Chapter 14
Lyrical
Like the night we reenacted the movie scene at the festival, the first touch of our lips was soft. Tentative.
Unlike that night, this was real. More real than I’d ever had in my life.
Jesse’s touch had always been gentle. My one complaint, if you could call it that, was that he always treated me too carefully.
He treated me as if I were blown glass, and that if he held on too hard or pushed too far, I’d shatter into a million pieces.
He never took physical contact for granted, always asking permission, checking whether I was okay with everything, and ensuring my needs were met.
I never wanted to hurt you, sweetness. Not for anything.
However, I never complained because I believed it came from a place of caring. Now? I knew it had been something else. He needed reassurance that what he was doing was what he was supposed to be doing. That he wasn’t outside the lines in our relationship.
Because the relationship he wanted, he wouldn’t allow himself to have.
Knowing that my guess about his feelings for Tiguan was correct made me both happy and sad. Happy because before he passed away, he finally understood what it meant to love someone so much that he feared losing them. And sad because that love went unrequited.
Not that I believed Tiguan would return that love.
But maybe, if Jesse had had time, he would have found someone who could return his affection in the way he needed to be whole.
Of course, then he would have struggled with his vows to me, but I would never have held him to me if he found the other half of his heart.
I loved Jesse. I always would. It wasn’t fair that a nameless, faceless enemy cut his life short before he had a chance to really live the way he wanted to. But he was gone, and nothing could change that.
All these thoughts were in my head and out in a split second. One second, Tiguan’s kiss was chaste and sweet. The next, he was nibbling at my lower lip. I tensed at the tiny tease of aggression.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Open your mouth for me. I want to taste heaven again.”
A soft gasp of shock at his words did what his physical coaxing could not, and as soon as my lips parted, his tongue slipped between them.
I froze in his arms as his tongue stroked mine. He seemed to sense that, although this wasn’t our first kiss, and it wasn’t my first kiss with a man, it was definitely something else this time.
He could have totally taken over, and I would have let him.
My nature was submissive to others from years of trying to fade into the background.
I never wanted to rock the boat or cause stress to others, so I remained quiet, passive.
I could be aggressive, but I needed to be backed into a corner and severely provoked—like with Mr. Forbes—to the point where self-preservation caused my flight tendencies to become fight.
Instead, rather than overwhelming me, his hands remained settled lightly on my hips.
His thumbs slipped beneath the soft cotton of my shirt, brushing butterfly-light against my skin, and his pinkies slipped just beneath the elastic of my sleep pants, where they sat, unmoving.
His mouth did all the work, cajoling me into responding.
My robe had loosened when he shifted me into his lap earlier, and it slipped from my shoulders to reveal the lacy-strapped cotton tank top. When I shivered, he retracted his mouth from mine and moved to pull my robe up over my shoulders. “Cold?”
There was a tone in his voice that I didn’t understand at first. On the surface, it was a question of care and concern for my well-being. But underneath, there was a tinge of something else, as if he were hoping my tremors resulted from something within me.
“No.” I loosened the tie of my robe, which had already pulled most of the way free, and I shrugged it off my shoulders to pool around us. “I’m not cold.”
His fingers flexed slightly against my waist, then he dragged my hips tight to his at the same time his mouth returned to mine.
This time, the gasp I issued was from the surprise of his warm hands sliding down the back of my thin cotton pants to cup my ass cheeks so he could lean back against the sofa and press my core against his hardening cock inside his jeans.
He groaned. “Naughty girl. You’ve been running around the house like this all night with no underwear beneath these pants? ”
He continued to kiss me, the pressure behind his stroking tongue stronger than before, as if trying to taste everywhere inside my mouth at once because he feared never getting another chance.
I wound my arms around his neck and returned his kisses, stroke for stroke, my hips instinctively grinding against his pelvis, which pushed up against me. Who was the woman I’d suddenly become? I’d never known I could respond to anyone like this.
“If you’d known, would we have been doing this sooner?” I asked, angling my head to seal our lips together.
“Honestly? I would have been afraid to touch you, but I probably would have taken at least two more showers today.”
I giggled against his mouth. Considering his body’s reaction to his discovery, there was no need to guess what he would have been doing there.
He rocked me back and forth, dragging my core against his cock over and over.
We were both struggling for air but reluctant to pull apart.
Our nonverbal moans of pleasure and grunts of frustration when we could get the moves just right harmonized with the sounds of our clothing sliding against each other.
He pulled back suddenly, his hands framing my face and holding it steady so I couldn’t look away from him. “Lyrical, sweetheart, this is way too fast, but I just can’t seem to stop. Please tell me I can take you to bed.”
I nodded.
He ripped my robe from where it pooled around my waist, then in a single motion, he pushed up from the couch. The sudden movement startled me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist to keep from sliding to the floor.
“Never gonna drop you, sweetheart.”
His steps were heavy and purposeful as he strode through the living room, down the hall, and into my bedroom, where he lay me in the center of the bed and followed me down to the cool, clean sheets I’d put there this morning.
I expected him to lie on top of me and continue kissing me as he undressed me.
But now that he had me in bed, where he’d begged to take me, time slowed down, and so did he.
He propped himself above me, his arms now curled underneath my shoulders and playing with my hair at the nape of my neck.
Hip to hip, he didn’t push against me but used his weight to keep me in place as he gazed his fill at my face, passing over each feature and cataloging his observations.
“The first time I saw you, I honestly believed my heart stopped,” he admitted.
“You had on this beautiful pink sundress, the one with the white belt, and the sun was shining on you like you were a fucking angel. It sounds so damn corny, but it’s true.
I fell in love with you right then and there.
And every time you wore it, I got hard instantly.
I knew it was wrong, and I felt so guilty, but I couldn’t stop it. ”
He buried his head in the crook of my neck, his mouth seaming itself to my skin, and he sucked gently. Not enough to leave marks, but enough so I felt his teeth press flat against the surface.
Threading my fingers through his hair, I tilted my head to the side, granting him access to travel down the cord to where my neck and shoulder met. “Love me, Rhen.”
Gently, he eased off the bed to stand between my legs at the edge of it. Reaching behind his neck, he pulled the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore over his head and dropped it to the floor. He toed his shoes off while he unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, shedding everything below the waist.
Rhen Durbin was gorgeous when dressed. Undressed?
He resembled one of those perfect-specimen statues in Italy I’d seen pictures of.
Smooth skin, with a healthy tan over every inch of him.
Did the guys lie out in the desert sun naked?
He didn’t seem the type to go to a tanning salon.
He was fit, but comfortably so. I already knew his muscled arms felt like home when they wrapped around me.
“This is really new between us.”
“Incredibly new,” I agreed.
He paused.
“I’m clean,” he assured me. “I haven’t been with anyone since I first saw you.”
“I’ve only had one lover.”
“Are you on birth control?” he asked huskily.
I shook my head.
He looked so unsure. “Lyrical—” He stopped. “I have condoms…”
“It took me quite a while to get pregnant. My ovaries don’t produce enough eggs, and they can’t figure out why. It’s highly unlikely I would get pregnant without help.”
“But you could.”
“Yes.”
He paused again.
“How do you feel about that?” he asked, his voice almost inaudible.
How did I feel about it? I had always wanted to be a mother. But Rhen and I hadn’t even been on a date yet. This whole situation was preposterous. And yet, somehow? I knew this was right. This was good. It was like Jesse had sent him to fill the gaps and replace the missing pieces.
“I think,” I started, “it’s more about how you feel.”
His hands reached for the waist of my sleep pants, sliding them down my legs to mix with his clothing on the floor. Then he coaxed me to sit up and pulled my tank top over my torso, arms, and head, dropping it behind him.
He kneeled between my legs on the bed, his hands smoothing over the insides of my thighs, his fingers curling over the tops. “I know what I want. Have known for years that you were what I was looking for. But I also know this is sudden for you.”
“Not that sudden,” I admitted. “There was always something about you. Something different. I just didn’t know what it was until I saw you in that diner. The moment you kissed me as the web-slinger, I knew. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
Without hesitation, I held out my arms to him, and he lowered himself so our bodies had no space between them. His hands curled under my shoulders to leverage himself, and the tip of his cock slid inside me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“I want to give you everything you want. If you told me tomorrow that you were pregnant, it would make me the happiest man on earth. I want kids. Lots of kids. Don’t care if they’re our blood, if we foster, or if we adopt.
Maybe we just take care of all the little ones running around the women’s center.
But I want whatever version of that with you. ”
I smiled at him. “I’d say this is the perfect way to work on making that happen,” I whispered.
Fusing his lips to mine, he thrust back and forth, making sure my body accepted him easily.
When he discovered I was more than ready, he increased his speed and force, pulling against my shoulders so he could grind the base of his cock against my clit.
It took no time at all for my core to scream at me to respond in kind, and I didn’t hesitate to push up against him with each stroke.
The tingles I’d been feeling all night sparked into flame, and it seemed as if it took no time for me to come undone with pleasure. Several strokes later, he followed, calling out my name.
He rolled me onto my side, cuddling me close. In a minute, I’d get up and clean up, but it felt comfortable to just lie here with him.
It was probably the heat vent blowing air in just the right place, but for a moment, I felt a warm, lingering touch in the center of my forehead. Almost the same feeling as when Jesse kissed me there. Then it was gone.
I somehow knew I wouldn’t hear Jesse’s voice again. His final mission was complete. He’d delivered Rhen to me.