Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(77)

But I wasn’t a coward. Intimidated by him, sure. Completely overwhelmed by the sight and smell of him so close to me, yes, but I wasn’t a coward who’d shy away from what I wanted. Not anymore. I stopped looking at his mouth, at his cheeks. I stopped avoiding his eyes and answered his question.

“No. I’m scared of what you do to me.”

I wasn’t surprised when he came even closer, stepping between my legs as he backed me into the dresser. “What do I do to you, sweetheart?”

“I…I…” Clearing my throat, I shook my head, reminding myself I wouldn’t hide anymore. “I’m scared of what you do to my body.”

That low groan, the way he bit his lip as though just the thought of my body’s reaction to him was the single most erotic moment of his life was haunting, had the shake that had only been in my fingers rushing up into my arms.

His expression was a little desperate, but wary and it fascinated me to see that constant cool of his fracturing just a little. Ransom’s top teeth dug into his bottom lip as he suddenly lifted me onto the dresser and then pulled me to its edge. “No one has done this to me in a long time,” he said, using his free hand to snake around my lower back and push me toward the fierce bulge of his hard dick. “No one but you.”

Glancing down, feeling the pulse of what I wanted so close, so warm, I swallowed, my throat making a small noise as my gaze jumped back to his eyes, realization a brutal truth that I equally loved and hated. “Ransom, that can’t be…”

“It is, baby,” he said, twisting my heart with one word. “I’ve tried before, trust me. I haven’t…Aly, my head is so f*cked up, but you, what you do to me…” Ransom kissed my neck as though he couldn’t admit how exactly he’d survived everything that had happened to him. He rested his forehead against my shoulder and wrapped my leg around his waist, holding it in place. “What you do to my body, to the noise in my head, it makes me feel again. I can’t not feel what you do to me.”

I didn’t know what to make of the look he gave me. I only knew that I craved that look like an addict, wanting just that fierce gaze to eat up my features, devour me.

“I didn’t want to feel, not ever again.” Ransom’s hand against my face was warm and I leaned into that touch, wanting more.

“And now?” I asked, half expecting him to walk away, still.

I liked the way he moved his gaze over my face, like he needed to examine every feature, like what he saw didn’t seem real. “Now I can’t stop myself. I don’t want to.”

Maybe I’d expected trumpets and choirs and for the sky to erupt in bright, blazing lights from fireworks. That’s what I saw in my head. The reality was better. I had watched him, wanted him, maybe even loved him for so long that I was almost frightened of what would happen next. Still, that didn’t stop me from leaning into his mouth when he kissed me. That didn’t slow me down when Ransom picked me up, his hands on my back under my shirt, mine tossed in his hair as our tongues brushed together.

“God, you taste good. You taste too damn good, baby.” He took me down onto the bed and we were frenzied with every grope and grab, every lick and taste—a thousand daydreams came to life, a thousand wishes I’d made, right there under my lips, squeezing against my thighs. I had wanted him to fill me up, dreamt of what it might feel to have his wide, wondrous body on top of mine. But this was better, so much better than anything my boring imagination could have ever invented.

Real-life Ransom was better than a dream. He was fantasy made real and right then with the sweet hint of coffee and peppermint on his breath, warming my neck, hardening my nipples, he was all mine.

I relinquished control, my hands gripping the headboard when he cupped my ass, lifting my hips to rake his teeth, his tongue along my ribs. What could I do? He made me drunk with sensation, with the hope that I was not dreaming, so I didn’t stop Ransom or his eager mouth when he reached my side, when he left kiss after kiss along my hip as he pulled down my shorts. He moved his tongue, his fingers along my stomach, his lips and mouth following like he didn’t want the sensation to stop, none of it. My grip on the metal headboard tightened and shook when Ransom’s tongue dipped into the crevice where my leg and torso met.

“I could eat every inch of this skin,” he said, looking up at me with that ravenous glint in his eyes again. “Every single…” Ransom growled against my hip when he flicked his tongue over my clit, “inch.”

He was everywhere then—inside my head, filling it with sensation, with need; on my stomach with his free hand sliding up to cup my breast and his mouth licking around my hips, then back down, teasing my clit again and again until I could not take it. I needed to touch him.

It was only meant to be a graze of my fingers against that beautiful face. Something sweet, something that would keep me tethered to that bed, to him so that my heart would not burst from my chest. But that single touch, Ransom deflected, a quick grip of his fingers to brush away my touch and when I tried again, moving one hand from his hair to rake my fingers over his neck, his back, he took hold of my wrist, working some considerable skill to keep his mouth and tongue moving and my hand away from him.

He’d never let me touch me. Even when we danced, Ransom led, I followed and I wondered where that came from, why he didn’t want to be touched. When he glanced at me again, loosening his hold on my wrist as he watched me, as though testing my reaction to see if I’d try to touch him again, the same distant flash came back into his eyes, the one I’d seen there that night in the studio when he’d first kissed me. It was her. I knew that. He didn’t want me to touch him because someone else held him back. Maybe he was scared what my touch would do to him. I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t let this go, let him do to me whatever he would and leave me no choices. If I was his that night, he was mine and I’d take everything he had, even if he only offered the smallest bit of himself.