Heroes Are My Weakness(72)

He wanted more, and he tried to push her knees apart. They yearned to open, but her jeans still manacled her ankles, something he quickly took care of.

She gripped his shoulders tighter as he clasped the backs of her thighs, opened them as he wished, and delved deeper.

She arched her neck. Tried to find the oxygen she needed. Her knees threatened to give out. And did.

She fell back onto their coats, her legs awkwardly splayed. He stepped between them and gazed down at all she’d revealed. “A ruffled rose garden. Full bloom.”

He was killing her with his dirty poetry. She wanted to kill him back. Conquer. But it felt so good to receive.

He loomed over her; pulling off the rest of his clothes; standing between her knees; large, naked. Daring her?

Oh, yes . . .

He went to his knees. Braced her ankles on his shoulders. Parted her with his thumbs. Found her with his mouth.

Her eyes drifted closed. Neck arched.

Oh, he was thorough. So thorough. Stopping. Beginning again. Touching with fingers. Touching with lips. Tongue. Breath cooling, then heating. She traveled the rise. Journeyed higher. Higher still. Reaching . . . Suspending . . . Seize up . . .

And the long, blissful burn.

He didn’t let her close her legs. “You’re not done. Quiet. Shhh . . . Don’t fight me.”

He owned her body.

How many times? The rise, the throb, the burn . . . He was seeing her at her most vulnerable, her most defenseless. And she was allowing it.

Only when she could handle no more did she struggle. He gave her room, then began to lower his own body over hers, all his focus on claiming what was so clearly his. On top. Still dominant. In control of his own satisfaction.

They weren’t real lovers, and she couldn’t permit it. She twisted from beneath him before he could pin her to the floor. Now he was the one on top of the pile of coats. He rolled to his side and reached out to gather her beneath him once again. But in the release he’d given her, she possessed an energy he didn’t have. She splayed her hands on his chest and pushed him hard, sending him to his back where she could practice her own magic.

She studied the musculature of his chest, the hard plane of his abdomen. And below. She bent over him. Her hair brushed his skin. He lifted his hands and crumpled the curly strands in his fists, not pulling it. Almost . . . savoring it.

She did to him as he’d done to her. Playing. Stopping. Playing again, her skin pale against his darker complexion. Sunlight and dust, the smell of sex, of her and him. He pressed the back of her head, but she resisted, refusing to let him fly. She was the most practiced courtesan on earth. Able to give satisfaction. Or to withhold it.

He’d long ago closed his eyes. He arched his back. His features contorted. At her mercy.

Finally, she gave him the release he sought.


THAT WASN’T THE END OF it. A coat zipper soon dug into her back, and she was on the bottom. Then on top. Then on the bottom again. At some point he abandoned her long enough to light the fire. He hadn’t been kidding about the condoms. He had them with him, and he seemed to want to use them all.

As the old farmhouse creaked around them, they explored each other more slowly. He seemed to love her idiotic hair, and she rubbed his body with it. She adored his lips. He called her a “beautiful creature” again, and she wanted to cry.

The sun was high in the sky before they were sated. “Consider this makeup sex,” he murmured in her ear.

It broke the spell that had captured her. She lifted her head from his shoulder. “Making up for what? We haven’t been fighting. For a change.”

He rolled to his side and slipped his finger in a curl by her cheek. “I’m making up for all that clumsy fumbling around I did when I was sixteen. It’s a miracle you weren’t turned off sex forever.”

“Obviously not.” A blade of light cut across his face, highlighting the scar at the corner of his eyebrow. She touched it and said, more harshly than she’d intended, “I’m not sorry about this.”

“No reason you should be.” He dropped her curl and rose from the floor. “You didn’t do it.”

She propped herself up. A red mark from the coats—or her fingernails—crossed his back. “I did,” she said. “I hit you across the face with your riding crop.”

He pulled on his jeans. “You didn’t give me that scar. It was a surfing accident. Stupid on my part.”

Now she was on her feet. “That’s not true. I gave it to you.”

He tugged on his zipper. “It’s my face. Don’t you think I should know?”

He was lying. She’d grabbed the riding crop and swung it at him in a blistering rage, punishing him for the pups, for what he’d done to her, for the cave and the note he’d written and her broken heart.

“Why are you saying this?” She snatched up her coat and pulled it on over her nakedness. “I know what happened.”

“You hit me. I remember that. But you got me somewhere around here.” He pointed toward a tiny white dash below the larger scar.

Why was he lying? Being in this enchanted cottage had made her drop her guard. A mistake and a sharp reminder that sex wasn’t the same as either trust or intimacy. She reached for her clothes. “Let’s get out of here.”


IT WAS A SILENT TRIP back to town. Theo pulled into the harbor parking lot so Annie could get the Suburban, and as he stopped, a middle-aged woman with a baseball cap pulled over her fried blond hair ran up to the driver’s door. She started to talk even before Theo had rolled his window down all the way.