He curved his upper body around her with his hands on her hips, seemingly oblivious to how desperately she wanted to hug him back. His voice whispered over her cheek. “You said everyone has vulnerabilities. What’s yours?”
Slick with sweat, her hands slipped on the counter behind her. She adjusted her grip and straightened to sit. If she were going to trust him, she needed to do it in the most important way. “Do you know what happens when you open up?” She looked pointedly at her legs, spread around his.
A smile danced on his lips. “You get laid?”
She snorted. “If you’re lucky.” She placed her lips against his, held them there for a long moment, drinking in the spice of his breath. Then she leaned back to look in his eyes. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have willingly sat like this with an aroused man between my legs.”
His body turned to stone, and hers hardened in kind. His nostrils flared, but she pushed on. “I’ve been raped sixteen times in this position.”
The hands on her hips curled into fists. He closed his eyes, and his chest rose and fell through rapid breath. His body shook against hers. Was he going to explode? He looked like he might puke.
“Hey.” She squeezed his hips with her thighs. “Don’t shut me out. If I can’t talk to you, this stops. We stop.” She wanted him to have access to the place inside her she never showed Noah. A mistake she wouldn’t make again.
He opened his eyes, and they were haunted and cloudy. He dropped his forehead to hers, and she could feel the tension sparking from his body. “Sixteen times?” A whisper.
“I stopped counting after that.” The truth was empowering. It opened her chest and released the toxin. It also exposed her heart. Maybe Jay would crawl in and rip it to shreds. Or maybe he would fill in the cracks. “When I learned how to open up, do you know what happened?”
He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. “It made you incredibly fucking strong.”
She smiled and kissed the soft skin below his jaw. “It made me strong enough to enjoy the feel of you between my legs.”
His shuddering breath bathed her in warmth. He kissed her neck, nuzzled it, and kissed it again. “Please don’t run off on me.”
She cringed. “Your sunglasses are in my bag. I’m not sorry about that. You know why I did it.”
“Yeah, Charlee.” He straightened, rubbing his hands along her spine, fingers circling her back. “It was brave and…romantic.” His eyes glimmered. Then they turned to brownstone. “And it nearly cost you your life. Until we bury Roy Oxford, you’ll be wearing a bodyguard.”
Until we buried Roy. The we sounded dreamy and …brash. But his hell-bent expression dissuaded her from arguing. She wasn’t sure the bathroom wall would survive another Jay Mayard tantrum. “Shouldn’t your security team be done sweeping?”
“They’ll turn over every stone within a ten block radius before they let us out of here.” He kissed her lips and explored her face, her neck, her shoulders with his mouth and hands. Her fingers tingled to touch him back.
“Can I put my hands on you?” she whispered when he returned to her lips.
A struggle of emotions swirled in his eyes and tightened the muscles in his cheeks. Maybe she was pushing, but pushing was what he needed.
His flawless complexion glowed beneath the loose strands of his dark brown hair. After a few thudding heart beats, his deliberation settled into smooth skin and a soft gaze. “Hold your hands up, palms facing you.”
She remembered how strong the angles of his jaw felt beneath her fingers the previous night as she held up the backs of her hands. “I touched your face last night when you were sleeping.”
He widened his eyes, but they were smiling. “Next time, I’ll be awake.” He interlaced their fingers, palms to palms and brought the backs of her hands to his chest. “Baby steps, okay?”
With all that thick brown hair curling around the tips of his ears, his dark round eyes and clear golden skin, he was way too beautiful to not be touched. She strained toward him. “Baby steps.”
He moved their hands from his shoulders to his cheeks, flinching as her knuckles stroked his velvet skin. Then he gathered her fingers at his mouth where he nuzzled and kissed each one, sending trickles of pleasure over her hands and up her arms.
What he did next, cut her breath. He let go briefly to turn her wrists, pressed her palms against his cheeks, and dropped his hands. He stared at her out of penetrating eyes, pinning her in place.
A fever bloomed beneath her fingers, and his facial muscles bunched and lolled. His breath sped up, quietly at first. Then the whoosh of air pushing through his nose carried noisily through the small space.
There was something pulling at the edges of his eyes, twitching the skin there, stretching from the corners, and spreading through his face. It settled on his mouth, twisting his lips away from his clenched teeth.
She jerked her hands back. “Jay?”
He was looking at her but he didn’t see her.
“Jay, talk to me.”