Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Savannah…
Corbett led me by the fingertips toward the bedroom, which I just now realized was similarly lit with a golden glow as the bathroom had been, but the light from the bedroom was several times less than the flickering candlelight of the bath.
In here, it was cooler, and fewer candles were lit.
The dark wrapped around us, making things more intimate somehow, as he guided me to his side of the bed, closest to the door.
“I still have a ton of paperwork,” I protested, and he gathered me to him lightly and said, “Not tonight you don’t.”
“Corbett,” I tried to argue.
“Ah!” he cut me off, giving me a stern look. “In the morning, Savannah. It will be there in the morning.”
I gave him a petulant look and he smiled, genuinely, and while he was so damn handsome when he was oh, so, serious, but when he smiled at me like this? My heart swelled and gave an irregular little flutter against the inside of my ribs and I swear my knees went weak.
“Lie down on your stomach,” he ordered gently, and he tugged the towel from my grasp at my chest.
I let him have it and hated how my cheeks flushed with embarrassment like he hadn’t already seen me naked several times and been inside me in just about every way to make a preacher faint on Sunday.
“Lie down on your stomach,” he murmured, running two fingertips from the hollow of my throat down between my breasts.
A heat curled low in my belly, as I crawled up onto his side of the bed and lay down, delving my arms beneath the pillow as I turned my head toward the nightstand and the glowing set of candles there.
One of them was a single wick in an aluminum tin, the label turned so I couldn’t quite read it. It smelled wonderful, though. Like honey and a light hint of vanilla.
He straddled the backs of my thighs and scooted down to about my knees, but kept himself off me by kneeling to either side of me in the plush bed. He rubbed his hands together briskly, the sound a tantalizing one, then picked up the candle in the tin and tipped it over my back.
I tensed, expecting it to burn, but a pleasant hot oil was delivered in delightful little rivulets down my spine and drips across my shoulders to his dark little chuckle.
“Relax, it’s made for this,” he said, and he set the tin with its cheerful little flame back down on the dark bedside table.
His hands pressed into my skin, seeking below the layers of tissue and finding and teasing at the knots of tension there, his thumbs working deep, and in even little circles, the pressure mounting until the knot gave with a little pop, and he was able to glide through the area with little to no effort at all.
I closed my eyes and groaned into the pillow as he worked through some of the lighter and smaller nuisance knots and lumps in my muscles, working them slowly into submission.
I lay helpless under his touch as he teased every bit of tension out of me, and yet, no matter how hard I tried to get it to quiet, my mind raced.
I questioned everything… why was he doing all of this?
It didn’t feel like this was what was supposed to be no-strings-attached fun.
It felt very much like we were tethered, a thin line of spider silk betwixt our souls.
I had yet to identify if that thin line of gossamer was some kind of a trauma bond, or if it was something more…
something lighter… something, dare I say it? Good.
“Relax,” he ordered gently and I realized I had stiffened up under his touch. “What are you thinking about?” he asked after I had relaxed my muscle groups one by one.
“That this doesn’t feel like no-strings-attached fun,” I confessed.
He chuckled lightly and said, “I don’t want anything from you,” he said.
“Now how is that, exactly?” my tone was chiding.
He laughed, “Touché, once again, Kitten.” He was silent, almost meditative for a time and I shifted so I could look at him. He tapped my nose with his index finger and ordered me sharply, “Relax.”
“You know you don’t have to do all of this if you want sex, you know…” I said and I couldn’t readily identify why, but I was getting mildly upset.
“Of course I don’t,” he said. “I’m doing this because I want to – not because I feel obligated to. I do what I want,” he said the last simply as though it should explain everything but quite honestly, it explained nothing and just left me that much more confused.
I turned over onto my back and he sighed, a long-suffering sound and cocked his head.
“Don’t,” he warned and I raised my eyebrows.
“Don’t what?” I asked.
“Don’t ruin it by starting a bunch of shit,” he said.
I felt my brows crush down into a frown and said, “I’m not trying to start anything, Corbett – I’m just trying to understand…”
“Understand what?” he asked.
“Why you’re being so nice to me…”
I fell quiet, because once I’d said it out loud, it sounded… lame. Stupid. Desperate.
He sighed and reached out a hand, curving it around the back of my neck and smoothing a thumb along my cheek. His whiskey-colored eyes searched mine, and he had such a look of tender concentration on his face.
“Because you’ve done well, despite so many hard things lately.
Because you deserve the reward for all the shit you’ve put up with.
I’m not an easy man to—” He shook his head and said, “I’m not an easy man to get along with, and you’ve done admirably in keeping your cool and sticking things out.
The least I can do is spoil you just a little. ”
I thought about it and lay still beneath him. He kept up on his knees, and rested his hands atop his thighs and I thought, and not for the first time, that as arrogant and irritating as Corbett Prescott could be – he was a gorgeous man.
I swallowed hard and said, “I don’t really know what to do with the kinder, gentler Corbett Prescott.”
He smiled then, and said, “How about Corvus?” he asked. “Corbett feels like a shell. A costume I wear.”
“Corvus…” I murmured and it was my turn to cock my head like the curious bird the name came from.
“Why did you choose that name?” I asked.
“Turn back over, let me touch you, and I’ll tell you.”
I stared at him, wary for a moment, but then complied. I hated how unreadable his face was to me.
He pressed hands into my lower back and slid them up to my shoulders, pressing deep, my back giving a series of satisfied pops as he dropped his weight onto me. One hand slid down my body in a deep caress, the other came up and his hand captured my chin.
He murmured next to my ear, “If you just want to keep it to fucking, I can do that…” and his hand that wasn’t holding my chin fast, delved in between my body and the bed, his fingertips aiming for and finding my clit effortlessly.
I kicked, and struggled and he laughed.
Of course, my efforts were ineffectual. He had me, whether I liked it or not. What did it say about me that I liked it?
He pulled back on my chin, my back arching, my pelvis thrust into his hand and the mattress below as he rubbed at my clit. I pressed hands against the bed for lack of anything better to do with them, and whimpered when he pulled just a little too much and my abdominals stretched painfully.
He didn’t let up.
If anything, the small sound of pain heightened things for him and he redoubled his efforts with his fingers slicking through my wetness, to get me to rise rapidly.
I panted, knowing he wouldn’t relent until I came, and God why did that turn me on that much more?
“That’s it, Kitten. Come for me, baby,” he growled and I whined, the pleasure coiling low in my belly like a snake, waiting to strike.
I was on that sharp precipice for far too long, until with a wiggle of my hips, grinding down against his hand, I hit that spark and the snake struck, and I was coming with wave after euphoric wave of pleasure slamming through my veins.
I panted, and he lowered me to the bed, and massaged my back, stroking over my skin lightly as the poison took hold and I swallowed my fear and accepted that Corvus was a drug, and like most drugs, he was highly addictive and I was hooked.
I shuddered helplessly beneath him as he chuckled darkly above me and I realized that I was wholly in his thrall.
Did he scare the shit out of me?
Yes.
Could I trust him?
In the bedroom? Absolutely. Out of it? Not as far as I could throw him… and that was the crux of things, wasn’t it?
My heart ached with a sudden loss and loneliness even though the man was right here.
The words escaped my lips before I could stop them as though all sort of filter had been removed from between my thoughts and my mouth: “Dammit, I love what you do to me. At the same time? I hate it.”
He laughed at that, and then it was as though his thoughts caught up to the weight and the meaning behind my words.
“This is just sex, Savannah. Don’t get attached,” he warned.
“No, I know…” I said faintly, and I hadn’t even been thinking along those lines… was he?
Impossible, I thought to myself.
That begged the question, though… was I? Was I catching feelings for him? I mean, the sex was incredible… the best sex of my life! But honestly, this whatever it was between us was toxic as hell. What lunatic in their right mind would want this full time?
Which was a funny thought as his thumbs pressed deep into my lower back, near my hips, just absolutely sending me and making me yip with that pain that oh, once I got through it, I knew I would feel so much better.
“Really?” he asked. “There?”
“I sit a lot!” I complained and he chuckled.
“Too hard?” he asked.
“Harder!” I gasped, and he laughed then.
“A woman after my own heart,” his tone was dry and I turned to look up at him as best I could from my prone and captured state beneath him and I pointedly threw his own words back at him.
“This is just sex, Corbett – don’t get – AIIE!
” He pressed in that spicy spot that sent an electric pain lancing from my butt and hip, midway down to my knee and without thinking, I kicked up.
My heel tapped him right in his butt from the way he was sitting on me.
“Oh! Achievement unlocked!” I cried, and I tapped him in the butt again with my heel. “I can finally say I kicked your ass.”
“Oh, really?” he demanded, and he sat back fully on my thighs and mercilessly tickled me.
I shrieked, and wriggled, and fought but to no avail – not with the way he held me down; and as much as I loathed being tickled, I loved that he did it and that I felt safe – even knowing he would push boundaries.
When he’d deemed that I’d had enough, and I lay beneath him gasping, giggling, and spent, he lay atop me, cuddling me, cozy, laughing and gasping with me and it was in that moment that I knew, it was too late for me.
That I loved this Corbett Prescott – Corvus – whatever he wished to be called.
This version of him? The playful, sweet, and considerate version?
I loved him and being with him and I knew that I would put up with all manner of Hell from the asshole version of him just for these moments…
and I also knew in my heart of hearts that that wasn’t healthy, or good, at all.
Still. I didn’t know if I could help myself.