Well Met(65)

“Gladly.” He kissed me again. Thoroughly. Hungrily.

“Mmm, okay, that’s pretty good,” I said when he was done. “What else you got?”

He laughed, and it was like the sun coming out. How many times had I seen him smile at Faire, and wanted that smile to be for me? Now it was, and it was almost too much to take.

“That sounds like a challenge.” He tugged on my hand, helping me down from the counter. “The kitchen counter is nice and all,” he said as he led me out of the kitchen. “I had it put in last year; still paying off that credit card.” A wicked smile lit up his face. “But I have many, many more comfortable surfaces to choose from around here.”

“Hmm. Well, I mean, I did just get here. The least you could do is give me a tour.”

“I know exactly where to start.”

We barely made it out of the kitchen before he pressed me against the wall in the hallway. We took plenty of breaks on the way up the stairs and to his bedroom at the end of the hall.

He didn’t turn on the light. Instead, he drew me into his arms in a dark bedroom that smelled like him. I couldn’t tell if it was soap or aftershave, but it was a clean, warm scent with an undertone of leather that had come to mean Simon. I wanted to bathe in it. I wanted his scent all over my skin, and when he reached for the ties at my neck I helped him push my dress down over my hips and onto the floor, leaving me in my bikini underwear and heeled sandals.

“No fair. You have on all these clothes.” I fisted my hands in his T-shirt and pulled it up and over his head, and he let it drop behind him. “It’s too dark in here,” I said. “Turn on a light or something. I can’t see you.”

“Can’t. I’d have to let go of you.” He took my hands and put them on his chest, and damn. I knew he was in decent shape, what with all the stage fighting he did. A guy who flipped a brick wall like Mitch Malone twice a day wouldn’t be a weakling. But knowing something intellectually and actually running my hands up a set of tight abs, to a muscled chest sprinkled with just enough hair to tickle my fingertips, was something else entirely. I forgot how to form words, so instead I stepped closer and let my mouth follow my hands.

He sighed from deep in his chest as my tongue started a tentative trail across his skin. He found the clip in my hair and pulled it out, spreading my hair out with his hands. I hooked my fingers in the belt loops in his jeans to hold him close as I let myself explore his throat with my lips, my tongue, my teeth.

“Emily . . .” His voice broke off with a hiss when I bit down gently on that place where his neck met his shoulder, and his hands tightened in my hair. I teased him with my tongue until he pulled my head away and kissed me again, his tongue invading with an urgency he’d never shown before. And then we were moving again. The backs of my knees hit the edge of his bed and I sat down easily, putting a hand behind me for balance. I felt a smooth quilt under me; of course Simon was the kind of guy to make his bed every day.

I expected him to lay me back on the bed and, well, get on with things. I anticipated his weight pushing me down, his body stretched over mine. I didn’t anticipate him sinking to his knees on the floor in front of me.

“I want you to know . . .” He slipped off my right sandal, and his hands lingered on the instep of my foot, traveling up my ankle, my calf, learning my shape. “I’m not a one-night-stand kind of guy.” The other sandal thudded to the floor.

“You’re not?” My breath shuddered. Would I ever be able to breathe normally again?

“No.” His hair brushed against my skin, teasing, feather-like strokes as he turned his head to kiss his way up my leg. “Never have been. This means something. You mean something.” His mouth on my skin sent me to the brink of insanity, but his words were a dart of sweet pain. How did he know the exact thing I needed to hear, and how did he know to say it to me now?

“I’m serious, Emily.” His voice was hoarse, desperate, and he pulled away to look up at me. “If you want this . . . if we do this . . . I need for it to mean something to you too.”

Tears clogged my throat and I cradled his face in my hands. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room. A trickle of moonlight I hadn’t noticed before fell across his face and I drank in his eyes drinking me in. I’d never seen anything in my life more beautiful than this man, on his knees in front of me in the moonlight.

I could see him well enough to see the vulnerability in his expression, the way he bit his lower lip as his eyes met mine squarely. His eyes reminded me of the vision I’d once had of him and me and a pirate ship at night, and the memory sent my blood racing. “I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t mean something.” I leaned down, taking his mouth and biting that lip myself. “If you don’t touch me,” I said against his mouth, “and I mean right now, I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind.”

His chuckle was low and dangerous. “Language.” But he skimmed his hands down my sides before tugging my underwear over my hips and down my legs, and I kicked them away. He captured the kicking leg and placed a lingering kiss on my calf before slinging that leg over his shoulder.

I fell backward with a low moan, catching myself first on my hands, then my elbows as Simon’s mouth moved up my leg, this time with purpose, to my knees and finally to my inner thigh. I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.