World Enough and Time (21 page)

“Oh, my God,” I murmured, vaguely aware of bed sheets bunching in my clawing fingers, but mostly distracted by the warm softness of his touch trailing down the back of my calf.

“Like that?” There was a hint of laughter in his whispered words.

I nodded, whimpering when his hand came back up and inched dangerously close to my pussy. I held my breath, wondering if I’d lose my mind faster if he did or didn’t touch my clit.

At the last possible second, his hand changed direction and drifted over my hipbone instead, and I released my breath, unsure if it was a sigh of relief or a frustrated exhalation.

He cupped my breast, his thumb circling my nipple as his finger had done earlier. I whimpered again.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Connor,” I breathed.

“See what I mean?” he said. “All I’ve done is touch you.”

I squirmed beneath his hand’s gentle, powerful presence. “All you’ve done is
tease
me.”

“Tease you?” He laughed. “Are you suggesting that any of this has been unpleasant?”

“Not at all, just…” I moaned as his thumb changed direction again.

“Just what?”

I pulled in a breath from the electrified air. “Frustrating.”

“What a terrible thing for me to do, frustrating you like that.” Lifting his hand away, he shifted beside me. “‘
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
,’” he whispered, “‘
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
’” —his breath warmed my skin, announcing his mouth’s proximity to my breast—“‘
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss
.’” His lips closed around my nipple. He teased it with his tongue while his hands slid under my arching back.

“‘
Good pilgrim, you
—” I paused, trying to remember the line. “‘
You do wrong your hand too much, which
—‘” It was there, somewhere in my memory, but too many years had gone by, or maybe the touch of Connor’s lips was just too sensual and distracting. “
Which
…”

He released a warm breath of laughter against my skin and kissed his way up my chest. Gently grasping my forearm while he spoke, he took over: “‘
Which mannerly devotion shows in this
” —his hand moved down to my wrist— “
for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch
,” —he laid my arm back on the pillow beside me— “
and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss
.” Connor’s palm covered mine and our fingers laced together.

I exhaled and when some of that warmth returned to my lips, I knew he was close. Swallowing hard, I said, “I thought you weren’t a fan of
Romeo and Juliet
.”

Another laugh, another whisper of breath on skin that needed to be touched. “I never said I didn’t like it, just that it’s not much of a love story.” He brought my other arm up and pinned it as well. “It is, however, sexy as hell in places.”

Heat moved past my jaw, but the gentle contact of his lips to my neck startled me nonetheless. Kissing his way up, he murmured, “
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray—grant thou, lest faith turn to despair
.”

From some deep recesses of my memory, the words came: “
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake
.”

His lips broke contact, but his voice vibrated against my skin when he whispered, “
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take
.”

The second his lips met mine, I swore an orgasm was only a breath away. Never had I been so acutely aware of the light scuff of his chin or the softness of his lips. He alternately warmed and cooled the side of my face each time he breathed in, then out.

He squeezed my hands and I responded in kind when he lowered himself to me, letting his chest touch mine. A single fingertip had driven me insane, but now this closeness of his entire body wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Needed more.

Hooking my leg around his, I ran my foot up the back of his calf. He broke the kiss with a gasp, then whispered, “Do you understand what I was talking about? About how erotic it is just to touch?”

I nodded, licking my lips and searching for another taste of his mouth. He granted me a brief, light kiss, but then was once again out of my reach.

“Connor…” The words were there, I knew they were. “Connor, I…” My fingers twitched in his, and the brush of his thumb down the side of my hand did nothing to help me remember how to speak.

“I love seeing you this turned on,” he breathed. “And all I’ve done is touch you.”

“I want…”

“Tell me.” He kissed the underside of my jaw and I brought my leg up, hooking it around his waist, and when his cock brushed my pussy, he exhaled against my chin.

“Touch me,” I whispered. “Touch me more.”

His lips pulled into a grin against my neck. “I think I know exactly how you want me to touch you.” Releasing one of my wrists, he guided his cock to me and pressed against me, letting only the head tease me. “I think I know exactly
where
you want me to touch you.”

Moaning, I raised my hips, seeking him.

“Is that what you want, Dani?” he whispered, breathing just below my ear. “Do you want me inside you?” The unsteadiness in his voice turned the teasing question into a thinly-veiled plea. The tremor in his hand, the raggedness of his breath on my skin, those little things I would have missed had I been able to see, all conspired to reveal that he wasn’t as controlled as he let on.

“Tell me, Dani.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I want to hear you say it.” The line between teasing and begging blurred, but became decidedly clearer when he added in a hoarse whisper, “
Please
.”

“Yes, I want—” The words lodged in my throat when Connor kissed my neck again. “I want you inside me.”

He said nothing. A catch of his breath signaled impending movement a second before his entire body shifted. His hips brushed my inner thighs, his presence over me rose, and he was inside me.

And there he stopped.

For the longest time, we were both still. Just breathing. Being.

When at last he moved, it wasn’t to withdraw and push in again. His torso twisted slightly to one side. Then his opposite hand caressed my face, fingertips drifting up my cheek to the string holding the blindfold on.

“I don’t think we need this anymore.” He gently tugged the blindfold off.

I blinked until my vision focused, and when it did, all I saw was Connor’s eyes. We both stopped, simply looking at each other. There was something unnervingly intense about the way he looked at me. Looked
into
me. As if he could see layers of me that either I didn’t intend to show or didn’t know existed.

If his startled expression was to be believed, this hadn’t been on tonight’s agenda when he’d greeted me at the door earlier.

He started to speak. Hesitated. Took a breath. “Dani, I—” But before he could finish, he kissed me.

Our mouths moved, and so too did our bodies. He withdrew slowly, slid back in just as slowly. I rolled my hips with him, gained speed with him. With a gasp, he broke the kiss, but not his rhythm.

Whatever it was, that unnamed something in his eyes, it echoed in his every motion. Maybe it was just my hyperawareness lingering even after my sight was restored, but I doubted it. Even as he thrust faster, everything seemed to happen in slow, fluid motion, my nerves aware of every last place we touched, whether it was his cock moving inside me or his soft, cool hair between my fingers.

And all the while, that look remained in his eyes. He held my gaze with a deep, burning intensity that I could neither identify nor define. It was only when he closed his eyes and came down to kiss me that he broke that eye contact, but the intensity remained in and around us.

He fucked me faster and my lips could barely remember what to do with his. All my body understood was the orgasm that neared with every stroke, but there was something there, something between us, something on the tip of both his tongue and mine, and only our clumsy attempts at kissing kept it at bay.

The blindfolded teasing had left my skin so wildly sensitive that every place he touched me now may as well have been erogenous. When the sole of my foot brushed over his calf, when his hips moved between my inner thighs, when his shoulders warmed my fingers and palms, the effect was no different than the head of his cock sliding over my G-spot. My mind had earlier sought to simultaneously feel his touch on every nerve ending that could take it, and for all the electricity surging across and beneath my skin now, I wondered if I’d succeeded.

My lips somehow formed a few intelligible words, begging him not to stop. Then his name rolled off my tongue and onto his lips, and his kiss sent me out of my mind. He didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, just kept kissing me and thrusting hard and fast as my orgasm went on and on and on, never once breaking his rhythm until he, too, lost control.

With a gasp and a shudder, his back arched and he closed his eyes. “Oh fuck,” he moaned. “Oh fuck, that’s—” With one final deep, hard, thrust, he threw his head back and gasped. I kept rolling my hips, squeezing and releasing to draw his orgasm out, and I didn’t stop until he sank down to me with a soft whimper.

We were both out of breath, both trembling, and we held onto each other while the room spun around us.

Connor pushed himself up on trembling arms. Our eyes met, and there it was again. No, there it was
still
. That intense…something.

For the longest time, we were silent, simply looking at each other. When the silence was broken, it was with my name.

“Dani,” he whispered. His fingertips trailed tenderly down the side of my face. “I know I shouldn’t, but…”

Oh God, I wasn’t imagining it
. I swallowed. “Connor…”

“Maybe this is a moot point with, you know, with our circumstances,” he said. “But it just is, and I can’t convince myself that I don’t—”

“I love you.”

We stared at each other. His lips were still parted for the words he hadn’t finished saying, and he neither breathed nor finished his thought. Whether or not he’d intended to say the same thing, I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

The words were out and couldn’t be erased, and I didn’t have it in me to care about the consequences. The only thing I cared about just then was the truth that had finally caught up with me.

I loved him.

I touched his face and drew him down to me.

Just before our lips met, he whispered, “I love you, too, Dani.” I put my arms around him, he slid his hands under my back, and we simply kissed.

I could love him. I could be in love with him. It wasn’t like I could force myself not to. Even falling dangerously in love with him like this still had the safety net of August.

August couldn’t be avoided and would hurt like hell when it came and went, but for now, I couldn’t deny the truth.

I was in love with Connor.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Time came and went entirely too quickly, and before I knew it, it was July. Two weeks after his graduation, Connor left for San Francisco. He flew out on Saturday, and I would join him the following Friday for a few days.

In my otherwise empty apartment, I was restless. I found anything and everything I could do to keep idleness at bay, because when I slowed down, time did too. By the time I’d finished reorganizing my CDs and DVDs, dusting, rearranging my trophy case, and hand-washing the dishes instead of putting them in the dishwasher, it was only one o’clock in the afternoon.

I flopped onto the couch and sighed, glaring at the clock on the DVD player. This week would be hell. It wasn’t just the fact that I was killing time. In a matter of weeks, I’d have more time on my hands than I could kill. Every minute without him now was just something to be endured until I was with him again.
So what am I going to do when he's gone
?

“This is pathetic.” I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. Shaking my head, I pushed myself up off the couch and went into the kitchen. There, I poured myself a glass of cranberry juice. I considered throwing in a shot of vodka, but decided against it. The walls in this apartment were closing in quickly, and it was only a matter of time before I had to get the hell out of here. Might as well be sober in case I decided to hit the road.

I chewed my lip and stared into my drink. Maybe going to San Francisco with him, even for the weekend, was a bad idea. Interstate flights to see each other took this relationship out of the realms booty calls and friends with benefits, planting it firmly into something that was worth the headache of airport security and sardine-can seating.

Then again, no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, we’d long since stepped out of those realms. When I wasn’t looking, I’d gone and fallen in love with him, which would make the end of this a hell of a lot more painful. And no matter how much I wanted to fantasize that it wasn’t, his move to California would be the kiss of death for this relationship. A long distance relationship was a bad idea. Maintaining something like that only created more stress while it delayed the inevitable. If we were going to put a thousand miles between us, we might as well just call it quits and get it over with rather than draw it out.

I drained my drink and set the glass in the sink. Then I grabbed my purse off the counter, pulled out my keys, and headed out. Even as I locked the door behind me and went downstairs, carefully ignoring the place on the stairwell where my mind’s eye wanted to superimpose an image of us, I didn’t know where I was going, only that I was going.

I started the car and put my seatbelt on. Staring out the windshield, I pursed my lips, trying to decide which way to go.

The sun shone brightly in a clear sky. Good day for a trail ride. Without giving it another thought, I pulled out of the parking lot and started toward the barn.

The gravel parking area beside the barn was packed with the familiar cars of clients and boarders. When I stepped into the aisle, every set of cross-ties was occupied and the rafters echoed with chattering voices and clattering hooves. The arena was undoubtedly just as crowded, so it was just as well I was going for a trail ride.