Chapter Sixteen
The depth of this man’s will scared her to the soles of her feet. She already knew he didn’t back down.
“Can you leave me alone so I can think?” She lifted her hands from his distracting massage. It was too persuasive.
He waited a beat, then let his hands fall to his sides. “If that’s what you want.”
Wow. So much for his single-minded pursuit. She turned away, swallowing a surprise ache that arrived in her throat. She absently plugged in her laptop so it would charge and kept her back to him, waiting for him to leave.
And waited.
When she turned, she saw he had moved to study her bookshelf. It was a tall, skinny thing she had found second hand in Haven and had painted yellow because there’d been some leftover high-gloss from the pantry.
He cocked his head, reading the titles. They were mostly her mother’s novels and craft books along with a few keepers written by other authors. None of it wore her name, but his interest still hit all her tripwires against intrusiveness.
“I meant, could you actually leave?”
“I know, but how does leaving and letting you think I’m getting busy with Ilke reassure you I’m only interested in you? If you want to lie down and stare at the ceiling, or go run a bath, have at it. I’ll read.” He tilted a book out of the line, then picked it up and flipped it over to peruse the back. “Is this the one about the brother of the jewel thief?”
“What?” Her brain went from trying to decide if he was being sexist or considerate with his suggestion she have a bath, when all her break-in sirens went off. “How do you know about that book?” She hurried across and took it from him.
“Is that a special copy? I was going to buy it online. I just haven’t got around to it.”
“What do you mean? You can’t buy it!” This was—She couldn’t—“No! You’re not reading my mother’s books!” Had he read My Heart’s Naked Thief? Noooo.
“Probably won’t get through all of them, no. That sounds like quite an undertaking,” he said dryly. “But three so far. I liked the thief one. Read it on the plane. Sexier than I expected, not that I’m complaining. Why are you—Are you crying?” He sounded appalled.
She shook her head so hard she rattled her own brain, but there was no stopping what was happening. It was so stupid, but her emotions had already been on a knife’s edge after their big confrontation after a really stressful week. Now her stupid eyes were on fire. Tears welled up and began to leak.
She blinked and blinked, feeling the spatter on her cheekbones while her lips trembled and her throat shut. She fought the pressure inside her so hard, her nose started to run. She sniffed, which turned into a jagged, suppressed sob.
“Don’t. Okay?” She rushed across to her nightstand and grabbed a tissue. “Just don’t.”
“Don’t what? I don’t understand.” Did he have to sound so cautious? Like she was a bottle of nitro? “You’ve talked about her before. If it upsets you…”
“Don’t read her books.” She avoided his attempt to take her by the arms, his light touch on her more than she could take right now. “Don’t buy them. Just don’t. How did you even—”
She grabbed another three tissues from the box, swiping it across her wet cheeks and blowing her nose.
“You get a free book when you sign up.” He sounded flummoxed. “The point is to read it and want to read the next one. Isn’t it?”
“You signed up for her newsletter? Why?”
“I was curious.”
“About my mother?”
“About you.”
She flung around, appalled. Exposed.
“I wanted to see if I could tell which parts you had written,” he admitted with a sheepish quirk at the corner of his mouth.
The hot-cold flush of humiliation took root in her.
Her mother’s fans, and by extension the portion of the interweb she interacted with, was a mostly safe community. There were occasional trolls, but if they attacked anyone, they attacked her mother. That got Glory’s back up and she took them on in the capacity of being her mother’s manager, but never felt like she herself was at risk. She was a footnote, reluctantly acknowledged and only because her mother had gone ape-shit insisting on giving her credit. Literally no one cared that she had written parts of her mother’s books. Glory liked it that way.
To have Rolf go looking for her contribution, maybe see right through the prose to her…
“Why would you do that? Why do you even want to know that?” Her voice came out like crinkled tissue paper. Her chest felt compressed, her sternum fractured.
“I don’t know. It was just something—”
“All in good fun?” she interjected, voice touching strident on the way to hysterical.
“No.” He grew very somber, searching her expression. “I’m not trying to—What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“You tell me!” She had to rub at the ache between her breasts, it was so painful. And blow her nose again. This man was put on this earth to destroy her!
“Calm down and tell me why you’re upset.” He reached out to stroke her arms.
Her psyche was so raw, it hurt to have him touch her, making the press of tears all the harder to resist. At the same time, he sounded so gentle she could only stand there dumbly, thinking that she was behaving like a world-class idiot when she had been so tough until this point. But of all the things he could do to her…
“That’s what that guy did. The jerk in high school.” She was a damned sprinkler, blinking and flicking tears all over her face. “He got hold of my notebook and read it to the whole class. I was trying to write like my mother. The teacher was out of the room and told me I should have been doing my math anyway.”
His hands stopped moving on her arms. “It was your diary?”
“It was a love scene. First person. I used the name of a boy in the class I had a crush on.” That poor boy had kept a wide berth until graduation and beyond, publicly shamed himself. “Everyone laughed and no one ever looked at me the same. I know I should be over it, but—” She swiped the inside of her wrist under her eye. “I don’t want you to do that. Read it then look at me like I’m a joke.”
“I wouldn’t. Is that how I’m looking at you right now?”
How the hell would she know? She couldn’t see through her blurry eyes. She brushed him off and grabbed more tissues. Mopped up. Drew big breaths, but nothing was going to erase what an absolute, over-reactive idiot she was. Him stepping out with Ilke the sex goddess? She could take that on the chin, but he touches a book that happens to contain a few descriptive passages she wrote and she has a mental breakdown. Very adult, Glory. Good job.
He came to stand behind her and massaged her shoulders.
“I’ll admit these aren’t books I would have picked up on my own, but they’re entertaining. Funny in the right way. If those are parts your mother wrote, then I can see where you get that chirpy mouth of yours.”
She sucked in her bottom lip, not exactly relaxing under his touch. Her heart was rolling around loose in her chest, making her feel trembly all over.
“If you don’t want me to read them, I won’t.” His thumbs dug soothingly between her shoulder blades, hitting pressure points that unraveled her tension. “But it’s a mean thing to ask of me because I want to know what happens.”
Seriously? She sniffed, but managed to pull it together, starting to soften and feel rational again.
He drew her closer, so his torso warmed her back and his strong forearms belted her close. His chin rested against her hair, mouth above her ear. “I would never mock you for working hard. Tell me you believe that much.”
She shrugged, shifting herself against him then leaning into his strength. “I want to.”
His hands moved on her arms, comforting and sensual. “Is this why you don’t want people to know about us? Because you were teased for having sexual feelings?”
She let out a choke of humorless laughter, pulling away. “What ‘us,’ Rolf?”
She turned to confront him, but wound up accidentally tangled in his steady brown stare.
He pretty much pounced with those whiskey-colored orbs, holding her the way a cat held a mouse, caged and heavy, claws out, but no damage done unless she decided to struggle against him. He wasn’t even touching her!
Beneath the implacability, however, was gentleness. He was looking at her differently and it made her insides coil and writhe with self-consciousness.
There was an ‘us.’ She couldn’t deny it when she had just told him something she had never told anyone else. It felt like a surrender, acknowledging this fragile connection. She bit her lips and dropped her gaze.
He touched her chin in a light caress. “Boys being jackasses are fine if they only hurt themselves. He shouldn’t have done that to you. It was cruel. I want you to forget about him. He’s not worth this heartache you’re carrying around.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course, it is. Think of me instead.”
Laughter burst out of her, releasing the angst and pain from the huge bubble taking up space inside her. It was a strange relief, allowing her to breathe, but the walls of that bubble had protected her. Now they were gone. She was completely open to him and shaken by how vulnerable she felt.
His mouth twitched with self-deprecation, so sexy inside the dark frame of his beard. But deep down, she knew he wasn’t joking. He was that full of himself and she positively yearned to be so self-assured. The ridiculous thing was, she probably would think of him from now on, whether she consciously wanted to or not. One way or another, this man was going to leave scars on her soul far deeper than stupid Garrett Waters ever had.
Rolf trailed the backs of his fingers down her throat in a caress that was almost too sweet to bear. When his touch came up again, he tilted her chin, waiting for her gaze to meet his.
“Kiss and make up?”
Her lips were trembling, her mind teetering between desire and self-preservation. She had spent the last week reassuring herself that he had spared her by ignoring her. Now her heart pounded in trepidation as she asked herself whether she wanted to try.
To achieve what? Did he really think this was going to turn into marriage and two-point-three kids? She had already put off her own life enough, not that she expected Rolf to derail whatever she eventually decided. They would fall apart long before she was ready to go after her own dreams.
Maybe knowing that made this worth the risk.
And maybe she was rationalizing because it felt so good when he was nice to her. She wanted this side of him for herself, not going to Ilke or someone else.
Her shoulder twitched in a very tiny hitch of assent, just enough to remove the tightness from around his eyes and have him wetting his lips before he pressed his mouth over hers.
The first contact was a snap of electricity, sharp and painful. She caught her breath even as he soothed, “Shh,” and settled his mouth more thoroughly over hers. He was so careful and gradual, she almost didn’t realize how quickly the kiss turned deep and all-consuming. She only realized with a small shock that his hand was in her hair, his lips fused to her parted ones and longing was filling her up.
She moaned, agonized by how intense this became. And so quickly. His sorcery and skill took her over every time. His arms tightened around her, squeezing her in as though he wanted to absorb her. Just as she began to feel smothered, she felt the racing pound of his heart against her flattened hand.
She expected him to be hard. She hadn’t expected him to be excited. Affected. She jerked her head back and he dragged in a breath, clouded gaze coming back into focus, expression setting into a fierce, possessive mask. Not triumphant, but with an air of something else, like craving or desperation.
She leaned in to him and angled her mouth as she offered it. He returned to their kiss with a shudder and a quiet growl. She wanted to analyze his reaction, but the way he devoured her erased all thought. She was instantly drunk on the liquid pleasure he poured through her, blatantly offering her tongue and gorging on the taste of him. Her hips arched, rubbing her mound against his hardness, trying to ease the growing ache there.
When her hands strayed under his shirt, greedily claiming hot, taut skin, he ripped his shirt off with a muscular twist and grabbed her close again, swooping to claim her mouth as if the interruption had been far too much for him to bear. Then her T-shirt had to go along with her bra, so they were naked torso to naked torso.
She slid her arms up, wanting the sensation of his hairy chest against her breasts. He picked her up, hot hands catching the backs of her thighs and pulling them around his waist, urging her to cling to him as he took three steps, then pressed her to the wall. His hot chest pressed hers and his hips settled neatly between her thighs. Then he got down to the real business of rubbing against her, making her squirm.
“Rolf,” she gasped, breaking away to catch her breath only to have him nuzzle her neck and lick her throat, then suck her earlobe. The textures of lips, tongue, and beard made her skin prickle and her body shake. The pressure of his hips sent more waves of delight to the place where he rocked and rocked.
“My room,” he muttered. “I need a condom.”
“Drawer,” she told him. She had bought them in Haven that first morning, thinking…
She couldn’t think. All she knew was that he wasn’t moving. He only shifted his grip on her thighs to open her legs more and kept moving his hips in that abbreviated thrust.
It was more intense now. More focused. Her flesh was so hot. The seam of her jeans added to the friction. The way he watched her took it to downright erotic.
“I can’t take it,” she said, so close she was biting her lip.
“No?” He gently released one leg, then the other, steadying her while she tried to find her balance.
A strangled noise of disbelief left her. Anguish. She had been so close.
His mouth twisted with dark knowledge and he pressed his open mouth against her neck, sucking until it started to hurt, then he lifted his head to stare into her eyes.
“It’s like bloodlust and you like it. How the hell are either of us supposed to walk away? Hmm?”
She couldn’t walk period. She couldn’t even speak. She stood there dumbly as he yanked open her jeans and rolled them down to her ankles, taking her underwear at the same time.
Then he pinned her to the wall again, this time with his mouth pressed to her, tongue dipping to separate her lower lips, then flicking and flicking as wet heat flooded into her loins.
His firm hands ran down her thighs, then up, urging her to open her legs further. His thumbs climbed higher, dug into the tendons at the very tops of her thighs, spreading the wetness he found, spreading her so she had no defenses against the thorough way he claimed her.
Without the cold wall at her back, she would have fallen over. She skimmed one hand restlessly against it, searching for something to steady her. The other she clasped in his hair, lifting into the thrusts of his tongue as her arousal intensified. She was making lurid noises. Her breasts hurt, they felt so neglected, but—“Oh, fuck.”
He pushed a thumb inside her. It wasn’t enough, but the way he moved it in and out of her as he sucked on her clit had her shuddering with climax that was both sweet and powerful and not nearly enough.
“What are you doing to me?” she gasped, rolling her head against the wall when he rose before her.
His answer was to cup her breast, circle his wet thumb around the tip, then he sucked the hell out of her nipple. By the time he had taken the other with an equal lack of mercy, she was panting. Gripped in fresh arousal. Willing to do anything for him. To him. With him.
He leaned his forearms on either side of her head and nuzzled her lips with his own. “I can’t get enough of the way you taste.”
She reached to open his jeans, seeing a flash of something in his eyes as she burrowed her hand into the pulsing heat behind his fly. He caught his breath and went stiff all over.
“I’m liable to lose it before they’re off.”
“Really?” She squeezed the thick shape that filled her palm. “Are you terribly aroused?” Her stroke of him was slow and deliberately light. “Would you like my mouth here?”
All of him seemed to contract, right to the pupils of his eyes. His nostrils flared as he steadily let out the breath he’d gathered in a shocked suck.
“Be careful with teasing me, schatzi. I will always take it further than you could ever hope to.”
“I wasn’t teasing. Equal opportunity.”
“Rain check.” He grasped her neck and tilted up her chin so he could lick her throat. Then he tilted his head against hers, looking down at where she exposed his flushed cock and smoothly stroked him. Her breasts were trembling with each of her breaths, her nipples sharp as pink diamonds. When he touched her bush, his fingers slid easily into sultry heat and drew patterns in the dampness on her inner thighs. “I’m going to fuck you so long and hard, you’ll feel empty when I’m not inside you.”
He really was a savage Viking of a man.
“I already do.”
He picked her up again. This time, when she twined her bare legs around his waist, she felt the abrasion of his jeans and the rub of his naked shaft against her as he walked across to the bed. He lowered her onto her back, then reached to the night table, attention more on the needy flesh between her splayed thighs than what he was doing, but the condom eventually got rolled down to the root.
His knee hit the mattress between hers.
“Missionary? How vanilla.” Her joke came out in a shaken voice, revealing the emotions she was trying to hide.
“We’re going to work our way through all the flavors.” He slid into her, slow and easy, but all the way. He rocked to be sure they were locked as tightly as possible. “Then we’re going to start all over and do it again.”