Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(62)
Ransom adjusted on top of me, pushing his hips closer, watching me when I managed to inch away from him.
“Come closer.” I didn’t bother to answer him—not that demand, not the quick flash of irritation on his face at my refusal. “Aly…”
“And if I don’t?” I knew better than to ask. My question was a spark flirting too close to the fuse.
“You really don’t want that question answered.” He wasn’t serious, didn't think I was. That threat was part of the game we used to play so often. Him demanding, me refusing. We’d switch, reverse roles and by the look in his eyes and the twitch moving his lips I knew he remembered playing with me. Remembered and likely missed it as much as I did.
He was so solid over me, trapping me because he knew I liked it. I always had. The weight of his thick body, keeping me still, pinning me just enough to make me ache for what he offered. But indecision was a weighty thing, it planted a kernel of doubt that, despite what my body was telling me, I needed to be sure I wasn’t just doing something stupid.
It was the indecision that seemed to urge Ransom on, lowering over me, just enough to get a taste of what he wanted. “You remember what it was like, don’t you?”
He came too close, a movement that vanished the space between us.
“No. That memory is gone.” Okay, two could play at this game. One look at his face told me he knew I was lying, but I tipped my chin, defying him anyway. “I don’t remember anything.”
I caught the hint of a smile, the pulse working in his left cheek. “You’ve never been a good liar, Aly.” Then Ransom moved quick, fingers sliding down my hip, a treacherously slow descent as he cupped me. My thin dance pants hid nothing. He was soft, smug with a stroke meant to tease, meant to reveal just how wet he’d made me. My body remembered. That much I knew the second Ransom touched me. “You’re still not.”
The laughed he released when I pulled on his shirt died as I brought his mouth to mine. “Shut up.” And he did, not letting me take more than a bite against his bottom lip. He tasted like a hazelnut latte. That was my last thought before Ransom held my wrists, grabbing them in one hand.
“You want to remember, Aly?” When I didn’t answer, Ransom returned his fingers to my body, rubbing against my clit exactly like he knew I wanted. The thick, warm pad of his thumb moved in circles, shaking away every thought, every sensation but the heat from his body and the weight of him on top of me. “Do you?” That hand quickened, the friction a sweet ache I didn’t want to ever stop.
“No,” I told him, wiggling one hand free, scratching my nails down his back, arching toward him, encouraging him to keep that thumb moving with the brush of my breasts against him. Even as I urged him on, I know I spoke the truth.
“No?” Ransom’s question disappeared behind the graze of his teeth down my neck. “You don’t want to remember?”
I didn’t. Not a single memory. A touch that was new, a taste that was different—that’s what I wanted. Memory came with emotion. It came with commitment, something that would land me back where I’d begun four years ago. I wanted to move beyond that. I wanted more.
“I…I want you to touch me like you don’t know me.” That hand slowed, the friction easing and I couldn’t look at him. “I want you to touch me like a stranger.”
He didn’t stop moving against me. Ransom wasn’t purposefully cruel. He thought he knew me, assumed he knew when I was pretending. But I wasn’t this time. I wanted him to give me what I asked for, not what he thought I wanted, not what I had wanted in the past. But he couldn’t do it. No, he wasn’t a stranger. He knew how close I’d come to climax. So he didn’t stop, only slowed before he moved his hips, released my wrist to pull my face up. And because I recognized how badly he wanted this, and knew that I would end up wanting it, too, I let go of wanting anything else and gave myself up to his touch, his fire, his desire.
“A stranger doesn’t touch you, Aly. Not like this.” And with that one touch, Ransom fractured the reserve I had tried so desperately to maintain. A push of my flesh, finger under my thong, right against my clit, bare, raw and that tactile, desperate urgency eased.
“A stranger wouldn’t know what you whimper when you want it, when you’re so close to falling apart that your breath becomes a muffle of sound.” He tugged at my pants, freed me from anything but the floor under me and his touch. His palm over my naked ass, then he pulled me against his body until he pushed his fingers inside me, working me hard, like no one but Ransom ever had. Ever could.
“No stranger would know that your breath hitches, that you hold everything still, the air in your lungs, even the beat of your pulse when I touch you.” He showed me then, with the dip of his fingers deep inside. And all did go still then—the breath between us, the axis of the world, my beating heart…it all seemed to stop until he moved his fingers over me, sliding until he found his way to a rhythm that made time coil and speed as quickly as it had slowed. Nothing held me back then. No excuses of why he shouldn’t touch me, no lies I told myself about not loving him anymore.
“I’m not a stranger, nani. Your body knows that.” Working faster, deeper, he smiled, pleased and happy when my mouth opened, when the space between us filled with the soft noises I made. His face wasn’t expressionless anymore. It told me all I thought I’d forgotten. The act of touching me, making me come, the noises I made, it was all familiar to Ransom. It was comfortable.