The Paper Swan(66)

He was avoiding me, and when I finally clued in to why, I wanted to kiss him even more. Damian wasn’t doing the dishes. He was wrestling with something he’d never felt before. He was feeling shy and it was something completely foreign to him. He had never allowed himself to like a girl, never been on a date, never felt butterflies in his stomach.

I felt a stab of tenderness that was quickly overcome by the urge to jump him. I cleared my throat in an attempt to dislodge the treacherous minx that was quickly taking over.

“Why don’t you go change? I’ll finish here,” I offered. He was still wearing his strawberry splattered shirt.

He jumped on it, like I had just thrown him a life raft. Anything to get away from me. I finished up the rest of the dishes and turned off the lights.

We bumped into each other in the hallway. He was coming out of the bathroom and I was going in. The first thing that struck me was his clean-shaven face. Bye, bye beard. The stitches were gone too. No baseball cap. It was like he was showing me his face for the first time—the ridges where the boy I once knew had hardened to a man, the places he’d stayed the same. The second thing I noticed was his skin, still warm and wet, bare except for the sweatpants that didn’t look so ugly when they hugged his hip like that.

“I—”

“You—”

We stepped away from each other, aware of all the places our bodies had just touched.

I don’t know who moved first, maybe him, maybe me, but we were zigzagging through the hallway, our lips locked, my back against the wall, then his, banging and colliding in the narrow space until we got to the bedroom.

Damian picked me up and carried me inside. His bare arms felt like heaven. We fumbled to get under the netting, neither of us wanting to stop kissing, but it was tucked under the mattress, sealing off the bed. When Damian knelt on the mattress, with me still in his arms, the whole thing ripped from the top.

“Problem solved,” he said, tearing through the gauzy folds as he deposited me on the bed.

I would have laughed, but he slid his body on top of mine and I was lost. Limbs measured up against limbs, palm against palm, familiar yet so different. My t-shirt and panties came off, his sweatpants kicked to the foot of the bed. I lay on my side, shuddering when his finger dipped down my back, tracing the indentation of my spine. Hooking my ankle around his, I rubbed my toes against the sole of his foot.

It was discovery and wonder, a stirring of the senses, a medley of sighs. We were skin-to-skin, and then apart, touching and exploring until the distance became too much to bear. He was on his stomach and my lips were skimming across the broad expanse of his shoulders and back. I had barely tasted his skin when he growled and turned over. Damian was a take-charge lover. He knew when he wanted it, where he wanted it, and how to make it happen. I was spooned into him, enraptured with the feel of his rough thumb on my nipple.

“Still crooked,” I said, taking his thumb into my mouth.

The reaction was instantaneous, a rush of throbbing, inflamed blood to that very male, insistent part of him.

“Skye . . .” He moved away from me.

“What?” I wasn’t done sucking his thumb.

He forgot what he was saying, and just lay back, watching me. “That is not helping,” he groaned.

“How about this?” I moved on to the other thumb.

“Fuck you.”

I giggled.

“Skye . . .” He tried again.

I moved on to the tip of his cock, teasing it with my tongue. His hips shot off the bed.

“Skye!” He yanked me away by my hair. “I don’t have any condoms.”

“I think I saw a mini sombrero in the living room.” I went back to what I was doing. His head flopped back on the pillow and his fingers threaded through my hair.

“What do you mean mini?” he growled.

“I take that back,” I mumbled, relishing the feel of him expanding in my mouth. He started thrusting his cock through my lips, retreating, advancing, an inch at a time, until I couldn’t contain him, all of him. The sounds coming from him were making my thighs clench as my need started overtaking me.

“My turn,” he said, flipping me over.

It was oddly tentative, his lips on that most private part of me. And I realized that this was where it was different for Damian. He might have f*cked a lot of women, but he’d never made love before, never thought about giving the same pleasure he received. And his baby steps—his hot breath, his tongue, his mouth—nudged me towards the sweetest release. When he slipped his fingers inside, first one, then another, I thought I was going to lose it.