Page 114 of Resist

“Hi.”

I step back and pull the door open wider, and he walks in. He doesn’t look around. He doesn’t notice the house or the rushed clean-up job or anything else because his eyes never leave mine. It’s heady and intoxicating in the most intimate of ways, as if I’m his when no one has ever laid that kind of claim to me.

Reaching out, he twists his fingers with mine as he shuts the door behind us. We both look down—at our fingers intertwined—and for some reason understand that this is the start of something all new for us. It sounds old-classic-black-and-white-romance-movie corny, but I swear to God it’s true.

Suddenly bashful, I lift my eyes back up to meet his, and within a beat, he’s pulled me into him, and his lips meet mine.

We don’t speak, the urgency to smother any doubt either of us has remaining too important. We pour the words we need to say—the apologies, the “never again,” the “how can we feel like this when neither of us is this kind of person”—into actions. His lips on mine. His hands touching everywhere on my body and not enough places all at the same time.

It’s been thirteen days.

That’s all.

But it feels like an eternity.

How do you spend a lifetime not feeling anything so much so that you take pride in being unattached, you build a business on it, only to have someone waltz into your life and make you feel so intensely that thirteen days seems like a damn eternity?

“I missed you,” I murmur against his lips as our fingers unbutton and unzip and unclasp as fast as we can.

There is no need to go slow and sweet. To reveal each other through removing one item of clothing at a time. Right now is about pure carnal need.

The need to taste.

The hunger in each other’s kiss. The salt on each other’s skin. The mint on his tongue.

The need to claim.

His hands mark me everywhere they touch. With sensations. With chills. With an ache so deep it burns bright and fierce.

The need to feel.

The cool wall against my back. The stubble on his jaw as it scrapes over my bare shoulder. The urgency in his fingers as they part me. The feel of his dick hard and ready against my thigh.

The need to hear.

The quick intake of our breaths as he slips his fingers into me. The unmistakable sound of how wet I am just from his touch and anticipation alone, as he slides in and out of me. The groans telling him how much this turns me on.

The need to know.

That he’s here. That his touch is real. That with every step forward, we’re leaving the drama of the past few weeks behind.

And then, amid all of the fervor, all of the desperation, Ryker slides his hands up to cup the sides of my face and just stares at me. There’s an absolute intimacy in the moment. We’re stripped raw, down to our basics, just him and me and the act of sharing each other’s bodies for pleasure. There’s need and greed and pure male masculinity in everything in his eyes, and yet there’s something else there. A tenderness. A need to take a second to slow down and understand what this is between us when neither of us is willing to define it.

“Jesus, Vaughn.” I turn my cheek into his hand and press a kiss to the center of his palm, my heart flip-flopping in my chest. “Do you know how fucking bad I want you right now?”

I lean up on my tiptoes, press the softest of kisses on his lips, and whisper, “Show me.”

It’s almost as if I can feel his restraint snap the second my words register. His hands are back on me. Mine on him. Seeking more. Demanding everything. Showing him what I want.

“Bed,” he murmurs between kisses. “Or floor.” Another kiss. “I’m not picky.”

A muffled laugh. A flurry of activity as we move toward my bedroom, all while not wanting to give up a second of touch or taste or togetherness.

And when we make it into my room, we fall clumsily onto the bed. Our laughter rings out and then slowly turns to moans when his lips close over the peak of my breast before making their way up to meet mine as my fingers encircle his cock.

Our lips are touching, our kiss halted as we sink into the feel of each other’s actions. We absorb the sensations the other evokes, and then I not so gently pull his shaft toward the V of my thighs, desperate for him to fill me. To move inside me. To bring me pleasure and release.

“There’s no hurry,” he says, his voice sending vibrations against my nipple. And then he laughs when I shift my body beneath him so that I can rub his cock up and down the length of my more-than-wet slit. “Did you want something?”