by Caro Carson
He obeyed the pressure of her hand, rolling onto her gently, only half his body covering half of hers—and he just about lost all of his mind. Her skin against his skin short-circuited his brain. It was the extreme version of the feeling he’d had when he’d first thought of her this morning, that electric awareness, every cell of his body seeking her, wanting her.
Here she was. She fit against him, she was made for him—that grunt of desire came from him. That convulsive thrust was his.
She made a sound, too—desire, or fear? Her hand stayed on his shoulder, but he felt its fine tremor. Lust, or nervousness?
He opened his eyes, desperate for some sense of control, and fell into the silver-gray of hers, for she’d been studying his face. She bit her lip—sexy or second-guessing herself?
Rules of engagement. That was how to maintain sanity. The rules of engagement had to be decided ahead of time, because during combat, decision-making was at the most rudimentary level: go or no-go. Soldiers had to know in advance which actions could trigger a battle, which responses were acceptable. Aiden needed to know the rules of engagement now, because he was being overwhelmed by an onslaught of sensation. He didn’t want to lose track of what was too fast for India, what would be too far for her. Go or no-go?
The condom packet was beside her on the mattress. The ends of her long hair, spilling off the pillow, nearly touched it. She has to reach for it. If she really wants this, she will tear that packet open. She has to reach for it herself.
That was it.
With the decision made, he could lose himself in the pleasure of the moment and stop second-guessing every bite of her lip or tremor of her hand. He lifted himself on one forearm, stroked his other hand up her body more firmly, watching her eyes as he did. She closed them—shy. But then she pushed against him luxuriously, catlike under his caress—bold.
They would go as far as she wanted to go. They wouldn’t go as far as he wanted to go, not unless she grabbed that foil packet herself.
He looked his fill of her breasts now, scooped his hand around the rounded shape of one, bent his head to enjoy the impossible softness of the other with his mouth. At the touch of his tongue, she sucked in a breath and pushed at his head a bit—he’d hurt her? She giggled, a lovely sound. He was charmed by the shyness, but he was cheering for the boldness.
Please, India—trigger those rules of engagement.
Chapter Seven
Aiden’s warm brown gaze captured hers as they looked at one another over the curve of her breast. “Ticklish?”
“I’m not.” But India was biting her lip and laughing because it had tickled. “At least I was never ticklish there before, not with—” She stumbled. “W-with anyone else.”
He raised an eyebrow at her stutter, and she blushed. Again.
I’m thirty-two. He’s not expecting a virgin. Still, she was embarrassed to have even mentioned previous partners.
Aiden licked her like she was a piece of candy, with a firm stroke of his tongue. “Does that tickle?” he murmured against her skin.
“Not as much.”
He looked back up to her and smiled. That sight alone stoked the pressure that was building, the pleasurable pressure that was rapidly building to a point where it would become pain without a release. By the time they got around to actual intercourse, she was going to be ready to explode at the first stroke.
She felt like a virgin in some ways. She’d never quite done it like this before, never had so much pleasure building up. Aiden was so into touching her. Everywhere. Not just going for the good parts, as what’s-his-face had announced he was doing, as if that had been some kind of genius game plan.
India had her fingertips resting lightly on Aiden’s head. He turned away from her breast and kissed the inside of her wrist. She shivered with pleasure.
He moved up the mattress a bit, teasing her with a smile. “Your wrist is ticklish?”
She shook her head, rustling the pillowcase. “No, it’s just that you’re finding parts of me that no one’s ever... That I didn’t know were so...happy to be touched.”
Something flashed in his eyes, an emotion a little darker than they’d shared so far. Her heart pounded.
“Beautiful India,” he said, his tone not quite as light as before, “then I’m sorry to tell you you’ve been sleeping with idiots.”
That startled a laugh out of her. No, that’s not it. I’m just not very good at this. The words were on the tip of her tongue, an automatic excuse for lackluster sex, but Aiden had closed the inches between them to kiss her lips again, then her cheek, a slow descent down her throat, her collarbone, a lick on her shoulder. Her shoulder. She loved it, all of it.
“Maybe you need something that won’t tickle.” Aiden’s jaw was slightly rough with the earliest stubble of a beard—he probably hadn’t shaved on this first morning of his vacation. Quite deliberately, he ran his jaw a short way across her chest. It left behind a little burning wake, a sensation only a man could give a woman. As that sensation faded, he slid a little lower, keeping his eyes on her face, and did it again, a gentle abrasion down the curve of one breast this time. She held her breath as he lightly rasped over the peak, but before the sensation could fade, he closed his mouth around her, his tongue extraordinarily cool and soothing in contrast.
She gasped and sucked in her stomach, a contraction that made her bring her knees a little closer to her chest, as if her whole body wanted to curl up around this one source of pleasure. Her fingertips had been resting lightly on his hair; now her whole hand cupped the back of his head fiercely.
He rested his forehead on her chest and made a sound like he had to catch his breath, too. “India...”
Do you see what we have here? That was the rest of the sentence that came after her name. She knew it.
This, this was what she’d been missing. This piece of the puzzle had been missing from her life, and because she hadn’t known how it could feel, she hadn’t minded the predictable Saturday nights. She’d been content with a man who’d been able to leave her bed forever at the first sign that his mother might not approve of her. She hadn’t understood the teal bra and a man’s willingness to risk a routine that benefited him. She’d let those relationships go. She hadn’t fought for any of them, because none of them had had this. This spark. This joy.
Aiden placed soft kisses down her body, a kiss on each rib, warm breath on her stomach, as he slid lower still on the mattress. She reached for him, stroked his hair with two hands as she discovered her left hipbone was sensitive to a man’s mouth, her right knee to his trailing fingertips.
It felt wonderful, this new source of joy. This was sex, good sex with a giving partner. How had she lived without this for so long? I’m thirty-two years old... She felt a quick sting of self-pity: why couldn’t she have had this in her life before now?
With his hands, Aiden brought her back to the moment as he touched her with care, the most intimate exploration yet. Intimacy. Connection. She’d found it here, paradise in bed with Aiden Nord.
Finally. She’d found it now because she was with him.
Then Aiden bent his head and she felt the strong stroke of his tongue. She arched her back at the sensation, so much pleasure from her lover—finally, everything was right. She was in the right place at the right time with the right man. Finally. When she squeezed her eyes shut, tears ran down the sides of her face to wet her hair. She didn’t care; let them fall.
He shifted again, a slight lifting of his mouth, but she didn’t feel him breathe. She didn’t feel him move at all for a long moment. When her eyes fluttered open, he rolled away from her and laid on his back.
“Everything’s okay, India.”
“It is?” She didn’t know what he was talking about.
“It really is. Just give me a moment.”
Was she not supposed to touch him for a moment?
That couldn’t be right. She ate up the sight of him, the way the muscles of his arm moved as he laid his forearm over his eyes, every motion by this man a thing of strength and beauty. She rolled toward him, wanting to touch him, to explore him, but when she slid her hand down his stomach, he caught it with his own.
“You don’t have to do that. We’ll go out to dinner. I’d like to take you out to dinner tonight, okay? Really. I just need a minute.” He drew one knee up, and she had the intuition that he was trying to master his breathing.
“Give you a minute to do what?” she asked, but suddenly, she knew. “A minute to cool off? Don’t you dare. You can’t—”
Neither one of them had climaxed. Nobody was satisfied. He couldn’t just stop everything now.
But he could, of course. He wasn’t obliged to have sex with her.
She laid on her back and stared at the ceiling. Her heart hurt. Every single beat hurt. Something had happened; she’d done something wrong again. Why was sex always so hard?
She might have been content to let another man give her a pat on the shoulder and leave the bed when he’d decided he’d had enough of trying with her, but not this time. This had been so different. Aiden had been so different. This time, she would ask.
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Am I a bad kisser?”
He only laughed, a short sound of disbelief.
She wasn’t joking. “Am I... Do I respond...funny? In a funny way? Am I odd?” She kept her gaze on the ceiling, her blush burning her cheeks more painfully than anything his rough razor stubble could do. She could feel him looking at her, but she could not look at him. These were the hardest questions she’d ever asked in her life.
“India...don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying.”
Oh, God. She was crying. It just didn’t feel like it because there were no gut-wrenching sobs, but tears were sliding from the corners of her eyes to the pillow. It irritated her. More than that—it angered her.
She sat up and turned toward Aiden, dashing the unwanted tears away as she tucked her legs under herself to kneel beside him. She sat on her feet, a yoga pose, or that of a geisha girl. Which was more fitting? Frustration and embarrassment and anger warred within her. She’d had a taste of something that she now wanted desperately. She’d been missing out all these years. She’d had something; she couldn’t go back to nothing.
“If someone doesn’t tell me what I’m doing wrong in bed, I may go crazy. You’re it, Aiden. I’ll never see you again, so you’re the one who can do me this favor. Just tell me, please. Why did you stop?”
He took his forearm off his eyes. “Didn’t you need to stop?”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve never wanted anything more than to keep feeling what you were making me feel.”
“You were feeling sad.”
She shook her head in quick denial. “What made you think that?”
“India, you were crying. You said something about another guy, I said he was an idiot, and a minute later, you were crying. I don’t mind being the rebound guy, but I won’t make love to a woman while she’s literally crying over a breakup with another man.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s enough.”
He was looking at her like she’d lost her mind. She was looking at him like—like he was the best man she’d ever looked at. He’d stopped in the middle of sex because he’d thought she was unhappy. He had standards, this man did. Empathy, an innate kindness. He knew how to worry about someone else before himself.
She had to explain fast, because he was worried about something he didn’t have to worry about. “I wasn’t thinking about anyone but you. How could I? You’re so...” She could never fill in that blank quickly, so she kept going. “The last idiot was never—Jeez, I can’t even think of his name right this second, that jerk. If I was crying, those were tears of gratitude, because I was enjoying the best sex of my life. The best. I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that finally, finally, I found a man who knows how to touch me. This felt so...essential.”
Their eyes were locked on each other. Silence stretched between them.
“Tears of gratitude?” he finally asked, and he raised one eyebrow skeptically.
She bit her lip. “Too melodramatic? But yes. It’s so amazing with you, I was so happy to be with you...” She gave up. “Tears of joy, then?”
Aiden began to smile, that devastatingly appealing quirk at the corner of his mouth. “The best sex of your life, huh?”
She blinked at the change in attitude. “Well...it would have been. We were definitely on the way to a grand finale, but you had to go and turn all gentlemanly on me and get concerned about me and decide to stop.” She gritted out the word stop.
“I apologize for interrupting the best sex of your life.” His hand settled just above her knee so naturally, it was possible he wasn’t even aware he’d reached out to touch her. “How long has it been since the last sex of your life?”
She shook her head again. “I thought you didn’t approve of kissing and telling.”
“Yes, but you already kissed and told me enough to make me wonder.”
“Months. He just stopped being interested, but I didn’t know why.”
“You didn’t ask?”
The truth was so clear in hindsight. “I didn’t care.”
He squeezed her thigh.
“It was never...” She gestured around them, at the tumbled sheets, the crooked pillows. “It was never like this. But it turns out he didn’t stop. He’s been having sex with someone else.”
Aiden winced. “When did you find that out?”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
He rolled his eyes. “C’mon, India. When?”
“Day before yesterday.”
He didn’t wince again, but India knew that sounded awful. Because her ex was awful, this wonderful morning now sounded awful.
“That has nothing to do with this. I’m telling you, I was crying tears of joy just now. Because I loved everything you were doing, damn it. Now I’m really ticked off, because I did not want to waste a minute of something great by discussing something that was not. A whole wasted year of not this.”
She was tied up in knots now. Not only was she sitting on her feet with her thighs pressed tightly together, but her hands were clenched together, tucked under her chin, which brought her arms in front of her chest, hiding some of her nakedness from him. This was all wrong.
“See? I told you I’m the rebound guy.” He squeezed her thigh—and winked at her.
He didn’t seem unhappy to be the rebound guy, but she couldn’t let him think that was how she felt about it. “I wasn’t thinking that. You’re so much more than that.”
“Best lover, then?” he asked, sounding boyishly hopeful. He sat up halfway.
She sat back, a little exasperated with him. She unclenched her hands, but she crossed her arms over her chest, still hiding herself. “I can’t award you Best Lover, because you stopped before some key required moments.” So there.
“I’m in the running for the Best Lover award, though. That makes me one hell of a rebound guy.” He laid back down, but he tugged on her wrist with one hand as he did. “Come here.”
She let him have her arm. “That sounds so awful. The Rebound Guy.”
He laughed even as he kissed the fingers of her hand, then set her hand on his shoulder so she was leaning over him. “Or it sounds like a great way to spend a vacation.”
Her mouth dropped open at the outrageous remark.
“Now come here.” He pushed one of her knees, encouraging her to spread them apart. Then he was tugging on her ankle, like he wanted her to move that leg to straddle him. She settled onto him, one knee on either side of his waist.
“You seem a littl
e eager to be my rebound guy.”
“I wonder why.” He hadn’t cooled off at all. His body was thick and hot beneath her. His hands stroked up her, sure and firm, like he had the right to feel all of her skin from her hips to her waist to her chest. Hot hands cupped her breasts for a moment before smoothing over her shoulders. She watched him as he watched his hands. He looked very satisfied with the path his hands were taking, like he was doing some kind of primal survey, taking ownership of the woman he’d invited to straddle him. Or maybe that was how she felt, like he was reestablishing the connection that had been building from all their touching, from skin sliding over skin.
With a gesture that seemed too civilized given their current state, he brushed her hair back from one shoulder, gently pulling a few strands out from the hoop earring. Survey over, he rested his hands on her hips, a loose grip. His hands were so large, his thumbs rested so very close to there.
She’d never wanted a man so badly in her life.
Conversationally, he said, “I am also available this week for revenge sex.”
“Revenge sex?” She couldn’t grasp the meaning of the phrase, of any phrase, because her reality was entirely physical at the moment, centered on the man underneath her, between her knees, and such a man—
“That’s when you know your ex is with someone else, and you’re determined to outdo them and have more sex than they’re having. To have better sex than they’re having.”
“That’s revenge sex?”
“That’s revenge sex.” He reached up and pulled her head down to kiss her on the mouth as if they were the lovers they should be.
She panted over his lips for a moment, until she was sure she could speak very clearly. “Then hell, yes, you are the rebound guy, and no person I’ve ever slept with or ever dated at any point in the past or even looked at in the last decade will have better sex than I do this week.”