Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(36)

Maybe she just wanted to go back in the shower and see if there was any more hot water left.

Don’t let the gun get to you. When she brought desserts to Chase and all the macho buddies who were hanging out with him and giving each other shit to keep him entertained, they were certainly wearing weapons somewhere on their bodies. That was how Chase had had a gun on him when they were attacked. It made sense that Jake would want to strip his weapons off him before she touched him, to keep them both safe.

It was just that they reminded her. Of guns going off, of the existence of things she hadn’t properly believed in, a week ago—death, given on purpose, by one human being to another. And the proof of it not in her kitchens this time but right here in her bedroom, inside her apartment, the only illusion of safety she had left.

Her lips drooped lower, her feet chilling.

“Lost the moment?” Jake asked conversationally.

Her eyes flew back to his.

He stepped back, resting his shoulders against the door and folding his arms casually. “Want to call a halt?”

She frowned at his relaxed pose. “You don’t even care, do you?”

“It’s not my first time at this rodeo, honey. Being used for sex.”

Her frown deepened. Of course it wasn’t. She knew that. At least, she’d assumed it, when she first asked him the day before—that he had had plenty of experiences of sex for sex’s sake. But…well, it was her first time. Having sex without at least hoping that hearts were also involved.

“Well, you might show a little more gumption about it,” she said, somewhat indignant. “As if you actually want it.”

“I’m on the fence. About what I want.”

Oh, fine then. Lina jerked her robe back in place and stomped over to her mirror, picking up her comb again. If he didn’t think he’d just gotten about as lucky as a man could get, tough luck for him. He didn’t deserve to touch her in the first place.

So there.

She nodded at herself in the mirror and yanked the comb too hard through a snarl.

A?e.

She threw the comb across the room, a violence that came out of nowhere, caught herself too late to stop it, and clapped both her hands to her face, taking slow, deep breaths. Not losing it.

People. People she loved. She told the beads of them in her head. Her mother’s hugs. Her father squeezing her shoulder at the door to the bakery, the day she started her first job. Her grandmother, smiling at her. That moment when she and Vi and Célie won their junior competition, the first all-female team to win the internationals.

Places. Beautiful places. The Seine in the evening, when they were dancing on the quays. The illumination of the Louvre and Notre-Dame and the lights of the bridges on the waters.

Hands settled on her shoulders, big and strong, massaging them.

She lowered her hands slowly from her face, under that firm, deep rub, and met his eyes in the mirror.

He gazed at her a straight, almost brooding moment. “Shh.” His voice dropped deep and gentle. “Shh, Lina. It’s okay.”

Her body relaxed under the words, the tension releasing first where his hands held her and an ease seeping down from there through the rest of her.

He pulled her back against him. His hands rubbed the terry cloth of her bathrobe against her ribs slowly, slowly, until her weight sank against his chest and her breathing slowed under the gentle pleasure. Only then did he stroke up her body to cup her breasts.

She closed her eyes. But then she had to peek.

His gaze had lowered in the mirror, no longer on her face but watching the reflection of his hands against her breasts. The multiple shadings of gold and brown of his hands, against the white of her robe. Big, lean, tough, capable hands. Rubbing that cloth.

She drew her lower lip under her teeth as pleasure sighed from his hands all through her body, and the world fell away.

He rubbed there until her hips were twisting against the arousal of his body behind her. Until she was biting her lip and arching back against him. Only then did he rub his fingers under those panels, to touch her nipples with a callused, sure touch.

Exactly like her fantasy. But his fingers felt so much better than hers. Stranger, hotter, harder, the demand for her body from someone else, not just herself.

She made a little mewling sound and gripped his hips behind her, her head back against his chest.

His fingers trailed down over her breastbone, down the center line of her belly. Her breath stopped. Her head pressed back hard into him.

He pulled the bathrobe tie loose, so that the panels fell apart and one long strip of her nakedness was revealed in the mirror. The subtle golden tones of her skin not much paler there than anywhere else, she spent so much time indoors. Dark, intimate curls, framed by bulky white terry cloth.

Lean fingers, variegated gold and speckles of brown, eased just to the start of her curls and stirred the first few.

“You, too, this time,” she whispered fiercely. “You, too.”

His eyes met hers in the mirror. His fingers stirred a little more deeply into her black curls. “You don’t get to choose that, Lina.”

Oh, yeah? Really? Because in her experience, men had zero resistance to the potential of sex. Surely she could crack him. She settled her butt more firmly back into his erection and twisted her hips, stretching her arms behind her to try to curve around his butt and pull him in harder.

He slid one arm through the crook of her elbows, tightened, and lifted—locking her arms up behind her. So that she couldn’t move them, and she couldn’t now properly bridge the distance that hold forced between their pelvises, and she couldn’t get away.