Eve dropped her lips to his. She’d always marvelled at how soft his mouth was, but something about it caught her off balance today. That the hard man he’d become could have any gentleness left in him. This should stop, but she cupped his face and he slid a hand to her waist and gripped tight as he parted his lips and she followed.
Their tongues touched and she melted into the delicious taste of him, coffee and sweetness, and she could hardly breathe for the memory of it all. Those recollections flooded over her. Of their love, the adoration when everything had been perfect and unassailable. She slid her hands into his hair and gripped hard as he thrust his hands into hers, tugging at the pins that tamed her curls, scattering the infernal metal objects with a clatter on the table
-top.
Their mouths clashed and warred and the kiss became a frantic thing with teeth and tongues and desperation. Gage hauled her onto his lap, never breaking contact. She twisted and then straddled him as he dragged her close till there was no space between them.
Years of dreams and desires collided in that one moment. She didn’t care what it meant, what he thought of her. Gage had been her one and only. She couldn’t contemplate another man touching her after he’d planted his seed during their one night of abandon, after she’d carried and lost their baby. It was too raw and too much and she just wanted to forget. Gage and his body could make her.
She couldn’t stop as her hands roved over his shoulders and chest and relearned him, like a road travelled long ago. She worked his buttons with trembling fingers so she could stroke the hot, perfect skin beneath. Rocked on his hardness because he was right there with her, thrusting up as she moved, each movement causing a bright burst of pleasure to explode through her.
One hand released her hair, trailed down her body to her breast. His questing fingers stroked over her nipple. She groaned into his mouth so he plucked at it harder in the way she’d loved as she rode him. He remembered everything that drove her wild and repeated it, their bodies still in perfect tune with each other. Their breaths panted into the room as he grappled with the button of her trousers. Slid the zip down too slowly then eased his hand inside and stroked gently over her underwear.
‘More,’ she gasped against his lips, and the word was met with a low chuckle and fleeting pressure but not enough. She burned, wanted to tear off her clothes as they itched and prickled her skin. He eased his thumb beneath the waistband of her panties, sliding it with steady pressure over her slick clitoris. It took only moments for the burn to build and twist then explode outwards, her screams of pleasure trapped by their fused mouths. He kept going and the orgasm went on and on, wreaking destruction.
When she’d shuddered for the last time and sagged into him, limp and wrung out, Gage tightened his arms tight around her waist and stood. She barely had the wherewithal to wrap her legs round his waist as he placed her on the table in front of him. Her hands tangled in his hair; his mouth never left hers. Frantic hands grappled with the buttons of her shirt, tugged down the cups of her bra and he dropped his head to her nipple and sucked, torturing her till she writhed against him. She wanted him again, the exquisite emptiness building deep inside.
Gage somehow manhandled her pants down and off her legs. He pulled her forward so that she perched right on the edge of the table. The clink of a belt buckle and the burr of a zip told her they were far from finished and she didn’t care. She never wanted this moment to end.
She reached out, craving to feel the heavy, warm silk of him in her hands, and then she took and gripped hard, marvelling at his glorious size and stroking him in the way she remembered he loved. He pulled back, moaned, mouth at her neck, kissing and nipping as a flood of heat built between her legs, aching to her core. He ran his teeth over and along the shell of her ear and the sounds they made were barely human, guttural expressions of need.
He tugged down the straps of her bra, pulled her shirt off her shoulders, trapping her arms, and she arched back, gloriously exposed. Gage’s one hand slipped between her legs, fingers probing deep. The other tortured her nipple.
‘I don’t damn well care anymore,’ Gage growled in her ear. It was like the words weren’t meant for her, as if he was giving himself permission to take what he wanted. Then he kissed her again, all heat and battle, and she shook as though she was overwhelmed by a fever, with the impending orgasm hanging just out of reach. He pulled her closer or did she guide him? Then his fingers withdrew, leaving her empty and bereft till he notched himself at her entrance. She wrapped her legs around him again, encouraging, drawing him forward with her heels. He entered her with a sharp thrust and a groan. She tensed at the sensation, swift and over-full. It had been years and, no matter how wet she was or how much she wanted this, she couldn’t help the gasp that escaped at the size of him. Gage stilled.
‘Cher?’
It had never been Eve when he’d been inside her.
‘A moment,’ she whispered. She wanted his hands and his lips and possession, so she didn’t have to think about him between her legs, invading her very soul. The short, shallow thrusts that had her panting and wanting even more. She raised her mouth to his, softer this time, gave a languid kiss that he mirrored as he slid in and out in a way she would have said was gentle and loving if it had been seven years earlier. The kindness of him at this moment would be her undoing. She drove her heels into the back of his thighs and tried to spur him on to something harder, less tender.
‘Just...take me,’ she said as she nipped at his collar bone.
‘No.’
He slowed right down then, rocked into her, and she thought she’d go mad. He threaded his hand into her loose hair, wrapped its unruly length around his fist and eased her head back, her neck bared to him. Her breasts thrust forward, pushed up by the ruined cups of her bra. He licked and kissed and sucked and she was sure he’d leave marks everywhere as she groaned in frustration, bright light sparking in her eyes and the cliff of oblivion looming just out of reach.
All the while he kept up the rhythm, gentle and slow, and she despised him for it because what she wanted was hard and hateful, not this...undoing. Unpicking every seam she’d so tightly stitched up over the years. Only when he slid his hand between them again, stroked and teased and she began saying who knew what—unintelligible mutterings that were probably begging but she didn’t give a damn about her pride—did he begin the hard thrusting that she’d craved, his rhythm breaking and irregular because he was as lost as her with the pressure and changes of angle.
In a roar of pleasure she fell apart, screaming his name, and he followed with a shout on one final hard thrust, filling her with his heat.
They stayed there for a few seconds, heavy breaths ragged in the room, the smell of salt and musk and sex hanging in the air, fused with the spicy scent that was all Gage. She closed her eyes, her head against his chest. The thump, thump, thump of his heartbeat in her ear. What had she done? His hate she could deal with. But a gentle, kind and passionate Gage Caron had the power to destroy her utterly and she wouldn’t let him. She’d barely recovered the last time she’d let him go. She needed to move, protect herself from her own critical mistake. Allowing herself to touch him. Thinking the fire of their passion wouldn’t burn her.
Eve raked up her bra straps. Shrugged her shirt back over her shoulders and pushed at Gage.
‘Move.’
He slid out of her, still half-erect, hair a mess and looking confused as he stepped back, hands up and off her body. She ignored him and wrestled with her underwear, trousers. Anything to get away as fast as possible, to begin the process of putting herself back together.
‘Eve?’
She shook her head as he tried to reach for her, tears stinging her eyes. Clutching her crushed clothes to her body as she pushed past him and ran to her room. She slammed the door and turned the key before stumbling to the bed and sitting on the edge.
Her body wasn’t listening to what her head was trying to tell her, that this should never have happened. The unprotected sex, whilst blindingly stupid, wasn’t going to lead to pregnancy. She had an implant so there was no risk of that.
No, it was that her body wanted more. More of Gage, his lips and his hands driving her out of her mind. Driving out the thoughts that whispered that if her father never recovered, some secrets would remain safe and she and Gage might one day have a chance, when there was none to be had at all. Not now or ever, because secrets had the power to destroy, and there were some secrets she would always have to keep.
What if he wanted more, too? She shivered, like she’d plunged into icy water. She craved that more than anything else in the whole world but there could never be any tr