Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (37 page)

She glanced down at his wrist. It was 1am, and shook her head. Jamie was halfway up the hallway before she said, “Damon.” It had to be. Taylor had stayed behind at the club to make sure he got home.

Jamie stopped his hand on the latch. “You don’t have to see him. I can get rid of the idiot.”

But she wanted to see him. Check him over; let her eyes catalogue his now too lean form, his hollowed cheeks, his pallor and weariness. She wanted to hear him; his tumbled gravel tone, cut up and uneven, and when she’d done that, seen her fill, heard his voice, she’d send him home. She’d work out how to talk to him, how to know whether to stay with him or go when they’d both had sleep.

She touched Jamie’s shoulder. “Open the door.”

He did, stepping aside, but keeping himself slightly in front of her. Damon stood on the doormat, feet planted wide, arms loose at his side, head angled down. He lifted his chin and opened his eyes. “I had to come. I had to hear your voice.”

“Short lead tonight, mate,” said Jamie and Damon coughed his surprise. “You should go home. Talk to Georgia tomorrow.”

“Georgia, is that what you want?”

She’d seen him; less the sullen stranger she’d expected, more the old Damon, in control and not asking for favours.

He cleared his throat. “If that’s what you want, I’ll go now. You don’t need to say a word. I behaved appallingly. All I want is a chance to apologise, but you get to call the shots. I’m done with making it about me.”

He wasn’t slurring, he wasn’t weaving, but he could still break her heart. She leaned into Jamie and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”

Jamie cast a disgruntled look Damon’s way. “You call me anytime you need.” He stepped around the door and smack up against Damon. “You’re sober?”

“Enough.”

“You upset her again tonight, you answer to me.”

“Fair.”

“Look at me and tell me you’re not going to do anything that’s going to make me regret leaving here without you.”

Damon’s hand went to Jamie’s chest. “You deserve an apology too. All of you do. I’m sorry. I blew it. I was trying to push you away so I didn’t have to know you were watching me fuck things up.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to drown. I just need time by myself to come to terms with what’s happened.”

“And you couldn’t have said that? Like none of us are deaf or insensitive to what you’re going through.”

“It’s not just my voice that’s gone. It’s who I am. I didn’t know how to say it.”

“Jesus.” Jamie grabbed for Damon’s arm and they fumbled into a hug. “You’re saying it now, mate.”

Georgia was the one who gripped the doorjamb. Damon’s fists were wrapped in Jamie’s shirt, his knuckles white. He said something she didn’t hear but made out Taylor’s name. The two men parted. Jamie giving her a nod, a watery smile before taking the stairs.

Damon stood where he was, waiting. Now she soaked in the sight of him. He was safe, he’d come home to her. She ached to throw herself in his arms, have them circled around her, have his breath at her ear.

“Georgia?”

“You frightened me. I hate that you did it deliberately.”

He closed his eyes, squeezing them, his shoulders lifted.

“You shut me out. Did you want me to leave you?”

“Yes.” His eyes flared open. Her breath stopped at the shock of the truth. He took a step forward, felt for the door. “Yes. I didn’t want to put you through…” his voice failed and he rolled his head on his neck in frustration.

“I should ask you to leave.”

“I’ll do exactly what you need.”

“I need you to be true with me. I need you to talk to me.”

He took a long time to say, “I can do that.”

She swallowed hard on a lump of emotion. “I need your arms around me and your body close.”

He took another step forward, a hand outstretched. She reached for him, then stopped. “I need to hear your voice.”

His breathed jagged. “It’s not the same.” He dropped his arm.

“No, but it’s yours, so it doesn’t matter what it sounds like, it only matters that it comes from you.”

He groaned and the sound hitched, stuck in his throat, making him cough. “Oh God, Georgia, always on my mind.”

They moved together, crashing into each other inside her doorway. She buried her face in his neck, felt his pulse hammering wildly under her cheek. Her arms were around his neck, his hands roved her body, palms flat, fingers spread and gripping like he was testing to see she was all there.

He curled a hand in her hair and she lifted her face to his. “Everything hurts, Georgia, every fucking thing.”

She would kiss him better. She would help him mourn. She would give him back his sense of self the best way she knew how: with time, with care, with patience, with love. He was worth it. The way he made her feel made it so.

She pulled free, drew him further inside and shut the door. She took his hand and led him down the hall, but he propped outside her bedroom. She put her hand to his face. “What do you need?”

“To feel you, all of you. To know you forgive me.”

They had to talk, they had to prod at his hurt and expose his fear. She had to spill hers. They had to find each other in this different place and that needed words, full sentences, whole lines of dialogue said without a script, untimed, unrehearsed and shouted raw.

He put his hand over hers. “Please.”

She would lose herself in him; lose this moment to start a correction. “Damon—”

“I need you so fucking much.” His whole body pulsed with tension, but he did nothing to draw her in. He was letting her choose.

There was no choice.

She kissed his throat and a hard breath punched out of him. She went to her toes and kissed his lips, her hands going around his neck. He pressed back, but gently as if he was afraid to let go. His apprehension and hesitancy flayed her almost as much as his distance had done. They were the same and they were alien things, lodged in the heart of her hero. She would be his priest and exorcise them.

She dug her fingers into his hair and dragged his face down to hers, caught his lips and grazed them with her teeth, tongue following to wet, to trace, to plunder his mouth. He groaned as he took, as he gave, hands to her backside, his hips rolling, pressing their need together.

Both of them were blind, bouncing off the wall, stumbling through the bedroom door. Georgia whacked her elbow on the dresser and grunted, Damon backed her into the wardrobe, knocking the sliding door off its track, she pushed him towards the bed and he sat quickly pulling her with him half laughing, half groaning, letting go and taking control.

His hands roamed her body, plucked at her shirt. “What are you wearing?”

She wore hope and anticipation, belted by trust and daringly exposing her need to be loved by him. “Black leather corset, red suede mini, no underwear.” She flicked her tongue to his ear. “Come fuck me shoes.”

Another breath punched out of him, one hand going under her shirt, over her plain t-shirt bra, yanking it down to cup and mould her breast, the other tracing up the leg of her jeans, drawing her knee up so she was braced over him.

“How did I think I could live without you?” She felt his words said on sand and grit trickle through her abdomen, curling, cramping, making her scramble to slide her core on the hard ridge of him, bucking and breathing in gasps.

He sat, lips to her neck, stinging. Hands to the bottom of her shirt, lifting. He stripped her shirt, bra, defences. She was less his priest than his brainwashed devotee. When he sucked at her nipple and eased deft fingers through her zipper, past her underwear, inside her, she’d have turned sacrifice for him.

He flipped them, bouncing her on the bed, hovering over her, hands easing her jeans off her hips, down her legs, stopping to unzip her boots and pull them free with her socks, with her pants. He threw his head back and breathed deep, of her, of how her need for him smelled; not smoky, heady church incense, but worshipful all the same.

She’d felt withered by his turning away, but now she felt plump, moist, ripe to bursting. He stood and shed his own clothes and she stared at him as though it was the first time, as though she didn’t know his taste and smell, the places on his body that were sensitive to her tongue and touch, could make him tense and jerk and writhe; as though she hadn’t marked him with teeth and nails, with the salt of her tears and the juices of her body, staining him like he’d drawn indelibly on her.

He looked down at her. “I want all the colours of you.”

He could have colour charts and paint palettes, all the textures and patterns of the universe if he touched her.

He took a foot in his hand, thumb brushing back and forth over her toenails, his expression intense. “I want all the scars and freckles, the blemishes, the tones. I want to know it all.”

She gasped. This wasn’t a make-believe game, not sport. He was learning her new. “Plum.” She’d painted her toenails the night before.

He cupped her heel, his other hand smoothing up her calve. “Toes like bubbles in wine.” He leaned forward and licked her shin. “What colour do I taste?”

She propped up on her elbows to watch him. His own skin was a darker warmer tone than hers, he tanned golden where she burned pink. She said, “Pearl,” because he made her feel lustrous.

He nipped, then kissed her knee, shaping it with his hand. “What scars?”

None on that knee, but it was a slighter darker tone to her shin. “Oatmeal, no scars but on the other knee.” He shifted, nose to her other knee, making her toes point. “It’s coffee coloured, a crescent shape. I came off my bike.”

“Show me.”

She took his hand, traced his finger over the scar beside her knee bone. He opened his mouth over the place and played his tongue back and forth on the indentation and it was so oddly intimate it dragged a whimper from her. She reached for him, but he ducked her hand, kissed his way up her thigh to her hip. She twitched, wanted his attention to stray lower, not higher. She caught his grin between kisses.

“You taste like vanilla. You smell like green fields.”

“You’ll make me pass out if you keep this up.”

He laughed, an engine purr against her belly, framed by his hands, his weight between her legs. He dipped his tongue into her belly button. “Warm honey,” then nuzzled her ribcage, “Lemon curd.” His hands climbed, covered her breasts, thumbs circling. She blinked hard, she wanted to drift, succumbed to the flush of heated feelings goose-bumping her senses, liquefying her spine, but she needed to watch him as badly as she needed to breath.

“What colour are your nipples?”

His question made her eyes flutter closed. If her skin was pearl, then her nipples were caramel, but under his lips warming to pink, to cherry. He knew what he was doing to her, he didn’t expect a coherent answer. But then he pinched, and she moaned, so he did want her colours charted—impossible man, so she told him in a rush of jumbled words as he licked and sucked and soothed.

He kissed each freckle she directed him to across her chest and shoulders, saying raisin or chocolate or peanut butter. She told him her cheekbones were roses, and her jaw buff, her eyelids peach with black ink lashes. She led him to tongue the circular chickenpox scar near her brow and draw the strands of her cinnamon hair across his lips.

He wasn’t unaffected by this. He ground against the bed, almost but never quite touching her core, never quite being where she wanted him most.

A finger to her bottom lip, he strummed it, gently. “These feel like wet silk, they taste sweet like oblivion. What colour are they?”

They were taupe, or beige, or passion, or in her imagination, a wild, wanton red she could never wear well. She arched her back, tried to bare down on him, but he stopped her with a hand to her hip and a fleeting kiss that he stole back before she could take ownership of it.

“What colour are your lips, Georgia?”

Colours she’d never known existed. The colour of life, real and fantasy; the colour of joy, swollen and plush. “Desire.”

He groaned and claimed them, locking on, flexing his hips under her hands, against her centre, courting entrance, tempting more, but he wasn’t finished with the lesson. He dragged free, panting heat on her skin, trailing moisture down her body to the places he’d skipped.

Fingers to the insides of her thighs, the skin so much softer, paler there, like fine cotton. He spread her legs and she trembled. His touch, the exposed position, she felt both vulnerable and naughty. It made no difference that he couldn’t see her, because he looked at her with such possessive intent, touched her with such dirty reverence, and spoke to her of all the things she longed to feel and be for him, for herself, for forever.

He sucked on her inner thigh, wide open mouth, tongue in play, teeth not far away, the muscles on his back flexing and shifting as he twisted to reach her, and she cried out, pulling at his hair, clutching at her own stomach, a ridiculous attempt to quell the riot of sensation.

When he traced a finger at her entrance she stilled, eyes pinned, breath stalled. With thumb and forefinger he opened her. “Tell me what colours you are here.”

Her breath was a sharp breeze cresting his hair as he moved to taste her. She lost all vocabulary as he used his tongue along, across, around, flicking, dipping, plunging inside. He made her all the colours in the wheel, all the hues of light and dark, all the intensities and shades of the spectrum. He saw only black, but lit up all the colours in her.

She was no colour without him.

A swipe over her clit that made her jerk. He murmured, voice hushed and heavy, crushed like velvet. “This is summer, this is rain.” He dipped again, spoke in a whisper. “Volcano rims, Saturn’s rings and drops of Jupiter.” She would tremble apart. She would tear his hair from his scalp. He had lost his voice, but not his ability to make her drunk on the lyrics of him.

Another swipe. “Flowers.” Another. “Sunshine.” Another. “Salt.” Another. “You taste like lust.”

She shook and shook and couldn’t stop the thunder and lightning inside her, the building storm. “Damon, please!”

He rose up over her, eased swift inside, eyes closed, torso arched, head thrown back. He said the word, “Earthquake,” as he claimed her, rocked her, chased the storm till it broke and split the atmosphere, with a boom.