hell, did he want to take a bite out of her.
The room was dark and he flipped on the small lamp on the dresser, adding a soft glow to the interior. He thought, condoms, and hurried to grab some from the bathroom drawer. They’d been an autobuy during a toiletries run when he’d first returned, though he’d had little expectation of using them. Back by the bed, he ditched the towel, but she remained where he’d left her, wearing only that little scrap of Frenchified satin and her long hair hanging over her bare breasts.
He tossed the condoms onto the bedside table and moved close to kiss her again. Her taste should have made him mindless, but that mix of emotions inside him started boiling once more with the heat of her tongue against his. In his mind’s eye he saw her going into Fitz’s arms, he saw her handing his father cupcakes, he saw his father warning Layla about him.
Word of caution. Be careful with this one.
Vance didn’t want her any less, but he wanted all the memories and conflicts and anger brought on by the day smothered, too. He pushed her onto the mattress and she scrambled back toward the pillows. He crawled after her, catching the side of her panties with his right hand so that the material slid down her legs as she moved toward the headboard.
Yeah. This was what he wanted. This was what he had to have, he thought, as he glimpsed the wetness between the pink, plump petals of her sex. He’d taste her, touch her, penetrate her, and he’d use his tongue and his fingers and his cock to banish the anger he felt toward his family.
Vance froze, startled by that last thought.
“What the hell are we doing?” he asked, a wash of guilt making him feel a little sick. “I don’t want this.”
She lifted a brow, her gaze sliding down to his eager erection.
“Okay,” he conceded. “I want this. God, I really want this. But I shouldn’t be acting on it because of what happened today with them.” He shifted to sit on the side of the bed and closed his eyes, his cock throbbing like a toothache.
“Them?”
He made a slashing gesture. “You know. My family. God, I’m pissed. And I shouldn’t take that out on you. Like this.”
The mattress dipped as she moved toward him. “They’ve disappointed you.” Her voice was soft. “Today, they hurt you.”
He didn’t want to admit it.
“It’s okay. I understand.” Her hand touched his back, smoothed down. “My mother walked away from me when I was two years old. My father left me for good two months ago. I can get a little mad about those things.”
“Ah, sweetheart...” Half turning, he gazed at her face. Her eyes were big, vulnerable pools in the darkness. He cupped her cheek with his hand.
She nudged her chin into his palm so her mouth could press a kiss to his flesh. “And lonely.”
God, didn’t that just hit him square in the chest? In a quick move, Vance pulled her into his lap, her nakedness against his. He was still angry and frustrated, not to mention stirred up by lust, but now tenderness infused him, too. Layla was lonely. Of course she was. And though it only added to his already-crowded emotional landscape, he didn’t seem to have a choice.
Her arms went around him. “You know what, Vance?” she whispered.
“What?” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Sometimes...sometimes a person just needs to be held.”
And like that, he took another blow. But the pain turned into a pulsing sexual ache as his mouth found hers and their tongues tangled and their skin heated. The decision was done, the die cast, the outcome destined. And it was okay now because he no longer was doing this only for himself.
Sometimes a person just needs to be held.
So he held her in a dozen ways. Her body against him. Her tongue in his mouth. Her pearling nipples between his lips. She took him in, as well. Arching when he slid a finger inside the wet clasp of her core. Crying out when he made it two, then three. He thumbed her clit until she was making those sweet, urgent sounds again, and then he turned her to her belly and used his tongue to paint the long valley of her spine and the sweet curve of her bottom cheeks.
The frantic clamor of need quieted the longer he had her under his