Unless, of course, we both decide otherwise...
CHAPTER FIVE
I DIDN’T TELL her how long I’d be and as I glance at my watch for the umpteenth time I know it’s been half an hour, but walking back into a wedding reception teeming with people didn’t appeal. Not when I’m in this torrid state of limbo. Between running and staying.
And hell, if I’m honest, the idea of her standing as I commanded, naked and waiting...
I’m the master of building anticipation; my lovers come back to me for just that. But, with Caitlin, she’s not just another lover, and I’m also not naive enough to put this entirely down to building her sexual thrill. It’s my own too, wrapped up in fear.
Fear of crossing a line we can’t come back from.
I try to bury the thought as I scan the landing outside her room. It’s deserted save for the eyes that follow me from the antique portraits lining the walls—I run a finger through the inside of my shirt collar. People from years gone by, all seeming to add to my own threatening judgement, telling me that this is a bad idea, that I should keep on walking. That I should get to my own room, lock the door and stay there until this fire inside m
e subsides.
I blow out a breath and rake my fingers through my hair. There’s no calming this fire though, not now I’ve let her in, seen her, felt her come around my fingers, witnessed her all doe-eyed and languid in my arms.
Caitlin. Fun and flirty Caitlin. All mine.
I conjure her up, naked and waiting. I plan out what will happen. It’s part of my control: no surprises.
I live my life to the full—I’ve been told, recklessly. But, when it comes to sex, I’m careful. I keep a close leash on everything: my need, what I’ll permit, what I’ll do, and what I’ll let them do in return.
That way it never blurs into something more.
Something that can’t be contained. Something that has the power to hurt. I’ve been there, done that, and I’ll never be that weak again.
Yet my hand still trembles as I reach out for the door handle to her room. Trembles. Fucking trembles. I don’t shake, I don’t get edgy, I don’t let anything bother me that deeply. But this...
The power of anticipation isn’t over her, it’s over me right now, a thrill that far surpasses anything I’ve ever known. I take a second to calm the fuck down and strain to listen through her door.
Nothing.
Will she even be there? Or will she have taken the opportunity to run while she still can? As she should. As I should want her to.
Only I don’t.
Footsteps down the hall, voices approaching, spur me into moving and I swing open the door, step straight in and—
I freeze. Hell, the whole world freezes.
I’m barely aware of flicking my wrist to swing the door closed again. Barely aware of the noise of the party still underway downstairs, barely aware of anything but her. My ears fill with the rapid beat of my pulse as it pounds in my head, the words stupid and naive pounding with it. What the hell am I doing? How did I ever think I could keep this under my control?
I try to take in air; I try to steady the vibration that runs through my rigid body and do what I can to ease the strange stuttering in my chest, the instant punch of heat, desire and a far more emotional response that would have me running for the hills if I was capable of it.
She’s naked. Just as I instructed. All brazen and coy at once, her arm hooked around a footpost of the four-poster bed behind her, her body entwined with it as she stares at me. And then she moves, a smile lifting her lips as she raises one hand to her mouth and hooks her French-tipped thumbnail in the gap between her teeth.
Is it a nervous gesture on her part or a seductive one? Damned if I know, but the effect it’s having below the waist tells me how I see it and I wonder if she knows it too. Knows that for six years I’ve fantasised about that gap, of probing it while I fuck her and go wild with her, and only her.
My breath shudders out of me as I do my utmost to regain control but, hell, I can’t stop drinking her in. The soft light cast by the bedside lamps plays over her skin, creating a captivating contrast of dancing shadows and gold.
She’s freed her hair from its knot and it’s wild once more, blazing like a true fire. Her breasts are teasingly concealed beneath her arms as she keeps herself attached to the post, one foot crossing in front of the other, enhancing the slender curve to her waist, the pop of her hip and partially concealing the teasing strip of hair I glimpsed outside.
She’s like a painting. A truly magnificent, emotive painting. Pure temptation, all seductive and warm, and the sense of something tender, something alien, grips me. I snap my eyes away, to the bed behind her, but it’s no less evocative. The sheets are all ruffled, as though she’s lain in it already and writhed, her hands fisted in the deep-red satin, pulling at them as her pleasure builds.
‘You took your time,’ she says, tugging my eyes back to her.
‘Miss me?’