Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  Her eyes flicked back and forth between his eyes as he leaned closer. He moved slowly, giving her a chance to push him away, or turn out of his hold, but she simply watched him come, those beautiful lips softening, opening.

  “You called me babe,” she whispered just before he reached her.

  “Did I? I must be telling the truth, then.” The distance between them was gone, and his lips were on hers.

  He’d been thinking about that kiss in the cabin for more than three months—the soft cushion of her lips on his, the hungry openness of her mouth, the way her tongue brushed his, the tight twist of her thin arms around his neck, the wispy weight of her body in his hands. But that memory was snarled in a bramble of guilt, and of disappointment. It hadn’t been real for her. She didn’t remember it, and he shouldn’t have let it go on. He should have pushed her away at once, but he hadn’t.

  This kiss, this one, when she was awake and truly with him, this was a marvel, and Trey was in no hurry for it to become anything but what it was. When he pushed his tongue into her mouth, she moaned, and her lips quivered against his. He shifted, put his arms around her, pulled her close.

  Shit, he was still in his whole damn suit. Still kissing her, reveling in the soft caress of her mouth, the sweet taste of her ice-water-cooled breath, the touch of her pointed little tongue, he let her go and worked his arms free of the jacket. It was an expensive suit, custom made for him by Nick’s tailor, but he didn’t give a shit just now. He pulled his arms free and tossed it away, then went for his tie.

  But Lara’s hands were there, loosening the knot, unbuttoning the collar button. She kept going, pulling the knot all the way out of his tie, working more buttons of his shirt.

  Was she undressing him? With every intention to be careful with her, he hadn’t thought it would go that far, not tonight. An hour ago, he’d intended to drop her off and never see her again. This was all a major U-turn, and they hadn’t talked in more than three months. He had no idea to what degree the attack still tormented her. She was a champion compartmentalizer, but that didn’t mean she was recovered, and he’d be damned if he’d take advantage of her again. Literally—he’d be literally damned.

  He tipped his head down, resting his cheek on hers. “Lara. What are you doing?”

  Her hands stopped working his vest buttons open, and she leaned back and met his eyes. “You don’t want to?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. That’s why I’m trying to get your shirt open.”

  “You’re ready? After—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say it. Not right now.”

  That was not a check in the ‘ready’ column. “I can wait, Lara. I’m in no rush.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “Let’s define ‘it’ here, okay? What do you want?”

  “I want to make love with you.”

  That was such a sweet, PG-rated way to say it, and he was so charmed, he couldn’t control his smile, which spread wide enough to stretch his cheeks.

  She misinterpreted it. “Don’t make fun of me. You’re the kid here, not me.”

  That barb stung, as intended, and Trey sat back. “If we’re going to do this, let’s make a pact right here—we don’t talk about age like it matters. Because it doesn’t. And cracks like that? Forget about it. I’m not a kid.”

  Lara sat up, too. “Then I want a pact that we don’t talk about our sexual history like it matters, however much or little there is of it. You thought I was a thirty-three-year-old virgin. I’m not.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” The angry light left her eyes. “So do you want it?”

  He swept his arm around her narrow waist and leaned toward her again. “What I want, Lara, is you.”

  “Wait,” she gasped, but not with reluctance. “Take your shirt off. I want to see.”

  He sat back again and undid the buttons on his vest and shirt, and he shrugged them off together, tossing them in the direction he thought he remembered his jacket had gone.

  Her hands went to his chest at once. They were small, like all of her, and soft, and when they skimmed over his pecs, brushing his nipples, and up to his shoulders, a grunting sigh left his mouth. When she’d studied him in the cabin hallway, he’d imagined her touch. He hadn’t come close to reality.

  She lifted her eyes to his and studied them as her hands moved over his shoulders, down his arms, exploring every muscle and vein and angle of his body.

  “It’s so interesting how your strength shows. You’re perfectly proportioned and developed.”

  Reeling from the rush of her caresses, Trey still managed a laugh. “That’s a very Lara compliment, if it was meant as a compliment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her fingers crossed his belly and came together just above his belt, and lust so clouded his head that he couldn’t remember what he meant. Oh, right. “You see past the obvious. I think most women would’ve just said I was hot, or cut, or something. You tell me what it is that makes me hot.”

  A smirk curled up one side of her mouth. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smirk before. “You think you’re hot?”

  “I think women think so. I think you think so.”

  Her fingers dragged through the thin trail of hair that was just about all he had on his upper body, and kept going up, between the curves of his pecs, over his shoulders, around his neck, and linked at his nape. Why were they talking and not kissing? He wanted her beautiful mouth on his again.

  “What do you think you are?” she asked.

  He put his hands on her blouse and began to work open the buttons. “I think I didn’t have anything to do with the way I look, except I take care of the body God gave me. I think I’m Trey.”

  “You believe in God.”

  “I do. I’m Catholic. Practicing. I go to Mass almost every Sunday.” Halfway down her blouse, he stopped and peered into her blue eyes—the same color blue she favored in her decorating. Like the sky after rain.

  Shit, love was turning him into a poet.

  Love?

  Yeah, love. Maybe. Probably. But that was staying in his head for now, and for a while after now.

  “Does it bother you, that I’m religious?”

  “No. It’s interesting. That your mind lets you believe in something you can’t know.”

  “I do know. That’s what faith is, Lara. Knowing without proof. Believing.”

  He finished with her blouse and pulled it from her skirt. She shimmied her shoulders and helped him take it off. Again, he tossed it toward his own clothes. They were working on quite a pile.

  He’d seen her fully topless once and partially topless several times, as he’d tended to her burn, but now, in the light of this change between them, this new thing, he could appreciate her. And worry for her. God, would he break her? He was six-two and a hundred-eighty pounds. She was so small and delicate he might actually be able to lift her with one hand.

  Her ribs showed everywhere—across her chest, along her sides. Her collarbones and shoulders stuck out as starkly as turned stone. Her elbows were the thickest parts of her arms.

  Her neck was long and graceful, like a dancer’s, and he focused there first, dipping in to taste her pale skin, just below the elegant curve of her jaw. Sighing, she tipped her head over, giving him the whole side of her throat.

  He reached back and found the twist of her hair. There was something plastic back there, and he pulled it out. When her hair sagged but didn’t fall, he reached back again and found another, and all her gold silk fell in a coil over his hand. She shook her head and let it loose all over her shoulders.

  She wore a lacy little top that wasn’t quite a bra. Trey had seen them before, on a girl he dated who also had small breasts—larger than Lara’s but not a handful. This was a ‘bralet’ or something like that, basically just a half-camisole in pink lace. As he trailed kisses down her throat, and she sighed and lay back on the sofa to make his way easier, Trey pushed her hair back and hooked a
finger in a slender pink strap.

  He got it over her shoulder and partway down her arm when she went tense, and her hand left its play in his hair to cover her breast and hold the lace in place.

  Understanding at once where they were, Trey pulled back a little and let go of the strap. “Hey. I’ve seen it. It’s okay.” He lifted her hand and set it aside—she trembled, but she let him move her—then, very gently, tugged the pink lace down.

  The burn was healed, and it was exactly what they’d meant it to be: a brand. On her breast, not even an inch above her little pink nipple, an ornate letter ‘B’, backward, had been permanently burned into her.

  He didn’t know what words would comfort her or express what he felt, so instead he put his mouth on the burn and kissed it. Her gasp stuttered over his hair and moved the strands, and he felt her conflict in the shake of her chest.

  Dipping lower, he drew her nipple into his mouth. There really wasn’t more to her breasts than those pert pink buttons, like the little marshmallows his nonna had put in his hot cocoa when he was a kid. But when he sucked that treat into his mouth, Lara’s reaction was magnificent—she cried out and arched back. When he flicked his tongue over the hard knot her nipple had instantly become, she grabbed handfuls of his hair and gasped out his name like a prayer.

  He was so hard he thought he was going to strain something. He could feel that his tip was wet already. But he did not want to fuck Lara Dumas on her perfectly coordinated sofa, not this first time, at least. He wanted to have her in a bed and take his time. She wasn’t a virgin, but she’d had only two boyfriends, and at least one of them was a creeper pedo from seventeen years ago. He would bet all the money he had that her last consensual experience had been a while back, and he knew when the last time someone had been inside her was.

  No, he wasn’t going to fuck her on the sofa. He was going to make love with her. In her bed.

  He rose onto his elbows and looked down at her. She was flushed and breathless, and her eyes sparkled with lust, and with avid surprise.

  “I want to take you to bed.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she watched her hands explore his chest again. He watched her eyes as her touch left lines of fire all through him, and he warred with the need to grab her and kiss her and touch her and have her.

  “I can’t … I can’t wake up here by myself. I … haven’t spent the night here yet, since …”

  “Please? What do you mean?” Trey sat back, and Lara pushed herself up.

  “I’ve been working my way back to being able to live here. I haven’t gotten all the way yet. I can be alone, but not after dark, and I can’t stay the night. If you come to bed with me, you can’t leave while I’m sleeping. I need you to take me back to my dad’s.”

  She wasn’t recovered enough for all this. “Lara, maybe we should—”

  “No. I’m okay. I just need that. Not to wake up alone.”

  “I don’t ever sneak out. But you want me to spend the night?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Nick had given him the next day off. It occurred to Trey that Nick was involved in all the ways he and Lara had ended up at this moment, and to wonder how much of that had been the don’s intention. Nothing Nick did was accidental, but he wasn’t exactly renowned as a matchmaker. Still, Trey wasn’t about to complain.

  “And I want to stay. So I will.”

  “Okay.”

  He stood and offered her his hand, and she took it and let him pull her to her feet. From the waist down, they were both still dressed for success, and Lara wobbled woozily on her high heels. A whim came over Trey, and he let it catch him; he swung her into his arms, cradling her as he had before. But this time, she was awake, and after a light gasp of surprise, she hooked her arm on his shoulder and smiled.

  “Point me to it.”

  She indicated the dining area and kitchen. “Through there.”

  There was a hallway off the kitchen. Lara directed him to the second door, and he stepped into her room. From his arms, she reached over and flipped the light switch, and a lamp beside her bed came on.

  Like the rest of her apartment, her bedroom was neat, organized, and carefully decorated. Uncluttered and cozy. Her bed was an old-fashioned brass or iron style, painted white, and her linens were the same soft green and blue as the rest of her décor.

  Trey carried her to the bed and laid her down. Standing beside the bed, he skimmed his hand down her chest, over her belly, still clad in her brown skirt, and down her legs. He circled his fingers around one slender ankle and lifted that leg to slide her shoe off and toss it away.

  Her feet were pretty—small and slim, with perfectly formed toes. No polish on her nails. He kissed those toes, and they flexed against his mouth. Setting that leg down, Trey lifted the other and took off her last shoe. There was a tremor in her, and he slid his gaze up her body to her face. She watched him intently, but there was no fear in her expression. Only curiosity, and desire, and anticipation.

  Smiling, he tossed the other shoe away and kissed those toes, too.

  He set her leg down and eased his hand up her body, over her skirt, to her waist. The skirt zipped along the side, and he opened it slowly, keeping his eyes on hers. When he tugged on the fabric, her hips lifted, and he pulled the skirt off and sent it to follow her shoes. Now she lay beneath his gaze in nothing but her underwear, that lacy pink not-bra and, he was charmed to see, a matching set of panties.

  But under those panties was a concave belly, and her legs were underdeveloped to the point of frailty, and Trey had another flutter of concern. Fuck, she was so thin. It couldn’t be healthy. Her hipbones stuck out so high that he thought his whole hand would fit in the space between her belly and her underwear. Testing that hypothesis, he slid his hand over her insignificant belly, down into her panties—not quite. The lace brushed over his knuckles like a kiss, but only because his hand was big, and she’d gasped in a loud breath at his touch.

  Trey was not attracted to waifish, undernourished fairy-women. He liked athletic women, with muscles he could dig his fingers into. Women he could run with, and surf with, and wrestle with. Women he couldn’t break. Why, then, did he find Lara so completely fucking beautiful? Why was his cock practically screaming for freedom? The need to take care of her, to hold her close and keep her safe, battled with the need to just take her, to grab her into his arms and fuck her sweaty, and he didn’t know which way was up.

  She gasped again as his hand slid between her legs, and Trey’s eyes darted back to her face. A little anxiety had darkened her eyes, and he stilled his hand. “Do you need to stop?”

  “No. I don’t want to stop.”

  That was an answer to a different question, but he took it on its face and let his fingers gently explore this most delicate part of her.

  She was natural; a soft puff of hair tickled his fingers. Trey had never been with a woman who didn’t shave, or wax or whatever they did, at least somewhat. A day ago, he might have said that he preferred a bare pussy, but, like everything about Lara, what she was was exactly what he wanted.

  And she was wet, and that was glorious. Her arousal washed away his worry and flooded his own need. He pulled her panties off and tossed them away. She sat up and pulled her top over her head.

  “Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he said, and meant.

  She took the compliment with pink cheeks and a small smile. But when he reached for his belt, wanting to be on the bed and as naked as she, Lara grabbed his hands.

  “Wait.”

  “Okay.” He took a breath to slow himself down. “We can stop.”

  “I don’t want to stop. I want to take your clothes off myself.”

  “Oh,” was the only thing that made it out of his stunned mouth. For a woman who didn’t like surprises, she dealt them out with fair regularity.

  She turned so she sat cross-legged at the side of the bed. He stood before her, and she opened his belt, and his trousers. As she hooked her fingers into his b
oxer briefs like she meant to push the whole works down, Trey remembered that he still had his shoes and socks on. He stopped her, setting his hands on hers.

  “Hold up.” He toed his shoes off. Generally, he liked the socks to go next, so he wouldn’t be a dude standing around in nothing but socks—not a good look at any time, and definitely not during sexy times—but he couldn’t work out how to do it while Lara’s hands were on him, and he didn’t want to move away.

  So, okay. He’d have to distract her from noticing that he was a naked dude in socks until he could get them off. Distracting Lara from noticing things—a tall order.

  He let her hands go, and she pulled his trousers and underwear down.

  And she was obviously distracted by what she’d uncovered.

  Trey managed—with some skill he’d take the time to be proud of later—to get his socks off as he stood before her, by putting one heel on the other foot’s toes as he stepped out of the pile of pants leg, and then repeating on the other side. A lifetime of surfing had given him talented feet and unshakable balance, thank you very much.

  When he was finally also naked, Lara freed her hands to roam over his belly, his hips, his thighs, his ass, studying every part of him, driving his lust to such a pitch that he could feel a tremor in his muscles, as he’d felt in hers. But he stood still and let her touch, understanding that she needed to know him in as much detail as she could.

  She hadn’t touched his cock, the part that wanted her most badly, and she didn’t until her hands had been all over the rest of him. Then she looked up at him, finding his eyes for the first time in endless minutes, and curled her hand around his tip.

  He’d wanted her for so long before this night, and they were proceeding so slowly on this night, that Trey’s whole nervous system lit up like the Vegas Strip at this first touch. His hips shot forward and he barked out some kind of needy sound.

  But she wasn’t there to jack him off, at least not intentionally. She studied his cock the way she’d studied the rest of him, her hands moving slowly over him, learning its dimensions, its features, its shape. Her fingers eased over his balls the same way, and they drew up tight to his body. Then she worked her way up his shaft again, to his tip. When she swirled her thumb over his tip, spreading his weeping wet over it, and then pressed just slightly at the hole, Trey groaned and rocked his hips back.