him. If she could still talk, he wasn’t doing his job. He didn’t want conversation. Not now.
“Quiet,” he said, biting her lower lip. She complied. Then, he returned to the business of making love to her mouth, taking her deeper and deeper with each pass of his lips over hers.
He continued to kiss her until she went limp, pliant. He imagined this was as docile as Rebecca Bear got.
“Turn the...” She let out a long breath. “Turn the lights off?”
Her words were like a punch to the gut. Because, whatever her reasons were for turning the lights off, it reminded him of her scars. And it reminded him of the fact that when he saw her naked, he would be confronted with the full extent of her injuries. Injuries he had caused. He felt like he was a bastard complying, but he did anyway. Mostly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to confront all that right now. He wasn’t sure he ever did.
That made him an ass. Or, maybe he did it because he was an ass. Because it was easier to shroud them both in darkness and pretend there was nothing hard or impossible between them.
Her scars would spoil the illusion, not because they would turn him off. That wasn’t the problem. They would spoil the illusion that they were just a man and a woman looking for a way to pass the time. Looking for a way to blow off a little steam. Her scars carried all their history. Those years that they’d spent never talking to each other, never seeing each other and yet living with each other. Her every step weighted down by him, no matter that he had never spent a minute in her company.
He couldn’t bring that to this. Not now. He would never have been the one to ask that the lights go off, but since she had, he was willing to take that easy out.
Now all he could see was her silhouette, nothing in detail, and as much as he mourned not getting a chance to take a look at that beautiful body of hers, he welcomed what it would conceal.
He grabbed hold of the flowing hemline of her dress, tugging it up over her head and running his hands over her bare curves. Then he dispensed with her bra, pushing her panties down her thighs, and taking a step back.
He could see the silhouette of her figure, and those long legs—long in proportion in spite of her diminutive height—still partly covered by those high boots.
“Damn,” he said, his curse almost reverent, “you’re sexy.”
He saw her breasts pitch with her sharp intake of breath. “Really?”
He moved forward, grabbing hold of her arm and tugging her toward him, placing her palm right over his cock. “What does that feel like to you?”
“I... I... I guess...”
He chuckled, bringing her in even closer, pressing his lips to her ear. “I want you. I’m so hard for you I’m about ready to burst through the front of these jeans. I want to bury myself so deep inside you I won’t be able to feel anything else.”
She trembled in his arms. Honest to God trembled. She didn’t say anything in return, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He supposed he should be happy that she wasn’t talking, that she finally wasn’t fighting him. At least not now.
He separated from her for a moment, tugging his shirt up over his head, then moving to his belt, jeans, underwear and boots. Then, he pulled her back up against his body, letting out a sigh of relief when her skin was pressed against his. Every inch of her, against every inch of him.
He kissed her again, moving his hand between her thighs, finding her wet and needy for him. His breath hissed through his teeth and he drew his fingertips through her damp flesh, teasing the entrance of her body before drawing her moisture out to that sensitive bundle of nerves, moving his thumb in a circle until a short, shocked cry escaped her lips.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, his voice like gravel, his dick so hard he thought it was going to break.
He wanted her so much. In spite of everything between them. Hell, maybe it was even because of everything between them. Maybe he was just that sick. Maybe he was just that destructive.
Maybe he was just his father. He’d run for a lot of years, and yet here he was. Back at