went on and on. Until finally I collapsed back against the leather. Boneless and strange. Different.
I opened my eyes and found him watching me and tenderness unspooled in my chest. Something living and vibrant, a wild…affection for him.
It was startling and awful. The wrong thing at the wrong time. And I felt myself flinch away from his eyes. Away from his touch.
“Annie?”
I took a breath, another, trying to rein myself in. Find my footing.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Best one yet,” I said with a wide, ecstatic smile, hoping he wouldn’t look past it at the strange panic I was feeling.
It’s just the sex, I told myself. You’re all twisted up because it feels so good and he helped you get it. That’s all it was.
I really, really wanted to believe that. But somehow, nearly naked in front of him, the air between us smelling like sex, I couldn’t…couldn’t commit to it.
He was staring at me, as if he could see what I was thinking, read my thoughts like a book. I put my feet back on the floor, shifting so my underwear wasn’t cutting up into me.
“Maybe,” I whispered, my voice still shaking. Sweat still dripping down from my hairline. “I should—”
He fell down onto his knees between my legs and reached an arm around my hips and pulled me hard against him.
I squeaked, startled. That soft wet place between my legs, still pulsing with blood, twitching still with pleasure, was tight up against the hard length of his erection in his jeans. He dropped his hand down to my ass and pushed me harder against him.
“Feel that?” he asked.
My mouth dry, my brain dumb, I nodded.
“Every time I talk to you, that’s how I get,” he said.
He ground us together and I flinched and gasped at the same time.
“Sore?” he asked me, and pushed back slightly like he was ready to give me a second. But his eyes said only a second.
He brushed his thumb over the damp crotch of my underwear and I flinched again, but not as hard.
“Just…sensitive,” I said.
“I thought listening to you come was hot,” he told me, his thumb tracing circles and circles around that damp spot, making it grow.
“That’s the only time anyone’s ever touched me…while I did that.” The second the words were out of my mouth I realized how much I’d revealed. It’s as if I couldn’t help it with him; even as I tried to keep all my own secrets, I managed to let too many spill.
He cocked his head. “You’ve never come with anyone else?”
“No,” I breathed.
He pushed against me again, so hard I was amazed his jeans didn’t tear. “Then this is going to get much better. Put your arms around my neck.”
Carefully, as if he were a live bomb, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. Shocks zipped between us as the storm outside electrified the air.
“I’m gonna kiss you,” he said. I felt my skin flush. I liked when he talked that way, the announcement before the act. I guess I had a thing for dirty talk, maybe from the phone calls. Or maybe that’s just what I liked and never knew it. Like black coffee.
“Yes,” I sighed and, slowly, carefully, he put his mouth—those beautiful lips—against mine.
He exhaled and I inhaled, breathing him in. I exhaled, he inhaled. He moaned against my mouth and I breathed that in, too.
As beautiful as those lips looked, they felt better. Infinitely better. The scar tissue at the edge of his mouth was harder skin than the rest of it. Just one of Dylan’s textures.
I had no experience with which to measure this kiss. It wasn’t as if Hoyt had never kissed me. He had. Perfunctory pecks that meant nothing, that felt like…nothing. That were as special as shoving my feet into shoes.
But this, this long, slow pressure. This sweet tasting. The careful breathing—it felt special. Like one kiss in a thousand. A million, maybe.
I reached up and touched his hair. It was silky between my fingers and he sighed against my lips, which I took to mean he liked it, so I ran my fingers through that hair. Up the back, past his scars toward his ears. Rough, then soft. And he pushed against me like a pet looking for more affection.
I smiled against his lips and gave him a good rub.
He grabbed the back of my neck, holding me still, and opened his mouth. His tongue touched my lips. I couldn’t quite swallow my gasp. Surprise and