A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)(59)

It was sooooo sexy.

For years, any sexual touch—and the only sexual touch has been my own—brought forth horror movie images of what was done to me. Only in the last year have I been able to sate myself without experiencing flashbacks.

This feeling is old and new. It’s how sex with Drew felt before.

Before.

He’d respected me, back then. Knew I wanted to wait for intercourse. Foreplay had been enough, endless hours of kisses and caresses, of mouths and tongues, of fingertips and strokes.

We’d been so close to making love all the way.

And then it was ripped away from us.

Drew’s watching me, his thumb moving in slow circles against my belly, but he’s waiting.

The next move is mine.

All this new knowledge about the past should take longer to percolate. I should wait, right? Analyze and dissect, think and absorb.

Instead, I lunge, reaching up to kiss him, my fingers in his hair, pressing the back of his head to me, my hips grinding into him.

He is freedom.

In his arms, I am safe.

In his arms, I can feel pleasure.

I wasn't sure whether this was the right way to proceed, but I am now. Every cell in my body screams for his touch. The way the moonlight flutters against his cheek makes me think of butterflies in spring, free and happy on the wind, landing on colored flowers and blending in. Just being.

I watch Drew with eyes that want to be free.

I sense his hesitation. I need to stop it. A kiss seems to be the only way to convince him. The connection of our lips feels so heavenly. I've missed this.

As he deepens the kiss, his hands going to my shoulders, then sliding down to my elbows, the warm press of his body against mine showing how much he wants this, I drift. I don't disconnect.

It's more like finding a new layer inside myself where all the worry and pain, the fear and regret, just doesn't live. It's a place where I can find a new self and study it under the lens of Drew's body.

His heat opens me, making my tongue curious, my hands given permission to stroke his muscled back. He groans, and I startle, the sound vibrating through me. He stops, breaking the kiss.

A part of me aches.

"What's wrong?" he asks, worried, his frown a validation that everything I feel is ok.

"Nothing," I rasp. "Nothing at all."

"If this is too much," he says, his voice firm. "You tell me."

"I will."

"I mean it."

"I know."

"You need to be open with me, Lindsay. No games. No nothing when it comes to being together like this. We're different now."

Oh, boy, are we.

His face is relaxed, the troubled tension gone, replaced by a different kind of pensiveness. I can tell he wants to make sure that I am fine, and that's good, right? It's not like four years ago.

Nothing is like four years ago.

Not one damn thing.

He is comfort and passion, the brush of bunched-up cotton from his shirt tickling my navel. My hands become bold, reaching for the hot skin at his waist band, fingertips tentative but in control. I want to touch him. I want to feel his hardness. I want to wrap my hand around his shaft and give him pleasure.

I want to take, too, because there is power in holding a man by his center. There is power and goodness and a purity to it all.

Maybe I can be pure again by being naked with Drew. By letting him make love to me.

Perhaps that’s what this is.

A cleansing ritual.

A baptism.

I reach down and touch the outline of his erection through his pants, cupping my pal, letting my fingers gently touch the tip. His groan is almost a growl, the sound fiery and masculine.

It makes me feel good.

It makes me feel alive.

“Look, I know you haven’t been intimate with anyone for four years,” he says softly. His arms go tense. “At least, I assume that’s true.”

“It is.”

He nods. “I don’t need anything you can’t give.”

I begin to tremble.

“See? You’re shaking. Maybe this is too much.” He moves his elbow and slides his hip along the bed cover, the weight change rolling me slightly closer to him.

“I’m shaking because it’s hard to restrain myself.”

“Oh?” His voice is so low. Low and smoky and full of deep, dark promises. Promises that whisper to the longing in me.

“I don’t know how I’m going to respond. I might freeze. I might cry. Scratch that – I’m definitely going to cry at least once. And quit looking at me like that,” I chide, sticking a finger in his face.

He bites it. Oh, God, that warm, wet mouth on my finger.

I pull it back and laugh in spite of myself. “I want to trust you.”

“You can trust me, Lindsay.”

“How do you know you can trust me?”

His eyebrows go up, and in the strange moonlight he looks like a man from the 1940s, all greys and shadows, smoke and mirrors. The room seems huge and tiny at the same time, all the color gone, replaced by the intensity of us.

Just us.

Nothing else is real.

“Because you’re the same woman I knew four years ago, even if you’ve changed. What’s underneath is the same. The outside,” he says with an appreciative, almost wolfish, grin, “is most definitely still fine. Possibly even better.”