Confessions in the Dark

by Jeanette Grey

  At least he didn’t try to pretend he didn’t see what she was offering. “You don’t have to.”

  She waited until he pulled his thumb away to lick her lips. “I want to.”

  It was the work of a moment to get him free. He made another one of those delicious noises as she wrapped her hand around the silky, searing flesh, smoothing the foreskin back. God, he was big. Perfect and achingly hard. The tension coiling inside of her wound higher. She was soaked with wanting, and it would be so easy to pull him down onto this bed with her. To climb on top and get the deep stretch, the fullness and the satisfaction of his body thrusting hard into hers.

  Instead, she pushed his pants and boxers farther down, then took another long, slow stroke with her hand. Patience was a virtue and restraint would be rewarded. And this wasn’t about her; it was about him.

  She’d never had a chance to take her time with him or to try to learn exactly what he liked. How he shuddered when she rubbed her thumb through the fluid at the tip. How he closed his eyes and tilted his head back as she drew that slickness down to just beneath the head.

  How he moaned her name when she slipped off the mattress to fall to her knees. When she replaced her fingers with her tongue.

  “Serena.” His voice came out choked and rough, and he threaded gentle fingers through her hair as she let him slip between her lips. “Oh, that’s perfect.”

  She hummed around him before pulling back. She wasn’t going to be rushed here, either. She licked and kissed and explored, breathing against the base of him and mouthing at the tender flesh of his sac. His warm, male scent invaded her senses, the salty, slightly bitter aftertaste of him thick on her tongue. Staring up at him, she skated her hands along his thighs, over lean muscle and coarse hair before bringing them to rest at his hips, dragging her thumbs over the grooves of the V that led her exactly where she wanted to go.

  And this was cruel, but she placed one more soft kiss to the very crown of him before leaning back. She wanted him desperate, wanted him insane for what she was about to give him. Her heart thundered and her pussy throbbed as she waited.

  Untouched for a moment, his cock bobbed on the air, liquid beading from the slit. His breath came faster and faster, his rib cage expanding and contracting furiously, and the hand in her hair clenched, nails raking against her scalp.

  Finally, he broke. “Please.”

  She wet her lips with her tongue. “Please what?”

  “Please.” His eyes were practically black. “Suck me.”

  Hot tremors of arousal raced up and down her spine, making her skin feel like it was too tight, and maybe she was cruel, maybe she had both patience and restraint, but even she was helpless against his plea.

  “Happily,” she murmured. With that, she opened her mouth and swallowed him down.

  “Fuck.” His legs shook, and his whole spine arched over her as she took him in as deep as she could. His other hand slammed against the edge of the mattress behind her, and he leaned into it like it was the only thing keeping him up.

  Maybe it was. Maybe he needed his crutch or to sit or lie down.

  Except when she made to slide off of him, he let a growl build low in his throat. Cupping the back of her head now, he urged her to take him in again, and that was all the answer she needed to dispel her doubts.

  Closing her eyes, she slid him back inside, triumph a brilliant glow within her chest. On an upward stroke, she curled her tongue to flick it over that spot beneath the head that had made him groan before, and the noise it pulled out of him this time was unreal.

  “Serena. Christ. You look so good with my cock in your mouth.”

  Her every nerve was alight as she moved into a nice, slow pace. His hips answered her, making gentle, shallow thrusts in time with the motions of her lips. The shaking in him deepened as he got closer and closer.

  “Faster,” he begged. “Nice and deep, yes—”

  His voice cut off as she wrapped her hand around the base. He slid slickly through the circle of her fist, the wet sounds of her going down on him and him fucking her mouth obscene and delicious on the air. He sped up, taking control, and she let him.

  Because maybe that was what he’d needed.

  A dizzying desire made her head spin. Someday, she wanted that. When his leg was healed, she wanted him to pin her to the mattress and take her hard, fuck her for hours with all the strength that was in him. Claim her and make her his own.

  She wanted him to keep her.

  Groaning around the thick flesh in her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut tighter. God, she wanted that so much.

  Finally, the shaking in his legs hit a tipping point. He sped the pace of his hips, and every muscle in his abdomen clenched hard. He drew in a harsh, sucking breath.

  “Shit, Serena, you take it so perfectly. Take it, take it all...I’m—”

  His jaw clamped shut, the hand at the back of her head snapping suddenly away. It was warning and permission, but she opened her eyes and pulled him in deeper.

  “Serena—”

  He came in surging pulses over her tongue, and she swallowed it all. Every rasping gasp, every line of strain was a hot punch to her core. Her slickness coated her thighs, and she could barely breathe past how badly she needed him, needed this, needed it to never end.

  She whimpered as he took one last thrust past her lips and stilled.

  God. She was in so deep with this man, and he’d never promised her anything—he’d explicitly told her that he couldn’t, even. There were obstacles and land mines lurking in the scattered landscape of his past. But as he stared down at her, shuddering through the aftershocks of his climax, this ember of hope ignited in her.

  Maybe. Maybe.

  The ember only grew as he drew back. He slipped free from her mouth with a wet pop that sent another lick of heat on a live wire to her clit. She stayed there on her knees, panting, her entire body tight and on edge with the depths of the ache he left in his wake.

  His body seemed to give out.

  Alarmed, she reached to try to steady him, but he shook his head. It was a controlled descent that brought him shuddering to the floor. Landing on his good knee, he reached out for her, and she went. They twisted and turned, arranging themselves until he had them how he wanted them. He sat with his back against the footboard of her bed, legs splayed out in front of him, his jeans still at his knees. Straddling his hips, she was even with his face, eye to eye and mouth to mouth.

  With an intensity in his eyes she couldn’t read, he pulled her in.

  She groaned as he licked his taste from her tongue. The kiss was deep and wet, his muscles lax from orgasm while hers still felt taut, every inch of her begging for touch. He settled a hand on her hip, thumb edging down toward where she was slick and soft for him, and she rocked into him, silently begging.

  Scraping his teeth over her lip, he delved deeper. Two fingers traced along her opening, and she clamped her thighs tighter around his hips.

  All that time she’d spent trying to figure out exactly how he ticked, and apparently he’d already mastered her.

  “There,” he said as he pressed inside, curling his fingers up and rubbing deep within. Firing off sparks.

  She nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck in some vain effort to be closer—to breathe his air and to surround him. To live in this moment when he was surrounding her. Filling her.

  His thumb touched so gently at her clit. “And there.”

  “Yes.” She sucked in a shattering breath at the wave of blistering heat, and it only flared hotter when he brought his other hand up to her breast.

  And it took so little. He stroked and rubbed, making soft circles around her clit and firm, curving motions inside. Cupping her flesh, he pinched her nipple between his finger and his thumb, kissing wetly at her mouth until she was panting for it. All too soon, the heat was an inferno, making her tingle all the way to the curled toes of her feet, but she resisted. She wanted more, wanted everything.

  B
ut he shook his head, fighting the resistance in her body.

  “Let go,” he urged. “I’ve got you, love.” And that endearment tugged at something that hurt too much inside of her, even as his fingertips pressed exactly where she needed him, as he rolled her clit just right.

  Her climax washed over her all at once, dragging her under. The flames broke into cool, cool water, relief and ecstasy, and he did have her. He did.

  But even as she fell into his lips, succumbing to the boneless aftermath of pleasure, that word echoed and panged inside her mind.

  Love. It was such a casual endearment, such a British thing to say. But it was what she wanted, what she wasn’t sure she could ever have.

  And it was exactly what she felt for this man.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  You know, there’s a perfectly good bed like two feet away from us.”

  Cole craned his neck in the direction of said bed, even going so far as to reach a straining hand toward it before collapsing back again. “Much too far.”

  Serena rolled her eyes, but the curve of her mouth against his chest betrayed her smile. “Suit yourself.”

  “I will.”

  He hugged her closer, shifting to press a too-intense kiss to the center of her brow. He shut his eyes, just breathing her in for a moment. Finally, he loosened his grip, prepared for her to swat at him or get up or make some vague effort at putting on her clothes. But she didn’t pull away at all. A light inside him glowed. Apparently the floor suited her as well as it did him.

  Honestly, though, no one could expect him to move after that. He’d managed to strip the rest of his clothes off, but that was as much as he had in him. In the aftermath of climax, they’d collapsed to lie together, tangled naked on the hardwood, and it was cold and it was uncomfortable, and he didn’t give a damn. All he cared was that he was here. With her.

  His heart gave a restless pang, and he ducked to hide his face in her hair.

  He didn’t deserve her. Not the playful way she flicked clay at his face or made fun of his fumbling attempts to keep up with her at the pottery wheel. Not the tender way she touched him or the quiet intimacy that seemed to enshroud them every time they kissed.

  The grace with which she’d sunk to her knees and practically worshiped him with her mouth.

  Christ.

  He didn’t deserve her. Fuck him if he wasn’t going to try to, though.

  She shifted, tilting her head to look at him. A little line appeared between her brows. “I can hear you thinking, you know.”

  Forcing a smile, he smoothed the crinkles between her eyes with his thumb. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just...anything in particular on your mind?”

  So many things. His racing thoughts were the reason he could rarely sleep, why he had such trouble staying present. Focusing on the pleasure of holding a beautiful, naked woman in his arms instead of obsessing over all the things that would eventually go wrong.

  For the time being, he pushed all those other competing ideas away. Ever so gently, he dragged a fingertip over the curve of her lower lip.

  “At the moment, I’m mostly thinking about your mouth.” The soft, wet heat of it and the dark, seductive tease of her tongue on his flesh.

  Her eyes flashed, and his prick, soft and sated, gave a waking twitch against his hip. Just as she had earlier, she parted those sinful lips and took a kitten lick at the pad of his finger. Fuck, could she taste herself on his skin?

  “Funny,” she said, voice husky. “Because I can’t stop thinking about your hands.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  Arousal was a slow, lazy hum radiating between them. A part of him wanted to ride it right into a second round of lovemaking, but a bigger piece was content to let it take its course. She seemed to sense that lack of urgency, pressing one more kiss to his fingertip before letting him draw his hand away.

  Resting her face against his shoulder again, she trailed her hand across his chest, gentle arcs that left soft trails of heat in their wake, keeping the fire alive without stoking its flames. In the silence, his mind started to drift.

  But it was her thoughts that beat too loudly this time.

  “What?” he asked as she traced the bottom of his ribs again.

  “I like these,” she said.

  It took him too long to catch up, but when he did, the ink sewn into his skin flashed hot. “Oh.”

  Her fingertips swept smoothly from the symbols at his abdomen to the star over his heart, then over to the lines that curled around his arm.

  “Tell me about them?”

  Warning sirens blared inside his mind. She asked the question so casually, as if it were nothing. If he deflected, she’d probably back off. The temptation ate at him. They’d already tread the burned out landscape of his past enough—couldn’t he have one evening to lose himself? To ignore the echoes of the ghosts in his heart?

  With a deep breath, he grasped her hand in his, too hard, and she startled, frowning.

  “You don’t have to—” she said.

  And it was that very assurance that made him realize he did.

  No matter how much of himself he revealed to her, she never pulled away from him. She’d coaxed out story after story until she had the most complete picture he’d ever allowed anyone to have of his life.

  She didn’t have to coax him anymore. Whatever she asked for he would give.

  Loosening his grip, he swallowed. He intertwined their hands and dragged her back to the inscription just beneath his ribs. “This was the first one. I got it my second term at Oxford. Right after I accepted that I would always be alone.”

  Her breath came out in a rush. “Oh.” She darted her gaze to his. “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s an equation. It’s for...” How did he explain it in a way that might make sense? He gave up and did the best he could. “A single particle, vibrating on a string. Unaffected by any other force or object. I...I thought that was how life would be for me.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  He shifted until he was looking her in the eye. “No. It wasn’t.”

  It wasn’t as if she could have forgotten that he had been in love before. Serena’s calm and Serena’s hands and Serena’s unrelenting, unforgivable, blessed, wonderful tenacity had been the things to pull him out of his patterns this time, but she hadn’t been the first.

  He pulled her fingers back to his arm. The lines of ebony ink were crisper where they wrapped around his biceps, the letters and symbols a part of him now. A reminder—one he’d forgotten for so very long.

  “This was the second.”

  “And when did you get it?”

  “Princeton. My third year of my doctorate. After—” He stuttered, the name refusing to come to his lips. “After I wasn’t alone anymore.”

  “They’re equations, too?”

  “Yes.” It had seemed fitting, after all. He tightened his grip on her hand. “The ones for light.”

  Four simple series of letters and symbols that taken together explained how every bit of brightness and color in the universe had come to be.

  Because that’s how it had been. A new start in a new country with a woman who had drawn him out of his shell, surrounded by the friends she had pressed him to make. It had felt like all the darkness in his life had been banished, like everything was different now. And it had been.

  Everything except him.

  He twisted his neck to stare at the ceiling, blinking hard. “After she died, I nearly blacked them out.”

  Her touch against his skin went heavier, her fingers pressing in. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “So am I. Now.”

  Because there was still light in his world. It had taken him so long to understand it, but there was. Serena had shown it to him again.

  Closing his eyes, he brought her hand to rest against his heart. “Instead, I got this.”

  “Oh.”

  She didn’t push and she didn’t
prod. Instead, she lay there, waiting, and he could have kissed her for it.

  Because this was the hardest tattoo to explain. It was the reason he’d had to try.

  “It’s a nautical star,” he said, looking up into soft, kind eyes the very color of the sea.

  Still so patient, she flexed her fingers beneath his hand, tracing the outline of the star.

  The sting of the needle came back to him, nearly as violent and precise as the fire of his grief.

  Throat raw, he pressed her palm in harder against his skin. “It was an inside joke.” Such dramatics they’d been prone to, way back then. Evoking an orator’s tone, he began, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?”

  And Serena was so smart. Those brilliant eyes of hers went wider. “Helen.”

  At least she could say his late wife’s name. It felt like his face was cracking. Serena’s gaze fell. She moved as if to pull her hand away, but he held fast, keeping her there. Exactly where he needed her, where he wanted her, where she lived now.

  “I spent some of the best years of my life with her.” But not the only good ones he’d ever have. A part of him was just beginning to understand that. “She’s written on my heart. She always will be.”

  “Of course, I would never—”

  He shook his head, and her words cut off. Her gaze shuttered, though, and the idea that she didn’t know this—that once again she could be putting herself and her happiness so low...

  His voice broke. “But she’s not the only one.”

  There was more room in his heart than he had ever known. The empty, aching, hollow spaces, the ones he’d thought he’d never fill in the wake of so much loss...maybe they were for her.

  “Cole...”

  “You’re in here, too,” he said, because no matter how this turned out—whether they pulled this off or he ended it in ruin—that much at least would always be true. “Serena. I told you, I can’t promise you much.”

  “I’d never ask you to.”

  He soldiered on, refusing to let her derail him or interrupt. “I still don’t trust myself.”

  He probably never would. After the way he’d lost control, first as a child with his tormentors and then again and again. With the men on the train.