your own for just a few weeks and this is what I find you doing, watching dirty movies at work.” His voice was low against her ear, playfully accusatory. “Were you going to touch yourself? Were you checking the hallway to make sure you were alone?”
She shook her head in his grip, her heartbeat ticking up.
He pressed his nose to the curve of her neck and inhaled. “God, I’ve missed you, Rush. Missed you like fucking air.”
The longing in his voice nearly undid her. She closed her eyes and let all that feeling move through her. All that ache.
He brushed his lips against her shoulder. “I love hearing your voice on the phone. But it doesn’t give me this. The scent of you. How your skin flushes when I touch you. How it feels when I taste you.”
Marin swallowed hard, heat pooling in her. She’d worried it would be awkward. She’d worried that time would change things. She’d pictured stilted conversations over coffee when he came back. Uncomfortable questions about how therapy was, how he was feeling, where things stood. Slow, plodding steps. She’d been dreading that part so hard her stomach had hurt every time she thought about it. But she should’ve known better. Even from thousands of miles away, Donovan could read her.
He wasn’t going to give her a chance to be awkward, to overthink things, to undo what they’d forged over the phone. He was going to do exactly what she needed to shut her mind off and turn her body on. He would make her shameless.
His hand slipped away from her mouth, his quickening breath tickling her neck. “Tell me now, Rush. I want you more than I can put into words, but you know I’ll listen. I’ll always listen. What color is the sky?”
She sucked in a breath. So much time had passed. So much had happened. But suddenly it felt like nothing, like a blink, a flash. He was gone. But now he was here. Here. Everything that had been askew shifted and locked into this new place, this perfect place. Like everything inside her had been waiting for this one moment all her life. She’d fallen for Donovan a long damn time ago. But it’d never been the right time. Or the right place. Sometimes she’d wondered if it’d been the right life. Now it was. And she was done talking.
“Trapezoid.”
She felt him smile against the curve of her neck. “That isn’t a color.”
“That’s how much I care about the sky right now.”
“Mmm. Be careful.” His grip on her tightened, the edge is his voice sharpening. “The doors to this floor are locked, and I have Lane standing guard. He won’t come in no matter what he hears.”
She could feel him growing hard against her, sending hot desire racing up her spine.
“I’m feeling pretty crazed for you right now. You could be putting yourself in a lot of danger, Rush.”
Everything had gone liquid inside her, and her heart had decided to set up camp in her throat. But there was no fear. Only pounding, urgent need. “Playing it safe is overrated.”
Donovan spun her around at that, his blue gaze colliding with hers and breaking her open inside. God, she’d missed him. More than she’d wanted to admit to herself. So much so it almost hurt to look at him. He brushed his lips over hers in a slow, reverent glide. “Yes. It is.”
And she knew then he wasn’t talking about sex games or role-plays in that moment. She heard it in his voice and saw it in the naked expression on his face. She’d spent her whole life playing it safe, but so had he. No more. Neither of them knew what the future would hold. They all had ghosts and demons and challenges. Everyone did. But there’d be no more running. They’d take each other’s hand and plunge into the unknown together. That’s what life was. That was living.
That was love.
He cupped her face, tracing her cheekbones with her thumbs. “Guess it’s time for us to be amazing.”
She smiled, the slow, sweet rush almost too much to hold all at once. “I think we already are. Always have been.”
He lowered his head, putting his mouth to hers, and poured all the longing from the time apart into the kiss. Lips clashing, tongues twining, breath mingling. Their hands moved everywhere, mapping each other like they’d worried they’d forgotten each peak and valley. Like they were afraid one of them would dissolve into an apparition. Like they would wake up. How many times over the last few weeks had she dreamed of this and woken up? But none of that happened. Just hungry, breathless kissing and whispered, desperate words. He was back. They were good. They were amazing.
And they couldn’t wait any longer.
When Donovan couldn’t get his hand successfully up her shirt, he grabbed the collar of her blouse and yanked. Buttons went flying and plinked onto the wood floors. All of her breath whooshed out of her, the glimmer of violence like a heat flare to her system. He cupped her breast with a hot hand, panting his words as he kissed her neck. “Don’t think I can be gentle.”
She tilted her head back and moaned as he bit her shoulder. “Good.”
Whatever he wanted he could take. She wanted him to take it. Donovan growled and divested her of her bra, making her nipples go taut in the cool air, and then his mouth was on her, sucking and nipping and making shocks of electricity move straight downward. She gripped his hair in her hands, tugging hard and losing her own hold on control.
“Fuck yes,” he said against her skin. “Hurt me, Rush. Show me how much you need this right now.”
He guided her against the wall and kissed down her stomach, making her belly jump and flutter. She didn’t let go of his hair. It’d been so long since she’d been touched and the adrenaline was making everything weak. She could dissolve into a puddle any second. “Please. Please.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He fumbled with the button on her shorts and then yanked them, along with her underwear, down and off. His thumbs grazed her over her crease, and they both groaned at how obviously turned on she was. “Every night that I stroked myself, I thought about you like this. So hot and sweet and open for me.”
The back of her head tapped against the wall, the need to come like a hammer pounding at every one of her senses. She was burning up from the inside out.