Let Me Be the One (The Sullivans #6)(50)

He simply stroked her face with his hand, his fingertips brushing over her lips, her jaw line. She shivered at the gentle, loving touch. She recognized what he was doing, knew it from the way her own hands had to caress a truly beautiful sculpture. She needed to touch it, needed to feel it beneath her hands to let the emotion of it course through her, and let herself become a part of it, too.

All night long, she’d been trying to hold back something, anything. But she just couldn’t do it anymore. She had to mirror his actions, had to give in to the instinctive urge to memorize him with her hands as well as she was memorizing his kisses with her mouth.

Vicki slid her hands from his shoulders to his face and when she put her hands on him, he closed his eyes and let out a ragged breath.

Was this what he had been waiting for, for her to give herself over to him fully, completely?

She ran her hands over his face, falling deeper in love with him with every new stroke of her fingertips over stubble and bone and cartilage. All the while, his eyes were closed as he simply let her feel him.

His beauty shook her all over again, just as it had day in and day out from the first day she’d set eyes on him. But to know him like this, for him to not only let her feel him so intimately, but also to practically beg her for it, was beyond anything she’d ever hoped for.

Finally, when her hands rested on his jaw and he opened his eyes again, what she saw in them had those pleas she’d planned on holding back forever spilling from her lips.

“Love me, Ryan. Please don’t wait any longer. Please.”

She didn’t know where he got the condom from and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that he had put it on and then he was kissing her again and she could feel him hot and hard and throbbing against her core.

He slid into her with a hiss of pleasure and she couldn’t keep her head from falling back, her mouth opening as she gasped for breath. One stroke of Ryan’s thick, hard heat inside of her and she was about to come apart again.

Her brain screamed for her to have more control. She couldn’t need him so much, shouldn’t be so pathetically responsive to every single touch.

Slowly, so damn slowly that she had to clench her teeth together to keep from crying out, he pulled from her before gripping her hips in his big hands and slamming back into her. She couldn’t look at him, keeping her eyes tightly closed rather than daring to see the dark fire in his eyes.

She needed to keep them closed until it was over and she could pretend that what they’d shared hadn’t been more than just sex between two horny friends.

His hands tightened on her hips. “Don’t hide from me, Vicki.”

Oh God, why did he have to talk to her like that? Like he was in charge of every cell in her body?

And, worse, why did it have to turn her insides to goo...and make her immediately respond with even more fire and need?

Angry with herself for having less than no control around him anymore, she closed her eyes tighter. Only, she knew that wouldn’t deter him from getting his way, and she was right when he leaned back over her and kissed each eyelid softly.

“Look at me. Please.”

His plea undid her. Completely.

Unable to resist him for a moment longer, she looked up at him, her inner muscles clenching even tighter around him as she let his dark gaze all the way inside her heart...and her soul.

“Oh baby,” he said on a whispered groan of pleasure as he pushed in even deeper, “I love the way you come apart when I touch you, when I’m inside of you. You’re so beautifully responsive. For me.” He pulled back, then thrust forward again, causing her to grip him even tighter with her legs, her nails digging into his back in her desperation. “Let go for me while I love you. Let me see you. All of you.”

Between the sweet movement of his body inside hers, his coaxing demands, and the intense desire on his face, Vicki had no choice but to obey.

His mouth captured her cries as she came harder than she ever had in her life, her orgasm going on and on and on, only to have Ryan catapult her back over again as he called out her name, as he told her again and again how good she felt, how much he wanted her, until he finally let his own control go too.

Chapter Nineteen

Vicki woke up curled into Ryan’s arms, the room dark, the covers up over them. His heart beat strong and steady beneath her open palm on his chest. Even in sleep, she’d needed to keep her hands on him, to make sure she didn’t lose that most elemental of connections.

Panic threatened to crash through the warmth, the remembered pleasures that still throbbed between her legs, at the tips of her br**sts, on her tingling lips. Dawn would break soon and then they would have to face reality, cold and hard and awkward.

All she wanted was to luxuriate in her fantasy-made-real for a few more seconds. Vicki knew it wasn’t forever, that their lovemaking had been some crazy blip on the radar screen, but letting herself be held by the man she’d loved forever, breathing him in for just a few more seconds, was something she simply had to do.

Ryan shifted, a low sound rumbling up from his chest as he pulled her closer so that her cheek rested on his chest and her hands slid around his waist.

Vicki’s heart fluttered with the pleasure of the sweetest moment she’d experienced yet. Making love with Ryan had been extraordinary, but she felt this closeness way down deep in the farthest reaches of her heart.

A few more minutes. That was all she wanted with Ryan before she slipped from his arms and went back to her own bedroom. But right now it was good, so damned good just to be close to him.