What He Never Knew (What He Doesn't Know, #3)(75)
“Please,” she spoke again, and this time, she broke with the word. Her eyes glossed, her bottom lip trembling before she sucked it between her teeth. “Please, Reese. Kiss me. Kiss me like I’ve never been kissed before, like I’m not damaged, like I’m new and whole and pure. Please,” she pleaded on another cry, swallowing as she tried to keep her composure while she broke what was left of the wall I’d put between us. “Erase the memories I have. Take away what I’ve seen and felt and fill me with the memories of this kiss, of a man touching me because he cares about me.” Sarah paused then, her hands twisting my shirt even more. “Of a man touching me who I want to touch me, and a man I want to to touch, too.”
My own eyes watered, but I sniffed back the urge to give in to those emotions. The pain I felt for her was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the admiration and care I felt for her, too. And in that moment, with that last request, there was only one thing I could do.
I kissed her.
My hands framed her face, pulling her into me with gentle care as my lips found hers, soft and surrendering, yet firm with desire. There was no one in the world I wanted more than Sarah, and I poured everything I had into that kiss to help her see it was true.
She bent under the weight of my lips, falling limp in my arms as I pulled her in closer. Her hands crawled up my chest, wrapping around my neck and into my hair as she tugged, asking for more. And I delivered, thumb brushing her jaw as I tilted my head to one side and slipped my tongue over her silk lips before she opened her mouth to let me inside. And when I tasted her — truly tasted her — a guttural groan erupted from my chest like a volcano.
Sarah gasped as I swept my tongue over hers, sliding my hands from her face to wrap around her small frame and pull her into me. The candlelight danced around us as we melted together, the kiss as alive as the hearts beating rapidly in our chests. Her hands explored me, mine held her, and when she finally broke for a breath, the energy between us crackled in an unbearable heat.
“Take me to bed,” she breathed, her eyes searching mine.
One arm swept under her legs, the other cradling her back as I lifted her from that bench and carried her across the house to my dark bedroom. The only light that reached us was from the moon outside my window, and it cast Sarah in a soft, cool glow as I gently laid her in my sheets. My lips were on hers in the next instant, stealing her breath again, my body sheltering hers as I slid between her legs. Her core was warm against me, and she gasped when I rocked my hips against her, letting her feel how much I wanted her, how much I needed her.
But I wouldn’t have her.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I wanted to make Sarah feel safe, and wanted, and cared for. I wanted to bring her pleasure, to let her slip away from reality for as long as she needed to. I didn’t know everything about what happened with Wolfgang, didn’t want to know how he violated her, how he stole something so precious from the most amazing woman I’d ever known. All I wanted was to erase those memories just like she asked me to, and replace them with those of a man reveling in the feel of her against him, in the absolute pleasure of being allowed to touch her.
I should have walked away. I knew it, distantly, like a voice screaming from some chamber in the depths of my mind. She was my student. She was too young. I was too old, too broken myself to have a prayer of fixing her. But it was all I wanted, all I could think of or desire as I pulled her to stand with me at the edge of my bed, my lips still fastened to hers.
“Sarah,” I breathed, kissing her again as soon as her name rolled off my lips.
“Yes?”
My hands moved from her hips up to her neck, sliding just under the collar of the sweater she wore. “I’d like to undress you,” I whispered, pulling back until her eyes met mine. Both of us panted, our chests heaving with each breath, and her eyes widened in fear at my request. “But, I won’t — not if you don’t want to. Not if it scares you or if you don’t trust me.” I paused, swallowing as I searched for my next words. “You’re beautiful, Sarah. And I want to show you that. I want to make you feel it — the way I have since the moment I met you.”
The corner of her lips curved into a soft smile, but instead of answering me, she pulled away from my hold, backing up until she was in the low beam of moonlight that streamed through my window.
And with her eyes locked on mine, she tugged the zipper that lined the front of her sweater down, down, slow as ever as it revealed the top of the dress she wore beneath it. Her lips parted as she peeled it off one shoulder, and then the next, letting it fall to the floor at her feet.
It was the most I’d ever seen of her.
Her shoulders were dotted with the same freckles as her cheeks, and I counted each one as her hands fell to the front of her thighs. She bunched them into fists, the fabric of her dress lifting with the motion, and she repeated it over and over, slowly inching the hem of the skirt up until it was in her hands, her thighs and knees exposed beneath it. Then, in one fluid motion, she tugged it up and over her head, letting it fall next to the sweater.
And it wasn’t about her taking her clothes off. It wasn’t about her showing me her skin. That action, undressing herself — it was her taking back the power Wolfgang had stolen from her.
I swallowed, stepping toward her as slowly as I could as my eyes drank every inch of her in. Those freckles dotted her from head to toe, like tiny stars in the dark night sky of her skin. Her hips were wide, her waist narrow, the swells of her breasts humble but absolutely perfect. It was more than I was prepared for, the image of her in nothing but a simple white bra and matching dainty panties. It was impossible to say what I imagined, what I though I’d find if I ever had the chance to see her this way.