“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
It was truly as if we had no choice but to touch. Like magnets, we were drawn to each other no matter how much time apart, no matter what obstacles were in our way.
We’d be separated again. Tomorrow, probably. And every day after. But perhaps that only emphasized the need to take advantage of the rare moments like this.
Written in the stars, he had said. Perhaps this, right now, was what he meant.
“Are we—are we truly protected here?” I asked, looking up at the sky. Just beyond the heavy canopy of the trees, a few stars blinked above us from the night sky. Stars we could never see in Manhattan, suffocated as they were by the city.
“As protected as we’ll ever be.”
I looked back down, overcome with clarity. Then, without saying anything else, I pushed his tie over his shoulder and began the process of unbuttoning his shirt. The crisp white parted to reveal his skin, a deep, glowing bronze, like a Roman hero come to life. I stripped off my own shirt and bra until we sat face to face, skin to skin under the night sky. Despite the lingering heat of summer, only his warmth could thaw my wintry chill.
“I love you,” I told him, for once unafraid of the words.
“I know.” Matthew’s gaze didn’t waver, as solid and unmoving as the statue he resembled. But so much warmer. So wide and open.
His eyes drew a long, slow blaze up my torso, tarrying a moment on my breasts and nipples, perked in the night, then continuing up my neck and face, to find my eyes once more. One of his hands slipped around my back while the other cupped my jaw to pull me close. My nipples grazed his chest, just enough that I sucked in a breath.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, the warmth of his breath sweet on my face, “I love you too. I have a feeling I’ll never stop.”
This time, there was no hurry. There had been so many goodbye kisses with this man that they were starting to blur together. Even so, this one felt different. There was no hurry to get through it, no frenzy to remove the rest of our clothes or devour each other whole. Instead, our mouths moved in achingly slow concert while the wind swished through the trees around us. Our tongues danced, slipping in and around, tasting, feeding, savoring each deep lick, each tangle and twist.
Matthew’s hands ran up and down my back, tracing the grooves of my spine and ribs, then slipped between us to cup my breasts. He kneaded them while he sucked on my lower lip, then worried my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers until I was humming against his lips like a kitten.
When he broke away, I gasped at the sudden flush of air between us, but Matthew wasn’t in a hurry to return. Instead, he settled his hands back on my hips and looked at me.
“What?” I asked breathlessly. “What is it?”
“I’m thinking…” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, looking pained with desire. “I’m thinking you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Nina. I’m thinking that you always will be.”
I drew my hands up to cup my breasts the same way he had, then took my nipples and continued the long, luxurious tugs he had engaged in just seconds before.
“Anything—” I pulled again, enjoying the concurrent shudder that ran through his shoulders as he watched. “Anything else you’re thinking?”
His eyes dragged up to meet mine. “Honestly?”
I bit my lip. “Please.”
“I’m thinking I really don’t want to be here right now.”
That was not what I was expecting. Before he could say anything more, I stopped what I was doing and folded my arms quickly over my chest. “Oh.” I looked down, trying to ignore the bite of rejection.
He knew. He had changed his mind because he knew.
But before I could get up, I felt his warmth against my back as his hands closed over my arms and slid down them, then around to pull me tight against him.
“Because,” he continued, “I need more than just another quick fuck in the woods, Nina. I need four walls. I need a bed. I need a place where I can take my fucking time with you again.”
I stilled. “Well, then. Why don’t you take it?” I did, after all, have an entire cottage at my disposal.
“Just tonight,” he said solemnly. “But tomorrow? Cards on the table, Nina.”
I bit my lip, unsure of what he meant. Perhaps he could see through my half-truths. Matthew was better at reading me than anyone else. I was too scared tonight, but at some point, I’d have to tell him everything.
“Agreed,” I said. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk.”
He kissed me again, and then I felt my shirt drawn back up over my shoulders.
“Put your shirt back on, doll,” Matthew murmured against my lips. “It’s the last time you’ll wear it until morning.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
We ran through trees and meadows of the spacious property like children in the night, toppling into the guesthouse with something akin to glee but which extended to someplace deeper. Someplace darker.
Matthew knew this house, of course. Had even stayed in it a few times over the years. For some reason, knowing that this too was a place he came to for its warmth and security, a place where he felt at home, only made me want him that much more. It wasn’t either of our homes, but it was better than a hotel room, or Central Park, or a public beach. It was a space that offered privacy and security, a place where both of us could trust that for the night, at least, we were safe.
As soon as the door shut behind us, Matthew kissed me once more, then resolutely set me apart from him.
“Strip,” he ordered, even as he began loosening his tie.
I licked my bottom lip, unable to respond from want.
“I’m not fucking around tonight, Nina,” he proclaimed as he yanked it off. “Do you understand?”
I honestly wasn’t sure I did, but I was too transfixed by the sudden expanse of brick-like muscle that appeared when he removed his shirt completely.
“Nina.”
I looked up. “What?”
Matthew yanked me to him and delivered another kiss that made my head spin. I barely noticed as he wrenched my blouse off my body and my skirt fell away like a shed chrysalis. All I knew was his mouth devouring mine. And the warmth of his skin under my hands as they slid over his shoulders and into his hair to pull him that much closer.
And then, just as quickly, he stopped again.
“Matthew!” I sputtered. “P-please!”
He wrenched his belt from his pants and the leather hit the wall with a loud thwack. Two seconds later, the rest of his clothes were on the floor, I was swooped off the ground, and Matthew was carrying me eagerly into the bedroom at the other side of the cottage.
“I’m so fucking tired of this,” he muttered as he let my feet drop back to the ground.
“Tired of what?”
“Needing you like this.” His kisses were so much more urgent now, desperate attempts to quench something burning within us both. “It never stops, Nina. It never. Fucking. Stops.”
“I know.” I took my share as well, grabbing his handsome face and yanking him back to me again and again. “I know, my love, I know.”
He buried his face in my neck, teeth drawing roughly over the delicate skin until he came to the base and sucked, hard. He trapped both of my wrists to the bed as he worked, pinning me against the soft, cool linens. I couldn’t have been more content.
And then, suddenly, he stopped.
“What?” I breathed, back arched, nipples inches from his mouth.
The hands around my wrists squeezed tighter.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck. I can’t fucking focus.”
“What?” I asked. “Why—why not?”
I was slightly hurt. I had practically tumbled down the rabbit hole just from his kisses alone, but he was losing interest?
He turned and felt around on the floor for something, then popped up holding his tie.
“Put your arms above your head,” he commanded.
&nbs
p; Taken aback, I did as he asked. He pulled the fabric taut between his hands and grinned like the rake he so resembled at times. The rake he thought he was, though I knew better.
“Stay still,” he said as he began wrapping the scarlet silk around my wrists, binding them first together and then to the slatted wood headboard behind me.
“How can I give you what you want if I can’t touch you?” I wondered.
“This is what I want, doll.” He continued with his task, brow adorably furrowed, until my hands were securely bound. “There. Now you can’t go anywhere. Not until I say.”
“You were worried?”
“I’m always afraid of that,” he said quietly. “Because it always happens in the end, doesn’t it? One of us always leaves.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Because, of course, he was right.
“Not tonight, though.” He pressed his face between my breasts, inhaling deeply as though his life depended on it. “Now you can’t leave until I say.”
“Why do you always want to see me in red?” I asked when the red of the tie caught my eye above us.
Matthew’s hands slipped up my arms to my bound wrists, then back down again.
“Because you’re so pale,” he said as he drew kisses down one arm, then the other. “It’s beautiful. This scarlet splash against your purity.” His smile curved wickedly inside my elbow. “And I really like knowing I’m the one who corrupts you.”
“But I’m not pure,” I said. “I have my sins, Matthew. Just like everyone else, I bleed when I’m cut.”
He paused over the bruise just above my breast, the one I never allowed to heal. Not completely. He licked it, lightly at first, then again with one long, languorous swipe of his tongue.
I shuddered as he moved between my breasts, tongue tickling the sensitive skin between them.
“I like it when you sin, Nina.” His voice rumbled against my skin, causing goose bumps to rise in its path. “I like to see you get a little dirty. With me.”
His mouth closed over one nipple, and he sucked, hard.
“Ah!” I cried. “You’ll—you’ll have to be careful. Someone is going to hear us.”
“Who?” he asked as he moved to the other side. “We aren’t sharing any walls here, Nina. It’s just us and the damn trees. So go ahead, baby. Make that sound for me again.”
I did, and then I watched, transfixed, as he drew a trail of kisses down my belly, pausing just below my navel to press a particularly tender one to the sensitive skin there.
“Baby,” he murmured, then continued further.
“Oh!” My heels dug into the mattress, hips arching upward as his mouth found my clit.
Hands wrapped around my ankles this time, securing me to the mattress on both ends.
“Take it, Nina. I want your pleasure. I want to feel you fuckin’ writhe, baby.”
And writhe I did, as his tongue twisted and lips sucked, as he savored every buck of my hips like I was a horse he was trying to tame. Every so often he would hum, and the delicious rumble against that most sensitive part of me made me jerk, not in an attempt to escape. I wanted to get closer.
My fingers flexed, aching to sink into his silken hair. His tongue dipped into me.
And suddenly, I flew.
“Matthew!” I shouted, loud enough that I was sure anyone within a five-miles radius must be able to hear me.
He released my feet in order to grab my thighs, hold me down while I shook and shivered and thrashed until I couldn’t anymore. At last, his iron grip softened. He placed his chin on my hip and smiled sweetly while he waited for me to recover.
“You okay?”
“Please,” I gasped. “Please. I want you.”
“Not yet.” He pressed one more kiss to my leg before sitting up on his heels, looking for a moment like a king surveying his kingdom.
“Why?” I whined shamelessly. “Matthew, please.”
“First I want to see those beautiful eyes while I slide into your mouth.”
I licked my lips eagerly, utterly shameless for the way his words drove my desire. He crawled up the length of my body, drew his impossibly hard arousal over my stomach, between my breasts, as if he wanted to feel every modest curve I had touch his most sensitive part as well. Then carefully, he straddled my shoulders and held his erection to the seam of my lips, a deliciously greedy gleam shining in his dark eyes.
Obediently, I opened.
How is it possible? I wondered as he slid inside, inch by inch. Despite the fact that I was literally bound and tied while this man unabashedly took his pleasure from my body, I had never felt more free.
Perhaps because I knew that however he judged himself, Matthew never judged me for embracing my animal nature.
“Fuuuuuuck,” he groaned as I sucked hard, relishing the taste of him. “Goddammit, Nina. It’s too much.”
But before I could do it again, he pulled out of my swollen mouth, then bent to retrieve a condom from his pants. When he returned, he covered me completely, his long, graceful body a secure cage against the bed.
I couldn’t have been happier to be trapped.
“Are you ready for me?” he murmured against my lips just before he stole a few more kisses. When he slipped against my slick entrance, he shuddered. “God, please tell me you’re ready, baby.”
Dying to pull him to me, I instead arched my hips upward in invitation. “Please.”
He fit himself to me, then grabbed my chin with one hand, holding me perfectly still as his lips closed over mine and he began the delicious, excruciatingly slow process of sliding inside me.
“Mmmmfftttt?”
I moaned lightly at the way he teased, then reluctantly, broke the kiss. “What did you say?”
His lips curved into that deliciously wicked smile against my mouth. “I said, ‘Is this all right?’”
“Oh—ah!” I tensed again as he pressed forward perhaps an inch more, then stopped. “Why do you always ask me that?”
“You know why.” He slipped in a little more, taking his time, giving me a few moments to adjust at each stage. Another tender kiss. Another inch forward. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I lifted my head, capturing his lower lip between my teeth, biting lightly. “You won’t. Just do it.” I bit again. “Matthew, I need you.”
He hissed his accord and then captured my mouth with his all over again as suddenly, he rammed the rest of the way inside.
The sudden force knocked my head against the wood slats, but I didn’t notice. Suddenly, he was moving, steady and deep, and I could not think of anything else but the fact that I was here. He was in me, filling my deepest, secret spaces.
“Squeeze me,” Matthew ordered in a ragged voice as his hands found my thighs and urged them around his trim waist. “Tight, Nina. Put all that Pilates to good use.”
Without thinking twice, I hooked my heels together and squeezed as hard as I could, pulling him inside completely. He needn’t have waited. I was slick with need, had been ready for him for hours.
“Fuck!” he croaked as he surged into me again and again.
“I want to touch you,” I moaned with every deep thrust. His body was slippery against mine, the friction of our meeting driving me closer and closer.
But I didn’t want to do it alone. Something was wrong. I didn’t want to be trapped anymore. When I toppled over that nameless edge, I wanted to bring him with me. In my arms, not just carried in his.
“Then free yourself,” he said, breath warm, voice low against my ear. “You want your freedom, my gorgeous girl? You gotta fuckin’ earn it.”
I shook my head from side to side, unable to take much more. “Please, Matthew. Just let me go. I want to come with you.”
But instead of doing what I asked, he just kept going, merciless in his rhythm. “You didn’t even fight, duchess. Why don’t you find out what happens when you do?”
His eyes gleamed as he pushed himself to his knees, still keeping my legs around him as h
e moved, a bit slower now.
He was the carrot, I realized. All I had to do was grab.
And so, tentatively at first, then a bit more insistently, I started trying to work my wrists out of the tight binding that trapped them. I wriggled and moved, and to my surprise, the silk began to loosen.
“It’s coming free!” I grinned as with each movement, the tie around my arms loosened until it had unraveled completely. At last I was free, and the energy from that feeling caused me to fly up and into his arms, forcing him to topple onto his seat as he caught me. We were still joined, but now I was the one on top, the one who drove the pace.
I ground down, taking him even deeper, and his mouth found my breast once more, sucking deeply, echoing the rhythm of our bodies.
“Oh, God,” I cried as my head tipped back. His strong arms kept me upright, along with my fierce grip on his thick hair. “Please, Matthew. Oh God, I’m so close!”
Matthew’s hand slipped between our bodies, but I didn’t need it as I flew again and, this time, took him with me. This man in my arms, and me in his.
It was and would always be enough.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The moon had risen high above the trees by the time we stopped to catch our breath again. Matthew and I lay together in the big, rumpled bed watching the shadows from the moonlight slowly cross our bodies while casting us both in its cool blue glow. For the first time in days, I was able to enjoy the plush, yet comfortable surroundings of the guesthouse, decorated as it was with oversized pillows, bright white and gray paints, and farmhouse furniture with just the right amount of weathering.
“This is what I used to want my home to be like,” I said, waving a hand around the cabin.
“This small?” Matthew joked. “I can’t really see you making do with a thousand-square-foot cabin, doll.”
I shook my head. “Well, no, not that part. Although in New York, there are plenty who do.”
He grunted in response, clearly feeling that should have been self-explanatory.
The Perfect Woman (Rose Gold Book 2) Page 35