His eyes dark on hers, he let loose his grip on her hip to stroke his thumb over her center, which was all it took for her to go flying again, his name on her lips.
It might even have been that scream he’d promised her, and when she let go, he arched, burying himself even deeper inside her as her muscles clenched tightly around him. He came with her, emptying himself into her in powerful thrusts that drove all the breath from her lungs. Falling over him, she trembled from head to toe…completely, one hundred percent in love with him. God.
Cord gathered her up in his arms, and she burrowed in, hiding her face, not ready for him to see. Not now. It would kill her if he saw it and said goodbye. So she lay against him for long moments, hiding, and when she could breathe again, she pressed her mouth to his throat.
He made a sound like a contented purr and stretched, lifting his head and meeting her eyes with his own warm ones. Reaching up, she touched his face, she couldn’t help herself. And then it was her turn to practically purr when he rubbed his stubbled jaw against her palm. “Sleep with me,” he murmured.
She went still. She’d love nothing more, but she couldn’t. Not without giving herself away. “Gotta get up early, I have work—”
“We can do early.”
Oh, God. The knot in her belly tightened. “Not this early. In fact, it’s really late…” She made a show of lifting her head to find the time. “Yeah, it’s three. Gotta get to bed, big guy.”
“Lexi.”
She absorbed the terrifying gentleness of his tone and let it galvanize her into action. She jumped up and started gathering clothes. Then she turned and bumped right into Cord, nearly knocking him to his ass. “God! I’m sorry!”
He dropped his cane to catch her, and leaned back against the bathroom sink, holding her to him. “Lexi.”
“You’re naked.”
“So are you.” He gave her a small smile, something new in his eyes to go with the usual affection and heat. “I think we should talk.” Great. Now he wanted to talk. “It’s three,” she repeated, struggling a little to get free, but the guy was like a brick wall when he wanted to be. “I have to—”
“Barrel out of here, yeah, I know. Just like you barreled into my life when I got back, assuming we were still friends. And goddamn if you haven’t barreled your way into the heart I’d forgotten was still whole and beating.”
Oh, God. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You refused to let me wallow, you refused to let me settle.” He smiled. “You took me bodysurfing, Lexi. You took me to scream therapy. Hell, you opened me up to living again, refusing to let me hide behind my secrets. So—” He cupped her face and made her look at him. “What’s your secret?”
“Cord.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again, shaking her head against the inexplicable panic clogging her throat. She was afraid, afraid of letting her heart open to him any more than it already had. She couldn’t lose anyone else, and to make sure she didn’t, she couldn’t let him all the way in. “I really can’t do this now. I have to leave.” And this time when she twisted free, he let her do just that.
7
CORD GOT TIRED of lying in bed trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong with Lexi, so he got up at the crack of dawn and went for a run. Just like old times.
Except, unlike old times, he couldn’t run. He couldn’t even walk fast. And at the end of the damn parking lot, he had to sit down on the curb and rest.
A car drove by, slammed on its brakes, then backed up. The passenger window rolled down and then he was looking into Lexi’s surprised face. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Perfect.”
She sighed. “Get in.”
“No.”
“Cord.”
“Lexi.”
She put her car in Park and got out. She sat at his side and studied him for a long moment. “Having a bad morning?”
“You could say that.”
“Can I help?” she asked.
“Sure. You can answer a question.”
“I don’t want to talk about last night.”
Too bad. He pulled off her sunglasses and asked the question that had been bugging him. “What do we have, Lexi?”
“Huh?”
“You and me. What is it?”
“Um…a friendship?”
“Is that a question, or a fact?”
She blinked. “What’s the matter with you? We’re friends. We’re…good friends. Best friends, even.”
He nodded and looked at the ocean. Then he voiced his deepest, darkest question. “But not more?”
She was quiet a long moment. “I wasn’t under the impression that you did more.”
Hard to argue with that, he supposed. “Things change.”
She shrugged.
“Is this because of Brad?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I mean I loved him, obviously, and then lost him.”
“And your parents?”
He felt her go very still. “Yes,” she whispered. “I loved them and lost them, too.”
His heart clenched at the look on her face. She was afraid. Afraid of losing anyone else, so afraid she was holding back. “They were older when they adopted you, Lexi,” he said gently. “In their fifties. It’s not your fault your father died from a stroke and your mother from heart failure the same year.”
“I know.” She hugged her knees and dropped her head to them. “I know it, I do. I just…” She drew a shuddery breath, and, with a sigh, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in.
“You just don’t like to risk it,” he murmured into her hair.
She was quiet at that.
“I haven’t been much of a risk-taker myself since I got home,” he told her.
Head still on her knees, she turned just her face to look at him. “I think you’re entitled to a break, Cord.”
“I’ve thought about doing as you suggested, you know. I can’t go out for the police department, they won’t take me because of my hearing loss. But the fire department is looking for arson investigators.” Something that actually, surprisingly, interested him. If he couldn’t be military, he could still go after bad guys. “Not sure I’m fit enough, though.”
“You’re strong as hell on the inside,” she said. “The rest will come, so you can just get over that fear.”
“I will get over myself, since I don’t want to sit on my ass the rest of my life. But how about you, Lexi?” He gave her a gentle nudge. “You’re still hiding.”
“From?”
“Intimacy.”
“Are you kidding me?” She stood up and put her hands on her hips, glaring down at him in shock and mutiny. “I beg to differ, seeing we’ve been about as intimate as two people can get. Just last night, in fact, multiple times.”
“Orgasms don’t count. Hell, Lexi, you can get those from my showerhead.”
She narrowed her eyes to slits as he slowly and, dammit, painfully, rose to his feet. “Intimacy is much more than casual sex,” he said. “Intimacy would have been sleeping with me instead of running like a bat out of hell once you were sexually fulfilled. Intimacy would have been waking up together, having breakfast. Intimacy would be—”
“Beyond me!” Breathing hard, she took a step back, eyes bright. “Okay? What you’re talking about is beyond me.” She pressed a hand to her heart and broke his.
“Lexi,” he said softly. “It’s not beyond you. We already have it. It’s our friendship, combined with the rest of what comes with a relationship like ours. It’s real and binding, and—”
“No. We went into this with our eyes open.” She backed away, pointing at him. “Both of us. Now you’re changing the rules.”
“There are no rules. You’ve never followed a damn rule in your life.” He followed her, and ran a hand down her stiff spine. “You’re late for work. Just tell me what you want.”
She just stared at him, her eyes suspiciously shiny, stubbornly mute.
He sighed and kissed her,
a sweet, warm kiss that she pulled back from, shaking her head with what could only be fear on her face. “Stop that,” she said shakily. “Stop what?”
“You just said goodbye to me.”
“I think you have that backward,” he said quietly.
“Cord.” She pressed a hand to her heart again, her other fisted in his shirt. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“Which leads us back to the big question.” He covered her hand with his. “What do you really want?”
You. It seemed to be on the tip of her tongue, or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Still, he willed her to say it, but she didn’t. She said nothing.
In the shattering silence, Cord opened her driver’s-side door for her. “You’ll figure it out.”
And, as she drove out of the lot, he could only hope that was really true.
8
FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Lexi remained stubbornly sure she’d done the right thing by not telling him how she felt.
But deep down she knew she’d been wrong.
She missed him. Things weren’t the same. He’d shut her out. He’d even gone to Jacob’s for a few days. He’d had a laser procedure done on his leg to lessen the internal scar tissue and muscle damage and his hearing seemed to be better, and he hadn’t needed her help.
Hadn’t needed her.
She thunked her head down on her table and squeezed her eyes shut. Hell.
It was all her. What do you really want? he’d asked. Well, dammit, she wanted so much it terrified her.
It took her a few more days to decide exactly what to do with that knowledge. She brought Cord his mail and he politely thanked her. They had lunch together, but it was strained.
So that evening she took a screwdriver to her showerhead and “broke” it. Then she made lasagna, and when it was ready, she threw together a salad and brought both dishes to his condo.
He opened the door wearing black dress pants and a black button-down shirt, opened at the neck, tie loosened, sleeves shoved up to his elbows.
He looked edible.
He smiled at her but instead of inviting her in, he leaned on the doorjamb. “Hey.”
“Hey. My showerhead’s broken. I need to borrow your shower.” She lifted the dishes. “I brought a bribe.”
“I don’t need a bribe to loan you some hot water.”
“That’s nice of you.”
He said nothing to that as she stepped in past him.
“There’s fresh towels in the cabinet under the sink,” he said when she’d set everything down on the same kitchen counter that he’d had her on, bare-assed, only last week.
She didn’t tell him that she’d rather use his towel instead of a fresh one because it would give her a cheap thrill to know the thick terry cloth had been rubbed over his body before hers. “Thanks,” she said, and headed down the hall toward his bedroom.
“Do you have plans for my showerhead?”
Her nipples went hard. Bad nipples. Slowly she turned to face him.
“Because if you do,” he said, “I’d like to picture it, is all.”
“I thought we weren’t doing that anymore.”
He sent her what could only be described as a wolf smile. “Yes, but I still like to think about it.”
Somehow she managed to resist the magic pull of his smile and left the hallway. Even more miraculously, she resisted the showerhead. Good as it was, it couldn’t compete with the memory of Cord’s fingers and mouth.
When she got out of the water, she toweled dry her wavy hair and left it hanging down her back. She told herself it was for convenience and not because Cord loved it that way.
As they ate, he ran a hand over her hair, then pulled back as if belatedly remembering that they weren’t Naked Friends anymore. She nearly cried. “Why are you all hot and sexy?” she managed to ask, gesturing to his clothes.
He smiled. “Hot?”
Smoking-hot. “You know you are.”
He opened a bottle of wine. “Interview. I think it went well.”
“Good.” She clinked her glass to his and summoned her courage. “To letting go of fears,” she said.
His dark eyes held hers. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
With a warm smile, he drank to that, and when she cleared their dishes she purposely bumped into him at the sink. Reaching out to slip off his tie, she unbuttoned his shirt before he took her wrists in his hands.
“Okay,” she murmured throatily, rubbing against him, her wrists trapped, his tie entangled in her fingertips. “You can tie me up this time. But I get to tie you up next time.”
He laughed low in his throat, as if he liked the sound of that, but he shook his head. “If we were on naked terms, you’d be so on.”
“You’d tie me up?” she asked, intrigued in spite of herself.
“Up, down, any way you wanted it.”
Oh, God. “I miss the naked terms,” she whispered. “I miss them a lot.”
“Me, too.”
They moved into each other. Being back in his arms was heaven on earth. He was big and warm and smelled so damn good. She loved the way he held her, his hands rubbing up and down her back, sinking lower to briefly cup her ass before shifting back as if he’d momentarily been unable to help himself.
She stirred against him, moaning at how hard he was. His head dipped, his cheek skimming her temple, his breath soft in her hair. “Lexi.”
A warning. He wasn’t sure he could resist.
Good. Because she sure as hell couldn’t resist him. She pressed her lips against his throat, then nipped the spot.
He sucked in a breath. “Careful. I bite back.”
She shivered. “I was hoping you would.” Tipping her head up, she kissed him.
He froze a moment, then groaned before drawing her away, holding her by the arms to look into her face.
“Please,” she whispered. “I need this, Cord. I need you.”
“Why?”
He had every right to ask, and this time she had an answer. The one that had haunted her all week. “Because you were right. I’ve spent a lot of time being afraid. Afraid of getting too close, of letting anyone in. But that’s no way to live, and I never even realized it until you.”
“What was it about me?” he asked.
“You make me feel alive.” She slid her hands up his arms, feeling the muscles bunch. “So alive. Please, Cord.”
With a groan, he dipped his head. “I can’t resist you, I don’t know why I tried.” And he kissed her, hard and demanding, until she wasn’t sure of her own name, much less why they’d held back.
She wasn’t sure how they got to his bedroom, either, but suddenly she was standing by his bed. He kissed her again, a sound of approval low in his throat when she kissed him back, but when she started to rip off her clothes, he stopped her. He took over the task himself with slow, sure fingers, getting his mouth involved, too, tasting every inch of skin he exposed. Kissing, licking, nibbling. By the time he had her naked, she was writhing in ecstasy on his bed. Then he wedged his shoulders between her thighs, one hand low on her belly holding her down, the other spread wide on an inner thigh, his tongue driving her halfway out of her mind.
“Please,” she gasped, sliding her fingers into his hair. “Oh, Cord, please.”
“You taste so good.” He slipped a finger into her as he slowly sucked her into his mouth.
His words, along with the vibration of his voice, pushed her right over the edge and she burst, the shock waves rocking her body for long moments afterwards. When she blinked her vision clear, he was holding her close and whispering something she couldn’t catch. Lifting herself up, she pressed him back into the mattress and kissed him, tasting both herself and his own hunger. “Lexi—”
She kissed his shoulder, his collarbone, his nipple.
He hissed out a breath. “I—”
Whatever he’d planned on saying turned into a groan when she nibbled her way down his fantastic abs, and then hovered over t
he most beautiful erection she’d ever seen.
He didn’t try to talk again. In fact, she was pretty sure he wasn’t breathing.
She caressed one hard thigh, then the other, kissing her way along the eighteen-inch scar there, until he quivered beneath her. Wrapping her fingers around him, she drew him into her mouth.
“Lexi!” His hands came up, sliding into her hair, and when she stroked him with her tongue, his hips came off the bed. “Don’t stop.”
She loved the fact that she’d reduced him to begging the same way he’d done to her, and she settled in to enjoy torturing him some more, but suddenly he hauled her up his body, his fingers digging into her hips like a vise as he buried himself deep with one hard thrust.
They both gasped in tandem pleasure, and emotions hit her hard—need, desire and the sensation of being filled to completion.
She loved him so damn much.
“Cord—”
“Don’t move,” he grated out.
She ran her hands down his chest and rocked her hips. Swearing, he rolled them, pressing her back into the mattress, coming over top of her, looking deep into her eyes as he held her down. “You never listen.”
Her entire body clenched in anticipation as she bent her legs, hugging his hips with her knees. “Cord. God, Cord.”
“I know.” He kissed her hard as he began to move, his hands flat on the mattress on either side of her, his face low, eyes locked on hers. Her hands were on his chest, his arms, anywhere she could reach, and she could feel his muscles bunching and contracting with his every movement.
“I can’t get enough of you,” she whispered, and heard his breath catch. She brought his head down to hers for a searing kiss, and in it she could taste promises and hopes and dreams. Arching up into him, she sobbed out his name as he moved within her, so deep within her, faster and harder until they were both gasping for air, on the very edge, and then she was teetering and then falling into bliss. He was right with her, his arms convulsing tightly around her as he shuddered.
Born on the 4th of July Page 5