She had always called to him.
She lowered her head again and he tugged her hair. “No,” he said, his voice sharp. “I want to be inside you.”
She stood then, lifting her dress and tugging her panties off. He reached for her, hooked his arm around her waist and tugged her onto his lap, bunching her dress up around her hips, squeezing her bare butt before giving her an open-handed slap. Nothing too hard. Just enough to draw one of those sweet sounds from her lips.
Then he gripped her hips tight and positioned her over his body, testing her with the blunt head of him, finding her wet and ready. He starting to pull her down, sliding into her by inches. Her head fell back and he couldn’t resist another nip on her throat.
When he was inside her all the way, she rested her head against his chest, her hands on his shoulders. “Yes, Xander,” she said, and he knew she was still with him.
A relief, because he’d been so lost in his own need it would have been easy to forget her. To forget that she might not be ready for this. But she was. She was right there with him.
“My dress,” she said, panting, “would you—?”
He tugged it up higher, pulling it over her head and throwing it to the floor, then undoing her bra with unmatched speed, exposing her breasts. “My pleasure,” he said, lowering his head and sucking one rosy bud between his lips.
She arched against him, her internal muscles flexing around him. It was too much for him. But he’d already taken too much from this and she needed hers. He needed to watch her face as she came for him.
He reached between them, sliding his thumb over her clitoris as he thrust up into her.
Her fingernails dug into his back and for a moment she lost herself. But he didn’t lose her. He held her the whole time. Watched as her lips parted, her eyes closed, her forehead creased. The way the scar tissue by the corner of her mouth folded, and how one brow never did match up with the other.
It was all her. No one else could have made this moment. No one else could have coaxed his darkest secret from him and then taken him to heaven on its wings.
She squeezed him tight, and the world exploded, his blood turning to fire and swallowing him whole while his orgasm burned through him, clearing out all the pain, all the regret, all of who he was and who he’d been, leaving him desolate in its wake.
And when he came back to himself, he was in her arms. And he wasn’t sure who he was. Or why he’d cared so much about a tie only a few minutes ago.
“When is dinner?” she asked, her voice sleepy.
“Eight,” he said.
“So we have five hours,” she said.
He nodded and somehow, in spite of the fact that his legs felt like jelly, he managed to lift them both from the chair and carry her to the bed. He pulled back the covers and laid her down, then got in beside her, pulling her body up against his. He buried his face in her hair and took a deep breath, the air filling his lungs seeming all the fresher because it was infused with her scent.
“I should have done this after the first time,” he said.
“What?”
“Taken you to bed. Held you close. You’re so soft.” He let his hand drift over her curves. Her hip, her thigh. “You are beautiful, Layna. I saw it just now. With that look on your face as you came. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t have to say those kinds of things.”
“I know. But it’s true. And you asked me only last week if I could say you were beautiful, and I said no. But I was wrong then. I know so much more now.”
“A week to obtain wisdom. I wish I had that gift.”
“Not wisdom in all things. But wisdom in how magical it is to watch you lose yourself in pleasure. To see the light catch your hair and pick up the hidden gold strands that always remind me of the past. Only the good parts of the past,” he said, laughing. “And I don’t know quite how I missed just what an incredible thing your smile is. Because you still have it. Because life has been cruel to you and you still smile.”
“So do you,” she said.
“Yes. But you mean it.”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head. “I already told you. I think we took different paths to accomplish the same goal. I tried to pretend everything was fine. I hid behind my smile. Behind artificial highs. So that I could pretend I felt something when I simply didn’t. When I couldn’t go back and face all that I needed to face. The only thing to do was never look at the past, and pretend everything was fine in the present.”
He felt her nod, her body shifting slightly against his. “Yes. That sounds about right. I mean, I understand that.”