He parts it over my shoulders and I wriggle to help. My exposed back meets the cool glass and I buck away. But his hand is there, curving me against him. I lower my leg to let my dress fall to the floor and my bra swiftly follows. My bare nipples brush against his shirt, the accidental caress as erotic, as charged as anything, and then his palms are there, weighing, caressing, thumb and forefinger rolling, plucking.
‘Fuck.’ I’m going out of my mind. I clutch him tighter, whimper more.
‘Lexi.’
He says my name as if he can scarcely believe this is happening. Hell, I can’t. It’s too intense, too dreamlike, too heady.
He twists my hair around his fist, pulls my head back against the glass as his hot mouth trails across the exposed skin of my neck, sucking, devouring. He cups the back of my knee to lift my leg around him once more, delivering that perfect hit of friction again, each grind taking me higher and higher.
My nails bite into his shoulders. I’m unable to move, rigid with the spira
lling heat, the knowledge that I’m close...so close. He pinches my nipple, squeezes it tight, almost painfully, and my clit pulses. He does it again. And again.
And then his hand is between us, slipping inside the elastic of my knickers. I bite into my bottom lip, hold my breath, and then he’s there, slipping down into my wetness, the brush of his fingers circling over me.
‘Cain!’ It bursts out of me—a warning? A plea? I don’t know.
‘You’re so wet,’ he says against my collarbone, his kiss feverish upon my skin.
And then he drops lower, sucks in one pert nipple, the hot cavern of his mouth surrounding it, his tongue rolling over it, and I tremble in my rigid state, my body not knowing which sensation to focus on more: his fingers over my clit, his mouth, or his hand over my breast.
‘I need to taste you again, Lexi.’
The heat pulses between my legs, my belly contracts and I drop my head forward, look down into eyes that gaze up at me imploringly. His tongue flicks out to tease at the nipple jutting at him, begging for more. He keeps my eyes trapped in his gaze as he tongues the sensitive flesh, his fingers picking up their pace inside my knickers...the same dizzying pace of his tongue.
‘Yes, Cain...yes.’
His hand slips out of my underwear and he drops to his knees. My legs lock tight as I fear I’m going to collapse, but then he’s cupping one of my ankles, coaxing me into bending my leg to step out of the dress, which is pooled at my feet. He returns my foot to the floor and does the same with the other, purposely widening my stance as he does so.
Cool air sweeps over the dampness of my knickers, arousing and shocking in one, and then his hands are easing softly upwards, stroking up the skin at the backs of my calves, my thighs, my bum... He leans forward, his nose nudging against my clothed seam and—God help me—I jerk into the simple touch.
He smiles up at me and does it again...slowly...very slowly...
He breathes over me. ‘Tell me again.’
I don’t even have to ask to know what he wants to hear. And then I realise he needs to hear it—he needs to be the one and only. Not because he’s staking his claim, or possessing me. It’s because of the same vulnerability that drove him away seven years ago. The fear of being the outsider.
For all his confident, outwardly arrogant persona back then, he was vulnerable. And for all the man he is now, he still has that fear deep down. It crushes me. I should have realised back then. I should have seen it for what it was and talked him round. But instead I pushed him away. I made it worse.
My throat closes over. Tears prick. The heat of desire and the burn of my failure, intensifies everything as I bury my fingers in his hair.
‘I want you.’
It’s a whisper, but it’s there, and then his hands are easing the fabric aside, his tongue is flicking out and he’s pressing it against me, parting me. The merest hint of friction sends me rigid, straining for more. My knees quake, my thighs tremble and, as if he senses my weakness, he palms my arse, holding me fast against him.
‘I want you...’ I moan again, grateful for the sensation that’s overtaking the pain of all that lies between us.
He groans over me, the rumble working its way through my body. Oh, yes. His fingers curl into the waistband at my hips and slowly he drags it down, over my thighs, my knees. I step out for the time it takes to strip it away, and then he’s on me again, wasting no time. His fingers part me for the arrival of his mouth and he sucks me...
Oh, God, yes.
‘You taste so good,’ he says over my clit, his lips brushing, his breath caressing, and then he dips his fingers inside me and runs the flat of his tongue upwards.
‘Cain...’
‘I love hearing my name from your lips...your Irish lilt...’ His fingers delve in deeper, pressing on my G-spot, his words separated by the sweet circle of his tongue ‘It’s so fucking hot... It’s like coming home.’
And I haven’t got time to process his words because he’s driving me to the precipice of release, with fingers and mouth and tongue. It’s a dizzying dance that he knows of old and I’m lost to it, ecstasy rolling through me as I let go.