She stared down at him in wonder.
“What?” he asked, reaching up to catch her mouth again, but she didn’t let him. She kept him pinned to the bed.
“Underneath your scratchy beard,” she panted. “And your height. And all these muscles. All this strength. Underneath it all, you’re the most gentle soul I’ve ever met, Ced.”
Cedric watched her for a long minute and she saw that he was gathering his thoughts. “It’s all for you, Elena,” he finally said. “Everything that I am, everything that I made of myself. It’s yours. It’s all for you.”
Elena let gravity take her then, in more ways than one. Her mouth fell to his and her heart banged hard against her ribs. With her chest smashed to his, she could feel Cedric’s heart doing the same thing, as if the two hearts were trying desperately to get to one another.
Their kiss was a long, hot slide against one another. One of those never-ending kisses that had no beginning and no punctuation. It was simply sensation. The slick velvet of Elena’s mouth had Cedric’s hands turning into fists on her back. He couldn’t help but thrust himself upward, into panty-covered heat, just once.
Elena gasped at the movement and then they were rolling over the bed. Cedric’s mouth teased her for a moment, changing the kiss to a chaste little series of pecks. But then he was back, his tongue sweeping through her mouth at the same second his fingers circled her wrists. His hands made a slow slide down her arms, around her elbows, up to her shoulders where his fingers butterflied across the wings of her collarbones. Elena felt as if her chest were a pallet and Cedric was painting some sort of secret language onto her skin.
She arched against him when he kissed at the hinge of her jaw, down to her shoulder. She gasped as he clamped down with his teeth, chuckled, and kissed his way along the map of her collarbone to the other side of her neck.
Elena was trembling. She was clutching Cedric’s hair in her fists and trembling against him. She did the only thing that made sense in this sweaty, dozy, dreamy world he was dragging her into. She hooked her feet around his waist and attempted to melt her body into his.
Cedric pulled back from her and groaned. He pressed his forehead into the mattress as he thrusted forward against her the way he had back in Brooklyn. They’d been wearing clothes then too. It felt so good, Elena’s eyes slammed closed, but then suddenly, Cedric was pulling away completely. She opened her eyes to see him kneeling between her bent legs. His eyes burning for her.
He yanked his shirt over his head with little to no ceremony and Elena did the thing she’d been wanting to do for weeks now. She rose up and planted her lips on the winding, organic lines of Cedric’s tattoo. It had lines up onto his shoulder and neck muscles and all the way down to his wrist. But Elena got lost somewhere around his warm bicep. His skin slid over muscle like silk, he was smooth and hard at the same time and as Elena nuzzled into Cedric’s elbow, she marveled once again at the gentleness inside this man’s body. He was built like a brute. But she had no fear of him. None at all.
Cedric wrapped his arms around her and Elena thought he was hugging her but his hands gripped the bottom of her sleep shirt. His eyes held Elena’s as he slowly, torturously, lifted the shirt inch by inch.
He gently and swiftly pulled it over her head and the black in his eyes swallowed the blue entirely.
Cedric looked down at her sitting on her heels on the bed and knew that his life was never going to be the same. She was so gorgeous all he could think was that he could die, right there, and have no regrets. Elena’s damp hair tumbled over her shoulders, her large eyes were swallowing him whole.
She wore a triangle of little white panties, covering her between her legs, but besides that, she was gloriously naked. Her shoulders sloped down so gracefully, her body looked to be in movement even though she sat perfectly still, her palms on her thighs. She was a garden of graceful lines and curves. Her breasts, small and high, sat heavily on her body, beaded at their dark gold tips.
Cedric wasn’t aware of growling or of moving toward her. But a half second later, his forehead was against her collarbone and he was staring down the curved planes of her body. He could see where her heartbeat banged against the cage of her ribs. That’s where he touched first. He pressed one thumb to the smooth line between her breasts. He felt her pulse slam against his own.
He wanted to kiss her again, but didn’t allow himself the pleasure of the oblivion Elena offered him. This was the first time he was going to follow every line of her body with his bare hands and he wasn’t going to let anything obscure it, not even the heaven of her mouth.
Cedric sat back so that his posture matched hers. They sat on their knees facing one another and Cedric thought of the crescent moon again. Just a flash of it, silver and curving and thin and breathtaking in the sky. That was Elena’s presence in his life. The most beautiful thing that the world had to offer. And all for him.
He let his hands travel down the sides of her body, tracing the hourglass of her figure. She shivered as he dragged the backs of his hands over her soft stomach. Her navel was a dark shadow, just like every part of her. God, Cedric loved her shadows.
Cedric wanted to look in her eyes, but he couldn’t drag his eyes away from the path of his hands as they traveled up her torso. His breath washed over her as he finally weighed one of her breasts in his hand. He moved his palm, her nipple drawing a circle against the center of his hand. Cedric used his thumbs to draw her breasts into an even harder point.
Elena breathed hard, all at once, and it told him she’d been holding her breath. She pushed her breasts harder into his hands and leaned toward him. Cedric’s arm banded around her waist as he used his weight to push her back. She was bent back, in a dancer’s arch, when his mouth found her breast. His thumb worked one while he lathed his tongue over the other.
Elena’s full weight was on his arm as he arched her. Her golden nipple in his mouth, between his teeth, insistent against his tongue, was making him wild. He tumbled forward, catching his weight on one palm and putting her on her back again.
He used both hands to mold her breasts, burying his face in their small but undeniable curve. He used his teeth, the scratch on his beard, the hard suction of his greedy mouth. His vision was dim at the edges, bright in the center, and he saw, with no small bit of masculine pleasure, that her skin was pinkening where he dragged himself against her. She was damp from sweat and from his kisses, her nipples were gathered, her skin goose-bumped.
He got another flash of crescent moon as she arched hard against the bed. He held her hips in his two hands and his fingers met at her back. The invitation was too much, all that smooth skin. Cedric flipped her over onto her stomach, her hair flinging forward over her head and exposing the graceful line of her neck. He kissed his way up her spine, his hand spanning over her ass and down to the hollow behind her knee.
“God, you’re so big you’re everywhere,” she gasped, her words coming out in a jumbled rush.
He laughed against the nape of her neck where he was currently making out with her. “You’re so small that I can touch anywhere anytime.” He demonstrated by clamping his teeth to her shoulder and stretching one long arm down to circle her ankle. She bent her leg and he traced a heavy hand over the arch of her foot and back up the highway of her leg. Elena put her cheek on the bed and Cedric laid his head next to hers, so that they were nose to nose.
He stared into her eyes as his hand slicked its way up the back of her thigh. His thumb traced the edge of her underwear and Elena widened her legs, making way for him.
She sucked in a breath as he exhaled hard and in that way too, they were connected as he pressed her panties to one side. He tested her wetness with one finger and Elena had the distinct pleasure of watching his eyes go blurry with lost focus as he encountered just how much she wanted him. He used one blunt finger to trace through her folds, to find the place where she was pulsing for him.
Elena gasped and wiggled against him, her breasts scraping a
gainst the sheets. She was electric. Her skin buzzed in every place where he’d brushed against her. His stubble had left a path of exposed vibration against her. He was touching her in one place, yet she felt as if he were touching her everywhere.
Cedric rolled onto his side, his eyes still on hers. He slid one hand under her cheek, needing to touch that beautiful face of hers. He took one foot and slid her legs farther apart as he pressed his finger inside her tight heat.
They both made a desperate sound. The kind of sound that showed just how helpless they were in the face of this desire for one another. If this was a cliff, they were both realizing that they’d jumped off the edge weeks ago. Now the bottom was rushing up to meet them. They could hit that water on their own or together. Cedric wasn’t letting her go. He wasn’t letting her hit alone. He was going with her. Cedric brushed over her with his thumb, making slow, drugging circles as his middle two fingers pressed inside her, deeper and deeper. She pressed her cheek into his hand and then, when the pleasure was too acute, she slid her eyes into his palm. Elena gasped into the darkness of his hand. She arched in either direction, driven wild by that methodical circling of his thumb.
He was slow and steady and Elena had the sudden realization that no other lover had ever taken his time with her before. Cedric was patient in his pursuit of her pleasure, his eyes fascinated and riveted to her. She could feel his gaze on her like a brand. She jerked against him and the weight of one of his legs fell over the back of her thighs, holding her down, holding her open.
His hand covered her eyes, his body giving her pleasure in a way she had no choice but to accept and Elena just went ahead and surrendered. With every other lover, there had always been the moment when she could give herself over or she could stay contained within herself. Elena had always, every time, chosen herself over the moment. But with Cedric, she never even approached that crossroad. Suddenly, she realized, she was already leaving herself behind. And he was leaving himself behind. She was already meeting him in a place where there was only the two of them, straining and panting and accepting every bit of pleasure they could give to one another.
And that thought was too much for Elena, her brain shut off and her body took over. She pushed up, onto her hands and knees and both of them groaned when the unexpected movement pushed Cedric’s fingers even further into her.
Cedric pushed up then too, on his knees behind her, his fingers curving inside her, his thumb burning in circles and his other hand on the flat of her back. It was that calm hand—palm down and soothing, like she was a wild animal and he knew what was best for her—that really pushed Elena over the edge.
She felt her hair in a spray over her back as she arched hard, her face toward the ceiling, toward the sky, toward God. She felt herself clamp down around Cedric’s fingers. She saw nothing as pleasure tightened every cell in her body in on the next. She shrank down to the head of a pin as she squeezed and squeezed down on the ecstasy he’d stroked out of her.
Elena trembled as her body finally released her from the rictus of pleasure and she collapsed forward onto her elbows. She was dimly aware of Cedric’s strong hands at her shoulders and hips, he was turning her over again, onto her back. Elena watched, with fuzzy vision, as he whipped her panties off and panted over top of her. Her view of him was as if it were through a camera, slowly spiraling. He was fuzzy around the edges but his face, his expression, was in sudden HD.
It was clear to her that Cedric too had left the land of choices behind. He was surrendering to everything, to her, to them, to the moment. He looked lustful and lost and ravenous as he parted her legs and dropped his head. For a moment, he just pressed his forehead against her belly, his great body expanding and contracting with his deep breaths. Elena pictured her scent sucking into him on the gallons of air his big body demanded.
But thoughts were gone when she felt his mouth against her. He was both gentle and exacting in his exploration of her. She got the impression that he had technique and experience and skill, but more than that, she got the impression that he was drowning in her. He was coming as undone as she was. His breath turned into grunts as his fingers gripped her hips hard, as he tunneled his tongue into her, suckled at her, swallowed everything she had to give him.
The bed shook as Cedric couldn’t help but jam his hips against the mattress. He was strung as tightly as the string on an upright bass, one good twang and he was going to be gone. Absolutely gone.
Gripping Elena, he rolled them both to their sides, his mouth still clamped to her heat, his face buried between her legs.
He grinned against the pain of her hand in his hair. Her body rode his face in a slow, rolling wave that he was sure she wasn’t even aware she was doing.
“Cedric,” she moaned. “I’m gonna—”
Yes. He spoke the word against her, into her. He demanded it of her. He meant it in every way possible. There weren’t enough yeses in the universe for all the ways he wanted her to come. And then she was that slick, tight, ribbon of elegant ecstasy again, a hoarse scream echoing out in the room as her body held and held and held.
She collapsed away from him, her eyes glazed and one hand reaching for him. She raised her head off the bed and there was something in her eyes. She was about to say something life-shattering, Cedric knew it. She was going to wreck him. He braced himself.
“Pants,” she said.
“What?”
“Off. Now. Naked. Cedric. Now.” And then she was shoving him backward, straddling his knees and her fingers clawing at his belt.
She was like a fierce little warrior kneeling over him, naked and ripe and heated. He lowered his hands to help her but she pinned him in place with her dark eyes and whipped his belt out of the loops, tossing it aside. Then his pants were getting wrenched down his legs with brutal efficiency. She stood at the edge of the bed and flung them aside like they were the flag of a country she did not pledge allegiance to.
And he knew how she felt. Right now, clothes were a betrayal to everything he valued in this life. He wanted nothing more than to tear off his boxer briefs but figured that he’d let her do the honors.
She did not disappoint.
Elena reached forward and slid his underwear down, inch by inch. And inch by inch, her eyes widened further and further.
“Jesus, Ced,” she murmured when she’d gotten his underwear part of the way down and he still wasn’t completely exposed.
Cedric grinned a sheepish smile and sort of shrugged. “This may have been another reason I was nervous to start anything with you in high school.”
“You thought I’d take one look at your size and scream Godzilla while I ran for the hills?”
He laughed and propped up on his elbows as they both looked down at his half-exposed length. “I didn’t want to traumatize you. I know it’s a lot to take in.”
They made eye contact then and burst out laughing at his accidental double entendre.
“I think I’ll be able to manage, Cedric,” she murmured, pulling his briefs down to his knees and then crawling forward, her mouth soft and eager against his.
Cedric kicked his underwear onto the floor and fell back onto the bed, relishing the weight and heat of her naked body against his.
“Condom,” he muttered into her hair, his hands wandering over every lush inch of her.
She went rigid. “Do you have any?”
His eyes bounced between hers as he slammed his head back onto the bed. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.” Elena rolled to her side and bit her thumbnail. “Um. I have an IUD?”
Cedric rolled his head toward her, adjusting his aching length against his thigh. “Is that a question?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a statement. I have an IUD.”
Cedric sat up and started rustling through his pants at the edge of the bed.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m getting my phone. I have my medical records on there because Rook makes us get
tested regularly as company policy. I’m clean. I can show you.”
She stilled his rustling hands by plastering her naked body to his back and kissing along his shoulder. “I believe you, Ced. I trust you. I’m clean too. I had all that stuff done when I was in the hospital.”
Cedric turned toward her, his eyes on hers. “You want me inside you, Elena? Bare?”
He watched her eyes dilate, heard her breath catch, saw the dark slick of her tongue against her lip. “Yes,” she breathed. “Do you want to be inside me?”
“Fuck yes,” he murmured before he tumbled them to the bed, his tongue in her mouth, his hands fastening her thighs around his waist. He rolled them so that she was on top and then rolled them again so that he was over her, bracing his weight on his elbows. She stretched out underneath him, the lengths of their bodies pressed tip to toe.
“I’m gonna love you, Elena,” he told her, and they both knew that he meant that in a hundred different ways. Words were no longer enough in the face of what they felt for one another, for what their bodies needed from each other.
One of his hands slid down her thigh and fastened under her knee. He pulled her leg over his hip and found her heat with the tip of his length.
Elena wanted Cedric to slam into her all the way to the hilt, but Cedric being Cedric, he patiently pushed forward, inch by inch. And damn it, he was right. This was so much better. She felt every gorgeous second of his invasion. She felt just how much bigger he was than anyone she’d ever been with. She stretched and accepted him as his mouth came down to hers and he rolled their tongues together. He groaned into her mouth.
And then he was all the way in, their bodies flush against one another. Cedric savored the moment for one pulsing second before he sat back on his heels, dragging her hips up to keep them connected. He lifted that leg from around his hip and, his teeth at her ankle bone, laid her leg over his shoulder.
Rook Security Complete Series Page 22
