Climbing Fear

by Leisl Leighton

  Her hands moved over his back, around his sides to his stomach, making his muscles jump and clench, his cock thicken and pulse, pushing painfully against his jeans. He grabbed her hands, held them still before she managed to reach her objective.

  ‘Reid,’ she protested.

  ‘Touching me there right now isn’t a good idea,’ he said as he kissed down her neck, licking and nipping his way down to her collarbone.

  She writhed against him. ‘I could get you up again.’

  ‘I know you could.’ He leaned back, looking into her eyes, those dancing, mysterious pools of green and gold and brown that reminded him of the bush he loved. ‘But after all this time, the first time I come is going to be inside you. Do I need a condom?’

  ‘No, I’m on the pill and have a clean bill of health.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Reid.’ His name was a husk of longing, of need. ‘Now.’

  He backed her up against the door, his cock pressed tight against her stomach, his lips on hers. He let go of her hands to strip her jeans off her, then made short work of the buttons on his jeans, pushing them down just enough before she lifted a leg to his hip, his cock sliding against her slick core. The sensation almost shattered him, but her hands on his chest, gripping his shoulders, moving into his hair as her lips met his again, held him together long enough for him to grab her hips, lifting her so she wrapped both her legs around him, and then with one thrust, slid into her wet warmth.

  Her scream tangled in the air with his guttural moan as he seated himself deep inside her, her fingernails digging into his skull. Their mouths stilled against each other, open, wet, hot breaths mingling. His fingers tightened on her hips, slid around to her bottom, allowing him to seat himself even deeper inside her.

  ‘Reid.’ Her head lolled back against the door, his name a moan in her throat, her chest, fingers splayed, hot brands against his shoulders. She strained against him, but he held her still for a moment, his face buried against her neck, as he tried to take hold of himself just enough so he didn’t spill inside her before he’d given her pleasure. He wanted to drive her into an orgasm, feel her pulsing around him, before he let go.

  The material of her bra rubbed against his chest as she pulled in gasps of breath. ‘Reid.’ A pleading sob. It was enough.

  He moved.

  Hell, that felt so good. He slid out almost to his tip, then slid back in again, slow, deep. Her moan met his, then she lifted her head and looked deep in his eyes. He moved again, sliding out then in, their gazes locked. He’d never felt anything so intense. It was like every nerve in his body was firing, every muscle straining, every ounce of who he was wholly taken up with sliding in and out of her tight, warm centre.

  He’d thought his memories of making love with Nat had been part imagination because they were simply too good, but the reality was something else again. His memories were faded, nothing in comparison to the reality of her in his arms, the sensation of being inside her, one with her. Nothing else mattered. The world could fall apart and he wouldn’t care as long as he was with her.

  ‘Reid.’

  He realised he’d spoken the last thought aloud, but he didn’t care. Not with her. He held her tighter, moved faster and faster, deep and hard against her, into her, gazes locked. Her hands moved from his chest, up his neck, trailing fire in their wake, until they were cupping his face, bringing it closer to hers until they were kissing again, hot, open mouthed, wet kisses, tongues delving almost as deep as his cock delved inside her core.

  He sped up, feeling her rise, rise, then she was pulsing around him, her cry in his mouth and he let go, spilling inside her, the spasm of her orgasm milking him beyond what he thought was possible. Light sparked behind his eyes, his muscles trembling with the power of his orgasm, of hers.

  Slowly, the pulsing faded until there was nothing but the warm tingle and Nat liquid and satisfied in his arms.

  He leaned back just enough to see her smile, her unfocused eyes.

  ‘You’re still standing.’

  He laughed. ‘Not for long.’

  ‘Let’s get to the bed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He let go of her legs, shivering as they slid down his, her touch still lighting him up inside even after the biggest orgasm of his life. His gaze skated over her and he couldn’t help a sense of absurd pride over how she looked, flushed and red-lipped, her hair a dishevelled mess, eyes unfocused, naked except for her bra. ‘You need to take that off.’ He gestured to the bra.

  She blushed—astonishing after what they’d just done—one hand going to cover her thigh, the other her shoulder. He took her hands, held them away so he could look his fill, then leaned in and kissed the scar on her shoulder, ran his lips down, down, until they caressed the ragged ridged skin on her thigh.

  ‘Don’t. I know they’re ugly.’

  He frowned, looked up at her. ‘No, they’re beautiful. An essential part of who you are.’

  Her hands jerked in his, her chest rising and falling faster as she watched him watch her, her gaze not disbelieving, but not trusting either. ‘I’ve got … stretch marks.’

  ‘You mean this?’ He let go of her hand and ran his finger over the fine silver tracery of a stretch mark that ran over the sensitive skin of her stomach. ‘You bore a child, fed her from yourself. It fills me with awe to think of it.’ He stood, running his fingers up her side to her bra. ‘Take this off.’

  She lifted her hands, hesitated. ‘They’re not as … perky … as they were.’

  He cupped the weight of her breast, lifting it in the bra, his thumb rubbing over the nub of her nipple he could see clearly through the plain material, enjoying the way she sucked in her breath. ‘You are more beautiful now than you were back then, and the changes in your body are part of that.’ He reached down and touched the scar on her leg. ‘Even this, and this —’ he bent and kissed the scar on her shoulder, ‘—tells part of the story of the remarkable woman you’ve become. A woman I want to spend much more time exploring.’ She still looked a little doubtful. ‘I’ve got scars too.’ He took her hand and placed it over the scar on his shoulder, ran it down his chest to the long gash over his rib, back up to the scar over his eyebrow. ‘Am I less because of these?’

  ‘No. You’re so perfect.’

  ‘As you are to me too.’

  A smile bloomed on her face finally. ‘You want me naked?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘I want to see you too.’ She gestured at his jeans that were barely hanging on his hips, and his shoes—he couldn’t believe he hadn’t even got to the point of taking all his clothes off. He hadn’t lost control like that for years. Since the last time with her.

  He pushed his jeans down his legs, toed his shoes off and kicked his jeans aside, his gaze never leaving her as she reached behind her and unhooked her bra, shimmying the straps off her shoulders in a way that made his mouth dry, then letting it drop one fraction at a time, playful now in a way he could get right behind. His cock stirred again, energy buzzing through his body, his brain. ‘Beautiful,’ he said as she finally dropped the bra to the floor. ‘Christ, I love your breasts,’ he said, voice gravelly. ‘I used to fantasise about them, but then the reality of them was even better than the fantasy, the way they felt in my hands, the pink flush of them after I took them in my mouth, the way you taste.’ He reached out, ran his hand over the taut peak of her nipple. She moaned and swayed. ‘How responsive you are.’ He lowered his mouth and ran his tongue around and over the nipple before sucking it into his mouth, scraping a little with his teeth. ‘Better. So much better,’ he said as he ran kisses across the valley of her breasts, palming the one he’d just wet and running his thumb over the peak as he took the other into his mouth, lathing it with his tongue and biting a little, making her jerk. ‘Christ, you taste good.’

  ‘Reid,’ she said on a long, low moan, her body trembling.

  He lifted his head.

  ‘Bed.’

  ‘
Yes.’

  He picked her up—where he got the strength, he wasn’t sure, because every muscle was still trembling with the depth of his orgasm—and carried her through to the bedroom, her laughter joy in his ear.

  He hadn’t been in the room since the night she was attacked. It had been cleaned of all evidence of the attack, although there was a gap, a loss, where the chest had once stood at the end of the bed. He’d have to do something about that, buy her something to replace it. He didn’t like the thought of her feeling its loss and remembering what some drug-addled kids had done in here.

  Her fingers brushed over his forehead. ‘Why the frown?’

  He smiled down at her as he lowered her to the bed. ‘I don’t think I ever made love to you in a bed before.’

  She chuckled. ‘No. We never seemed to be able to make it to one back then.’

  ‘Let’s make the most of it now.’

  ‘Yes, lets,’ she said as she caught his mouth with hers and pulled him down to her.

  Their loving this time was slower, longer, each of them taking time to explore, to play, building up to a peak before pulling away from it a little, a silent agreement between them to make it last for as long as possible. Although, when she took him in her mouth, making his breath a fire in his chest and his eyes roll to the back of his head, he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from spilling right there and then. But somehow, he kept it together through the pleasurable torture before grabbing her, flipping her on her back and returning the favour.

  Bloody hell she tasted good. Better than he remembered. He licked and sucked and took the quivering nub of her sex into his mouth as he plunged his fingers inside her, making her writhe and scream. Then, kissing up her body, he slid between her thighs, pushing them wide until his throbbing cock glided against her wet warmth. She wrapped her legs around him, her pelvis tilting up in such a way that made the tip of his cock enter into her. Sucking in a breath, barely holding onto his control, he grasped her hands in his, looked into her eyes. ‘You fill me up, Natalia Robinson. You make me whole. It doesn’t matter if I can’t climb, if I can’t do anything else, as long as I can do this with you.’

  There was a flash of something in her eyes, a shadow that flickered deep, but it was too late to wonder about it, because he was pushing inside her, into her tight, wet warmth, and she was moaning, her head thrown back, throat arched in an invitation for his lips and tongue and teeth. He was deep inside her, each slide taking him deeper, but he wanted more. He moved her legs up, higher, wider and slid in deeper, his balls cradled against her. Her back arched, pushing him deeper, a moan vibrating in her chest. He slid out slowly then back in hard and fast, repeated again and again until she pulsed around him at the edge of an orgasm, and he could hold onto his control no longer, losing himself to the wild ride, to the rhythm that was making love to Nat, reaching for the thing that would heal the hole inside him. She screamed his name, her fingers digging into his shoulder, his back, her face a mask of beautiful pleasure, the last thing he saw before the lights exploded behind his eyes, his cry echoing in the night around them.

  Chapter 21

  Nat woke with a start, groggy and disoriented, heart pounding as it always did after the nightmares that plagued her every night. She frowned. There had been no nightmare. In fact, the last week she’d slept better than she had in a very long time, and when she woke up, sweating and heart racing, it wasn’t from nightmare images but something far more intimate and pleasurable that made her body ache, her intimate flesh throb. Her body was aching and throbbing, but she hadn’t had a sexy dream either.

  The bed moved as a heavy weight rolled beside her, a leg coming over her, an arm cinching her close to a hard, hair-roughened masculine body.

  Reid.

  His name was a sigh in her throat, a river of pleasure through her veins as she remembered what they’d been doing for the last few hours before falling into an exhausted sleep. And yet, it wasn’t even his presence that had woken her.

  Something was wrong and, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Unable to lie in the bed and torture herself with her thoughts, she decided to get up and make herself a cup of tea and try to reason out what was bothering her. It had something to do with Reid. Not with what they’d done—she’d never regret that—but it was something else. Something that was an ache in her bones, a pulse of warning up her spine.

  She tried to slide out from underneath his arm and leg, but he responded with a grumpy mumble, his hand tightening possessively over her naked breast. She couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips, the warm glow of his touch.

  Although, that glow wasn’t enough to allay the edginess prickling at the corner of her mind. She tried to move again, but that only made him hold her tighter, his leg clamping down on hers.

  She’d have to try another tack.

  Managing to turn a little, she stroked his hair from his forehead and pressed a kiss to the scar she’d had a hand in making. ‘Reid.’ His mumbled ‘what’ was barely discernible. ‘You have to let me go.’

  ‘No.’

  She suppressed the chuckle in her chest. ‘I need to go to the toilet. You have to let me go or I’ll pee in the bed.’

  With a disgruntled mumble that sounded like ‘awright’, he let her go. She slid off the bed and was almost at the walk-in-robe when he said, ‘Come back quickly.’ She turned to see him looking at her, his eyes luminous pools lit by the moonlight streaming through the window.

  She didn’t say anything, couldn’t, but it didn’t matter as he’d already closed his eyes, rolled over to his other side, his breathing indicating he’d fallen back to sleep. If he’d ever properly woken up—which she doubted.

  Nat pulled on an oversized t-shirt and some undies and padded down the hall to the kitchen and put on the kettle. Thirsty, she went to the sink to get some water. The night was inky black beyond the window, the moonlight illuminating very little on this side of the house. She could see her own reflection clearly in the glass, the bright cheeriness of the kitchen behind her. She stared at her pale reflection, reached up to touch the furrow between her brows.

  What was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she feeling glorious, like she expected to feel? Was it because she knew that no matter how many times she made love with Reid, it would never be enough? That she loved him—she could admit that freely to herself now—but it didn’t matter, because she couldn’t have him? Not forever. The pain of those truths was there, but she’d known them all along and they weren’t what was causing this discord inside her. They hurt—hell, they hurt more than she thought they would—but the loss of him in the future wasn’t the source of these strange feelings. This knowing that there was something else wrong, something that had been said. Yes, it was something he’d said to her that had started this feeling inside her until it had grown enough to wake her, to cause aching shivers to ratchet up her spine and feed across her skin.

  What had he said? It was something … something …

  The kettle began to whistle. She turned it off and went to get a mug.

  ‘Nat? Are you okay?’

  She jerked and spun to see Reid standing behind her at the kitchen door, his body outlined by the aching dark of the hall behind him. ‘You’re awake.’ Her gaze ran over his glorious body, noting the scars that marked the perfection of the golden warmth of his skin and yet somehow just made him all the sexier.

  He rubbed his eyes, then ran his hand through his sleep-tussled hair. ‘You were gone.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. I just needed something to drink.’

  He stepped into the room, the door closing behind him. She swallowed, becoming achingly aware of the distance that spread between them. ‘Do you want something?’

  ‘You, in bed, under me.’

  Her knees buckled as he strode towards her, and she couldn’t help but appreciate the play of muscles in his thighs or the thick length of his penis that was even now rising to attention. She
dragged her eyes from the view as his hands clasped on her face and he pulled her into his kiss. She expected him to take, to plunder, and braced herself for the impact, but instead, he gave her soft, nibbling kisses, his tongue taking little tasting forays along the sensitive inside of her lips, making her muscles quiver and jump.

  ‘You still thirsty?’ He ran his lips down to the bared skin of her shoulder where the oversized t-shirt had slipped down her arm.

  ‘No,’ she managed, her voice husky.

  ‘Then why didn’t you come back to bed?’ He looked up at her again. ‘I missed you.’

  She couldn’t answer, couldn’t voice her concern, the worry that nibbled away at the edge of her happiness. He ran his thumb across her lips as he straightened.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He tipped his head on the side. ‘Yes, there is.’ His gaze skated over her face then clashed with hers.

  She suddenly knew what part of the problem was. It had to do with what he’d said when they’d made love. ‘Reid, why don’t you think you can do anything other than be here with me? I mean, you’ve run a successful business for years, a multi-national company and a TV show and even if you can’t climb right now, there’s no reason you can’t do other things with it. You’re intelligent and capable and full of amazing energy and ideas. The sky’s your limit.’

  ‘I did those things with Luke. He was the business man. Without him …’ He shrugged.

  She frowned, stepped closer, not liking the closed look on his face. ‘Is that why you are thinking of closing your business down? Because you think you can’t do it without him?’

  He stared at her, something wild and raw moving in his eyes. She thought he was about to open up to her, to tell her what was in his heart, reveal his darkest thoughts, share his feelings of inadequacy the way she’d shared with him, but then he turned away and said, ‘I’m hungry. How about I make us some pancakes.’