Chapter 55
Ikiss my wife, who is my life, and I will let no one take her from me. I want her to know this. I want her to feel, not just hear, how much I love her, and yet, there is a rage of anger inside me I need to bury and control. I have to go downstairs and act like I’m king of the fucking world when everything I love is right here in this room, and delicate, too damn delicate. As surely as I think those words, though, Cat bites my lips, and not gently. “Get out of whatever place you are in your head,” she demands. “Right now. I know what you need, so use me.”
“I never use you, Cat.”
“I use you,” she says. “Every time I need out of my own head, I drive you to the edge until you fuck me the way I want to be fucked. Until you make me forget and,” she grabs the lapels of my jacket, “stop what you’re doing right now. Stop acting like we’re different because that makes me think things that I didn’t think before, that I know aren’t true, but you’re scaring me. You’re making me think this is going to change us.”
“It’s not,” I say roughly. “I’m just angry.”
“Then be angry. Angry at her. Deal with it, with me. Show me.”
I don’t need to be pushed any further. I need her. My mouth closes down on hers, my tongue licking into her mouth in a deep, hungry kiss, and I let her taste everything I feel. My fear of losing her, and us. The gut-wrenching moment I heard what Debbie claimed. Just thinking about how that must have affected Cat, gutted me. Just thinking about her actually believing it, tore me apart. And some part of her has to doubt. It’s human. I don’t want her to doubt.
I tear my mouth from hers. “You’re all I need. You’re what I needed before I even knew I needed it.” I kiss her again and then raise up on my knees to shrug out of my jacket, tugging away my tie and tossing them both. I’m back with Cat in all of sixty seconds, kissing her again, my hand caressing her waist, reaching up to cup her breast.
She arches into my touch and while moments ago, I just needed inside her, the anger in me refocuses on the here and now, and Cat. It’s all Cat. I want her to moan for me. I want her to come for me. I want and want where she is concerned, and she needs to feel that now. I didn’t do what Debbie claims I did, and Cat needs to be reminded how much she completely rocks my world. I skim her T-shirt up her body and tug it up and away, but I don’t let her lower her arms. I do what I rarely do with Cat. I pin her hands over her head.
“I need you to trust me, Cat,” I whisper, pressing my cheek to her cheek, pulling back to look at her.
“If I didn’t you wouldn’t be in this apartment right now, let alone pinning down my arms.”
I reach down and unhook her bra, my hand caressing the material away to cup her breast; my lips finding that small space on her neck just below her ear, and I laugh, when moments ago I didn’t think I could. “I wouldn’t, would I?
“No,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t because I think more of myself than being with a cheater, but you aren’t that Reese. You think more of us than that too, which is why you need to stop worrying about me and us.”
“It’s why I can’t stop worrying about you and us.” I cover her mouth with mine, kissing her even as I pinch her nipples. I rotate her and drag the bra off of her shoulders and then grab my tie from the ground, sitting up on a knee and pulling her wrists together in front of me.
“You have to test the trust, Reese,” Cat says when I wrap the silk around her and bind her hands. “It’s there,” she says. “You can do anything to me because I’m yours. You know that, right?”
I cup her face. “Anything, Cat?”
“Anything,” she whispers, no hesitation in her voice.
I drag her to her back again and pull off her sweats and panties. When she’s naked, bound, and lying there, I lean over her, my fists on the couch on either side of her but I don’t touch her. “Do you know how much—”
“Yes,” she says before I can finish. “Yes to anything you can finish that sentence with. Yes, I know how freaked out you were when you heard about Debbie. Yes, I know how angry you are. Yes, I know how worried you are about us and yes, I know you still have to do your job and it’s tormenting you right now. Should I go on?”
I don’t know how any two people can know each other like we do. I stand up taking her with me, and again my mood shifts. I don’t want to press Cat to do more with me than she’s ever done. Not now. Now with people downstairs, and time ticking. I don’t need to make her prove her trust. That’s another mistake. It’s unfair. She’s not on trial. I untie her hands and toss away the binding. I just want to make love to my wife. I cup her face and her hands go to my hands.
I kiss her and back her up against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling window and I turn her to face it, pressing her hands to the glass. Mine go beside hers, and together, we’re right here, above the city, in control of our world, the way we always are when we’re here in this place. My hands caress up and down her waist and gently tease her nipples. She moans, and I cup her breasts, molding them to my hands and she leans into me, lifting her face, offering me her mouth.
I kiss her, and this time it’s one-part tenderness and one-part burning, barely-contained passion. “Don’t move yet,” I whisper, a soft command as I stroke her cheek and then release her.
She stands there, hands on the glass, gorgeous as fuck, her skin perfect, her ass even more perfect, and that’s trust, too. Letting me look at her. Letting me stand behind her when she has no idea what comes next. I undress and I’m back to her without delay, my hand settling on her belly, my lips finding her shoulder, teeth scraping the delicate skin there. She breathes out, a trembling, delicate breath, and I brush her hair over her shoulder, my lips finding her neck, the way I plan to find every sensitive spot on her body before this night is over. Many now, before we go downstairs, back into the flames of hell. My hands drag down her shoulders and back up over her breasts.
I go down on one knee, settling at her side, my hand on her backside, and the other on her belly. I squeeze her cheek and then slide my fingers lower, teasing her clit, while my teeth scrape her hip. She gives me one of those moans I’m after and I want more. I turn her to face me as I rotate to stand in front of her, but I don’t press my lips to that most intimate part of her. Not yet. I press my lips to her belly and when I look at up Cat, I’m almost certain I find tears in her eyes.