His hands roamed her body, plucked at her shirt. “What are you wearing?”
She wore hope and anticipation, belted by trust and daringly exposing her need to be loved by him. “Black leather corset, red suede mini, no underwear.” She flicked her tongue to his ear. “Come fuck me shoes.”
Another breath punched out of him, one hand going under her shirt, over her plain t-shirt bra, yanking it down to cup and mould her breast, the other tracing up the leg of her jeans, drawing her knee up so she was braced over him.
“How did I think I could live without you?” She felt his words said on sand and grit trickle through her abdomen, curling, cramping, making her scramble to slide her core on the hard ridge of him, bucking and breathing in gasps.
He sat, lips to her neck, stinging. Hands to the bottom of her shirt, lifting. He stripped her shirt, bra, defences. She was less his priest than his brainwashed devotee. When he sucked at her nipple and eased deft fingers through her zipper, past her underwear, inside her, she’d have turned sacrifice for him.
He flipped them, bouncing her on the bed, hovering over her, hands easing her jeans off her hips, down her legs, stopping to unzip her boots and pull them free with her socks, with her pants. He threw his head back and breathed deep, of her, of how her need for him smelled; not smoky, heady church incense, but worshipful all the same.
She’d felt withered by his turning away, but now she felt plump, moist, ripe to bursting. He stood and shed his own clothes and she stared at him as though it was the first time, as though she didn’t know his taste and smell, the places on his body that were sensitive to her tongue and touch, could make him tense and jerk and writhe; as though she hadn’t marked him with teeth and nails, with the salt of her tears and the juices of her body, staining him like he’d drawn indelibly on her.
He looked down at her. “I want all the colours of you.”
He could have colour charts and paint palettes, all the textures and patterns of the universe if he touched her.
He took a foot in his hand, thumb brushing back and forth over her toenails, his expression intense. “I want all the scars and freckles, the blemishes, the tones. I want to know it all.”
She gasped. This wasn’t a make-believe game, not sport. He was learning her new. “Plum.” She’d painted her toenails the night before.
He cupped her heel, his other hand smoothing up her calve. “Toes like bubbles in wine.” He leaned forward and licked her shin. “What colour do I taste?”
She propped up on her elbows to watch him. His own skin was a darker warmer tone than hers, he tanned golden where she burned pink. She said, “Pearl,” because he made her feel lustrous.
He nipped, then kissed her knee, shaping it with his hand. “What scars?”
None on that knee, but it was a slighter darker tone to her shin. “Oatmeal, no scars but on the other knee.” He shifted, nose to her other knee, making her toes point. “It’s coffee coloured, a crescent shape. I came off my bike.”
“Show me.”
She took his hand, traced his finger over the scar beside her knee bone. He opened his mouth over the place and played his tongue back and forth on the indentation and it was so oddly intimate it dragged a whimper from her. She reached for him, but he ducked her hand, kissed his way up her thigh to her hip. She twitched, wanted his attention to stray lower, not higher. She caught his grin between kisses.
“You taste like vanilla. You smell like green fields.”
“You’ll make me pass out if you keep this up.”
He laughed, an engine purr against her belly, framed by his hands, his weight between her legs. He dipped his tongue into her belly button. “Warm honey,” then nuzzled her ribcage, “Lemon curd.” His hands climbed, covered her breasts, thumbs circling. She blinked hard, she wanted to drift, succumbed to the flush of heated feelings goose-bumping her senses, liquefying her spine, but she needed to watch him as badly as she needed to breath.
“What colour are your nipples?”
His question made her eyes flutter closed. If her skin was pearl, then her nipples were caramel, but under his lips warming to pink, to cherry. He knew what he was doing to her, he didn’t expect a coherent answer. But then he pinched, and she moaned, so he did want her colours charted—impossible man, so she told him in a rush of jumbled words as he licked and sucked and soothed.
He kissed each freckle she directed him to across her chest and shoulders, saying raisin or chocolate or peanut butter. She told him her cheekbones were roses, and her jaw buff, her eyelids peach with black ink lashes. She led him to tongue the circular chickenpox scar near her brow and draw the strands of her cinnamon hair across his lips.
He wasn’t unaffected by this. He ground against the bed, almost but never quite touching her core, never quite being where she wanted him most.
A finger to her bottom lip, he strummed it, gently. “These feel like wet silk, they taste sweet like oblivion. What colour are they?”
They were taupe, or beige, or passion, or in her imagination, a wild, wanton red she could never wear well. She arched her back, tried to bare down on him, but he stopped her with a hand to her hip and a fleeting kiss that he stole back before she could take ownership of it.
“What colour are your lips, Georgia?”
Colours she’d never known existed. The colour of life, real and fantasy; the colour of joy, swollen and plush. “Desire.”
He groaned and claimed them, locking on, flexing his hips under her hands, against her centre, courting entrance, tempting more, but he wasn’t finished with the lesson. He dragged free, panting heat on her skin, trailing moisture down her body to the places he’d skipped.
Fingers to the insides of her thighs, the skin so much softer, paler there, like fine cotton. He spread her legs and she trembled. His touch, the exposed position, she felt both vulnerable and naughty. It made no difference that he couldn’t see her, because he looked at her with such possessive intent, touched her with such dirty reverence, and spoke to her of all the things she longed to feel and be for him, for herself, for forever.
He sucked on her inner thigh, wide open mouth, tongue in play, teeth not far away, the muscles on his back flexing and shifting as he twisted to reach her, and she cried out, pulling at his hair, clutching at her own stomach, a ridiculous attempt to quell the riot of sensation.
When he traced a finger at her entrance she stilled, eyes pinned, breath stalled. With thumb and forefinger he opened her. “Tell me what colours you are here.”
Her breath was a sharp breeze cresting his hair as he moved to taste her. She lost all vocabulary as he used his tongue along, across, around, flicking, dipping, plunging inside. He made her all the colours in the wheel, all the hues of light and dark, all the intensities and shades of the spectrum. He saw only black, but lit up all the colours in her.
She was no colour without him.
A swipe over her clit that made her jerk. He murmured, voice hushed and heavy, crushed like velvet. “This is summer, this is rain.” He dipped again, spoke in a whisper. “Volcano rims, Saturn’s rings and drops of Jupiter.” She would tremble apart. She would tear his hair from his scalp. He had lost his voice, but not his ability to make her drunk on the lyrics of him.
Another swipe. “Flowers.” Another. “Sunshine.” Another. “Salt.” Another. “You taste like lust.”
She shook and shook and couldn’t stop the thunder and lightning inside her, the building storm. “Damon, please!”
He rose up over her, eased swift inside, eyes closed, torso arched, head thrown back. He said the word, “Earthquake,” as he claimed her, rocked her, chased the storm till it broke and split the atmosphere, with a boom.
31: Seen
Damon couldn’t sleep. He shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t have stayed. He lay beside Georgia and tried to keep from moving, waking her, tried to make this moment with her in his arms last for as long as possible. Because it had to be the last time he held her like this.
He should’ve known how she felt about Hamish too, not just the fact of him writing to her shaking her, making her rethink her marriage and her time with him. That was a different kind of avoidance; that was the dark fire of jealousy, the rising spectre of the ex. He was not immune to it; not stronger than it, and it was made worse because they’d changed hats. Now Hamish’s was white and his was distinctly charred.
Maybe he should let her go back to him.
It would be light now. Georgia slept still, curled against his arm, her breathing a series of soft sighs. He’d exhausted himself running from his love for her and now learning her anew in a reunion that should never have been needed and never should’ve happened. He was still a coward, and so much worse a one for how he’d taken her heart and how he’d leave it.
He’d had words while he explored her, like songs, like poetry in his head while he held the planes of her body, the dips and swells of her flesh, silky on his tongue, fragrant on his lips. And he couldn’t shut them up, stuff them back inside. But the cost of them was high. Each one was a staple of his heart to hers, a wound he’d leave behind, because no matter how much he loved her, how much she sang to him, he still needed to let her go. It would be like losing another of his senses, but he couldn’t take her where he was going, a private hell of adjustment, of silence and rage.
The kind of hell she’d already walked through.
Rage is what turned him from her, from the rest of them, and he didn’t have it under control. It burned in him. He was like Georgia’s Hamish in that. Too ready to blame, to lash out, incapable of stopping it happening. He felt that way now, lying in this comfort, his gut a watched pot of boiling muck ready to spill and scald. It would only get worse, and by the time he adjusted, worked out how to live as a man with different limitations, he’d have ruined what they had together, ruined her worse.
He breathed her in. The night had been an act of insane selfishness. He should’ve let Jamie steer him away, better, let Taylor take him home, rather than walk him to Georgia’s door.
He felt the swell of Georgia’s ribs, the languid heaviness of her limbs and tried to memorise those parts of her he’d be without. All her colours, all her sounds. Georgia forever on his mind. When she’d stirred, clutching at him, nuzzling him as she woke, he found the strength to do what he needed to do to give her back her freedom.
He cleared his throat; he could get decent tone and control for those first few hours of the day. “Hello, beautiful.”
Her lips to his. Her mouth so warm, so effortlessly capable of arousing him. He kissed away the morning taste of her, till she was pure addiction sprawled across his chest, till there was no sleep left in her and he felt energy tweak in her limbs.
She put a finger to his cheek, to his dimple. “I am going to mess you up.”
He smiled. “You don’t think you might have already done that.” He was messed up about a lot of things, but utterly scrambled about her.
“You’re so good at making sex about me, but not this morning.”
He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“When we’re together like this, it’s always you pleasing me. You never ask anything of me for you.”
He trailed a hand from her back to her neck, around its column to her cheek. “Is that what you think?” He felt her nod. “You’ve got that so wrong.” He brought her face closer for a kiss and got lost in it. When she broke it he said, “I ask everything of you and you give it without question.” Emotion was a steel bar across his chest, making it hard to breath. “You make me selfish for need of you.” She was quiet, still and it unsettled him instantly. “God, baby, talk to me.”
“You really think that?”
“I know it.”
“You don’t have to impress me, you’ve got me. I lusted after your voice, but you had me the moment you used it to show me who you are. I’ve already forgiven you all the things you’ve done to push me away and all the things you’ll do in the future.”
A wounded sound poured from him. He tightened his arms on her. She was a witch with extra sensory vision. She could see into his black soul, into his panicked psyche.
She put her fingertips to his throat, her breath on his face. “Now who’s speechless?”
They came together with all the fire and fury of a star being made. She was the elemental one, the atom of light. She’d learned his body and knew its secrets, knew to keep her hands on him, move them in a pattern that soothed, that to touch him suddenly outside that anticipated flow could surprise, madden, delight. She fused those approaches with hands that stroked then stopped to change position; a sneak attack, to squeeze or pinch; lips that dragged, then wet, then stung. She was everywhere and nowhere, absence and pressure, gasp and twist and compressed desire so intense he was flattened by it, unable to do anything but receive her hands, her mouth, the sucking slide of her heat, the ache to have, have more, have all.
He gave up trying to predict her movements; gave over to the pulse of his blood, the gravity of her, drawing him into a place where his thoughts dissolved like scattered space dust, and only his body remained, a housing for energy so concentrated, so brilliant he was unbalanced, unearthed and fused to her.
She used her mouth, her tongue, her excited breath to stun him, take him higher, make his back arch off the bed. He fisted her hair, the sheet, to try and ground himself, prolong the moment.
He didn’t want to finish in her mouth, but she wasn’t giving him a choice. “Come with me.”
Here he could have what he couldn’t have in life. He curled off the bed, his abs bunching, his legs shaking, and caught her under the arms, raised her over him. She would be wide-eyed and wild, her hair all over the place, her lips red and plumped up. There was a sheen of moisture on her skin and she tasted salty, tangy from her feast on him. She pressed him down and centred over him, her heat, her juices shockingly beautiful, loosening his tongue.
“Slide hard, baby. Take us there. Show me the sun.”
She picked a new pattern, a new rhythm, this one punctuated by rolling hips and clutching thighs, her hands on his chest, her song a string of verbal tics and moans, high pitched hitches and low exhales.
She raked her short nails down his sides and dripped sweat on his stomach. “I hate you for shutting me out.” Her voice shook and her body trembled.
He took her hands and dragged her torso to his, grunting as the hot silk of her covered him, easing inside her, mouths open on each other’s, gone deaf, gone insensible from the need to thrust, knowing only the crash of their energies, the force of their joining until the cloud burst, the white blasts and the star was made.
And he knew what he needed to do.
They washed each other in her tiny shower, an excuse to stand close, to keep touching, and he told her about London, about trillions of frequent flyer points he’d never be able to use up, about wanting her to have the chance to talk face to face with Hamish. The idea confused her.
“Why would you do that, and I don’t mean the airfare. Why would you want me to see him again?”
“Because you need to. I know you’ve talked.”
She put wet hands over his ears. “You weren’t supposed to know that.”
“You wanted to keep it from me.”
She shut the water off and dumped a towel on his head. “You had enough going on. I didn’t want you to think I was secretly fixating on my ex-husband.”
He scrubbed the water from his hair, passed the towel over his face. “Are you?”
She bit him. Not softly. Teeth to his bicep. He’d heard enough of her private conversations to know it was more tangled than that. To know it was a mass of contradictions and feel
ings, all of which he had no business in, least of all now.
“I don’t know what to think about Hamish. I don’t know if I can believe what he says. He sounds the same but what he’s saying is different.”
“Which is why I think you should see him.”
“You are the strangest man.”
“You’re just working this out now?”
“I don’t get why you’d do this.”
He reached out, hand to her shoulder, slid it around her waist and brought her back against his front. He breathed deep of her shower freshness, her green tea shampoo, her freesia sweetness and she leaned into him with a sigh. “I want you to be happy. I want you to be strong and free and not carrying around past regrets.”
“You sound like Carmella.”
He sounded like a desperate man who knew Georgia would have reason to take his words and all his actions as false. He turned her head to kiss her. He shouldn’t have but his greed knew no end.
When she broke away with a happy chuckle and a shove, it galvanised him, “Let me get you an airfare.”
She came back to his side, her lips to his neck. “Only if you have enough points for both of us.”
Georgia phoned Hamish. Damon could hear the suspicious delight in her voice and held his breath, there was always a chance Hamish didn’t want this. Hamish did.
Damon made the booking. First available and got lucky. A flight the next morning. They spent that night at his place. Taylor made herself scarce. Georgia made herself impossible to resist. She wasn’t finished assaulting his senses, eroding his will. She insisted on undressing him, pushing his hands away, stopping him from helping. She had him naked and desperate for her, so hard it hurt, before she let him touch her, strip her, slide against her.
“God, your skin.” It made his feel electric, snap with it, fizz with it. He put his nose in her hair and she sighed her joy. He could smell her excitement, feel it ripple on her. Her nonsense articulations were connected to his sympathetic nervous system. They spoke to his arousal, drawing it out, urging it on. But it would be too quick if he didn’t slow them down and he wanted this to take all night, take all time, all motion and make a study of it, preserved for his repeated replay.
Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) Page 30