Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

“Wanna put somethin’ here,” he said, cheek to my pubic mound, his fingers tickling the thin skin just under and inside my hipbone. “A small coral rose and the words ‘read my skin’.”

I shivered as if run through by a ghost, because sometimes with Nova, that was how it felt. He understood me so well, all the little things I thought, but didn’t have the courage to say, that it seemed he had the ability to stand at the corner of my mind like a specter.

It should have been invasive, but I thought it was exquisite.

“Let’s do it,” I agreed, combing my fingers through the top of his silken hair. “Whenever you want.”

He groaned in answer, lapping at the skin with his tongue then tracing the seam of my groin down to the lips of my sex.

“Fuck me, you taste so sweet,” he said as started to eat me, lifting my legs to shift them over his shoulders to give him better access. “Never been addicted to a thing in my fuckin’ life, but know I need the taste of this pussy in my mouth every day to sustain me.”

God, the thought of that rolled through me like hot air, inflating my oversized heart, firing the love I tried to keep tamed in my chest.

“You can take a taste whenever you need one,” I gasped as he drew hot, sucking circles over my clit with his talented mouth. “I wouldn’t want you to have to suffer detox.”

He laughed against my pussy, the vibrations delicious against my sensitive skin.

“You’ll have to endure my shitty ass attitude when the time comes.”

And just like that, the hope went out of my chest, punctured by the unwittingly cruel remark.

You dumbass, I wanted to scream at him, I love you. and if you tried, I know you could love me too!

“Yeah,” I huffed instead as he twisted his fingers inside me in a way that made me squirm. “You think our relationship will survive that?”

“We’re still friends now, my mouth on your pussy,” he said reasonably before he swirled his tongue at my entrance.

“Friends don’t give friends boners,” I quipped, tugging hard on his hair so he hissed and surged back up my body. I gripped his iron hard cock through his jeans then made quick work of unzipping them so I could take that hot flesh in my hand. “Admit it, you want me.”

His jaw set, hard and intractable, a Booth characteristic that meant he was settling in for the long haul. “Want you, yeah, but want our friendship more.”

My nails dug into his shoulders as I wrenched him to the side, rolling him to his back in the long grass, releasing the scent of honeysuckle crushed under his weight. I notched the hot, round tip of his cock at my center and slammed down, crying out as he impaled me.

Nova grunted and flung his arm over his head as I started to move, but I wouldn’t have that.

He was hiding, hiding because I knew there was something there between us in the shimmering, electric blue of the descending twilight. Something that had nothing to do with friends and barely even anything to do with lovers.

He had planted an entire garden in my heart, across my skin, inside my chest, and whether or not he was willing to admit it to himself, at some point he had to have known what he was doing.

Loving me so hard, I’d had no choice but to grow to love him back.

He might not have had the words to say, the wherewithal to compute it, but it was there, lurking like a monster under the bed at the back of his dark eyes.

Love. Tenderness. The awareness that he’d fall on his own sword if it meant I’d be safe and happy.

“Look at me,” I demanded, raking my nails down his chest then hiking up his shirt so I could do it again on his bare skin. “Watch me take you.”

It was an echo of our first time together, but this time, I was in control. I was the one cracking open that hard, shiny veneer he wore like a beautiful mask for the world to see so that I could get to the ugly tangle of emotions beneath.

Begrudgingly, he dropped the arm over his face and looked up at me, a muscle ticcing in his jaw.

I leaned forward to grab his hands, move them above his head, and twine our fingers together, bringing my face down so I could kiss the pained grimace off his face.

“It’s okay to like this,” I reminded him. “It’s okay to want me more than once, more than twice, maybe even for a long time.”

I rocked my hips smoothly, undulating like a boat on the waves, taking him deeply inside my body, then nearly all the way out just to feel the full length of him.