Confessions in the Dark (14 page)

“I don't bloody care.”

He needed her
now
. Under him, legs spread, the soft wet of her open for him, and he'd put his mouth on her for days, until she was screaming and senseless with it, and then he'd drive inside, finally
feel
her—

The backs of her legs hit the bed, and he bore her down onto it, throwing his crutch to the side as he followed after, climbing on top, cock aching and mouth watering, his skin practically vibrating.

And then he put his weight on his bad knee.

What the—

Serena blinked her eyes open, struggling to fight off the haze of sex and need that had fallen over her with every crushing kiss and brush of Cole's body against hers. One second, he'd been all over her, pushing her back onto the bed with intent in his gaze, and the next he'd gone rigid, pulling his mouth away with a shocked gasp before pitching to the side.

To be fair, she'd heard longer strings of curse words pouring out of him. But it had been a while.

“Um...” She rose up onto one elbow, reaching out with the other arm. She was still panting, breathless from his touch, but the heaving of his chest seemed to be about something else entirely. She hovered there with her hand a few inches above his ribs for a moment, uncertain what she should do. Touch him? Leave him alone?

A sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Really, things had been going entirely too well. Even she had no idea how they'd moved so seamlessly from him shaking apart in front of her, recounting the worst day of his life, to them practically mauling each other on her living room floor. It was like all the simmering tension between them had hit a flash boil, bubbling over in a rush of steam and contact, and it had been too fast, too easy. Too good. She should've known something would go wrong.

She'd just been hoping that maybe they could get it right this time.

Letting out a groan of frustration, Cole covered his face with his hands. He took a couple of deep breaths like that while Serena's stomach dropped another fraction of an inch. Finally, he pulled his hands away. His gaze met hers, the tight line of his mouth tilting ever so slightly upward.

“Sorry,” he said.

Her heart stuttered. “For what?”

If he said he was sorry for this, for touching her at all, she was going to...Well, she didn't know what she was going to do, but it definitely wouldn't be good.

He lifted one brow, and that wasn't regret on his face. If anything, it was a smirk. “For overestimating my recovery.”

With that, he captured her wrist and tugged her toward him, getting his other hand on her waist. She shrieked, taken completely off guard as he hauled her along. The next thing she knew, she was on all fours over him, her hair falling everywhere, her breasts ready to spill out of this dress, and it was the best kind of whiplash.

Oh
. It struck her all at once. His cry of pain and his sudden recoiling. They were about his knee—not about her. Not about
this
.

Her face just about burst with the force of her smile.

The curve of his mouth echoed hers, and the happiness on his face took her breath away nearly as thoroughly as the heat of his palm curling around her side again. He raised his other hand to graze her cheek, and she chased it, shy and adoring as she pressed her lips to the backs of his knuckles.

He cupped her face. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

And it was dark, their faces both in shadow, the only light in the room that which filtered in through her blinds or seeped in from the hallway around the corner. But it was enough.

“Hi,” she repeated, and then she dipped down and kissed him.

She'd loved the way he'd taken charge out in the other room, the way he'd propelled them here seemingly by the force of his will alone. But this, with her on top, with the chance to control the pace was good, too. She opened for the sweep of his tongue, letting the kiss go wet and deep, but she kept her body above his. She kept it slow and lingering as the hot spark from before got the time to spread and grow, more a smolder than a blaze. A warmth that made her insides bloom and glow.

His having two free hands to touch her with was a pretty great thing, too.

“Mmm.” A soft sound got knocked out of her lungs at the heat of broad palms skimming along her sides. He smoothed all the way down her hips and over her thighs, and she was so open kneeling over him like this. She clenched inside, slickness gathering at the catch of rough fingertips on the hem of her dress.

Ever so slowly, as if giving her time to tell him no, he slipped his hands just underneath. She exhaled into his mouth, scraping her teeth over his lip, everything tensing inside her. He pushed the fabric up, and she moaned, shifting her hips into his touch.

It was all the encouragement he needed. Bolder now, he stroked his hands along that bare expanse of skin, thumbs pressing into the tenderness of her inner thighs, so close to where she wanted him. He drifted higher and higher, and her body was a live wire. Was just the wet need and the aching tips of her breasts, the fire zipping up and down her spine with every pass.

He grazed the center panel of her underwear, and her arms gave out beneath her.

“Fuck,” he breathed, rasping. “You're soaked.”

His hot touch pressed in harder, choking another noise from her, and she dropped her head, closing her eyes. Burying her face in the solid muscle of his shoulder as she rocked into the petting of his hand.

His voice dipped even lower. “You like me telling you that? Like me telling you how good you feel?”

And what could she say to that? It was filthy, really; it made her all hot and squirming inside, and she loved it. She nodded, and his breath caught, the sound of his swallowing echoing through the space.

He swirled a circle around her clit through the fabric. “Pretty little knickers all wet for me.”

Good Lord, was he
trying
to kill her?

It was so damn tempting to just lie there, head cradled against his arm and let him take her to pieces, but she pushed up, tucking a finger into the knot of his tie and loosening it before opening her mouth against his throat. She kissed a wet line to his ear. Warm and breathy, she nipped at the lobe. “Maybe you should take them off me, then.”

With a low rumble of a growl, he got a hand around her neck and tugged her to meet his mouth. He kissed her sass from her lips even as he slipped past the elastic of her panties. God, he hadn't been kidding. The glide of his fingertips was so slick, her flesh drenched. He teased along her slit, dipping just barely inside before taking a glancing stroke across her clit that had her moaning around his tongue.

“Barely need to, do I? Could make you come just like this. Greedy kitty all swollen and aching for it.”

That he probably could was the worst of it. His finger slid inside so easily, and it had been so long. She'd wanted him for ages, and her head was spinning that they got to have this. That he wanted to make her come and that he was so
good
at it. His other hand slid up her side to cup her breast through her dress, and it was another sparkling point of contact.

But she wasn't done for yet. Fumbling, she let go of his tie to glide her palm all down the length of his chest, past his belt and—

“Jesus.” He bucked into her touch, clicking their teeth together as she cupped him, and
damn
.

He was hot and hard and long, and she was going to have that in her. Another hot pulse surged through her at the thought, and she nipped at his lip.

“I don't know,” she said, trying hard for disaffectedness and missing by a mile. “Two can play at that game, can't they? Think I can get you to go off like this? Make you come in your pants like a—”

The “teenager” part got cut off in another shriek, and this time there wasn't any pretense that the noise in his throat was anything other than a growl.

“Naughty,” he groaned, slipping his fingers from her to get a hand under her thigh.

And it shouldn't be such a turn-on to keep getting manhandled like this, but it was. He tugged and bodily lifted her, and crap, she'd been so aware of his limitations on the crutches that she'd almost forgotten the pure muscle the man was carved from. There wasn't any forgetting it now. He got her knees settled to either side of his head, strong hands clamping on to the curves of her thighs, and his mouth was right there, red and sinful through the dim, and she felt faint.

“What are you—”

“If you can't keep your hands to yourself,” he said, eyes darkening, “I'll just have to keep them where I can see them.”

With that, he grasped both her wrists, dragging her down until her palms slapped against the mattress above his head, and she was still reeling when a hot thumb traced the place where her leg met her hips. When he dragged the panel of her underwear to the side.

And then he...oh God, he wasn't going to...he...

Her knees went weak, her whole body trembling at the first wet lick along the length of her. She pounded a fist into the mattress. This wasn't real, it couldn't be, except that he lapped at her, again and again. His tongue was hot and perfect against her softest parts, and when he found her clit, she bit back on a scream.

“No,” he scolded, parting from searing flesh for the scantest fraction of a second, palm taking a barely-there swat at her rear. “Let me hear you.”

He dove back in, lips surrounding her. He sucked at her clit, only stopping to take fluttering strokes of his tongue over her, and she didn't try to hold back this time. Slapping at the bed again, she choked out his name, and it was happening too quickly. She never climaxed this fast, and she wanted it to last, wanted to get naked and explore, and—

And he plunged two thick fingers deep inside, thrumming hard against her inner walls and she was lost.

She came with a shout, black fire surging through her, blanking her mind to everything except the pulsing warmth, the sweet kiss of his mouth. The fullness of having him inside, but she only wanted fuller. Wanted more.

When her vision returned to her a solid minute—or possibly a decade—later, she was straddling his face, her mouth and breasts mashed hard against her quilt. Shivering aftershocks rocked through her as he took another slow swipe with his tongue. He pulled away, slipping his fingers free, then patted at her thigh as if that were an acceptable cue to dismount.

She was still desperately needy, her blood hot, her head dizzy. But she was also filled with a sudden, indignant blaze.

In a rush, she pushed off the bed, rising to kneel over top of him. Gazing down at him through the dimness, she settled her shaking hands on her hips.

“I'll have you know”—she flipped her hair back over her shoulder—“that I put my hands wherever I please.”

Without further ado, she did just that.

Really, Cole should have bloody well known. At every turn, Serena had been the one pushing and pushing in this relationship. It wasn't any surprise that she wouldn't want to lie back and let him take charge of things here, either.

Challenge in her eyes, she walked on her knees down his body until she hovered above his hips. She curled those delicate little fingers of hers around the buckle of his belt, and white-hot sparks slid up his spine, his prick jumping, heart thundering. As she pulled the leather through, he reached out, gripping wildly, but he didn't stop her.

Forget that she didn't swear or that she worked with children. This woman was a match burning bright, sexual and confident, and he wanted her so badly he was screaming inside with the ache of it. She'd ridden his face with hardly a moment's hesitation, had left his mouth slick with her. Her taste and her scent surrounded him, making him wild, and then she was tugging at his trousers and reaching inside.

“Fuck.” He arched back, baring his throat, his eyes rolling up in his head at the warm touch of soft fingers on bare skin as she pulled him out. It was heaven, absolute heaven, a cool drink in the desert after years of being alone, of never being touched. Of never imagining he would ever be touched again. “Serena, please—”

What the hell was he even asking for? It didn't matter. She wrapped her fist around him and stroked, sliding her palm over the slick tip, pulling his foreskin back as she drew down to the base, and then she was—

“No, oh no—” The words slipped out, but they weren't a protest. He had to close his eyes against the perfection of wet, red lips pursing around him, of his own hard flesh disappearing inside, but it didn't matter. The afterimage was burned into him; he'd be ruined by this. He thumped his head back against the mattress, threading his fingers into the soft tumble of her hair. “Yes. Just like that.”

She found the spot right under the head, flicking her tongue against it as she sucked him deep, and he right near lost his mind. Giving in to it, he tilted forward with his hips, doing all he could just to hold on, to last. His balls drew tight, and he groaned out, “Baby...”

She pulled off before the feeling could crest, and he snapped his eyes open. Ugh, mistake. She hovered with her parted lips right over his prick, sweet pink tongue peeking out. The vision alone made him throb. After one last squeeze, hard around the base, she let him go. The wet length of him fell against his abdomen, but he only had a second to lie there, bereft, before she climbed her way back up his body.

“Who's greedy now?” she asked. Her kiss was just as intoxicating as before except it was better. The faintest hint of his own taste mixed with hers, and he dug his fingers in deep against her hip. She nipped and licked all around his mouth, lapping up what she'd left of herself on his skin, and they were both greedy, apparently.

They'd
both
been wanting this for so long.

Holding her in place with his fingers twisted in her hair, he kissed her deeper, tongue chasing hers. He snuck the hand at her hip back under her skirts, and forget soaked. Her kitty and his mouth had left her wet all down her thighs. She got her own hand in there, too, pulling her knickers out of the way again.