His steps slowed. “Is that so?”
She gave a brief hum.
Jaw ticking, he went back to surveying the backyard, but he was moving in her direction now. With such brisk purpose, she couldn’t breathe. Touch me.
“If I’d known you were in this perfect, hidden garden thinking of me, Hallie,” he said, frowning at her mouth. “I’m afraid I would have ripped your door off the hinges to get to you.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
Admissions. Truth. She would give him as much as she could to make up for the one thing she was too scared to tell him. Yet. They were finding middle ground. He’d taken a few steps into her chaos, and she’d started serious planning of the library job. Booking more appointments, committing, doing her best to arrive on time. And it felt good. She couldn’t screw this up by revealing how absolutely harebrained she’d been.
What if the revelation was his tipping point and he walked away?
They looked at each other for so long, the sky darkened a degree with the onset of evening, turning from pink to burnt orange, the bourbon of his eyes rich and smoky. She was tempted to give him more truth but could only bring herself to act on the impulse with her body. She could open herself up and be vulnerable in this way—and, God, she wanted to. Needed to. Didn’t want to hold back a single thing from this man.
That’s how she found herself stepping forward, kissing the underside of his chin, her fingers working to unbuckle his belt.
Immediately, he started to breathe hard, his nostrils flaring, but he never stopped looking her in the eye. Not until she eased the zipper down past his thickened shaft and reached into his pants, stroking the full length of him through the opening. Then his lids locked down like shutters, squeezing tight. “Hallie,” he choked. “What are you . . . oh Christ. Oh shit.”
She wasn’t sure what led her to kneel. To guide him to her mouth and take him inside so eagerly. Maybe because she’d fantasized about this countless times, although, in her fantasies, they were usually in one of his lecture halls at Stanford—a fact which she’d take to the grave. Or maybe she just wanted to do good with a mouth that was holding on to a lie. She closed her eyes and worshiped the smooth steel of him, her hand growing more and more confident in its newfound skill as it pumped top to bottom, increasing the hard swell of him with every fisted stroke.
“Can’t . . .” he heaved, fingers tangling in her curls. “Can’t be your first time sucking . . . ?” Moaning around him, she nodded, and his breath caught, followed by the taste of warm salt in her mouth. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have—I’m going to finish. Stop. You have to stop.”
Oh, right. Like that was going to happen. Did he have any idea what it was like to watch the straitlaced professor of her dreams lose the grip on his self-control, to know she was the cause? At some point, he must have plowed a hand through his usually perfect hair, because it stood on end in places. His jaw was clamped down, throat flexed, and the flesh in her mouth was painfully erect. She remembered him like this last night. At the end. How he’d been at his stiffest right before the fall, and she cherished this knowledge about him now. His telltale signs. His weakness—her. I’m his weakness. There was so much strength and power in that knowledge that her confidence ticked up another notch, and she popped him out of her mouth. While maintaining her hold on his erection, she found his balls with her lips and blew a gentle raspberry onto one of them, before drawing it into her mouth on a groan.
“No, no, no, no. Hallie. Get up. No more of that. Goddamn, sweetheart.” His fingers twisted in her hair involuntarily, a violent shudder passing through his powerful body. “Wait. Don’t stop stroking,” he heaved thickly. “Hard. While you’re sucking them . . . shit.”
Using his hold on her curls, Julian hauled her face away, and as she gulped down oxygen, she savored the sight in front of her. The shine she’d left behind on his aroused flesh, the hair she’d never seen on his upper thighs and low on his muscular belly. All of him. All of him was so startlingly raw and beautiful. But then he was dropping to his knees and slamming their mouths together, angling her head to the right and invading her mouth with an animal sound.
Lust inundated Hallie, burning and wild, and she kissed him back, distantly aware of Julian searching for something in his wallet. Protection. Putting it on in a hurry while they raked every corner of each other’s mouth with long strokes, hips pressing, grinding.