“Yes,” I said when he flicked open the button.
“This?” He unzipped the fly.
“Yes,” I said through a gasp of breath as he rolled my nipple with his other hand.
“What about here?” he asked as he braced his weight and slid his hand into my shorts, running his finger along the edge of my panties.
“Yes!” I cried, my hips rocking up.
His breath caught, and I looked into his eyes. If I wasn’t already aching for him, the open, ravenous look of need on his face would have gotten me there. As it was, the way he ran his tongue over his lower lip had me squirming.
Eyes still locked, his fingers finally slipped under the silk fabric and found my center. He groaned at the same time I did.
“Fuck…Rachel. You’re…God, you’re so wet.”
My hips bucked as he swirled his fingers over my clit. Sparks raced through me, pleasure spinning my senses until there was only Landon above me, his fingers on me…inside me.
“Take them off,” I ordered. I needed him—needed to feel him inside me, filling the emptiness that no one else could.
His jaw locked, like he was steeling himself. For what? And did…? Yeah, his hands shook as he drew both my shorts and my underwear down my legs. Seeing him so lost for me only revved me up another notch, until my body was humming, need coiling in my stomach.
He closed his eyes for a second, and two deep breaths later, he opened them, looking over me like I was everything he needed—like I was the ridgeline he was desperate to ride, the trick he’d spent every minute prepping for.
In one simple look, he made me feel like I was beautiful, precious, and so very desired.
He rose over me and then kissed me, his movements leisurely. He only pulled back when his hand stroked down my body, watching my every expression as he returned to my core.
Then his fingers… Oh. My. God. His fingers found me.
“Yes,” I whimpered. “Landon!”
He pressed kisses to my jaw, my cheeks, my lips as he stroked me, pressing and swirling in rhythm. My hips rose for his touch, and my hands threaded through his hair to hold his mouth to mine.
My breaths stuttered, gasping as my heart pounded. He groaned as he sank one finger inside me. “So. Fucking. Perfect.”
The pressure in my belly wound tighter and tighter as he worked me over, using his fingers to stroke just right inside me as he rubbed over my clit with his thumb. He played me like an instrument, knowing every note he could wring from me, exactly how I liked it.
“I can’t wait to taste you again,” he said against my lips, and I began to quiver. “Not this time, because I’m saving it. But soon. I can’t wait to feel you shuddering around me, coming apart under my tongue.”
His words pushed me over the edge and I flew, the tension within me bursting into radiant stars with an intense orgasm. He covered my mouth with his when I screamed his name, then kissed me back down until I was shuddering with aftershocks beneath him.
“That was…I don’t…there’s no words.” I couldn’t even string a sentence together as I floated inside my own body.
I ran my hands down his torso toward where he strained against the material of his shorts, and he caught my hand. “God, no.”
“What?” I asked, not understanding.
“That’s it. Only you.” His voice was strained, his breathing labored with mine.
“You want me,” I said defensively, feeling the sting of rejection.
“More than I want to breathe right now. Yes. I’m dying to bury myself inside you.”
“Then why?” I asked, wrapping one of my legs over his hips.
He groaned, his hand running along the curve of my thigh. “Do you love me?”
“What?” I dropped my leg and sat up, scurrying back until I reached his headboard and drawing my knees to my chest. He did not just say that.
“Do. You. Love. Me?”
“Why? What does any of that matter?”
“It matters.” He sat back on his heels, the delicious lines of his abs tightening with each breath as his erection distorted his shorts in a way that firmly disagreed with what he was saying.
“What? It never matters to you. Why should it now?” He would sleep with every girl he came into contact with but me? What the hell was this?
He closed his eyes as his jaw flexed—the classic Landon getting his shit under control look. His eyes were just as fierce when he opened them. “You’re it for me, Rachel. You are the only woman who matters to me. No one mattered before you, and no one has mattered since. Only you.”
“But you won’t sleep with me.” God, I wanted to believe him. But he’d said it all before, and that hadn’t exactly gone well for me.
He shook his head. “No. Because I want to make love to you, not sleep with you. I want to look into your eyes and tell you that I love you with my words, not just my body.”
The orgasm had made me boneless, but his words melted me. “Landon…”
“You can’t say them yet. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with waiting, because the first time I slide inside you, you’ll love me. You’ll know that I’m not going anywhere, that you’re my choice and my first priority. And until you know that, I’m not doing this, no matter how badly I want to.”
“Seriously?”
“Very seriously. Besides, I know our pull—our chemistry—but you can’t tell me that part of this wasn’t to see if I’d lose interest after I got you back under me, and that’s not how this is going to happen.”
My mouth snapped shut. “How…?”
His smile made him even more beautiful, even as pained as it was. “I think I know you pretty well by now. I tell you I’m done fucking around, you spook and take off your clothes to test me.”
“You took off my clothes,” I grumbled.
“Semantics.”
“It wasn’t all a test,” I admitted.
“I know that, too, which is what makes it that much harder to tell you no.”
“So you’re not going to touch me until I can say…that?” God, I couldn’t even think those words. Those words—whether or not they lurked in my heart—opened the door and handed him the match to burn me down.
His grin turned wicked. “I’ll touch you whenever you like. I’ll make you come thirteen different ways every single day if that’s what you want. But I’m not making love to you until it’s that. I’ve waited too long to get you back in my bed to just have sex with you, Rach.”
I looped my arms around my knees, simultaneously frustrated, turned on, and stupidly moved by his words. The Landon I knew would have taken me any way he could get me. Nova would have done it without blinking and walked away in the morning. This patient, determined guy…hell if I knew what to do with him.
“So what now?” I asked.
“Now we sleep,” he said, pulling back the covers and sliding underneath. “Unless you want a second round?”
My mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water. Of course I wanted a second round. But I wanted him inside me, with me, not just orchestrating my pleasure. I wanted his, too.
I had two possible courses of action.
I could crawl in next to him, curl into his arms, and sleep…