Eight Ways to Ecstasy (23 page)

The instant they made it through the door of his house, Kate was on him. Her bag hit the floor, and then her hands were on his shoulders, her mouth on his. He groaned into the kiss, the low simmering hum of desire that'd been heating his blood since he'd first set hands on her on the steps of the museum rising to a boil. He walked her backward, and she pulled him along until he wasn't sure who was leading who. Her back connected with the closing door, and he shoved a fist up into it, slamming it the rest of the way shut.

Thank God this hadn't just been him.

She played her cards close to her chest when she wanted something, but he hadn't imagined the heat in her eyes. How could he have? Everything they did was a callback to another moment. Running through galleries together like they had the first time they'd met, when the flush of desire between them had been uncomplicated and naked and new.

Letting her look at him with those artist's eyes. The way she had as she'd drawn him stretched out and bare on a hotel bed. The way she had through a camera lens as he'd stripped off his clothes and taken slow, torturous strokes over his own needy flesh.

Before he'd thrown her down and pressed inside and taken pictures of that, too.

He kissed his way across her jaw and to her throat, tugging her collar out of the way to suck a bruise into the hollow where her shoulder met her neck—right where the old one had started to fade. “God, Kate.”

Lightning ran up his spine as she traced her foot along the back of his leg. She tilted her head to the side and dug a hand into the meat above his hip, inviting him in.

And fuck but he had needed this. She might be having a shitty day, and she might escape from it by looking at pictures in a museum, but this was how he washed it all away. Even back before he'd known what sex could mean, he'd racked up the notches on his bedpost as a way to get out of his head. He'd run and he'd lifted and he'd fucked the anxiety and the anger out of his blood. The boredom and the purposelessness, once he'd gotten to Paris.

He lost himself in his body. Like this.

Running a hand up under her jacket, sliding from her hip to her chest, he circled the warm curve of her breast. “What do you want, baby?”

He'd give her anything. Do anything to make her feel good and to earn him his chance to be with her like this.

“I want—” She cut herself off, gasping for breath as he cupped her fully. As he scraped his teeth along the shell of her ear. Her hand found its way into his hair, and
yes
, fuck yes, he loved it when she tugged like that. “It's been so good—”

“Damn right it has.”

But she shook her head, even as she kept pushing into the wet kisses he laid and sucked into her skin. “The museum.”

“Just the museum?” He ground into her hip, pressing that hardness into her and having to bite down against the sound of need the contact pulled from his lungs.

She clutched him tighter. “The museum, everything. Like being in Paris again.”

It was. So much like it.

The scratch of her nails against his scalp had him pulling back, looking at her with eyes that felt wild, nearly as wild as hers looked as she stared up at him. Her soft, red mouth parted, her breath coming hard.

“Pretend we're in Paris again,” she said, and it was like his whole body lit up.

Their time together that summer had been a rushing whirlwind, preserved in flashes in his memory. She'd been so innocent and so terrified, but he'd coaxed out the sexiest, bravest creature with patient hands and soft kisses. With his
mouth
.

He dragged his tongue across his lips, going harder in his jeans. “Happily.”

He dropped to his knees right there in the entryway. With a firm grasp at her ankle, he tugged her legs apart. Fuck autumn and fuck tights and fuck boots. He nipped his way up the fabric from her knee to well under the hem of her skirt.

She groaned as he mouthed to the top of her thighs. With clenched fists, she helped him ruck the fabric higher. The sound of her pleasure meshed with a choked, high peal of a laugh. “That's not what I meant.”

“It's not?” He remembered doing a lot of this back then. It had been one of so few things that hadn't scared her off, and God but it had worked like a charm. Even that first night, when she'd been so tense, so afraid of her own pleasure and so doubtful about his promises that he could bring it to her…this was what had gotten her there. Soft, wet kisses against her cunt and the wet flicker of his tongue over her clit. He slid a hand up ahead of himself and rubbed a thumb over her. Even through the layers, she was damp and warm.

“It's not the
only
thing I meant.”

A hot punch of arousal rocked through him as he turned his head. Laid his cheek against her thigh and gazed up at her while he primed her with low strokes of his thumb. Her face was red, the flush creeping down her neck and past the marks he'd left there, toward her breasts. And he knew this blush. Knew the embarrassment and the hard work it always took her to push past her inhibitions, and…

And the desire. She
wanted
something.

Oh, this was going to be good.

He barely recognized his own voice, gravelly with need as he asked, “So what else do you want?”

She seemed to have to dig deep as she flexed her hands and her jaw. But she found it, gaze connecting with his. “Whatever you want to give me.” Her throat shivered. “Something I haven't had before.”

Moaning aloud, he buried his face against her leg. “Oh, baby.”

His cock was a dense ache as a thousand possibilities roared through his mind, his skin too tight and his flesh throbbing. He could get his mouth on her and feed himself to her, fuck her throat while he fucked her pussy with his tongue. Could turn her around and pound her right into this wall, or get her to ride him, find a way to help her do it with abandon. Watch her tits or—or reverse cowgirl and watch her ass and—

Oh hell. He knew what he had to do.

It killed him to pull away, blood pounding in his cock and through his veins, every inch of him crying out to have her right then and right there and
right the fuck now
.

Well. Not every inch.

In a movement that was so much smoother than he felt, he rose to his feet. The shiver of bare air between them hummed, shooting sparks. With all the restraint he had left in him, he grazed the backs of his knuckles down the side of her face. From her temple to her chin and down. All the way to the center of her chest.

Then he lifted his gaze to meet the dark heat in her eyes. Low and deep, he said, “Bedroom. Now.”

Kate just about flew up the stairs. Her lungs were full, her nerves alight, thrills running from her breasts to the hot pit of need in the center of her abdomen and back again. Thundering footfalls on the bare wood behind her shot her heart into even higher gear, giving her a fresh burst of speed, and she laughed aloud. She wanted to be caught, but that wasn't the point. Being chased was a rush of adrenaline zooming through her tingling skin, was
amazing
—

But it was nothing to his overtaking her. She bit down on a scream as strong arms wrapped around her waist. He hauled her bodily over his shoulder, and she kicked her legs at empty air, feeling alive, feeling like everything that had been weighing her down was floating off of her at once.

The whole mattress bounced beneath her as she made impact with it. He threw her down and then rose up to stand above her. A predatory gleam lit his eyes, making the liquid pieces inside her go hotter. Wetter.

As she watched, he pushed his leather jacket from his shoulders, letting it fall with a clatter to the floor. All precise, efficient movements, he set to work on his cuff links and the buttons of his shirt, his only acknowledgment to her a curt, gruff “Strip.”

She didn't need to be told twice.

Her clothes melted like water beneath her fingertips. None of the hesitance that had once plagued her remained as she pulled off her own jacket and her top and her bra. Naked to his waist already, he caught her ankle in his hand, tugging at her boots, and she shoved the whole jumble of her skirt and tights and underwear down her legs as one, only for him to tear them away. And then he was hooking his hands under her knees to haul her to the edge of the bed.

Her breath caught, her lungs seizing when he lowered himself down to sit on his haunches on the floor, hot hands on her thighs, spreading them apart. Nostrils flaring, gaze intent and searing as it focused singularly on hers.

And then he leaned in.

With her legs over his shoulders, the room around her spun. He'd been bald-faced in his intimation of doing this for her in the entryway of his home, but even the knowledge of what was to come, even the experience of having survived the impossible heat of his tongue before couldn't have prepared her for the wet kisses he peppered all around her sex.

“Rylan—”

“Shh.”

The first hot stripe he licked up the center of her had her back arching, her hands scrambling, twisting in the bedsheets above her head. But he pulled away, eyes flashing.

“Give me your hands.”

She did just that, only to have him rest them securely in his hair, and, oh God. His mouth bent right back to its task, a hard sucking glance right over her clit as two fingers pushed inside. She hung on for dear life, but every time she feared she was grabbing too hard, yanking too savagely at the tangled strands, he groaned, the sound unmistakable as anything but pleasure.

So she gave in to her own. Jesus, it was shameless, the way she pushed up into the motions of his tongue, bucking to try to get his fingers deeper.

Only to go shatteringly still when he slipped his other hand lower.

It wasn't the first time he'd touched her there. She quivered, throat going tight at the soft pressure at her ass, and she remembered this. Remembered the fullness and the explosive way he'd made her come.

But it still felt so naked. So vulnerable.

He parted his lips from her flesh for just an instant. “Let me. Let me in, gorgeous. I promise, it's gonna feel so good.”

And who was she to question? She'd been the one to beg him to show her something new. Pulse roaring in her ears, she dropped her legs to rest them lower on his biceps, spreading her thighs wider for him. Slipped her hand from his hair to the warm, solid muscle of his shoulder.

It was a dual assault as he lowered his mouth to her again. The pressure against her other opening wasn't a gentle nudge this time. His fingertip was slick with her liquid, pushing inside with an inevitability, and there was that burn, that sharp spike she'd anticipated, but at her wince he sucked her clit between his lips and hit that perfect spot inside her sex.

Her body yielded to it, the intensity and the stretch soaring past discomfort and into something hot and deep.

“Oh God,” she mumbled.

“That's right. Give it to me.”

He pressed and pressed, warm strokes into both her openings at once, and she was light. Was light and sensation and fullness—

Until she was devastatingly, achingly empty.

“No—” Her eyes flew open, and when had she even closed them?

His hands landed to either side of her head, the lean lines of his chest and arms gleaming as he held himself over her.

“This is what is going to happen,” he said, and something turned molten in her spine. His voice rumbled hot in his throat and resonated through all the wanting places in her body. “You're going to keep this”—he shifted his weight, taking her hand and setting it to the swelter between her legs—“ready for me.”

She slipped a fingertip through her folds, whining at the easy, slick glide. “And what are you going to do?”

His eyes darkened. “I'm going to go find our toys.”

Brushing the base of her clit, she bit the inside of her cheek.

“You remember them?” he asked.

God, did she ever. A long, cool piece of glass with a little swell that pressed just right once he helped her push it inside. A nice deep rumbly vibe that he'd coaxed her through stroking along her clit, and he'd been there behind her the entire time, eating up her moans and whispering filth into her ear. Naked and hard and rubbing off against her spine because her pleasure had turned him on that much, because he wanted her so badly—

He dipped down to place his lips beside her ear. “And you know what then?”

The warm wash of his breath, the wet sounds of his words sent tremors humming through her skin. “What?”

“I'm going to fill you up. Watch that pretty glass slide into this soft pink pussy.” His hand dipped down between her legs, one of his fingers sliding in alongside hers, making her spine arch and twist. “Give you that vibrator.”

“Yeah?”

“And you're going to get yourself off with it, aren't you? Gonna get yourself so worked up?”

More worked up than she was already?

“And I'm gonna be right there.” He scraped the line of her throat with his teeth, perfect and sharp. Then his hand slid lower. “I'm gonna be right here.”

“Oh God.”

His fingertip circled her ass again, and she shook down to her bones. “Remember I told you you'd be begging me to fuck you here someday?”

He had. That first night he was back.

Nose against her jaw, he groaned. “You're gonna beg me, Kate. You're gonna need it so bad, and it's going to be
amazing
. You'll be so tight—”

Her whole body hit a peak that wasn't orgasm—was instead this impossible breaking tidal wave of want crashing over her. She surged up into him, grabbing at his neck and hauling him down. Their lips met, tongues thrashing and teeth clicking, all messy and wet.

Then, gasping and breathy, she pushed him away.

Power poured through her limbs, electricity humming just underneath her skin. “You'd better get on with it then.”