“But I no longer had the resilience or faith of a child. I couldn’t cling to a na?ve hope that things would change, get better, that he would miss me enough to want me with him. Because that separation was voluntary, mandated only by him, it hurt much more than all the others combined.”
She sat for several seconds, then left the bed and went into the bathroom. “Did you see a hair dryer in here?” A few seconds later one was switched on.
Rye got up and checked outside again. “Damn it.” The police unit hadn’t gone anywhere. The officer could be sleeping through his shift. Or guarding that door. He had no way of knowing, and the only way he could test it was to show himself.
The hair dryer went off. Brynn came out, her hair still only partially dry. She was briskly rubbing the ends of it with a towel. “Still there?”
“Yeah. But there’s no sight of anyone else, which means he didn’t call for the cavalry or they would have been here by now.”
“Do you think it’s safe for me to leave?”
“Unless he’s manning a post.”
She bowed her head and rubbed her forehead. “I can’t fail at this. I can’t.”
“Hey.” Rye went to her, took the towel from her hand, and dropped it to the floor. “You’re not going to fail. We’ll figure a way. You’ll get to Violet with time to spare.”
She raised her head and looked at him with damp, imploring eyes. “Do you promise?”
“I have every faith in you.” Then he continued forward, his footsteps unchecked. She had no choice but to back up until she was against the wall. He placed both hands above her head and on either side of it.
“What’s this about?” she asked.
“Sharing body heat.” He bumped her middle with his.
She dropped her head forward and left it to rest against the center of his chest. “Look, Rye, exhaustion made me nostalgic. I told you a boohoo story, but it wasn’t designed to make you feel sorry for me.”
“Then feel sorry for me.”
She raised her head. “What for?”
He lifted a strand of hair lying against her chest and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers. “Because I’ve been wanting you for almost twenty-four hours, and I’m tired of it.”
She swallowed, said huskily, “You’ve passed on several opportunities.”
“Best I recall, the last time I made a move, you pushed me away and enforced a kissing restriction.”
“It was intended to be a goodbye, so why should you care?”
“I wanted that kiss.”
“You’d said you didn’t have designs like that on me.”
“Well…” He moved in closer, the bump graduating to a meshing. Her placed his hands at her waist and began gathering up her sweater. He took it slowly, giving her time to object, slap his hands away, stop him in any fashion. She didn’t.
He leaned in to whisk his lips across hers as he continued to raise her sweater until it cleared her chest. Her arms went up. He pulled it over her head and let it fall where it would.
She lowered her arms, but otherwise didn’t move. He took advantage of her passiveness to drink in the sight. The slender column of her neck, the shallow triangle at its base, a bosom made for pillowing. Her bra was the color the sky turns right before the first star comes out.
He placed the fingertips of both hands on her collarbones, traced their width to the bra’s shoulder straps. “I believe that’s what I said. What I can’t believe…” He lowered the satin strap, dragging it down her arm with painstaking slowness until the cup of her bra caught on her nipple. “…is that you took me serious.”
He moved his hand to the under curve of her breast and pushed it up, then lowered his head and placed his mouth on the swell above the twilight-colored fabric. He kissed it openmouthed and with leisurely sweeps of his tongue, before gently sucking the skin.
She made a purring sound as her body went lax. Her head was back, her eyes closed. She was biting her lower lip. He whispered, “Is that permission to continue?”
She opened her eyes and, clasping his head firmly between her hands, brought it to hers. Their mouths came at each other hungrily. This was no coy kiss. Her tongue was giving and receiving, and the way she drew his in was as erotic as hell.
The caveman in him was awakened with a vengeance. He wanted to claim her mouth, possess it, and to inflict pain on every other man who’d had so much as a sampling of it. He wanted to kill the wild Hendrix boy.
He reached around and unhooked her bra. It dropped between them, then fell away. When next he put his mouth to her breasts, he covered a nipple. It was hard, ripe with arousal. She arched up, offering him more. He teased, he tugged. Pleasuring her became his sole purpose in life.
Until her hands moved to his fly and started working open the metal buttons. She was deft. In a matter of seconds, she had him in hand, almost stopping his heart, but not curbing the male instinct to thrust.
Which he did. Into her firm grasp. The pressure she applied was perfect. The skin-to-skin friction was so incredible that, by the time she’d worked her way up to the tip, it was drum-tight and damn near bursting. Her thumb made a pass across the slit, pressed.
“Jesus, Brynn,” he gasped. “Stop. Stop.” He moved her hand off him.
“You’re pushing me away again?”
He tried to laugh at the absurdity of that question, but he was breathing too hard. “Hell no. Fuck no. Take off…” He couldn’t even finish but gestured at her remaining clothes.
Holding his gaze, she sat down on the bed and pulled off her boots and socks, then stood up and removed her jeans. She pulled back the bedcovers and lay down, thighs demurely together.
Between them was a pastel patch of lace that was expanding Rye’s veins with raw lust. He loved the thing. He wanted it gone.
He managed to undress and wrangle a condom out of his wallet, then crawled onto the bed, parted her thighs, and settled between them. Holding her hips between his hands, he planted a solid kiss on that tantalizing terrain between navel and sex. It deserved more attention. Adoration. It warranted a shrine.
But some other time.
He dipped his head lower and brushed the triangle of lace with his lips, back and forth several times. Then, with Brynn working at the panties as urgently as he, they were finally cast off. Again, he forgot how to breathe. She was beautiful.
His fingertips grazed the delta of soft hair, then he slid his hand between her thighs. His fingers dipped into warm honey, into her, then went deep and stroked. Her hips came off the bed. She fitted her mound into his palm and ground it against the heel of his hand with a feverishness that matched his.
He withdrew his hand and stretched out on top of her. He kissed her neck, ravenously, but a bit awkwardly, as he fumbled with the wrapper and got the condom on.
Then—God, finally—he pushed into her in one long, uninterrupted glide, until he was completely, solidly embedded. Seized again by a primal possessiveness, he clamped the slender cord of her neck between his teeth and held it for several heartbeats, then raised his head and looked down into her face.
Her cheeks were flushed. Catching the dim light, her eyes shone silver as they looked into his. Breath rushed past her lips, made swollen and red and damp from kisses.
“Pride be damned,” she whispered. “I wanted this. I wanted this.”
Sliding her hands down to his butt, she secured him inside her even deeper and began a sinuous belly dance under him. The rhythmic curl and tilt of her hips started a throb in his cock that would have been painful if it hadn’t felt so damn good.
With his nose, he pushed her hair aside and placed his lips against her ear so that she would hear every panted word, each curse, praise and blessing, every syllable of the sex-talk chant that urged her toward her orgasm, and his inarticulate, mating growl when he allowed himself to come.
The only thing he wished he could take back, the one thing he wished he hadn’t said where she could hear it, where he could hear it, spoken on a serrated sigh as he sank onto her in sweet repletion: Brynn.
Chapter 27
12:37 a.m.
Nate had gone home.