He reached for the coverlet. “Let me see.”
The flames flickered in his eyes as he slowly drew the blanket away. A white rectangle covered a four-inch square above my left breast. He reached out, but instead of touching the bandage, he touched me.
Was it an accident? At the time, I thought so. The way he snatched his hand back, though not too far, and caught his breath, the way his startled, almost mortified gaze flicked to mine.
Later, of course, I knew better, but then, everything seemed so innocent, a product of the moment, of us. We’d almost died. It made perfect sense we should desperately want to prove that we lived.
The loss of his touch was more painful than a talon through the heart, and without thought, I arched, the movement causing hand and breast to collide again. Of its own accord, his wrist—now healed—turned, and my full weight glided into his palm. The next instant he was kissing me, or maybe I was kissing him.
He tasted like the night, cool and dark, even as his skin beneath my fingers seemed to burn. I’d touched him in my dreams a hundred—no, a thousand—times. Yet every stroke was a revelation. As if I were coming home to a house that still smelled new.
I tugged on his shoulders, and he dropped the towel, then slid onto the bed without ever lifting his lips from mine. His hands explored, learning the curves at my breast, hip, and thigh.
“Soft,” he murmured, then moved his mouth across my jaw to my neck, where he worried a fold of skin between his teeth. “Sweet.”
I laughed, and the sound was low, throaty, sexy, not at all like me. Then again, I practiced glamour. Me could be anything at all. Since Jimmy seemed to like this version, I let her stay.
He nuzzled my breasts, laved a nipple, and I caught my breath as the sensation shot through me. He lifted his head; his eyes glittered auburn in the firelight. “You like that?”
“Mmm,” I agreed, and he lowered his head to give me more.
“I’ve been wanting to do this since you opened the door in that robe.”
He drew me into his mouth, suckling hard, and I curled my fingers into his hair. He teased me with his teeth, then blew on the moist, taut peak.
“Did you know I could see the outline of these?” He lifted my breasts to his mouth, tonguing first one then the other. “They were so beautiful, I couldn’t think of anything but you all the way to Mount Taylor.”
“Good at hiding it,” I managed.
He rolled on top of me, pressing his erection right where I needed it the most. “Not anymore.”
I licked the trail of that droplet of water, across his chest to his nipple. Before I could close my lips around it, he plunged.
He was young—who wasn’t compared to me?—but he also wasn’t completely human. He lasted longer than I thought he would.
I set my hands on his hips, gave him the rhythm, lowered my palms a few inches, and showed him the depth. His tongue echoed our movements. My breasts skimmed his chest with each thrust. He stilled, shifted, and did something amazing that made lights go off in the sky, on the ceiling, all around, or maybe just in my head. By the time I remembered my name, he was raining kisses across my damp cheeks and moving within me once more.
He was so beautiful, he made me ache. I couldn’t help but reach up and touch him. When I did, he lowered his gaze, and what I saw there made my stomach jitter and dip. Was that expression merely a reflection? How could he love me so soon? Then again, I’d loved him before he’d even been born.
“Jimmy,” I began.
“Shh,” he murmured, and kissed me, making me forget whatever I’d been about to say. Right now, all that mattered was this. The two of us all tangled up in each other, warm and safe for the moment, a memory I already had come to life.
His movements became faster, harder, I didn’t mind. He couldn’t hurt me.
Or so I thought.
When he pulsed to the beat of my heart, the tandem of that pulse made another start in me. I caught my breath in shock and wonder, crying out as the world again fell away.
I clung. I couldn’t help it. We couldn’t be together every minute. I couldn’t be in the right place at the right time every time. Sure, I’d made a deal, but the one I’d made it with lived on lies and had reneged on bigger deals with better angels than I.
Jimmy lowered his forehead to mine, his hair brushed my cheek an instant before his lips touched my nose, then he rolled to the side, taking me with him, folding me into his arms and flicking the blanket over us both.
His breathing evened out; I thought he was asleep when I whispered, “I dreamed of you.”
As consciousness fell away I could have sworn he whispered, too.
I know.