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  “Protection?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Condoms. In the drawer by the bed.”

  She started to rise, meaning to head for the darkened bedroom, but he rocked to his feet with ridiculous power and told her, “I’ll get them.”

  Them?

  With a half smile and a jerk of his head toward the jagged city vista, he added, “When I come back, I’d really like to see you standing against that window.”

  As he turned for her bedroom, he unbuttoned and stripped off his shirt, the muscles in his back doing acrobatics underneath his skin. The V created by his wide shoulders and waist made her legs quiver all over again.

  And because he’d proved to her that control wasn’t always necessary for pleasure, she went over and stood by the window.

  Chapter

  16

  Naked from the waist up, his jeans already unzipped, Leith hurried back to the living room from the bedroom, box of condoms in hand. One thought alone played on exuberant repeat in his mind: I’m about to have sex with Jen Haverhurst.

  When he came out of the hall, he thought he knew what to expect. After all, he’d been the one to tell Jen he wanted her up against the window. But the truth was, no amount of preparation or fantasizing could have set him up well enough for the actual sight. Jen’s curved silhouette cut an erotic shape against the rectangles of the city lights. Her hair swung at her shoulders and she stood with her legs apart, far enough that he could trace the lines of her inner thighs all the way up to the place he most wanted to be. Though he couldn’t see her face in the shadows, he knew the moment she saw him, because she raised her arms and flattened her palms against the glass.

  “Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, hoping Da’s ghost would forgive him for such a curse in these circumstances. “Look at you.”

  He sauntered toward her, forgetting he’d been in a rush only a minute ago. As he got closer, the city lights let him see her wide-eyed, openmouthed expression. The look of expectation and anticipation. Of lust. She breathed deep and even, her nipples rising and falling, the shadows shifting across her chest.

  When he finally touched her, it was to take her cheek in his palm. There were too many words to say, so he kissed her. It was a slow, deliberate stroke of his mouth over hers. Her lips were so smooth and soft, and even though they’d kissed countless times in their lives, even though he’d just gone down on her for the very first time and had made her come in a way that still left him happy and dizzy, this kiss felt much, much different.

  He inched closer. Close enough that her nipples grazed his bare chest. Just a brush, a tease, but it sent waves of sensation over his skin. God, she was so, so soft. She leaned back against the window, her warm hands sliding around his waist and dipping into the back of his loosened jeans, curving around his ass. Slowly, she pushed his jeans to the floor and the sound of the denim hitting the parquet heightened the kiss. The air-conditioning felt wonderful on his hot skin, but the cotton of his underwear weighed heavy as chain mail. When her fingers slipped beneath the top elastic, he sighed. When she shoved the underwear down to his ankles, he groaned.

  With a long swipe of her tongue against his, she released his mouth from the kiss and trailed a slow, hot gaze down his bare body to his erection.

  Stepping out of his jeans, he said, “Touch me.”

  Her lips quirked at the order because she was already halfway there. She wrapped her fingers around his dick—sweet, sweet girl—pushed them all the way to the root—holy fucking God—and gave an agonizingly slow, gentle pull all the way to the tip—whatever you do, just keep doing that. Just like that.

  Darkness fell as he shut his eyes and concentrated on the way she stroked him, how she managed to build his need when he hadn’t thought it could go any higher. He’d gone willfully blind, every stroke of her hand a torture. Her mouth found his chest, and he could feel her smiling against his skin.

  He wasn’t smiling, though. Hard, short breaths left his open lips. He had one fist planted on the glass, his forehead grinding into the curl of his fingers. At last he pushed away from the glass and encircled the wrist of her stroking hand. “Enough.”

  She stopped. He saw the little vibration of her pulse, the live beat dancing in her throat.

  “I want in you,” he said.

  Without words, she slipped the box of condoms from his hand and took one out. Ripped open the packet. She lifted her face to him as if to question what they were about to do, just as she’d done all those years ago in the back of the Caddy. As if this were their first time or something.

  It was, actually. It was their first time as the people they were now.

  He thought about all she’d revealed to him earlier that evening and kicked himself over how his eighteen-year-old self should have guessed there was more beneath her surface. He cringed at how cock-blind he’d been. How he could have been helping her instead of trying to get in her pants all the time, and then getting pissed off that she left him.

  He thought about how he’d done such a bang-up job at convincing himself he was steady and fulfilled these past three years, but how sad and alone he truly felt, thinking himself abandoned by the two people who’d meant the most to him.

  He had to stop thinking like that. Like Da had died on purpose. Like Jen had been laughing as she’d gotten on that plane. Neither was true.

  Though she stood gorgeously bared before him now, she’d never been as naked to him as she’d been in the lounge, her story on her lips. It made his heart hurt. After all this time, she still had the ability to do that.

  She touched him again, bringing him back to the present, and a playful light came to her eyes as she rolled the condom down his cock with an efficiency and care he refused to think about.

  As he slid his arms around her rib cage and lifted her up against the glass, an echo of his thought, and her words, in the lounge returned: I really did love you. And if I’m not careful it’ll happen again.

  Her legs folded around his waist, heels on his ass. Her narrow arms wrapped around his neck and he found her mouth again, holding her with shaking thighs in that position.

  The tip of his cock nudged against her, and even that part of her felt different and exciting to him. A whole new woman, a whole new experience. She was trying to grind against him, trying to get him inside, but the position restricted her movement.

  “Wait,” he said against her lips. “Let me.”

  “Hurry,” he thought he heard her say, the word shredded.

  He flexed his arms and pushed back slightly, holding her body away from him. Together they looked down as he positioned her over his cock. Just the tip of him went in, a wet, tight pressure covering his most sensitive place. At the same time, their heads snapped up and they looked at one another. This moment was only the beginning of the most powerful physical and emotional connection in existence, and he was already lost.

  Bending his legs and leaning her back against the glass, he got better leverage. He pushed in a little more, watched himself slip inside. He refused to let his eyes close. He wasn’t missing a millisecond of this. He drank in her gasp as he slid in even further. He watched with awe the dilating of her pupils, the string of staccato, musical moans that punctuated each of his thrusts, until he was fully inside her.

  She was everywhere, all around him. Her body surrounded his cock like a beautiful glove, her sounds filled his mind, and her being encased his heart.

  “Leith,” she said, shuddering, and there was too much to decipher in that word. A plea, a prayer, an expression of disbelief.

  At last he got his bearings, found his strength. Muscles clenched, he started to move, a gentle pulse inside her. He wasn’t capable of much more. Not in that position. Not with the way his chest felt like it was about to explode. He used the slow, clutching pump as long as possible, until it just simply wasn’t enough.

  “I want . . . I need more. I need to move faster,” he whispered into her hair. “Can I get you back on the couch?”

&
nbsp; Wordless, she nodded and his fingers dug into her thighs, pulling her off him to the soundtrack of their mutual groans. He lowered her to the ground, and he was filled with a caveman satisfaction that she wove on her feet, and that her nails clawed into his arms to steady herself.

  He kissed the dreamy look on her face and slowly nudged her toward the low couch. She sat on its edge.

  “Scoot back,” he said. “This time I’m getting on with you.”

  “And getting on me?”

  That unselfconscious giggle of hers sent him over the edge. What edge that was, he wasn’t quite sure. All he knew was that she had all her weapons trained on him that night and he was going down, down, down.

  “And getting in you.” He prowled over her, pressing her body into the black leather. She lay down, arched her back and opened her legs. Jen, splayed out for him. No chance of Olsen showing up this time. This woman was all Leith’s.

  He wedged his knees between hers, spreading her out, his cock pounding with need between them, dying to get back in where it belonged. As he came down over her, he loved the way she sighed against his weight. He kissed her as he entered her again. He slid into her far too easily, and with so much power it shocked him. Instead of taking her sounds between his lips, he fed her his own—a long, low groan as she took him even deeper inside. A murmured curse as she tilted up her hips and wrapped her legs around him, one of her hands digging into his hair, the other scratching at his ass.

  He fucked her with the depth of everything he felt. And yeah, even though his forehead was pressed against hers, their eyes locked in a dizzy haze, this was fucking. Fucking at its finest, its most intense.

  Pleasure immediately raced for his groin. All sensation from every available nerve rushed to the center of his body, his world. That feeling built and grew, driving him deeper and harder into Jen. He was losing control, but he wanted this to last a hell of a lot longer than he feared it would. He’d bragged that he wasn’t eighteen anymore, and he wanted to be inside her as long as possible, but the feeling of her wrapped around him was making that nearly impossible. Every stroke chiseled away at what he’d always considered to be spectacular control.

  His head sagged to her neck as his hips did their thing, steered by the need for her, piloted by the emotions he never expected to feel again.

  Her name unintentionally leaked from his mouth. He felt her palm on his neck, touching him with a gentleness that almost hurt. Lifting his head, still plunging into her with long, heavy movements, he watched the flicker of recognizable emotion in her eyes. She was struggling with the same things he was.

  Withdrawing from her with a moan, he pushed back to his knees. She was reaching for him, trying to guide him back to where he’d been, but he loved taking her out of her control zone, and instead took her knees in the crooks of his elbows. Hoisting her hips off the couch, he penetrated her at a whole new angle that shot his eyeballs straight to the back of his head.

  Then it was her turn to say his name, a million times, one after the other, at the peak of every one of his thrusts. She felt amazing. She looked amazing—small underneath him, her arms flung out and clinging to the edges of the couch.

  He couldn’t hold back any longer. Couldn’t temper himself. His body just let go, and his crazy, Jen-addled brain lost what little control it had managed to cling to.

  He came, the orgasm spiraling like a cyclone through his body. Everything tightened. Ten years’ worth of desire that he hadn’t known was building up inside all released at once. It was goddamn heaven. Nothing else to it.

  Two minutes later his brain still hadn’t come back to reality after being short-circuited. His whole body still tingled. Finally he realized he’d collapsed on top of her and she’d wrapped her limbs around him, the crush of her embrace nothing short of possessive. They stayed that way, entwined, for who knows how long.

  “Wow,” she whispered. “I loved watching that.”

  A wave of emotion crashed into him, took him under.

  With a regretful wince, he pulled out of her and rolled to the edge of the couch. He tied off the condom and padded to the bathroom to get rid of it. When he came back, she was lying in the exact same position, legs and arms all loose and lovely, only her head had turned and she looked out at her city.

  He stretched out naked beside her, the leather sticking to his damp skin, and draped an arm over her belly. She rolled her head back to meet his eyes.

  “You didn’t come again,” he said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He knew very well what she felt like when she came, how her muscles got all tight inside, and how her whole body set off in a cascading series of quivers from head to toe. “My fault? Too fast?”

  She gave a little shrug and ran light fingers across his collarbone. “I’ve turned into a clit girl. Doesn’t mean I didn’t love it.”

  He narrowed his eyes and gave her a doubtful grin. “I don’t believe that.”

  She laughed once, loud and sharp. “Well, believe it. I think I know what I need.”

  “You didn’t used to be like that.”

  “People change. People’s bodies change.”

  He considered her as he widened his smile. “No, I think that’s the control talking. For some reason you turned your mind off to anything else. You think you’re only a clit girl, therefore you are.” When he scraped a nail over her firm nipple, she hissed, her pupils dilating all over again. “I want to try to get that back. Can I? Please? With a little practice, I’m sure I could do it again.”

  She pushed at his chest in a feeble, adorable attempt to act pissed off. It would have helped if she wasn’t smiling. “Oh, really? We haven’t been together in ten years and you’re an expert on my body?”

  His palm made a slow trail down her belly. Her far knee came up, cradling the heel of his hand as it pressed against her pubic bone. He loved this part of her, how it surpassed the softness anywhere else on her body. As he touched her where she was still slippery, she went still.

  “I am.” He nosed the dark hair from her neck and said into her skin, “Remember that night when I taught you how to come? When I just kept touching you here and you exploded in the back of my da’s Cadillac?”

  She let out a sound that was part indignant, part disgust, and a whole lot of remembered ecstasy. “You did not teach me that.”

  “Sure I did.”

  “I was doing just fine on my own, thanks.”

  “Exactly. It was just a solo effort. But it’s better when someone else does it for you, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” She swallowed, and he licked up her moving throat. “And you’ve gotten even better at it.”

  “Well, I’ve learned a few new tricks.”

  She edged away, and he removed his hand from between her legs.

  “I don’t know how I feel hearing that,” she said.

  He shrugged and took to lightly rubbing her arm. “Sure you do. It’s probably the exact same way I feel. Let me see if I get it right: You and I were each other’s first sex all those years ago, and it was cool and exciting, but in that awkward teenage way. We got a little better at it and we thought it was the bomb. All that intense exploration that opened up a whole new world. Then we weren’t together anymore and we slept with other people”—she winced—“and we learned what we like and how to please another person. Jen, I don’t like knowing you’ve been with others either, but guess what, neither of us can change that. I can’t get pissed about what’s happened before this, not when it was never something I could control.” Then he kissed her soundly and grinned. “I can only enjoy the benefits of a fine education.”

  She looked a little stunned at that, considering, then she nodded in the way that reminded him of when her spreadsheets all balanced up and her crazy world suddenly made sense.

  “So.” He ran a hand through his hair as silence settled between them. “You never answered me back in the bar. You just jumped me. It was so embarrassing.”

  She looked at him l
ike she honestly had no idea what question he was talking about. It made his throat dry up, and not in a good way. No turning back now, though. “Are we going to try this again?” he asked. “You and me?”

  The gentle movement of her hand on his chest paused. She rose up on one elbow so they were eye to eye. She looked terribly worried, like she’d already made up her mind to leave him here and now. Like it was ten years ago and they were on another picnic blanket. Then she kissed him, close-lipped but sweet and long. That hadn’t happened a decade ago, and it sent his mind spinning toward hope.

  “How?” she asked when she pulled away, and she looked genuinely confused. “How could we make that work?”

  Tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, he replied, “We try.”

  “All right, then,” she said seriously, and something sharp and sweet struck him in the heart. “We try.”

  Chapter

  17

  “Speaking of not answering questions, you still haven’t answered mine from last night.” Jen slid into the nook between the counter and the window overlooking Bleecker Street, marveling over the fact that Leith MacDougall was sitting at her tiny kitchen table, devouring a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats.

  An impish look preceded his smart-ass comment. “Which question again? Was it: ‘Do you like that?’ or ‘More?’ Because the answer is ‘yes.’ To both.”

  Though she acknowledged him with a smile, she clutched her coffee mug in both hands and tried to look as earnest as possible. “No, the one about why you aren’t staying in Gleann for the games. Or competing. The real reason. I know part of it, but I think there’s more. And I’m here to listen, if you want.”

  He set down the cereal spoon so carefully it didn’t make a ripple in the milk. “You do know part of it. Because I showed it to you.”

  She wanted to touch him but he’d gone shuttered, and he leaned so far back in his chair she couldn’t easily reach him. “Your dad. The house. You haven’t dealt with losing him yet, and going to the games, which was such a huge part of growing up—for both of you—would be too painful a reminder.”