41. Mira
41
MIRA
Kissing isn’t supposed to be like this .
There are sloppy makeouts in the back of a bar or on a dance floor. Classic, if underwhelming and largely forgettable.
Then there are the kind of perfunctory kisses that are like knocking on a door—once someone answers, you move on to other things. No need to linger or draw it out.
Zane Whitaker has apparently never heard of those kinds of kisses.
Because this…
This is decadent .
His mouth is soft and warm against mine, gentler than a man his size has any right to be. And I’m almost too stunned to enjoy it.
Almost . Because I am still alive, after all. And Zane has me pinned against the sink while his tongue slides over mine, coaxing it deeper into his own mouth. It makes me wonder what else his tongue could do if I gave it free rein over the rest of me.
His thumb brushes the column of my throat and his other hand drifts over my shoulder, sliding the strap of my sundress free. I don’t think he even meant to—but that’s the problem.
What is this?
What does this mean ?
I summon the strength to tilt my chin down, breaking contact. I’m breathing embarrassingly hard. It doesn’t help that Zane immediately starts finding other uses for his mouth—such as kissing my jawline. The side of my neck. The soft spot beneath my ear.
He inhales deeply. “Fuck.”
There it is.
This was an accident. He doesn’t want me.
“It’s okay,” I pant. “We don’t have to… You said you didn’t want to start anything.”
He rests his forehead against mine. “I said your name.”
“What?”
“I said your name,” he repeats, gripping my hip. He bunches the fabric of my dress in his hand. “This morning. In the bathroom. You were right.”
I shake my head, too dizzy to follow what he’s saying. “I don’t?—”
“I was thinking about you.” His voice is a rough growl as he hauls me against him. His body feels incredible, but somehow the words feel even better. “I didn’t know you were at the door, but I was thinking about you, Mira. I was saying your name while I?—”
I whimper. An actual, for real, this-is-not-a-drill whimper.
“I know you saw,” he says, reading my mind. “You know what I was doing.”
It was impossible not to see. Even with steam in the air and condensation on the glass, the outline of Zane’s body and his jutting erection were painfully clear. I didn’t even mean to admit that I heard him saying my name; it slipped out. I was shocked and trying to make sense of everything.
I still am.
“Why?” I breathe.
“Because you wear these fucking dresses every day.” He fists the fabric at my hip, dragging it higher up my thigh. “Because you’re everywhere in this house and I can’t escape it. Even when I try.”
He misunderstood my question, but somehow, he’s answering it perfectly.
I arch closer. The bulge in his pants presses into my stomach and we both gasp.
Suddenly, he grabs my waist and lifts me onto the counter. It’s the first time we’ve been on the same level like this. His blue eyes are dark and glassy. They slip closed when my legs wrap around his body.
“You’re going to have to tell me to stop,” he grits out, eyes still closed.
“Do you want me to?”
Do I want me to?
Zane is so close and I’ve been thinking about this for so long, in so many ways. But my head can’t seem to catch up.
This was a fantasy, not real life. We can’t have this.
Then he hooks his hands around my ass and hauls me to the edge of the counter as if to show me how incredibly close we are to having this. He’s right there, pressing against my center, and I dig my nails into his shoulder blades. I drag my fingers over his back, tapping out what I want in morse code.
More. Now. Please.
“I want…” He exhales against my neck. It feels like he’s barely clinging to control, and I had no idea he could want this as much as I do. “Fuck no, Mira. I want you to tell me this is the greatest idea anyone has ever had. I want you to tell me that we’d be the smartest people on the fucking planet to do this every day. Twice a day. More.”
I slip my fingers in his belt loops. I barely tug and he shifts closer, sealing the space between us. Zane is waiting for my permission, which is why I hate the next words out of my mouth.
“I… I can’t tell you that.”
God, I want to. I want to lie and have this with Zane—whatever the fuck it is.
Even with his hands burning trails down my back and fisting in my dress until I wish he’d put us both out of our misery and rip it off, I have to be practical. I always have to be practical. I can’t afford not to be.
Literally. Figuratively.
I need this job and the money.
I need to stay five steps ahead of my past, and I can’t be bogged down with anything resembling an actual life when the time comes to run. No boyfriends with wicked tongues. No adorable blonde-haired little boys with crooked smiles.
Starting this with Zane when he’s all I’ve thought about for weeks is the closest I’ve been to putting down roots since I moved to Phoenix four years ago.
Which means it’s almost time to leave again.
Except leaving would require letting go of Zane, and I don’t know how to do that. Instead, I hold him closer.
He drags my body against him, giving us both friction exactly where we want it. I moan and Zane kisses me again, lazily, almost like he’s drunk.
“Okay. Okay.” He’s rocking against me even as he’s thinking. “Fine. Don’t tell me that.” His thumbs stroke over my inner thighs, sending a rush of heat to my core. “Just tell me you want this. That would be enough.”
A startled laugh bursts out of me. I’m throbbing for him, hanging on by a thread. So wet I’m sure he can smell me.
“Of course I want this, Zane.”
That’s all it takes.
I thought we were already out of control, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, all the other reasons for why this is a stupid idea burn up in the inferno between our bodies.
They dissolve in the molten heat of Zane’s mouth on mine.
He swirls his tongue into my mouth, tasting me like he’s been dreaming about it. I moan and he pinches my bottom lip between his teeth. He tugs on it before making his way down my neck.
I’ve never been tasted like this before. Savored .
People might argue that this isn’t sex, but they’d be wrong. The way Zane’s stubble is scraping over my collarbones, the way he’s murmuring things I can’t hear against my chest and the pulse in my throat—it’s like he’s already inside of me.
I’m not sure how anything can be better than this.
He huffs out a sharp laugh. “It’s going to get so much better, Mira.”
Oops. I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but I don’t care when he bunches my dress around my waist and almost falls to his knees when he sees the scrap of black between my legs.
“Are these—” He curls his fingers over the soaking wet lace. The same pair I had on the day we met. He drags them off of me and crumples the delicate material in his palm. His blue eyes meet mine, shimmering with something unreadable as he slides my panties into his pocket. “These are mine now.”
Possession.
I’ve never belonged to someone before. Not my family. Or a boyfriend.
But I could belong to Zane Whitaker.
For tonight.
“They were already yours,” I breathe, achingly aware of the cool air across my damp center. “Since the moment you walked into that bathroom. I think of you every time I wear them.”
He growls and circles his thumb against my clit. “This is mine, too.”
I swallow down a moan and cling to him.
We’re just getting started. This is supposed to go on and on. Hours—days—of Zane touching me, tasting me. But he’s about to send me over the edge with nothing but his thumb.
I want to take him with me.
I fumble with the button of his jeans and he helps me shove them down his hips. I saw the outline of him in the shower this morning, but nothing prepares me for the weight of him in my palm.
We both freeze, stuttering out ragged breaths while I stroke him slowly from root allllll the way to the very tip.
“You’re big everywhere.” I swallow, nerves and excitement fluttering in my stomach. “Noted.”
“You can take it,” he rasps.
Like he wants to prove it, he hooks a finger into me. It’s a slow, consistent press, and I don’t breathe until he’s all the way inside of me. Then he curls his finger against nerve endings I didn’t know I had and all the air in my body rushes out.
When he slides a second finger into me, the world stops turning. I want to keep touching him and act like I have mind-blowing, world-shattering sex all the time, but I’m losing control of my limbs. My lungs. My heart.
My entire self is in Zane’s very large hands.
“I’ve touched myself enough for both of us the last two weeks.” He pulls my hand away, wrapping my arm loosely around his neck. “There’s only one thing I want.”
He works his fingers into me again and again, stretching me until he can add a third.
I’m panting, balancing on the edge of oblivion, when he strokes his thumb over my clit.
It’s like a bomb detonates inside of me.
I throw my head back, a strangled cry tearing out of my throat. My legs clamp down around his hips as he chases my orgasm with his fingers, drawing it out until I’m a sweating, whimpering puddle against his chest.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, kissing his chest through his shirt. “That was the best sex of my entire life and we still have our clothes on.”
He slides his fingers out of me and brings them to his mouth. With his eyes locked on mine, he licks them clean one by one.
It’s so hot my vision is going fuzzy around the edges.
“You taste exactly as good as you smell,” he growls. Then he grabs the hem of his shirt. “Now, about our clothes…”
He tugs his shirt over his head and I fight with my dress, desperate to be free of it.
I’m still pulsing with my release, but I want more.
Maybe I’ll never have enough.
It’s a terrifying thought, since I have no idea how much of Zane I get to have. I don’t know why he’s doing this or what it means to him.
But when I finally throw my dress on the floor and Zane looks at me— all of me —I shove my doubts to the backseat and tell them to buckle the fuck up.
His jaw flexes like he’s angry. Like the sight of me naked on the counter is infuriating to him.
“Why don’t you have a bra on?” he huffs.
My nipples are hard, desperate points. I cup my breasts with my hands like maybe I should cover up. “I don’t wear a bra with a lot of my dresses. The straps are so thin that they?—”
“Fuck.” He rips my hands away and replaces them with his own. “You’re really trying to kill me. How in the hell am I supposed to get anything done now that I know that?”
“Would it help if I told you that you aren’t alone? I’ve been touching myself to the thought of you, too.”
He drops his head to my shoulder and groans. “No, Mira. It really doesn’t help. At all.”
He’s still playing with my breasts, weighing them in his hands and circling his thumbs over my nipples. It feels way too familiar for how long we’ve known each other.
It shouldn’t be like this.
We’re supposed to be fumbling and unsure. He’s supposed to ask me a million times, “Is this good?”
But he knows . He can tell. Because Zane somehow knows my body better than I do, and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to walk away from this.
“Okay, well…” I wrap my hand around his cock and it twitches against my palm. “What if I told you that I’d do anything to have you inside of me right now? Would that help?”
“Anything?” he growls.
I nod, positioning him at my entrance. “Absolutely anything.”
“Good. Then you have to wear my jersey for every game.” He teases the very tip of himself into me and we both take a breath, like it’s already too much. “And keep it on while I fuck you afterward.”
I’ll wear Zane’s jersey every day for the rest of my life just to get him inside of me.
My eyes are locked on our bodies. On the way he’s disappearing into me bit by bit, stretching me further than I thought possible.
When I glance up, Zane is watching me. His pupils are blown wide and he brushes his thumb over my lower lip. I suck it into my mouth, swirling my tongue over the tip as he sinks the rest of the way into me with a groan.
It’s the single most erotic moment of my life.
“Holy shit.” I squeeze my eyes closed and focus on the way he fills me. On the way he feels against me. Because if I think about the look in his eyes and how much I want to see that look every day for the rest of my life, I’m going to freak out and ruin what is, without a doubt, the best sex any human has ever had.
Zane draws out of me and slams back in. I scrape my nails over his chest and lower. Soft hair trails down to where we’re connected, and I have to open my eyes to see all of him. To remember every detail of the way he looks and the way we sound crashing together.
His body is glistening with sweat. His muscles flex as he pumps into me and it’s so fucking indecent. The fact that Zane gets to walk around looking like this is obscene .
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to finish right now,” he pants.
I kiss him, rolling my hips to meet his. We settle into a rhythm that has me whimpering against his shoulder.
“We didn’t talk about—” His fingers dig into my ass hard enough to bruise and I feel his hips stutter. “Fuck, I want to come inside of you, Mira. Tell me I can.”
I’ve been on the pill since I was fifteen. Even if I wasn’t, would another little Aiden be such a bad thing?
Holy shit, I sound insane.
I feel insane.
This is what starting something with Zane does to me.
It’s a mistake, but I can’t regret making it when he’s clinging to me like this.
“Mira,” he snarls, his hand snapping up to grab my chin and tilt my face to his. His eyes are wild and his jaw is clenched. He’s teetering on the edge of sanity and control and it’s because of me . “Tell me I can.”
I nod. “Please.”
The second the word is out of my mouth, he drives deep inside of me. He groans into my neck, and I feel him twitch.
The combination of being as full as I’ve ever been and having this strong mountain of a man practically begging to come inside of me sends me off the deep end, too.
I contract around him and it’s unreal. I feel every ripple of my orgasm, every singular cell where Zane and I are connected, and I never want it to end.
“Fuck.” He kisses my neck and my collarbone. “Nothing has ever felt this good.”
He’s right. I know he is. But as he draws out our release with slow, steady pumps into me, those doubts I shoved down earlier come right back to the surface.
Zane and I talked about starting “something,” but I have no idea what that “something” is.
Is this a relationship? Does he want that?
Or maybe this was his way of apologizing to me. Sorry I got drunk and left you with my son all night and threatened to fire you. Here’s my dick to make it all better.
The embarrassing thing is that I’d probably accept that apology.
Zane draws out of me and finds our clothes on the floor. He hands me my dress and tugs on his jeans, all while I’m panty-less and spiraling on the counter.
Finally, he stands in front of me and holds out his hand.
I stare at it. “What is that?”
“My hand,” he says flatly. “One of several body parts I just had inside of you.”
Even after everything we just did, I blush. “I know, but what are you doing with it now?”
He forces his hand into mine. “We’re starting fresh.”
“Like, starting over?” Panic claws up my throat. “You want to forget what we just did?”
“That would be physically impossible. I plan to come to the memory of this night for a long, long time.”
He’s making me feel special. Like he hasn’t had a thousand different women in a thousand different positions.
Zane is almost making me feel like this meant something to him.
“So, why do you want to start over?”
He drops my hand and drags his through his hair. “I want to pretend that we did this in that bathroom the first day we met, like we both wanted to.” He fixes me with a look that tells me there is no point arguing, so I don’t. “Maybe then the last couple weeks of sexual tension wouldn’t have happened and we could have… fuck, I don’t know… cohabitated better.”
My thighs are still shaking, but I squeeze them together. “So, now that we got that out of our systems, you think we can move forward and be professional?”
I try to picture what it would be like to live in this house and not be able to touch Zane now that I know what touching him feels like.
Torture.
I’d rather forget about the money and run penniless into the night.
“I don’t think there’s any way I’ll ever be professional with you,” Zane admits, his throat bobbing. “I don’t know how this thing between us is supposed to work, but we need to try to figure it out. For Aiden.”
“For Aiden,” I repeat. “Right. Of course.”
“Instead of fighting and not talking for days, maybe we can work our frustrations out in other ways.”
I raise both brows. “You want me to be your nanny with benefits? That’s a little cliché, don’t you think?”
He slides closer to me and walks his fingers slowly up my leg. Goosebumps trail in his wake. “There is nothing cliché about what we just did. Which is why I think we should do it more. And often.”
I chew on my lower lip, trying to decide how I tell Zane I can’t fuck him anymore because my feelings might get hurt.
“There’s a lot going on right now. With CPS dropping in for visits, Aiden starting school, hockey. I don’t want to do anything to mess that up for you.”
“This is the clearest my head has been in weeks,” he says. “Plus, it’ll be good for our ruse. We need to be on the same page if we’re going to convince CPS that I’m a family man now. That’ll be easier if we’re on good terms. So be a good girl and say yes.”
There’s a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. Like he knows that he’s toeing the line by talking to me like that, pushing me like that, having his way with me like that.
And there’s a twinkle that says he knows the answer I’m going to give before it even leaves my lips.
“Okay,” I whisper hoarsely, still rippling with the oozy, melty goodness of post-sex hormones. “Yes.”