Now she’s laughing. This is like watching a fucking tennis match, except the players are using my heart instead of a neon green ball. When we’ve been staring at each other so long, I’m about to ask exactly how many kids she plans to have, I mentally shake myself. “Are you done with your ice cream?”
“Oh.” She seems to have zoned out, too. “Yes.”
I take the rapidly melting cone out of her hand and toss it into the nearby garbage can on the other side of the vestibule, along with mine. When I return to her, I’m already starting to breathe hard, because if anything, the rain has gotten more intense and we’re in this little dark room, removed from the world, and my hands are itching to be on her smooth, bare skin. I might have been able to last five minutes without getting physical, but her apples scent is mixing with the rain and her natural sweetness, turning my mouth dry. I’m gravitating back toward her like a higher power—ironically—is in control and she’s watching me approach with half-open eyes, her back arching ever so slightly off the wall. And so I just keep walking until my forearms are planted on the wall above her head, my mouth a few inches above hers.
“I meant what I said before, you do have a soft center,” she whispers.
Those pinwheels inside me start going crazy again, spinning frantically. “No, I don’t.”
Her palms ride up my chest. “Yes, you do.” That touch moves down, down, over my stomach and lower where she unsnaps my jeans. Fuck. This is happening. “When we met, I needed someone to give me rough. Maybe you need the opposite.” Her hand delves into my jeans where she strokes my cock with a feather-light touch. Just grazes of her fingertips. And yet I’m already grinding my molars together to keep from spilling. “Maybe you need someone to give you slow and sweet. So you know you’re capable of it. So you know you deserve it.”
I’m shaking my head. No.
I don’t know why, but I can’t let that happen.
Somehow I know slow and sweet with this woman would be even more catastrophic than hard and mean. And yet I’m removing my gun, setting it on the closest ledge.
“Taylor.” Why is my voice ragged? “Let’s fuck.”
“Uh-uh.”
“No?”
She leaves my erection resting in the V of my jeans and slowly, God, too slowly, she winds up the sides of her dress in her fists, puling the material up to her waist and leaving it there. Naked thighs. Hips. Her pussy that much closer…and covered in red lace panties.
She’s wearing the hookup panties.
In a church.
“You know I was only ever going to wear them for you, right?” she whispers.
I drop my face against the stone wall to the right of her head and moan. Louder when she starts jacking me off again, her hand moving a torturously methodical rhythm and my hips start to match it, grinding, rolling.
Stroke. Pause. Stroke. Pause. So light. Yet my rasping breath sounds like it’s coming from surround sound speakers in this stone echo chamber of a vestibule.
What is she doing to me?
“You make me feel safe and protected,” she whispers against my chin, then higher to my lips. “But at the same time, you make me feel like I can protect myself. Isn’t that kind of amazing?” She lays kisses along my jawline. “Aren’t you kind of amazing?”
She feels it.
The way my cock swells over her praise. Right there in her hand.
God knows I feel it, too.
I’ve acknowledged it before. The fact that I need this woman’s admiration. Her trust. And it’s so generous of her to give me those things despite my nature. The way I act. She saw through it all. She’s seeing me clearer than anyone ever has, right now, reciting a spell that is turning me to putty in her hands. I’m holding on to the wall for dear life, letting her wreck me one slide of her fist at a time. There’s a niggling urge to growl at her, tell her I don’t need compliments or praise. But I ignore it, teeth buried in my bottom lip, waiting to hear what she’ll say next.
Fine, twist my arm. I’ll start.
“You’re the amazing one,” I blurt. I’m not winning any awards for that one, but she likes it. The corners of her incredible mouth tilt up at the corners and she pumps me harder, making me hiss. “I miss you at night. When you’re sleeping.”
Her chest heaves faster. “You do?”
“Yes.”
These admissions are a bad idea. They’re going to come back to bite me in the ass. But it feels too fucking good to tell this woman the thoughts in my head. I could lay all the shit in my head at her feet and she would make it better. That truth is built of concrete. My feelings for her are even more solid. Titanium. No getting around that anymore.