Saving Rain(60)
“Are you sure?”
She was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. But pain ran deep, and trauma embedded itself even deeper. My concern was with her comfort more than it was with anything else. I cared for her, not just her body, and I didn’t want to take another step further without knowing for certain that she was okay—if that was at all possible, and if not, I would respect that too.
But Ray held my gaze and nodded. “I would tell you if I wasn’t,” she assured me as one hand moved from my hair to seek the evidence of my want and need for her.
She gripped me through my pants, stealing a groan from my lungs. Fuck, it had been so long since something other than my own hand had touched my dick, and while time had an odd way of making it not seem to matter after a while, it fucking mattered now. My hunger for her grew until I was all at once starving.
So, I nodded, prying my lips away from her neck. “You’d better unlock that door fast,” I teased. “Or we’re not making it off the porch.”
“Not sure the neighbors would like that all that much,” she teased right back, taking my hand and moving up the stairs backward.
“The neighbors would understand.” My eyes never left hers. The spell she had over me was so great, so powerful.
She laughed, leading me toward the door. “The neighbors would call the cops.”
“Yeah, maybe, but only because they’d be jealous.” Carnal intent took control as I pressed her back to the door, caging her in with my arms and pressing the strength of my dick against her once again. I lowered my mouth to her ear, smelling her hair and tasting her skin, before adding, “And I’d happily let Officer Kinney slap the cuffs on me to hear you scream my name loud enough for them to hear.”
She shuddered, releasing a hot breath against my cheek. “I think I’d rather have you to myself all night than let you sleep at the police station with Patrick.”
“Then, like I said, you’d better open that damn door.”
I was quick to capture her lips once more before backing away, reluctantly giving her the space to find her keys in her bag and unlock the front door. I leaned against the doorframe, unable to keep my eyes off her. Unable to believe that this was the same girl I’d protected years ago. The same girl I’d held close to my heart and written letters to for all those years I was held from society. It had to all mean something, right? It had to mean something that I would find myself here, that we would allow our feelings to grow until they reached this turbulent, pivotal point in which I could hardly look at her without wanting to explode.
It was always meant to be her.
The thought struck swiftly, kicking my heart with an intuitive truth that took my filthy, dirty mind and flipped it upside down, to bring forth that sensitive guy she believed I was because of my books and love of reading. But it was the truth, wasn’t it?
Ray and I … Rain and Soldier …
We were always meant to be. And if it couldn’t have happened that one night when we were teenagers, then fate had seen to it to bring us back together in adulthood, to take our trauma and grief and hardship and somehow, someway, make it better.
She pushed the door open and met my eyes as she took my hand to bring me inside. “What?” she asked, smiling as the house enveloped us in its hushed darkness. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” I asked, pushing the door shut and locking it behind me.
“Like you’re seeing me for the first time all over again,” she replied, wrapping both hands around one of mine, taking me down the hallway to a room I’d never been to before.
“Maybe I am.”
The hallway was too dark. I could no longer make out her features or expression, but I felt her. I felt her hands; I felt her presence. I felt the warmth and need charging through the sliver of space that separated us on the short walk to her room, where she pushed the door open and released me from her grasp. A shred of light came in through the window, silhouetting her figure in its gentle glow as she wasted no time in sliding her hands over her breasts and belly and thighs to grip the hem in her grasp and pull it up and over her head.
“What do you see now?” she asked, her voice low and husky, as she stepped out of her heels and moved deliberately toward the bed in nothing but her bra and panties.
My heart hammered wildly—a pathetically nervous reminder that it had been ages since I’d been with a woman. That this was my first time alone in one’s bedroom. That this was the only time I’d ever felt something for someone I was about to sleep with. And thank God it had to be her. Thank God it was Rain.
“What do I see?” I parroted, entering the room and stalking toward her as my fingers painstakingly undid the buttons of my shirt.
She nodded as she met the mattress and stepped onto it, resting on her knees.
“I see my hope,” I answered, letting the shirt drop to the floor. “I see my dreams.” I undid my pants and pushed them down low on my hips. “I see my salvation and redemption.”
My hands reached for her, and hers, for me, and I framed her face with my palms. We lay together, and I worried I’d crush her beneath my weight, but she didn’t protest. Instead, she welcomed me, opening her thighs wide and inviting my hips to nestle comfortably against hers. Calling me home to her warmth.
I found her gaze as I pressed deeper, firmer, harder against her, stopped from entering only by a couple of scraps of flimsy cloth. I was certain the closeness was torture, but then, fuck, if I were to eventually find myself in Hell, maybe torture wouldn’t be so bad.