Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(48)

Well, that was a very nice thought. He toyed with it, not sure he trusted it.

Still, if that was what she believed now, it kind of reflected well on him, didn’t it?

“Also was afraid,” she admitted, low and rough.

Bingo.

“But not for any good reason. I’m kind of scared all the time now. But I’m trying.”

He sighed in surrender, and just picked her up and set her on the counter, nudging her desserts out of the way. He kept his arms loosely around her, his hands resting on the small of her back, and settled between her spread legs.

Her pupils dilated instantly. Jesus, he’d become her opiate of choice.

A painkiller, Christ.

Which made his current actions that of an enabler, but…shit.

“What kind of condoms?” He kept his voice deep and easy, sneaking his thumb under the edge of her knit shirt and rubbing the small of her back.

Her head arched back a little, and a long breath moved through her body. And, as he watched her, through his, too. “Just, like…basic.”

“Yeah?” His thumb climbed higher. “I can do basic.”

Her eyes opened. “Not too basic,” she said quickly. “You have to be involved this time. That’s the point of having a condom.”

“I already told you that you don’t get to make that choice, sweetheart.”

She bit into her lower lip. He ran his fingers farther up her spine.

She shivered, her eyes closing again.

“You okay with that?” he murmured. “Giving up your right to choose?”

Her eyelids were growing heavy already as they flicked to let her look at him. Her lips parted, that pretty bow almost impossible not to just lean down and lick. Her eyes fell closed again, and she let her head tilt forward in a drugged nod.

He knew it was just sex for her and she didn’t care who was providing it, but erotic pleasure captured him anyway. That, in her battle with paranoia, she had chosen to trust herself to him.

She hadn’t “found someone else.”

Okay, now you’re just being pathetic, he told himself.

But damn, her back felt smooth under his hand. Slim but strong, with that definition of her trap muscles and delts that came from a very physical job that involved a lot of heavy lifting and kneading and thumping. He traced the shape of those muscles, her shoulder blades, found her nape and after one circle there that made her shiver and sigh, let his hand stroke all the way down her spine again.

He loved her sighs. The peace and bliss that took over her body at his stroking. His world still held—his peripheral vision still active against all possible dangers, so that he still saw counters and burners and all kinds of steel, and her, human and small in the midst of it. But her own world was shrinking down to pure sensation. Soon she would see nothing at all. Only feel.

He wanted to kiss her, and again he thought: You are f*cking lost if you do that. Don’t do it.

God, her mouth tempted, though. Just to take it and kiss it, kiss her and kiss her until he lost himself in—

No. Don’t lose yourself.

You can’t be the drug and the drug-taker. Talk about a trap.

But he could make her lose herself. His hand rubbed around under her shirt, cupping her breast. Not huge but full. Perfect. The right to touch those breasts could have been the most perfect gift to him. If only it had been offered a slightly different way.

She made a sleepy, hungry sound, her eyes still closed.

Probably no point in making her open her eyes to prove she actually knew it was him, was there? His teeth pressed together in temper.

And he shouldn’t agree to do this if he was going to get angry at her while doing it. As she’d pointed out, You can say no.

And let her seek out someone else? Yeah, right.

Handling his desire was like bracing with his back to the ocean. The surges kept coming in at him, hard, no warning, and he had to hold firm against them. Only they were hot surges, not the icy Pacific. No team counted on him, and no team linked arms with him as they all braced against the battering waves together, either. He was on his own.

He pressed his knee against the counter wall to keep that surge from bearing him in against her body and rubbed his hands down over her ribs to her hips and back up to her breasts again.

She set both hands on his chest and spread her fingers, stroking up over his shoulders as if the exploration fascinated her.

Shit. See, this was why he’d held her with her back to him the other two times. Keeping himself out of harm’s way.

Away from that little smile on her face, as if she thought his body was this amazing treasure he’d offered her. Away from the feel of her hands on him, small and strong and curious. Those hands loved textures. Loved sensation.

Loved him.

No, they don’t. Okay, not loved loved him, but…loved the feel of him. But it was that whole blurred line thing that was going to screw him the f*ck up.

He tried to lift his hands to peel hers off him, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

She was pressing her fingers into him. Squeezing and testing, so fascinated by…his muscles, he guessed. Hell, it was good to have muscles right now.

She stroked and squeezed up his chest to the edge of his T-shirt and then pressed one finger lightly in the hollow of his throat. Shifted it. Pressed lightly again.

Shit, was she touching all his freckles again? She was going to kill him with that.