“What is it?” he repeated, his thumbs sliding slowly over her nipples.
She struggled to capture the ends of her fraying purpose.
“I’m not sure I trust you,” she accused in a tight whisper.
She almost bit her lip to still her anguish when his stroking thumbs stilled on her damp nipples.
“What do you mean?” She experienced a blast of the cold sharp anger Sebastian Kehoe must have felt this morning coming face-to-face with Dylan’s wrath.
Why had she felt the need to tell him now, in this intimate moment? She was so raw. So vulnerable to him.
That’s why you did it.
“Alice?”
She shook her head on the pillow. “I realized it today. That’s why I didn’t meet you tonight.”
His expression darkened. “What happened? Did someone say something to you? Jim Sheridan? Kehoe?”
“No. It’s nothing like that. No one said anything to me. Why did you have to act like a paranoid Neanderthal today in the woods? Don’t you trust Jim Sheridan? I thought you were friends.”
“We are friends. And I do trust him. I had my reasons, Alice.”
She waited for the rest, her brow cocked. She sighed in frustration when he remained silent and implacable.
“There. That’s why I don’t trust you. You keep things from me. Still. Besides . . . I’m not sure I trust anyone. Not completely.”
Her defiant words sounded feeble to her own ears. They seemed to hang in the air between them, inadequate and limp.
“Do you want to be here? With me?” he asked.
“You know I do. I’m just so confused.”
“Do you think I don’t know what it’s like? To be told to trust, just because an authority figure tells you to?” He shook his head. “I’m even more accomplished at doubting than you, Alice.”
His gaze lowered over her throat and chest, to where he held her breasts in his hands. Her nipples prickled at the weight of his gaze.
“Your body trusts me. Even if your mind doesn’t,” he said grimly after a moment. “For someone like you—for someone like us—trust doesn’t come wholesale. It comes in stages. And this”—he nodded at her flushed, naked body—“is a start.”
She knew what he meant. He’d had it every bit as rough as Alice growing up. Both of them had learned the hard way that to trust was to eventually hurt.
To not trust hurt, too, though. Dylan was teaching Alice that lesson for the first time in her life.
“I’m sorry,” she said miserably, because she’d seen the flicker of pain on his face when she’d said she didn’t trust him, despite his tough response. She’d caused him pain, and that knowledge hurt her, in turn. “I just thought I should tell you. It only seemed fair.”
“But you came tonight. For this?” he asked, and his hands on her breasts tightened slightly.
“Yes.” She bit her lower lip when he resumed massaging her breasts and stroking her nipples with his thumbs. He was crouched over her, his strong thighs spread, his crotch suspended less than an inch above her lower belly and sex. As he resumed caressing her breasts, she felt his cock come into contact with her skin as the weight of his erection mounted. She moaned, the elusive touch of his desire tormenting her. “I came for you,” she confirmed in a heated rush. “I came because I need you.”
“Even if you don’t trust me?” he asked in a hard, dry tone, still molding her breasts to his hands and teasing her nipples with his fingertips.
Heat swept through her chest and face. “Isn’t it enough? That I’m here? That I let you tie me to this bed. That I’d let you do anything to me here?” she asked desperately.
His magical hands slowed. Holding her stare, he lifted his hand and pushed his blunt fingertips against her flushed lips.
“Anything?”
“Anything,” she whispered, arousal swelling in her.
“And you say you don’t trust,” he said so quietly, for a moment Alice thought she hadn’t heard him correctly.
His head lowered again, and her thoughts splintered as he kissed her breasts and ribs and heaving belly, pausing to taste her with the tip of his tongue or bite gently at the curve of her hip. Her skin roughened. She pulled on her restraints, squirming on the bed, but the straps remained secure—holding her in place for pleasure.
Making it impossible to run. She loved him for knowing she required that. Especially tonight.