Chapter Nine #4
So I let my excuse be good enough and scurry off to my room. Anxiety is dogging me, and I’m not sure if it’s just the upcoming thunderstorm and my childish fears, or the much more adult peril I feel around the sex we just had.
I get into some cozy, soft pajamas and crawl beneath the covers.
The curtains are open, because I find the darkness even more disconcerting, but when the lightning begins to flash in the sky I start trembling.
It’s so stupid. I’ve faced far worse things.
Including a thunderstorm actually out in the middle of the ocean.
There’s no reason for me to act this ridiculous.
But it’s like my body belongs to someone else. And I am frightened like the lonely child I used to be.
I’m tossing and turning, covering my ears, when the door opens.
“Ciro?”
“I came to check on you.”
My heart leaps up in my throat. “Oh.”
No one has ever done this for me before. No one has ever come to see if I was all right. Or cared if I was afraid.
“You were worried about me?”
“You made it quite clear earlier that storms frighten you.”
I had. But genuinely, no one has ever cared before.
“I’m scared,” I say.
He marches purposefully across the room, and comes to sit on the edge of the bed. And then that tattooed hand covers mine. Squeezing me tight. “Everything will be all right.”
I feel an ache building inside of me. Not just because I want him physically.
But because I crave closeness. Because I’m actually closer to this man than I’ve ever been to anyone.
We talked about our childhoods. We’ve made love.
He understands things about me that I’ve never even tried to explain to anyone else.
And now he’s here, offering me comfort when before all I’ve ever been able to do is curl up in a ball and try to ride out the storm.
I sit up, and rest my head against his shoulder. He cups my face, pushing his fingers through my hair. And then I look up at him. Our mouths are close, so close and I want him so very badly…
He kisses me. His kiss is gentle at first, then hard and deep, and I want to lose myself in the sensation of it.
God, he’s perfect. Everything that I never allowed myself to fantasize about.
His mouth moves over mine, and I wrap my arms around his neck, whimpering as he pulls me up onto his lap. “Please, gangster,” I whisper against his lips. “I know you can make me feel better.”
He growls, flattening me down into the mattress. I can feel that he’s lost control. That whatever he came up here for at first, and I really think it was just to comfort me, he’s after more now. Just as powerless against it as I am.
But he doesn’t just take me. He kisses me. All over my body, that wicked mouth tracing patterns over my skin. Making me whimper, making me cry out with need.
He licks me until I’m sobbing. Until I’m begging for release.
He moves down, his wicked head bent between my thighs as he begins to taste me there.
His tongue is insistent over my clit, his fingers buried deep inside of me.
He’s whispering against my skin, intimate, filthy things.
And I’m not a victim of the storm anymore.
I’m one with it. It’s like the wind, the rain and the thunder and lightning have wrapped themselves around my body, the electricity, the intensity of each roll of thunder reverberating inside of me.
And I know that I will never be able to think of storms again without thinking of his wicked mouth, his fingers moving deep within me.
I know that every time it rains I’ll think of how wet he made me. On a crack of thunder, I cry out my release, pulsing around his fingers, and he moves up my body, pushing his fingers into my mouth, and I suck them, cleaning my own pleasure off of them.
“Perfect,” he says.
He lifts me up, bringing me down over the top of him, urging me to impale myself on him the way that I did by the fireplace. And I do. I take him deep, riding him as the storm rages on.
The lightning cracks across the room, and I see his face. Wonder in his eyes, his mouth parted and slack as I take us both all the way to the edge.
And then, on a cataclysmic roll of thunder, we both break apart.
He pulses inside of me, pouring himself deep within me.
And I let my head fall back.
He raises his hands, cupping my breasts, and I glance down, transfixed by the way those tattooed hands look over my breasts. I don’t know that I’ll ever get tired of that. I don’t know that it will ever stop amazing me.
But I feel sad then, because I’m not his woman. I’m his prisoner. And I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the baby.
I swallow hard. “Thank you,” I whisper.
I slide off his body, and then he pulls me up against him. His arms wrap around me. I want to cry, but I don’t let myself, because crying is for women who have that luxury. I never have.
But then so is this. Being comforted. Resting with another person.
Thunder and lightning doesn’t feel like fear anymore. It doesn’t feel like being alone.
But I’m afraid it feels like something else altogether.
Something I don’t think I’ll ever be allowed to have.
And that’s almost scarier than the storm itself.