Page 53 of Crossed By the Stars
“It’s just sexual tension, Armaud. Nothing more. We had one half of a screw one time in a bed in Benita’s chateau. You never gave us a chance to get it out of our systems. You always ran.”
A knife twisted in my gut. I had run. But the mention of the time I’d woken up with her mouth around me made me go hard instantly, pulse increasing. The memory of what she tasted like when I’d flipped her on her back and lost myself to my tongue between her legs made me want to repeat that performance, to give her relief without having her move her sore body to receive it.
“Your theory is, if we’d continued to make love to each other up against every piece of furniture and wall we found, we’d have already moved on?” I asked, my voice deepening as each word pummeled me with fantasies. Images of doing just that. Taking her on every piece of furniture in this room…in the cottage…in every single building I owned.
Jada shrugged. “We’ve both gotten tired of every other person we’ve been with.”
She wasn’t any other person I’d been with. She was the aching void I’d tried unsuccessfully to fill.
“You’re wrong,mon bijou,” I said, tossing the book aside, moving in closer to her, careful of her bruised body but putting myself right up against her. I looked down into her eyes flickering with a desire that caused a flame to burst inside me. “The one taste we had of each other proved the goddamn opposite. If I was fully inside you, I’d never want to let you walk away. I’d want to have you tied to my veins to inhale whenever I had a chance to breathe. I’d want our skin permanently grafted together so we’d never be apart.”
“You’re sick, Armaud,” she said.
Her hand curled around my bicep. I wasn’t sure if she’d intended to push me away or pull me closer, but instead, it just rested there, the warmth of her coasting over me, the smell of her filling my lungs. Lemongrass and mint.
“It’s how a man should feel about a woman,” I told her, the longing in her eyes an echo of what crawled through me.
“Possession isn’t love,” she responded.
“It isn’t possession if the feeling is mutual…if you needed me tied to your very being as well.”
My hand trailed a path up her arm, over her shoulder, and to her neck. I gripped the back of it, my thumb grazing her cheek, careful to skip her wounds.
“What you’re talking about is an unhealthy obsession,” she said.
“I don’t disagree that the line between wild love and obsession is a very fine one. Sometimes you find yourself on one side, and sometimes you find yourself on the other.”
“I don’t want that,” she replied, but her hand tightened on my bicep, pulling me ever so slightly closer, and her eyes landed on my mouth again.
“No.You want disposable men because then you won’t ever have to face your issues with power and control that your father built into you. You don’t have to face loving someone and risking them betraying your love.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment before opening them again with a blaze of fire shooting out. “Prove me wrong.”
It was guttural and pained, torn from somewhere deep inside her soul, and I couldn’t resist. I placed my lips on hers and instantly combusted. Flames licking through every single part of my soul. Devouring me. Forcing me to devour her.
I’d intended it to be gentle, a simple kiss for a wounded body and soul, but that changed the moment our mouths met. Years of denying this moment had me almost snarling at my need for her, pushing fiercely into her lips that met mine with the same level of power and force. She nipped at my bottom lip, and I took the opening to plunge my tongue into her mouth, licking, demanding, commanding that she return the need and want and desire with her own. And she did, sweet tongue ravaging mine, sucking, pulling, banging along the soft inner recesses of our mouths as if it was our bodies banging along the walls.
I dragged the covers down and slid my hand under the sleepshirt, gliding over the gentle slope of her waist and finding her breast. I cupped it, massaging and twisting the pebbled peak so that she gasped out. She threw back her head, and I trailed my tongue down her neck, the snowy expanse calling for me to leave a mark. I bit her, and she moaned again. Her hand slid under the tailored T-shirt I’d worn for the drive, nails digging into my skin at my waist.
I prided myself on my lovemaking being so tantalizingly slow and methodical that the women I was with begged for my next touch, butwith Jada, I couldn’t seem to find the control I normally used. I was all fire and want and need that seemed driven by something outside of my body. Outside of the room. By the forces of nature themselves.
She attempted to throw her leg across my thigh, to tug us closer, and the movement caused her to cry out with pain. A sharp grimace crossed her face that instantly had me pulling away. I let her go completely and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling while my body burned. My breath was still ragged, and I couldn’t look at her, because if I did, I’d return to consuming her. Without even glancing her way, I felt her body curl up on itself. I didn’t know if it was because of the pain or because of the perceived rejection of my pulling away.
I couldn’t have her think that way again, so I rolled back onto my side and met her gaze. Fucking mistake. It was full of lust but also fear. Fear that I’d hurt her again, because I’d already done so several times in our lifetime together.
“I can’t do this,” I said, and her eyes closed. I reached up and tilted her chin toward me. “Not while you’re hurt. Not while you can barely move without crying out in pain.”
Her eyes slowly opened, reading mine, trying to figure out the double meaning behind my words, but there were none. Only me, telling her the truth. I wanted this. I wanted her. I didn’t know what the fuck that would do to my relationship with my family orÉclair, but I couldn’t walk away and leave her to face the wolves on her own again.
Jada
BIG BAD HANDSOME MAN
“With his rugged good looks yeah he's got me hooked
Got me where he wants me to be.”
Written & Performed by Imelda May
