her get centred. Something she needed to make it through to the other side. She’d said he was beautiful—he was perfect—but perfect for some other girl less screwed up, less emotionally spoiled and stunted than she was.
She tracked her nail around the outer edge of the tattoo on his bicep, a stylised compass, with four points. It was a permanent reminder of direction on a man unlikely to ever be lost.
While she had him, she was going to make this distraction count. When she left him, it’d be with the knowledge she did him no harm and he’d know how to find his way back to his life without her.
She butterfly kissed his shoulder, fanned her hand across his chest and moved to sit astride him. One eye flicked open and then he shut it, but a sexy grin spread over his face. “Are you the wicked hallucination of a desperate man?”
She folded down over his chest to kiss him. “I’m anything you want me to be.”
His laugh caught in his throat. “You’re such a liar.”
She’d have acted offended but he was right. She was a liar and an actress and a fake, and she was too busy running her hands over his body, tasting him, losing herself to care. It didn’t matter that it was light. That he could see her smudged and tousled with the sun streaming into the room through sheer curtains. Seeing him made it more real. Now she wanted to know if last night was a repeatable offence. If he could take her to the sky, push her off and make her feel like stars collided again.
Jake’s body twitched under her weight. “You keep doing that and it won’t be a gentle start to the morning.” He ran his hands down over her shoulders and the circle of her hips. She looked in his face with the devil of carnal intention in her eyes and he laughed. “Ho, so that’s the plan is it? Hmm, I can get with that.” He palmed her hips and pressed her into him. Then he stilled, lifted his hands. “You want this?”
She groaned. This beautiful, caring man. She had him so knotted up, he needed to ask permission when he should’ve known she was crazy, insane, ready for his touch. He left her speechless, she let her body do the talking, grinding her hips down on him, finding a rhythm that was slick, fast and smooth, making his eyes go wide and his head roll back and his language nonsense. Making him see this, for now, was real. He flipped her over on her back and her gasp was a bolt of pleasure across his face.
Ungentle was the morning. Rielle cried out as Jake made her twist and buck, her muscles clench and spasm. As the sun brought its first rays of heat, she made him sweat with her hands and her tongue—with the way she touched and tormented him. This time it was easier to approach the stars, easier to leap, free fall and fly, both of them together.
She soared outside herself and when he called her name he brought her home. Her eyes flew open. They were wet, brimming, full up with feeling. Through glazed vision, Rielle saw the shadow cross Jake’s face, felt defeat soften his limbs. He’d read her tears as shame, as dislike, as hurt, as everything gone wrong again and she knew she had to make it right. She wasn’t sure her tongue could form the words he needed to hear, her lungs let go the air to say them. She only knew she had the power to hurt this man, to take his good heart and squeeze it dry with her savage need for him. She blinked the damp away.
“You rock my world, Jake Reed.”
He frowned. “I upset you and that’s not what I want. Not what this is about.”
How to tell him he touched her soul? That he made her feel sweet, deep pleasure and sharp, sour pain at once. She didn’t understand it herself—just knew she was fractured and he had the means to break all her silos and melt her back to whole.
She brought warm, swollen lips to his to whisper, “You change me and it’s good,” the words not coming out right, words for a therapist not a lover, but as close as she could come to telling him what she felt.
He rested his forehead on hers. “I want to believe you.”
The need to convince him this was