Come to Me Recklessly (28 page)

Christopher nuzzled his nose deeper into my neck, running his thumbs in delicate circles on my belly over my shirt. That shock of unruly hair brushed along my cheek. I turned toward it, inhaling, clouding my senses with the intensity of this man, the inundating flood of sex and lust and everything I’d always believed I shouldn’t have.

But I wanted it.

Wanted him.

His lips were at my shoulder, leaving a whisper of a kiss as he dragged them across my bare skin. One arm tightened across my stomach while his other hand slowly slid up my torso. I shuddered as he drew it up between my breasts and to the center of my chest. He held it there, and I could feel my heart beating a thousand emotions against his palm.

Christopher’s mouth parted against my jaw.

I whimpered.

God, I just needed to see him, to make sense of what was happening. I twisted out of his hold to face him and sat back low on my knees.

His expression was fierce, his eyes frantic as they darted all over my face.

With a trembling hand, I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair.

Eyes dropping closed, he snatched me by the wrist and pressed the underside to his lips. He gentled a kiss across the sensitive skin. “Samantha,” he mumbled, almost pained.

Chills skated free and fast. “What is this?” I forced out, the words shaky.

He grasped both sides of my face, bringing us nose to nose. “This is
unstoppable
.”

Christopher threaded his fingers in my hair, and I could feel the tension wind through him, the coil of strained muscles that bunched and flexed as he held me an inch from his face.

“Samantha,” he murmured again, before he leaned forward and captured my bottom lip between both of his. All that soft fullness closed over mine, the kiss a sweet assault of gentle tugs and pulls of his mouth that danced right through my soul. He kept the kiss slow but brimming with emotion, so full I wanted to weep.

It reminded me so much of that first tentative kiss, the one back in the park years ago that had swept me off my feet.

Succumbing, I uttered a tiny moan, my lips pushing back, brushing his, welcoming more.

Hungry hands cupped my neck, before he ran them over my shoulders and down to my waist. I rose higher on my knees, my hair falling down around us as I fell into his kiss.

Beneath the slow exploration, all those smoldering ashes lit. A furor of flames licked and jumped.

I never wanted it to end.

The kiss remained gentle, almost a contradiction to the intensity brewing between us.

Fingers dug into my sides when I pressed closer, needing to feel more of him, and his tongue slipped into my mouth, a controlled chaos that would be my complete undoing.

“Christopher,” I breathed, and he burrowed his fingers deeper. There was no mistaking his blatant want. Every inch of this beautiful man was hard and straining and as desperate for me as I was for him.

He ripped himself away. “It’s time to go.”

I almost laughed at the madness of it all, this crazy boy who held me in his hand, the one who made me feel as if I could fly, the same boy I’d follow wherever he wanted me to go.

When had I forgotten?

He helped me to stand, then gathered the blanket in a ball. He tucked it under his arm and guided me away with the other. Our breaths were labored with intent as we wove behind the vendors and deeper into the night, traipsing through the grass to the parking lot where we’d left his truck. Christopher said nothing as he helped me in, then rushed around to his side to get in the driver’s seat. He slammed his door shut.

A stark stillness took us over as the overhead lights dimmed and cast us in shadows.

Even then, I could feel the severity of his gaze. His voice was gravel. “If I take you back to my place, it means you’re mine, Samantha. You understand what I’m telling you? Otherwise I’m taking you straight home.”

Unable to form words, I nodded.

“Then tell me now, what’s it gonna be? Because I refuse to share you with that asshole.”

The decision scraped up my throat. “You. It’s always been you.”

It was never really a decision to make.

No matter what happened between me and Christopher, the relationship I had with Ben was a charade I could no longer keep up. Maybe it had everything to do with Christopher. I didn’t know. But what I did know was Ben never had my heart. It’d always belonged to Christopher.

He started his truck, threw it in gear, and tore out of the lot. We said nothing as he drove the short distance back to his house. We just let all our unspent emotion build up between us.

He didn’t even touch me.

But I knew I was his.

He pulled into his garage and cut the engine. Overhead, the chain ground against the metal wheel, and the large garage door slid shut behind us, making it feel like the two of us were the only ones that existed in this world.

I sat in frozen anticipation as he made his way around to my side.

Was this really happening?

I was shaking when he opened the door. He reached across me to release my seat belt. Stealing all the air. Filling me up with his own.

Grasping me by the hips, he pulled me into his arms. He hiked me up high on his body, my head above his. I wrapped my legs around him, my urgent hands clutching him at the back of his neck.

Oh God. I might lose my mind if I didn’t get him closer. After all this time, after everything we’d missed, I didn’t think I could ever get him close enough.

“Sweet Samantha,” he uttered and those green eyes flashed with desire. He stared up at me and twisted his fingers through my mass of hair, bunching it in his hand, the other bracing me around his waist. “I was a fucking fool to let you go. Won’t ever do it again.”

Never breaking our gaze, he carried me into his house and toward his room.

I clung to his shoulders, knowing all those beliefs about forgiveness that my father had ingrained in me held all the power they promised. What happened in the past no longer mattered. I only needed to be assured of one thing. “Promise me something.”

“Anything,” he said as he carefully laid me out in the center of his bed.

I lay there staring up at the beautiful man towering over me. Desire coursed through me. A magnetic energy that coated my veins and pulsed through my nerves. Palpable. Real. My chest heaved with strained breaths, an open display of everything I wanted to give him.

“Promise you’ll never lie to me,” I pled through a pained whisper, and deep inside those old wounds flared.

It was Christopher who held the power to extinguish them.

Emotions moved through his expression, lines of remorse and devotion scoring his face.

Slowly, he climbed onto the bed. Never breaking his unyielding gaze, he nudged my knees apart to make him room. He planted his hands on either side of my head. Muted lights glowed from high up in the recessed niches outlining the far wall behind him, casting us in shadows.

He cupped one side of my face. His words were earnest and sincere. “I promise.”

Acceptance swallowed me whole.

A soft smile curved my mouth, and I reached up and fluttered my fingertips along the side of his face. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Christopher gathered my other hand and drew it up between us. In the darkness, those severe green eyes locked to mine, a silent fury stirring in their depths. “Not one fucking day went by that I didn’t think about you. Miss you. And these last few months…” His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and he shook his head. “It was torture having you so close and knowing you weren’t mine.” He blinked a long blink. “I am still so in love with you, Samantha. Completely, crazy in love with you.”

My heart stumbled at the same words he had uttered so long ago. It was a memory that had haunted my years. A promise of forever I’d thought would never come to pass.

“I love you with every part of me, Christopher. I never stopped.”

How could I have?

A wistful smile edged his mouth, his brow drawn tight. “It was supposed to just be you and me.”

I gentled my fingers across his bottom lip, giving myself over to that old sorrow that now was replaced with so much hope. “Just you and me and forever.”

“Forever,” he said. Something passed through his eyes, before he descended to capture my mouth in a kiss. Coaxing. A constant ebb and flow, a needy push and pull of his lips as they played fervently against mine. He lifted up on his hands. His shoulders tensed as he dipped down to nip at me with his teeth, before his tongue dove in to tangle with mine.

And I kissed him with everything I had. With everything we had lost. With everything I had left to give.

It was that same war of pent-up need, tongues and teeth and desperate hands.

One I no longer wanted to win.

This was surrender.

Christopher moved to lavish my neck with openmouthed kisses. I lifted my chin to grant him more. Chills skimmed across my skin and I whimpered.

Could anything feel better than this?

“Samantha,” he murmured, trailing lower, across the exposed skin on my chest. “Baby, I need you so fucking bad. You have no idea.”

He rocked against me, his erection pressed to my center, and all those pleasured places cried out for him, begging for relief.

I drove my fingers into his hair, and my back arched when he closed his mouth over my breast, which was covered by far too many layers of clothes. “Oh God, Christopher. Please,” I begged. “I’ve never needed anything as much as I need you.”

My voice almost sounded foreign to my ears, but at the same time it was so clear. I’d never been more certain of anything in my life.

Hot and desperate, his hands slipped beneath the hem of my sweater. I shivered under his touch. He tugged it over my head, and his mouth went right back to my neck as he pushed his hands under me to unclasp my bra.

He sat back on his knees and slowly drew the straps from my shoulders.

A rush of cool air bit at my flesh, and the buds of my breasts pebbled as I lay there exposed to this man, who stared down at me as if he’d just been handed the world.

And I felt no urge to cover myself the way I normally did. No force of that modesty and discomfort that had haunted me for the last seven years.

I wanted him to see me.

Because I belonged to him.

He exhaled a weighted breath and brushed his fingertips up my belly.

I jumped and squirmed, every nerve alive.

“You’re gorgeous, Samantha.” He flicked through the buttons on my jeans. He leaned back, his eyes hungry and hot as he slowly dragged them down my legs. He left me in nothing but my panties, and I felt like I’d burst into flames when he swept his gaze down my body. “So fucking gorgeous.”

He looked back up at me, swallowing hard. “Do you have any idea? Any idea at all what you do to me?”

Redness blossomed across every inch of my skin, and my heart hammered an unsound beat, filling up all those places that had been empty for so long. Desire pulsed as a tortured throb between my legs, and my hips bucked in anticipation, spurred on by his stare.

Christopher pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor.

My attention went straight to the intricate colors that adorned the entirety of his chest. It swirled up over his collarbones and shoulders, spiraling down both arms, an expanse of delicate art imprinted on his skin. An intonation of hope and light.

All of it was mesmerizing, this dangerous man who’d marked himself with grace.

“You’re beautiful,” I said on no more than a whisper. I sat up and placed my hand over his thundering heart. “Somewhere inside, after everything, I always believed it. You’re beautiful, Christopher. Inside and out.”

He grabbed my face between his hands and shook his head. “No, Samantha. You just make me better. You can’t see all my ugly when I’m surrounded by your light.”

My gaze trailed down the defined planes of his stomach. I kissed his chest, and my shaky hands slipped down his sides to fumble through his belt. I struggled with his buttons, too anxious and nervous to get my fingers to cooperate.

A tender smile pulled at his mouth and he eased off the end of his bed.

Everything about this moment was Christopher.
My Christopher.
The boy I’d come to love and trust and know when I was just a girl.

Slowly, he worked through the rest of his buttons and rid himself of his remaining clothes, never taking his eyes off me as I watched him undress.

I only shook more when he nudged me onto my back and pulled off my panties.

Nerves hurtled through me, desire and need and a flicker of fear.

And I understood the risk, that my heart was again in his hands. Exactly where it’d always been. But this time it was more vulnerable than before, just as vulnerable as my naked body that quivered as he slowly climbed back over me.

He could break me so easily.

Because I was giving him everything.

My heart. My future. My trust.

Christopher kissed me, a passion-fueled kiss that left me light-headed and almost frantic for more. I panted, digging my fingers into his back while his hands explored. I jerked when he ran the back of his hand down between my thighs.

“You okay?” he asked, turning his hand to run just the tips of his fingers back up through my slick folds.

That fire raged.

“Yes.” The word fluttered from my mouth. More than okay. “Perfect.”

The faintest smirk pulled at his mouth, and he lifted up on just one hand. He focused on my face as he pushed two fingers inside. I gasped and he groaned. “Samantha… baby. Been dyin’ to touch you this way.”

Frenzied, my fingers scraped over his chest and shoulders.

He turned and kissed the inside of my elbow, the sweetest brush of flesh, and he whispered across the sensitive skin, “Love you… so fucking much.”

He sought out that tiny pleasured place with his thumb. He circled it as he pumped his fingers. Little sounds whimpered from my mouth, an incoherent utterance of his name, and shamelessly I writhed, feeling as if I might die, as if I finally could live. “Please… make love to me.”

Christopher stilled, searching my face, before he leaned over and grabbed a condom from his nightstand drawer. Sitting back, he ripped it open. I watched in awe as he rolled it down his length.