Chapter 34 Sydney
Sydney
Ican’t think. Can’t speak. I’d tried to convince myself I was strong enough to leave him. Then he showed me I needed to be strong enough to stay.
My eyes and sinuses still burn from the wretched loss that wracked me for those hours we were apart, and now something furiously hot thunders through me.
His body cages me against the wall, and I could scream. I could bite. All for want of this man. I run my hands over the solid weight of him. I remember this. How he likes it.
A memory of a cute log cabin. He’d brought my hand to his mouth, first kissing the pulse at my wrist, then his tongue tickled between my fingers before he licked a stripe up my palm.
He guided me back to grip his cock. He’d wrapped my fingers around him, covering my hand and teaching me the rhythm and tightness he preferred.
“That’s it. Just like that. You’re killing me. ”
“This doesn’t count,” I panted as he slid my panties to the side and explored. “No penetration.”
“Whatever you say.” He pressed his thumb into my mouth. “Suck.”
I did, then he found my clit with that digit, and .
. . Later, his tongue, then, in the murky darkness, under an ivory wedding ring quilt, and lit only by the open bathroom door, he came down on top of me, the two of us naked.
I tasted the salt of his skin, clawed at the smooth muscular planes of his back, bucked beneath his weight, tried to guide him inside, but he kept his word and did nothing more than glide against me.
“You said no penetration,” he protested in a strangled tone.
“I changed my mind. Give me a little.”
“Are you seriously asking me for just the tip?” He sounded like he was in pain.
“Yes. Dammit, yes.”
“We’re not eighteen-year-old Mormon virgins,” he choked.
“Pretend we are.”
“You hate me. You really do.”
No. I loved him. So much that I—
He slid inside, barely. Then he stayed perfectly still. The relief lasted less than three seconds, then it was worse, the ache for fulfillment stealing my resolve along with my sanity.
“You should move a little,” I said, lifting my hips in a quick thrust and drawing him in farther.
He dropped his head beside mine, laughed, then slammed his forehead against the mattress. Repeatedly.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying not to die.”
“Let’s renegotiate. For one night only, we do anything we want, as many times as we want, before the sun comes up, then never again. We’ll get it out of our system,” I said.
He took my mouth in a carnal kiss and powered into me.
Here and now, I tilt my head to the side to give him better access as he nips and sucks his way down my neck.
He startles a laugh from me when he straightens then hikes me over his shoulder.
“Gabriel.”
“Sydney.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
My name has always been nothing but a way to identify me. I don’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other. But he never says “Sydney” like it’s an offhand label. He turns my name into a benediction, love spun into a vow.
He drops me onto the bed, kicks off the last of his clothing, and crawls over me. The new position has me closer to the lamp than I like. It glares into my eyes.
“Turn off the light. Turn it off. Turn—”
A brief, stretching reach, then inky darkness descends. Gabriel’s hard length presses against my thigh.
I tunnel both hands through his hair and drag his mouth down to mine, then I push on his shoulder. “On your back, beautiful.”
He rolls over, reversing our positions. “I should punish you for that.”
“There you go, threatening me with a good time.” I slide down his body, then lift my prize from where it presses against his lower abdomen and drop a kiss to the tip.
Another flash of memory. We were in our bedroom in the Manhattan penthouse. He wore nothing but his wedding ring.
“You know I don’t need this, right?” he’d asked.
“I want to try. For you, but for me too.”
Gabriel wrapped my hair in his fist and guided my mouth to his cock. “Kiss.”
I pressed my lips to the tip, then darted my tongue out for a little taste of the salty bead of liquid waiting for me.
He groaned. “Tap my thigh if you need me to back off or I get too rough for you. I mean it. The second you stop enjoying yourself, so do I.”
I nodded.
“Holding your breath helps suppress your gag reflex. I’ll count backward out loud so you always know how much longer you have until I pull you off.”
I opened for him.
He pressed inside. Controlled my head. Farther. Farther. Until he bumped the back of my throat and I swallowed.
I was utterly in his power. He would choose my next breath. My nose pressed flush against his pelvis as I surrendered utterly. It was scary. It was also insanely hot.
I’d never let any man come close to anything like this, but he loved me. He wouldn’t hurt me.
“Three, two, one.” He dragged me off by my hair, his eyes wide.
I grinned up at him and wiped my chin with the back of my hand. “Again.”
The memory makes me bold. There’s nothing tentative about the way I worship his body.
He smooths my hair away from my face, not controlling my head tonight but petting me, praising me with his touch.
He bucks, shudders, and whimpers, never leaving me in doubt about how I make him feel. No stoic silence in bed for Gabriel McRae.
Partially sitting up far enough to grab my hips, he rearranges my body into the 69 position.
At the first touch of his tongue, a muffled cry escapes my lips. I lose my rhythm and lift my head. “You know I can’t concentrate when you do that.”
He chuckles against my clit, sending a delicious vibrating shiver from my toes to the top of my head. “I’ll make you a deal. Whoever comes first takes bottom afterward,” he says.
“Hardly seems fair to you. I have a head start.”
There goes that laugh again. He gives me a light slap on my butt. “You’re going to need it. Now, put that pretty mouth back on my dick.”
It’s probably for the best that he “wins.” Holding that position for any length of time would have been a struggle for me.
Before long, exhaustion was bound to take over.
I suspect he knew that all along because the lovemaking afterward is slow and gentle, filled with tender words and quiet intensity as he braces himself over me and pushes into me.
Later, he holds me in the darkness, my body draped over his as perspiration dries on our skin, and his heart thuds steadily beneath my cheek.
His fingers trail up and down my spine. “Why did you shut off your phone earlier?”
I should cringe at the memory, but I’m too sleepy. “When we went to bed originally, the battery was almost dead. It hadn’t charged for very long before I had the idea to look at photos, then I forgot to pack a charging cord.”
“If I hadn’t followed you, where would you have gone after here?” he murmurs.
“After I made arrangements, I’d have gone back to get Rufus from the staff at the house, then probably gone to my old apartment in New York to see what I could remember.
You told me about it, but I forgot until Annabel reminded me and said they could take me there.
I was thinking I wanted to start with the lab.
Earlier today, I had Ben send me the company emails of everybody I worked with from the last three months.
It’s going to take me forever to read them all, and it’s probably stupid.
I know if there was anything there to catch, your people would have already, but I thought maybe it could prompt memories.
He sent me the footage from the entire day when I took the laptops, and from the new cameras in the lab too.
Even watching it sped up is going to take a while, but maybe I’ll notice something no one else does. ”
“You could do that from here. Do you still want to go back?”
I nod against his chest and yawn. “It’s time.”
“The doctors say the things that happened while you were drugged will probably never come back, the same way people lose their memories while under anesthesia. If you don’t remember, it’s not something to feel guilty about, no matter what my brother said to you.”
“I hate that. Even my short-term memory still sucks for some things. What if I go back into the lab and forget I was even there the way I do with the doctor’s visits or when Clarissa and Janessa came to see me in New York?
” Or the times I asked Gabriel for answers about our past, then not only forgot them afterward, but, according to him, zoned out right in the middle of hearing them.
“Then we deal with it,” he says.
“You’ll come with me?”
He scoffs. “Where you go, I go.”
Sleep tightens its warm embrace, but I manage to answer before succumbing to the comfort of darkness.
“Where you go, I go,” I echo.