Theo looked at her. Fascination was still in his eyes, but the adoration had been temporarily shouldered out of the picture to make room for a fiery lust that almost seemed to make his eyes glitter, greener than ever. It could have scared her, but instead it made her spread her legs further apart and try to draw him still closer to her. It was a look that seemed to promise that excellent and bone-melting things were about to happen to her.
“Yes,” Theo said. “That’s exactly what I should do, now that I think about it.”
She hurried him, not wanting his fingers or even his tongue again, just wanting him to be inside her completely, wanting to feel his whole length against her inner walls. He took a little persuading to rush, but not much. He almost fumbled the condom in his excitement. She was gratified by that, by how eager he was beneath all the chivalry. Neither one of them was interested in plucking flowers. Only ravishment.
At last he moved forward and buried his body in hers. Desire flared up inside her again, making all her skin feel new and attentive to him and his
movements. He made her tremble. She arched up to meet him as he drove forward again and again.
The attic now sounded like it came with a big brand brass section. Playing “We Will Rock You.”
“You’re going to break the bed,” Jillian gasped, her hands moving against his sleek, strong back. She could feel his muscles flexing. Her own, in her center, seemed to tighten to match that as well as his thrusts.
“We’re going to break the bed,” Theo corrected. “You can’t leave yourself out.”
“With noise like this, I don’t think we’re leaving out anyone in a hundred mile radius.”
Then her whole body tightened around him, first in what she thought was a laugh and then in what turned out to be an incredible, powerful second climax, just as shattering as the first.
Theo lost himself then too. His hips surged forward powerfully. Without meaning to, Jillian grabbed him there. She loved the powerful, tensed muscles at his thighs and the way they suddenly relaxed, like he was a puppet with cut strings.
She felt that way herself. No: like she’d had nothing but knots inside her and he’d come along and untied every last one until finally she was loose in a way she never had been before. This, she thought in wonderment, is what it feels like to not be tense. To not always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. To not always be looking for an angle. Because as surprised as she was that Theo wanted her, liked her, she believed that he really did.
That was not the kind of sex you had when you were pretending.
He caressed her cheek. “What are you thinking about?”
“You,” she said honestly.
“I’m thinking about you too.”
She cuddled up to him, resisting at the last minute the urge to pull the sheet up over her body to cover herself. She liked the way he was still looking at her displayed curves.
She said, “What do you think about me?”
“Right now it’s mostly monosyllables,” Theo admitted. “Wow. Hey. Hot.”
“Seriously.”
“Every word of that was serious. But also—I really admire you. You’re able to hold onto what’s good and valuable about your family without getting mired down in the bad. I’ve never known how to do that.”
She ran her hand down his chest, feeling his heartbeat, the slight soft scratchiness of the chestnut-colored hair there. “Can you tell me about your family?”
He nodded. With the way they were lying, she felt that more as a jostle of his chin against her head. That too made the bed quiver and let out a mournful squeak, like it wanted them to know that it didn’t have a family.
“My parents died when I was seventeen.”
That was more tragedy than she’d wanted to bring into pillow talk. “I’m sorry. That must have been so hard, coming along right when you’d been pushing their buttons.”
He stroked her shoulder and said nothing to that for a long moment. Then he said, “Thank you. And yes, it was. Even now, I feel like I’m lying if I talk about it without mentioning that I’d been a thorn in their side for their last few years.”
“You were a kid.”
“Not after that.” He said it calmly, as a cold, hard fact. “I couldn’t see any reason to stay and be shuttled around between houses of whoever was willing to take me in. I’d applied to college—that was one of our arguments—so I just left early. I washed dishes in a campus diner until the semester started. I haven’t been home since.”
“Your parents didn’t want you to go to college?”
She had other questions, too, like why he thought he would have bounced around among neighbors instead of being placed with the nearest relative or in temporary foster care, but this seemed at least a little touchy.