“I was fucked up.”
Touched by his frankness, she ran two fingertips across that mobile mouth as he spoke, her eyes becoming heavy. “Talk to me.” She filled her hands with his taut jaw and leaned closer, inhaled the mist of his breath. “Your voice.” I want to take it in me, wrap it around my body, I want to . . . to hear.
He was quiet at first, no sound audible in the room but the rustle of the sheets as their bodies adjusted. They snuggled deeper under the covers, her body sliding down the length of his until they touched head to toe.
Then he spoke, his voice a velvet wave, rolling thick and dense across her nerves, sending a melting sensation down her legs. “The first time I saw you, it had been raining. I’d just been admitted and was coming out of the principal’s office, and you were rushing down the hall, trying not to be late.”
His hands caressed along her body and his voice, his words, reached a thirsty, intricate part of her that seemed to greedily cling to each one. “You were soaked, your books almost slipping from your grasp. And then you saw me. And you stopped. For the longest time you just stared at me. And I stared back and thought, ‘God, is there a prettier sight than this girl?’ ” There was a soft silence, then his hot, wet tongue stroked heatedly into her ear. “I wanted to lick you dry.”
Lying against six feet two inches of this man, Paige could too easily picture the devastating eighteen-year-old Zach must have been, standing tall and gorgeous in the middle of a school hall, staring at her with those weakening eyes of his. She quietly marveled, “I must have thought, ‘God, please let me have this gorgeous green-eyed boy all to myself.’ ”
He chuckled, and it was a throaty, humming sound that wrapped around her like a blanket. “You had me at ‘Oh. You must be the new transfer.’ ”
She smiled against him, but she did not want him to stop, wanted his words in her ears. His voice was all the things you would hush to hear— a whispering breeze, a soothing creek, a haunting black thunderstorm . . .
Snuggling closer, she laid her ear on his chest, just over the steady, provocative pounding of his heartbeat. “Tell me more about me and you.”
He stroked her back as he did, his words resonating in his chest under her ear. “Fridays you used to stay over at your friend Francine’s . . .” Her entry felt sensitive after the sex, and even then, she was teeming wet, felt his hardness surge against her tummy as he remembered. And his voice, richer still, darker, deeper. “But you weren’t really with Francine— you were sleeping with me.”
The thick, long staff between their bodies began to pulse with heat, and a dense arousal coated his speech. “We kissed for hours. Until the sun came up. We touched, ate, talked, didn’t sleep. We parted every Saturday morning, trembling with wanting each other.”
She shivered. Her breasts throbbed. She sought out his mouth, blindly, and he gave it to her. They caught, burned, blended. Then his words misted across her face, and his voice. God, his rich, delicious voice.
“Every time, we kissed a little longer. Touched more, petted heavier.” He stroked a finger along the back of her arm, his voice changing, becoming terser and gruffer with longing. “I lived for those moments, when you were in my arms and I was drinking from your lips, filling my hands with your breasts, your little hands all over me.” He fisted her hair in his hand, heaved her up, and kissed her firmly, possessively. “We kissed at school, but it drove me insane not to talk to you. I couldn’t touch you, couldn’t hold you, couldn’t be with you.”
Her voice broke. “Why?”
“My father. Your father.” A thousand questions tumbled in her mind. She wanted to know everything and at the same time, she didn’t. “We were watched at school, and I was ordered to stay away. But there was old Mel’s closet— Mel was the janitor. And we hid between classes and kissed until our mouths were swollen.” He seized and enjoyed her lips until her chest felt like exploding, too. “Nothing, nobody could keep me away from you.”
Her lashes rose, and his incandescent green eyes trapped her, sucking her into their depths, spinning her within the whirl pool of her needs. His needs. He lowered his hand, scraped his knuckles across a breast that had become accessible when she shifted.
“Any time, every time you’d let me, I’d latch on to this little peak until you were writhing with pleasure, screaming ‘Zachary.’ ”
She shivered, got wetter, hotter, her rising temperature causing her to desperately press her breast into his hand. “I wanted you,” she whispered. I still want you.
The look he leveled on her blazed with heat. “You loved me, Paige.” The words buffeted her with a blow of searing pain, mingled with yearning and longing and regrets. That someone remembered what she couldn’t drove the sharpest, longest dagger into her chest.
Because she should remember this, too.
A choked noise darted out of her as his hand turned, engulfing her flesh. His fingers teased, tweaked, plucked the nipple, and his timbre dropped another notch. “We wanted to make love.”
She could picture the eighteen-year-old girl in the picture, a good girl, full of hesitation, and too easily conjured up the isolated, enigmatic new boy who’d been patient with her. “And?” she softly prodded.
In a startlingly easy move, he flipped her onto her back and slid down her length, easing her knees apart. “And I waited.”
Moisture pooled between her legs. He knew her. She knew him. Somehow it was as if she’d been born for those hands whisking up the inside of her knees, for his hands to trek across her skin.
God. What had she found here? What had she missed her whole life?
His palm stroked languorously up her left thigh. Deliciously callused, the hands of a man who used them. Paige had forgotten about her scars, but at his gentle handling, she burned bright red with embarrassment. “Please come back here.”
“Shh. Baby, shh.”
He nuzzled her stomach, both hands kneading her thighs. They weren’t lovely, her scars. Despite what he’d said. They were painful to see and had been painful to wear, but suddenly they knew his lips, and they became another part of her body. Another part he could kiss.
“Poor baby.” He kissed her scars from tip to tip, side to side, one at a time. “Poor baby.”
His hands slipped under her body and cradled her cheeks as he ducked his head. His nose nuzzled the tender fluff between her legs. Then he expertly parted her folds open with his thumbs. “Poor”— his tongue sampled—“wet”—he licked again—“baby.”