He slides his palms down the outsides of my thighs.
The next thing I know, his hand is between them, teasing the wet seam of my body. My spine arcs when his fingers delve into the cleft of my sex. It’s been so long. To think I’d nearly had myself convinced that any sexual impulse I had was snuffed out the day I left Paris.
It was only waiting for this. For Nick.
“Oh, God.” I gasp, shuddering against him as his touch slides through my wetness, his thumb rolling deliciously, torturously, over my clit. Each stroke winds me tighter, driving me toward a pleasure I can neither slow down nor contain. I want to burrow my face into his chest, but Nick moves back, watching me. Studying every nuance of my response.
As always, I’m stripped bare under his gaze.
Because even after a year apart I am his.
My climax breaks over me without warning. I cry out with the intensity of it, with the staggering force of everything I still feel for Dominic Baine.
I open my eyes a moment later and find he’s still watching, still searching my face. And between my quivering thighs, his fingers are still moving reverently inside me.
“Christ, Avery. You’re so fucking beautiful when you come.” His voice is ragged, tight with desire. With his free hand, he gently caresses my cheek and brow. “I want to be inside you.”
I press against him, smiling up into his sober face. “I want it too, Nick.”
“No. You don’t understand.” He withdraws his fingers from inside me, then lowers his forehead to rest against mine. “I want more than that. I want to be the only man you take inside you.”
“You are.” I hold his serious gaze, unable to pretend with him now. I can’t lie by letting him think it’s been easy for me without him. Not after everything he’s told me.
All the lies and pretending we’ve done with each other are part of our past now. If we’re going to move forward, there’s no room for anything but the truth.
“There’s been no one else since you, Nick.”
He grunts. “So, Professor Nice Guy. He really isn’t in the picture?”
I shake my head. “He never was, just like you said. I broke it off with Brandon the day you and I talked at the gallery.”
“And Jared Rush?”
I frown at both the question and his jealous tone, although it shouldn’t surprise me. When we were together, Nick all but forbade me to get close to the charming artist even though the two men were on friendly terms in the past.
“Jared and I are friends, that’s all. That’s all we’ll ever be,” I assure him. “There’s been no other men since you, Nick. No one. Not once. Not in all this time.”
I see the jolt of astonishment flash across his face. I see the relief.
“Damn you for letting me think they could have been.” He exhales, then mutters a quiet curse. “Do you know how badly I wanted to forget you? How many times I went to a bar or a party for the sole purpose of finding some nameless, faceless female that I could fuck instead of tormenting myself every waking moment with the thought of wanting you?”
I’m holding my breath as he talks, yanked unwillingly back to reality. I’m terrified of what he’s going to tell me. I had no claim on him this past year, but if he confesses to screwing half the women in this city, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t bar him from my heart that easily, but if he felt so little for me that he could do what he’s describing, I don’t know how I’ll be able to look at him and not feel like I’m in love with a stranger.
He lifts my chin, forcing me to give him my full attention. “I wanted to be able to fuck you out of my head, Avery. Out of my heart. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want anyone else. I still don’t.”
Hope catches in my chest. “Then you didn’t—”
“No one,” he says, brushing his lips over mine. “Not once.” A tender kiss to the side of my neck that makes my pulse race and my heart leap. “Not in all this time.”
Joy surges inside me, along with renewed desire. I can’t contain either one. Throwing my arms around his neck, I leap at Nick, my bare legs encircling his waist. Our mouths meet with abandon, with ferocious hunger.
He holds me aloft, his palms and forearms supporting my weight. And then suddenly we’re in motion, ascending the staircase that leads to my bedroom on the second floor.
Nick’s never been in my house before. Never been in the queen-sized bed that seems very small as he sets me down on the edge of it and stands before me to finish undressing.
He strips with elegant efficiency while I watch with eager eyes and a watering mouth. He’s so heart-stoppingly handsome I nearly forget to breathe. I know every muscled ridge and plane of his body, yet he’s never looked more virile than he does now.
He pushes me down on the mattress, his body covering me. His weight on me is a comfort as much as it arouses me. I cling to him, arching beneath him and yearning to have him buried deep inside me.