Pride After Her Fall

He slid his hands up her thighs, pooling her long silken skirt, and remembered as his hand touched bare skin that she’d gone commando.

Thank God.

She whimpered and drew him to her, clamping her thighs around his lean hips. Her eyes were wide and what he saw there wasn’t simply desire, it was anxiety.

‘Lorelei?’ He was so close to the edge, and yet she was looking at him as if she wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

‘Nash, I’m scared.’ The words were almost wrenched from her. Her fingers were digging into his shoulders as if she was dangling off a cliff face, her bright troubled eyes fixed on his.

‘Don’t be.’ He suddenly didn’t feel all that secure himself, and that was a new experience. The words he found for her came from a deeper place inside him. ‘I’ve got you.’

As if that were enough for her she lifted her mouth to his, shaking, a little wild, and her body came alive beneath his own in a way it never had before, coaxing him to take her. He only just remembered the condom. Deep inside her, he held on to his control by receding increments as she seemed unable or unwilling to let go. He felt her resistance not as a challenge but as a desperate uncertainty on her part. Her words came back at him. You’re just certain in a way I’ll never be.

He pressed his forehead to hers. ‘Look at you,’ he said, grazing her cheek, her mouth, her throat with his lips, moving slowly now. ‘So strong, so wild. Do you remember when you threw that shoe at the traffic inspector?’

Lorelei gave a little start under him.

He brushed against her clitoris and she bucked. He did it again.

‘Both shoes. I knew it then.’

‘What—what did you know?’

‘I’d never keep up.’ He shifted his hips.

She made a sound—part murmur of approval, part moan.

‘You stuck your finger in his face and read him the Riot Act.’ He cupped her bottom. ‘I thought you were going to get us arrested.’

She quaked against him. ‘Sorry... I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, don’t be sorry,’ he urged, moving harder inside her. ‘Never be sorry. Do you remember when I took you back to the villa?’ He angled his thrusts to reach higher. ‘This—is what—I wanted—to do. Right there. In the Veyron.’

‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why didn’t you?’

But she was already there.

‘Stick shift,’ he groaned as Lorelei’s inner muscles clamped around him. He was grabbed and thrown down again and again, until his body convulsed uncontrollably against her and she clutched at him, riding out her own pleasure. It seemed as much his as hers, making sounds he only half recognised.

As he subsided heavily on top of her the chemical high kicked in and for several minutes he just held her, his chest pumping. He was conscious only of her trembling, responsive body cleaved to his—until he became aware something else was at play here. This wasn’t just the euphoria of great sex. He could feel the connection with her still and didn’t want to break it. He really didn’t want to move, but he knew there was a risk if he didn’t pull out of her, dispose of the condom.

It was as he began to sit up that he became aware she was making soft, helpless sounds. Insidious recognition reached down into his gut and grabbed hold of something he hadn’t had to acknowledge in years.

The voice of his old man, telling him it was his fault, always his fault. To be a man and not a snivelling four-year-old boy.

He needed to hold her. That part of him that told him it was weakness that was at war with the man in him, who curved his hands around her slight, quaking shoulders, gathered her up in his arms and held her.

She turned her face into his shoulder and he experienced a surge of tenderness that threatened to further undo him. He was not accustomed to being gentle, but somehow he was, stroking the curls tumbling down the back of her neck, using his broad thumb to trace the curve of her ear, kissing her there because he needed to.

Except the face she lifted to his was not tear-streaked. Her amber eyes glowed; her cheeks were hot and flushed. She had never looked quite so beautiful, and she was smiling at him, softly laughing, her face haloed by all those silky fair curls.