About Last Night

She’d have said something more, something witty, but she got distracted by the full-body shudder that racked her when City got serious about making her pay for teasing him, and by the sudden knowledge that she might not actually be a one-orgasm gal after all. Maybe it had just been a matter of finding the right guy.

Holy hell. That felt— Wow. “Okay.”

Then he kissed her again, hard and deep, and his fingers found her nipple and proceeded to do something cruel and terribly electrically pleasurable to it. Before she knew quite how it had happened, the rest of the world had slid away, and there was nothing else but the exquisite way they moved together, the pressure building at her core, the sound of their stomachs slapping as he gradually increased his speed and force. In the end, she had to dig her fingers into his back and bite his shoulder to keep a handle on something, anything, and even that didn’t keep her from tipping over the edge. But at least this time he went over with her.

When he came to his senses, Nev rolled onto his back straightaway, fearing he’d crush her. She was so small, no more than seven stone to his thirteen. Though it had been easy to forget when he was inside her. Then, she’d fit him perfectly.

They were incredible together. He couldn’t begin to understand it. She didn’t look like the women he usually went for, didn’t act like them, either, but something about her sent him straight round the bend. She was so responsive, so alive. So there.

He hadn’t been with a woman in months, not since Grace. She’d put him off, with her manicured fingernails and her theatrical moans. Sex for Grace was a performance, which made it something very near a chore for him.

But not with Cath. Learning what she liked, what made her thrash and moan and mumble obscenities, he’d lost all sense of time, of where the boundaries were or ought to be between them. Her first orgasm had elated him, the second nearly killed him, and his own erased him from the face of the earth for a few long, ecstatic seconds.

He already wanted to do it again.

Cath rose up on one elbow, studying him. Her skin was pink, her hair mussed. She looked elfin, lovely. “You’re kinkier than I expected,” she said. “I figured you’d be strictly a missionary position kind of guy.”

He’d very much like her to list all the things she thought about him so he could prove her wrong, one item at a time. Strictly missionary position. What a bloody depressing thing to say.

“You were hoping I’d tell you to close your eyes and think of England?”

“Not hoping. Possibly fearing.”

Her smart mouth made him smile. “I reckoned I’d better branch out. I didn’t want to disappoint you, Mary Catherine. I understand you Catholic schoolgirls are quite sexually adventurous.” He rolled onto his side so he could cup her breast, running a thumb over her nipple. She had gorgeous breasts, small but perfect, with nipples that sat up and begged to be sucked. Never the sort of man to turn away a beggar, he obliged this one, and she rewarded him with a soft gasp, her eyelids falling to half-mast.

“I didn’t last long as a Catholic schoolgirl,” she said after a while. “Got kicked out.”

“Imagine that. Whatever for?” He brought his tongue to her other nipple, drawing it into his mouth. She flopped onto her back.

“Stealing. And drinking the communion wine.”

He’d liked to have seen her at fifteen. He could imagine her spoiled and reckless, lacking good sense but with vitality to spare. Stealing and drinking—she’d have been hell on her mother. The thought pleased him.

Nev dropped his hand between her legs, enjoying the way she squirmed closer. “You shouldn’t drink, love. It doesn’t agree with you.”

“Shut up. I only had three glasses of wine last night. And some kind of tequila thing with Red Bull.”

“See, you’ve proved my point. You’re a very poor lush.”

She stuck her tongue out, but he rather liked her tongue, so he kissed her, encouraging her to put it in his mouth.

They didn’t talk for a while.

Later, she lay on her stomach, and he stretched out beside her with one hand on her arse, studying the figures on her lower back. “Tell me about your tattoos. What do the numbers mean?”

There turned out to be four tattoos, each with its own small Copperplate numeral. The songbird came first, then a lit match, a book, and the intricate tangle on her stomach. All four images were interconnected with a matrix of lines and swirls.

“They’re my mistakes,” she said. “Each tattoo represents one of my worst mistakes. So I won’t forget.”

He traced the shape of the bird, wondering what she could have done to merit writing herself a memo on her body. “It’s a very permanent sort of reminder.”

She raised herself up slightly, catching his gaze and holding it. “They were really bad mistakes.”

She didn’t say Back off, but she told him all the same.

He tried a slightly different tack, wondering how far he could push her before she turned as fierce as she looked when she ran in the park. “What about the phoenix?” He slid one hand to her shoulder, picturing the tattoo beneath her collarbone. “It doesn’t have a number.”

Apparently this was a permissible question, as she relaxed slightly. “That one’s from when I decided to start over. You know, clean slate. No more mistakes. Phoenix rising from the ashes.” She gave him a small smile. “I was doing pretty well there for a while.”