Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1) (9 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Timeless

I march out of Aiden’s bedroom, down to the living room. I have my eyes on my red flats, planning my next words, when I almost collide with him in the kitchen. He looks warm, giddy even. The anger seems to have vanished. This is the look that confuses me above all others. The sheer joy amid bleakness and isolation. Arrested as I am by him, I can’t help the grin that splits my face in two.

“You weren’t trying to sneak out, were you?”

“No, I was coming to find you actually. Probably a good thing I didn’t get far. Chances are I would get lost.”

He laughs. “Then I think it’s time for a tour. I didn’t have a chance to show you around earlier.”

“Maybe we can fit in a lesson on art interpretation too. You know, things like ambiguous pointing toes?”

He laughs again. “I may have to examine those pointing toes.”

The toes in question curl at the prospect. For a moment, I wonder whether I should press the art lecture but my eyes fly to the clock on the wall. Sixteen hours and fifteen minutes of embargo left.

His index finger comes under my chin. “No clocks today,” he whispers and wraps his hands around my waist, bending his seraphic face to mine.

The kiss is gentle and slow. His tongue traces my lips, once, twice, three times, four. He does not rush. My mouth parts in response and only then, his tongue comes in. His hands clutch my waist tightly. Suddenly the slow pace is not enough for me. I take his lower lip between my teeth and bite it like I have wanted to do since the flood in the painting room. He moans and fists his hand in my hair, arching my head all the way back.

He lowers his lips to the base of my throat. “This is the first part of you I saw in your painting,” he whispers. “I wanted nothing else but to kiss it.”

His lips flutter over my skin. I’m on fire. That warm pulse between my legs throbs until the rest of me is vibrating, inside out.

He pulls back and takes my hand. “Let’s finish that tour.”

He strides to the clock on the wall and flips off the switch. Then, he unplugs the microwave, the stove, the sound system.
All the clocks.
We stroll through the rooms, and wherever he sees a clock, he turns it off and kisses me. Hard kiss, soft kiss, long, short, bites, nibbles, blows, until the only thing that keeps me from slumping to the hardwood floor is his primal hold around my waist.

In the end, we enter his library. It rivals Reed’s Rare Books Collection. Mahogany floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls, holding hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books. A hand-carved chessboard is set out in the corner. If I were not burning and the clock were not ticking, I’d sit here all night. He smiles at the awe that must show on my face.

“What are men to books and libraries,” he chuckles, modifying Elizabeth Bennett’s quote from
Pride and Prejudice
.
So bloody clever!

“In vain they struggle. It will not do.” I spoil Mr. Darcy’s words.

He laughs and pulls me tightly to him. “In vain, indeed,” he says, kissing me in front of Austen and all.

On our way out of the library, I notice a calligraphy quill with a long, black-and-white feather on a shelf. A beautiful Amherst.

He notices my gaze. “A gift from my mother. She seems to think this is a manly pen. She bought one for me and one for my father when they were in Europe.” He rolls his eyes, but there is a tender ache there when he talks about his mother.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, thinking of my mum’s quill on my dresser. Like a last warning to step away from more loss. I push the thought aside and pick up the quill. It quivers like me. I caress his cheek with it, pausing at his scar. He takes it from me and runs it over my lips, my jawline, my neck and my collarbones. My breathing becomes shallow.

Feather in hand, he leads me out of the library and down the hall, finally to his bedroom. He unplugs his alarm and takes off his Audemars, pulls out the crown and shoves it in his dresser. His eyes are liquid fire. He saunters toward me with single-minded focus.

Every muscle in my body is coiled and tensed. The bottom of my belly is clenching with a dark, addictive ache. I am ready. I want this. He caresses my face, looking at me questioningly for permission. I can only nod and reach for my dad’s watch. I have not taken it off in four years but tonight is past-free. My hand shakes as I undo the clasp. Aiden wraps his hand around mine. I thought it would feel like my skin was being flayed but with Aiden’s touch, my wrist feels lighter.

When the watch comes off, we don’t stop it. He sets it gently in the dresser next to his Audemars. Then, he looks at me with a pure smile.

“Let the time stand still, Elisa.”

Chapter Nineteen

Masterpiece

The light of his bedroom is muted. No sound but the night and my loud breathing. He is close, very close. I smell sandalwood. Cinnamon. Aiden. I see nothing but him. And he has turned part beast, part man. The molten blue of his eyes stirs, melts, whirlpools, freezes and revives all over again, in some inner battle.

He caresses my cheek with the backs of his fingers, along my jawline, until he reaches my lips. He traces my lower lip with his thumb and the edge of his nail scrapes my skin lightly, back and forth, back and forth. My eyes close, my head lolls to the side.

Then, both his hands frame my face.

“Open your eyes,” he whispers. I do, but my eyelids are heavy.

“Elisa, have you done this before?” His voice is low, almost part of the night. I can only shake my head.

“
La virgen,
” he mouths. “Are you sure you want this?”

This, yes. What’s coming later, no. I nod. Apparently the powers of speech have deserted me. His lips hover over mine. I feel his hot breath on my mouth.

“I should stop you, but I won’t. Because every day, every hour—awake or asleep —since I saw your first painting, you have haunted me.” His voice is on a tight leash, and the fire in his eyes rages brighter. One of his hands leaves my face and splays at the small of my back. He presses me against his body. Hardened, coiled. For me. He brings his mouth to my ear.

“I think it’s time I haunt you back.”

You already do
, I want to say but I cannot find my voice.

His lips brush against my earlobe, feather-light like the quill that he has set on the bed next to us. He takes my earlobe in his mouth, tugging at it with his teeth. My spine goes rigid and quivers like a strained bow. The knickers he gave me feel wet and cool. It helps my overheated skin.

He kisses underneath my ear, my jawline, my neck. His other hand fists in my hair and bends my head back so he can kiss my throat from the base to my chin and finally, finally, my mouth. I have missed him. His tongue is alive. It moves with mine, flesh on flesh. I reach slowly to wrap my arms around his neck and knot my fingers in his hair. It’s the familiar in the new.

He starts to kiss my cheek, my nose, my eyelids. I panic.

“Please, don’t kiss my forehead,” I whisper. I keep my eyes closed, afraid to see who knows what in his face. I know I sound mental but this would be the worst moment in the world to have a breakdown. His lips stop.

“Look at me, Elisa.”

I open my eyes, terrified that he will decide I am too messed up, too much work.

“Why do you ask me that?”

I swallow hard and manage a whisper. “My dad used to kiss me there. I can’t bear it. You can kiss me anywhere else you want. Whatever else you want. But not there.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, and his eyes turn unbearably soft. The sound marks a transformation. With a groan, he parts my lips with his tongue, and we are off. I realize abruptly that until now he was hesitant. But my words resolved whatever conflict he had, and now he moves with abandon.

He caresses my spine and cups my behind. At first gently, then hard. He pins me against his hips, and there it is, that part of him that wreaked havoc in my head all day today. He grinds against me, breathing harder. He tugs my lower lip with his teeth. It’s not gentle. It hurts, but it starts a frenzy inside me. I pull his hair and, without thinking, bite him back. My muscles tense under his hands as I turn liquid.

He grasps the hem of my dress and lifts it slowly. When it finally comes off, he throws it behind him so forcefully that it hits the back wall. I stand before him in my cream lace bra that does not match the knickers he bought me. It does not seem to bother him. He takes a step back with a look of triumph in his eyes.

“You’re magnificent,” he whispers. “Even better than I imagined. And that’s saying something.”

Shyness should not be here but it is. I force myself to look at him, instead of down. He is wearing too many clothes. I’ve never seen a man naked before but Aiden Hale does not seem to belong in the same species as other men.

Uncertain that I can move, I manage a small step toward him. I lift my hands tentatively to his belt. The moment I reach for him, he wraps his hands around mine and whispers, “Start a little higher. Or this will be over much sooner than either of us wants.”

I can’t help my proud grin. It makes him smirk, humor back in his eyes. I start unbuttoning his shirt but my fingers are shaking. After the first two buttons, he sighs, grips my hands and rips the shirt off. Buttons fly everywhere.

“That should do it,” he says as if this is a normal way to undress.

It makes me giggle and squirm at the same time. That was… I cannot think of a word. Brain-frying hot? That’s the best I’ve got.

He is wearing a tight T-shirt underneath. It strains against every muscle like wrapping tissue on a present. I slide my fingers under the hem and take it off, hypnotized by the body that materializes one inch at a time. First, the hard edges of the V that disappears into his low jeans. Then the short dark hair that trails toward his navel. And every peak and valley of his abs, perfectly symmetrical. I stop and stare. I don’t know for how long but eventually a throat clearing brings me to my senses.

“Elisa, when you’re quite finished ogling my body, would you be so kind as to remove my T-shirt
all
the way?”

I look up at once, noticing that, in my awe, I abandoned the T-shirt. It is now covering his face and hanging limply down his back.

“Oh, sorry,” I mumble, heat burning not just my face but the rest of my skin.

“Not at all. You can ignore my face for my body anytime you wish.”

I pull his T-shirt over his head and his glorious face is mine again. I rise up as high as I can on my toes and kiss him on the lips. “Impossible to ignore this face,” I murmur against him.

He lengthens the kiss. I can’t resist sucking on his lower lip and biting it gently. His gasp makes me braver. I place my hands on his shoulders. His muscles ripple underneath me. He is breathing hard, but this breathing I know. It’s like mine. Fast and shallow. I drop my hands to his chest and then slowly across his rib cage, his stomach, along the waistband of his jeans.

I snap his belt open and unbutton him. Then I stop moving and stare shamelessly. What exactly am I going to do with the bulge that is straining against his jeans?

Don’t be ridiculous, he’ll guide you
, I scold myself. I suck in a breath and unzip him. I slide my hands under his jeans and start taking them off, praying with my one rational brain cell that he does not get caught on something. I hear a hum from his chest, but he does not rush me. Perhaps he is letting me enjoy my first unveiling. I drop to the floor along with the jeans and slide them off his feet with his shoes and socks. Even his feet are attractive. I lean back, feeling like I just unveiled a sculpture commissioned personally for me from Michelangelo himself.

His legs have a light dusting of dark hair. My eyes follow them up until my head bends all the way back. The hard muscles rise up to the heavens. Or rather to the one and only heaven that has now captivated my entire focus: the snug dark gray boxers he is wearing. I rise up slowly, checking to make sure my legs can support me, and reach for them, running my fingers along the band where it meets his skin. He tenses and twitches beneath my hands. I gather the last bit of courage from the gnawing need in my veins, and drop his boxers to the floor.

He springs up as if he broke through a leash, blind to everything but me.
Oh my fuck!
A naked man is a whole different plane of existence. Utilitarian and beautiful. Lewd and romantic. And the only axis holding the contradictions together is now before me. Hot. Heavy. Hard. Present.
The cock.

At that first sight, awe and everything else leave me. I become ruled by instinct. Male and female.

He is watching me, amused and hungry.

“It’s not that scary, is it?” he teases. “Trust me, it works out.”

I nod. He would know better than I. He takes the small step between us blindingly fast. In the same move, I am in his arms, my legs wrapped around his waist, and my bra is off. Maybe he is a magician. Or maybe my bra melted on its own. Whatever it is, I can’t be bothered with it, because he is kissing me with a desperation I’ve never felt before. I give him back everything I have. I must have gotten it right because my moan mingles with his. His abs ripple against the hot wet spot between my legs. My lower belly trembles. I flex my legs around him, half-afraid of the motion, half-mad with need for it.

He walks the two steps to the bed and lays me on it, my legs on each side of him. He looks at me so intensely that my hands fly up to cover my breasts, but he grips them and shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he says. “Let me look at you. Not your paintings tonight. You.”

I can’t hide. Under his eyes, I feel like a woman. Not because my breasts feel tighter, heavier, but because a man is looking at me this way. I arch my back instinctively for his touch. But he takes the feather quill to my skin. I feel like a blank page.

The feather moves over my cheeks, jaw, neck, collarbone, shoulder, breasts, ribs, waist, hipbone, knickers and thighs. The trail of the paintings. He brings it back up, drawing other lines, blazing new paths. With every whisper of the feather, I turn more incandescent.

“I knew it. Not a single mark anywhere else,” he says as the feather traces circles around the three freckles on my hip. He switches between the feather and the tip of the quill. Soft and hard, smooth and sharp. Drawing circles around my nipples, over my breasts. It feels like he is writing on me. I try to make out the letters, the words. I miss some. I get others.
I. Mine
.
A.H
. The trembles in my lower belly become tremors with a life of their own.

The feather trails up to my lips and flutters over them.

“Tell me what you want, Elisa,” he whispers as the feather sweeps back to my breasts and nipples. Round and round. They tighten, they hurt, they need something stronger and, though comparatively small, they lift the rest of my body toward his hand.

“I don’t have the words,” I gasp, and he smiles. He drops the feather and lowers his body over mine. Skin on skin for the first time.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t, innocent as you are. Let me give them to you. Repeat after me.” He brings his face close to mine.

“Mouth,” he says.

“Mouth,” I whisper, and his mouth closes on mine. His lips are hot and wet. They mold, coax, flex and enfold my own.

“Tongue,” he says between kisses.

“Tongue,” I breathe back, and his tongue dances with mine again. Soon, his pace leaves me behind.

“Throat.” His lips travel over my chin, hovering and waiting for me to speak.

“Throat.” My voice is part of the silence, my breathing too loud to allow any other sounds but his to interfere.

“Skin. Perfect skin.”

I say it back, and his lips trace my collarbone.

“Shoulder.” He blazes a new path and plants soft kisses there.

“Now the hard words, Elisa. They’ll get harder and harder. Say them,” he commands.

He speaks and moves, my words sounding more and more like pleas. He stops at my breasts. His mouth closes around my left nipple and pulls on it gently, while his hand pinches the other one. Kissing, sucking, biting, some bites light like nibbles, some harder than even his pinch or the quill’s tip. My tremors turn violent. He moves to my other nipple and sucks hard, alternating between sharp bites and gentle rolls of the tongue. Every muscle below my waist flexes and burns. Every flick of his tongue sends a new jolt through me, and right as I’m reaching a precipice, his mouth moves lower.

Belly. Belly button. Waist. Hip. Hipbone. Thigh.
I repeat his words in a daze. Every time his lips touch me after a word, the pulse between my legs beats faster.

“Speak up, Elisa,” he says, and only now I realize that I missed the last word. The final word. The one that is making the world go around. He says it again—carnal, dirty, vital—as he hovers lightly over the knickers he chose that are now trembling. His hot breath inflames my skin. I know he is waiting for me.
Oh, what the hell
. I repeat the final word like it’s a call for salvation, and he presses his lips and nose into my knickers. I writhe and he pulls back. The pleasure becomes painful.
Please. Now
, I beg him in my head.

“These have been wet all day today, haven’t they?” he asks. My moan is confirmation enough and my hips lurch toward him on their own. “I’d like to shred them but I’ve grown rather attached.” He slides them off in one swift move. Naked for the first time, my hands fly down to cover myself.

“None of that.” He shoves my hands away not at all gently. He looks exultant. His control is slipping too. Good, he can’t wait much longer, and frankly, I will go up in flames if he does. He starts a trail of kisses inside my thigh. His destination is obvious. Once there, he blows a warm gust of air that makes me hiss. He places a small kiss on my pubic bone. His stubble tickles. His words rain on me again, sentences now, commands, dirtier and, oddly, more romantic. More intimate. Some I can repeat, some I cannot. He continues undeterred and finally, finally, he is at the center where the frenzy is at its worst.

His mouth closes on the spot at the same time that one of his fingers slips inside me. My cry rends the air and I grip the bed cover. My hips start to writhe on their own. He restrains me with his other hand and sucks in rhythm with his finger, sending another cry in the air. Then his tongue takes over, circling, and a second finger joins. The pressure of his mouth increases. My thoughts break. Faster. Deeper. Harder. I’m tensing. Rising. Falling. Tunnel vision. Darker at the edges. Breaking. Burning. Calling. Fire. Ice. Air.
Aiden. Aiden. Aiden
.

A scream is echoing on the walls and in my head. I crash back on the bed. Was I levitating? As the world resurfaces, I still feel his mouth on me but now in kisses, like a soothing, hushing motion.