I know he feels it too. I can feel his need pressing between us, his breath hitching in tune to mine, his hands fierce as they fork through my hair.
Our teeth clash as our pace outruns us and I laugh. I’m delirious at letting go, at not being in control. I don’t feel like myself. Or rather I feel like my younger self, with no cares, no worries. He pulls back and I look up at him. He’s grinning, his eyes alive with mischief, and I am that young again. So is he.
But you’re not.
The realisation ripples through my system, the chill contending with the heat as the past seven years rapidly replay and I’m in freefall. Lost to it.
The sudden burn of tears is my wake-up call.
Oh, God, no.
I try to draw a breath, my fingers freezing in his hair as I close my eyes to block him out until I can see straight again. I cling to the chill within my belly, the echo of my pain, of my loss.
‘Lexi...’
It’s part-groan, part-plea, and then his mouth is back, travelling along my jaw, his shadowed stubble teasing a rough path to my earlobe. The ice is melting. My fingers are softening in his hair...my disobedient deprived body is curving into him and letting his heat burn out the cold. This is better. This feeling. I don’t want the chill. The grief that will overcome me if I let it.
‘Lexi...’
The way he says my name is a tortured sound that meets my inner torment head-on. He knows we shouldn’t do this. He knows it’s wrong. He has his reasons and I have mine. Yet we are both losing it. Letting it win. And the battle makes it all the more powerful. All the more desperate.
I cling to his head as his teeth graze the delicate flesh of my earlobe, shiver as his hot breath invades my ear and moan my approval. Not that he needs it. He knows my every erogenous zone and is using that knowledge to push me.
But I know his too.
And I’m eager to remind him of it.
I tug his shirt from his waistband, slip my hands beneath and feel the heat of his skin under my palms. He’s harder than I remember. Hot, lean, chiselled.
My mouth waters anew and I trail my fingers up his back, feel his skin prickle, his body shudder against me, and I smile. Still the same Cain. The one who can’t determine if he’s ticklish, turned on, or both.
Confident, I rake my nails down his shoulder blades and he grinds his hips against me with a hiss against my throat. I want more than a hiss, though; I want him out of his mind. I want the controlled man of minutes before surrendering to the wild man of old.
I drop my hands to his waistband, go to pop the button, and his hands drop to my wrists, stilling me.
‘Not yet.’
When? I want to ask, but I can’t speak.
His mouth is moving down over my blouse, the light fabric allowing just enough sensation to draw my nipples through both it and the lace of my bra, betraying exactly what I want, what I need. He pulls my arms behind my back, clasps my wrists in one hand as he walks me backwards against my desk.
I’m restrained, captive, and all his. It shouldn’t turn me on like it does.
He shouldn’t.
But, hell, I’m turned on and willing to lay myself bare just to feel the completion of this. The promise of the climax to come. That height of bliss, of ecstasy, of what I’ve not had in over seven years. Ever since... Ever since...
He thrusts my skirt up my thighs and my breath hitches, my mind quits. His palms are hot and hurried against my skin, frantic—and, fuck, I am too. It’s like a long overdue homecoming. Being here, like this, with him.
The breadth of his palm covers the front of my thigh, his thumb is so close to the heart of me, and then he skims over my underwear, a gentle brush that has me bucking and crying, arching my back to ple
ad for more.
He makes a sound—half-laugh, half-groan—and then his mouth is covering one nipple, his teeth biting through the fabric. I curse the very existence of my clothing. Of any barrier. I want it all gone. Hell, I want the last seven years gone. A rewrite of every painful second. If only...
I’m too close to sanity again. Too close to ending this before I’ve had my fill—
No. No. No.