Page 49 of Deny Me
Gone.
The press of his hands forced Charlotte back against him. As naturally as breathing, her head tilted to one side, giving him access to her throat, her shoulder. He dropped his chin, buried his face against her sweet-smelling skin, and just breathed her in. Held her as the agony of what she’d told him tore him apart.
Charlotte startled against him. She reached up, and he realized her shoulder was wet where tears he hadn’t known he’d shed glistened against her skin. The room blurred. “Charlotte.”
She turned in his arms.
A frisson of hunger shot through him at the feel of her silk nightgown against his skin, and then her palms were cupping his cheeks and her concern was staring back at him through the tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words rough with her own tears. “I’d have done anything to stop it. But…”
He snatched her hard against him, burying his face in the silky length of her hair. “Don’t you ever apologize to me again,” he growled. “This was not your fault. Never.”
“It wasn’t yours either.” Her fingers dug into his hair, gripping his scalp as if she could hold him and herself together if she tried hard enough. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just was.”
“I wasn’t here.” That was the largest knife ripping through his soul—he hadn’t been here when she’d needed him, when she could’ve died without him beside her.
“You couldn’t have known, King.” Easing back, she stared deep into his eyes. “We both made mistakes. We were young. We—”
King kissed her. He had to—because he needed to show her how he felt, and because he needed to hold back the words. If he didn’t kiss her, he’d tell her he loved her, and he wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready. It didn’t matter that he’d never stopped loving her; it only mattered that the love that had been sleeping deep inside him was roaring back to life with a strength that scared the shit out of him.
So he drowned himself in her taste instead.
Charlotte gasped into his mouth. Her slim body arched into him, the feel of her bringing his cock to life. His T-shirt and the thin gown she wore barely provided a barrier between them, hiding nothing as they moved restlessly against each other and their mouths devoured every bit of need the other had. Duty tried to rear its head, but he stamped it down hard. He’d stopped when they’d kissed the other day, but not tonight. He wasn’t letting her go, not until this hunger tearing at his gut could find some relief. Not until the pain in his heart could find some solace.
Gripping the back of her head, he tilted until their lips fit together like two pieces of a whole. Charlotte’s mouth opened, let him in. He’d kissed her a thousand times before, and this kiss was just like all the others, and yet not. He knew her mouth intimately. Knew what she liked, what she craved. But after ten years he also didn’t know her at all. The taste of mint and woman lit up his senses. The feel of his tongue sliding along hers, filling her, taking her, lit up his cock.
King groaned against her lips.
The sound must have brought Charlotte back to reality, because she turned her head away. “King—”
Grasping her chin, he turned her back to him, struggling hard to control the rapid beat of his pulse and the demands of his flesh. “Tell me,” he said, refusing to let her escape. “You know you can tell me, no matter what. I’ll listen.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
As if he wasn’t telling himself the same damn thing. A different kind of tension crept through him, and he forced himself to let go, step back. “I won’t—”
Charlotte stepped forward, hesitated.
He sucked in a deep breath. “I won’t tell you I don’t want this, Charlotte. I do. I want it more than I ever realized I could want something. Someone. But the choice is yours. I won’t take that away from you.”
She closed her eyes, and his heart sank, knowing what her answer would be.
“I want this too.” She opened her eyes, and tears glistened in the low light of the bedside table across the room. “More than I’ve wanted just about anything, I want you. And I’m tired of denying it.”
King took a step forward, another, another. Until their bodies brushed each other and he tasted her breath in his mouth. Reaching around, he cupped the globes of her ass, lifted her tight against him, and moved toward the bed.
He’d dreamed so many times of holding her in his arms like this, her skin barely covered, her warm breasts soft, her firm ass in his hands. This was the moment that shook him, the moment he craved even more than being inside her—this first moment when he uncovered her skin, felt her bare against him, took one firm nipple into his mouth and sucked. It was the moment of surrender, of coming home. Like nothing he’d ever felt before or since.
The moment that made them one, heart and soul. The body would follow.
He stopped beside the bed, and Charlotte slid down his body until her feet reached the carpet. Staring deep into his eyes, she reached for the hem of his T-shirt and drew it up his body. When it gathered beneath his arms, he lifted them. Tugged the material over his head. Charlotte didn’t wait—her hands covered his chest, slid along his skin, lingered over his nipples as they hardened for her touch. He swore his entire body expanded in response, preening for its mate, showing her exactly how much he hungered for her attention. Her love.
That’s what he wanted, what he needed. Sex was no more than an outward expression of the craving that burned deep inside him, for her.
“Charlotte,” he groaned.
Those delicate hands slid over the ridges of his stomach, the hollow of his navel, to the line of blond hair that cut a trail to the hungriest part of him. His heart stuttered as she cupped him. The squeeze of her fingers around his cock had his balls drawing up tight—and he wasn’t even naked.
