All Things Pretty Page 37

Sig.

And me.

And all that’s between us.

Just one night.

I stare at the same face, reflected now with subtle changes. Eyes bright with resolution, lips trembling with anticipation.

Once my mind is made up, I’m nearly frantic. I throw on shorts and a tee shirt–nothing spectacular since I don’t plan to be wearing it long–stopping only long enough to scribble Travis a note for when he gets home, telling him not to wait up and to call if he needs me. He’ll assume that I’m with Lance.

I don’t even bother pulling my hair out of its loose topknot. I simply grab my purse, lock the door and run to the car. I can’t get to his house quickly enough.

I’m out of breath when I make it to his door, knocking with all the urgency that I suddenly feel. When Sig finally appears in front of me, only a few short seconds (that felt like lifetimes) later, his expression is wild, like he was expecting something else. Trouble maybe?

His eyes meet mine, and we stand perfectly still and silent. He frowns for a second and then scans my face. His gaze travels over my flushed cheeks, my parted lips, down to my heaving chest. And then, as though he can somehow read my body and its intent, they flick suddenly back up to mine and stop.

For thirty second or so, a million unspoken things pass between us. There is doubt, indecision, a touch of fear. All on my part. In this moment, it’s driven home what a huge mistake I could be making.

On his face, one thing. A question. A single query. Can I walk away?

Can I?

With my heart beating an ancient rhythm against my ribs, marking me with a tattoo that I will forever be left with, I bask in the richness of his eyes, the beauty of his face and the acceptance of my choice, whatever it is. It’s all here, right in front of me. Someone who wants only me, to please me, to be with me. Nothing else.

That is what I can’t walk away from. Not just yet.

Wordlessly, I do my best to answer Sig, to answer his question. By holding steady, by standing still, unwavering in front of him.

Time slows. Body’s react. The only thing I can hear is the sound of Sig’s accelerated breathing and the rush of blood whirring inside my ears. And then I hear nothing. I see nothing. I’m immediately carried, heart, mind and body, into the tiny bubble of what I feel. For this man, for his touch, for this thing that’s between us.

With a strike so fast, it seems out of place in this molasses moment, Sig’s hands snap out to cup my face and his lips crash down onto mine. There is no room for second thoughts or questions or gentleness. There is only need. And passion. And a craving that’s completely out of control.

I open for him and he dives into a kiss that I feel all the way into my bones. I feel every lick of his tongue like a sweet scrape down my spine, every touch of his fingertips like soothing sandpaper over my soul.

He pulls me inside, flinging the door shut behind us. He wraps his arms around me, lifting me off my feet and carrying me to the bedroom. It’s dark and quiet here, the room filled only with the heat that our fevered bodies are generating and the scorching sensation of our want.

Already, I’m as desperate as I was this afternoon. After just one kiss, I want nothing more than for him to fill me up. Make me his.

Leaving my lips only long enough to pull my shirt over my head, Sig strips me quickly and efficiently of my clothes until I’m held snugly in his arms with nothing but air covering me.

With his one hand fiddling with his zipper, Sig lifts me enough to capture one straining nipple between his lips. And he sucks. Deliciously hard, so much so that I throw my head back and thread my fingers into his hair, holding his sweet cruelty close.

Laving my turgid flesh, he manages to free himself. Incoherent with desire, I wrap my legs around him, so needy that I can’t think past how to get him inside me. I hear the rustle of a wrapper and then, almost savagely, Sig turns, presses my back to the wall and drives his body up into mine.

My lungs freeze and my head bumps back against the cool plaster. I literally can’t breathe for a few seconds. I can only feel. Everywhere, all my nerves are alive with his penetration. He’s so big, he’s buried so deep that my body struggles to accept him just as my mind struggles to process the pleasure-pain of his presence.

Sig goes perfectly still, only the sound of his heavy breathing in my ear for a few seconds. And then I hear a gruff yet tender, “Did I hurt you?”

He begins to ease back out and I exhale, managing a short, “No. Please.”

And that’s all I get out. Sliding his tongue into my open mouth, Sig lowers me slightly, dropping me down as he flexes his hips, plunging even farther into me, stealing my breath once more.

I’m teeming with sensation. My lips, my nipples, my legs, my sex. My skin. My core. I feel Sig all over, like the brilliance of lightning, bottled and transferred to my body through his, jumping excitedly from synapse to synapse. With every movement of his cock within me, sensation explodes outward, like a geyser, raining beautiful, white fire into my blood.

Pressing my back harder into the wall, Sig reaches down, around my legs where they join my body, and places his fingertips on either side of my straining entrance, pulling gently and spreading me further. He swivels his hips and then thrusts sharply up, the friction of the movement against my wide-spread lips stimulating every bundle of nerves in my sex. I come apart. In his hands, against the wall, around his shaft. Like a mushroom cloud, I detonate, out into the stars, and then my world quickly shrinks back to the hot, wet place where we are joined. My world becomes so tightly focused on my climax that I can neither think nor speak.

“God, yes!” he growls through gritted teeth as my body clutches his in my first spasm. I bite my lip to keep from screaming his name. I milk him rhythmically, the fullness of him inside me intensifying each wave. His growl dissolves into a groan and he murmurs into my ear, “That’s what I want. To feel you coming for me. Just me. Just me.”

Like punctuation to each sentence, he strokes me from the inside, slowly, gently, prolonging my ecstasy until my arms fall limply to my sides.

When my limbs begin to regain feeling, shedding the heavy numbness of orgasm, Sig holds me to him and moves me away from the wall. His body is still deeply seated within mine when he kneels on the mattress and tenderly lowers my upper body onto the comforter.

He keeps my legs wrapped around him, my hips off the bed, as he barely flexes into me. My body reacts instantly, shivering around him and eliciting a gasp from my tingling lips.