Page 299 of Off Limits: The Firsts

“I thought this was a one-night thing, right?”

“Yes, but no promises.”

“I’m going to make you come. Can I promise you that?”

Another kiss. This time I take the lead and lick my tongue against his until I pull back and nip his lip. “I’ll accept that promise.”

“Good. Can we stop talking now because there are much more important things I want to be doing with my mouth, and every single one of them involves you and no words.”

My teeth sink into my lower lip as our eyes meet. The door unlocks behind us. Our feet move in reflex. Our fingers link together.

Once over the threshold, we kiss again—his lips beginning their masterful assault of everything that is good and sexy and arousing and needed.

“God, yes.”

His lips find my neck as my hand finds the door to push it shut behind me. As soon as the lever clicks, Grant has me up against it with one hand on my breast and his tongue licking its way up the line of my neck.

He laughs as he stumbles. I giggle as I grip his shoulders to steady us. But even when I do, the earth is still tilting beneath my feet from his desirous assault. Every sensation is welcome and wanted. Each touch of his another reason to temporarily ignore my history.

But he doesn’t.

For some reason, the minute the thought crosses my mind, I can feel the sudden hesitancy in Grant’s otherwise all-consuming and libidinous demeanor and know we are on the same page.

He is remembering.

He is wondering.

He is worrying.

“No,” I gasp out in a desperate plea for him not to go there.

“Em.” Regret. Fear. Uncertainty. All three meld and mesh in that one syllable of my name.

My hands are on his jaw, forcing his face up so that he has to meet my eyes through the dimly lit entry to his house. “No,” I repeat. “I am not her anymore. She is not me. Don’t do this, Grant.”

With that simple statement . . . that simple devastating statement, I press my lips to his. I need him to see that I’m not a victim and that I refuse to be treated like one. I need him to know that he has no clue what I do or don’t need, and therefore, I am going to show him.

As if he knows this is what I need, he allows me to take the reins. The man hell-bent on proving to me that he’s in control, lets me take the lead in this dance that is uniquely ours.

“Show me,” he murmurs, those two words as seductive as his touch.

And so, I show him.

With my hands and my tongue and my words and my touch.

This time, we start slowly. I tease and taunt him with the gentlest of caresses while my hands find the hem of his shirt and pull it from his pants. With the slightest of breaks of our lips, the fabric passes over his face and falls to the floor. I do the honors for myself next as we move slowly backward in that awkward dance of kiss, touch, retreat, repeat, until the backs of his legs hit the couch

“What do you need from me?” he whispers against my lips, unknowingly giving me the question I need and the willingness to take it.

I’ve never been shy about taking what I wanted from a guy before. I’ve never worried about what they thought because, in the end, we were both there for the same thing—pleasure. With Grant? I care. His ability to give me the things I need without even questioning is unnerving and comforting and makes me want this all the more.

“You. I just want you,” I say as he hisses a breath when my hand slides inside the waistband of his jeans to find him hard and stiff and ready for me.

“Take me, Em.”

And then our mouths crash together again in a torrent of desire that warns of its irreversible damage to my body and my heart. I push it away, focusing on his hands undoing my bra. The pads of his thumbs brushing ever so softly over the tips of my nipples. His fingers tugging at my zipper. The palms of his hands as they run down my sides and push my pants down over my hips.

My body reacts in every imaginable way to him. It wants and needs and begs and pleads. He pulls me against him so we’re body to body. Skin to skin. Mouth to mouth.