CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He wasn’t a photographer, but he didn’t need to be to know she was a breathtaking subject. Gorgeous, real, and heartbreaking. Written in her eyes was a mix of emotions—trepidation, courage, excitement, determination…. He tried to capture them all as she tugged her black sweater over her head, then unbuttoned her jeans.

She didn’t pose or mug for the camera. She simply did, and he simply shot.

She reached for the zipper of her jeans and worked it open.

“Mmm. It’s getting harder to concentrate,” he murmured as he snapped a shot of her undressing.

She laughed, and he caught that on film, too. “Harder. Ha ha,” she said with a flirty smile. That was captured for posterity, also—her playful side shining through. He caught every moment of her getting ready for him.

Her eyes met the lens, as if she were able to peer behind it to see him. Even though he was the one with the camera, somehow he felt studied at the same damn time. She was so fucking knowing, observant through her bones, down to her marrow, even when being photographed. Those green irises held him captive as she gazed at him, taking her time undressing, pushing the denim of her jeans down one hip, then the other, giving him a strip show.

She wiggled her eyebrows. Licked her lips.

His chest rumbled as his dick hardened. “That’s what I was talking about earlier. You enjoying yourself.”

“I am.”

“I want you to enjoy yourself with me.”

“I do.” She let her jeans fall to the floor. She stood in her black bra and panties, and he snapped an image of that, too, as his skin grew hotter and desire flashed inside him.

“You like it when I take your picture?”

She nodded.

“Then lie back on the bed. Hair on the pillow. That’s one of my favorite looks of yours. All those crazy red strands spilling across the white pillowcase.”

“Tell me why you like that,” she said, scooting back on the bed, assuming the pose.

“Because you’re vulnerable and raw. Because you look real, and sexy, and you look like you want me.”

She swallowed, and he snapped quickly, cataloguing her reactions. “I do want you.”

“Let yourself want me,” he said quietly, capturing more as she reached to unhook her bra, then more as her breasts spilled free.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his erection straining against his jeans. “So fucking turned on. Can’t concentrate on the picture.”

“Don’t concentrate. Just shoot,” she said, as she tucked her thumbs into her underwear, and he hit the button again, his length thickening as a heavy need thrummed in him. The need to have her. To take her.

She pushed down her panties, revealing the soft auburn landing strip. His mouth watered. He wanted to rub his face against it, to feel her slickness on his jaw. To taste her heat on his tongue. He groaned but somehow managed to click again and again, as she skimmed off her panties and lay naked on a hotel bed.

“Open your legs,” he instructed.

She raised her knees, and let them fall open.

Gripping the camera harder, he swallowed thickly. Her pussy was so fucking pretty, so goddamn ready for him. “Don’t let anyone else ever take your picture like this,” he said, as possessiveness stormed through him. He hated the thought of anyone ever seeing these photos, let alone seeing her naked. Thank God the pictures were on her camera, which meant they’d be safe where they belonged.

“Never,” she said in a heated whisper. “No one ever has,” she added. “This is only for you.”

He inhaled sharply, her meaning registering. She was giving him something her husband had never had. Something that was a first.

Now.

Fucking now.

He couldn’t take it anymore.

In a flash, he set the camera on the bureau, and unbuttoned his shirt.

With her index finger, she beckoned him. He recorded that image in his mind—her calling him to her side. Him heeding her wish. He’d play those few seconds over and over again. The story of his heart, given long ago, only to her. “Come to me,” she said. “Join me. Fuck me like you wanted to when you were taking the pictures.”

He shoved off his jeans. “On your stomach then,” he said, and didn’t take his eyes off her as she flipped to her belly. With her cheek pressed to the pillow, she watched him. Watched him as he stripped off his boxers and as he reached to stroke his cock, hissing in a breath because it felt so fucking good to touch himself as she stared, her eyes flaming with lust. But something else, too. Longing, desire, and also a new kind of freedom, it seemed. Like she was finally letting herself feel everything.

She lifted her rear, inviting him home.

“You,” he gritted out as he climbed on the bed and brought his dick to her ass, rubbing it against the soft flesh of her rear. She moaned, rising up into him as his hard length slid between her cheeks, like a filthy tease of what he wanted to do to her someday. She pushed back, and he filed that reaction away in the dirty vault to bring out again when they were both ready. For now, he moved lower, gliding the head of his dick against her heat. Fuck, she was slick and wet, and so damn ready for him. Her soft velvet folds were like a beacon, and his dick pointed its way home.

“I want you so much. I love wanting you. It feels so good,” she said, her eyes on his, and he fell even harder for her as she let herself open up to him, and to pleasure, and to this chance to feel again, to live again, and hell, he hoped maybe, just maybe, to love again. He covered her with his body, and she let out the sexiest purr, then the most intoxicating moan as he pushed the head of his dick into her slippery sweet entrance. He sank inside in one slow, deep, decadent move. So snug—so fucking perfect for him. They moaned in unison. She fit him deliciously, and he couldn’t imagine not having her like this.

“Did you like it when I took your picture?” he asked once he was fully nestled in her.

“God, yes,” she panted.

He pushed deeper. “Why? Why did you like it so much?”

She moaned. “Because I love being naked with you. I love being with you. You make me feel so good.”

“Just let me make you feel this way. Let me.”

“I will. I am. Oh God, please.”

As he fucked her like that, slow and unhurried, she moved with him, shifting her hips, aligning her body, sliding against him. He cupped her tits, squeezing, then pinched the nipples.

She gasped as he tugged at them, and that drove him. Burying himself deeper in her, he gripped her hair in his hand.

“Yes,” she said, urging him on, and he knew she meant both the fucking and the tugging. He wrapped those gorgeous red strands around his fist. “Hard. Pull hard.”

Yanking her hair, he pulled her head back, raising it off the pillow.

“Oh God, yes, like that, like that.”

“You like it rough?”

“With you, I do. So rough.”

He gave it to her the way she wanted. Driving in deep. Gripping her hard. Fucking her relentlessly.

With each thrust, she cried in pleasure. With each pinch, she groaned his name. With every nip of his teeth, she gushed.

And he was consumed. Utterly consumed.

Sex with her was a revelation. It was as if he’d discovered life on another planet, to know that it was possible to have this kind of sex. Savage yet tender. Cruel but gentle. To know she wanted it the same way. Her sounds told him she wanted to feel it everywhere. In her body. On her skin. In her heart. Oh God, he fucking hoped she wanted him in her heart. So deep in her heart that he could never be removed. Always. Like he was the end of the line for her. Just like she was for him.

Love me, he wanted to say. Just fucking love me.

But he couldn’t say that. Not now. Not yet. Instead, with her hair tight in his hand, and her throat exposed, he gripped her shoulder, digging his thumb into her collarbone.

“Like that, just like that,” she cried out, this time in French, in that heated way she spoke when she was close to the edge. Her pussy clenched around his shaft, so tight, so fucking perfect.

“And this?” he asked, biting down on her shoulder. Love me.

“Oh God.”

He thrust harder. Brought his lips to the shell of her ear. Spoke harshly. “Do you want me to leave marks? Ones that say you’re mine? You’re fucking mine. I want to fuck you till you’re mine.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” she urged, and he let himself believe she was answering his greatest wish. I’m yours.

He pressed his lips hard to her neck, his teeth biting down, digging in as she went crazy beneath him, rocking and thrusting and losing all control as she cried out and came undone in a fevered frenzy.

Then his balls tightened, and his vision blurred. The rarest pleasure, the kind that came from total carnal bliss, surged in his bones, igniting him until he came long and deep inside the woman he loved.

He just fucking loved her.

And it was so goddamn hard not to tell her, in her language or his. He tried to swallow the words, to choke them down, but the moment got the better of him. “I’m so mad about you. So completely crazy for you. All the time. I can’t stop this feeling,” he whispered, barely scratching the surface of how he felt.

She tensed all over. Then she scooted out from under him, her hands on his chest, her eyes meeting his. “You speak French. You speak perfect French.”

Fuck.

He hadn’t meant to say it in French. He hadn’t meant to let on he’d understood everything he’d heard her say in her native tongue.