So she did.
When neither of them could stand more, he positioned himself above her, paused, stared at her with so much emotion in his eyes that she felt overwhelmed. What was he waiting for?
“I’ve missed you, Emily. So much.” Rather than giving her what she ached for, he kissed her mouth. A kiss way too sweet for the heat of the moment.
A kiss way too sweet for her peace of mind.
His gaze locked with hers, he moved his hips, giving her what she needed, what they needed.
Rather than the frenzy of their previous matings, he kept his pace slow. When she’d try to increase it, he’d resist. When she gripped his buttocks, urging him faster, deeper, he took her hands into his and held them above her head, locking them into place by his hand over her wrists. She didn’t really try to escape. Why should she when the heat was rising inside her thighs, when warmth swirled in her belly, building?
His gaze still locked with hers, he built her higher until she went so high there was nowhere to go but over the edge.
So she fell.
Further and further, she floated downward.
He let her float, but not all the way down. Instead, he moved and took her up, up, up again.
And again.
* * *
Chest heaving, Lucas collapsed onto the mattress next to Emily. Her chest rose and fell. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. Her body flushed from his loving. Her hair fanned out around her in messy, just-had-wild-sex disarray.
He’d never seen anything more erotic. He’d never seen anything more beautiful.
“You need to get dressed,” she told him, her voice breathy. “So you can go home before it gets any later. I have to work tomorrow.”
Then there was that.
“I don’t want to go, Emily.”
“I don’t want you to stay.”
Which was a hard pill to swallow.
“Why not?”
“We aren’t dating, Lucas. We aren’t moving toward a relationship with each other. We’re using each other for sex. Nothing more. For you to stay in my bed, to actually sleep beside me, implies an intimacy we don’t have.”
“What if I want that intimacy with you?”
“This isn’t just about what you want.”
“I realize that, but—”
“No buts, Lucas.” She climbed out of the bed and grabbed his underwear off the floor and tossed it at him. “Here.”
“What are you afraid of, Emily?”
Rather than climb back into bed, she opened a dresser drawer and pulled out an oversize New York Knicks T-shirt and put it on. “With you? Everything.”
That had him pausing with his boxer briefs halfway up his thighs. “After what we just shared, how could you possibly be afraid of me?”
“That was sex.”
He shook his head. “You keep telling yourself that, Emily, but we both know that wasn’t just sex. Never was. Never will be.”