ETHAN WAS IN an odd mood on the way back to his house after the game. Another big storm was blowing in, one that seemingly matched his demeanor—ominous clouds with flashes of electricity, a dark promise of more to come.
But Ethan didn’t seem angry, or at least not angry with me. It was more that he’d closed off a part of himself, and he didn’t want to grant me access to it. Or rather, to him.
I had no right to want access to any part of him, and he’d already given me more than I could have hoped for. I knew I shouldn’t think too much of it…but his disposition ate away at me, nonetheless, like a cat slowly but doggedly gnawing at its prey.
“Got a Thundershirt for Snoopy,” he said, finally breaking the stilted silence once we were a couple of blocks away from his house.
“A Thundershirt?”
“It’s supposed to help keep animals calm during storms or for other things that upset them. Vet visits. Fireworks. Strangers coming over. Any sort of loud noises that bother them. Wraps around them and helps them feel secure or something. Guess tonight’ll be a good night to test it out.”
Even as he spoke, another streak of lightning ripped through the dark sky, followed close behind by a massive boom of thunder. Now that we’d finally gotten some rain, it seemed there would be no end to it. The skies seemed to have been saving it all up and now wanted to send us a deluge. Which was probably for the best—unless it came too fast and the ground couldn’t soak up all the water in time, causing floods.
But there was a part of me that wished we could just get some rain without a storm, even if I liked the storms. A good, solid soak could work wonders on the earth and the soul, both.
Ethan turned in at his driveway. He’d barely put the car in park in the garage when the skies opened up with a fresh downpour.
Snoopy met us at the door, shaking and cowering at Ethan’s feet while somehow simultaneously attempting to jump into his arms. I could understand the sentiment; I wanted to jump into Ethan’s arms, too, but for an entirely different reason.
He bent down on the floor and secured a complicated gray piece of fabric around Snoopy, using a series of Velcro straps to tighten it in place. When he stood up again, the dog looked kind of silly, as though wearing a doggie version of a straightjacket, but the wild terror was gone from his eyes. He whimpered with the next roll of thunder, but he didn’t panic. It was just an I-don’t-like-this sort of whine, not an I’m-about-to-die one.
If only there were something like a Thundershirt for me when it came to facing whatever wrenches Hayes tried to throw into my path. But maybe Ethan could be my Thundershirt against the storm my life had become. I didn’t think he’d mind wrapping himself around me to calm my fears.
Once Snoopy was suited up, Ethan headed for the living room, with the dog following close behind him. I joined them and sat on the sofa, taking off my brace to let my skin breathe and putting the ankle of my broken leg on the coffee table with a pillow beneath it for cushioning. My leg was almost fully healed—I shouldn’t need the brace much longer at all, and I certainly didn’t need it at home. It was simply a precaution at this point. Ethan sat next to me. Snoopy jumped up on his other side, and their combined weight caused me to lean toward them.
Or so I told myself.
I probably could have fought the urge to roll into Ethan’s arms, but I wasn’t inclined to do anything of the sort. It was far more gratifying to feel the strength of Ethan’s body alongside my own, the heavy weight of his frame grounding me to reality.
More tentative than I’d ever known him to be, Ethan settled an arm around me, tugging me against his side. His heat was just as seductive as his clean scent and the energy coursing through the air outside.
Forgetting all about trying to keep myself upright, I leaned in and reveled in the sense of security I found in his presence, the comfort I found in his strength.
There was just as much electricity crackling inside as there was outside. Ethan had to feel it, as powerful as it was. The very air we were breathing seemed alive, almost sizzling. We could fry an egg on it if we wanted to.
“We haven’t really spent much time alone,” I observed, cautiously easing my way into talking about all the things that remained unsaid between us.
He didn’t respond for a moment. And then, “No, we haven’t.” Short and sweet, and incredibly quiet. Tentative, almost, even though there was typically nothing tentative about Ethan.
“There are usually doctors or nurses or some of the guys from the team around.”
“Or Carter.”
“Or Carter,” I agreed.
“I feel safer when there’s someone else with us.”
That reaction made me blink with incomprehension. “Safer?”
He made a soft sound. “Because I won’t be tempted to do things I shouldn’t. Not if someone else is with us. But when we’re alone…”
An uncomfortable and exciting tingle filled my chest. My pulse quickened, and my breaths fell heavy from my lips. “What sorts of things?”
He didn’t respond, so I looked up and met his eyes. They were full of heat. “You know what sorts of things,” he finally said.
Suddenly, my mouth was dry. I licked my lips to wet them, but it didn’t do much other than draw his eye.
“I do,” I said with as much confidence as I could put into those two tiny words. “And I also know I want those things. I want them as much as you do. Maybe even more. Because I need to know…”
But I couldn’t finish the thought. I felt too raw to go there, even though Ethan was surely the safest man in the world for me to talk about these things with—the still-raw pieces of my soul. He was the only one I wanted to see those parts of me. The only one I felt safe enough with to expose the most broken shards, the shattered veneer of protection that had once existed around my heart.
“Need to know what?” Ethan asked a moment later, which provided me with just enough impetus to power through.
“I need to know what it’s like when I want it.”
“You’re killing me.” He clearly didn’t need me to explain further.
“You’re killing me,” I repeated. “We both want it.”
“I’m not going to rush you, Natalie. I won’t push you.”
“Maybe I want to push you and not the other way around. Maybe I want you to let me. Maybe I want to touch you. To taste you. To feel your hands on me. To put my hands on you.”
“Maybe I want to give in,” he rasped, but he looked like he wanted to take the words back.
There would be no taking those words back. Not on my watch.
“So give in,” I replied. “Let me touch you.”
He closed his eyes and let out the softest, most painfully erotic groan I’d ever heard.
Seizing the opportunity, I shifted my weight around and propped myself up on my knees, straddling his thighs.
“Natalie,” he said on a strangled sigh, but I cut him off by kissing him.
It was a tentative kiss, at first—a gentle brush of my lips over his, a soft swipe of tongue. I wanted to test him out, and he let me, even if every taut muscle in his body said he wanted to do nothing of the sort.
But when I slid my tongue past his teeth, he groaned and opened for me, falling back against the couch cushions and bracing my hips with his powerful hands while our tongues tangled.
I ripped at his tie and got it free, then flung it over my shoulder before fumbling with the series of buttons closing his shirt and getting enough of them undone to free the hollow of his neck. As soon as it was available to me, I lowered my lips to that spot, kissing and licking him there until his Adam’s apple bobbed seductively.
A crack of thunder sounded, and Snoopy whimpered and burrowed closer to us. Ethan groaned and picked me up, carrying me into my bedroom and kicking the door closed behind us. When he sat down on the edge of the bed, it was with me straddling his thighs, his hardness pulsing against the apex of my thighs with a seductive heat.
“Touch me,” I begged, continuing my quest to free all the rippling muscles of his chest and abdomen, my voice harsh and raspy.
“How?” His hands clenched against my hips, as if he needed to brace himself. “Where? Tell me what you want.”
“I want you.” It was the only coherent thought I could form, the only words my brain could come up with.
“Show me,” he said, his words almost inaudible over the frantic pounding of my heart.
I sat back, straddling his thighs, frustrated and frantic for more. But the heat in his expression soothed my battered nerves.
He reached for my hand with one of his own, guiding me to take his other wrist. “Show me what you want,” he repeated, more strongly this time.
But other than not Hayes, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.
I hesitated, my desire warring with my uncertainty and my insecurities.
Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I was rushing into Ethan’s open, willing arms before I should. Maybe I was just using him to fulfill a need, to help me prove to myself that Hayes hadn’t ruined me beyond repair, that I could handle being touched by a man as long as it wasn’t Hayes.
Except…that wasn’t entirely true. Because I wanted Ethan. I wanted all of him. Everything he could give me.
“We don’t have to do this,” Ethan said, breaking through the fog filling my thoughts. His eyes were filled with so much concern it felt like a sharp stab in my gut. “You don’t have to—”
“I want this,” I cut in. “I do. I want you.”
“You have me,” he said, and he made it sound as if there was so much more involved in those words than simply the physical.
But right now, I could only think of the physical side of things.
Touch.
Sensation.
Heat.
Allowing my thoughts to travel anywhere else would be too much. Too soon.
Too real.
He was right about that, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
“Show me what you want, then,” Ethan said.
My pulse pounding in my ears, my breathing shaky and shallow, I guided his hand to my breast. His large palm settled over me. He gently squeezed, and I closed my eyes with a soft sigh.
“More?” he asked.
I nodded.
He squeezed again, a bit harder this time, and my nipples hardened into tight balls.
I breathed in harshly against the sensation, allowing my head to fall back.
Ethan raised his other hand and covered my right breast with it, gently rolling his palm over my sensitive raised flesh.
“I want your mouth on me,” I said.
“Over your clothes?”
I shook my head and reached for the hem of my top. He helped me lift it over my head, and I tossed it to the floor. His hands settled on my ribs, and he pressed his lips to the curve of my breast that was visible just over the top of my bra. My hands shook as I reached behind me and undid the clasp, but everything about Ethan was sure and steady.
He was a rock. My rock.
My eyes trained on his, I dropped the straps and let them fall from my arms.
Then he lowered his gaze and studied me—not just my bare breasts but the scar on my abdomen, the hint of my tattoo that was visible over the top of my pants, the minor dip in my waist, the slight bump of my lower belly, the one Hayes had hated, the one that had never flattened no matter how many crunches I’d done over the years—all the imperfections that made me me.
“You’re so beautiful,” Ethan said just before he crushed his mouth to my breast.
He swirled his tongue around my nipple and suckled my taut nub, all the while rolling my other nipple between his thumb and forefinger so gently I almost couldn’t feel it. He kept one hand on my hip, holding me steady, keeping me grounded as my breathing turned ragged.
“More,” I pleaded. “I need more.”
“More how? What do you need more of?”
I needed more of Ethan, but I said, “Harder,” because I couldn’t quite figure out how to vocalize what I truly needed. The thought of putting it into words was enough to terrify me, and I didn’t want there to be any fear involved in this. I wanted to lose myself in him. To forget all about everything that was wrong in my world, in my life, and only focus on the here and now.
He gave me what I asked for, lightly scraping one nipple with his teeth and rolling the other between his fingers with more pressure, and the insistent pressure building between my thighs turned to liquid heat.
A sharp crack of thunder split the silence that had been filled with only our breathing and moans, followed by a long, low rumble that seemed to go on forever. The entire house shuddered and reverberated from the intensity of the storm, which only added to the electricity pulsing between us. The lights flickered and then went out, but it didn’t matter. We didn’t need our eyes to see; our hands and tongues could see for us.
He shifted his attention to my other breast, and I collapsed back against the pillows, dragging him down with me.
“More,” I pleaded, and I undid the button and fly of my jeans, dragging them down my hips before guiding his hand to my slick heat.
He gave me more, his mouth following the path of his hand. He licked and suckled, used his fingers and teeth and lips and tongue in ways I’d never experienced before, until I was rocking up my hips to meet him, my toes curling into the sheets as I cried out.
It was only when he wrapped me up in his arms a moment later, cradling me against his chest and whispering soothing words in my ear, that I realized I was actually crying. Hot tears dripped down my cheeks and landed on his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head. “No. Don’t be sorry. I don’t want you to be sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have gone so far.”
“Ethan.” I tipped his face up to meet mine, forcing him to look me in the eyes. “I wanted that,” I insisted.
“But—”
“I wanted it,” I repeated. “I want you.”
And before he could come up with some other reason he shouldn’t touch me, before he could devise an excuse to keep his hands off me any longer, I shifted off his lap and reached for his belt so I could undo the buckle, drawing the leather free from the loops.
“Natalie,” he ground out when my fingers fumbled with his button and zipper, the hard evidence of his arousal pulsing against my fingertips.
I shot my eyes up to meet his gaze. “I want you,” I repeated. “You told me you’d give me anything you can. I want you to give me this.”
“You already have me,” he said as I lowered his pants and freed his length.
“I want all of you.” Because I was almost positive he already had all of me.
Before he could come up with any more arguments, I dropped my mouth to place soft kisses over his crown, licking up the salty precum leaking from the tip.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I don’t expect you to—”
“I want this,” I cut in, just before sliding the pointed tip of my tongue along the ridged underside of his penis.
He let out a ragged groan, and I felt the mattress shift beneath us as he inched back to brace himself against the headboard. When I took his crown between my lips and slowly lowered my mouth over him, taking almost all of his length, a soft hiss of breath flitted through his teeth.
I kept waiting for his hand to fall on the back of my head, guiding me to do what he wanted, pushing me to take more of his length, forcing me into gagging on him—but it never came. Ethan kept his hands fisted in the sheets beside his body, allowing me to set the pace.
I felt almost drunk on the power he was granting me over him.
His cock swelled in my mouth, and his balls tightened in my hand. I knew he was close, so I kept up my pace until he pulled away from me, saying, “You’ve got to stop, baby, I’m going to come.” Then he hurried off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom, returning a few moments later with a warm, damp cloth that he passed into my hands.
Suddenly awkward and unsure of myself, I kept my eyes down as I cleaned myself off.
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed beside me, his weight causing the mattress to dip. “I shouldn’t have allowed that to happen,” he said slowly.
“Why not? We both wanted it.”
“What I want doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” I countered.
He sat there, the silence in the room heavy beneath the sounds of the thunderstorm raging outside.
I inched closer to him and reached for his hand. He allowed me to take it and twine our fingers together.
“I needed it,” I said slowly. “I need more of it.”
“I just don’t want to push you into things I want when you aren’t ready for them.”
“You’re not pushing me into anything, Ethan.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“Well, I am. Maybe that’ll have to be good enough for the both of us.”
“I want to give you what you need,” he said. “I want to take care of you, but I can’t put what I want first.”
“Not even if it’s what you need?” I said softly. “Don’t you count in all of this? After everything your father put you through—”
“Not even if it’s what I need,” he said, cutting me off and speaking into the dark stillness between us.
“But what if what I need is you?”
He didn’t have an answer for my question.