Seven (9 page)

The momentum of her orgasm faded
completely, but she tried to hide it from him. This might be the end, but she
wanted to feel him come inside her one more time. She kept her eyes shut and
tried not to cry. Continued whimpering, although less from desire and more from
heartbreak now.

Owen froze with a wrenching groan,
his cock inside her all the way.

Before she had time to process that he’d
stopped, he’d leaned over her. Cupped her cheek with one hand. “Amy?”

“What…why…” she stuttered, trying to
form a coherent question.

His breath was hot and damp on the
side of her face, and she could feel his weight pushing her into the hard wood
of the dresser. “I thought this was what you wanted,” he said in a raspy
whisper.

She wanted to look at his face, but
she couldn’t open her eyes. If she did, all the tears she was trying to hold
back would overflow. “It is.”

“No, it’s not.” He pulled his weight
off her and then pulled out of her completely—leaving her feeling empty in more
ways than one. His voice was uneven. He’d been on his way to climax and had to
stop abruptly. “If it was, you wouldn’t be crying.”

“I’m not crying.” A tear leaked out
of her tightly shut eyes, belying her words. One of his fingers found the tear
and flicked it away. “That’s just because it feels so good. I'm just
overwhelmed.”

She had to open her eyes so she could
see Owen’s expression. He looked sober and intense and unreadable as he shook
his head slowly. “No. That’s not what it is.” He pulled her up off the dresser
and, before she knew what was happening, he had lifted her off the floor,
cradling her in his arms. “I thought I was giving you what you wanted. You
should have told me you didn’t want me that way.”

“I did,” she said, instinctively
twining her arms around his neck and nestling against his strong body. “I was
the one who instigated it, remember?” When he didn’t respond, she continued,
“What about number seven?”

He laid her gently on the bed and
lowered himself beside her. Caressed her face with such tenderness that the
lump in her throat threatened to suffocate her. “Fuck number seven,” he said
hoarsely. “Amy, tell me what’s wrong.”

She just wasn’t brave enough to tell
him. She’d lost control of too much already. She couldn’t lose control of
everything. “Nothing,” she mumbled, giving the lie one more try.

Owen felt warm and big beside her,
and he was gazing at her with an intensity she didn’t understand. “Amy, tell me
what you want.”

She wanted him to love her. Wanted
him to stay with her and not go back to London. Wanted to spend the rest of her
life with him.

“I want to try for number seven,” she
said at last, meaning it for one last time, reaching up to stroke his thick,
damp hair.

He shifted his tense body and studied
her carefully. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, opening her
legs as he moved over her and settled between them. “I’m sure, Owen.” She
wrapped her arms around him and pulled him as close as she could make him. “I
want you to make love to me.”

There was something too raw and naked
in her last words, and she was afraid she had given too much away. But it was
too late to take them back, and part of her didn’t even want to.

With a strange groan, Owen sank into
her once more, and she tried to wrap her legs around his hips. It took her
three attempts, since her muscles were tired and trembling, but she finally got
her legs linked around him.

He didn’t move immediately. Just buried
his face in her neck. “Amy,” he said, his voice muffled and unspeakably dear.
“I am. I always have. I’ve never done anything else.”

Something lurched in her chest as she
tried to understand what he meant. “Owen? What do you—”

He raised his face and placed one
finger on her lips, silencing her with the gesture. Meeting her eyes, he
murmured, “Don’t talk. Don’t think. Don’t try to work it out. Some things we
just can’t control.”

She was about to cry again. About to
shatter. About to be completely overwhelmed. So she made one last-ditch effort
to stop it. “There’s an appalling kind of irony to your telling anyone in the
world not to talk, think, and control.”

He smiled slightly in response but
refused to lighten the mood. “Amy,” he said softly, his tone almost pleading.
His hard length inside her felt familiar, felt complete, felt so incredibly
right. “Why won’t you understand?”

Opening her mouth again, she would
have asked another question, but he silenced her with a kiss. The lovely
pressure of his mouth on hers was so sweet that the tears that had collected in
her eyes streamed helplessly down her face.

“Owen,” she whispered against his
lips, sniffing and hoping that her nose wouldn’t start running. “What—”

“Shh.” He continued pressing little
kisses into her mouth, and then he started to move inside her.

Slowly, gently, with a lingering
rhythm, Owen made love to her—just as she wanted. Her legs tightened around him
with every deep thrust, and one of his arms edged under her shoulders so he
could pull her chest toward his as they moved together. They were kissing
constantly, his lips and tongue stroking her mouth as his hard cock stroked her
most intimate self.

The pressure started building again
with the rich friction of his motion inside her, and she angled her hips to get
more stimulation on her clit. Moaning against his mouth, she arched beneath him
as the sensations continued to collect at her center.

Soon, her breathing became too urgent,
and she tore her mouth away from his. Tossing her head on the pillow, her eyes
happened to land on the clock. “Faster,” she urged him breathlessly. “Running
out…time.”

“I don’t care.” His voice was a husky
caress. He mouthed the sensitive spot beneath her ear. “Amy, it doesn’t
matter.”

“Yeah…does,” she panted, arching her
neck back and clawing at his shoulders as her orgasm approached too damn
slowly. “You wanted…to win.”

He made a strange noise in the back
of his throat and continued the steady thrusting of his hips. “Amy, baby,” he
said thickly, his face hidden because he was now nuzzling her neck. “That was
never what this was about.”

“But,” she objected, hope flooding
her chest at the implications of what was happening but reason trying to keep
her joy in check. “You said—”

“I say a lot of things.” He found her
throbbing pulse and kissed her there. “They’re not always what I mean.”

She wanted so much to believe him.
Wanted so much to allow herself to believe that he was trying to express
something without words.

She had to make sure. She breathed,
“Why don’t…you say what you mean?”

He lifted his head up. Met her eyes.
Told her everything she needed to know. “Why don’t you?”

Because she was afraid. Because she
didn’t think he loved her back. Because she thought it would lead to
heartbreak. Could his reasons be as simple as that?

His eyes, his mouth, his hands, his
cock, his body was telling her the answer. All of him was loving her, adoring
her, asking her to love him back.

She did. So much. Held him tightly
with her arms and her legs. Squeezed him with her inner muscles. Moved her hips
with the rhythm they were making, allowed it to push her toward release.

“Owen,” she cried, on a taken
breath—wondering how everything had been made right in such a short space of
time. Her heart, her body was exploding with a fullness she’d never imagined
before. “Owen.”

“Amy,” he choked out in response. His
movements had taken on a new urgency, propelled by the change he must sense in
her. He sped up his thrusting and kept giving her clumsy, loving kisses. “Love.”

She arched beneath him again as she
felt the delicious pressure coiling tightly inside her. She was sore, but it
didn’t matter. All that mattered was Owen inside her. All the way inside her.
All the way to her heart.

And the unimaginable truth that maybe
she was in his heart too. She couldn’t believe it was real, but he was silently
communicating his feelings to her. Finally, she couldn’t help but hear them.

“Amy.” The gentle rhythm of his
motion disappeared as desire and need took over. “Amy, Amy.”

She was crying again. Tears falling
down her face and sliding into her hair. Little sobs breaking out of her throat
as she felt her final orgasm tighten, on the edge of releasing. “Owen,” she
whispered, just before she came.

Her body froze, as if shocked by the
shattering rush of pleasure. And then her whole body rocked with the sensations.

She clawed lines down his back as she
came. Felt Owen come too.

He grunted out her name one final
time as his hips jerked against her, as he tightened and released with his
climax.

They lay together breathlessly
afterwards, making funny, helpless sounds as they tried to deal with the
culmination of the entire afternoon.

Unthinkingly, Amy glanced at the
clock. “4:10,” she said hoarsely. “You win.”

He kissed her again, leaving Amy a
limp heap of mush and satisfaction. Her tingling legs had finally unwound
themselves, and her exhausted body was sprawled beneath him.

When he didn’t reply in words, she
added, “Seven orgasms. Who knew?” She briefly wondered if any sexual encounter
she had in the future could possibly live up to this afternoon.

Then she looked up at Owen’s tired,
tender face. Thought about what both of them seemed to feel.

Decided the future might be even
better than today.

“That means we get to live out one of
my fantasies,” Owen said in a textured voice. He couldn’t seem to stop stroking
her face, and his body was heavy on top of her.

“Right,” Amy agreed, almost glad she
hadn’t won because she was dying to know what he fantasized about. “But, just
so you know, we’re not going to be having sex again for a day or two.”

He pulled his limp cock out of her
with a wet sound. “Are you really sore? I tried to be careful.” Then he looked
a little guilty. “At least, until the end. Then I got a bit carried away.” He
pressed a little kiss on the side of her mouth. “You do that to me, you know.”

“I know,” she said, smiling at him
fondly, tearing up again at the joy of knowing this was true. “It’s not too
bad. But no matter how careful you are, seven times is seven times.”

He nodded. “Well, not to worry. This
hasn’t been entirely painless for me. And I’m not sure I’m going to be
particularly eager for a while myself.” He smiled, something deep and
intoxicating entering his eyes. “We can wait for my fantasy.”

She sighed happily and nestled
against him. “Okay. Hopefully I’ll be recovered enough by whenever that is.” They
both really needed a shower, and she thought it must be a sign of how
completely besotted she was that she didn’t even care how sweaty and messy he
was as she snuggled against him. Of course, she was a little sweaty and messy
herself, and he didn’t seem to mind either. “Owen, I—”

A sudden scratch in her throat made
her cut off her words abruptly, her head twitching to the side and her body
jerking with each cough.

Owen loosened his hold on her and
waited until she recovered herself. But when she stopped coughing, he grabbed
her and scrutinized her face with a surprisingly hungry gaze.

She blinked up at him, still a little
befuddled from all the sex, the exhaustion, the coughing, and the joy over the
revelation of Owen’s unspoken feelings.

“Yes?” he prompted impatiently. His
gaze was so urgent and frustrated that Amy had to think back to what she’d been
saying.

Then—in a hot rush—she understood. He
thought she’d been about to say something important. Something that started
with “I.”

She was momentary flooded with mushy
feelings over this evidence of how much he wanted to hear her say it, and she
almost babbled out the truth in a sappy haze.

But she bit the words back, her
nature making itself known with a sudden clench. The selfish coward wouldn’t
say it himself. Wanted her to say it first. Actually expected her to cave
before he did.

“You what?” Owen demanded, his arms
like a vice around her.

Arrogant, spoiled asshole. Thought
she would make it easy for him. Always used to getting everything handed to
him.

Well, not this. She might have lost
the wager of the seven orgasms, but she wasn’t going to let him win this other
game.

This game that meant so much more.

Smiling at him tenderly, she patted
his cheek. Gazed up at his handsome face, her heart in her eyes. Said sweetly
what she’d originally intended to say, “I reserve the right to veto any of your
fantasies if they make me too uncomfortable.”

This time she was watching for it,
and she recognized the disappointment that flickered briefly in his eyes at her
words. Was impressed by how quickly he was able to hide it as he murmured,
“Agreed.” He relaxed beside her on the bed, looking as drained and exhausted
and worn as if he’d been through a battle. Then his lips twitched. “I’ll think
of something good for both of us.”

She was instantly intrigued and
rolled over until she was draped on top of him. “What are thinking? Anything
good?”

He narrowed his eyes and raised his
eyebrows. “You’ll find out eventually,” he said snidely.

 “Bastard,” she muttered. “Indulging
in petty spite just because I wouldn’t tell you that…”

“That what?” His body tensed up
beside her.

She sniffed, panicking a little over
how close she’d come to slipping and saying what she was now stubbornly
determined not to say first. Thinking quickly, she rephrased, “Just because I’m
not swooning over your victory.”

He smiled in tired amusement, the
intensity fading once more. “It was quite a victory, wasn’t it?”

“Pompous, bloody arse,” she mumbled,
exaggerating an accent vaguely similar to his.