Page 68 of Fearless

His smile was more of a grimace. “Has there been anyone else?”

“No. No one.”

She couldn’t tell if that pleased him. It was mortifying for her; she wanted nothing more than to be like Jasmine, to have some skill and wit to offer him in this moment. All she had was herself, and she hoped that was enough.

“Then take a good look,fillette.” Mercy’s eyes lifted to hers, and their intensity was unfathomable. “Because this is what it looks like when a man wants to be inside you.”

She took her look, and then another, her heart hammering hard, trying to work itself through bone and blood to reach the palm of his hand.

“Have you got any idea how bad I want to have you?” he whispered as he held her pinned on the kitchen counter. The same kitchen in which they’d had breakfast that first day, nine years ago.

Her throat ached as she swallowed. “So have me.” And she wound her hands in his hair and pulled him down to her.

He kissed her and kissed her, until she felt drunk. She leaned into his hands, dominated by the urge to press the whole of her body against the whole of his.

Then she felt his fingers at her buttons, and with a few deft moves, he had them undone and her shirt was parting, the air cool against her skin. He smoothed the halves back and passed his rough-skinned hands across her belly, up her ribs. They closed over the black cotton cups of her bra and Ava’s spine bowed as she arched into the contact.

He withdrew and she thought she must have done something wrong, that he was displeased…but then he took hold of her hips and pulled her to the edge of the counter, until his hips were wedged between her thighs and his cold belt buckle was against her belly. And through their clothes, his erection was against the throbbing place that craved its touch.

It shocked her a little. She gasped and her hips moved. She wanted so much more.

“Come on.” There was impatience in his voice as he slid his hands around and scooped her up, clutching her ass.

Ava dutifully wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and clung to him as he carried her. Through the kitchen, the living room, down the hall, his long legs took them to her room in a matter of strides. Ava nuzzled her face into his throat – he smelled like Gillette shaving cream and cigarettes and the autumn outdoors – and caught a blur of her familiar, personal space: the bed, fluffy and inviting and waiting for them, her paintings and her laundry hamper and the wash of pale light through the open blinds.

Mercy set her down on the end of the bed, and he kissed her, passing his tongue into her mouth, scraping at her bottom lip with his teeth. She was lightheaded when he pulled back, her lips swollen and her eyelids heavy. He was a drug, this man, and she was more than happy to OD at this point.

The look he gave her before he stood was loaded with more of that supreme intensity from the kitchen. “Get naked,” he said, and shrugged out of his jacket, letting it hit the floor.

She didn’t want prettier words than those. She pulled the shirt off her shoulders, skimmed off her leggings, her panties, unclasped her bra, all in a feverish daze, aware of Mercy shucking his clothes, but not seeing it clearly in her own haste.

When she finished tossing her bra onto her dresser, Mercy was suddenly on her, his mouth finding hers as he eased her back to lie across the bed, climbing up over her. The mattress dipped dramatically under his weight. His knee slid between hers and she opened her legs, giving him space to settle between.

It was all so spectacularly new for her: the roughness of the hair on his legs, the thick satin of his skin, the sense of absolute surrender as all six-feet-five-inches of his grand height covered her with the elegance and savagery of a panther. And all their comfortable familiarity vaporized. Because this wasn’t just the two of them anymore, but the intentions that lay between them, and that both frightened and excited her.

Mercy pulled back, bracing up above her on his arms. She wanted to touch his biceps, and she realized she could, passing her hands up the hard bundles of muscle, tracing the ridged veins that laced them, as her eyes followed, up the thick column of his throat to his face. His features were harsh, but his eyes large and soft, a glittering shade of amber in the incoming shafts of afternoon light.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, his voice a low, Cajun-heavy purr she’d only heard once or twice.

She wanted to remember the sight of him this way, with his hair failing across his forehead and the tattoos on his left arm glimmering. She wanted to memorize the sculpted contours of his chest and neck and arms suspended above her.

She wasn’t afraid. She was a jumble of so many thing, but afraid? No. She would never be afraid of him.

“No.”

“Shut your eyes,fillette.”

She did, and then she felt his hand on her. She felt the mattress dip beside her, felt him settle in right next to her. Her arm was pressed to the hard wall of his chest. His knees touched her calf. And he was breathing right in her ear, the rhythm increasing, breath by breath, as he began a trail at her throat and moved downward.

He palmed her breasts, one and then the other, squeezing, shaping them. He traced her nipples with his fingertips until they were pebbled and aching.

Ava tried to roll toward him – she wanted her hands on him – but he held her gently down with his hand on her sternum.

“No,” he said in her ear. “And eyes shut, remember?”

Gooseflesh erupted across every inch of her skin and she felt him smiling against her face.

Down he moved, tracing the delicate lines of her ribs. Across her belly in unhurried strokes that left her trembling and made her wet.

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