CHAPTER FORTY
“So, we need to have a little talk.”
Those were never the words a guy liked to hear from the woman he was dating. Or maybe dating. Or wanted to date.
Theresa smiled at him from across the kitchen table. “Ilya?”
“Not about the diner, huh?”
“It’s about us. And Dina Guttridge.”
He groaned. “Shit. Look, it was a stupid thing that happened once, two years ago. You can’t get more stereotypical than that whole thing. I delivered a package to her that they’d dropped off by accident at my house, she invited me in for an iced tea . . .”
“Spare me the details, please.” Theresa held up a hand. “I don’t care.”
“No?” He wanted to be relieved but eyed her cautiously.
“I don’t care about your previous poor judgment. No.”
Ilya blew out a small breath. “Okay . . . ?”
“She came over here earlier, warning me off you. Because you were not to be trusted.” Theresa raised an eyebrow and leaned back in her chair.
God, she looked gorgeous. Hair pulled up, minimal makeup, tight T-shirt, and jeans. Bare feet. Her toes had killed him a little when he came in the front door and saw her, and he’d never even been a foot guy. Everything about her seemed to affect him, though. Even the haughty look she was giving him. Maybe especially that.
“You’ve said something along those lines already,” Ilya said. “More than once.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
Ilya leaned across the table to take her hands, his thumbs rubbing gently across the backs. “I’m not saying you don’t have a point.”
He’d been hoping to make her laugh, and she did. He’d have kissed her except for the distance between them. He settled for linking their fingers.
Theresa looked down at their hands. “So here’s the thing, Ilya. I’m not sure I do trust you. But I want to. Okay? I want to try. This thing between us that we’ve been pretending didn’t mean anything for months, I want to give it a try.”
“Me, too. You can trust me on that.” This time, he did get up from his seat to lean across the table for a kiss.
“I’m going to try,” Theresa said, and took a deep breath as though her words had taken a lot of courage to say.
Ilya knew how that felt. He sat back in his chair. “I want you to be able to trust me. I believe you can.”
She smiled.
This time when he got up, he knocked the chair over in order to get to her. His mouth found hers. His fingers sank into her hair. He kissed her like a promise.
“I love the way you taste,” he told her.
Theresa laughed into his open mouth, then let her tongue slip along his as she drew him closer. Her chair creaked. His back and neck ached a little from the awkward position, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop kissing her. He slipped an arm behind her shoulders to get her up and out of the chair. He turned her until she sat on the edge of the table. He eased between her knees, his hands roaming over her back until one anchored at the nape of her neck. He kissed her as hard as he’d wanted to do the past couple of weeks while the flu had cock blocked him, and she kissed him with as much fierce hunger.
When she cupped him through his jeans, Ilya groaned her name. Her soft laughter sent another surge of arousal through him. He pushed into her touch, already aching from wanting her.
They hadn’t done more than kiss since the sex in the diner, and that had been before they’d had any sort of discussion or agreement about where they were going with all this. He didn’t want the second time to be on a kitchen table. “Wait . . .”
Theresa broke their kiss, her expression almost comical with surprise. “What?”
“Not here. I want this time to be . . . slower.” He kissed her until she responded and then withdrew to tease her with only the brush of his breath on her face. “I want to take my time. I want to make you crazy . . .”
“I’m already crazy,” she said in a rough voice.
“I want to make you lose your mind.”
She laughed huskily. “I have a bed upstairs, you know. You could take me up there. It has fresh sheets and everything.”
He cupped her face in his hands, searching her gaze. “You want this, Theresa?”
“Yes. Of course.” A shadow drifted across her expression. “Do you?”
He did, more than anything, but somehow it was going to be different this time. No hasty, furtive coupling, with both of them pretending it meant nothing. The idea of it, that they might be getting ready to make love instead of fuck, sent a series of tingling chills, sharp as shattered glass, up and down his spine.
He wanted this time to matter. More than that, he needed to be worth mattering to her. He kissed her again, softer this time.
“Yeah. I want to make love to you, Theresa. But upstairs. In a bed.”
She noticed his deliberate turn of phrase. He saw it in her eyes and the curve of her smile; he felt it in the way she kissed him slowly but without lingering. She pushed him gently away from her so she could get off the table, and then she took him by the hand and led him upstairs.
ÍIlya touched her with reverent hands. Not hesitant or uncertain, not fumbling, and not even particularly gentle, which Theresa loved, because the harder he held her, the better it felt. He touched her as though she were precious. He excavated her a layer at a time until she was revealed to him, nothing left to hide, but so much left to discover.
She murmured his name when he moved his mouth over her collarbone, the syllables of it hissing into a sigh at the nip of his teeth. She arched under the delicious sting, and he cupped her breasts so that he could kiss the nipples, one at a time. When he drew one into his mouth, sucking gently, Theresa cried out. Her hands were over her head, gripping the spindles of the creaking headboard.
“Make that noise again,” Ilya said as he slipped a hand between her legs to toy with her there. “Aah, God, babe, you’re so wet.”
She made the noise again, helpless to stop herself at the stroke of his fingers on her and the sound of aching desire in his voice. Ilya had promised her he was going to make her lose her mind, and she was well on her way. At the teasing pinch of his fingers between her legs, she let go of the headboard to dig her hands into his hair. She hadn’t meant for it to be a command, but she didn’t complain when he moved down her body, his mouth skimming over her bare flesh, to settle between her legs.
“Tell me you want this.” His breath gusted against her heat, making her incredibly aware of her arousal.
She licked her lips, forcing herself to make words. “You love that, don’t you? Making me say it.”
“I do.” He gave her a slow, exploratory lick and chuckled at her gasp, then muttered a cry when her fingers twisted in his hair. “Tell me you want my mouth on you.”
“I want . . . your mouth . . .” It was too much, trying to speak around the urge to moan.
He gave her what she’d asked for. Teasing flicks of his tongue that sent her close to the edge but not over it, then the slow, steady pressure of his lips. She was mindless with it, muscles tensing and the world going away until there was nothing but Ilya and the pleasure he was giving her. He was talking to her, words muffled as he brought her ever closer to climax with his mouth. She could not hear what he was saying, could not make sense of it, nor could she answer him with anything but the low, rasping noises that forced their way out of her throat.
She came, finally, in a series of pulses so strong the pleasure bordered on the edge of pain. She heard herself crying out, but it was the sound of Ilya’s answering muttered moans that tipped her into another wave of orgasm that hit hard on the heels of the first. It left her plundered.
She tasted herself on his kiss when he moved up her body, and she managed to open her eyes. His hardness rubbed her belly, and she shifted, meaning for him to slide inside her. Ready for it.
“Tell me that you want me,” he breathed.
She tipped her face to kiss him, adding a nibble on his chin. “I want you.”
Still, he hesitated, a confusing array of emotions moving over his face. Theresa frowned. “What?”
“I don’t have anything.”
She laughed, softly at first, then louder and louder until she bit off the giggles so she could kiss him again. Her hand moved between them, stroking, until he shook and groaned and pushed into her grip. She looked at him.
“I know it’s important to you,” Ilya began, his voice breaking as her hand moved.
“We’ve both had all the tests, right? We established that.” He nodded, and she kept her hand moving. It was her turn to tease him, and she reveled in it. “I’m on birth control, and I haven’t been with anyone since I got the all clear. You?”
“No . . . damn, babe, I’m not going to last long enough if you keep doing that.”
All it took was another shift of her body, a slight press on his shoulder, a wiggle, and he was inside her as easily as taking a breath. Ilya shuddered again, pushing deep. He buried his face against the side of her neck, and she felt his gasp and the press of his teeth on her.
“I want you,” she told him, urging him to move with her hands and the lift of her hips and the way she hooked her heels behind his calves. “I want you, I want you, I want you . . .”
Ilya pushed up on his hands, his thrusts getting deeper. Faster. His expression turned grim at first, but then he smiled as he looked down into her face. When she dug her nails into his ass, he gave a low groan, shaking, but never looked away from her eyes. She watched his pupils dilate. She felt him surge inside her.
“I want you,” Theresa whispered as Ilya slowed and finally stopped with a gasping breath.
“You have me,” he said.