by Stacy Gail
“An exhibit? Of my stuff?” Her eyes widened, as much from the fleeting brush of his lips against hers as from surprise. “You really think my art is worthy of an actual exhibit? What if no one shows up for it?”
“Now who’s sounding like she doesn’t know she belongs anywhere she wants to be?” He cupped her nape, his fingers kneading the muscles there even as he brought her mouth to his. “I believe in your brilliance, just as much as you believe in me. Together we’ll support each other whenever we need it, and in the process we’ll conquer any pissy little obstacle that’s stupid enough to get in our way. Sound like a plan?”
“It does.” For a moment the thought of her parents flitted through her mind before she shoved it into the secret vault where she kept all the dark and painful things she didn’t know how to handle. What they thought was irrelevant. Her art had never been noticed or appreciated by them anyway. On the contrary, her father had often insisted she stop “wasting” her time on it and apply herself to something that actually mattered. She would be stupid now to allow the thought of them—and the approval that would never come her way—to keep her from achieving the life-long dream of having an exhibit of her work.
Their approval no longer mattered.
Setting her drink aside, Becks settled deeper into the crook of his arm, resting one hand on his knee and squelching the desire to slide it higher. “What kind of promotion are you thinking of doing?”
“Interviews. Podcasts. Photo ops. Maybe a YouTube video on your artistic process, if you’re willing to let a film crew in.” His hand came to cover hers, his fingers threading in between hers before he slowly began to slide it upward.
“I’m not good at that sort of thing.” It was getting harder to concentrate on the conversation, especially when she could feel his thigh muscle tighten under her palm. “But if it’s what you think needs to be done, I’ll struggle through it.”
“I’ll be with you every step of the way. God, your hand is so hot. I love being burned by your touch” He sighed raggedly and buried his face in her hair. “I’m hating my clothes right now. I want to feel you on my skin so bad it hurts.”
Her breath left in short little puffs as she lifted her gaze to tangle with his. In his eyes she could see what she wanted—the two of them with nothing between them. No clothes. No doubts. Just the two of them in absolute harmony, united in both body and spirit, protecting each other from the world and loving each other as no one ever had before.
Loving each other…
No.
Not love. Never love.
Oh God, no…
Andreas stepped into the room, wiping his hands on a dish towel as he went. “Please forgive the interruption. Dinner is served.”
Chapter Thirteen
Andreas had outdone himself not just with dinner, but with the setting as well, complete with gilt-edged plates, flowers and candlelight. Payne barely saw it. He ate everything set before him, though he had no clear memory of a single bite. What he did remember was what made Becks smile or laugh, or simply sigh with pleasure. That was what made the meal perfect.
Or, almost perfect.
Andreas cleared things away before discreetly announcing he was heading home for the evening, a converted boathouse no more than fifty yards from the main house. Once they had the place all to themselves and the sense of privacy was as tangible to Payne as the beat of his heart, he took Becks on a tour. As they moved through the first floor, he noticed something seemed a little off. It was subtle, so subtle that at first he thought it was his imagination. But as they looked through the library and into what had once been a study and was now his studio—with several of his more famous tattoo designs framed and hanging on every inch of wall space—he realized what it was.
Becks had stopped looking him in the eye.
As they wandered up the stairs to the media room he’d converted into a home theater, he rested his hand on the small of her back to see what kind of reaction he’d get. Her color heightened and she smiled as if she couldn’t help herself… but still she didn’t meet his gaze. Nor did she rest back into his touch or turn to him in any way that could have been construed as receptive. As they moved into a common area that held a seldom-used pool table and another mini bar, she idly rolled the cue ball along the table to bumper it back to herself, keeping her gaze fastened on the ball.
And not him.
Enough.
When the cue ball zipped by him, he caught it up, then dropped it into a pocket. “Uh-oh. Scratch.”
“No fair.” Her smile was quick and fluttery. Nervous. What the hell had put her so on edge? “Though that’s usually what happens when I play pool. I suck at it.”
“It’s all in how you hold the stick.” Slowly he rounded a corner of the table and hoped he didn’t look too much like he was stalking her. Even if that was exactly what he was doing. “Though, to be honest, I’m probably not much better. I’m so busy I don’t get much time to play.”
“This house was built for fun and games, though.” She didn’t try to keep the distance between them as he’d expected her to. She did, however, shift back half a step as he closed the gap, as if she’d had to consciously stop herself from pulling an all-out retreat. “If the people who owned this place when you were a kid had deigned to let you in, you probably would have had a blast playing in here. Sliding down the banisters, playing hide-and-seek. Fun stuff like that.”
“I’ve got a game that might be considered fun.” He reached her at last but didn’t touch her. Not when some instinct told him she wanted to backpedal at full speed. “Ever heard of Too Hot?”
As he’d hoped, her eyes at last lifted to lock with his. He felt the slam of it all the way to his spine to reverberate a deep, unending need in his cock. “No. How do you play?”
“It’s pretty simple, really.” He raised a hand, again nice and slow, and made as if to cup her cheek but stopped just shy of doing so. His heart nearly beat out of his damn chest when she bit her lower lip and leaned imperceptibly toward his palm, like a flower seeking the sun. “First you have to have a couple, like us.”
“Is that what you would call us? Are we officially a couple?”
Her aversion to putting labels on relationships once again reared its ugly head, but he wasn’t in the mood to let her get away with it. “Yeah, we’re very much a couple. That means we’re perfect for playing a rousing game of Too Hot.”
“Got it.” She licked her lips, moistening them. He ached to do that as well. “What are we, as a couple, supposed to do?”
“The rules are simple.” He stepped as close as he could without touching her, torturing them both as the radiant body heat between them ballooned up, hot enough to make his head spin. “We kiss continuously, making sure that we don’t touch in any other way. Just our mouths. If a person breaks the kiss or they touch their partner with anything other than their mouth, they’ve lost the game.”
“No wonder it’s called Too Hot.” The color he’d noted earlier swarmed back into her cheeks, and when her eyes began to glitter with an excitement she couldn’t hide, he almost threw her down on the pool table then and there. “Does the winner get anything?”
“It wouldn’t be a game if there wasn’t a prize to be won.” He lifted his other hand and just managed to stop himself from stroking her riotous hair. Did she have any idea how it broke him not to fill his hands with her? How, deep down, he suffered in an unnamable way when she wouldn’t look at him? “The loser of Too Hot has to allow the winner to do whatever that person wishes with their partner.”
Her eyes widened. “Whatever that person wishes? Like… anything they could imagine?”
“Anything at all.”
“My goodness. That’s quite a prize.”
“Yes, it is. But it’s also one hell of a risk.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if you lose?” When she couldn’t stifle a shiver, desire coiled so deeply in his gut it almost made him double over. God help h
im if she ever discovered how utterly she owned him. “While Too Hot seems like a fun game at first, that’s not what it’s really about. It’s about trust. Whether I win or lose, the question is… do you trust me to take care of you no matter what the outcome is? And should I dare to trust you to take care of me?”
The faint alarm that had touched her face drained away at the last part. “You can trust me, Payne. I would never hurt you. I couldn’t.”
Yet you stab me when you refuse to look at me, then leave me to bleed when you won’t tell me why. The words coated his tongue, wanting their freedom so much he could taste their bitterness. But he’d be damned if he’d say it. No way was he about to sound like a whiny little bitch begging for her attention.
Besides…
He might not like her response.
“So? How about it, Becks? Wanna play?”
She ran her tongue over her lips once more before she nodded once. “Challenge accepted.”
A game of Too Hot with Payne was the stupidest thing Becks could do when she was such an emotional train wreck. A train wreck, moreover, that couldn’t even figure out what she was feeling from one moment to the next. But when every cell of her body cried out for this man like he was both her salvation and her drug, she couldn’t do anything else. He was responsible for the skip in her heart whenever he walked into a room, for God’s sake. How the hell would she ever be able to say no to him?
But that wasn’t the real question. The real question was what if her heart skipped as frantically as it did because she’d made one of the biggest mistakes in her life and fallen in love with him?
She didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. All she wanted was to kiss him, drink in his warmth and fight like hell to make sure she won. As far as immediate goals were concerned, this game he’d set up was in the bag.
She thought Payne might have whispered her name a scant second before their mouths touched, and like that, the game was on. As always, the heat emanating from him kicked off a sweet melting inside, as if his kiss had enough power to liquefy her bones. The texture of his lips was her personal idea of heaven—crushed silk over steel, and he knew exactly what to do with them. They molded to hers as if that was what they were made to do. Entranced, she tilted her head in search of a flawless fit, a fusion of two parts making a seamless whole. Her hands crept up with the idea to press at his nape and intensify the sensation of completing their fit.
No. Don’t touch.
An internal wail of dismay at the last-second denial knifed through her, so keenly she was surprised it didn’t echo through the room. It must have cost her a year off her life to not fill her eager hands with the feel of Payne. The rules of the game were stupid, really. Bordering on torturous. They didn’t even seem that important now, not when she yearned to worship him with her hands. All too well she could imagine her fingers gliding over his strong, muscle-sculpted shoulders, her palms rubbing against his pectorals before feeling the wild beat of his heart, a beat that matched her own.
How her arms burned with their stillness.
Desperation began to hum through her, so low she almost missed it. She strained upward into his kiss until she was sure she had branded the feel of his lips on hers, but it wasn’t enough. She yearned to feel him, to bring the breathtaking solidity of his frame against hers and drown in the sheer joy of his closeness. She needed that sensation the same way an alcoholic needed a drink.
Don’t touch. Don’t touch.
In her mind, she lifted her leg to caress him from hip to knee with her inner thigh, before wedging his leg between hers so that he would know she wanted something solid there. That she wanted him there. The muscles in her lower abdomen contracted with helpless desire as his tongue licked at the inside of her lips, as if he wanted to sample every texture her mouth had to offer. Her pulse began to beat between her legs, an urgent rhythm that made her shudder with savage sweetness. She was so excruciatingly empty without him filling her, and her panties grew damp with the force of her desperation to merge his body with hers.
Don’t…
The nip of his teeth against her upper lip made her gasp, her mouth opening wider in surprise before he invaded her, coaxing her tongue into a sensual dual. What a beautiful, talented mouth he had. He could give lessons on how to have sex with a kiss alone. He had an almost magical ability to make her feel cherished, as if she was the most important part of his world and he was willing to spend the rest of his life proving it. All she wanted was to give that back as best she could by caressing him with her tongue and hoping he understood.
Touch.
A fractured moan rumbled in the back of his throat, so deep it was something that she felt more than heard. That spontaneous sound was an admission of pure delight, and it filled her with dizzying triumph. She had made him feel so good he literally couldn’t keep quiet about it, just as he had done so often with her. There was no greater thrill, knowing the man she’d chosen to be with could only moan his pleasure, a pleasure that she had given him.
Touch.
Touch him. Yes. Touch him.
Her hands delved deep into the cool crispness of his hair, clenching with frantic need as she tried to show him how frenzied he made her, and how treasured. Steely arms banded around her to crush her to his chest, as if he wanted to merge them into one being through sheer force before he half-turned to the table. Blindly she lifted so her butt rested on the polished lip of the pool table while he came to stand between her knees, his hands quickly tugging her shirt over her head before unfastening her jeans.
“I love how you kiss,” she breathed, scooting out of her jeans and underwear with his help. Relief at each barrier being removed was quickly replaced with edgy anticipation of glorious things to come, so much so that she undid the buttons of his shirt before gliding her lips and tongue over a pectoral muscle without bothering to peel the shirt from his shoulders. “You kiss me like it’s the last kiss you’ll ever have, and every time it stops my heart.”
“I needed to hear that from you.” A condom appeared from his pocket before he undid the front of his pants, shrugging out of his suspenders with an impatient twist of his shoulders. “Did you know that, Becks? Just as much as I need your lips and your body and to feel how wet you get for me, I need to hear that you like what I do to you, that you want me. Tell me how I make you feel. Look me in the eye and tell me everything.”
A thousand and one answers rampaged through her head as she locked her gaze with his. He made her remember what a joy life could be. He taught her how to laugh again. To play again. He brought light to her solitary dark world, then tempted her to join him in its golden glow. He inspired her to be courageous. To be a better Becks.
He was everything.
“You do this to me.” Taking his hand, she pressed it against the valley between her breasts still covered by her bra, so he could feel how her heart was setting a new world’s record when it came to beats per minute. The way his heavy-lidded eyes widened told her that not only did he feel its crazed racing, but he also understood what it meant. “It’s like I come alive when I’m with you. When we’re apart, I can’t feel my heart beating. I’m not even aware of being alive. I just exist. But the moment we’re together I become so thrilled that I’m alive. I’m thrilled, because that means I can be with you.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. And you, looking back at me, is what I wanted to see.” His hands skimmed with bold possession over her legs, caressing them slowly apart before moving to free her of her bra. “Don’t ever look away from me, Becks.”
Even as her excitement grew, that struck her as odd. “Why?”
“Because no other woman makes me feel like my life hangs in the balance if I can’t make that connection with her,” he gritted out, his voice rough. “No other woman makes me shake so much I can barely stand. No other woman makes me hard just by smiling at me. I know it’s crazy, but if I’m not with you or if you’re not looking at me when we’re together, I can’t fucking stand
it. It’s just something you’re going to have to put up with.”
He slid into her before she could say anything, and her mind emptied of all words as he lifted her legs higher by cupping the backs of her knees. The angle of penetration went exquisitely deep, and it was staggering in its rightness.
Oh, yes.
A low moan purred out of her as pleasure bloomed through her body with each measured thrust. His hands slid from the backs of her knees, down the underside of her thighs to cup her butt in his palms. He lifted her up into every stroke so that she felt magnificently impaled, her entire being fixated on the sensation of being filled by this man who had become her world.
And he did fill her in ways that went beyond the physical realm. At first she’d tried calling it lust, then desire, because those were drives that were easy to handle. But what consumed her now wasn’t easy. The joy and completeness that ballooned inside her wasn’t even close to being easy, and it was so vast she couldn’t see its end. The beauty of it was so intense it brought tears to her eyes and made her yearn to be with him, always, when she no longer believed that such a thing like always existed.
But with Payne, she could almost believe.
Her legs were spread wide, draped over his biceps as each deep, smooth thrust rocked her world. She couldn’t stop herself from digging her heels into his back as the glorious tension in her sex began its devastating buildup. The madness of it began to eat away at her control. The encroaching delirium was so lovely she hardly noticed the heated friction of the table’s felt covering chafe her shoulder blades as Payne crashed them together in an increasingly wild rhythm. The near-violent sound of body impacting body threaded together with their ragged breathing and quiet moans, creating an audible tapestry of unashamed eroticism. It was always so beautiful with him, she marveled, as sensation sharpened to exquisitely painful levels. She was beautiful with him, and she couldn’t live without this beauty…
