Chapter 22 #2
She rubbed her palm on his chest, teasing across his nipple ring, which immediately hardened the skin it pierced. With slow, tortuously slow movements, she began unbuttoning his shirt. Suddenly, Alex wanted to rush. Wanted to strip all these clothes off them both and get inside her.
But even he recognized that as the self-protective mechanism it was. Fast meant less time to think. Less time to feel.
And this woman made him do both.
And she deserved better from him.
When she popped the last button on his shirt, Alex pushed himself up on one hand to shrug out of it. Then he pulled his white T-shirt over his head and tossed it aside too. Greer’s attention was fixed on his nipple ring, and her tongue touched her bottom lip.
She glanced up at him. “Can I…?”
“You can do whatever you want.”
She framed his nipple with her thumb and forefinger and blew a stream of air across his already vibrating skin. The quilt below them became a bunched wad of cotton in Alex’s fist.
Then she licked him, curling her tongue under the silver hoop and ball, tugging gently, and the sound of seams ripping barely registered in Alex’s brain.
Greer pulled back and frowned. “Did you just rip that quilt? It’s handmade.”
“I’ll buy you a thousand of them if you’ll just do that again.”
“Here,” she said, pushing him onto his back and untangling his fingers from the bedcovers. “Put this hand to better use.” She placed it on her ass. “Squeeze that if you feel the need.”
“Better,” he panted.
She went back to work torturing the small ring—and Alex’s sanity—with her tongue. To distract himself from the almost overwhelming pleasure, he unbuttoned, unzipped, and unsnapped everything he could get his hands on.
When Greer gave him a little nip, the tiny pain zigzagged through his body, leaving every nerve raw-edged and needy. Unfastening clothes wasn’t enough anymore. “Nakedness is next to godliness,” he said.
She laughed and looked up from his chest with hazy eyes, as if she’d just taken a hit off a primo joint. “That is so wrong.”
He wrestled Greer out of her clothes while she did the same with his pants. It was forever before they were both naked and panting from a combination of lust and laughter. “Note for next time,” she said. “There’s a reason we were taught to take turns in kindergarten.”
Next time. There would be no next time.
The room was all slate shadows, so hopefully she couldn’t see the truth and pain on his face. She ran a hand down the center of Alex’s chest. “I want to see them. Really see them this time.”
Alex’s muscles tensed. Those tattoos were the story of his life. At least the stories he was forced to remember every time he looked at himself in the mirror. But if he was going to leave Greer, shouldn’t he leave her with something?
He stretched and clicked on the bedside lamp. The light diffused through the shade meandered over his body, setting some areas of his skin aglow, casting others in shadow.
Greer trailed her fingers over his naked collarbone, so slowly, so carefully, her touch was almost reverent. “You have such a beautiful body.”
“My mamá cried when she saw my first tattoo.”
“Why?” Greer’s touch—now on his pectoral muscle—both soothed and aroused.
“She said I was abusing the only temple God had given me.”
The feel of Greer’s nails over his ribs and down his side was enough to lift Alex’s hips from the bed. Since she was draped over him, his dick nudged the underside of her breast, and she chuckled and told it, “You’ll get your turn.”
Alex squeezed his eyes shut against images of his cock getting its turn. That way, he didn’t have to see Greer skimming the sensitive skin along his hipbone, but the feeling was so erotic, so intimate that he felt a hot pressure behind his eyes.
“Are any of these gang symbols?” she asked softly.
He tried to push a word out of his throat, but it was closing up on him. A couple of breaths, and he was finally able to say, “No.”
“Did you design them?”
“Javi and me.”
“Is your younger brother half this talented?”
Jesus, he had no idea. When he’d left home, Nicolás was still coloring in Transformers books with broken crayons. “I…I don’t know.”
“Now that they’re back in Texas, will you spend more time with him?”
Not the topic he wanted to discuss. Not at all. He grabbed Greer’s hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “In case you’ve forgotten, it’s just you and me in this bed. And we’re naked.”
She wriggled from his hold and sat back on her heels to gaze down at him. Her small smile was directed at his dick. “Oh, I haven’t forgotten.” Then she touched him, just a light stroke from his sac to the tip. “Why didn’t you have your penis done?”
Jesus, that had his hard-on wilting a little.
“I mean, you obviously have a high pain tolerance.”
“Pain tolerance doesn’t equal complete batshit fucked up. You know any guy who’d willingly stick a needle in his dick?”
That made her laugh, and she circled him, squeezing on the downstroke.
Unfortunately, she abandoned his newly re-inspired erection and concentrated on tracing the designs on his thigh instead. “Is this a phoenix?”
“An Egyptian eagle. The symbol of authority and protection.” Not that it had done his family a damn bit of good.
“And this—” she finger-painted the curve of his calf, “—is a flower.”
“Lotus.”
“Which means rebirth.”
“How did you know?”
She looked up, met his stare with her own. “Because I know you. And you don’t think you deserve another chance even though you desperately want one.”
And in that moment, baring his body to her took on an entirely new meaning.
Had he given away too much of himself, too much of his power, his self-containment, by allowing this woman into his more private spaces?
His instinct was to leave the bed and cover himself with a barrier more protective than just clothes.
But something told him a wall made of bricks wouldn’t keep Greer out of the places inside him if she really wanted to see them.
“And I’m about to know you even better.” She smiled in that way that made him think of a shameless wood nymph and curled against his thigh.
Her breath skimmed over his dick, and he automatically reached down to wrap his palm around himself to relieve some of the throbbing tension.
But she literally cock-blocked him and pushed his hand away. “Uh-uh. Mine.”
And then she took him in her mouth, sliding her lips slowly over the head, touching the tip with her tongue. Alex’s rock-hard balls contracted even more, and he spread his legs.
Greer took that as an invitation to take more of him. And God, the amazing wet heat of her mouth was the closest place to heaven Alex had ever been. Would probably ever be in his life.
She didn’t hurry, just learned every inch of him with her tongue and lips, occasionally grazing him with her teeth.
Alex dug his heels into the mattress and his fingers into Greer’s tangled hair. But he was careful not to thrust, not to press down on her. This was her show even if he died a thousand deaths in the process.
The combination of her smooth lips, wicked tongue, and perfect suction had him setting his back teeth against the brain-destroying pleasure. Then she increased her tempo by a half-measure and took him to the back of her throat.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. If she kept it up, he wouldn’t survive.
He tugged lightly on her curls. “I…I can’t take any more.”
Her only answer was another slow, sliding deep-throat move, and the beginnings of Alex’s orgasm tingled in his balls.
He pressed—a gentle squeeze of his thumb—against her carotid artery. “Please,” he said, the word a strangled mess on his tongue.
Greer backed off but took her own sweet time about it. When she looked up at him, her pupils were dilated and her lips were shiny from sucking him.
So fucking beautiful it ripped a hole in his chest. “You are so—”
“I love you.” Her words were quiet, the most sincere three syllables he’d ever heard in his life.
And he thought she’d ripped a hole? Hell, she’d just detonated a pipe bomb inside him. “Greer, I—”
She smoothed two fingers over his lips. “Don’t. Don’t say anything you don’t mean. And don’t reject something that’s freely given.”
If she wouldn’t let him articulate his complicated feelings for her, then he’d do his damnedest to show her. Probably kinder anyway since he was leaving regardless of how much he cared for her.
So Alex pulled her up his chest then gently pushed her onto her back so he could settle himself between her thighs. He smoothed the hair out of her face, took his time trailing his fingers over her fragile cheekbones and silken skin.
This. This was the temple where he wanted to worship. The altar he wanted to kneel before.
He leaned in, trailed light kisses along her jaw, down her neck, across her vulnerable collarbone. Her beeswax scent—warm and heady—perfumed her skin. A light reminder of her feminine strength.
She moved restlessly beneath him, a husky “Mmm” vibrating up from her chest. Her hands clutched at his back, urging him to move faster.
But he took his time, exploring the hollow between muscle and bone with his tongue, his lips. And not until he was ready to move on did he turn his attention a few inches down her body.
Greer’s nipple was tight and pink-tipped, and when he circled it with his tongue, she arched beneath him, pressing her breast against his mouth.
He backed off and blew warm air over her skin until she sank against the bed again.
Then he returned to his work, alternately using his tongue and the scrape of his teeth to drive her arousal higher.
He knew it was working because she tilted her center against him, and her warm wetness skimmed his belly. He forced himself to breathe through the stab of incredible need. He could just shift up a few inches, slide himself inside her welcoming body.
He could make them both whole.
And he would. After he made her lose her mind.
“Alex, please,” she panted.
But he simply moved his attention from her left breast to her right.
Her nails bit into the back of his neck. “I listened when you said please.”
“I’m listening,” he murmured against her skin. “I’m just not answering.”