He removed his hands from her back, cupped her neck, and slowly tilted her head back. “Let me show you.”
The first kiss touched the hairline at her temple, and the muscles in her face relaxed. The next brushed her eyelid. She smiled, remembering the way his had twitched under her fingers the night before.
A kiss landed on the corner of her smile. More trailed along her cheek to the spot below her ear, and he lingered there with nipping lips.
She laughed and buried her ear in the crook of her shoulder.
“Tickles?”
“You’re a tease. I thought you were going to kiss me?”
He stared at her mouth, his own parted with increased breath. His chest rose and fell, moving against hers. When his tongue wet the top corner of his lip, she felt it on her skin from her lips to her toes.
“Jay—”
He swooped in and took her mouth. It began with a sip, then nibbles, a little at a time. Soon he was sucking every inch of her lips, sending the beat of her heart spluttering through her veins.
She fell into a trance, yet she could mark every perfect second of his mouth opening hers, and the precise moment their tongues touched.
Oh, to run her fingers through his hair, or over his ribs and around to the rise of his backside. As it were, her hands were useless weights hanging on her thighs. She didn’t want to move them, afraid she’d startle him and ruin the moment.
He seemed to sense her distraction and joined their fingers without breaking the kiss.
She pulled on their hands to bring them around to her back, but he tugged them the opposite direction, over his hips, and settled them with the backs of his hands over his ass. The position brought their hips together, and she felt the strength of his arousal at her belly.
“Is this too much?” he breathed against her lips.
She arched into him and chased his tongue, entangling it with hers. She moved to his bottom lip, drawing it in, tasting it, and slowly let it go. “Not enough.”
Beneath the solid rock of his chest and arms, she felt him shaking. With restraint? Anticipation? She rose on tiptoes to deepen her strokes, leaning into him, bolstered by the musculature of his body.
They began to gasp for air, and the roll of their tongues slowed. The intensity faded into lazy doting licks and the wet slide of swollen lips. When their breathing returned to normal, she dropped her heels to the floor and searched his eyes. “How did reality stand up?”
“Incomparable.” His eyes glimmered. “The fantasy was an opening act. You just flattened me with a show-stealing encore. I’m ruined for all other performances.”
Her pulse fluttered in that girly draw-hearts-around-his-name kind of way. Was she an idiot? She needed to pull up before she drowned. “I was hoping for a more explicit answer.”
His dark eyebrows crept together, and he tugged her closer by her hands held at his back. “I was one thrust against your cunt away from busting a nut. That explicit enough for you?”
The lewdness of his words stiffened her spine. She asked for it, deliberately forced the sentiment from the moment. Emotional distance was safer for them both. So why did she feel so sick?
“Shit. I’m sorry, Charlee. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Don’t be. It’s better that way.”
He dropped her hands and stepped back. The absence of his body was as discomfiting as his expression. “You don’t get it, do you?” The brackets around his mouth deepened with his scowl.
She could feel his disappointment because it was hers, too, and the air was thick with it. “I came here to talk, not…this—” She gestured between them. “You’re forgetting the last time I attempted a relationship, my boyfriend was murdered.”
He touched her shoulders and guided her backward until her legs hit a chair. With a nudge of his hands, he sat her in it. Then he dropped on his knees between her feet and pulled at the hem of her shirt at her hips until it covered her thighs. That last gesture made her want to yank out her heart and hand it to him. She was an idiot.
“And you’re forgetting I lost you once. I won’t let you out of my sight again. I have one of the highest trained security teams in the country. The safest place for you to be is at my side.”
The suggestion was noble. And ridiculous. “Will I stand on stage with you in front of thousands of people while you perform?”
He glared at her and she realized the crater in her argument. Jay Mayard didn’t stand on stage. He sang from the shadows despite his fans’ dismay.
“I owe Nathan Winslow an apology. When I scrape up what’s left of my ego, I’ll give him one.” He interlaced his hands with hers. “He’s a fucking hero.”
Her hackles went up. “Don’t—”
“I’m not being flippant, Charlee. I mean it. He rescued you, and as much as I want to kill him, he’s my fucking hero, too. I got to tell you that’s hard to compete with.”