Insecure (Love Triumphs 1)

Her thready, “Please,” pulled him up.

He stepped back but took her hand. Her apartment was two blocks the other way from Dillon’s. They were neighbours. He had a thousand questions but they couldn’t compete with the need to get to her, to touch her tulip petal silk skin and hold her body; take the real her and wipe the plastic porn substitute out.

He checked himself when they tumbled inside her place, nearly tripping over a stack of boxes. She was living like he was, half unpacked, indoor camping. Her easel stood in the room by the only window, a canvas on it.

She watched him like he was made of explosives.

“You want this, Cinta?”

She flung her coat off. Jeans and a long-sleeved tee that fitted close underneath. If she only wanted to talk he needed to get out of here now. She stared at him as though she wasn’t sure she had the power to defuse him.

“You were on fire when I met you,” he said

“I still am.”

Holy fuck. He got rid of his coat. She’d taken off her shoes, started on her top. He stopped her. This would be too quick, and if it was only one night he wanted it slow and easy; a faked-out forever. He wrapped around her and lifted her so they fitted together. He kissed her till he was weaving on his feet. She’d gotten his shirt undone and her mouth was hot on his chest. He wanted inside her body, but he wanted her words too.

“I left you a message.”

She pressed her face to his neck. “I was scared of this, scared of you. But I went to your house, when I knew I wanted more.”

Buster’s house, sold to a developer three months ago. He moved her away from him so he could see her face. It was one weekend five months ago, but it’d done some damage to both of them.

“I’m not scared now. I want more.”

He didn’t need the leather; he needed his hands on her soft, warm skin. He didn’t need the raunch of boots and single buttons or the tease of too much but not enough flesh; he needed Jacinta in his arms, whispering her need in his ear.

She could taunt him all she liked, with her hips, with her tongue stroking his, he’d take it—he’d want more. He didn’t need to teach her respect, he only needed to see trust in her eyes and feel desire from her touch.

He undressed her slowly, making her gasp, making her laugh—a gorgeous sound—when he had trouble with the hooks of her bra. He got it off her and slingshotted it across the room and she laughed again.

She hadn’t laughed enough the last time they were together. He wasn’t a guy who knew how to make her laugh except by accident, but if he could find a way he’d make her happy, at least tonight.

She’d said more, but more could mean anything, and there was no room in his head to explore it, he was too busy relearning the secrets of her body. The way her waist scooted in from the hollow under her ribs and swelled gently to her hips. He traced that symmetry with his tongue, with his open mouth. Her arse was made to fit in his hands, her hands were made to make his blood surge and speed through him, make him forget slow and fight to get it back.

“I missed you, Mace.”

He’d missed her too. The pulse in her neck, the bone of her cheek, the stalled hitch in her breath when he teased her body. A different missing. Not like he missed Buster. That emotion was a tender sore in his heart, a soft spot in his head like a sinkhole where memories he was worried about losing got pulled together and sucked down, spewing up at him randomly when he least expected them, cutting off his breath.

Yesterday a memory of Buster teaching him to play poker using matchsticks for money made him forget where he was driving. He’d pulled up in front of the old house, now a construction site, before he realised what he was doing. He’d driven for forty minutes in a dream state like his brain was slow loading.

He’d missed Jacinta in an entirely different way. She was the memory he’d yet to make. She was the longing that had always made him feel different, apart from everyone around him. He didn’t know what loving a person who wasn’t Buster, who wasn’t Dillon, was about, but he knew Jacinta was someone he craved, like a perfect, pristine line of code that’d function cross platform evermore.

She tugged at his hair. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Not lost.” Not now, when for months that’s how he’d felt. Never registering, drifting out beyond the most powerful search engine, empty and anxious.

“It was only a weekend. I didn’t think there could be more.”

That word again—more. More was the smell of her, cle

an, aroused. It was the fine spider tickle of her hair dragging across his arms, the flick of her tongue on his lip and her thigh wedged against his. More was in her eyes when he broke away to lose the rest of his clothes to regret he hadn’t come prepared for this, but to see she was. More was what she gave him when they came together on her bed and she took him deep, held him tight, her arms around his back, her knees hitched at his sides. He had her body and he had the trust in her eyes.

“I dreamed of you, Cinta. But it was never this. Never true. Only bad data. A false positive. Nothing is like you.”

He rocked his hips and her gasp was hot across his throat. Her fingers dug in to the back of his neck. This was how he made her happy, this was how he won her devotion; with slow, smooth thrusts and circling hips, with dragging kisses, with a rhythm that made her arch into him and toss her head.

She shouted his name and he lost control, no tempo other than speed, no tacit feeling other than friction so achingly sweet and tight. Eyes jammed shut because the dream and the reality were mashed together with the smell of her, of them, as their skin grew slick and their breaths stuck and sucked and stuck again. All the loss and insecurity he’d carried multiplied inside him till he couldn’t contain the sensation shuddering out from his centre, sending his vision white.