Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  “Georgia?”

  “I was looking for a spare toothbrush for you.” She was looking at the swell of his thighs. Amazing how your brain could function even when the rest of you was in stasis, suspended between I want, and I should run out and get groceries.

  “Ah-hah.”

  He put a hand to the doorjamb and a cavalcade of muscles in his side and arm shifted, making a bizarrely connected bunch of muscles in her core contract. She turned back to the drawer and rattled her hand around in it. The toothbrush was right on top, but she needed an excuse not to look at him because if she looked at him she was going to need surgery to reconstruct the bones in her legs.

  “Georgia.”

  She was Lot’s wife times a million. She turned back to him when she knew she shouldn’t. She stared. She was going to turn into a whole salt mine. “You’re, um.”

  His other hand went out to clasp the other side of the doorway. He had two ladders of muscle ripping up his abdomen and a ridge of them over each hipbone. She wanted to touch them, trace them to where they disappeared into his briefs. He was not going to need help becoming erect. He was kidding about simply sleeping.

  And he could probably make her orgasm if he said a complete sentence.

  “What?” He let go the door and brushed a hand idly through his hair then over his chest, down his body to his hip, before dropping it to his side.

  She wet her lips. If he made that gesture again, a single phrase could do it.

  “Come to bed.”

  “Oh God.”

  He laughed, which meant she’d said that aloud. He’d be in hysterics if he could see her death grip on the sink.

  “I’m not going to touch you unless you want me to.”

  She did want him to, so badly her mouth was dry. But stirring ungently under the swelling current of desire was a tidal wave of anger. She deserved the chance to have good sex. She was sick of feeling ashamed for wanting it and frightened she was no good at it.

  She should’ve cured herself of this idiot reluctance with Sebastian when she’d had the chance. He’d been perfectly willing, a perfectly decent my marriage is all but over choice. But she’d chickened out. Left him with a hotel bill, a pay TV movie and room service—twice.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “What does it matter?” Oh snap.

  Damon’s eyebrows shot up at her shitty tone. “I’m only wondering if you’re still in the dress. If I’m a little underdressed?”

  She let go of the sink and put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, but come out of the bathroom and talk to me.”

  “I’m wearing a t-shirt.” She flicked it over her head and took her bra off, shrugging the shirt back on. “I’m on birth control.” For two years now for absolutely no good reason.

  “Ah, okay.” He did the thing with his hair again. The muscles under his arm flaring. They were like cool, clean water to a woman dying of thirst. She needed to lick them.

  “I don’t have any diseases.”

  “Georgia.” He folded his arms, his tone low with concern.

  “I don’t want to use a condom.”

  He coughed. She’d shocked him. “Yeah, I do prefer not to sleep in one when at all possible.” He slathered stress on the word sleep and sarcasm all the over the rest of the sentence.

  “I’m being serious.”

  Head cocked, brows raised. “I’m not entirely sure what about.”

  Anger was a better fuel to burn reticence with than a lack of underwire. “Is there any reason why we can’t do it bare?”

  “None, but slow down.”

  “I’ve been slow forever.”

  “You don’t seem to want to come out of the bathroom.”

  “I want to fuck you.”

  His chin jerked up. “I’m delighted, but confused.”

  He shook his head and that errant lock of hair fell across his forehead. She wanted to push her fingers through it. She needed him to step up here. She didn’t know how to take the lead and she didn’t want such a depth of consideration from him. “It’s what you’re here for.”

  His hands came up—stop sign. “Whoa.” His tone flat and level.

  “I need you to stop being so gallant and fuck me.”

  “Okay, I hear you.” He sighed. But he wore his uncertainty like taxi fare home and it jangled like a pocketful of coin in her head.

  “I’m freaking out.”

  “I’ve got that.” He took one step towards her and she was in his arms, pressed against his length. “I’ve got you. Breathe.” There wasn’t enough air in the world to fill her lungs. “Listen to my voice.”

  She could do that. She nodded against his chest.

  “It’s you and me. No one else. Whatever happened before, that’s not going to happen now. Let it go. Be with me. You know I want you. I’ll take care of you. We’ll take care of each other. I’d carry you out of here but our luck right now we’d end up in the kitchen or I’d give you concussion on the doorframe.”

  He said that last bit while he backed them out of the bathroom. She didn’t let go of him, just said the word, “Left,” to orient him.

  He missed the bedroom doorway, thudding into the hallway wall. He spun her, backed her up against it and pressed in on her like he had before she got the front door open. This time she was facing him and he wasn’t wearing all those clothes. This time he was kissing her, breaking off to tell her how they’d take their time, how he had nowhere else he wanted to be, no one else he wanted to make love to, sleep next to, wake up with.

  If he wasn’t holding her up, she’d have been a panting puddle at his feet. She had both hands in his hair. She was not letting him go, not letting him think long enough to figure out what a bad idea doing it with the crazy woman was. She was barely letting him get more than a few words at a time out and yet she clung to them too, clung to his beautiful voice and the stories he told to make her believe this would turn out all right.

  When there was no bone left in her legs for the surgeons to reconstruct, he did lift her. His shoulder to her stomach giving her the perfect view of that wonderful backside she dare not touch. Did he have any idea how well constructed he was, how built for sex? How entirely dazzled she was?

  He got them through the bedroom door telling her how much he wanted to be with her, that he was going to keep her in bed all the next day. When his shins hit the bed, he lowered her to the mattress and stood over her, his eyes down on her. Did he have any idea how much she wished he could see her? Because when he looked at her like that he made her feel beautiful.

  Her turn to speak. “I can’t stop staring at you.”

  “Probably good I can’t see that.” Full force dimple. “Go right to my head.”

  Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was surprised not to see it making her skin jump. She touched his leg tentatively with her toe, flattened her foot on his thigh and he took it in his hands.

  “You have great legs.” He’d had his hands up and down them as he’d carried her. He pressed his thumbs into her instep. “Tiny feet, good fit for my hands.”

  Sore feet from the heels. His touch hurt and she flinched. He stopped immediately, held still. Showing her how this was going to be. “Nothing you don’t like.” She brought her other foot to his other thigh, she could show him too, and he moved his thumbs again, this time long strokes from heel to the base of her big toe. “Everything slow from here; everything easy.” Hands to the other foot, thumbs probing, stroking. “You can stop me anytime.”

  “I don’t want you to stop.”

  “We don’t have to hurry.”

  But it was late, after 2am. “You don’t have to treat me differently to anyone else.”

  He put a hand to the inside of her ankle then ran his palm up her calf to her knee. She sucked in a breath as he moved it down along her inside thigh, stopping at the elastic edge of her underwear. “There is no one else. Only you.” His hands moved to her feet, her ca
lves. “For a long time there’s been no one I cared enough about to want to be with for more than one night. I’m treating you differently, because you are different and this is not one night.”

  “I don’t want you to—”

  “What, make you feel special? Make you happy? Just try and stop me.” The words pity me shrivelled up on her tongue, got deleted from her mental dictionary. “Besides you make me feel happy, so it’s only fair to return the favour.”

  “I do?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. She was such a dummy, didn’t know when to shut up.

  He laughed, then did something really alarming. He went down to his knees on the rug. She sat up so quickly she surprised him, her feet stomping the floor either side of his hips, her thighs skimming his shoulders, her stomach brushing his head.

  He sat on his heels. “Okay.” He smiled. “I’m going too fast.”

  It shouldn’t have been too fast but it was. She’d been calm, ready, for all of fifteen minutes. “I’m sorry. I’m no good at this.”

  He moved, put his hands to her shoulders and pushed her back, climbing up her body, dragging her further up the bed till they were both lying sideways across it and she was cradled in the spoon of his bent knees, her back against his front.

  Being shifted like that was a shock, more so than when he’d rolled her or picked her up; it punched out of her in a squeal. His physicality was a wonderful thing; he was strong, he could be fast, he could move around her, with her, with such ease. That’s not something Hamish had ever done.

  Damon kept talking. Telling her he loved her hair, particularly the little random curls she could never keep off the back of her neck, the ones that annoyed her for their failure to be tamed in place by pins or spray.

  He spoke against her neck, a hand caressing her arm, but was otherwise still, just being there with her, teaching her to trust him.

  “Your skin is like nothing else I know. Not velvet, not silk, not satin. I thought the freesias were in your soap, from a bottle, but that smell is in your skin. It’s wild and sweet.” He kissed the back of her neck. “It excites me.”

  She turned to face him, pushing him over onto his back, coming up on her elbow to study him up close. He had his eyes closed, the dimple in his cheek packed away, his far arm bent at the elbow, palm under his head. His posture was relaxed but there was a tension in his body, a hum he couldn’t silence.

  She felt absolutely unanchored, swaying between need and want, and run and hide, and all points in the continuum of confused desire. “You’re really okay just sleeping?”

  He scrunched his face. “Yep.”

  No waiver in his voice, a quick commitment to the one short word, but he had to know she’d seen the please don’t make me look. She mashed her lips together hard to stop unexpected laughter, but he must’ve heard it in her breathing, his dimple made a showing, a brow lifting lazily.

  She leaned closer and breathed his heat. “I don’t feel sleepy.”

  His eyes opened. The hand at her back came up to play with her hair. “What do you feel?”

  Terrified: of disappointing him, of ruining this for herself. “Comfortable.”

  It was opposite of a safe word. It was a green light, a waved flag, the crack of a starter’s gun.

  His fist closed and he pulled on her hair, but let go immediately, his palm cupping her skull. “Then let me give you something to go with that.”

  “What?”

  “Everything.”

  He pulled her across his body and his tension vibrated in her. He brought her face close to his and his kiss was firm—stamping his intentions. He was going to take comfort and make a mess of it, bend it all out of style, set it on edge and annoy it into screaming awareness.

  The readiness in his body shaped the urgency in hers. The press of his arms, the path of his lips loosened her last grip on reluctance and put a new willingness in her hands.

  She touched him with wonder and necessity. His face, his shoulders, the heat of his chest. Her fingers found ripples in his muscles, curves and ridges to seek with her hands and learn with her lips.

  He captured her shoulders, stopped her moving. “I want the luxury of all of your skin on all of mine.”

  She wanted it too, the obscene wealth of it. He released her and she sat, straddling his thighs. He followed her upright, tugging at the bottom of her shirt. They lifted it off together and then his hands were on her, safe and dangerous, insistent and gentle.

  “Ah Georgia, you’re beautiful. I need your skin under my hands. I want to breathe it, lick it, fill my senses with you.” He nuzzled her neck, his palms sliding over her shoulders, down her back, under the elastic of her underpants and over the rump of her backside. “These have to go.”

  “Yours too.” Amazing that came out at a normal volume; it sounded like trumpet in her head.

  He groaned. “Oh God, yes.” His voice had fallen into thick glue, heavy in his throat, sticking on his tongue. He released her. A few seconds apart and then no more barriers.

  She stood, ditched her underwear. She watched him do the same, breathing open-mouthed, loud in her own ears, eyes so bugged out it was a wonder she could blink over them.

  Logic told her the two of them would fit together; one to encase and absorb; one to seek and define, but watching him pull the cover off the bed, it was impossible to believe that could hold true, impossible not to need, with a kind of unhinged sanity, being claimed by the weight and length of him.

  He stood by the bed. “I want you something fierce, but you need to choose.” He extended an arm, reaching for her, his expression intense. “Where do you want to be?”

  Above, below, beside, right side up, upside down. She was already all points of the compass, spinning wildly. “Everywhere.”

  He beckoned and she came into his arms, the shock of skin on skin knocking a rasping grunt out of her, turning her hands to claws on his shoulders, and she knew where she wanted to be first—beneath.

  Beneath him she’d feel his power, give hers over for a time. Beneath him, watching him, in the rhythm of him, her body could not for a panicked moment mistake him for Hamish and not for an eternity measured by his kisses want things any other way.

  Time became the urge of his knee between hers, the stroke of his fingers on and around and inside. She lost her breath in the seconds his lips touched neck, nipple, unknown nerve ends that shot sensation from scalp to toe tip. Ages passed in the flicker of his tongue, down, down, from mouth to mouth, where he licked up into her making her buck and squirm and fight to ride this wrecking he was bringing.

  He made her insensible to the bed, to the room, the flat, the street, the world. He made her see nothing and exalt in it, because she felt everything: every bone shake, every flinch of pleasure, every laboured gasp and moan wrenched from her gut in a fit of feeling that emptied her head of thought and filled it with reaction.

  Her mouth on his skin. Her lips sucking his pulse points. Her hands stripping him of the coordination to ease inside her slowly, play the ebb and flow of them easily, creating instead a racetrack: speed and precision, thrust and fine concentration, a finish too far, too close, too achingly triumphant.

  Over that line they were nothing but carcasses for the time it took for the world to come back into focus, for Georgia’s eyes to see again, for Damon to withdraw and crash beside her, haul her ruined body across his and hold their hearts together in the crisis of coming down.

  She stirred when she heard his voice, so greased with wonder and fatigue it was a new melody for post-coital bliss. “I swear that made me see colour. Bright stripes of it, whole rainbow arcs of it.” He kissed her slow and deep, his hands heavy on her hips. “I’m never going to have enough of that. I want it to have been the same for you.”

  He wanted her to talk and her brain was half starved for rational thought, ricocheting between various wavelengths of emotion, what came out of her mouth was, “That was—um—wet.” Hamish had often not been able to ejaculate.
r />   Damon tensed. “Yeah. You’ve—”

  That wasn’t her first orgasm, but it broke the sound barrier of anything she’d experienced before. “He often didn’t—um.”

  “Okay, but what about you?”

  She lifted her head from his shoulder to watch his face, eyes open and brows crooked down, concern but no embarrassment. She took a steadying breath. “When Hamish was still interested in sex he was good to me, but I’ve not…it wasn’t…oh God.” She buried her face in his neck. It made absolutely no difference, even after what they’d just done, that he couldn’t see how flushed with discomfort she was; she burned with it.

  He gave her hair a tug, but his voice was still that sliding, slippery ease. “Tell me what you felt.”

  She nibbled on his earlobe. A delaying tactic; a delightful distraction. Maybe he’d let this pass.

  He quirked his neck, half pulling away from her teeth, but his arm tightened around her to hold her in place. “Georgia.”

  He’d written a new musical arrangement for her understanding of sex. He’d drummed a score on her body and a put a riff in her heart that changed her definition of sound. His lovemaking was an earworm to beat all other songs that could hook you. She was incapable of withstanding a craving for more and more of the tune they made together. She traced her nose over the circular edge of his ear, breathed him in.

  She told him what she felt.

  “Sonic boom.”

  17: Technicolour

  Damon could smell bergamot and vanilla. The candles Georgia lit while she was avoiding the whole we’re about to have sex thing, right before she disappeared into the bathroom and he’d thought about getting dressed, leaving her in peace and taking his frustration home. Damn glad he hadn’t.

  It had to be late morning, judging by his hunger, but there was no light in the room. He’d get up and go for his watch but he might wake her and he could think of better ways of doing that than incidentally. She owed him eggs, or any kind of caress she cared to call eggs, bacon, toast. He’d accept them all, stuff his face with them and no matter how much she served up, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy his hunger for her.