Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(45)

Claire sagged. At least he wasn’t upset because he’d found it unappealing. “We need to lie down together.”

“Whatever shall I do when you leave?”

“You’re not staying here, remember?”

“But I am. I must. And you must go.”

Fear shrunk her skin tight. “Not going to happen. That’s not what we agreed to.”

He shut off the shower, and as the water dripped, he took a deep breath of defeat. “You must be reasonable—”

“I am damned reasonable. I’m a lawyer. Reasoning’s what I do.” She reached out for him, but met only marble tile. Turning blindly, hands in front of her, she searched for him and got tangled in the darkness as surely as if it were vines. She had a feeling he was deliberately staying away from her. “Will you quit ghosting around?”

He laughed a little. “You are so . . . assertive.”

“I am.”

The sound of a towel being worked over a body called her to the left, but the flapping moved as she went toward it. “Stop that.”

Michael’s voice came from behind her. “Were the men who loved you that way, too? Powerful and tenacious? As you were with me?”

“Can you dematerialize or something? How can you move so fast?”

“Tell me about the men who loved you. Were they as strong as you?”

She thought of Mick Rhodes, her childhood friend who was also a partner at WN&S. “Ah . . . one of them was. The others, no. And they didn’t love me. Look, let’s focus on the now, okay? Where are you?”

“Why were you intimate with them, then? If they didn’t return your love?”

“I wasn’t in love with them, either. It was just sex.” In the silence that followed, an odd kind of chill set up shop in her spine. “Michael? Michael?”

“I’m afraid I feel rather foolish.”

“How so?” she asked cautiously.

Somehow she knew when he left the bathroom; it was as if her body sensed his or something. She fumbled her way back out into the bigger space. “Michael?”

“I’ve behaved in a childish manner, haven’t I?” His voice was calm and level now. Horribly so. “To have cried over something that was . . . quite normal for you.”

“Oh, God, Michael, no.” Normal? That hadn’t been normal. Not at all. “I feel like crying right now myself because—”

“So you pity me, do you? You shouldn’t. There is no crime in not feeling as I do—”

“Shut up. Right now.” She wanted to point her forefinger at him, but wasn’t exactly sure which direction to target. “I’m not into pity and I don’t lie. Those other men are not you. They have nothing to do with us.”

So they were an “us” now, were they? she thought.

“Michael, I know this is all so hard for you, and probably throwing in the sex on top of everything wasn’t such a great idea. I can also understand why getting out of here is scary. But you’re not alone. We’re going to do this together.”

She had no idea how it was going to work out or where they would go, but the commitment had been made. With their minds. With their bodies.

Well, wasn’t she a romantic all of a sudden. All her life she had mocked the whole consummating a marriage thing. Sex, to her, was just sex. Now, though, she knew differently. She felt for no good reason that they were tied together. It made no sense, but the bond was there and the physical intimacy had been part of it.

His arms came around her from behind. “It does make sense. I feel the same.”

She held on to his hands and leaned into him. “I don’t know where we’ll end up. But I’m going to take care of you.”

His voice was low, his vow grave. “And I’m going to do the same for you.”

They stayed that way, linked in the darkness, embracing. His body was warm against her back, and when he shifted closer, she felt his arousal. She moved her hips, rubbing against him.

“I want you,” she said.

His exhaled breath shot into her ear. “You would be . . . ready again so soon?”

“Usually the guy is the one who needs to recover.”

“Oh. Well, I think I could do that all night long. . . .”



And as it turned out, he could.

They made love so many times, the sex blurred together into one seamless erotic episode that lasted . . . God, hours and hours. Through the second dinner. Into the night.

Michael’s body was capable of orgasm again about ten minutes after he came and he was driven to explore all the carnal joys of sex. He took her every way possible, and as he got more and more comfortable, that domination strain came out in him to a greater extent. No matter how he started them off, he always ended with her on the bottom, either face up or down. He liked to hold her in place with his weight, and sometimes with his hands, making her submit to him. Especially as he drank from her throat.

And she loved it, all of it. The way he overpowered her, the feel of him thick inside of her, the clamped seal of his mouth on her throat. It wasn’t until the penetrations became painful for her that she could bear to stop him and she was frustrated that she couldn’t keep going. She wanted more of that sweet suffocation underneath his surging body, more of his power.