Page 87 of Resist

Tell me you want me, Vaughn. Tell me you want to do this.

Something shifts inside me. Emotions. Sensations. Bricks tumble off that wall built around my heart.

Some switch gets flicked deep within me. His words echo and reverberate and spark something in me to life.

“Vaughn.” My name is part groan, part plea, but his hands hooking under my arms and hauling me up show no hesitation. They tell me I can’t close out the emotion. I can’t hide behind this act. Neither does the way his lips crash over mine.

They’re hungry and desperate, and they reflect how I feel. How I want him to make me feel.

“Ryker.” It’s my answer. My consent. My plea for him to do whatever it takes to erase the memory hidden in the depths of my mind.

“Tell me you want me,” he murmurs against my lips, asking, needing, wanting with words while his hands are already taking.

With the way he pulls my shirt over my head. With the way his hands skim over my torso and begin to unclasp my bra. With the way his lips kiss a trail down my neckline and then nip the top of my shoulder.

“I want you.” The words are out. My confession confessed. My fears and inadequacies now placed on center stage for him to see and take advantage of.

“Thank fuck,” he murmurs and then lifts me so that my legs slide around his waist, so that my lips feast with kisses on the underside of his jawline. I hug onto him as we move inside, my face buried against his shoulder as I fight back the bitter wave of panic that threatens to derail us.

But it’s wine on his breath. Not absinthe.

There’s an ache bone deep from wanting him, not a churning in my belly.

I fight those two warring memories. I push them away. And when Ryker lays me down on a bed that’s more comfortable than any other I’ve lain on before, when his lips meet mine in a tender kiss that hints at how hard he’s fighting his own desire to be patient with me, when he murmurs, “Christ, you’re gorgeous,” they disappear for now.

Ryker takes his time with me. His hands never stop touching; his lips never stop kissing . . . he takes his time but with a consistency that never allows the sensations to ebb long enough for the memories to bubble up.

His mouth closing over my nipples. First one and then the other. His tongue sliding down my stomach to the top part of my jeans, biding its time there until we both fumble and manage to get my pants and panties down and off my legs. Another swear in appreciation as his eyes meet mine from his position between my thighs that sets off a want and need so desperate within me that I’m overwhelmed by it. A lick of his tongue over the top of my slit just as his fingers spread and expose that soft hub of nerves there.

I gasp. Moan. Call out his name as his tongue slides up and down with an appreciative hum in the back of his throat that turns me on in ways I never thought a simple sound could.

No one’s done this to me before. I’ve never let anyone in far enough to trust them like this. And oh my God . . . the ache is so bright I fear it will burn out, but the way my body reacts to the sensations—first molten hot, then tense, then like every nerve ending I have is being teased with a feather—is something I can’t describe.

My hands tangle in his hair as he moves. My hips buck up to meet his lips. My body drowns in these feelings that his tongue and his hums and his fingers and his five-o’clock shadow scraping against my inner thighs evoke.

The orgasm slams into me. Those sensations I’ve only ever been able to create by myself somehow seem a hundred times more powerful at the hand of someone else.

I cry out. Or mewl. Or moan. Maybe all three, and I don’t care because my body is so on fire with pleasure that my mind is a mess and my heart is racing so fast it pounds in my ears to match the pulsing of my muscles between my thighs.

For the briefest of moments, I feel like fireworks have exploded inside my body. Little detonations of sensation from a body that has betrayed me for the longest of times. Technicolor in a world that has been black and white for so long.

He groans as I clamp around him. His face above mine, my arousal still a badge of honor around his mouth, his smile so devastating.

And when he leans down and kisses me, when I can taste what he did to me on his tongue, I know I’m ready for him.

I know I want him. Want this. I know he won’t hurt me.

“I want you,” I murmur against his lips as the fist I have in his shirt turns to a frantic scramble to get it off and over his head. As we shove his jeans down and he toes off his socks and shoes. As he positions himself between my thighs, lines up the crest of his beautiful cock at my entrance, and just barely rubs it up and down my slit to let me know what’s coming next.

One of his hands links with mine while the other holds his dick, his eyes locked on mine as he makes that slow, deliberate, and restrained push into me.

This time we both moan. This time muscles that normally resist pull him in and tighten around him. This time when he starts to move, he looks down to watch us as I buck my head back into the pillow to feel us.

And feel I do. When he grinds his hips against mine and bottoms out within me. When he pulls out and teases me with just the tip until I’m shoving my hips up begging, asking, demanding that I want more. When he picks up the pace.

Seconds feel like minutes as the ecstasy is shared between the two of us. As he gives it and I receive it and as he takes it when I give it. The minutes stop mattering when we both fall spent and breathless beside each other on the mattress with sweat misting over both our bodies and pleasure hijacking our every nerve.

“Hey, Vaughn,” Ryker pants, and I can hear the smile in his voice without even turning my head and looking his way.