come hard but silently. My mouth is open but no sound comes out. The pleasure is too intense.
As I jerk and convulse around him, Killian slows the motion of his hips, the way he likes to, so he can feel my every throb and twitch. Panting, he puts his hand around my throat and his mouth to my ear. His voice is raw with emotion.
“I want you to lie to me. Just this one lie. Just this once.”
I moan, not understanding.
He raises his head and looks at me with burning eyes. “Tell me you’re mine.”
My heart clenches to a fist. Nose to nose, we stare at each other. He thrusts slowly in and out.
It’s a lie. A small, simple lie. There can’t be any harm since we both know it.
I draw a ragged breath. “I…I’m yours.”
His lids flutter. Thrusting harder, he moistens his lips. He wants more. And god help me, I want to give it to him.
“I belong to you. Only you.”
His moan is soft but his eyes are softer. Inside my chest, something delicate begins to tear apart.
“I’ll always be yours,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “No matter what. Body and soul. Heart and mind. All of me will belong to you forever.”
He kisses me suddenly, his mouth devouring. His thrusts turn fast and desperate. He makes a sound deep in his chest, a purely masculine sound that could either be pain or pleasure.
Biting my lips, he fucks me until he breaks away with a garbled groan.
I sink to my knees on the flour dusted floor, wrap my hands around his engorged cock, and open my mouth over the crown.
He fists his hands into my hair and comes, staring down at me.
I have to close my eyes as I swallow so I can’t see the look in his.
The look that tells me the lie he asked me to tell is going to turn out to be anything but small and simple.
23
Jules
After that night, we’re inseparable.
He eats meals with me, wanders the town and marina with me, sleeps beside me in my small motel bed. At least I assume he sleeps. He must. Every time I wake, however, he’s already up, with coffee and pastries waiting.
I never hear him come and go. A part of me thinks he can turn to smoke and slink silently in and out of rooms through cracks in windowpanes or under doors, like Dracula.
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Over dinner in the evenings, he asks me questions, dozens of them. They grow more and more personal each day. He asks me about Fin and Max. About my favorite movies and TV shows. About my favorite foods and books. He asks what I wanted to be when I was growing up, what I remember about my mother, what it was like being an only child.
If I’ve ever been in love.
I answer everything honestly. I ask no questions in return.
If he wonders why, he doesn’t mention it. Perhaps he knows it’s the only way I can protect myself. I’m afraid that the more I discover of that poet’s heart that beats beneath his powerful, dangerous exterior, the more unable I’ll be to walk away when it’s time.
He takes me dancing. He takes me to the movies. He rents a sailboat and captains it himself. We visit art galleries and museums, we listen to a jazz trio at a bar overlooking the ocean, we stuff ourselves on lobster and crab. We do all the silly tourist things any normal couple would do on vacation.
And, everywhere, we make love.
On a dock at night. On a merry-go-round in a park. In the motel jacuzzi. Down a dimly lit, secluded back hallway of a restaurant. In a high school auditorium we snuck into after dark.
It’s always frantic and almost always wordless. We’ll be walking hand in hand down the street or standing at a beachside railing watching the sea birds circle overhead, and suddenly we’ll look at each other and be overcome.
That’s the only way I can describe it: overcome. Overwhelmed by heat and hunger.
Overpowered by need.
When I wonder if this is how my mother felt when she met my father, I feel deeply afraid. And more certain that my moratorium on this affair is wise.
Not wise enough, though.
I didn’t know it then, but I’d already lost my heart.
The guy who approaches me is about thirty, well-built and nicely dressed, and smiling. He’s got a man bun and a tattoo of a katana on his forearm. He’s Caucasian, so getting a