One Night to Risk It All(35)

And then it was all wiped away as she gave up emotion for pleasure. There was nothing but their fractured breathing, Alex saying rough, coarse things in her ear. In English, in Greek. Words she’d never heard before. Words that sent a shiver of illicit longing through her, that heightened her desire, amped up her arousal.

After the orgasm he gave her outside, she was shocked that she had another one building already. But with each stroke, each rough, whispered word, he pushed her higher, faster.

He put his hand beneath her lower back, lifted her hips off of the ground and thrust harder into her, the sound of skin on skin overtaking the traffic noise from the street below.

He thrust into her one last time, a hoarse sound rising in his throat as he came. The sound, his loss of control, the look of tortured pleasure on his face, was so intense that she felt it as it echoed through her, grabbed hold of her own pleasure and expanded it, pushed her over the edge, their orgasms blending into one until she couldn’t tell where hers began and ended, until she felt like they’d genuinely become one.

When it was over, the traffic noise came back into her consciousness. He rolled away from her, lying on his back on the carpet. A breeze blew through the door, chilling her bare, sweat-slicked skin.

“Well,” she said.

“Yes.” She looked over at him. He was on his back, his arms up, hands beneath his head.

“I suppose that was inevitable,” she said, sitting up, drawing her knees to her chest.

“Clearly it was,” he said.

“Obviously. Because it happened.”

He turned and rose up, cupping her cheek. “Yes, it did.”

“It didn’t fix anything,” she said, a cold feeling stealing into her chest.

“No, but I don’t suppose sex ever stood a chance of fixing anything.”

“I thought we might...” She stopped talking, because she didn’t know what she’d thought. That it would steal the mystery? Break the bond? That it would bond them? Answer the questions and reservations she’d had?

No, she hadn’t thought any of that. She’d thought of nothing but need. Her need to have him, the way he’d looked at her. The way he’d wanted her.

Not the fa?ade, but her.

But now, with the haze of orgasm fading slowly into the background, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was, yet again, naked with a man she didn’t know. Yet again, she was exposed with him.

This time she’d gone and shown just how needy she was. For some kind of acceptance. It made her cringe. She knew better than to show this much of herself. Than to be anything more than self-contained.

Her mother had been that way. So perfect. So gracious. And she’d tried. Rachel had always tried, and never quite lived up to it all. She’d failed eleven years ago, on purpose and with blazing, spectacular glory because at the time it had seemed better than trying so hard and still not measuring up.

And she’d failed again with Alex.

“I think I need...”

“A cigarette?” he asked.

She laughed. “No. Oh, man...I haven’t had a cigarette in...more than a decade.”

“But you’ve had one? I’m shocked.”

She took a deep breath. “I think you’re too easily shocked. Everyone has a past, you know.”

“Oh, believe me,” he said. “I know about pasts.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“You seem far too...good, to have a past,” he said, frowning.

“I seem good? After that? I need to work on my moves.”

“I just mean...you were a virgin. You’ve never had your name in the paper for anything even remotely scandalous.”

“By design. All of it. Anyway, since when does virginity equal goodness? Mine’s certainly not a reflection of that. It was...fear, mostly.”

“You didn’t seem afraid that night with me. Though you did tremble a bit.”

“I hate you.”

He stood up, naked still and entirely unconcerned.

“I’ll bet the people in the building across the way are getting a show.”

He turned and waved. “Probably.”

“Good grief, Alex, have you no shame?”

“No. A product of my upbringing, I’m afraid. Hard to have shame raised in the environment I was.”

“But the people across from us might have shame.”

He grinned and bent, grabbing his black underwear and tugging them back on. “There, how’s that?”

“Better for some,” she said.

“Not you?”

She felt her face get hot. “Not really.”

“How is it you kept all this passion hidden for so long?”

“I hid it so well, I even hid it from me,” she said, hoping to redirect the subject. Away from things like this. Away from drunken parties and stupid decisions. “Plus... Look, I’ve made some crappy decisions, okay? And I almost got burned seriously and permanently because of it. Who am I kidding? I did get burned just...privately. I learned my lesson, though. I learned that you can’t just do things without consequences catching up with you.”

“Do you have lung problems from all your smoking?” he asked, his tone dry.

“If only that were the case.”

They looked at each other for a second. She was still naked. And he was mostly naked. And she realized they knew so little about each other.