“I need you to say it.” His grip on me tightened.
With his jaw clenched and his eyes imploring, I answered from the heart. “I won’t.” I tried not to panic at the commitment that statement implied and reassured myself that I’d find a job and make this new situation work. Whatever it meant for us, that would have to play itself out.
When stark relief etched his handsome face, I knew I’d pleased him, and a corresponding sense of peace settled inside of me, making me wonder—what was this unspoken thing between us? I didn’t understand it.
I wanted more even as I fought against the sensations because they threatened me—more accurately, they threatened the sense of independence I’d told myself I needed.
Gabe slid his hand through my hair, tugging until I responded with a whimper. Okay, I clearly liked that dominating side of him. It was something I’d never experienced before but obviously responded to. Something else to think about later, I thought. Another facet of myself to explore when the opportunity arose.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he informed me. “And this has nothing to do with gratitude,” he muttered and sealed his mouth over mine.
Holding me firmly, he slid his tongue over my lips once, twice, demanding entry. As if I’d deny him. Just the touch of his tongue set off fireworks inside me, and I responded to everything about the man. Everything he took, I wanted to give. Everything he provided, I craved more of. He must have understood because his tongue tangled with mine, tasting the far reaches of my mouth, sucking, pulling, learning every part of me, while I turned to liquid at each slip and glide, every thrust and parry.
This was being kissed. It was being told that I mattered. Even the way he sank his hand into my hair and held on let me know that, as much as he was dominating me, he yearned for me too. He needed the connection between us as badly as I did. The intensity was furious, fast and sudden, but I needed it, and somehow he sensed as much. My ni**les puckered tight, beading until they were begging for Gabe’s touch. His kiss held a direct line to my sex. But physical responses aside, the emotional yielding inside me explained so much more, screaming for me to believe that I could trust this man. A virtual stranger in so many ways, yet my body knew him already. Why else would worry flee from my mind, a foggy, blessed euphoria taking its place?
He broke the kiss but didn’t release me, instead dragged his lips over my jaw and down to where my shoulder met my neck and slid his tongue over my skin. I trembled as he found an erogenous zone I hadn’t realized I possessed. Cream coated my panties. Though I should be embarrassed at my easy acquiescence, it felt too good, desire melding into a whirlpool of burning need. A hard nip of my skin startled me into awareness, the sting of pain taking me by surprise, and I yelped out loud. Before I could struggle against him, a shock of ecstasy pulled me back into the vortex, reaching downward to my full, damp pu**y.
Shaking, I crawled closer, finding his rock-hard erection behind a denim barrier, awaiting me. I needed him so badly. Could come so easily. I trembled and moaned. “Oh God.”
“No, Iz. Just me.” His breath was hot in my ear, and even his deep chuckle sent shooting sparks of awareness through me. “I want to f**k you right now. I want to slide into you when I’m completely bare. Feel your hot walls pulse around me until I come inside you and you feel everything I can give you.”
Holy mother. Knees knocking, body shaking, only Gabe’s hold on the back of my neck and the way he braced an arm around my waist kept me standing.
“Is that what you want, kitten?”
I moaned my assent. “Yes. Yes, take me now.”
A masculine groan shuddered through him. “My bedroom,” he muttered, his grip tightening.
That one word cleared my head enough for me to remember the other room in the house, the one with the rumpled sheets, the scent of sex, and the condoms in the trash that had sent me running.
“No. I can’t.”
Gabe lifted his head and stared into my eyes, disbelief flashing in the smoldering depths. He didn’t ask for an explanation, but I heard the silent demand anyway.
“Not like this.” I repeated his reason for not kissing me earlier, although his explanation for stopping was very different from mine now.
Again, he waited, as if he were entitled to an explanation but wouldn’t demean himself to ask.
I swallowed over the lump lodged in the back of my throat. “I heard your housekeeper cancel on the answering machine and thought I could help you out by cleaning since she couldn’t. She promised you she’d take care of the other room,” I said in a rush. “The one with the closed door. So I … went in and saw … everything.”
His eyes darkened in anger.
Because I’d crossed that threshold where I didn’t belong? Lance’s triggers had been far less. “I wasn’t snooping. I was trying to help.”
“Fuck.” He looked away.
His reaction hurt, and I braced myself for the lecture to come.
Without warning, his grip on me eased. I looked up to find him staring down at me, his gaze unexpectedly soft. “Don’t ever be afraid of me, Isabelle. I’m not him.” His calming voice soothed me.
I nodded and realized I was shaking, that fear had indeed taken me over. “Yelling was Lance’s preferred form of communication. That or complete disdain followed by deafening silence.” Which had left me feeling as bereft and as alone as I’d been as a child.
“Anything more?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“No,” I assured him. “Lance knew how to wound without touching.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “My anger wasn’t at you.” He soothed me with caring strokes of his fingers over my throat and neck. “It was at myself. That there was anything in that room for you to find.”