Nameless Series Boxed Set (50 page)

“We’ve already
been over this. I had misunderstood your feelings for me.”

“I know that,” Erin
exclaimed, glaring at him with her hands fisted at her sides. “I’m not blaming
you for having those feelings, and I know I screwed things up too. But it’s not
all my fault. If you’d been willing to open up your mouth a little sooner and
give me a few hints about how you felt, then I wouldn’t have been so astonished
when you finally got around to telling me.”

Seth’s hands
weren’t fisted. They were relaxed and hanging loosely beside his hips. But she
knew he was tense. She could see a muscle in his jaw spasming occasionally. “Why
are you rehearsing all of this now? It’s over. We’ve already worked through
it.”

“But you still
never tell me how you feel or what you’re thinking,” she insisted. “You’re
still always holding back.”

“Surely my
behavior is clear enough for you to know that my feelings haven’t changed. Surely
you can read between the lines.”

She let out a
little squeak. “I can’t believe you... You were just whining to me about
my
not saying things to you. You know I love you. I’ve told you, and I keep telling
you—more than you’ve ever told me. I’m sorry I haven’t made a lifetime commitment
to you or something like that. But I’m scared. I’m still scared. After Marcus,
it’s just not that easy for me to give up the things that make me feel safe. You
said before that you understood. But, regardless, right now it sounds like you
expect some sort of a double standard. You expect me to understand why you’re
holding back. Well, why can’t the same thing apply to you?”

Seth’s eyebrows
had lowered, and he was frowning in her direction.

Feeling like
she wanted to claw that cool, disdainful look from his face, she snapped, “If
I’m supposed to read your behavior, then why can’t you read mine? Surely you
can see that I love you every bit as much as you love me, that it’s just fear holding
me back, exactly as it is for you.”

She stood
panting and glaring at him—feeling like she’d made an exceptionally strong
point and had left him without a good way to counter it.

But Seth’s
reaction was not what she expected.

He didn’t look
angry or exasperated or defeated. He stared at her blankly, and it looked like
his entire body had clenched up.

Erin, feeling
rather taken aback by his dramatic reaction to her rhetorical comeback,
prompted, “Seth? What's wrong? Is this astonishment at the brilliance of my
argumentative skill? I did have two years of law school.”

“Erin,” he said
hoarsely, something unbearably tense in his gaze. “Erin, think about what you just
said. And then tell me if the implications are what they
sound
like they
are.”

Drawing her
brows together, Erin thought back over her words.

Gasped as she
realized what she’d just said. And what it implied.

Her mind had
been in a chaotic whirl just the moment before, but now all of her thoughts and
feelings slowed down to an aching crawl.

The universe
shifted into slow motion.

“Erin?” Seth
said again, his voice almost rough in his husky timbre. It felt like he was
miles away from her. “Erin, tell me. Did you mean...”

It wasn’t
chaotic or confusing anymore. With that same slow, inexorable momentum, all of
the pieces finally came together.

She loved him.
She loved him completely—even as she’d kept trying to hold parts of herself
back, trying to resist the final commitments that would have made her
vulnerable, that meant she’d give up the control she clung to.

It was never
about Marcus, although it was convenient to blame it on him.

She was just
scared.

It was fear
holding her back, exactly as it was for Seth.

In so many
ways, they’d always been the same.

And, because
they were the same, she didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

“Yeah,” she
breathed, turning back to gaze at Seth’s stiff figure, in which was leashed suppressed
energy and angst. Something was leashed inside Erin too. Something she was
about to set free. “Yeah. I did.”

Seth sat down
abruptly on the foot of the bed. “You did what? You meant—”

In a giddy
flood of relief, Erin actually laughed out loud. She sounded a little
hysterical, but she didn't even care. “I meant what I said. My actions should
have showed you that I do love you exactly the way you love me. All the way.
With everything. Forever.” It felt like a huge burden had finally been lifted. Like
something imprisoned had at last been released. Like she could finally take a
full breath. “Because I do.”

Seth simply
stared, looking so stunned and uncomprehending and adorable that Erin couldn’t
help it. She did something she hadn’t done in years—since maybe as far back as middle
school. Something she’d never dreamed of doing to Seth.

She took three
running steps toward the bed and tackled him.

He grunted when
the force of her body hit him. Her momentum pushed him onto his back on the
bed, his legs still dangling over the side, and Erin ended up in a tangled heap
on top of him. “I love you,” she said again, looking down on his winded face
and beaming like an idiot.

Seth’s arms had
come up around her—as if he couldn’t help himself—and his hands slid up and
down the satin of her pajamas, along the curves of her hips, ass, and thighs. But
his face was still serious when he murmured, “Erin, are you sure? Because if
you change your mind next week—”

“Did you not
understand what I was saying just now? It means I’m not going to change my mind.”
She kissed his mouth. His chin. His left cheek. His mouth again. Wanted to swallow
him whole. “I love you, Seth, and I want everything with you. No holding back
anymore. What do you have to say about that?”

Something deep
and powerful and breathtaking kindled in his eyes. Transformed his entire
self—the entire part of his self he tried to keep hidden.

But his mouth
quirked up in that irrepressible half-smile. “All I can say is that I love you
too.”

***

Seth didn’t say much after that.
He didn’t have to.

One of his
hands started straying significantly and was now curving around the back of her
thigh to slip in between her legs.

Erin covered
his mouth with another kiss, this one much deeper than the ones she’d given him
before. Her tongue stroked the line of his lips until it dipped inside his
mouth, caressing the length of his tongue with slow, sensual purpose.

Seth’s hand
moved almost imperceptibly, until he was cupping her groin. Her satin pajama
bottoms were thin and cool, and Erin was pretty sure that he could feel the
heat of her growing arousal through the fabric.

The ache of
pressure at her center was starting to become an issue, and Erin found herself
unconsciously grinding her pelvis into Seth’s hand—trying to get some
stimulation where she needed it. Having succeeded in unbuttoning his shirt, she
said, “Now that we’re on the same page, let’s save further heart-to-hearts
until later.”

Seth seemed
quite amenable to this suggestion, and he shifted his hands until he was
holding on to her hips. Before she could object to the loss of stimulation, he
had flipped them over until she was on her back, with Seth poised—big and hot
and intense—over her.

He pushed his
pelvis down into hers, and she could feel the hard bulge of his arousal through
his pants.

The pressure
against her groin made her groan in pleasure, and she groaned even more when he
did it again. She was even more aroused than usual—finally freed of so much
that had always held her back—and she could feel that she was already wet, a
kind of pulsing developing between her legs every time Seth pushed into her,
every time she looked up at the blinding intensity of his eyes and the fire of
his expression.

He was gazing
down at her. Not speaking. Not kissing her. Just gazing as if he could devour
her with the raw power of his stare.

She moved her
legs restlessly, sliding her feet against Seth’s trousers and rubbing her
thighs against his. Her arousal kept building just from this minor friction. So
much so that—when Seth pushed his pelvis into her again—she arched her back
dramatically and clawed at the loose fabric of his shirt.

“Seth,” she
gasped, practically writhing beneath him now. “Seth, isn’t this our great
climactic lovemaking resolution?” She was particularly proud of having come up
with such a lucid, ironic question, even in the midst of her heavy lust. “Are
you actually going to just stare at me instead?”

After just a
beat, Seth smiled. Made a husky noise in his throat. “Oh, no,” he promised—his
voice a caress. “I’m not going to just stare.”

Squirming
helplessly in response to the pulsing of her desire, Erin started to push his
shirt off his shoulders. “Could have fooled me,” she grumbled.

With a hoarse
chuckle, Seth pulled back slightly so he could take off his shirt completely. After
tossing it on the floor, he moved over her again. Grabbed the bottom of her
tank top and yanked it up until he’d pulled it over her head.

Erin sucked in
a breath as the cool air hit her bare breasts, but almost immediately Seth’s
hands had covered them. He fondled her nipples—neither of them noticing when
they leaked a little—and Erin gasped as the tingling sensations from his touch
shot all the way down to her pussy.

When the
intensifying pleasure became too overwhelming, Erin grabbed his wrists and
pulled his hands away from her breasts. Then, releasing his wrists, she twined
her hands around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss.

They shared a
deep, hungry, open-mouthed kiss—Seth’s tongue thrusting into her mouth in the
primitive motion she longed for from the rest of him—and Erin managed to wrap
one of her legs around his, getting herself in an effective position to rub her
arousal against the top of his hard thigh.

The rocking of
her body matched the rhythm of their mouths working together, and Erin rubbed
her breasts against Seth’s bare chest, seeking all of the contact and
stimulation she could.

It wasn’t long
before she could feel an orgasm developing from the friction of her groin
against his thigh, and she groaned into his mouth in response to the rising
feelings.

Her whole body
was flushed, and she could feel the intensifying heat of his tense body.

Her motion
became more erratic as she rubbed herself against him, her climax close enough
now to reach.

Then Seth tore
his mouth away from hers. “Erin?” he rasped, raising his face just enough to
gaze down at her.

Freed of his
mouth, her head began to toss back and forth on the pillow. “Fuck,” she
breathed, clinging to his bare shoulders as she kept grinding her arousal
against his thigh. The satin fabric of her pajamas was sticking to her hot
skin, but it only added to the intensity of the sensations. She started to
shake beneath him, rubbing against him as urgently as she could.

“Are you going
to—” Seth began, his eyes crawling over her red, twisted face, her jiggling
breasts, her swollen, parted lips.

“Yeah,” she
gasped, one of her arms flailing out to clutch at the sheets, the fingers of
her other hand digging into his shoulder. “Yeah,” she huffed again, bucking her
pelvis wantonly in tiny, rapid pumps against his thigh to intensify the
stimulation on her clit. “Gonna come,” she grunted, feeling the swelling
pressure begin to break. “Gonna come. Just...from this.”

Seth swallowed
a groan—of pleasure, of need, of primal dominance, of
something
—and he
adjusted his position to give her better access to his thigh. In the process,
his erection moved out of contact with her gyrations, a move Erin assumed was
intentional, so she wouldn't accidentally take him with her when she came.

“Fuck,” she
choked, tossing her head so wildly she got a piece of hair in her mouth. Couldn’t
get rid of it. Couldn’t do anything but claw blindly for some sort of purchase
and let the sensations take her over the edge. “Coming. Seth!”

Erin knew that he
was watching her when the tension broke inside her. She shuddered beneath him,
against his thigh, gasping and making silly mewling sounds as the pleasure rippled
through her.

She could feel
how tense the muscles in Seth’s thigh were as she rubbed against it a few last
times. The rest of his body was just as tense. He sucked in harsh breaths, his
nostrils almost flaring.

“God,” Erin
moaned, sinking back limply onto the mattress. “That was good.”

Seth was damp
with sweat—on his face, his forehead, his chest, and she could tell how close
to the edge he was.

So, feeling
unexpectedly playful, she stretched out and arched up her back. “I’m exhausted
now. That’s enough for me tonight.”

Seth probably
knew she was teasing, but he couldn’t help but make a choked noise in his
throat in instinctive response.

Chuckling in
fond satisfaction, Erin relented, “Well, maybe I can stand a little more.”

Seth, obviously
recovered, gave her a predatory smile. “A
little
?”

Erin started
working on the fastenings of his pants. “At least as much as you’ve got.”

After ridding
themselves of their remaining clothes, Seth situated himself between her legs. He
supported himself with one arm and used the other hand to guide his hard cock
into position.

Erin looked up
at him happily—already feeling full, satisfied, and overflowing with tender
emotions. “I love you,” she told him.

Seth’s eyes
blazed into unbearable heat, and he thrust into her with one sudden stroke.

Erin moaned and
stretched as his hard substance pushed its way into her pussy, which was
already tight from her orgasm. She parted her legs more and shifted beneath him
until she was comfortable again.