“No! No more waiting. Please. There’s no more to be between us!”
“There’s one thing. I need to go across the street. I wasn’t expecting…I didn’t want…” He was searching for words the way she sometimes did, but he didn’t have the excuse of English not being his first—his only—language. He stopped, dropped his head to her chest to regroup. But that didn’t help, his head pillowed on her beautiful breasts. He looked up. “I don’t have anything. Protection. I need to go over to the drugstore.”
She blinked for a couple of seconds, not understanding. “Protection?”
“Condoms.”
“Oh.” Her reaction then surprised him. Shocked him. Her expression went somber, and she pushed away, working herself back to sitting and attempting to straighten her hair and clothes. “You don’t need. There’s no need.”
With a deep breath to reclaim some calm and follow this new change of direction, he sat back on the sofa, next to her. “No? Are you on birth control?”
She laughed, and the sound nearly echoed with sadness. “In a way, yes. I can’t have children.”
“Oh.” Carlo felt hollow at the disclosure. He’d thought more than once about sharing a child with her. “I’m sorry. May I ask?”
She lifted her face. Her eyes were hard. “He didn’t want children. He thought pills and condoms were not sure enough. So he made an appointment, and a doctor tied me. Um, no. Tied my tubes.”
He didn’t think it would have been possible to be prepared to hear that. “Jesus, Bina—and you didn’t want that?”
Rain began to hit the windows and skylights. “It didn’t matter so much what I wanted. Or didn’t want. It never did.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“What? Why?” Cupping her face in his hands, he leaned in close. “Bina, never apologize for the things he did to you.”
“I was a fool.”
“You were young, and then you were trapped. But now you’re here, and he’s not. Because you survived. Don’t apologize. Be proud.”
“I don’t think I can be that.” She grazed the fingers of one hand through his beard, and he closed his eyes and let himself feel her touch thoroughly. “For right now, I’m happy that you don’t have to go into the rain.”
“So am I.” He stood and lifted her into his arms, then carried her to her bed, careful not to knock himself out on her pitched ceiling.
He stopped at the foot of her bed, where he could stand upright, and set her down. With her arms wrapped around his neck, she slid sensuously down his body, and the pressure on his cock was both too much and not enough. He groaned and began to unbutton her shirt, needing to be able to touch her at last, after all this time, skin to skin.
He had touched her, of course, the night that Auberon had last hurt her, when he’d washed her blood away. That act had had an intimacy of its own, but there was no point of comparison between that night and this. That night, in that moment, he had desired only to help her. To save her.
She did not need saving now.
Following his lead, Bina worked the buttons on his shirt. With her arms framed by his, her progress down his shirt was faster, and she was pushing it off his shoulders before he’d worked open the last of her buttons. She took her top over, and he discarded his.
When they were both shirtless and she was standing before him, her beautiful, full breasts wrapped prettily in a lacy bra, Carlo paused, savoring the moment. She smiled and put her hands on his chest, running her fingers over his pecs and then turning one hand over and letting her knuckles trail down his breastbone, over his abdomen, her light touch making his muscles twitch. When she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his jeans, he groaned and finally lifted his hands to her breasts. He cupped their firm softness and ran his thumbs over the stiff buds of her nipples, the lace of her bra slightly rough to the touch.
God. God.
She arched toward him with a little gasp, and then stepped back from him suddenly, her fingers sliding from his jeans. Concerned again, he dropped his hands.
“Bina?”
She didn’t answer. Carlo watched her eyes, trying to read the tumult in them, a storm that seemed wilder than the one that had begun to rage outside. Rain lashed the windows now, and bursts of lightning and thunder strobed the air.
Taking a deep breath, trying to fill his words with truth, he said, “We can stop. It’s okay.”
“No.” She reached back and unhooked her bra, letting it fall from her shoulders to the floor. The sight of her bare skin, flushed dusky pink with her arousal, her nipples tight and her chest heaving, was almost too much; he had to lock his legs to keep himself from charging, pulling her into his arms. Then she took the steps that returned her to him, and he pulled her into his arms, after all.
“No one has ever touched me like that. Gently. I was surprised.”
“You were surprised that I was gentle?”
“No. Maybe yes. It was…intense. Many feelings. Everywhere.” Her eyes slid away. “I’m like a schoolgirl. So silly.”
Carlo felt a new weight of responsibility, something he’d never properly considered. She had been only with Auberon before now, and he had been a sadist. She had no context for how sex should feel. He remembered their first kiss, how she’d seemed inexperienced though she’d been married for so long. There was something powerfully arousing in the knowledge that she was, for all intents and purposes, a virgin in the ways of sex—of consensual sex, mutual pleasure. But it also meant that he needed to take extra care. His own preference was a little on the wild side—not kink, really, and not intentionally rough, but fierce. Generally speaking, he enjoyed a spontaneous fuck against the refrigerator in the middle of cooking dinner more than rose petals and candlelight. Though he’d never walked away from rose petals and candlelight.
But Bina didn’t even know her own preferences, and she deserved gentle care. He’d known that already, and he’d been treating her gently. He could rein in the ferocity that sometimes overtook him mid-romp and focus on her. He would. But he had some questions, and standing at the foot of her bed, both of them bare-chested and barefoot, before they went further, he had to ask.
“Have you ever come?”
He was glad to see that she didn’t look away this time. “Orgasm? Yes. I come. I…touch myself.” Every muscle in his gut clenched at the image that simple sentence conjured in his head. “I think of you.”
He groaned again and held her more tightly, letting her feel what she was doing to him.
“Did you, with him?”
She stiffened. “Carlo…please, I don’t want to talk about him now. No more talking. I can feel your heat on me. I want to think of you only.” She took a step back and opened her pants, shimmying out of them and her underwear at the same time. He caught a glimpse of white lace sliding down her legs. And then she was naked before him, all golden skin and tight curves. At the juncture of her thighs was a black, trimmed triangle. He wanted to feel his hand slide over that dark patch.
She unclasped the clip in her hair and dropped it onto her little pile of pants, then shook her hair loose. Her fingers slid into his jeans, and she opened his belt, and then the buttons of his fly, pushing her hands around, inside his jeans, under his boxer briefs, and gripped his hips.
And with that, Carlo’s good intentions, his desire to go slow and gentle and ease her into this experience, simply exploded into shards of animal need. Trey’s birthday was just less than a week away. Marking a year since Jenny left. They’d stopped having sex three months before that. Fifteen months since he’d last had sex. Fifteen months. And here he was with Bina, this beautiful, fantastic woman whom he loved, her naked body against him.
He took her by the hips and lifted her up, intending at first to bring her face to his so that he could kiss her. But she wrapped herself around him, her legs encircling his hips, her arms around his neck, and she kissed him, her tongue plunging deeply into his mouth. He took over the kiss, building the intensity, clutching her close, try
ing to keep one toehold on sanity and not just drop her on the bed and fuck her.
Her core flexed hotly, wetly, on his belly very low, in the gap she’d made by opening his jeans, and his cock ached to the point of real pain. Turning away to take a beat, he gasped, “Bina, I’m losing control. I want to be gentle, but I feel crazy.”
She was panting, too, and she didn’t stop writhing in his arms. If anything, her movements became more deliberate. “Do you love me? You were true when you said it?”
“Yes. God, yes. I love you.”
“You don’t want to hurt me? It won’t make you come to hurt me?”
“Bina, no. Of course not.” He knew that Auberon had suffered a horrible death, but it had not been bad enough.
“Then I don’t want schoolgirl sex. I want what you want to do. I know it will be good. It’s the best already I’ve ever felt.” As an emphasis, she clenched her legs tightly and drew herself, the scalding wet of her, against his skin. She sucked in a moaning breath and arched back over his arms. Then she looked him in the eye. “You needn’t be gentle. Only kind.”
With that, his eyes still locked with hers, he lifted her up a little with one arm and brought the other hand between them, pulling himself finally free of the binding of his jeans. Before he entered her, he pushed his hand between her legs, sliding through her folds, making sure she was as wet as she could be. He thought she was, and he was ready, so fucking ready to be inside her, but when he passed his fingers over her clit, she gasped and jumped in a deliciously needy way, and he lingered, rubbing gently, and then firmly, eliciting sound and touch and movement from her that was sure to drive him insane.
He was losing his sense of balance, so he brought them around to the side of her bed, careful to stoop as the ceiling shortened, and laid her down, going with her so that he wouldn’t have to let her go or even stop exciting her clit. As soon as her back hit the mattress, freed then from having to help him keep her off the ground, her writhing became more frenzied. She let him go, her arms dropping from his neck and clutching the comforter, her legs relaxing and sliding down his thighs until her heels hooked behind his knees.
Lying down, he had so much more access, and he took a plump, marvelous breast in his free hand and sucked its dark nipple into his mouth. He’d been wrong—she hadn’t been as wet as she could be. As he drew her nipple against his teeth, she arched up, at the same time wetting his hand completely. “Oh! Oh, Carlo! Oh!”
Holy God, the way she said his name in passion. He’d imagined it, that full-bodied R undulating over her tongue, but the reality was worlds better—like her tongue was wrapped around his cock. Unable to hold off another minute, needing to join her, to feel her pleasure on his body, he pushed back and rid himself of his jeans, which had dropped almost off his hips already, courtesy of her writhing body. Settling between her thighs, he slid into her, and oh, Jesus. Oh, God. He closed his eyes and paused, letting himself feel her, letting himself feel the magnificence of this moment. For this woman, he had killed. Not with his own hand, no. But he had set the pieces in motion. For this woman, he would do the same again, if needed. For this woman, he would do anything.
He thrust deeply, sinking into her tight heat as far as he could go, and she went completely still. When he opened his eyes, he saw her staring wide-eyed at him. He thrust again, feeling the dense fire in his gut that said he was close, and watched her eyes flare even wider. Another thrust, and he reached back with one hand and caught her thigh, pulling it up to his waist. Understanding, she looped her legs around him again and crossed her ankles at the small of his back. When he thrust the next time, she gasped “Oh!” and began to move, lifting and dropping her hips.
He held for a few more seconds, letting her find her own rhythm; then he began to move in earnest, with her and against her until there was nothing slow or gentle about their coupling. The storm crashed over their heads as they crashed together, and Carlo spared a fleeting thought that he might yet accidentally hurt her, the way their bodies were meeting, but then she dug her fingernails into his back and drew up, leaving long, fiery marks in his skin, and he stopped thinking.
“Carlo! Please!”
As she cried out, her body constricted violently around his, and she bent her head back so far the veins and muscles in her throat stood out. He pressed his lips to the wildly beating pulse point at the base of her throat and then let go the reins on his self-restraint, coming as soon as he did so, the pleasure wrung from him with agonizing intensity.
When her body relaxed, he smiled down at her, feeling sated and spent, cozy in this high little nest while the heavens lashed the world outside.
But Bina wasn’t smiling. She look distressed. Scared, even, and Carlo’s first thought was that he had hurt her, that in the frenzy of his need he had been too intense. He thought about that ‘please’ she’d called out at the end and wondered if she’d been asking him to stop, when instead he’d gone harder.
“Bina, what’s wrong?”
She pushed at his chest, and he didn’t try to hold her back. He pulled out of her, his body clenching at the friction, and rolled to the side, freeing her to clamber out of the bed—which she did, immediately, and then crossed the room to stand naked at the dormer where her book collection was. The lights were on, it was night, and that window faced the street. He doubted the rain would obscure the view sufficiently.
“Bina?” Not sure what he’d done, he knew of one thing to do. He stood and grabbed the comforter from the bed, then went to her and wrapped her up in it. That she let him, and didn’t shy away, gave him some small ease.
“Bina—baby, are you all right?”
She didn’t answer.
~ 16 ~
Sabina was angry.
She was so angry she was shaking, and she couldn’t understand it or find a way to control it. What had just happened, what Carlo had done, what he’d made her feel…it was beautiful and astonishing, and nothing she’d ever known was possible, and she wanted to curl into him and stay there forever.
But she felt like she was about to break into thousands of brittle pieces. A need to rend, to punch, to scream was on her so hard that it took every ounce of will to stand still and quiet. The weight of the comforter he’d laid over her shoulders and wrapped around her seemed to her to be the only thing keeping her intact.
He’d called her ‘baby,’ and she’d felt the word like a caress. He was worried, and she knew he thought he’d done something wrong, but she couldn’t ease his mind. She thought if she opened her mouth the only sound she could possibly make was a scream.
So much anger. Rage. Fury. Why? Her head spun and twisted, and she couldn’t understand. She needed to understand. The storm outside, churning the sea into angry grey foam, was nothing against the storm in her head.
“Bina, did I hurt you?” He brushed her hair back from her face, and she flinched away. She hadn’t meant to—she wanted him to touch her, she needed him to touch her—but she’d done so in reflex. His hand fell away, and he stepped back.
“I did, didn’t I? I’m sorry. I’ll go.” She heard the jingle of his belt buckle behind her.
The thought of that, of losing him, broke her control, and she wheeled around. “No! No!”
He’d picked up his jeans and now was standing near the foot of her bed, the denim dangling from his hand. He was so perfect—long and lean and well-muscled, his cock hanging impressively even in its sleeping state. And his eyes—so dark with worry.
“Bina, what? What can I do?”
“I don’t know! I’m—I’m very angry, and I don’t understand!” She hugged the comforter more tightly.
He went on with pulling his jeans on, and her heart and head got louder, raced faster. But he left his belt undone and came back to her. “You’re angry at me?”
“No! I want you to hold me!” He lifted his arms at that, and she stepped back. “But I feel like I’ll go crazy. I don’t know why I’m like this!”
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