Chapter Twenty-Four
After Ashe left, I scooted across the bed to fiddle with my iPod, setting it on my mellow playlist and making sure it was plugged into the docking station. When I turned around, I found London sprawled across the bed, one hand resting lightly on his now bare chest and the other flung wide in an invitation to cuddle. I accepted, and he held me close.
“This is amazing,” he told me. “You just don’t know.”
“I can imagine.” And I could. After days of not being able to let his guard down around me—or most anyone else—it had to be a refreshing change.
At first we simply lay there, snuggled up, content just to be together. But after a while, our casual touches became more measured, teasing. And then London surprised me by pushing me over onto my back, rolling with me to settle in the vee of my legs, propped up so he could look down into my face.
“Hi,” he said, smiling.
I smiled back. “Hi, yourself.”
He leaned in for a kiss, and I moved one hand to cradle his head, my fingers tangling in his hair. The kiss went on and on, and for once no wave of emotion rose up to threaten us. Or at least not an overwhelming wave of our combined emotions. My own tangled feelings were enough to deal with. I pushed away the negatives ones easily enough and lost myself in London’s kisses.
Soon he broke the kiss, moving to nip at my earlobe and then to seek out the most sensitive points on my neck. A whimper escaped my throat, and my legs wrapped around his waist without running the idea by my brain first.
“Not fair,” I told him.
“So I should stop then?”
I answered by tightening my grip on his hair and pressing his face back to my neck. He laughed, which I felt more than heard, and then went back to his exquisite torture. It didn’t take long for me to become a writhing mess and only a little longer for me to come completely undone. Only then did he pull back, urging me to sit up enough that he could help me out of my t-shirt.
London eased me back to the mattress and lowered his head to rub his slightly stubbled cheek against the smooth, sensitive skin just above the line of my bra. He moved just a little to one side, and I carded my fingers through his hair again, holding him to me as he grazed my nipple with his teeth.
I expected to lose my bra then and for London, like most other guys I’d known, to spend the next eternity obsessing over my breasts. Instead, he trailed kisses down my sternum and belly. He paused to deal with the button and zipper on my shorts, pushing my hands away when I tried to help. Scooting backwards, he dragged off my shorts and dropped them on the floor. For a moment, he knelt at the foot of the bed, just looking at me. I could feel myself blushing and had to fight to keep from trying to cover various flaws with my hands. He’d seen me naked before, but this was different. Without the magical reverb, I was free to feel self-conscious and vulnerable.
In the next moment, I forgot about feeling awkward as London covered my body with his again, kissing me until I was dizzy with desire. He fumbled my bra hooks open, stripped the thing off of me, and tossed it over the side of the bed. A few minutes of licking and nipping, and he was scooting back down the bed, stripping off the last of my clothes as he went. He stood at the end of the bed, again just looking at me. This time I couldn’t seem to stop myself; I found myself trying to hide behind my arms and hands.
“Don’t,” London murmured, and I forced my hands back to my sides. He beamed at me and rubbed my leg in a comforting gesture.
A moment later he withdrew his hand to unfasten his jeans, and as he stripped, I flashed back to the vision he’d sent me. When he looked up at me again, he had the same feral gleam in his eye that he’d had in the sending. I felt my breath catch in my throat as desire curled into a hot ball deep inside me. Just like in the vision, he stalked toward me like some great jungle cat, sliding his hands up my legs as he crawled onto the bed. And just like in the vision he licked his lips and lowered his head—but unlike with the vision, he didn’t stop just when things were getting good. He followed through this time, driving me to grasp his hair in one hand and the sheets beneath me in the other. It didn’t take much of his attention before the hand grasping the sheets curled into a fist that I jammed into my mouth to keep from screaming as he pushed me over the edge.
I lost track of the world around me for a long moment, coming back to awareness with London trying to coax my fist from between my teeth. I let him, and he kissed the marks I’d left on my knuckles before covering my mouth with his.
“Okay?” he asked.
I smirked up at him, feeling smug. “What do you think?”
He grinned down at me for a moment before kissing me again. Again he kindled my desire, and then fed the fires a little at a time. We kissed and touched and tasted, made a couple of lame jokes about the freakin’ huge box o’ condoms, and then my legs were around London’s waist again and he was inside me at last.
We moved together like we’d been made for one another, without any of the awkwardness that sometimes rears its ugly head. London took control, and I was glad to let him. He brought me to the edge again and again before finally, finally pushing me over into shuddering, clawing, jaw-clenching ecstasy. London wasn’t quite there, but I was content to bask in the afterglow and urge him toward his own happy ending.
Afterwards, we lay side-by-side, only our hands touching, until our blood and skin had cooled a little. London surprised me by curling against my side and pressing his face into the juncture of my neck and shoulder. I stroked his hair and nuzzled his face, pressing a kiss to his sweaty forehead. His lips moved against my neck, forming silent words. I had a feeling they were the sort of words that he wasn’t ready to say aloud and I wasn’t ready to hear. I hugged him closer and kissed his forehead again before mouthing two silent words of my own: “Me, too.”