Page 64 of The Wallflower Manifesto
That seemed to spurn him on, the pace increasing, his hands plucking and stroking at her breasts, his hips grinding into hers as he moved. He groaned with every touch, every motion, like each one was the first and most perfect.
She caught herself holding her breath, squeezing her eyes shut, clamoring toward some dangerous thing just out of sight, just out of reach.
He must have seen it too. His hands melted down to their joining, intensifying it, sliding in the slickness of her arousal to push her past the horizon, over the edge, off the cliff. He didnotclose his eyes, though he was obviously chasing pleasures just as overpowering.
Every time she managed to pull her lashes apart, to see him in the tiny gasps before sensation forced them shut again, he was fixed on her, watching her, intensity and unblinking focus on his handsome face.
And when she did finally tip over that threshold, he watched that too, sucking in a sharp breath and holding it in his chest as wave after wave crashed over her. He watched until he couldn’t anymore, until he was forced to let it take him as well, to drive him past the same point of oblivion.
He was frantic, his body unwound into desperate speed and demand until everything froze and he cried out too and fell onto her mouth for the descent, a final, slowing heartbeat of slowing, luxuriating strokes.
And then there was nothing left to do but collapse. Together.
CHAPTER 24
At some point, minutes or hours or centuries later, Abe regained his senses.
He winced at the necessity of opening his eyes, of moving his body at all away from the lovely soft warmth of Millie Yardley’s entangled limbs. It was a crime that he felt he had to, of course, and it would only be for a couple of minutes, but he still damned and damned again the universe for it.
He was careful. Quiet.
He put a pillow under her head, smiling gently to himself as he stroked her damp brown curls, some still half pinned to her head. He covered her with his favorite quilt, tucking it around her curled-up body, and kissed the sharp line of her cheek.
Tomorrow, he thought, his sheets would smell like fresh pears, just like she did.
He only needed to do a few essential things. To douse the candles downstairs. To lock the door. And to start a small fire in the sitting room to dry her clothes, which he had to hunt for around his room like easter eggs.
Because that disarray was also his fault, it only made him smile again.
He prowled around the house naked, rapidly handling his checklist of tasks. If Freddy were to come back at this moment and catch him slithering around in the nude like some perverse bandit, well, then so be it.
He’d rather that than miss even a minute of being in bed with her again.
The last thing he did was crack open the moonlit window next to the pillows, letting the sweet, cool breeze from the aftermath of that first summer shower whirl its way into the room. It gave him more cause to huddle under the blankets with her, to pull her close and keep her warm.
And he fought sleep, because sleep would mean missing this. Missing precious, golden seconds of it.
When she stirred a little, rolling over and blinking up at him sleepily, he thought, with no small amount of guilt, that it was the volume of his thoughts that had disturbed her.
He dropped a lingering kiss on her brow, using this opportunity to divest her of those sharp little pins in her hair. He’d never seen it down, and it was wet and tangled from the combination of the rain and his fervor.
She let him, watching him with a soft, bemused smile on her face, as though she couldn’t quite comprehend both what they’d done and what the aftermath looked like. She looked like she had expected something far louder and less pleasant than this pocket of warmth and gentle touch.
“What did it mean, that thing you said?” she murmured, fingertips finding his chest. “Go…go furry …”
He paused, looking down at her in surprise. “When did I say that?”
“When I …” She paused, lowering her lashes with a curve of her lips, a sharpening of the apples of her cheeks. “When I sat on the bed,” she decided, though she clearly meantwhen I took off the last of my clothes.
“Oh.” He chuckled, working out one final, stubborn pin with the tips of his fingernails. “It was … a prayer.”
“A prayer?”
“More or less,” he replied, getting the pin free and tossing it away.
She narrowed her eyes, tilting her face up in the moonlight. “Did you get what you prayed for?”
“I did not,” he replied fondly, laughing in earnest now. “It meansGod help me. God had already lost all power opposite you, Millie Yardley.”
