Page 65 of Played
I repeat that to myself as he skims his hands up my hips, over my stomach, slipping beneath my sweatshirt to raise it and tug it over my head. My bra quickly follows, and I’m standing naked and vulnerable in front of him while he remains fully clothed.
Oh God. There’s so much meaning in that, I’m scared to mentally touch it.
“Hey.” His hard, big hand pinches my chin, tilting it up, while his other hand slides into my hair, gripping the curls so tight my scalp tingles. I draw in a breath, my lashes fluttering down at the pinpricks of pleasure dusted in pain that echo in my pussy. “Where’re you in your head?”
I shake my head. Well, as much as his hold will allow it. But he’s not accepting that nonverbal answer, if his tugging my head farther back is any indication.
He mugs me, his narrowed gaze scouring my face before returning to me.
“One thing you not gon’ do is lie to me. Just tell me you don’t feel like talking about it, and then we can talk about it.”
Despite the doubts and hurt still clinging to me like damp fog at dawn, I snort.
“You know that doesn’t make any damn sense, right?”
He shrugs, but he also doesn’t release his grip on my hair or chin.
“Where’d you go, Dina?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to saynothingor make up a lie on the fly. But staring into his beautiful green eyes, I can’t. I may not be able to give him the entire truth, but I can give him some of it.
Sighing, I dampen my bottom lip with my tongue and watch his stare follow the motion like a cat studying a skittish mouse.
“I’m a little scared of what this will mean for me, how I’ll change,” I whisper.
His gaze immediately softens, and on Solomon, the expression is fuckingmystifying. My heart throws a haymaker against my ribs, and I almost stumble backward from the power of it. Only his grip steadies me, supports me.
“Yeah, baby, I get it. You think this shit don’t scare me either?” My eyes balloon, and he gives a low laugh, his thumb rubbing over my bottom lip, swiping through the moisture there. “This might not bemy first time fucking since ...” He doesn’t complete that sentence and he doesn’t need to. I know very well what thatsincemeans. “But it’s the first time I give a fuck about it. The first time I’ll look in a woman’s eyes while I’m deep in her pussy and know who she is. The first time it’ll mean something past getting off.”
My throat closes tight, and I stare up at him, robbed of words and thoughts at his rumbled confession. It doesn’t take away all the hurt from being banished to this impersonal room, but damn if it doesn’t ease most of it.
God, I’m in so much trouble. So much.
He releases my chin and lowers his hand to my throat, to the necklace with the pendant resting just below my collarbone.
“What’s this?” He brushes his fingertips over the image of Saint Florian.
“Saint Florian medal.” My throat tightens further, but for a different reason this time. His touching Keshaun’s necklace. I clench my jaw, battling back the guilt and shame trying to shove their way to the forefront of my mind, my heart. I gently nudge his hand away from it, closing my fingers around it. “The patron saint of firefighters. It was ... Keshaun’s.”
His body stiffens, and for a moment, I think he’s going to jump back and away from me. His eyes blaze green fire as it remains fixed on the necklace. When he lifts his eyes to me, long moments later, it’s me who has the urge to shift back and away. The objection lurches to my tongue. I’m in the house where he lived with his wife; this place is a whole tribute to her. He better not ask me to remove my one connection to my dead fiancé ...
As quick as that heat flared, it banks, and he strides around me, heading for the do—bed.
I frown.
I didn’t imagine that anger in his eyes, and I would’ve bet my beloved Argonath bookends that he was leaving the room. But no.He sinks down on the bed, legs sprawled and spread wide, one palm planted on the mattress beside his hip and the other beckoning me over.
I wait for the instinctive bust of irritation at that impervious curl of his fingers, like he’s a king summoning his subject. But apparently my pride is now bowed down to the power of the pussy, because she is doing all the thinking. My walls spasm, clenching as if I didn’t just experience the most cataclysmic orgasm of my life. And since he is named after a king, it shouldn’t be a wonder that my vagina has prostrated herself in front of him.
My feet move forward, carrying me the short distance until I’m standing between his powerful thighs. He traces two fingers down my throat, over my collarbone—evading my necklace, I notice—around each of my breasts, pausing to swirl a caress around my nipples, before trailing a path down my stomach and over to my hip. I glance down, halfway expecting to see the road map that feels branded into my skin.
“I’m clean, Adina. Had a physical at the beginning of the season, and I haven’t been with anyone else in weeks. Even then, I used a condom. Always have. I can’t lie; I don’t want anything between my dick and this pretty-ass pussy. But if that’s not where you at, what you want, then I can go get a condom. Your choice.”
“I’m on the pill,” I breathe, my belly constricting and sex pulsing at the thought of him pushing inside me, bare, nothing separating us. “And I haven’t been with—”
“Yeah, I know,” he softly and yet sharply cuts me off. “Need you to say it. You good with me going up in you raw?”
“Yes.” Craving that more than I want to dwell on.
