Page 67 of The Last Dance You Saved
I had a life to go back to before it crumbled too.
So why did this feel like reality…and the life I’d left behind feel fake?
It was nearing midnight when I heard the quiet hush of footsteps on the stairs and doors closing down the hall from me. Just because some of his men had come in didn’t mean Rafe was back, but I couldn’t stand waiting anymore. Couldn’t stand making a circuit through the tiny room one more time.
If he wasn’t back, I’d find something else to do to fill the time and shut off my brain. I made my way silently down to the room below me where Rafe had moved his things the night before. Light bled out from under the door, and I thought of knocking, but I didn’t want to wake Fallon across the hall, so I simply turned the knob.
He was standing at the window, shirtless with a pair of sweats clinging to his lower body. His palm was on the glass, but he wasn’t looking outside. His head was bent, shoulders leaning forward, as if he was carrying the weight of a hay bale on his shoulders.
The click of the door shutting behind me had his head jerking up. Dark eyes met mine, worry and pain dancing with lust as he slowly watched me step closer, and that same heady desire that roared through me whenever he was near rushed back in. It pooled in my stomach and made me forget everything I’d come to say. All I wanted was to get lost for a few hours in the sinful promises we’d taunted each other with, if only to give him a respite from the worries dragging him down.
“I know we need to talk, but I’m not good company tonight,” he said. He picked up a glass of bourbon from the dresser next to him, tossed it back, and set it down empty.
“Let’s be honest, Slick. You haven’t exactly been burning up the air with your repartee at any time.”
Only the slight raise of his brow showed that he’d enjoyed my little dig.
I moved forward again, and this time, I didn’t stop until our bare feet were touching. Until the musky scent of him, soap and fields and bourbon, filled my lungs. “We do need to talk,” I said. “But right now, I think you need something else more.”
He watched as I slid my palms over the cuts and lines of his stomach, up over the dark hair sprinkled across his chest, along those strong, wide shoulders carrying the world. I pressed closer, sliding between his legs, brushing our hips together, and was rewarded with the hard length of him surging into my stomach. When I followed the path my hands had made with my lips, he inhaled sharply. A hiss of tortured pleasure.
“Sadie,” he grunted, and I ignored the warning in his tone, flicking a tongue over a dark nipple. He fisted my hair, dragging my head back so his eyes, ablaze with need, scorched into mine. “Tennessee, I won’t be gentle. I won’t be kind. I have too much burning me up inside tonight.”
“I don’t want gentle or kind. I want you as you are now—raw and gritty and tormented. Let me ease it all for a few hours.”
He stared for several long heartbeats, and then, his mouth slammed into mine. Just as he promised, it wasn’t gentle or kind or tender. It was agony and flame and deliciously rough, causing my core to clench and my pulse to race.
Teeth grazed and hands bit into my skin, digging deep and anchoring me to him.
Our breathing was harsh and feverish.
His kisses and his touches were savage and all the more beautiful because of it.
I surrendered everything to him. Control. Heart. Hope. I gave, and he took, inhaling me. His head dipped, finding the pulse beating wildly in my neck, nipping and sucking at it before continuing farther downward, and when his mouth ran into the neckline of my tank, he simply tore it from my body. Heedless of my gasp, he latched on to a hard tip waiting for him.
I moaned, fingers tangling in those locks bronzed by the sun, trying to find enough air to keep from drowning. When his mouth moved away from that tormented nipple, I whimpered in protest, and I felt him smile against my chest before he slid over to the other breast and gave it the same attention he had its partner.
Then, I was up in his arms, and in two long strides, he had tossed me on the bed and dragged my pajama bottoms and underwear off my legs. He flung them away and then slowly, thoroughly, took in every single inch of me.
“God, you’re beautiful.” He said it as if it caused him pain. As if the mere sight of me hurt. He even closed his eyes to block me out, thick lashes resting against bronzed skin. His chest heaved as if he’d run miles. Finally, his lids opened to reveal a delectable inferno waging inside him. One I wanted to devour me.
“Rafe.” His name was a tortured beg as my hand skimmed low over my stomach, seeking relief to the growing ache inside. He cursed under his breath, grabbed my wrists, and yanked them above my head as he landed on me, the delicious weight pressing me into the mattress.
I leaned up to take his mouth with mine, slanting to join them perfectly, and heat burst along our lips. A bonfire I wanted to flash and flare until I was nothing but ash. With one hand, he held my wrists captive while he pushed his chest up and away from me with the other.
“My way, Tennessee,” he growled. “My way or we stop.”
I wrapped my ankles around his calves, and the movement dragged his hard length right where I was aching for it to be. “Then, get to work, Slick.”
His lips curled up for all of two seconds before he leaned in and bit my lower lip hard enough it brought as much pain as it did pleasure. “I want to use both my hands to worship your body, darling. Can I trust you to leave yours where they’re at?” he asked.
“Why can’t I touch you too?”
“I’ll let you. Just not yet. My turn first,” he said.
For a moment, defiance flickered, but then, because I ached with a desperation that felt fatal if it went unfulfilled, I simply nodded. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have agreed to in that moment just to feel him on me. In me. Around me.
He slowly let go of my wrists, and when I knotted my fingers together and left them above my head, he smiled. A wicked, sinful smile that had lust spinning through my veins, pounding with the speed of a racehorse. And then he did just as he’d said he would. He worshipped every piece of me with hands and tongue and teeth until I was vibrating.
