“Take this.” I pull off my rubber band and grab his hand. It has some trouble fitting over his much larger hand, but it finally snaps into place.
He gives it a dubious look. “What for?”
“Snap it.” I demonstrate. “When you feel you’re getting lost inside your mind.”
He’s still unconvinced. “It won’t be enough, Cass.”
My heart hurts. “And this.” I reach behind my neck, unclasp my pendant and lift it in front of me. He says nothing, letting me clasp it around his neck. The pale agate star-shaped stone rests in the hollow of his collarbone. “Hold on to it if you need to. Its edges are sharp, but not enough to cut you.”
He squints down at it. “Is that what you do?” He looks up, right into my eyes. “When you get lost inside your head?”
“Yeah.” I have to clear my voice. My eyes burn, and I force myself to not think about Angel and about those dark times. “Yeah, that’s what I do.”
He nods, grips the pendant, tests its edges, his expression pensive, those long lashes a
lmost resting on his broad cheekbones. I want to hug him, console him, give him courage—kiss him, pull him into me, feel him come inside me.
Talk about feeling torn.
But then he solves the issue when he pulls me onto his lap. He has me straddle him and runs his hands up my thighs, under my skirt. I’m wearing thigh-high black stockings, woolen and thick, and his warm, callused palms on my bare skin feel awesome—scratching just a little, enough to light up my nerve endings.
“Shane—”
He captures my mouth with his in a searing kiss, while his hands dive under my panties and find my seam, parting me, stroking me. His hard-on is pressed between us, hot and thick. It’s so sexy I can’t stand it.
He fingerfucks me, building up the fire inside me, and I moan in his mouth. He breaks the kiss, reaches for the bedside table.
“Condom,” he whispers.
“Shane, wait, I—”
He stops. His fingers still, his hand inside the drawer freezes. “You don’t want it?”
“Seriously? Can’t you tell?” I snicker a little, because hey, he has his fingers inside my pussy and I’m wet and moaning and kissing him, but… “I want you so much I think I’ll die if you don’t pull on that condom and get inside of me this very minute.”
His eyes light up. “Good. I need this, Cass.” He swallows hard. “I need you.”
It’s so damn powerful. This is his way of reminding me that, despite his past and the scars he’s still carrying, the wounds that still haunt him, he’s a person, a man with needs and desires, and that he’s not shattered. He’s not giving up.
“Then do me.” I try to regain control of the situation. Of myself. I run a hand over my breasts, feeling my nipples tighten. “Take me, Shane.”
Even if it’s just this. Just sex, something that has no real meaning to me. No real value. The men I’ve been with are a blur, memories I erase the moment they are made.
But this…this is different. I feel it in my bones, and I’m afraid.
He grins as he pulls a condom foil from the drawer and rips it open with his teeth, while his fingers inside me slide in and out, in and out until I’m clinging to his shoulders, clawing at his golden skin, desperate to come.
His cheekbones are flushed, his beautiful mouth open just a breath.
Oh God, we’re really doing this. I’ve never felt this way before—like this is important, so important I want to weep and take it slow and memorize every second of it.
But his mouth descends on mine again, demanding and hard, then sweet and soft as his fingers pump faster, dragging me over the edge in a blinding, earth-shattering orgasm.
And before I recover from that, he pulls his fingers out in an agonizing slow slide over my clit and belly and pulls on the condom. I don’t even look down to see if he put it right—something I always check with any boy I have fun with, and I wish Shane didn’t wear one, wish I could feel him inside me without protection.
Then he pulls me up a little. Pushes his cock into me.
Wow. Holy shit.