet and strong it made her ache. It wasn’tThe Terminator, however. He wasn’t watching anything so easy to attribute to a guy like him.
He was watchingStarman.
She had no idea why—out of all the thousands of movies she had—but he was doing it just the same. She couldn’t even pretend he’d left it on for her, before maybe slipping out the door. He was never going to just slip out of the door, no matter how weirdly she imagined him doing it. He wasn’t the kind of guy to do that. She saw it very clearly now, more clearly than she’d been willing to before.
He was the kind of guy who watched sad movies at 6:00 a.m., with the soundtrack turned way, way up. He was the kind of guy who said,Hey, hey come here quick this is my favorite partwhen she got to the doorway to the living room, so engrossed he didn’t see what was weird about this—either that or he didn’t care. He’d probably wanted her to wake up and come down and do this with him.
Thatwas the kind of guy he was.
“Come on, come on,” he said, waving her over in a way that suggested yet another lovely thing. Once she got there, he was going to put his arm around her. Did he realize that he always put his arm around her when they watched stuff together? Probably not. She hadn’t even realized she stroked the back of his neck the way he’d said she did.
They were just the little touches and caresses that they’d accumulated, over two weeks of intense intimacy. Two short weeks that could have been a thousand years, for all the things she felt as she settled down to watch with him. She felt safe. She felt secure. The worries from the day before fell away.
For a little while, at least.
A very tiny while.
“They think I’m dead, you know.”
He said it matter-of-factly, the way most people might say the weather’s meant to be fine tomorrow. He didn’t glance away from the screen to give it a little extra importance. He just kept staring and staring straight ahead, as though to say, Starmanis of more significance to me than this news.
And she believed him too. It seemed as if he really meant this indifference, despite that being a complete contradiction in terms. When she didn’t answer he didn’t say anything more, and after a while he began commenting on the movie. “I had such a crush on Karen Allen as a kid,” he said, and suddenly she was thinking of completely different things too—like the fact that he probably wasn’t old enough to have had a crush on Karen Allen. He was only twenty-seven. Surely Cameron Diaz would have been more his speed? But then again he did like the classics.
