Page 39 of Between the Lines

“I’m fine.” It comes out breathily, and I discreetly cough to cover it up. “Really. I promise.”

His brows pinch together, the dark irises hard behind his glasses.

“I’d still like to check. Please.”

The please is dipped in desperation, and I cannot trap the sigh that escapes. Apparently, he can’t rein in his grunt either.

So, I let him touch me. What else am I supposed to do?

His eyes and his hands methodically cover me, assessing for damage I suppose. I don’t question why it’s so important to him, don’t point out that I was T-boned by a group of sixth graders and not a Mack truck. I think I let him look me over because I like feeling cared for. Because normally, I’m in his position—fussing over my siblings and making sure everyone else is okay. For once, it’s nice to be the one wrapped in gentle hands.

That’s what I am—wrapped up in his firm but gentle palms. Sparks sizzle in a roadmap that I know I’ll trace as soon as I get home. But it isn’t his hands that do the most damage. It’s the deep forest in his eyes that will be my undoing. His hands trace me tenderly, but his eyes? He’s willing me to drown into the fierce, possessive protector he has suddenly morphed into. I know that if I allow myself to fall down that well, it’ll be a long swim back up to the top.

“I think my dress took the brunt of the damage,” I say to dispel some of the tension, to maybe get his hands off of me before he has me melting through his fingertips like butter. I lift the hem of my thrifted treasure that I’ll now have to spot treat and probably send to the dry cleaners with Mom and Dad’s weekly load.

Nathan grasps the material between his fingers, rubbing it tenderly. A flash of my skin between that caress makes my eyes flutter shut, makes my breathhitch.

“You look beautiful tonight.”

I gasp. My fingers flutter to the base of my throat.

“I…”

Don’t know what to say.

I don’t allow myself to be in the position to be noticed by men. Men don’t get a permanent place in my life. But some way, somehow, Nathan Harding is standing between my spread legs with his hands bracketing my thighs calling me beautiful, and I want to let him. Just like I had wanted to keep talking to him the other day in his office, when all of a sudden, both of our shattered pieces were sparkling on his desktop next to each other. If we had kept revealing more of ourselves, I wonder if those broken pieces would have made a stained glass masterpiece.

I swallow that admission, wish my pulse to settle, and choke out aThank youthat’s more sandpapery grit than actual gratitude.

We simply stare, as if there’s nothing else we can do besides stew in the heavy weight of this silence. His eyes are pools of darkness, so wide that I can barely make out the green glow they usually give off. The one that matches my dress. I can make out the ticking of the clock on the wall and the faint echo of the speakers in the gym down the hall behind several closed doors.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Ms. Benson?”

No. Absolutely not.

I nod, blinking rapidly, trying to swallow past the flutter in my pulse, but I can’t. And thank God for that. All of a sudden, his eyes tick to my throat, to the beating of my heart against its hollow.

“Your pulse isracing.”

He shudders, from his voice down to his toes, as he says it. Our breaths pant in erratic tandem with the second hand on the clock above his desk, reminding me that when I’m with him, time seems to slow.

“Mhm,” I squeak, tracing my fingertips over the flutter that has replaced my heartbeat.

“Letme make it better.”

He says it like a prayer, and I have no choice but to lean forward, like I’m tethered to him, and my body has just been waiting for permission. His hand skims from the desktop to my thigh, and it takes everything in me not to flip up the skirt of my dress and shove his hand right between my thighs to feel how wet I undoubtedly am, but I resist. The torture of his heated touch is so much better. He takes his time, skirting up my waist. He stops at my breast, and I think he’s going to divert from his path, brush his thumb over my nipple with that hesitation, but he grunts with the effortnotto, and I wonder just what kind of foreplay I’ve experienced in the past.

The moment his fingers graze my throat, I moan. My lips part. My eyes flutter, struggling to hold onto the matching expression on the face of Nathan Harding staring back at me. He’s barely done a thing and yet he looks like he’s just finished running a marathon. His thumb presses against my pulse in the same moment that his fingers press around the back of my throat, and I wonder if it’s possible to come like this?

My lust filled haze has me scooting forward on the edge of the desk, trapping the outsides of his thighs with the insides of mine, and my body catches fire. He squeezes my throat, just enough to remind me that he’s in control, and then dips his head into the space between us.

His nose skirts along my skin, preceding the hot, panting breath that leaves scorch marks in its wake. I am full on panting now, my chest heaving in the gap of space between us. If this was supposed to stop my pulse from racing, he’s doing the opposite. I squeak, pulsing my thighs around his. He groans, his free hand flexing on the desk as if he’s restraining himself, and I’m about to reach for him, about to put that hand to good use, when his tongue darts past his lips and presses to my pulse.

It's crazy, right? To feel like I’m free falling through the sky with just a kiss to my throat? But that’s exactly how I feel. The deskbeneath me disappears the moment Nathan’s lips seal around my pulse, his tongue stroking in a rhythm that has my head tilting back and my hand threading through his blonde hair. I can’t help it. I grip, hold him there, and let a moan slip past my parted lips. It’s as if that was the cue he needed, because finally,fucking finally, his other hand grips my waist and holds my body to his mouth as he feasts.

The flat of his tongue plays lazily against the column of my throat, and I think I might die like this. Back bowed with his hands on me as his mouth sucks the soul straight from me. And when I slip those remaining centimeters to the edge of his desk, allowing his hips to notch right against mine, where the swollen length of him presses hard as steel against my pussy?

I’d be perfectly content to die this way.

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