Privacy Code (Shatterproof) (8 page)

Chapter
Fifteen –
Catherine

Having Watts follow me home
required two things I didn’t know I had in me. Spontaneity and trust.

I hadn’t said
anything as he walked me to my car. Not one word. Part of that was because I was still nervous about seeing him and his arrival was nothing like I had expected. Mostly, though, I was stunned when he told me his name.

It meant everything to me. It meant he had heard me, had understood me on some level. And that seemingly simple act of telling me his name was a gesture that was deserving of my trust in return.

That’s why I hadn’t objected to taking him to my apartment. Whatever happened when we got there, it wasn’t going to be cheap and hollow. That much I knew, and it was nowhere on the list of things I thought might happen tonight.

Daniel Watts.

I had gone to the Hay-Adams expecting maybe a drink, possibly some food, and definitely a tough conversation. Part of me thought there was a chance I would end up with Watts alone again, but all of my thinking led me to believe it would be in a room at the hotel, not a room at my place.

Choosing not to show up wasn’t an option. For one thing, I was still too enamored with
him, curious and eager to discover the Watts I had known from all those emails.

Also, succumbing to my old ways of avoidance would have been a defeat. No longer would I live my life as if I were a mouse, scurrying around, trying to evade the talons of a bird of prey. No more fear of the world. Timidity and isolation had served their purposes, but it was time for something new,
something brave, all because of Watts.

During the drive home
, all I could think about was whether I’d left dishes in the sink, whether I had left a pair of panties or a bra on the bathroom floor, and…thank God I had changed my sheets the day before.

I couldn’t think of a time I was this nervous. It was more intense than the other night as I waited for him in the lounge, more so than that elevator ride up to his hotel room.

This was different precisely because of that night. It had ended abruptly, leaving me physically and emotionally frustrated, all of which only served to raise the tension.

I knew what was about to happen.

But I couldn’t have expected it to happen the way it did.

When I got the door unlocked and stepped inside, Watts was on me in a second. He pulled me close to him so possessively I almost felt like I slammed into his body. His left arm was curled around my waist, holding me firmly against him.

I felt his other hand at the hem of my skirt, but only for a second, because he moved it swiftly upward and around to palm my ass.

He pulled me even closer and I felt the hard ridge of his erection th
rough his pants.

Watts was
looking into my eyes. I couldn’t take my gaze away from his stare. There was something there I hadn’t seen before, but had read about. The metaphor of someone’s eyes catching fire. That’s what I saw in Watts.

A burning desire.
Unstoppable. Coming for me.

“I
wasn’t planning on this happening,” he said, “but when I saw you, I had to have you again. Have
this
again.” He lips crashed into mine, fucking my mouth with his tongue. “I’m sorry about the other night. I know we’re going to have to discuss it, but it’s going to have to wait.”

I nodded vigorously. “
Good.”

When he moved his mouth to my neck,
I grabbed his jacket and gripped it in my fist. My head fell to his shoulder. Were it not for his arm around my waist, I might have lost control of my legs and fallen to the floor right then.

I looked up and saw his eyes tr
ained down the hallway. He took my hand and led me to my bedroom.

Once across the threshold, I turned to face him. He started unbuttoni
ng my shirt from the bottom up. He stopped when something caught his eye. I knew by the direction he was looking that he’d seen my full-length mirror.

“Over here,” he said, leading me by the hand. He guided me between him and the mirror, turning me so that I had my back to him and we were both looking at our reflections.

“I want you to look at yourself,” he said, “and watch how I touch you.”

My stomach fluttered as a wave of the good kind of nervousness rocked into me.

Watts finished unbuttoning my shirt, lowered it down over my arms, then tossed it to the side.

With his hands behind me, he unzipped my skirt, letting it fall to the floor before kicking it aside.

Watts ran his hands from my hips, up my back, and to my shoulders where he bent down to place a kiss.

Into my ear, he whispered, “Do you remember an email
in which you called yourself ‘average’?”

I did remember it, because it’s truly how I thought of myself. And I was grateful for it. I could blend in and virtually disappear when I wanted to. Sometimes, though, like the night I typed that word into the email, I was engaging in negative self-talk about my looks. It was times like this that I wished I were beautiful.

Watts said, “I’ll take that silence as a yes.”

I nodded.

He unclasped my bra and gently slid it off my arms.

“You were so wrong,” he said. “So wrong it’s almost
as if you were lying to me.”

His fingers hooked into the elastic of my panties. In that moment, I wished he
would have torn them off of me. I wanted him to. He was turning me on with his words and actions, more so than I could have imagined.

“You weren’t lying to me,
though,” he said, tugging my panties down over my hips, down my thighs, until they fell to the floor. “You were lying to yourself.”

I was standing there
naked, fully exposed to him, while he hadn’t removed a stitch of clothing. It was as though he was testing my trust for him. That, or he got off on making me feel vulnerable.

I didn’t know if he wanted me to say anything in response.
I hoped not because I was lost in what he was doing, and thought maybe he had rendered me speechless. It didn’t matter, though. He was clearly directing this his way, and I let him continue.

“
You aren’t just average.”

His hands slid up my sides, cupping each breast. His thumbs and forefingers closed around my nipples and he lightly pinched and pulled on them. The
y responded by tightening. Watts flicked his fingers across the tips. My entire body shuddered at the sensation, blood coursing through my veins at a million miles an hour as my heart hammered in my chest. I was getting lost in the physical feeling so deeply that I almost missed his next words.

“Beautifully average.”

His hands retreated from my chest, sliding down my stomach. His knee pushed its way between my legs, parting them. I watched as I became even more exposed to him.

“Irresistibly average.”

His hands teased my skin just inside my hips, reaching down to the top of my thighs. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Off of him. Off of us.

I felt his lips close around my earlobe.

I was on the verge of begging him to touch me, but he knew what he was doing to me, and despite my urgency he could have dragged this out for an hour or three and I wouldn’t have minded. Unless I fainted first.

His middle finger was almost on my clit. He circled it, again and
again, before finally touching it.

My knees almost gave out.
I reached back and my fists clenched onto his jacket, with a white-knuckle grip. I knew he wouldn’t have let me fall, but it was reflexive.

Just
as quickly as he had touched my clit, he pulled his hand away. I watched in the mirror as he raised it higher, slowly. All the way to his mouth, where he sucked on the tip of his finger.

Our gazes locked.

“Deliciously average,” he said, and I thought if he kept tasting me like that and I kept watching him do it, I just might come right then and there. Somehow.

We stared at each other in
the mirror for a long, silent moment. My stomach was in a tight knot, not from nervousness, but from eager anticipation.

“Those are all contradictions,” Watts said. “There’s nothing average about you.”

He stepped aside and told me to sit down on the bed, his voice a rough whisper in my ear.

I sat.

Watts stood before me. He was tall to begin with but here, in this situation, with me literally nakedly vulnerable, he towered over me.

He reached into his
coat pocket, pulling out three condoms, all still attached at the perforated edges. He tossed them on the bed beside me. I watched them fly by, and when I looked back at him he had removed his coat.

I watched as he started to unbutton his shirt, exposing his tight chest and stomach. My hands took on a mind of their own and reached for him. His skin was warm and
smooth, taut over the muscled lines of his torso. His hips formed into a V-shape, leading down the front of his pants. A thin line of fine hair trailed down from his chest and continued past the waistline of his pants.

His hands were on his belt, unfastening it, then to the button and the zipper…

It had been so long since I had let any man get close to me like this. And in that moment, it was as if I were doing it for the first time. Watts wasn’t into the shed-clothes-and-fuck type of sex; he was enjoying pulling me out of my comfort zone, and I was ready for him to take it as far as he wanted.

My hands slid down the sides of his body and into the elastic of his boxers.

I looked up and our eyes met, his gaze intense. Still fiery. Wanting me. Needing me.

He was waiting to see what I would do. Testing me? Seeing if I really wanted it?

I pulled on his boxers, lowering them, and his cock sprang free. Fully erect, rigid. For me.

I was sure he expected me to take it in my mouth, and I was ready.

He gripped his cock at the base and ran the head across my lips. I opened my mouth, tasting him for the first time, expecting him to slide into my mouth, but he kept moving it back and forth across my lips. I closed my eyes and moved my head slightly forward to take him in, but there was nothing. I opened my eyes and saw him holding his cock to the side, just far enough away that I couldn’t reach it with my mouth. My gaze drifted up his body. He was grinning, his stare burning a hole through me.

“Tease,” I said, closing
my mouth and he touched the tip to my lips again.

“Such a beautiful visual,” he said.
“But I want to fuck you right now. Lie back, Catherine.” There was something about him including my name in his demand that made it even hotter and made me want to do whatever he said. That’s what my brain registered. My body didn’t need to process his words—it just responded as if by reflex.

He was on me again. His tongue traced a line from my navel up to my chest, sweeping along the underside of the swell of my breast.

Watts took a nipple into his mouth, sucking, pulling on it between his lips. When I felt his teeth lightly graze across it, I let out a deep sigh. I closed my eyes, my back arching into him, pressing against his face, wanting him to lick and suck harder.

And he did for a long moment, drawing it out, movi
ng from one nipple to the other, moaning deep in this throat as he did so.

As he moved his way up my body, licking along the way, I felt the weight of his cock, first on my thigh and then notching betwe
en my legs as he nipped at my lips and tongue.

He moved his hips, letting his erection
glide along my wetness.

I wouldn’t be able to take this much longer.
I needed him inside me. I also needed to remember to keep breathing.

“Do it,” I said, pulling away from his mouth.

“You don’t want to rush this, do you?”

Through my shaky breathing I
managed to say, “No.”

“Should I make you beg for it?” he asked.

“Please don’t,” I said immediately.

His mouth curled into a smile and he groaned. “That’s almost begging in itself.”

There was silence for several seconds as he teased me by continuing to slide his cock against me.

He kissed me again and I felt the grin on his face. “I have a lot of self-control, but my cock doesn’t. We can always
do it fast and hard, then go again, you know.”

“Do it… Now you’re
making me beg,” I said.

He reached beside us, grabbed the condoms,
tore one off. With ease, he opened the package and reached down. I felt him rolling the condom on.

Watts knelt between my legs, pushing them open wide.

I closed my eyes, preparing.

“Open your eyes, Catherine. I want to see
your eyes the first time I’m inside you.”