Just About Sex (26 page)

Hearing approaching footsteps on the other side of the door, she tried to decide what to say to him. Not the truth, which was that she couldn’t make it through another twenty-four hours without seeing him. Maybe the best thing to do was apologize for ignoring his calls all week. Yes. Apologize and talk. That was why she’d come.

The door swung open and Alex stared down at her, evidently too surprised to speak. She was probably the very last person he’d expected to show up on his doorstep at eleven on a Saturday night.

The porch light provided enough illumination for her to see that he looked awful. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved. Stubble left his normally neat goatee looking scruffy. A wrinkled white T-shirt topped faded jeans.

When he saw her, his fists clenched at his sides, flexing his heavy biceps. His harsh, glittering gaze roamed up and down her body, and his face tightened into the forbidding lines she’d seen the day he stormed into her office.

“You’re killing me, Simone,” he said in a husky, humorless voice.

She began to tremble. Emotions, powerful and unidentifiable, churned in her chest, each battling for supremacy. “I don’t mean to.”

Snorting, he turned his head to watch a car drive past, and she had the feeling he couldn’t stand the sight of her. A muscle pulsed in the strong column of his throat. After the longest moment of her life, he looked back at her.

Leaning against the doorjamb—apparently he didn’t want her in his house, and she could hardly blame him—he shoved his hands deep in his pockets. One side of his lips arched in a sneer. “How was your
date?
”

“Not good.”

Another snort. Dropping his head, he studied his bare feet for an eternity. Finally he looked up, and she saw naked vulnerability in his wary expression. “Why didn’t you call me back this week? I left all kinds of messages. Are you punishing me?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

His face twisted. “You’re a therapist,
Doctor.
What would you say if one of your clients tried to get away with a nonanswer like that—”

“I’m scared,” she whispered helplessly, admitting it aloud for the first time. “The things you do to me, the way I feel about you, I just…”

“What are you doing here, then, Simone? If I’m so terrifying?”

His tone was utterly defeated, as if he needed to brace himself for whatever further damage she planned to inflict on him, and it tore her apart. Suddenly she knew, with a terrifying clarity, exactly why she’d come.

She’d fallen in love with this man.

Her head spun with the realization. She loved him. He was smart and funny, moody and vengeful and…complex. Against all odds, she trusted him. Alex cared about her, and wouldn’t hurt her. Not again. Not purposefully.

If she loved him, why couldn’t they be together? Because of her stupid hang-ups? Because she was afraid she’d turn out like her mother? No bloody way. Nothing would keep her out of this man’s arms as long as he wanted her there.
Nothing.

Scared but euphoric, she told him the truth. “I came to tell you why I look at you like you hung the moon.”

Stiffening, he sucked in a breath with a surprised hiss. A bright, hopeful light appeared in his eyes.
“Why?”

Simone leapt with both feet and her whole heart. Having waited her entire life for this moment, she had no intentions of doing anything halfway. Why not give him the keys to the kingdom?

“Because,” she said, holding his gaze so he could see how much she meant it, “you’re the most special man I’ve ever met, and I want to make love with you.”

From deep in his throat, Alex made a choked, disbelieving sound. After that, his harsh breath filled the complete silence up and down the street. For the longest time he stared, his expression strained and intent, and if she’d just stumbled onto the scene she’d have thought he looked like he was in pain. Doubt crept over her joy, clouding it. She was just beginning to wonder if she’d made a grave mistake when he cried out, the sound triumphant in the night air.

“Come here,” he said, reaching for her.

“Wait.” She held up a hand and he froze, but looked very unhappy about it. “You need to understand something about me, Alex. I don’t…trust men very much.”

“I know,” he said, and she could tell by his sad, solemn expression that he
did
know, and didn’t blame her for it. “Your father—”

“Didn’t bother to stick around and didn’t bother to marry my mother.” Bitterness crept into her voice, as it always did when she spoke of the man whose genes she carried but whom she’d never seen. “And about a thousand men have walked out on my mother since then.”

If anything, the determined glint in his eyes only intensified, almost as if he didn’t care anything about her heritage and poor prospects for a successful relationship.

“Luckily, I’m not your father. And we both know you’re not your mother.” Cupping her cheek, his voice dropped to a soft, tender whisper. “Come inside.”

Stooping down, he threw his arms around her waist, lifted her straight off her feet, and buried his face in her neck. Laughing now with relief, she clung to him as he swung her around into the house, kicking the door shut behind them.

Chapter 22

I
n the darkness of the foyer, they went wild, as if they’d left all their inhibitions outside on the porch. With a low, guttural sound, Alex simultaneously dropped her to her feet and fused his mouth with hers. She opened for him, thrusting deep and tasting red wine—had he been drinking at dinner?—inside his delicious mouth.

Everything about him overwhelmed her senses: the burning heat and absolute hardness of his body molded to hers, the woodsy, citrusy scent of his cologne, his smooth, hot cheeks, the prickly goatee, the wonderful animal sounds he made, as if she drove him out of his mind and he absolutely couldn’t control himself.

His hands dragged through her hair and over her face. Rubbed down her back and kneaded her butt. Ground her against his raging erection and circling hips. Pushed her back against the door with the thunk of her head. Grabbed the bottom of her dress and ripped it off over her head. Slid over her black bra, panties and bare skin, burning every inch he touched.

“Alex, Alex,
Alex,
” she chanted whenever his mouth slid from hers, mindless and intoxicated with him. She groped and rubbed him with abandon and without finesse. Everything had to be explored, thoroughly and repeatedly: his smooth neck, endless hard shoulders, long arms bunched with muscles.

A distant thought came to her: she wasn’t reaching bare skin, only the soft cotton of his T-shirt. Temporarily insane, she forgot she could take it off by lifting it over his head. Grabbing handfuls of his shirt, she tugged on it until she heard a loud rip. Finally, Alex realized what she wanted, took mercy on her, and jerked it off himself.

Skin. Finally she had acres and acres of satiny brown
skin. “Oh,”
she said, gasping and flattening her palms against the ripples of his belly. Delirious, she dove in and reveled in it, rubbing her face across the heavy slabs of his hairless chest, licking and nibbling. Sweet and salty, hot and damp, his bare flesh thrilled her as nothing else in her life ever had.

Maybe she was doing something right because his primitive sounds grew louder and more abandoned, and his big heavy hands knotted in her hair and pressed her closer. “
Simone.
I want you…want you…
want you.
”

Reaching lower, she found the button above the tight crotch of his jeans and fumbled it open. She slid a hand inside his gray boxer briefs and found him, straining and eager for her.

Hearing the sharp hiss of his breath, she glanced up and saw his heaving belly and rib cage and, above that, the thrilling arc of his throat as he threw his head back. Awed and reverent, she tugged the briefs down in the front and immediately smelled the faint, wondrous scent of his musk. Leaning in, she nuzzled him, running her tongue up his length for a tentative taste. He cried out and, in one swift movement, jerked her away and to her feet.

Pressing his hands to her butt, he lifted her up and she clamped her legs tight around his waist while he kicked his jeans off. He carried her up the steps as if she was no heavier than a five-pound sack of flour, miraculously not dropping her even as he stroked her from behind, his clever long fingers sliding under her lace panties and into the sopping, vulnerable cleft between her legs. She hung feverishly on the border of a cataclysmic orgasm. Beyond shameless now, she moaned with exquisite pleasure, generating sounds she’d had no idea a human being could make.

Alex turned into a dark room and gently laid Simone on a bed as if she was a piece of crystal he didn’t dare handle. He left her long enough to turn on a lamp in a far corner, and images formed: dresser, wardrobe, chairs, nightstands, sleigh bed. Behind her head she felt the giving softness of feather pillows; under her hands she felt a down-filled duvet. Anything more than that, her overwhelmed senses couldn’t register.

By the time he turned back to the bed, she was on her knees, waiting for him, watching the astonishing play of muscles in those rippling thighs and tight butt as he walked, wondering how he fit those wide shoulders through doorways, hoping he’d wrap her tight in those hard, heavy arms and hold her all night. She reached for him, but he froze and stared at her with the hottest, most intense eyes she’d ever seen.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he whispered.

“I’m here.”

Slowly he came closer, until finally he was within touching range by the side of the bed. But when she moved into the circle of his arms, he backed up a little and studied her face as if he’d never seen a human being before. One hand came up, and he traced his fingers—gently, slowly, maddeningly—across her brow, down her cheek, over her bottom lip, down the column of her neck, and, finally, over the heaving swells of her breasts, just above where they disappeared into her black bra.

It was all too much for Simone. The excruciating pleasure his gliding touch brought to her overheated, oversensitive skin, the emotion, the adoration in his eyes.
“Alex.”
Her eyes slid closed and her head fell back, as close to a swoon as she’d ever been, or ever would be. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes and down her temples into her hair.

One of his arms tightened around her waist, steadying her. “Shhh.” Holding her face, he wiped her tears away with his thumb. “Open your eyes,” he told her. “Look at me.”

Simone clung to his forearms, raised her head and forced her heavy lids open to see his huge, blazing dark eyes just inches from her own. “Are those good tears?” he asked, his voice so gentle she felt it more than heard it.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Those eyes softened, smiling at her. “Do you have any idea how happy you’re making me?”

A laughing sob welled up, trapping the words in her throat for a minute, but she swallowed it down. Sliding her hands up and over the ridges in his arms and shoulders, she held his face and brushed her thumbs over his lush, moist bottom lip. “I’m the happy one here.”

That delicious mouth smiled against her fingers and then came closer, capturing hers for a deep, agonizing, perfect kiss as he eased her onto her back.

Everything slowed down. The way he released her bra so her breasts spilled free. His wide-eyed, appreciative, incomprehensible murmur as he stared at her. The nuzzle of his hot, wet mouth against her breasts. The thrill of him latching on and suckling, hard, until her cries became sobs and her back arched off the bed. The glide of his hands down her sides to her hips. The pull of her panties as he slid them down her legs and off. His low, earthy moan as he slipped his fingers between her thighs and felt how hot she was for him, how wet, how
ready.
The scrape of his rough chin against her tender skin, and the breathtaking circle of his tongue against her core. The faint, rippling spasms of pleasure that radiated all the way up to her belly. The way her thighs fell open, telling him it was time.

Above her own mewling and cooing, she heard the rattle of a drawer and rip of foil. Then he was there, hard and hot and huge, inching—inching—inside her, filling places that had never been filled, stretching places that had never been stretched. Killing her with unearthly pleasure. Taking her, belonging to her.

Suddenly he froze and, over the tangle of their slick bodies wrapped around each other, he raised his head to look down at her with unfocused, bewildered eyes. “Simone?”

This time, she reassured him. “Shhh. I’m okay.”

His brows drew together in astonishment.
“Simone?”

“Make love to me, Alex,” she whispered, raising her hips to meet his, testing herself. “Please,
please,
I need you.
Make love to me.
”

Making a choked, disbelieving sound, he kissed her eyes and both cheeks.

Then her life began again as he did as she asked, holding her tighter, murmuring to her, rotating his hips in slow, gentle,
effective
circles that rubbed, over and over again, across the perfect spot, the center of her existence. They moved together in an ancient, poetic rhythm, their bodies fluid and inseparable. Simone’s rippling spasms grew and multiplied, and so did her cries. Finally he eased out, millimeter by millimeter, and then eased back in.

It was unbearable.

Simone came, her body filled with a piercing ecstasy more fantastic than anything she’d studied in school, or could ever have begun to imagine. She clawed at his back, scratching him, trying to hold onto something so she wouldn’t soar into the next universe. This seemed to drive him wild. Groaning, crying out, he threw his head back and increased his pace, pounding into her until her head bumped the headboard, increasing her pleasure a thousand times. With a final thrust, he called her name, his voice hoarse and triumphant.

As he collapsed—exhausted, wet, heavy and delicious—on top of her, Simone’s tears came again because she was so grateful for the day Alex stormed into her life.