Razed (Barnes Brothers #2)(55)
Her gaze came up to meet his.
“Unless you planned on kicking me out for a rousing night of partying with your brother or something, I wanted to hang around for a while,” she said, a smile kicking up the corners of her mouth.
“Well.” He braced his hands on the counter by her hips, pretending to mull it over. “Zach stopped being an ass. I reckon we could hit the bars with a bunch of college kids . . . nah. I’ve done that.”
She chuckled and reached out, curling her hands around his neck. “What did you wanna do, then?”
“Movie?” He didn’t reach for her. He wanted to. Wanted to push that skirt up, peel that shirt away. He thought maybe she might be naked under the silk. Maybe. But he kept his hands planted flat against the counter.
Keelie’s gaze dropped to his mouth.
“I’m not in the mood for a movie.”
“You sure? Zach still has Netflix. We could probably find Addams Family.”
“No.” She licked her lips and leaned in, pressing her mouth to his neck.
He curled his hands around her waist then, wondered if she felt the same subtle shake he’d just felt. “What then?”
“Zane?”
“Yeah?” He turned his face into her hair.
“I’m already nervous enough. Can you stop talking, maybe?” The words came out tight and strained, like she’d squeezed them through a straw.
He caught her hand, lifted it to his lips as he leaned back.
Her hands were shaking, too, he realized.
“Why are you nervous?” He studied her face.
“Because . . .” She blew out a breath, her gaze locked on his throat. Finally, she looked at him. “I told you I don’t do casual sex. Quick f*cks. Sex is serious for me.”
“Keelie, are you saying you’re—”
“I’m not a virgin.” She looked away, but not before he saw the haunted, strained look in her eyes. “I just . . . there was a time when I tried to treat it as casual, like it didn’t matter. I sucked at it, even then. But I thought it might . . .”
Her words trailed off, but he could tell she wasn’t done.
Finally, her shoulders rising and falling on a sigh, she looked back at him. “It was a way to be close to somebody, I thought. Didn’t matter if I loved him or not, if he loved me. It was a way to be close. So maybe I had a few too many flings. It only made me feel worse. So I stopped. Since then, I just . . . sex should matter more than I let it matter. I told myself it would matter the next time.”
Her gaze lowered, and her words were ragged as she continued. “Ah . . . you’re the next time.”
*
He was quiet.
Too quiet.
She shot him a look, half afraid at the look she’d see on his face.
The moment she looked up, his hands cupped her face, cradling her so she couldn’t look away. His mouth brushed against hers, butterfly light. But even as she opened her mouth to deepen the kiss, he slid his lips up along her jawbone. She shivered as he nuzzled her neck, scraped his teeth along her neck.
The arm he had wrapped around her waist tightened and she whimpered, the sound foreign to her ears as she rocked against him. He caught her hips when she would have done it again.
“Easy,” he whispered, pressing a quick kiss to her mouth. “We have all night.”
“Is that enough?”
The question escaped her before she knew she’d asked it, and she bit her lip as she tipped her head back to meet his eyes. She was tall, standing five nine in her bare feet, and her heels added almost three inches to her height, but Zane still towered over her. In the golden glow that filtered in through the western-facing windows, a look of taut, harsh hunger tightened his face.
“No.” He pressed his thumb to her lip, his gaze locked on hers. “It sure as hell isn’t. But it’s where we start.”
There was a heat in those words, a sensual promise that threatened to send her senses into overload. She might have collapsed back completely limp onto the counter if he hadn’t caught her up against him.
*
You’re the next time.
Those words shattered the threads of control that Zane had been working to rebuild. He’d like to give her pretty, sweet words, but something told him that wasn’t what she needed, or wanted.
Pulling her up against him, he guided her legs around his waist, dying a little as the warm, wet heat of her settled against his cock. Watching her face, he carried her into the bedroom down the hall. There, dying sunlight streamed through the slits in the Roman shades. If there hadn’t been other buildings around them, he would have thrown the material back just so he could see the way the light played over her skin, the way the color of the tattoos spilled over the delicate ivory.
He’d find a place, he thought, somewhere out of the city, just so he could have her in the sunlight.
Soon. Some other time, he’d take her in the sun and trail his hands along those long, graceful limbs, see her pale skin painted gold under the setting sun.
Lowering her to the floor by the bed, he reached and caught the straps of her silken, rust-red blouse and peeled it down.
And realized he’d been right.
She was naked under it, the blouse lined. Her breasts, small and delicate, firm enough to go without a bra. A delicate blush painted her cheeks pink, spread down along her neck to touch the upper slopes of her breasts. Dipping his face, he pressed a kiss to her breastbone, nuzzled her softly.