She traced an idle finger over his Adam’s apple.
He swallowed, the hard knot rising and falling beneath her touch.
Dizzy with desire, Arlie tilted her face up to his. The air was crackling and sizzling with electricity, with anticipation. The breathless inevitability of this thing between them making her feel loose-limbed and drunk. Invincible and terrified.
“All my life, I could have anything I wanted.” Cupping her jaw, he ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “Except you.”
Arlie’s breath came in irregular bursts, something deep inside her tightening at his admission. “You want me?”
Samuel only looked at her, but his silence said it all.
His wordlessness the purest part of what he had always given her.
The look that passed between them was both question and answer.
Yes?
Yes.
Arlie closed her lips over his thumb, drawing it into the wet warmth of her mouth.
His eyelids fell closed as a sound half pain and half prayer rumbled up from his chest.
She traced the tip of her tongue over the ridges of his fingerprint, imagining she could still taste book pages there.
He walked her backward, his weight pressing her against the wall as he withdrew his thumb from her mouth. The tips of his four fingers found the valley of naked skin between the snowdrifts of her robe, trailing along her neck, her chest, dipping beneath the fabric to find her nipple, already hard against the cloth. Slowly, lazily, he moved his thumb over it, making her gasp as he gently pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.
He’d done the same thing in the sacred darkness of a closet when they were eighteen.
He claimed her lips, tongues tangling in a devouring frenzy.
Arlie moaned into his mouth when he found the tie to her robe and loosed it. Cool air kissed her still-damp skin, the contrast delicious and illicit.
He broke their kiss and moved down her throat, lips scorching a trail over the sensitive flesh.
Flicking the robe open, he brought his mouth to her nipple. Sucking, nipping, grazing, until she was half mad. Her fingers tangled into the dark silky strands of his hair as his hand slid over her stomach and lower. Deliciously lower.
His grunt of approval vibrated through her chest as his fingers found the slick, aching place between her thighs. Teasing the sensitive bundle of nerves, he coated it with her own drenching desire.
Moving his mouth from her breast, he looked up at her, waiting until he had her undivided attention. “Do you want me to make you come?” These words pronounced in that voice. His voice. So measured. So controlled.
“Oh, God, yes. Please,” she panted, her knees already weakening with the prospect.
Increasing the delicious friction, Samuel kept his thumb on her clit while he slipped his finger inside her. Filling her. Exploring her. Locating the spot that made the world around them go dusky and blue.
She fell forward, open, wet mouth on his naked shoulder.
“You like that?” he asked.
“Very much,” she gasped, struggling for both oxygen and sanity.
His other hand found her hair, fingers threading into a gentle grip that sent chills cascading down her neck. He angled her face toward his and Arlie knew instinctively it was so he could watch her. To read in her eyes the pleasure he had created.
Arlie bucked against his hand, years of want overriding all reason. Several selves aligned. Wanting him. Wanting this.
Samuel quickened his pace, matching her desperate undulations as she rode the groundswell at her center, threatening to wash her out to sea for now and forever.
His lips were hot at her ear, offering encouragement. Saying every single thing she had ever wanted to hear.
“I wanted you from the moment you first set foot in our house.”
Arlie’s hips backed against the cool wood of the closet door in rhythmic strokes.
“I wanted you as you stood there in your sundress trying not to look at me in the kitchen.”
His fingers ventured deeper now, kindling a fire of a depth beyond her knowledge or experience. Her legs began to shake, her fingernails digging into his arms.
“I was only pretending to read, hoping you would come to the library to watch me. I would sit there staring at pages for hours and not remember a single word. Waiting for you.”
She no longer had control of anything. Not her body. Not her life. Not her destiny.
Her core began to clench. All of her gathering around a single point that galloped toward a cliff into blackness.
“Samuel.”It was urgent, this message. A white flag, a plea. She was undone. Under his complete care and command.
“Yes,” he said, his voice glowing with the dangerous heat of a banked coal. “Come for me.”
As if she had any choice.
Overcome by rippling pulses of pleasure like she had never known, she surrendered.
Undone. Lost in a firestorm of bliss. Every part of her both heavy and light as a new galaxy of stars unfolded behind the lids of her closed eyes.
Limp and boneless with the bliss he had given her, Arlie sagged against him.
“What do you want, Arlie Banks?” he asked.