by Ruthie Knox
“Why haven’t we been doing this all week?” she asked the ceiling.
Sean didn’t answer. He was too busy investigating her belly button with his tongue.
That was okay. The question would keep. The ache he’d reawakened between her thighs, though—that demanded a response.
He gave it with his fingers, parting her swollen, slippery flesh and coaxing a terribly unsexy sound from her throat. He smiled and moved back over her, kissing her deep as his fingers moved inside her deeper and curved until he found a spot that made her buck instinctively and swear like a sailor.
“There it is,” he murmured.
Thumb glancing over her clit. Fingers gliding in and out, finding that sweet spot on every stroke and making her heels scrabble for purchase. Making her hands clutch at his shoulders and her nails dig into his biceps. Making her tear her head away and bite her lip because it was too much, and the low, tight tingling centered around Sean’s hand would be her undoing.
She careered toward the edge, trusting Sean to keep her safe. Trusting his self-command. But it didn’t feel quite right. She wanted the Sean she’d had in the car. The one who’d shared command with her.
“Don’t make me come again,” she said. “I want you with me.”
“Next time. This time, I get to watch.” His voice in her ear was so low and growly, his hands between her legs so masterful, she gave in and let the orgasm rip through her, one tight, titanic wave that left her trembling when it receded.
As promised, he watched her, his deep blue irises glittering with possessive satisfaction.
“Holy shit,” she said.
“Mmm,” he replied.
Then he started all over again.
He began at her toes and kissed and nibbled his way up her legs, finding erogenous zones she hadn’t even known she had. His hands massaged her hips and her ass, his mouth moved up her inner thigh, and she couldn’t do anything but stroke the top of his head with shaking fingers and beg.
It wasn’t what she wanted.
“Sean, come here.”
He hooked one hand behind her knee and opened her up to his tongue, licking her sensitized clit with one firm, short stroke that loosed horrible, wonderful aftershocks. With her fingers fisted in his hair, she tossed her head and bit her lip hard enough to hurt. “Come here.”
“No.”
Katie ran out of patience. Grabbing his shoulders, she pulled him toward her and slid down the bed at the same time, away from his questing mouth.
“Enough,” she said. “Come here, for crying out loud. I want you.”
Sean was on his hands and knees above her, and her calves dangled off the foot of the bed. When he caught sight of her frustrated expression, an unexpected smile broke his composure, lighting up his whole face. Funny Sean again.
“You need me for something?” he asked. “I’m kind of busy.”
“Yes,” she said, running restless fingers down his stomach to claim her prize. Her free hand found purchase on a bicep taut from carrying his weight. “You going to make me beg?”
“That was the idea.”
“Don’t you have needs to satisfy?” she asked, accentuating her question with the movement of her fist along his rigid length. “I’m not a completely selfish person. What do you like?”
He knocked her hand loose, captured her fingers, and raised her arm above her head, bringing the other up to meet it.
“You.”
This time, when he lowered his head to kiss her, she wrapped her legs around his waist, lifted her hips against his straining cock, and begged with her body as his tongue penetrated her mouth, explicit and obscene.
“Now,” she said, wriggling against him until he was positioned at her entrance, nudging her open. “Now.” With a sneaky upward thrust, she took in a few beautiful inches.
Sean swore and pulled out, rolling to one side and reaching for the condoms he’d dropped on the bed.
“Hurry,” she warned.
“Or what?” Paper tore, and Sean directed his attention downward.
“Or I start to bite.”
Then he was looming over her again, smiling that wicked smile. “Promise?”
She’d never been a biter, but then she’d never been a thrasher or a moaner before Sean, either. “You’ll have to drive me to it,” she said.
His only answer was that confident one-dimpled smirk.
He pushed her knees up, spread her wide, and watched her face as he began to move inside her with short, shallow thrusts, each one a little deeper and a little better than the last. His pupils dilated. His jaw tightened. His breath came rough and ragged as he claimed her without apology, his movements just this side of too rough, until the entire thick, hard length of him was pulsing inside her and he closed his eyes and said, “Oh, ffuck.”
Katie cupped his face in her hand, amazed how different it was to be able to see him. How different he was tonight than he’d been in the SUV.
Tight and edgy. Hurting.
“Sean?” She stroked the hair at the nape of his neck, her hips already rocking, trying to take him deeper even as she stretched to accommodate him. He was big. Big, and so unbelievably hard.
Restless and greedy for more, she circled her pelvis. Sean grabbed her thigh with one huge hand and said, “Don’t.”
Katie moaned and disobeyed.
“Please, d-don’t,” he said. “You’re so tight. Jesus, I c-can’t—”
“Move,” she demanded, pushing her hips hard up into his. “Now.”
“Damn it.”
She felt the moment when he lost it, and it sent a thrill straight through her, a blue electric blaze of forbiddenness. One hand buried itself under her ass, the other braced against the headboard behind her, and he breathed hard and thrust into her, finding a fast, fierce rhythm that was exactly what she needed from him.
They were supposed to be nothing more than partners with good chemistry. Consenting adults having a good time together. Sean was her inadvisable man, her torrid urge. A whim.
But it wasn’t like that at all. Her craving for him rose with every blunt stroke, no anonymous biological thing. No whim.
It was Sean.
And she knew—the blood singing in her veins, the pounding of her heart, the energy pouring through her and centering where she clamped him tight between her thighs—nobody else could do this to her. Nobody ever had, and nobody ever would. Only Sean.
“Harder,” she said.
He shuddered.
“Look at me,” she commanded.
Those dark eyes, almost black. Pain and lust and something that might have been trust.
She wouldn’t think. She would only feel.
Her heels digging into his back. Her entire being focusing to a sharp, tight peak. Dirty. Lurid. Perfect.
She sank her teeth into his shoulder when she came, and he stiffened, his own release accompanied by a rough, animal groan that went on and on, sounding in her head long after they’d finished. Long after she tasted the tang of his sweat on her tongue, swallowed against a throat raw from crying out.
Even after the pulsing pleasure receded and she felt the dull ache between her sticky thighs, she could still hear the echo of that sound.
They breathed together, bathed in sweat.
Wrecked.
Reborn.
She didn’t know as what.
Chapter Twenty-eight
When Sean moved off her and collapsed facedown on the bed, Katie opened her eyes and took a long, deep breath.
Don’t think, she told herself. Not yet.
She could hear all the doubt crows rustling around, bumping her shoulders, staring down at the naked forms on the bed.
Not yet.
She fixed her eyes on the wall instead.
That’s when she saw the Star Wars posters.
“Nice posters.”
It felt like the thing to say. Attack with levity, because what was she going to do with him otherwise? Make something more of what h
ad happened than she should? Fall in love with him?
No.
Her voice came out sounding as though she’d been smoking a pack a day for forty years, which seemed about right. She was fairly sure she couldn’t lift her arms. Never before had sex left her a boneless husk. She hadn’t even known to aspire to huskdom.
Sean didn’t lift his forehead from where it was buried in his pillow. “How hard do I have to fuck you to k-keep you from p-picking on me?”
She rolled over and splayed herself across his back, enjoying his heat and sweat and the tidal rise and fall of his breathing. “I’m never going to stop picking on you.”
He turned his head sideways so she could see his smirk. “I have good art at my house in C-california.”
“Princess Leia cast in bronze?”
Sean grinned and buried his face in the pillow again, and Katie found enough strength to throw a leg over his hips and climb properly on top of him so she could lie down again with her cheek resting between his shoulder blades.
“Now you’re trying to ssuffocate me,” he said.
“Too heavy?”
He reached back and stroked her thigh once, his hand clumsy from the angle. “You? Please.”
She smiled. “So you don’t have a Princess Leia. Oh, I know! You have a life-size statue of carbon-freeze Han Solo.”
“For a non-geek, you know a lot about Star Wars.”
“Everybody loves Star Wars.”
“So why are you p-picking on my p-posters?”
“Because you framed them, Sean. That’s just wrong.”
“You were the k-kind of girl who punched the boys you really liked, weren’t you?”
“I kicked Jeff Myers in the shins during recess all the time in second grade. He never understood.”
His back heaved up beneath her as he chuckled. “That explains why my sscalp hurts.”
“Your scalp?”
“You p-pulled my hair. Bit me, too. I think you must love me.”
“Did I? I’m sorry. I didn’t even realize. I was too busy getting screwed so hard, I lost all sense of reality.”
Languidly, he flipped over, and she ended up half pinned under his leg, his smile filling her field of vision and his hand under her head.
“You like me, though,” he said.
“You’re weird.”
“Yeah, but you like me anyway.”
“Don’t sound so pleased with yourself. I’m not such a prize.”
He dropped his head and nuzzled her throat. “Sure you are.”
They stayed that way for a long minute, Sean breathing against her, her arms looped loosely around his neck, and she let herself bask in him. Just for a little while.
“I have to g-get up,” he said.
“Knock yourself out.”
She looked at the Empire Strikes Back poster as he threw his legs over the side of the bed and left the room. She heard the click of the light switch followed by the sound of running water in the bathroom.
Katie understood what Sean was doing in Camelot, though clearly he didn’t. It was punishment. He was serving time for a crime he’d never committed.
The woman she used to be would have been desperate to help him, to rescue him from his unhappiness and coax him to stay.
And yes, unfortunately, she was still that woman. Obviously. That Katie had been in charge just minutes ago, when Sean was inside her. Straining toward him, wanting to rescue him with her body and give him everything he needed. But lying here in his bed, surrounded by his adolescent crap, she knew she couldn’t save him, and she didn’t want to entrap him. He’d already entrapped himself. She only wanted to enjoy him while she could.
If there was some secret way to keep her heart out of what their bodies were up to, she didn’t know what it was. But maybe it didn’t matter if she got hurt again. With Sean, for the first time in her life, she felt sufficient. He could stay or he could go, and she would remain here, and her adequacy, her value, would have nothing to do with her ability to hold his interest.
It was a good way to feel.
Progress, if not perfection.
Sean came back in the room and stretched out beside her. His hand found her stomach.
“We’re sssupposed to be working,” he said. He kissed her throat.
“I know. But I’m really hungry.”
He lifted his head. “I d-don’t have any food.”
“I’m sure I can throw something together.”
“No, I mean I really d-don’t have food.”
“Well, come on,” she said, dragging her sated body into a seated position. “Let’s go see what there is.”
He gave her a T-shirt to wear and pulled on his jeans. Downstairs, he showed her the cupboards, where she found some dusty cans of tuna, a container of salt, and a bag of expired wheat germ. He didn’t even have nonperishable food.
What he did have was approximately forty coffee mugs of various sizes and ages. He had flowery dishes, a collection of miscellaneous Tupperware, and, on the counter by the coffeemaker, a bag of Peet’s coffee beans that appeared to be the one item in the kitchen seeing any action.
He had a black ceramic urn on the countertop that almost certainly contained all that was left of his mother.
Oh, the man was a mess.
And he didn’t live here. The conclusion had been solidifying ever since she walked in the door, but the kitchen clinched it. The house was fussy, overstuffed, and dim. There was nothing to suggest Sean in any of it except the computers camping out on the dining room table.
Sean had an immaculate wallet, a car completely empty of junk, and understated, unwrinkled clothes. This was his mother’s house, and he wasn’t inhabiting it. He was squatting in it.
He really was a self-punishing bastard.
“I m-mostly eat at the Inn,” he said. “We c-could go out to d-dinner if you want. Maybe go into Mount P-pleasant for Chinese?”
She indulged herself and imagined it. Katie and Sean at the Hunan Garden, sharing crab rangoon and swapping funny stories.
But there wouldn’t be a Katie and Sean. He wasn’t going to stick around Camelot, because his whole life took place somewhere else, and whatever wounds he was nursing here would heal eventually, or he’d gnaw off the limb that had trapped him and limp home.
Either way, he would leave, and she would get left.
It was different this time, though. Levi had promised to love her until death did them part. Sean had never promised her a thing. He didn’t love her. He barely even knew her.
She didn’t love him either. She liked him a lot. There was nothing on earth she’d rather do than have sex with him. She respected his intelligence and his humor and his basic goodness and his … well, his everything, but she didn’t love him. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to let herself make the same mistakes all over again.
She could be with him and enjoy him—even care about him—but she wouldn’t try to keep him.
Better to make this simple, so she couldn’t forget what it was.
“Let’s order a pizza,” she said, closing the cupboard door with a louder thud than she’d intended. “And then we should get to work.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Sir, you’ll have to remove your watch. Sir?”
Katie poked him in the lower back. “That’s you, Buster. You have to put your watch through the X-ray thingy.”
Sean had already been prompted to throw away his water, pull out his bottle of eyedrops and stick it in a plastic bag, remove his shoes and his belt, and place his car keys and wallet in a tray that looked like a dog dish. Now the dog dish was gone, and he was at a loss.
“Where am I supposed to p-put this?”
“Give it to me, I’ll put it in my purse,” Katie said.
Sean handed over his watch, and the TSA agent beckoned him to step up to the full-body scanner.
“Do you have anything in your pockets, sir? Anything at all?”
“Just some c-cash.”
&nb
sp; The woman shooed him in. “Put your hands up, please.” He copied the figure on the illustration in front of him, raising his hands to his forehead, palms out, elbows up. Something whirred and clunked. The other side of the pod opened up.
“Have a nice flight,” she said.
After gathering his scattered belongings, he found Katie on a bench in a spot helpfully labeled “Recombobulation Area.”
“I d-don’t know why they don’t just ask you to sstrip and bend over. It would ssave a lot of t-time.”
“Men are such whiners about airport security,” Katie said cheerfully. “Caleb hates it, too.”
“It’s d-demeaning.”
“You kind of suck at it,” she replied.
“Ssweet of you to say. My watch?”
She handed it to him. He sank down into a chair beside her and started trying to put himself together again, beginning with his belt.
“I like it,” she said. “I’m not used to seeing you suck at things.”
Tying his shoelaces put him eye-to-eye with Katie’s high-heeled ankle boots. Her legs, encased in black tights. As he sat up, he got to know her short black skirt better, and then his eyes insisted on visiting her soft, tight, bright blue shirt for longer than was strictly polite.
“Quit that,” Katie said as his eyes raked over her throat. Her neck. Her mouth. Those regal cheekbones.
“Quit what?”
“Quit looking at me like you want to do me in an airport bathroom stall.”
“Now that you m-mention it, that’s an excellent idea.”
She smacked his knee, then rubbed out the sting. Rubbed a little higher. “Ever had a sex-in-public fantasy, Sean?” she asked.
“I have now.” He checked to see that she was recombobulated, then stood and pulled her to her feet. Leaning in close, he whispered in her ear. “I’m going to find somewhere. After we land in Des Moines, I’m going to find a sspot, and then I’m going to make you c-come so hard you’ll have to bite your hand to keep from giving us away.”
She swayed a little and flattened one hand on his chest for balance. Her throat had flushed pink. “Promises, promises,” she said in a husky voice.
She wore her hair up in a ponytail. He kissed behind her ear, running light fingers over the sensitive nape of her neck.
