His own legs were slow-shutter speed. His eyes reticent to look away from her. This new Aurora Rae who was truly his. Fired by the want to claim all of her, he picked her up and lay her back over the table.
“Christ, you’re beautiful.”
“I’m impatient and so horny if you don’t get a move on, bad things could happen.”
He smiled down at her, smoothing his hand from her ribs to her hip and over her thigh to cup her bent knee. She had a T-shirt and jeans on, still wore her kicks. He’d seen her in business suits and ball gowns and swimwear and never seen her look as lovely as she did now.
“What kind of bad things?” There was no room for anything bad here.
“It’s possible my senses are so overloaded I’ll short-circuit.”
He leaned down, so he was eye to eye with her. He slipped the hand that was on her knee along her inner thigh and pressed its heel to her pussy. She jerked and arched into his hand. She was hot there through layers of cotton and his cock was so hard he could barely speak. “Don’t even think about it.” He twisted his wrist against her until she grabbed for his hand and stilled him.
“Don’t start something you’re not intending to finish,” she hissed.
He laughed and pulled away. “I could look at you for a thousand years and never get tired of the view.”
She sat up abruptly. “If you make me cry before we get naked I’ll never forgive you.”
She’d already made him tear up. He couldn’t have both of them blubbering. Another decade might’ve passed in the time he took to kiss her thoroughly and then leave her complaining.
The cabin wasn’t stocked. He didn’t have a clean towel or soap or anything to shave with, but the shower water came on hot and strong and felt luxurious. He half expected her to follow him in. Rory didn’t like to wait for anything. Hard as he was, he wasn’t being with her for the first time anywhere but in a bed. This cabin was a replica of hers, two single beds but there was no linen. They’d make do. He didn’t have a condom, but they’d both had full medicals before coming in here and she had a contraceptive implant. He should set an alarm, so they could safely sneak out before it got light.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He couldn’t get properly clean. He had nothing to set an alarm with. He had no way to keep her safe. If he did this, took her body, made her come, there was no putting it back in the box. Those tears that’d leaked from him were shock and disbelief.
They’d cross that line they’d always stood on either side of. That line had a good reason to be there. It had protected his heart when she chose Cal. It had cemented it when she broke with Cal and chose to run away, hide out for six months with not a word. And when she came home and elected to fall back into the relationship they’d always had. That was the third time his hopes died. He didn’t know if he could do this and hold the line and he needed the line to know who he was without her.
And he was destined to be without her, because none of this was real.
He got out of the shower and put his filthy jeans on. She understood before he even spoke. Because she knew him to the cartilage of his joints and back.
She put her arms around him and pressed her face to his steaming chest. She could feel how much he wanted her. “You think this will change us,” she said.
He took a handful of her hair. “How can it not?”
“Everything changes.”
“We’ve been sidekicks all our lives.” She would know how much he’d always wanted her. “You never asked for anything more. Even when you were free to.”
“I am now.”
It wasn’t enough for him. Not near enough to be her vacation fling. “That’s this place.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “Where we went tonight, it was somehow predictable and yet I never expected it to happen. I want it to happen, Zeke, you and me. I think we could be amazing, even if it’s temporary.”
He knew that amazing already, it sang in his hands as they held her, in the nerve endings of his spine as he bent to create a shelter for her from his body. But temporary was a life sentence of loss.
“You’re not ready,” she said, looking up at him. There was no trace of disappointment, no anger or fire in her. He’d dripped all over her. He’d put the fire out.
“Okay,” she pulled on his neck till he rested his forehead on hers. “We can park this. For tonight. For forever if you need. Maybe it’s the smart thing to do.” She groaned, her hands carving down his back to spread over his ass. “Tell me it’s smart to give this up.”
“We’re working,” he said, because that was what he had. Just being so near her again was messing with his internal logic, shutting down all the reasons why being with her was a bad idea.
She kissed his chest and then pushed away. Turning her back to deal with her hair. “For the record, I wanted everything we did and more. I don’t know how much of that to attribute to this place and how much it’s always been there.” There, that was the problem; that was the ache in his body. “Are you going to be weird with me?”
He spied the hair tie on the floor and retrieved it, holding it out to her. He needed to match her honesty. “Yeah, I’ll probably be weird with you. Waited my whole adult life to kiss you again, Aurora Rae. For the record, I wanted everything with you, but I think it is this place that’s changed things between us and we need to focus on why we’re here. If we get carried away, we could lose what we have.”
She reached for the tie. It took all his strength not to fold her hand into his. He would be weird with her because he’d crossed the line and it would take a while to cross back and be in the place where he could touch her casually again and not want to come out of his skin.
“I’ll go first,” she said, putting her hair back in a tail. “I’ll talk to Cadence. We need to plan what we do at the bonding ceremony.”
He let her go. It took a good half hour to pull himself together, thinking about the things he might’ve done and said differently. Replay the sounds she made, how she’d moved in his arms, the way she’d looked at him as if he was all she ever needed. Aroused, frustrated, he finally stirred himself to leave, after prying a floorboard lose and stashing the phone.
His cabin was lousy with snoring. He was queasy with hunger and tired beyond reasoning, but he slept fitfully. The fantasy of Rory’s intimate touch had a reality in his dreams now and it was enough to keep waking him. By the time the sun’s rays lit the cabin, he was unable to pretend he could rest without seeing her and not prepared to think through the why of it.
It was as necessary, as involuntary, as blinking.
Rory’s step faltered when she saw the tree he’d stashed on the porch as she slipped out the door of her cabin in her skins for a run. He tensed. A wave of nausea hit his gut that had less to do with hunger than the sight of her frowning at him. This was a dumb move. He was putting himself in harm’s way and doing it without regard for the consequences.
And she was the one thing in his life he’d never taken risks with. Because sure as seconds ticked by she’d break him.
“Not at all weird,” she said, standing on the porch steps looking down at him where he sat, while she tossed an apple in her hand.
Brazen it out. It’s all you’ve got, asshole. “What? It’s just a run. We’ve done this before.”
“You look awful. Did you sleep at all?”
“I slept.” The fantasy Rory in his dreams had nothing on the real life one who was irritated with him now.
She shook her head and tossed him the apple. “If you can’t keep up, I’m leaving you behind.”
Story of his life with her. “I can keep up.” Living on the edge. He took a bite of the apple, its acid flooding his mouth and throat and momentarily making him feel like puking.
She came down the steps and the dark slashes under her eyes were evidence. “You didn’t sleep,” he said.
She tossed her head. “I slept.”
They were both professional liars but not with each other. With each other th
ey only hid the truth under layers of denial. Weird it was then.
She took off, heading out towards the pastures and the barns. He took the last bite of apple, tossed the core in a garden bed and went after her, his longer stride catching her easily. He settled in behind her, let the swing of her ponytail and the economy of her movements guide him, let his motion ease the ache in his muscles and tune out all the reasons he should still be in bed, or anywhere else but following her lead.
The problem was he would follow her into the mouth of a smoking volcano. Except she was too smart to lead him there. Until last night he’d always been able to trust that Rory would ignore the moments his craving for her seeped through his armor and under his chainmail. He’d caught her off guard last night, but judging by her imperious response this morning she wouldn’t let it happen again, because God help him, he was not sufficiently squared away in his head to do the right thing.
As they pounded past the feedlot, a field full of cows and the lone goat who bellowed at them, he couldn’t recall what the right thing was. Every cell in his body told him it was to be close to her, so close he could give her the pleasure he’d denied her last night. The sweat that beaded on his skin wasn’t only the result of the exercise.
They ran past the farm crew collecting eggs and milking. They ran past the sporting field and the locked barns Rory had searched, well past being seen by anyone up this early, to a smaller barn he’d not been to before. She opened a side door and he followed her inside. It was full of farm machinery. Rory stood in front of a stack of tires, between an oil drum and the arms of a massive plough, in a shaft of sunlight from the open door, with her weight on one leg and hands on her hips. He’d had his hands all over her body last night, his mouth on her skin. That knowledge was wings at his back. Fighting the wrongness of it that was anchors at his ankles.
He pulled the door closed behind him, the bar lock clunking loudly into place, making Rory flinch.
He could keep this professional. He stayed by the door. “What did you learn this week?”
“That I—”
She faltered and turned her back to him. He stepped forward because in those two words he heard the crust of the earth crack and it released him to go to her.
“Want you,” she said.
She was supposed to be the one who drew the line for him to hold.
“That I need—”
He had her in his arms a beat after her words faltered. He pulled her back to his chest and she wrapped her arms over his. The barn smelled overwhelmingly of worn metal and rubber, oil and grease but Rory’s body was hot, and she smelled of soap and sweat and fitted so perfectly against him he was swamped by the sense of her.
“It’s unfair to you. And I don’t know what it means for us, but I want to scream from needing you,” she said.
There was another version of his life where he could see this for what it was, Rory’s anxiety from the intimidation tactics she was being subjected to, her need for reassurance, spilling over into physical form. His own long-denied ardor. He parked it, pocketed the keys. He’d come back to it when he needed that logic, because right now the only thing he existed for was to give her relief.
“I can handle it,” he said tucking his face down in her neck, breathing her in as he expelled that deceit. “Tell me what you need.”
She angled her head and he took the hint, fastening his lips on her neck, kissing up to her ear, which he rimmed with his nose and then took her lobe in his mouth. That got him the sting of fingernails in his arm and a gorgeous moan. He would break time itself to hear that again, to know it was a feeling he caused to rise up in her.
“Give me some words, Aurora Rae.” This couldn’t happen by accident. Not some day-drunk mistake she regretted, and he blamed himself for.
“Please, Zeke.”
His name groaned with need was so delicious he could almost block out the sound of his impending doom. She tried to turn in his arms, but it would wreck him permanently if he was watching her face as he made her come, so he held her fast and whispered in her ear. “I’m going to touch you everywhere. I’m going to make you feel good.”
That got him a hiss as she pushed back against him. He put his fingers to the hem of her top and peeled it up over her head. Acres of flawless flesh he’d not touched, not kissed. He dumped his own tee, the better to feel her, to let her feel him, and went to work, the insanely arousing whimpers and sighs she made his guide.
His skin felt crazily alive where she touched, and he was painfully hard. The press of her body, the ways she flexed and shifted, bumping against his cock, was deliriously distracting, but unlike last night, his heart was steady, and he was focused on her pleasure.
A flick of his fingers under the hooks of her sports bra and he had uninterrupted access to her breasts. The speed with which he wanted her naked was tempered by the fact that the floor was filthy and there was nowhere he would risk laying her.
“Hard and fast,” he said, hands sliding around her ribs and up to cup her breasts. Utterly, fucking gorgeous. “Are you here with me?”
“Yes.” She surged into his hands, and the kiss they shared as he curled around her was the purest drug he’d ever used. He made her writhe with thumb flicks across her raised nipples and wrap her arms around his neck and dig her fingernails into his skull when he pinched.
When he had her shaking and moaning and his own feelings were oozing out in rough exhales and gut deep groans, he tunneled his hand down her ribs, belly, inside her skins and under the triangle of her panties, right to the wet, hot center of her.
His body was her bed. He used one hand to hold her knee bent to her chest to open her up and the other to tease, to stroke, to rub and pinch, to dip inside her.
She gripped his arm and rolled her hips. “Oh my God, Zeke. Yes.”
It would be easy to make her come, she was already wet and shuddering. But he didn’t want to please her so much as smash the foundation she stood on and then build it up more firmly, so she felt strong and ready to take on the world again.
“You like this.” He curled his fingers inside her and stroked against the wall of her vagina. She threw her head back against his chest with a sound of lovely agony. “You are fucking perfect, Aurora Rae. I am the luckiest man in the world to have you this way.”
He took that lucky and made it skill, alternating between rubbing her clit and finger-fucking her until she started bucking against him. As she came, she lifted her other foot off the ground and he took her whole weight before she cried out and her body went slack.
Holding her upright, kissing her as she drifted and lowered her feet to the ground, was nothing but joy. When she turned to tuck her face against his chest and sighed, he knew there existed a contentment beyond anything he’d ever achieved.
He’d stolen just the inkling of it.
He smoothed his hand down her messed up ponytail, taking the band with it. “You okay?”
“Hmmm.”
Her satisfaction made him grin. “You’re late for breakfast.” He combed her damp hair, regrouped it in a bunch and wound the band around it, three times for good measure. “You’ll need an excuse.” And he needed a return to the reality they were in, where being this way together was fantasy.
“Hmmm.”
He laughed and that made her lift her face. “I’m going to be very late for breakfast because I need a moment for my bones to solidify so I can take care of you,” she said.
Ah, no, that wasn’t happening. So many walls crashed down and lines rubbed out, but he needed that barrier to hold. He could love her, have her like this and stay in control but taking it any further was a suicide run. Part of him had known that last night.
“Next time,” he said with a quick kiss to punctuate the end of an argument not yet begun.
“I demand equal orgasm rights.”
Missed a trick that she wasn’t fucked into complete compliance. The idea of trying harder next time made him smile. God. Fuck. He still held he
r upright half-dressed and he was already thinking about next time. He was going to get them killed.
He softened his arms, made sure she was balanced and then stepped away, pretending a detachment he didn’t feel, his own body a riot of chemicals, a shaken test tube of the extreme elements of desire and need.
“We have to get out of here.” He went to the door and opened it an inch, blinking in the brightness. No regrets. He’d made her come apart in his arms and that was beauty and truth he didn’t need to hide from.
She ducked under his arm, her clothing back in place, turning to look up at him, a war going on in her eyes. If he kissed her again, they’d both lose. “We need to go.”
“That was—”
“Don’t—” Talking about it was more reality than he could deal with.
She put her hand over the place in his chest where his heart was trying to start a riot and nodded, then she pushed the door open and danced out into the sunlight. “Keep up,” she said, and started running.
He watched her go. Wild and free, and for that shining moment, entirely his.
Chapter Eighteen
Mind. Blown. She’d had sex with Zeke. Not the naked, sweaty, all out penis-in-vagina-sex Rory wanted to have with him, but a completely life-altering, orgasmic experience all the same. It was all she could think about. And it would be completely bizarre if it wasn’t. His big warm hands cupping her, stroking her, opening her up. The way he was gentle and rough and masterful and hesitant all in the right proportions. His clever mouth trailing over her skin and making it shimmer and then his refusal to take any comfort for himself.
She’d trusted him with her body and completely lost her head over him and now he was sitting across the table from her as cool as ice, about to explain to Cadence, who hadn’t wanted to let him in the cabin, why they should be bond mates.
Bastard.
Oh God, what was wrong with her? Cabin fever heated to a billion degrees. Zeke’s hands on her body in ways that were as thrilling as they were disturbing. Yet here he was calm and focused doing his job as if what they’d done together in the barn was nothing more than donuts and dancing in the dark.
The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game Book 3) Page 16