Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(36)
She helped him this time, lifting her left leg and putting her foot on his shoulder. Watching him with a little smile clinging to her lips as he stroked, kissed, stared. Nothing on her ankle. Nothing on her foot itself, or her smooth calf . . . front or back. Nothing on her thigh. He couldn’t get a good look at the back, but he thought he would have seen it when he had her on her stomach before.
“Hmm,” he said, replacing her leg on the bed. “I’m stumped.”
“Don’t give up yet,” she said, pouting adorably.
“All right. Turn over.”
Damn, how he enjoyed watching her do that, the graceful move, the strong lines of her back, the beautiful curve of her ass. The flip of her hair as she moved it out of his way. He let his hands discover every square inch of her, sliding over soft skin, kissing the dimples above the first rise of her cheeks, letting his fingers lightly skim the sweet recess between. She made a breathless sound, enjoying his exploration, but the only heart he saw was the one low on her back.
“Are you sure there’s one more?” he asked.
Savannah giggled, low and lusty. “Promise.”
His eyes moved over her arms, her wrists. He picked up first one and then the other. Nothing on the inside of either wrist, nothing on her soft inner forearms. “Damnit, Savannah. I give up. It must be somewhere no one would ever see.” Surely not on the inside of her lip or—
“No, you can see it. If I want you to.”
What the hell. It must be on her scalp. And as much as he would like to spend the rest of the night with his fingers in that lustrous hair, there were more pressing matters to attend to. Like how hard he was after touching her for so long. Oh, she knew what she was doing when she invented her little game.
“Fuck it. I’ll find it later,” he said, rolling her over to her back and pulling her thigh up on his hip as she gasped, watching her eyes half close in pleasure as he teased her clit with slow strokes of the underside of his cock. Damn, she was wet. And warm. He wanted her so f*cking bad it terrified him, so bad it hurt. It would be better for her if she didn’t realize how much she affected him, if she could get on her plane and go back to New Orleans and forget all about this.
He didn’t want her to. And he damn sure didn’t want to forget.
Mike took a minute to slip another condom on, then returned to the welcoming circle of her arms and eased gently inside her, careful to monitor any wince, flinch, or whimper. But everything about her seemed ready to accept him regardless of their earlier exuberance. She was soft, and sweet, and so beautiful he ached to look at her. So he kissed her instead, their bodies without a breath of air between them, combined and moving in perfect rhythm with each other. She fit him perfectly. Devastatingly.
Minutes or years passed; he lost himself in her. Maybe he was finding himself too. When she came, giving a rolling, leisurely undulation of her hips, he drank her cries while her inner muscles pulsed erratically around him, driving him nuts, taking him down with her. He dropped his head to her shoulder and cursed as she seemed to draw the release from somewhere deep in his soul, her fingernails biting the muscles in his back.
It was a long time before either of them could speak, combined, naked, sweaty, tangled in the sheets. He never wanted to be anywhere else.
Even after all the times Savannah’s soul had been stripped bare for him tonight, his arms were like a safe haven where nothing bad could see or touch her if she didn’t want it to. She lay facing him, practically floating, while he gently traced her arm with his fingertips. Somehow the way he was looking at her was more intimate than anything they had done together tonight.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked him after a moment, smiling a little as she anticipated his answer.
Instead, though, he asked a question in return. “How are you, Savannah?”
Her smile slipped, brows drawing together. “I’m good.”
“No,” he said softly, moving his hand from her arm to stroke her cheek. She knew from the emphasis he put on the words exactly what he meant. “How are you?”
And she almost could hate him right then, because tears filled her eyes before she even realized what was happening. She wiped at them furiously, horror-struck.
“Baby,” he groaned, pulling her tighter against him and holding her so close his hand fisted in her hair. “It’s okay. You cry if you need to.”
“Why do you have to be so wonderful?” she wailed, and hated herself even more for how pathetic she sounded. “And don’t you dare say you’re not,” she added before he could open his mouth.
“Do you want me to stop?” he teased. “Try being a dick?”
“No.” She somehow managed to chuckle and sniffle at the same time. “But I do want you to be real.”
“This is . . . real as it gets, darlin’.”
“You’re nothing like I expected you to be. I only saw how you were with your opponents . . . with Tommy.”
“It’s a part I play. Not that I don’t get in there to win. I do. I get in there knowing the other guy is the enemy and he’s trying to take what’s mine. Intimidation tactics are all a part of it.”
“I know. It’s hard to reconcile what I saw before with what I know about you now.”
“Don’t get it in your head I’m some kind of saint, Savannah,” he said darkly. “I’m not.”