“I want to do this,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him as tightly as he had her.
He let his body lower onto hers with the heavy voluptuousness of a man sinking into a bed after a long, brutal day. The warmth of him rushed from her fingertips to her toes. She ran those fingertips over him, seeking still more of that warmth, like an impossible addiction.
“I want to do this,” she whispered, unbuttoning his shirt and finding her way in to his skin. She shivered with the pleasure of it, as if she hadn’t just felt his skin that morning, as if it had been years.
The white Christmas lights sparkled over his strong, smooth back when she bared it. She chased them over his skin, fascinated, stroking them as if they were a dream she could capture. On the tree, the lights shimmered off the glitter of the snowflakes and brown bears and red cardinals, sparkling over this dream, this dream she could have.
Still.
He would still let her have him.
That was such an incredible thing.
He made love to her intensely, in the firelight and the tree lights, kissing her everywhere, being kissed everywhere, stroking her too deeply, gripping her too hard, and breathing in hard gasps of pleasure when she gripped and stroked him, too. He rolled her over him and sat her up astride him for what seemed to be the pure pleasure of seeing her there, of stroking the lights over her skin, maybe of believing in her. He rolled her under him again in a sudden, hard rush, as if he had to capture her beneath him before she disappeared.
“I love you,” she said suddenly, and he jerked, his hands spasming on her body.
“I love you so much,” she said, and he kissed her urgently, whether to shut the words up or to drink them straight from her mouth, she couldn’t tell.
She kissed him back, giving him the words through her kiss, through her touch. I love you so much. How could you love me?
I got so bogged down in what I lost, but I never lost you?
“I love you so much,” she whispered again to his shoulder, that strong, strong shoulder, the gorgeous bone and sinew and muscle of it.
He slipped his hand between her face and his body and covered her mouth, forcing her head down to the floor until she was pinned there by his hand silencing her. She stared at him over it. His face could have cut the air with its severity, his eyes glowing in the firelight, almost beseeching, as if she was torturing him.
But I do, she tried to say, the protest muffled against his hand.
But I really do.
His palm hardened, his other hand dragging fiercely down from her breast, over her belly, to take her sex, spearing her in one aggressive thrust of his finger.
She yelped a little, and that, too, got crushed by his hand on her mouth. She tried to twist her head back and forth, to shake him off her, but he held her, and her body yielded to his mastery in one helpless rush of arousal. Making itself ready for whatever he wanted.
Oh, God, she had always loved this game. And yet it was different now.
It wasn’t a game.
His eyes glittered, his touch so ferocious, so much anger in him suddenly, this wild beast of anger that bucked against even his control.
I do love you, she told him with her hands, shaping those beautiful cheekbones of his, that mouth that hardened so much when her fingers stroked over it. I do. She petted the words over his hair, which had gotten just a little too long, as if he just could not bring himself to care about getting it cut.
Shut up, his finger said, spearing her deep, holding her impaled. When she wriggled against it, the heel of his palm firmed on her pubic bone, holding her down, and all her body’s effort to adjust had to go into the squeeze of her inner muscles around his finger, into the heady release of all tension, the softening.
She dragged her hands over those gorgeous arm muscles of his, all lean and hardened now. You don’t understand. I really, really do.
I’ll make you shut up, his thumb said against her clitoris. I’ll make you. She shivered with the pleasure and the invasion, aroused more and more every time she tried to twist and failed to twist free. The arousal pressed at her, almost brutally fast, the edge coming up so quickly . . .
Please, Kurt. She tried to beg for more, for release, and she couldn’t. Only with her eyes, and yet when she tried to catch his eyes, tried to beg him, his own eyes glittered, ungentle, dangerous. Please just—do it, she tried to plead with a buck of her hips.
But he wouldn’t let her hips buck. He eased his thumb up from her clitoris and twisted his finger in her, slow and deep and relentless, when they tried.
She began to pant, wanting to kiss him so desperately, wanting to fling herself at him and wrap herself around him and drag him into her. But his hand pressed down on her lips unyieldingly, and the line of his mouth was bitter-hard.