Page 27 of Rejected
Laurie sighed and pulled her up, clean off the water, hoisted her onto him, and kissed her more hungrily, more desperately. Suddenly, this change came over him, and while he had been gentle until now, he became desperate, frantic. His mouth opened and closed over hers, tasting her, stopping short of biting her lip. He was like a drowning man inhaling air after three days lost at sea.
He murmured her name over and over again as he held her folded into his arms, pressing her body into his chest, and she leaned her head as far back as she could to enjoy as much of him as possible.
The ripples of weakness and—pleasure? Yes, pleasure—that were washing over her were so delicious they made her ache with a burning dullness she never wanted to stop.
I do not want this to end.
Finally, it did. The ocean of pleasure and longing that was as exquisite as it was excruciatingly painful was over in a second, leaving her disoriented and hungry. She opened her eyes. Laurie’s face was inches above hers. She could barely stand to look at him, he was so beautiful. His eyes, hooded, dark with desire and hunger, his lips absolutely ravaged, destroyed by her.
He let her slide down his body and land on the ground, and then he just stood there, panting, a wet,Greek god of a man, hanging upon her every expression, her every word.
“That was…” she tried to say, but could go no further. Her heart was beating so fast, she could not breathe. Could not think.
She had to concentrate on growing bones back inside her body—on relearning how to stand by herself. It was most odious.
“I need more,” he panted.
She did too.
She told him she did, only with her eyes, and he understood immediately. With a relieved sigh, he buried his head in her neck.
“Miss St. Claire,” he murmured in a completely sensual way she had not thought him capable of. “Please. Save me from this torment.”
He trailed his mouth over the delicate skin of her throat, his lips sending waves of heat down the length of her whole body. She moaned softly and his legs trembled. He spread them further apart and planted them on either side of her body, so that he could keep his balance in the shallow water, but she could feel him shaking with her every sigh, barely able to keep himself from falling to his knees.
He is the one about to faint now.
I did that. I did that to him, as he did it to me.
She had never felt like this, so small beside a man, and yet so utterly powerful. So dizzyingly in control of his every breath, every move. She turned her head, offering him her lips again, and he descended upon them with such hunger, it was as ifshe was about to be devoured. Or at least, she hoped she was.
He kissed her until she could not breathe, and neither could he, until their mouths felt melded together. Until she could not remember what she had been doing her whole life if she hadn’t been kissing her best friend.
When he started to explore the wet skin of her arm, he seemed to forcibly stop himself with a huge effort. Their lips parted, and he held himself slightly apart from her, as if he did not trust himself to keep touching her.
As if this was a point after which there would be no return.
“It will never be enough, Jo,” he rasped, and his voice shook as a man’s does when he has been stretched to his very limit of endurance. “Never, until the end of time.”
She murmured something unintelligible. She had definitely lost the power of speech.
How had I not known this? I who have read so many books?
Thiswas what kissing was? This terrible, soul-crushing desire that started a fire in one’s stomach and did not end until it consumed one whole? This was what the poets all talked about? This fainting, this hungering, this burning?
This feeling alive?
No wonder no one ever wanted women to know about it until it was too late—and they were married to the highest bidder. No wonder it had started wars,set worlds on fire, and inspired the world’s greatest novels and poems—
“I have been building my willpower for years,” Laurie gasped, “and you destroyed it with one look. You—I have been pulled from the depths of despair into the greatest joy known to man.”
Oh no.
Please don’t say—
“You scared me before, Jo,” he went on, “as I have rarely been scared in my life. But you have thought better of it now, haven’t you?”
Oh no.
