Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty #3)(47)

“Fuck.” It was as much a prayer as it was a curse as he slid his hands down her long, slender back to cup her ass. And then he was lifting her against him, wrapping her legs around his waist as he turned them around and pressed her up against the sliding glass door that led to the balcony.

Below her, Austin’s lights glittered like stars and for a second—just a second—he was spellbound by the beauty of them. Of her. Of this moment, when for so long he’d been unable to appreciate the beauty in anything.

He shuddered at the realization, buried his face in the curve where her neck met her shoulder. And breathed. Just breathed.

She held him for long seconds, her arms and legs wrapped tightly around him as she whispered soft words in his ear, loving words that somehow made it both easier and harder for him to breathe. To think. To just be.

He started to get twisted up in it, tangled in the memories of his past as the familiar guilt wrapped itself around his gut. His heart.

But it was like she knew, like she could feel it, too, because suddenly she was cupping his face in her soft hands, those gorgeous gold-brown eyes of hers looking deep into his own. “Hey,” she murmured, before pressing soft kisses to his jaw, his chin, the sensitive skin of his neck. “Stay with me. Please.”

“I am,” he told her. “I’m right here.”

She must have heard it in his voice, though, because when he moved to once again take her mouth with his, she shied away. Pushed him back just far enough so that she could slide her legs down his hips and put her feet on the floor.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice breaking with the sudden need—the sudden desperation—burning inside of him. Don’t push me away. Don’t leave me alone, not now. Not yet.

His hand clenched on her hip, his fingers digging into the soft lushness of her ass for one second, two, before he forced himself to let go. To move away.

But she moved with him, her arms twining around his waist and her body pressed against his own as she walked him backward across the living room.

“What—”

She stopped him with kisses, so many kisses—soft, hard, slow, fast, lingering, deep—as she kept them moving down a short, narrow hallway. “Much as I like walls,” she murmured against his lips between kisses, “sometimes a bed is good, too.”

Relief flooded him and he grinned, his arms winding their way back around her waist. “You won’t get an argument from me,” he told her as they made their way from the hallway into her bedroom.

Since it was the label’s condo, there wasn’t much to the room—nothing personal that would tell him anything about her that he didn’t already know. At least, nothing beyond the fact that she had yet to unpack and was currently living out of a purple-and-white polka-dotted suitcase that he found completely ridiculous and totally endearing all at the same time.

But there was also a bed—a huge, sprawling bed with a black duvet and a million pillows—and at the moment, he was much more interested in it than he was in Poppy’s luggage, no matter how charming her suitcase was. He started to take control, to turn her so that he could lower her onto the big bed—but she just shook her head.

Shot him a wicked little smile.

Murmured, “It’s my turn.”

And then she was shoving him hard enough to have him falling ass first onto the bed.

She was on him in a second, her long, curvy legs straddling his hips as she yanked his shirt over his head and sent it soaring across the room.

He laughed a little at her enthusiasm, but his amusement soon turned to need as she slammed her mouth down onto his.

It was a fast kiss—fast and hard and deep—and he was just getting into it when she pulled away. He reached for her, but she laughed and twisted her hips to dislodge his hands. He groaned—even through two layers of fabric, the feel of her sex against his cock was nearly enough to have him going blind with need—and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to roll her beneath him and take what he so desperately wanted.

Only the knowledge that she wanted to be in control this time kept his hands on the bed and his hips from thrusting into her as she pulled her tank top over her head and then leaned over to rub her breasts against his chest.

Fuck. He gritted his teeth, tangled his fingers in the duvet, fought against the need blasting through him like a particularly powerful bass line as Poppy started licking and kissing and nibbling her way up his neck. She paused at the hollow of his throat, swirled her tongue against his skin in slow, lazy circles that made his eyes cross and his dick swell. She prodded his Adam’s apple with her tongue, once, twice, before moving on to where his jaw met his neck. She dawdled there for long seconds, licking her way along the line of his beard until she reached the sensitive spot beneath his ear. She kissed her way over it even as she blew a warm, soft stream of air into his ear that had his hips slamming up and into hers of their own volition.

She gasped, her knees tightening around his hips, and for a second he thought he had her. But then she moved to the other side of his neck and started all over again, and he knew he was in trouble. It was a feeling that only intensified as she sought out every single one of his spots, listening to the way his breath hitched and ebbed in an effort to figure out exactly what he liked and how hard—or soft—he liked it.

Jesus. He wasn’t going to survive giving her control. Wasn’t going to survive her curious sensuality, or the care she was putting into her exploration of him. Groaning deep in his throat, he closed his eyes thinking maybe if he couldn’t see her beautiful face, her gorgeous body, that maybe—just maybe—he’d last long enough to get inside of her.