Just for You (16 page)

She paused, stroked his hip with long, sensitive fingers. On down to the muscles of his outer thigh, then up, sliding over the quadriceps. Down again, then tracing delicately over his inner thigh, and her mouth, her tongue were working on him.

He was the one who was helpless now. “Reka,” he gasped, shifting on the bed, trying to get closer to that hand.

“Say please,” she murmured against him. Still too far away. Too far, and he needed her. He
needed
her.

“Ah. Please,” he said, because he’d have said anything, and he felt her smile against him, and then her hand was there, where he needed her, and he rose into it, and she began to stroke, started to kiss her way down his chest, down his belly, her mouth following the path her hand had blazed.

“Do you want this?” she asked when she was there, her mouth already against him, so close and still not quite there, her voice like cream. “Do you want to come in my mouth?”

The jolt of it ran all the way through his body. “Yes,” he got out. “Yes. Yes.”

“Then come on, boy,” she said. “Give it to me.”

She set in on him, worked him over, and he was lost, and he did.

And this time, he was the one shouting.

Because I’m a good time
, she’d told him, what felt like months ago.
Because I’ll do anything
. And it was true.

They’d taken a shower, later, but then they’d been clean, and soapy and slippery, and it had seemed like a shame to waste that. He’d had her against the wall again, the water beating down, her legs wrapped around his waist, the power of it taking her over until she’d been wracked with it, and if he hadn’t held onto her afterwards, she’d have been taking her second tumble of the night, because all her strength was gone, drained, pulled out of her body by pleasure.

He helped her out of the big stone stall, dried her off with a big, fluffy towel that she’d have sworn was brand-new, led her to the bed again and climbed in with her, pulling the duvet over them and settling down beside her, holding her so close, running a hand over her skin, and she was all but purring with relaxed contentment.

“You make me feel so good,” he told her after a minute. “and you make me so…you make me lose it. I want so much.”

“Mmm.” She cuddled a little closer. “You can have it, too. Seems you can do anything you want with me. I’m just that easy after all, when it comes to you.”

“I am a lucky man,” he said with a sigh, and she looked up at him, saw the look of smug satisfaction on his face, and laughed a little.

“Just you remember that,” she told him as severely as she could manage.

“You’ll remind me if I forget, I’m sure. And we forgot the condom that time,” he added lazily, his hand smoothing her hair now, “in the shower.”

“We? That wasn’t me, boy.”

He laughed, a low chuckle. “Yeh. Me. I forgot.”

“You don’t sound too worried,” she decided.

“I’m not. I’m clean, and as I may have mentioned, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“That’s not the only thing condoms are for.”

“Not worried about that either.”

“Well, as it happens,” she admitted, “you don’t need to be, because I’m all good on that. But good to know, because I come from a fertile family. I should warn you.”

“Told you. I’m not worried.” His hand stroked over her shoulder, like he still needed to touch her. “I’m happy, is what I am. But why tonight? What changed your mind?”

She lay still for a moment. “I wanted to be here,” she said slowly, serious now. “I wanted to be here for you. I figured, you probably had people there for you when you won, happy to celebrate with you. I wanted you to know you had somebody there when you lost.
I
wanted to be there for you.”

“Aw, baby,” he said, and then he was laughing a little again.

“What?” she demanded, although she was smiling back. “Making my declaration, aren’t I?”

“If I’d known all I had to do was lose,” he said, “this would have been a whole lot easier.”

She was lying there a bit later still, somewhere in the depths of the night. They’d slept, and woken up, and he’d reached for her, and it had all happened again, so sweet this time, touches and murmurs and a slow, strong rock into the blissful ache of release. Now, she was sprawled over him and loving being there, the beat of his heart steady and strong under her ear, already slowing even as her own heart continued to pound.

She traced a hand lazily over his heavy shoulder, down the sculpted muscle of his arm, reveling in the solidity of his warm body beneath her, in the certainty that he was hers, and that he wanted to be.

“Whoa, boy,” she said on a sigh, “you take my breath away.”

A quick jerk of his chest under her cheek as he laughed. “Aw, sweetheart. You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Mmm.” She smiled against his skin, gave him one last gentle kiss there. Both of them finally sated, bodies humming with satisfaction. And falling asleep with him holding her…it was everything she’d ever wanted.

His hand moved down her back, caressed its way down to her waist, settled there as if that were his place, and that was how it felt. Like his.

He spoke, so quietly she could barely hear him.

“E ipo,” he said, and then, more softly still, “Kia hei taku ate i te tau o tana tiki.”

She raised her head from his chest to look at him, her hand still stroking the intricate designs of the tattoo that swirled over his beating heart, needing to touch him there, and his hand smoothed her hair as if he needed the same thing.

My darling
, he’d said.
Let my heart be bound with the strings of her tiki
.

It was from a poem, a poem she’d never have dreamt Hemi knew, one that she would never have imagined him saying to her.

“Time to tell me too,” he said, and she looked at him and could see straight through the outward assurance to the trembling heart beneath, the heart that needed hers as desperately as she craved his own.

She gave it to him, because it wasn’t a choice.

“Ka nui taku aroha ki a koe,” she told him, the tenderness so strong, the longing to hold his vulnerable heart, to protect it forever, so fierce.

She saw his eyes close for a moment, and she could tell, all the way to her belly, all the way to the seat of her soul, that she was watching the fear of love unreturned leaving him, flying away on eager wings. The relief flooding his body was as real to her as if it were her own, because it was.

My love for you is limitless
, she had told him.

Because it was.

O
ctober. Spring, and the first real break of the season for an international player, the gap between the end of the Southern Hemisphere Rugby Championship and the beginning of the five-week European Tour allowing for a much-needed rest, precious time with family and friends away from the pressure of the game.

A break, and he needed a break, for all sorts of reasons. Two weeks off, and he was spending them with Reka.

They’d gone to Whangarei first to visit her mum, to Russell to see the rest of her whanau, and she’d cried a little when they’d left both places.

“It’s only a few hours away,” he said when they were in the car again, across on the ferry, on their way north to Ahipara and his own family. “You can still visit heaps. It’s all good, baby.”

“Not what you said when you told me to move.” She was drying her eyes already, throwing it right back at him. Bloody hell, but he’d missed this.

He laughed. “Got me. And I didn’t tell you to move, I asked you. I only wish it were that simple.” Even though he didn’t, not really. “But yeh, living with the people you love is better. Which is why I want you to live with me.”

“Oh, smooth,” she said. “Dead smooth. Got me there, didn’t you, in the end. Got my toothbrush in your bathroom.”

“And your nightie in my closet, and I’m happy to have it there. I’ll be happier when all your things are there, though. I’ll be happier when you’re there even when I’m not.”

“I know you would, and you’re wearing me down, no worries.”

“Good.” He took a hand off the wheel to squeeze hers for a moment, then had to put it back again, because the road had too many twists and turns in it for one-handed driving, this far north.

Slowing for the drive through the minimal bustle that was Kaitaia, around another green curve, and, finally, it was there, the exhilarating tang that was salt and ozone and endless possibility, filling his lungs even before it came into view, and his heart lifted as it always did at the sight and the smell and the sound of the sea.

His sea. His beach. His place. The sweep of gold meeting blue that stretched endlessly northward, uninterrupted, all the way to Cape Reinga. The Ninety-Mile Beach.

“Home,” Reka said, as always understanding him perfectly.

“Yeh,” he said. “Home.”

After that, it was his mum running out to greet them, arms wide and welcoming, telling them about the hangi she had planned for the next day. Going out fishing with his dad, helping him rebuild the carburetor on a faulty outboard motor, eating and talking and laughing and his whanau, the neighbors, the friends, the land and the sea.

Home, and Reka fit there, the same way he fit with her family, understanding and belonging and meshing at a level, in a place that was bone-deep. Spirit-deep. Blood-deep.