Chapter Twelve #3
She smiled. “I’m sure.”
Something in his shoulders eased.
“And just so we’re completely clear, if you ask me again in thirty seconds, I may become quite cross.”
His mouth twitched. “Good to know.”
She slid her hand free and curled it around the back of his neck. “Come here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t you dare start that either.”
His laugh was lost against her mouth. And after that, she stopped trying to think ahead.
Not because she forgot what she looked like, but rather because she stopped caring.
She was too busy feeling. Too busy discovering that his stillness everywhere else translated here into attention.
That he noticed every response she gave him and seemed to store it away, changing what he was doing without making a performance of it.
He was learning her without once making her feel studied.
And she learned him too, and that mattered.
It mattered more than she could have explained.
She wasn’t simply standing there being loved.
She was loving him back, touching him, kissing him, discovering places that made that wonderful control of his slip and feeling absurdly powerful every time it did.
When they finally made it to the bed, there was nothing remotely graceful about it.
Blane sat on the edge first and drew her between his knees, and Bea went willingly, smiling as his hands settled at her hips.
She stood there for a moment with her hands on his shoulders, looking down at him—this enormous man who had seemed almost immovable since the first time she’d noticed him in London—and she felt another little surge of that new, astonishing power when he tipped his face up to hers and waited.
When she kissed him, his hands slid around her, warm against her bare back, and she moved closer until there was no space left between them.
She stopped thinking about being nearly sixty, not because her body had somehow become younger.
It hadn’t. Her breasts were softer than they used to be, and her waist was different.
There were lines and marks and all the ordinary evidence of a life already lived.
But Blane didn’t seem interested in comparing her to any earlier version of herself. He was interested in this one. In who she was right now, here, with him.
When he shifted farther onto the bed, she followed him. She laughed when they both tried to move at once and almost collided. Then Blane nearly knocked the lamp from the bedside table and caught it without looking, and she burst out laughing.
He stared down at the offending lamp before setting it carefully back where it belonged. “Don’t say a word.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I really was.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling when he kissed her again.
And that was perhaps the best part. There was nothing solemn about any of it.
It mattered—it mattered enormously, but it didn’t have to be solemn.
They could laugh and find their way together without pretending either of them had arrived in this bedroom knowing exactly how the other worked.
She shifted beneath him and hooked one leg around his, drawing him closer. His breath caught, and there it was again—that delicious awareness that she could affect him simply by wanting him and showing him that she did.
“That okay?” she murmured.
His eyes met hers. “More than.”
She smiled. “Good.”
And for a while there was no talking. There was kissing and touching and the slow, sometimes awkward business of discovering how two unfamiliar bodies fitted together.
There was Blane stopping when she shifted, not assuming he knew why, and Bea realizing she could simply move him where she wanted him.
That did something to her that she couldn’t explain.
Not only was this enormous man hers to move, but he moved willingly, eagerly, not to appease her, but with the objective of pleasing her.
There was the strange delight of discovering that asking didn’t break the mood.
Neither did laughing. Neither did changing position when something wasn’t comfortable.
If anything, all of it made the intimacy greater.
This wasn’t a scene they were acting out according to some romantic idea of how it should be; it was something they were making between them. Something honest.
Then he moved over her, and she opened herself to him, and the humor finally gave way to something deeper.
His forehead came down against hers, and for a few moments she was aware of almost nothing except the warmth and the weight of him.
She hadn’t done this in a long time, all she could do was wrap her arms and legs around him.
Then came the push, the flare of heat, the utter awareness of him inside her.
Her mind chattered that she was welcoming him into her body the way she’d already welcomed him into her heart.
After a few moments, he lifted his head, looked down into her eyes, and smiled.
She smiled back, nodding, knowing the question he was asking without needing the words.
She rocked her hips slowly, clinging to him more tightly as pleasure rippled out from the place where they joined.
He held still while she continued to move until finally, she slapped his backside. “Are you going to join in?”
His chuckle rumbled through his chest into hers, making her wriggle underneath him. At that, he rolled his hips slowly, making her bite down on her lip.
“Blane,” she breathed.
“Bea.”
He picked up the pace, and they found their rhythm together. He seemed so controlled at first, but his control kept slipping whenever she touched him. She loved that, loved being able to feel what she did to him. Perhaps most of all, she loved that he wasn’t hiding it from her.
When her own pleasure began to build, she didn’t retreat from that either. She didn’t quiet herself because she thought she should. Didn’t wonder whether she was taking too long or wanting too much or doing any of it the way some imaginary woman was supposed to.
Blane seemed to notice the moment she stopped holding anything back. “Yeah,” he murmured against her hair.
That was all and somehow it was enough. She held on to him and let herself have everything she’d spent so long wondering whether she ought to want.
She surrendered to the pleasure, and to the sheer, astonishing fact that this man could make her feel this much—and that she could feel his control slipping because of what she was doing to him.
His movements lost some of their careful measure. His breathing roughened against her, and when she tightened her arms around him, he said her name.
Not darlin’. Not woman. “Bea.”
Something about that nearly undid her all by itself.
She stopped thinking then, no longer paying attention to anything except what was happening between them. Pleasure built and built, gathering until there was nowhere left for it to go, and when it finally broke through her, she clung to him and let it.
Blane followed moments later, his body going taut against hers, her name rough in his throat again.
By the time they lay tangled together afterward, she stared up at the ceiling with a smile she couldn’t seem to do anything about.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so thoroughly comfortable inside her own skin.
For a while neither of them spoke. His arm was around her, her head resting against his chest, and she could hear the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear.
Eventually, he ran his fingers lightly down her arm. “You okay?”
She smiled against him. “Very.”
“Sure?”
She lifted her head.
He looked wary for half a second, and she laughed. “Yes, Blane. I’m sure. Although now you’re overdoing it.”
“Just checking.”
“I know.”
She settled against him again. That was the trouble—she really did know. She understood what he was doing, and there was no edge hidden beneath it. No unspoken suggestion that there was a correct answer she ought to give.
“I liked that you asked me.”
His hand stopped on her arm.
“Before,” she added.
“You sure?”
She pinched his side.
The quiet chuckle beneath her cheek made her smile, but after a moment she grew serious again. “I mean it. It probably sounds ridiculous.”
“Doesn’t.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Doesn’t usually stop you saying it.”
She propped herself up to glare at him.
His face remained perfectly straight.
“You are dreadful.”
“You might have mentioned that already. But I still get the impression that dreadful is better than what you’re used to.”
She lay back down, but the thought remained. “Simon wasn’t a bad man.”
Blane said nothing, and that made it easier. She stared across the room toward the dark rectangle of the balcony doors.