The Art of Scandal(72)

It pierced him like a bullet. That word. Her mouth, swollen from his kisses and begging for more. Begging for him. This was what it felt like: to be wanted, and to be enough.

“Are you mine?” He kissed her again, claimed her with his tongue. “Because I’m yours.”

Rachel pulled back, but just far enough to whisper, “Yes.” Her hands slid beneath his shirt and Nathan yanked it off by the collar, nearly ripping the fabric in the process. That’s when he knew this would be different. Rougher. Dirtier. After all that time, they were starved for each other. She put her mouth on his neck, kissing and licking like she’d been thinking about it all along. Drawing a map. Then she urged him back and down, until he was sprawled on the couch and looking up at her, a siren bathed in rainwater. She raked her eyes over his body like she wanted to devour him whole.

Rachel tugged at her dress and pulled it down over one shoulder. Teasing him. Savoring this. “The night we met, you asked me a question about what I wanted,” she said, and the rasp of her voice made his stomach clench.

She pulled her arms free. “I couldn’t answer you.” The dress collapsed around her waist, revealing a white bra, soaked to transparency.

Nathan sat up so he could touch her. He had to touch her. His fingers found that indention at the top of her stomach, just beneath the lace of her bra—the soft dip before heaven. “You’d been through a lot.”

Rachel’s eyes were all shimmering want. “That’s not why I couldn’t.” She unfastened her bra as he slid his hands up and palmed her breasts. She arched her back and made sinfully grateful sounds when he tugged her nipples. “I’ve never wanted what I should,” she said. “My whole life has been selfish cravings. Guilty pleasures. Being desperate for things I can’t admit that I want out loud.”

This was how they started, with confessions and cravings, exposing all the dark places they were supposed to be ashamed of. Nathan reached beneath her skirt, prying away the strip of lace and satin, and sank two fingers inside her wet heat. She hissed and groaned as he trailed them out again, a leisurely stroke that settled into steady circles over her clit. “You can say them to me.”

He watched her eyes flutter as she rocked against his hand. “I don’t want you to be gentle,” she whispered. “And I don’t want to be careful.” She stroked his hair and kissed him, hard. “I want to make you come apart.”

She straddled his hips, rubbing herself against the rigid fabric of his jeans. It was torture. It was bliss. It was enough to spark the base of his spine but would never ease his suffering. He nearly begged her to give him more, something. Anything. But then he remembered what she said, about wanting him in pieces, and the thought coiled low, into a throbbing ache that made him groan.

Nathan thought he’d seen everything. Every part of her. But this was different. She didn’t move like the woman he’d known before. Her body practically glided over his, so sure of its beauty. He kissed her neck. She tasted like heat, salt, and rain.

“I want all of it,” he said. “All your secrets. Every filthy last one of them.”

She slithered lower, her mouth on his chest, kissing, licking, nipping him with her teeth. Her hair was light and cool on his skin. He sank his hands into the curls.

“This is my fantasy,” she mumbled at his waist. “You. Like this.” She unbuttoned his belt. “I touch myself, but I want you.”

Nathan felt the heat of her breath as she pressed her lips against him. When she took him in her mouth, his body seized. She pressed her hand to his chest, to his heart, like she wanted to measure how thoroughly he was being wrecked. His hand fisted mindlessly, a gentle hair pull that made her hum in pleasure. Soon he was begging for release, pleading for mercy.

Rachel climbed on top of him, and he entered her with a long, rough stroke. They were wild and frantic, fighting to move deeper and harder than their bodies would allow. Eventually, they settled into a rolling, seductive dance, one body instead of two. Rachel came with a series of moans into his mouth, and Nathan held them in his chest like smoke. His release was a punishing, spiraling thing that gripped him so hard that he shouted her name. When it finally receded, he collapsed on the couch, shattered and wasted.

Rachel lay on top of him, and he studied her face as they both came back to themselves. Her eyes were soft and hazy. He touched her chin, tracing the perfect line of her mouth with his thumb.

She was his. But once they left, she wouldn’t be. Not completely. “What if we stayed?” he asked.

Rachel hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“Stay with me. Just for a few days.” He kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, trailing small I love yous over her skin. “Let me take care of you.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


Rachel’s dad used to say that instincts were your heart trying to be heard over your head. If you ignored them too often, they would eventually go quiet. Her instincts, her heart, used to fantasize about running away. She thought about it when she wandered through a bookstore until they took down the open sign. Or when she ate her muffin slowly at a coffee shop so they’d keep refilling her mug. It happened the day she dropped Faith off at culinary school. Rachel had roamed around the city for hours because she didn’t want to go home.

But those were fantasies. Her head would remind her of how grateful she should be for her life. Over the years, it happened less and less. So when Nathan asked her to stay, it felt like her heart, tired of being ignored, had put those desires into someone else’s mouth instead, hoping this time she would finally listen.