Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2) (19 page)

“Well let’s see what
you’re
hiding.” I hop off the bed, turning him by the shoulders until he’s facing me, and push him to sit on the edge of the mattress. I grab the bottom of the Bob Marley hoodie he loves so much, pulling it over his head.

“Ah. What every rock star is wearing this year.” I pluck at the shoulder of his t-shirt. “The obligatory wife beater.”

“It’s called layering.” He laughs, hands sliding under my pajamas to push the material over my butt and down my legs. “As much as I’m enjoying all this conversation, I didn’t cross time zones for banter. I need this to go faster.”

“Faster, huh?” I kick the pajamas to the side and shimmy my panties off, stepping out of them and into the vee of his thighs. “Fast enough for you?”

There’s no teasing left in his eyes. He lifts up, sliding his jeans and briefs off, pulling me onto his lap, my knees bordering him on either side.

“Did you miss me?” His hand slips between us, one long finger slowly, deliberately, sliding up and down my hot, wet slit while his eyes lock on mine.

“It’s only been a week.” My words float on a breath. It’s all I can manage with my body begging his fingers to move, to possess me. To penetrate me. “I hardly had time to miss you.”

One dark brow lifts, along with the left corner of his mouth. So damn sexy I want to skip all of this and just impale myself on him right now, but the waiting, the taunting of our bodies heightens every sensation.

He circles my clit, the motion stirring heat in my belly. The callus on his finger from playing guitar brushes over the thin, sensitive skin, erotic and rough. My breath is in a holding pattern, trapped in my throat, waiting for his next move.

“You sure you didn’t find time to miss me?” His voice, always deep and smooth and dark, roughens with the desire written so clearly in his heavy-lidded eyes.

“That depends. Did you miss me, Rhyson?”

My hands wander over the muscles in his arms, over the lean chest and the ridges in his abdomen, down to grip and slide over his thick cock. He’s smooth and hard in my hands, and I’m rewarded by his response. His head falls back, mouth drops open on a gasp. His fingers cover mine, guiding my hand, pacing me to his pleasure.

I lower myself, whispering my love over his chest before taking a nipple into my mouth, rolling my tongue around him. Suckling him hard while steadily gripping and pulling. He braces one hand on the bed behind him while the other cups my neck, his thumb brushing over my lips.

“I missed you.” His eyes open, holding mine. “I missed this. You know I did.”

“I missed the taste of you.” I slip lower until my mouth hovers over him. “Can I taste you, Rhys?”

Without waiting for consent, I take him into my mouth, sliding my lips over him until he pushes against the back of my throat. I’m on the floor, on my knees between his thighs, greedily lapping and sucking at him, my hands gripping his hip, the muscled curve of his butt, the sinewed arm, anything to anchor me when the rich, salty taste of him on my tongue would send me into a tailspin. The longer he’s in my mouth, the more desperate I am to taste him. To take him as far as he can go.

“Pep, fuck.” He twists my hair around one hand, tugging until only the tip remains in my mouth. “Babe, I’m gonna come.”

I nod, asking for it only with my eyes fixed on his. I pull him in deeper, my fingers wandering up his chest to twist his nipple until my name storms past his lips. He sets an erratic rhythm that’s almost too much for me. Both his hands cup my head as he pushes deeper into the slippery interior of my mouth.

“Yes, baby. Fuck, Pep.” He hauls in jagged breaths, his fist clenched in my hair just shy of pain. “Shit.”

Every word pushes me higher, desperate to have him streaming hot and wet and thick down my throat. He’s always so strong, but under my hands, in my mouth, he moans, head flung back, vulnerable, every defense stripped away. I can’t take my eyes off him as I milk away his inhibitions. He tips his head up, our eyes locked as I watch him become as much mine as I am his in every way. I slow the motion of my mouth to a caress of my lips over him, finally, reluctantly releasing him. I run my tongue over my lips, still wet with his release.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, his voice raw and husky.

I stand, pushing his shoulders back to the bed, shocked by my own aggression.

“Did you enjoy it, though?” I ask unnecessarily. I taste the evidence of how much he enjoyed it.

“There’s only one thing I love more than that.” He pulls me forward until I’m straddling him, pulling one breast between his lips. My gasp fills the quiet hotel room. “That’s being inside you.”

He takes my mouth in a kiss, his tongue exploring and plundering. We twist into each other, desperation in every breath, in every brush of our lips. Each of us silently begging the other to go deeper, harder, moaning into the intimate contact. I grasp him, tugging until he’s hard again in my hands.

He grabs my hips, poising me over him. “Ride me.”

I rise up and down slowly, a raw, hot, wet slide of skin. My body grips him, and it’s sweet and hot and tight like the first time. Even better than I remember. The reality of him more fantasy than my dreams.

“I’ll never get enough of this.” He kisses my throat until he reaches my lips again.

“You say that now,” I gasp into our kiss. “We’ll see what you think in twenty years.”

My words freeze us both, my wide eyes finding his in the dim light of my hotel room. I can’t believe I said that. We’ve never even discussed . . . I mean, you don’t just say . . . you don’t assume . . . I drop my eyes to the place between us where we’re joined, my stomach caressing the muscles in his. He tugs my hair, bringing my eyes back to his face, back to his serious eyes.

“I fully anticipate that in twenty years you’ll have me as whipped as I am tonight.”

He pulls out, twisting until he’s the one standing, and I’m lying down, my butt at the edge of the mattress. He pulls my legs over his shoulders, and the first thrust goes so deep and hard it scoots me up the bed. I grunt from the force of it, clenching the cool sheets between my fingers. I don’t want him gentle. I want to still feel him when he’s gone. The sensual paradox of his eyes, tender on mine, while his body takes me with rough passion pushes me over the edge. One of his hands grips my thigh and the other grips the mattress, his handsome face twisting with the same emotion ripping through me as my body gives him the only response he demands, the only response it can.

Complete surrender.

TWENTY YEARS, HUH? MY MASTER PLAN
is working. My heart almost fell right out of my chest when she said that. She’s never referenced our future that way. In terms of decades spent together. She’s thinking marriage, right? I’ve been thinking marriage since . . . let’s just say it isn’t a new concept to me. In terms of time, we haven’t been together too long.

I know.

How else would I measure how long we’ve been together other than time? I measure it in terms of every private joke we shared in a roomful of people. In every kiss that feels like the first time over and over again. I measure it in how much better I want to be when she’s in my life. In those terms, we’ve already got eons together.

“You’re awfully quiet back there.” Kai burrows her back deeper into my chest, looking up over one shoulder, her smile brighter than the dim lamp light.

I fold the length of her hair over one shoulder, baring a stretch of naked skin to feather kisses down her neck and between her shoulder blades. She flips onto her back, reaching up to brush the hair out of my eyes. Without skipping a beat, I shift my kisses to the front, dusting across her collarbone. I open my mouth wide over her breast, laving the nipple with my tongue until she arches up, her breath hitching and her fingers clenching at my scalp.

“Your nipples are absolutely perfect,” I mumble into the underside of her breast. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Once, twice, five, maybe seven times.” She laughs, her Southern drawl even slower, her breath still jagged, nipples tight and wet under my tongue.

“But that was in the throes of passion.” I dip to kiss the tattooed prayer wrapping around her ribs. “I’m saying it completely sober, so you know it’s true. Not in the throes.”

“Will you stop saying throes? No one say throes.”

“I just said it.” I lift my head, teasing her with a glance. “You’re saying I invented the word throes?”

“No, not invented, just that people don’t use the word . . .” She rolls her eyes. “Shut up and get back to my nipples. You were saying?”

My hands roam her flat stomach and one sleekly muscled thigh. This girl and her dancer’s legs are gonna be the death of me. I flip her back onto her side and spoon my body around hers until that tight ass is pressed against me as I reach around to cup her breasts. I know she’s self-conscious about them.

“How could you ever think these breasts were anything less than perfect?”

“They’re tiny,” she whispers. “Most men—”

“Don’t matter since I’m the only one who’ll ever see them.” A horrible thought blackens my brain and I turn her onto her back again. “Pep, you still want to act?”

“You know I do. Eventually. Malcolm already has an acting coach lined up.”

Fucking Malcolm. Not even going there.

“I mean, you know you can’t do nudity, right?”

“Rhyson,” she groans. “Don’t you dare start with this.”

“And no sex scenes.” Okay. Compromise. “I mean I guess, kissing is okay. Like
closed-mouthed
kissing.”

She turns those tilted eyes my way wearing her “gimme a break” face.

“Name the last movie you saw with closed-mouthed kissing, no nudity, and no sex scenes, Rhys. In recent memory!
A Wonderful Life
doesn’t count.”

I mull that over because there’s gotta be something she can do.

“
Frozen
.” I can barely get it around the laugh swelling in my throat. “They had it on the plane.”

“Dude, you just said
Frozen
.”

“That’s it. I just solved our problem. Animation. You’d make a great Pocahontas. Or who was that other one? Mulan?”

“Diverse Disney princesses.” Her shoulders shake with the laugh. “That’s what you’re leaving me? And by the way, you don’t have to physically resemble animated characters to play them.”

“But it
would
lend a certain authenticity, don’t you think?”

“We’re not having this discussion any time soon.”

“Animation could be a great way to ease into acting, Pep. I think you should consider it. Because if you start acting before you’re good, I’ll rotten tomato you.”

“You would rotten tomato your own girlfriend?”

I shrug, turning down the corners of my mouth and linking my hands behind my head.

“If you suck, you’d leave me no choice.”

“If you rotten tomato me, I’ll never give you another blow job.”

Even knowing she’s pulling my chain, my heart stops for a second at the possibility of those lips never wrapped around my cock again.

“You, my lady, are the most powerful woman in the universe.”

She laughs so hard she curls her legs up and grips her stomach under the sheet.

“Blow jobs make me the most powerful woman in the whole universe?”

I lift up on an elbow, turned on my side, pushing the hair back from her face.

“Nope. Just in mine.”

Our eyes hold until the laughter evaporates.

“You’re crazy, but I adore you,” she whispers. “You know that?”

When someone says they adore you, it’s like love with a heap of cherries on top. You could love someone and kind of hate them. But to
adore
them, you have to like them a lot. And still it seems a pretty flimsy word to describe what I feel for this girl.

She lifts off the pillow far enough to give me a quick kiss that I waste no time taking deeper, licking into her mouth and nudging my thigh between her legs.

“Don’t start again,” she says, the words husky against my lips. “Or we won’t get to talk.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” My hands skim over a naked hip beneath the sheet.

“Yes.” She pulls back to look at me. “You haven’t even told me how this happened. How you came to be here with me.”