Sweet Sinful Nights(43)
She could subsist on this moment. She could use it as the balm to her overactive brain, to all the harsh moments that rattled into her life from out of nowhere. Keep taking more from him—more kisses, more touching, more contact.
But she wanted to give, too. To give to him as he’d done for her.
“My turn,” she said, as she returned the favor. She worked her way up his neck, kissing his jaw, then his earlobe. He grasped her harder as she mapped his skin, loving his clean scent, his rough stubble, and his hard body.
“You’re quite good at taking your turn,” he murmured.
She nibbled on his earlobe, and he pumped his pelvis up into her on a muffled groan. A blast of heat tore through her, and taking and giving smashed together.
“Ride me,” he said in a rough, husky voice. They were wanting all the same things. Wanting the give and the take as well. “Ride me hard. Like I know you want to.”
His words ignited her. She followed them to the letter, as they collided in a mad frenzy in the photo booth. Through their clothes, she was grinding against him in seconds, her white panties and his jeans the only barriers. They became a tangle of teeth and heat and madness, as she kissed him ruthlessly and slammed against him. He kissed back the same way, wild and untamed, his hands knotting through her hair, pulling hard. Grabbing. Biting. Tugging. Hands and fingers clawing everywhere. Their breaths turned loud. If anyone walked by on the way to the restroom, surely they’d hear her moans of desire.
She didn’t care.
Not with the way his lips consumed her, taking over this bruising, needy, dangerous kiss that felt like tipping over. Like she was losing what little control she had of her emotions for him. She was poised, teetering on the edge of something. This week had been so sweet, so delicious, so like a perfect courtship that it made her remember how deeply she’d been in love with him before. The way he’d treated her stirred up all those feelings she’d forced out of her mind and shoved into a box for the last ten years. They were resurfacing, breaking free of the past, and fighting their way up her body. Terrible, dangerous feelings that threatened to take over her mind.
She moved faster, harder, kissed more deeply, her desire climbing higher.
But then he placed his hands on her shoulders, and gently, but firmly, pushed her away. Forcing her to look at him.
“Shan, why don’t we get a room?” he asked, his eyes hazy with lust. “You know I want you so much. You’re driving me wild, and we’re practically f*cking with our clothes on in a photo booth. C’mon,” he said, tipping his forehead to the curtain as if to say Let’s go.
And then, like the motherf*cker it was, the past grabbed her throat. Like a slingshot, it snapped her back to everything that had broken between them.
She clenched her jaw, grabbed his collar. “I can’t just go have sex with you, Brent.”
“Why not? Isn’t that pretty close to what we’re doing now?”
She swallowed hard, and let it out in a harsh, broken whisper. “Because it was never just sex with you.”
But she didn’t stop moving on him. She only slowed the pace, because she couldn’t break the connection. This electric thread was part of them, part of who they were, part of who they were becoming again. She downshifted from the madness to a slow grind. He followed her lead, adjusting his rhythm too, shifting his touch to a softer one, as he ran his hands along the bare skin of her arms. Gently, he kissed her shoulder, making her shiver. “What was it with me?”
She cupped his cheeks, and looked him in the eyes. Spoke the truth. “It was everything,” she said, as she moved against him, the friction sending another powerful wave of desire through her. “All of it. This. You. Us. You were everything to me.”
He laced a hand through her hair. “Do you have any idea how much I want to be everything to you again?”
She shook her head. She was still stuck in time. The freshness of the hurt felt so new again. “Do you have any idea how devastating it was when you broke up with me?”
He groaned, sounding annoyed. Defeated. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about the past,” he whispered as he kissed her neck. His lips were barely there, just the flutter of a hummingbird’s wings. Even so, the kiss turned her liquid. How the hell could they kiss and argue? But then, that was what they’d always done. Even while they fought, they could never stop touching.
“I can’t hide from the past. I can’t move on unless we talk about it.”
“Then tell me,” he said roughly. “Tell me what you want to talk about so we can start over.”
“How do I know it will be different?” she asked, as she leaned her head back and succumbed to the strange combination of kissing and confessing. Or touching and talking. “Because of the shoes, because of the bracelet, because of scarves and lunches and the dinner and the tickets this weekend to Alvin Ailey?”
“No. Those are just things. It’s what’s behind those things that matters, and that’s how I feel for you. Because I would do anything to have you back,” he said, holding her face and forcing her to look him in the eyes.
And as she did, something inside her cracked open. The ice that she’d packed around her heart that he’d been chipping away at day by day, thawed completely.
“It’s harder for me to just start over than it is for you,” she blurted out, even though it was selfish, what she was saying. She knew that. But she couldn’t escape the painful truth of who she was. She stared fiercely at him, keenly aware of both the intensity of this conversation and the pressure from his erection between her legs pressing hard against her damp panties.