She looked toward the side table. “In the drawer over there.”
He followed her glance. “Is it three years old?”
“Just about.” She’d bought them within a week of kicking Richard out—not because she expected to have sex with another man anytime soon, but because preparing for the possibility was one more way to thumb her nose at him. “Expired, you think?”
Caleb chuckled. “Yes.” Moving off her, he fished around in his pants for his wallet and then returned with a prize. “I only have one. We’ll have to make it count.”
She expected him to get right down to business after that, but he took his sweet time heating her up, his hands on her breasts and stroking over the outside of her thighs, the inside of her thighs, fingers dipping between her legs, tongue tracing the shape of her collarbone and flicking her nipples and doing to her mouth what she very much wanted him to do to her body. She reached for him more than once, trying to speed him along, but he batted her hands away and counseled patience.
“What happened to fast and hard and rough?” Desperation made her edgy and possibly a little whiny.
“Mmm. We’ll do that next time. We have to get acquainted first.”
She moaned and laced her fingers behind his neck, pulling his face close so he could see how serious she was. “Clark, I know everything I need to know about you except how you feel inside me.”
Lifting her knees, she wrapped her legs around his hips and shifted until the tip of him pressed into her. “Now,” she said, wiggling in an attempt to bring him inside. “I’ll tell you anything you want to hear, anything at all, if you do it n—unh.”
He thrust and met resistance. Thrust again, slow but determined, and then withdrew and sank back inside her. This time, her body yielded, taking him so deep, so deep, she forgot how to talk. She could only arch her back and close her eyes and inhale.
Everything smelled like Caleb. His soap, the scent of his sweat. They were both slick with it and breathing hard, the room stifling with the doors all closed. It was too hot to be touching, too hot even to hold hands, but she wanted every single inch of him to stay pressed against every single inch of her anyway, and she wanted to breathe him in and look at him and taste him on her tongue.
This was more than she’d bargained for.
“Okay?” he asked, brushing his lips over her chin.
Holy shit.
“Ellen?” He kissed the space between her eyebrows.
“Yes?” She managed a breathless whisper.
“You okay?”
“I’m …” What was the word she wanted? “Sublime.”
He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners, and said, “Yeah, you are. And sexy as hell.” He withdrew slightly, then returned, seating himself even deeper. “And beautiful.” Out, then back in. She would perish from the pleasure of having him inside her. She would expire. Any moment. “Did I say sexy yet?”
“Yes.” Oh, God, yes.
“It deserves to be said twice. Sexy Ellen.” Withdrew. Returned. She squeezed, and he stopped moving, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Honey, you’re going to kill me.”
He smoothed one hand over her forehead and kissed her, finding a slow, even rhythm with his hips that she did her level best to disrupt, because this was too much for her. He was too much. Too sweet, too considerate, too amazing. She hadn’t anticipated it would be this … much. She hadn’t expected this tight feeling in her chest when he looked down at her, this muzzy certainty in her bones and her skin and her fingertips that there was something right about this experience. Something perfect. Something alarmingly big and important.
So she closed her eyes and urged him to go faster, digging her nails into his back and letting him hear what he was doing to her with every stroke. She couldn’t linger here with him, couldn’t let him make love to her this way. She needed him selfish and wild. Unimportant. Disposable.
When he lost control, she felt it, the shudder that racked his body and the way he stopped holding back. He buried his face in her neck and his hands under her ass and spoke in her ear, a low rumble that proved he’d been lying earlier when he’d said he wasn’t much good with words. He was the whole package, driving her toward the cliff with his body, pushing her off it with that bedroom voice telling her she was beautiful, she was sexy, she was smart, she was everything he wanted.
When she came, she kept her eyes closed and her lips pressed tightly shut, because she was afraid of what she’d feel if she looked at him, and she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she’d say his name.
Chapter Fourteen
When he’d recovered enough to be capable of coherent thought, Caleb noticed the heat first.
Ellen’s bedroom had become a greenhouse, hot and humid and smelling of sex and cinnamon. One of them needed to turn on the ceiling fan if they were ever going to have a hope of cooling off. Crack a window, get some air moving around in here.
But her hair spread out over his shoulder in damp ropes. Her hand was on his stomach, and he could see it rise and fall with every breath he took. He slid his palm down her back and over her ass, savoring the dip and curve, the way his hand fit so many different ways against her body.
Without warning, she sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the bathroom.