48
Laura
When I marched into the room, the sound of the shower let me know Dax was cleaning up. Something was wrong because he’d hardly said hello after he and Luke returned from their recon mission.
Was he upset I hadn’t skipped and hopped into his arms like Beverly had done to Luke? He knew me well enough to know that that would never be me. I had a hard enough time trying to figure out why we had chemistry in the first place.
Lately, we could hardly agree on any subject, so whatever was bothering him was something we weren’t going to agree on. Our arguments were different than they were in the beginning. Now, we argued, said what we needed to say, then we’d go quiet on each other for long periods of time. I much preferred us constantly biting each other’s heads off.
He entered the room with his shorts hanging low on his waist and no shirt as droplets of water drizzled down his solid, lean body. The scar where he’d had the bullet removed was visible, and at times I could tell it still pained him. He’d never complained, and I’d easily picked up on the fact he didn’t want to be babied about it.
He’d walked out of the bathroom half naked on purpose—his attempt at seducing me. I wasn’t going to let him know it was working, so I took the seat in the desk chair with my back to the desk and folded my arms across my chest.
“Care to tell me what’s wrong with you?” I cocked my gaze until my damn eyes defied my brain and ran down the expanse of his body.
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he stalked across the room and stood in front of me. His warm energy and fresh scent wrapped around me, comforting me when I didn’t need or want it to. Not answering my question, he dropped to his knees before me, his chest bumping my knees apart as he drew closer.
With him positioned between my legs, staring up at me, every bit of the anger I’d built up disappeared as my heartbeat quickened. He reached out and brushed his fingers along my cheek, his steel gray eyes peering into me. My first instinct was to pull away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“My problem is nothing you should be concerned about. I’ll deal with it,” he murmured. There was a strange note in his tone that I pondered and attempted to decipher until my mind gave up the quest.
He reached around my waist and tugged me into his body, drowning me in his masculine dampness. Jagged anxiousness filled me, and I wanted to touch him and fall into the urgent need he’d filled me with. How was I supposed to return to being normal if he kept making me want him?
My hands worked their way up his arms before I raked my fingertips through his silky hair, closing his eyes, and relaxing his tensed body. With his face in my palms, I just stared, trying to make sense of this, of us.
Why him? Why couldn’t I fight this? Why did I so easily give in when we were this close? He glared up at me, eyes pleading. I drew him closer until our faces were inches apart, hesitant, scared, and unsure. He closed the last inch of space, allowing his lips to hover right below mine. “Please, Laura,” he whispered against my lips, and I lost the last of my control.
Soft, smooth strokes of our dancing lips started the kiss. He delved deeper, intensifying the pressure, making me feel it so deep, I didn’t know if I was feeling my heartbeat or his, hearing his pulse thump or mine, tasting his truth or the truth I’d denied myself.
His tongue brushed my lips and urged me to open for him. The kiss evoked a tingling depth, and I allowed myself to connect with his flowing emotions and embrace my own.
Dax was the only person I’d allowed myself to connect with on this level, and I didn’t know how I felt about it from one moment to the next. I’d always had the ability to hold firmly to my terse and snarling will because it kept me strong. Would I be forever changed by this connection? Would I lose the tough edge I needed to keep me safe from all the harm out there in the world?
He led me to the bed, sitting me on the edge. My mind switched to autopilot, and I didn’t protest anything he did, even when he went slow and hit me with what I was beginning to understand was intimacy. I took it all: the emotion, the soft caresses, the slow, tender moments, until I was presented to him nude and lying across the bed.
He stood in place, staring, making me squirm under his gaze and feel like a superstar all at the same time. He shoved his shorts down, and my gaze took him in. He was a sexy man, a truth I’d had difficulty accepting.
A sigh huffed from deep within my lungs before I backed further onto the bed, anxious for the addictive high he had the ability to give me. He climbed in and fitted his body against mine. His fastest movements came when he tore open the condom and pinned my gaze in place with his as he slipped it on.
His warm hardness spread my wet heat apart when he started to slide into me with a slow lingering ease. The only person I’d allowed inside my body, I believed he coveted that truth like a priceless possession. Life was proving I didn’t know it all, that I couldn’t find all my answers in the streets, and that embracing a tough attitude wasn’t always necessary.
No matter how urgent our start, he always eased into me first. Once he worked himself in as far as my body would allow, our releasing sighs met and kissed in midair. He moved with meticulous strokes, making love to me instead of the fast and hard fucking I often sought out. Painfully slow, affectionate, intimate. I didn’t fight the emotions stirring between us although they terrified me.
I was grateful when the pleasure started to combat the arsenal of emotional weapons he’d unleashed on me. Our moans and harsh breathing joined the overwhelming currents that had taken my nerves by storm. With every thrust he flooded my body with pleasure that caused my eyeballs to roll and sent my hips chasing his movements.
“Don’t let this be it, Laura. We’re good together.” His hot whispers floated into my ear.
He’d just revealed what his problem was. He wanted an us, and I was firmly against it. He was convinced we could be a functioning couple. When he attempted to convince me of it, I’d laughed in his face, and it led to an argument.
“Do you feel that?” He slid into me with a strong downstroke.
“Yes,” rushed past my lips as my body reacted. My nails clawed into his upper and lower back as my body trembled from the explosion of pleasure he’d drove into me.
“Only you and I can create this kind of magic. Only you can make me feel this good, this high, this special,” he whispered, causing that pinging in my heart to spread a delighted ache through the rest of me. He was turning me against my own body, against my own mind and although I didn’t like it, I accepted it.
Instead of responding to his comments I placed my hand behind his neck and tugged until his lips were on mine. He backed off, glaring at me with a perplexed expression. It wasn’t like me to initiate a kiss, but he resumed it, caressing my lips with his until desire urged him to seek out my tongue.
His slow movements sent our bodies into a sensual dance. We clung and took from one another until our worlds collided and became one sensational universe.
Dax had made love to me, and I’d embraced every moment of it. We breathed in each other until the haze of our bliss started to dissolve us into a relaxed state. I embraced the pressure of him buried deep inside as we remained clinging to each other, neither of us willing to let go of the other. This was the fifth time this wasn’t supposed to happen between us. The fifth time I’d insisted we couldn’t do this anymore.
I was the first to let go, but it wasn’t because I wanted to. I let go because he refused to stop pulling me in, mentally and physically, stirring a desire I needed to put an end to. We lay next to each other, neither of us speaking a word. However, the silence that hung around us was alive with what had been left unsaid.