“Not in the least. Do you mind if I touch you, as well?”
She thought about that for a minute. “I think that would be nice.”
“Good.” He wanted to strip her bare so he could have access to all of her, but contented himself to appreciate what she was willing to give. She bent her head and kissed the middle of his chest, her hands making long stroking motions that ran from his collarbone down to where the sheet covered his belly.
“I’ve never met anyone who has such a nice chest,” she said, kissing one of his nipples. “You have an actual six-pack, Theo. I’ve never known a man with an actual, bona fide six-pack.”
“And I suffered like hell for it,” he said, laughing, trying to unhook her bra with just one hand, but unable to do more than make awkward tugs at it. “When Jake made that top ten bachelor list, I figured I would give him a run for his money. We shared a personal trainer, but she was half in love with him and made me work like a dog four hours a day, while she allowed him to swim laps for half an hour.”
“You put me in a really difficult situation, here,” she said, letting her fingers trail down his belly, pushing the sheet a bit until it was on his pelvic bone. “I suspect you have way too much regard for yourself already, and yet, I really do want to tell you just how nice your chest and stomach are.”
“If I let you get by without complimenting me on that, will you let me take your bra off?”
“No,” she said, and he gave a mental sigh, pulling his hand from where it was still trying to manipulate the damned hooks. She smiled, and to his utter surprise—and complete joy—she pulled her T-shirt over her head and, with a deft move, took her bra off, as well. “But since you’ve been so nice as to let me touch your chest, I think it’s only fair you get to do the same.”
“Oh, thank you,” he said, possessing himself immediately of her breasts. They weren’t too large, not surprising given that the rest of her was finely made, tall but willowy. “You have just made my day. Possibly my week.”
She laughed, the sound deep and throaty, one that went straight to his groin. He pulled her down over him so that he had access to those tempting, satiny breasts, enjoying her gasp when he took one delicious nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue over the taut tip. The taste and heat and feel of her filled his mind, making him crave more. She groaned and arched, her hands clutching the sheet. “Glorioski! Do the other one!” He obliged, his body tensing with the sensation of her.
He wanted badly to make love to her, but he would let her set the pace. If she wasn’t ready for it, then he’d wait. Even if it killed him.
One part of his mind idly wondered where the plan to give her the boot had gone. He told that part to go screw itself, then, unable to keep from touching her, slid his hands down to the waistband of her leggings.
“May I?” he asked, hoping she didn’t hear the heavy throb of need in his voice. He didn’t want her to think he was an animal, unable to control his base desires, and yet, just the taste of her breasts made him want to plunge deep into her depths and claim her as his own.
She panted a little as she looked down, then got to her feet right there on the bed, pulling up first one leg, then the other as she divested herself of the tight black cloth.
He couldn’t help himself—he flat out ogled her legs, from the tips of narrow, long feet up to sturdy ankles, calves that curved out in a flare that reminded him of her hips, on up to her thighs, her satiny, enticing thighs that he wanted to bury his face in. He traced a line up both legs, from ankles to the backs of her knees.
She hesitated, still standing over him; then suddenly with an annoyed noise at herself, she removed her underwear. His eyes widened at the gesture. Was she signaling what he thought she was signaling? Any other woman stripping herself buck naked would tell him exactly what she had planned, but with Kiera, it could simply mean she was testing him, making sure she could trust him. He hadn’t missed the calculating glances she had slid his way earlier, and knew that her trust issues extended to lovemaking.
“Why are you goggling at me like that?” she asked, her hands on her hips. That just made him look at her hips and admire the flare of them, their sweet curves making him hard enough to hew marble. “Is it my pubic area? I don’t wax down there because it hurts like a motherfussing pus bag, but I do trim when things get unruly.” She bent over to look at her pubic mound. “I didn’t think it was time to prune again, but if it offends you—”
“Gods of all the pantheon, Judeo-Christian, and Islamic worlds, no!” he said, his body tighter and harder than he ever remembered being when she dropped down to her knees, straddling his hips. She reached behind and twitched the sheet off the lower half of his body, her eyes on his as she leaned forward and kissed first one, then another nipple before nibbling a path upward to his mouth.
“Make love to me, Theo,” she whispered.
Words choked in his throat. He wanted to thank her, to get on his knees and promise her anything, but instead, he did a quick mental calculation.
“Shall we do it this way?” he asked, pulling his knees up a bit, his hands full of her breasts.
She pursed her lips. “Are you letting me be in charge because you know I’m a bit skittish when it comes to men, or is this your favorite position?”
“Both. Neither. What was the question?” His cock positively ached with the need to embrace her heat, but he let her take the lead.
“What about foreplay?”
“What about it?” he asked, more than a little desperate. He wondered if it would be unseemly to beg her to take pity on him and impale herself on his cock.
“Do we need it?” She looked down at his penis. “Did we already do it? I’m ready to go if you are.”
“I can honestly say that I was ready yesterday,” he answered, sending up fervent little prayers that he’d survive the experience of Kiera making love to him long enough to give her pleasure.
She giggled and, positioning him, started to sink down.
He groaned as the tip of him slipped into her, but she paused, asking, “Oh. Do you have any ... er ... illnesses? I have a birth control implant, but I suppose we should be adult and address that.”
“No diseases, venereal or otherwise. I am allergic to penicillin, though.”
She smiled, giving her hips a little wiggle as she continued to descend upon him. “I’ll remember that should you come down with pneumonia. Theo, this is very ... is there an end to you? You seem to go on and on, and yet you promised me you weren’t porn-star big.”
“Almost there,” he gasped, his hands sliding down her hips to her thighs. “Dear God, woman, stop doing that swivel or it will be all over! No, not that one—that one is—nrng—it’s the other one I object to. Yes, that one. Stop doing that this instant. Do it just once again, and then stop it.”
She giggled again, and did both a left and right swivel as she moved up and down on him.
His eyes crossed, his hands convulsively clutching the sheet beneath them, expending every last iota of energy he possessed to keep from moving his hips. He knew he would never be able to stand the sensations if he were to thrust into her, filling her, taking her gasps into his mouth. He just had to lie there dormant, and think of horrible things to distract himself from the tight, velvety grip that moved upon him and left him on the verge of a climax.
“This is so very nice,” she murmured, leaning down to kiss him. “I didn’t know you would feel like this inside me. You are so very there.” She moved with a little faster rhythm.
Theo was quite sure he would die with the pleasure, and then she leaned down and gently bit his nipple. The streak of pure sexual pleasure that made his chest burn was too much for him.
“Is there a reason you aren’t helping?”
He opened his eyes, desperation filling his voice. “You don’t mind if I move?”
“Of course not. It’s much better when you get in on the—THEO!”
He flipped her over without dislodging himself, he
r legs draped over his arms as he growled into her mouth. “You didn’t say I could move! I was trying to be a considerate lover! It was your job to tell me that I could—oh, God, don’t tighten like that.”
“Kegels,” she said, her breath as tortured as his own. She dragged her nails up his back, and matched his thrusts, biting the cord in his neck. “Now, Theo, now!”
“Thank God, I didn’t think I could last much longer,” he said, panting in between each word. He tried a couple of swivels of his own, but it was an effort that he knew he wouldn’t fully get to explore. She quivered beneath him, her body tightening in ripples that just about made him see stars as he gave in to his own climax.
It seemed to take forever before he could catch his breath, his mind stuck in a postorgasmic haze that consisted only of Kiera and his exhausted wreck of a body.
“That was pretty damned amazing,” Kiera said when he rallied enough strength to roll off her. He didn’t think at first he’d be able to, since his muscles all seemed to have turned to wet noodles, but he was a gentleman, and gentlemen didn’t crush their lovers into the bed just because said lovers had wrung them like a wet towel.
“You can talk?” he asked, glaring at her. “Why can you talk and I’m almost dead? I don’t have any muscles left, and my brain shut down when you damn near squeezed my cock off—please continue doing the Kegels, by the way—and you can talk? Women!”
She giggled, lifting a hand as if she was going to stroke him, but it fell languidly to the bed. “I’m pretty boneless myself.”
With a great effort, he managed to roll over onto his side and look at her. Her eyes were closed, but there was a little smile that sat on the corners of her lips. He knew he shouldn’t ask, but his curiosity got the better of him. He picked his words carefully nonetheless. “Would it insult you if I asked what made you change your mind?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him, confused for a moment before she realized what he was asking. A little blush flooded her cheeks under the freckles, delighting him. “Oh. Well, Swami Betelbaum is very big on not lying to yourself. And after you were so ... understanding ... earlier by stopping when I wanted you to stop, I realized that I was lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I really did want to keep going. So, I decided if you were still interested, then I’d go ahead and let my libido romp all over you.”
“I like your libido,” he said, moving his hand to her arm, then up to her face to brush back a loose strand of hair. “It can feel free to romp on me any time it wants.”
She looked at him silently for a moment, the laughter in her eyes dying. “Theo, I want to tell you something. It’s hard, but ... well, this kind of makes us close, and I don’t have anyone else to tell. I get so tired of going around and around with it in my own brain. Maybe you can see something I can’t see.”
He raised his eyebrows, wondering if she was going to tell him about the warrant.
“You probably guessed this, but my relationship with my ex wasn’t good.” Her eyes were shadowed with pain.
“I assume by the way you reacted last night that he was abusive.”
Her gaze skittered away, and she scooted over, pulling up the sheet she’d brought over from the other bed, wrapping it around herself. “Yes. He almost killed me one day when he caught me using his computer. It took me a couple of days to recover, and when I did, I knew I had to get out or the next time, he’d shut me up for good.”
“Ah?” Theo was filled with a fury that made him want to fight. He knew from the years of therapy that he didn’t have to give in to his desires, and thus, instead he acknowledged the feelings, gave them a long, hard look, and admitted to himself that he badly wanted to find and beat this man who had mistreated his delicate gazelle.
“I didn’t take anything of his, only my stuff, some books, and my clothes, and a couple of little knickknacks that only have meaning to me. But he went to the police and told them I took his computer. They sent a letter to the women’s shelter where I went that I was to report to the station and turn myself in. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Misha has friends there,” she said bleakly.
“Misha being ... ?”
“Mikhail, my ex. Misha is the diminutive of that name. I’m pretty certain that it was his police friends who helped him track me to the last two apartments I rented.”
“Dirty cops?” Theo asked, his sense of outrage growing even greater, which was a miracle considering he was already so furious he wanted to pound this Mikhail into a pulp.
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t blame you for not turning yourself in,” he said, stroking the bare arm nearest him, mentally drafting the conversation he would have with his attorney.
“That was in Wellington. I managed to get out of there without him finding me, but I had to use my bank card here in Auckland, and I think he followed me. He’s ... there’s no other word for it than hunting me. I don’t know why, other than he wants to punish me for leaving him, but he almost caught me before I left Wellington, and he swore to kill me if I didn’t give him back what I’d stolen.”
“You said you didn’t take his computer.”
“I didn’t.” She knelt next to him, her hand on his arm. “All I took were my things. Just what would fit in my duffel bag. I double-checked it to make sure I didn’t have anything that was his by mistake, but it’s just my clothes, a couple of paperback books, a hairbrush that was my grandmother’s, and a desk Zen garden that Swami Betelbaum recommended. I didn’t even take my phone, because Misha paid for it.”
“Have you talked to an attorney?” he asked, wondering if he oughtn’t bring in a second lawyer to deal with her situation. If he had his personal lawyer working on the custody agreement for Peter, he could get a second one going on Kiera’s case.
“Yes. The women’s shelter set me up with a pro bono lady. She said that I needed to turn myself in, and we could talk after that, but Misha has a lot of friends, and he isn’t shy about using them.” Her eyes held a silent plea. “With some of them in the police, if I turned myself in ...” She shuddered.
“Then we won’t do that,” he said.
“We?” she asked, suddenly wary again.
He took her hand and kissed it. “I owe you for helping with Peter.”
“Theo, what we just did ... that was nice. Really nice. The nicest I’ve ever experienced, but it doesn’t mean we have any sort of a future together, if that’s what you’re thinking. And I apologize if I’m presuming that what is probably very common casual sex to you is something more to me. Because it’s not.”
“That is a very hard sentence to parse,” he said slowly. “But I think there was an insult in there aimed at me.”
“No,” she said, pulling her hand back. “Not an insult, just a recognition that you no doubt have a crap-ton of sexual partners, and that flings like what we did are just that—flings.”
“Do you know,” he said, frowning, “that got even more insulting. I find myself feeling like I should defend my history with women, and at the same time reassure you that our recent activity was something profound.”
“Of course you don’t have to reassure me,” she said quickly, hurting his pride a little. “I wouldn’t expect that at all.”
“But you think me perfectly capable of what? Serial one-night stands?”
She must have seen something in his eyes, because she suddenly hugged him. “No. It’s just men who look like you—well, you have to admit that women are probably all over you.”
“You’re not making it better,” he told her, rising above the pain that she didn’t think what they had was worth exploring more. He wasn’t under any delusion that she was madly in love with him any more than he was with her, and yet, there was an attraction between them, a feeling of rightness that he experienced with her that he wanted very much to nurture. But she wasn’t coming from the same emotional space he was, and he had to remember that her reactions were influenced heavily by her past.<
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“I know,” she murmured into his shoulder. He was somewhat amused to find she was rubbing his back in the same manner she had done for Peter the day before. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to open my mouth without saying the wrong thing.”
“I don’t know about that.” He let his hands slide down to her ass, giving it a little squeeze. “I’d say you were very adept with your mouth. Mine certainly enjoyed yours.”
She moved away, another of the delightful pink blushes on her cheek. “My point, before I more or less called you a male nympho, for which I apologize, is that I can’t stay with you. Assuming that’s what you’d want.”
“I think it is, yes,” he said, surprising himself by admitting it. But then, why should he be so surprised? Both his father and brother had fallen almost instantly in love with the woman of their choice, and although he’d never understood that, he was beginning to see how it might happen.
“If my situation was different—” She bit off the sentence. “But it isn’t, and I can’t risk Misha finding out about you and Peter. It’s just that simple.”
He realized then that she truly believed that it was inevitable that this ex, the brutish thug Mikhail, would find her. And he knew without a single shred of doubt that she would outright refuse to remain with him simply because she wanted to protect them.
None of his romantic partners had ever tried to protect him. It was an odd feeling, both heartwarming and annoying.
“I think you’re jumping the gun, as you Americans say,” he said without giving a hint to the mental plans he was forming and discarding. “And I have an idea how we can both help each other, but first, I need to make a few calls.”
“Help each other how?” she asked, suspicious.
“Several ways, and none of them including the smutty things you are thinking,” he teased, delighted when she looked amazed that he’d read her mind. “The most urgent of which will take place today.”
“I have to get going,” she said, giving another shake of her head. “That was our agreement.”
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