Page 77 of Work It Out
“Oh, shit.” Rayah framed his face with both hands. “I wasn’t thinking.” One hand flew to the pulse at his neck, checking for a tachycardic response. His heart was always finicky, but it tended to freak out easiest first thing in the morning.
“I’m okay. Got a little woozy for a second, but what do you expect?” He cupped her breasts in his hands, testing their weight. “All my blood rushed to my cock and set up residence the second I woke up with this beautiful body draped over me like a wet dream.”
No one had ever been this much fun to tease. Her responses were so pure, they made his chest ache even as he wanted to corrupt her, because Rayah playful and confident and saying dirty things… They wouldn’t leave her bed for days.
She parked her hands on his pecs, holding him down. Like he’d try to get away? “We can’t have you passing out from lack of blood flow.” Her lips covered his in a long, drugging kiss.
When she sat up again, Jake pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and tried to look pitiful. “Dizzy. So dizzy.”
He wouldn’t have been able to joke about that “weakness” two months ago. Her laughter rang through the room, another burst of sunshine illuminating exactly how dreary his world had become inside his tunnel vision, and he knew he’d finally truly accepted who he was as a chronically ill person. Thanks to her.
“Poor baby,” she cooed, working her way down his body in torturous increments. She was endearingly clumsy. He’d never seen anyone move with the kind of grace she did, and he’d worked with professional dancers for years. She was as affected as he was, and thank God for that. Keeping her would be a lot easier if she was as wrapped up in him as he was in her.
Her tongue flicked over his nipple, and he stopped breathing. Her lips curved into a smile against his skin. Brat. Before he could tease her for tormenting him, her delicate hand slid down his stomach and wrapped around his cock, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Tighter, baby,” he groaned. “It won’t break, I promise.”
For the briefest second, she lost her rhythm. But then she rose to her knees and her hot gaze fixed on the way she worked him. She nibbled her plump lower lip, her shoulders went back, and her grip strengthened. Up and down, up and down in slow, firm strokes. A low moan ripped from his throat. He struggled to stay still, let her explore. He didn’t want to spook her, but his hips weren’t listening. They punched into her grasp. Rayah’s eyes widened and, fuck him, she licked her lips. But it wasn’t a sensual lick. She seemed nervous.
He tucked his hands behind his head like he had all day, when he was actually threading his fingers together to keep from reaching for her.
She rubbed her earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve only ever…” She said it like some sort of warning, like she was worried she’d disappoint him. No, that wasn’t right. She didn’t sound worried. She sounded…scared.
Did she think he’d get mad if she didn’t suck him off like a porn star? “The only way you could do it wrong is if you bit me. Think of the mess. My entire blood supply is there right now.” He’d thought to make her laugh, but something dark and ugly passed over her face.
“Hey.” Thanks to his new abs, he sat up in one smooth motion. “I was kidding. And I don’t want you to do anything you aren’t 100 percent comfortable with. Ever.” He tipped her chin up with a finger.
She shied away from his touch. Her breasts bobbed with her accelerating breaths, and her hands started to tremble. The pulse at the base of her throat fluttered like hummingbird wings. But her eyes frightened him most. They bounced around the room, unfocused and ungrounded. She’d rocketed from scared to panicked in one breath. Wherever her mind was, it was far from this bed and even further from him.
“Baby?” he whispered, reaching for her hand.
“Don’t.” She jerked back, falling off the bed to get away from him. “Please, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t touch you?”
She shook her head frantically, tears sparkling on her lashes. “Don’t call me that. Don’t call me baby.”
Jake put both hands up, palms out. He kept his voice calm when he wanted to rage, because the pit in his stomach knew what was happening. All the times he’d wanted to kill Vicky’s asshole boyfriend seemed like flares of irritation compared to this sudden volcanic fury.
He tamped it down. This moment wasn’t about him; it was about her. “How about ‘cupcake’?” He used his best imitation of Gramps’s Zen voice. He needed her back in this moment with him, and cupcake was theirs—only theirs.
She brought her legs up and hugged her knees. Finally, her eyes landed on his face and stayed there. The first tear broke free and rolled down her cheek as she nodded. Her breaths still came in staccato gasps.
“All right, cupcake. First, take a quick, deep breath in, then let it out on a count of eight.” He counted for her on the exhale. “Again.” Her gaze fixed on his face, and a little of the wild panic floated from her eyes on each exhale. By the fifth time through, she seemed calmer, more focused, but she was quaking all over now.
“Can I hold you?” he asked quietly, careful to keep the creak out of his voice. “Just hold you. You look like you’re about to shake apart.” And he didn’t feel so steady, either.
She glanced down at herself, as if only now remembering she was nude. Jake reached over the side of the bed and plucked his shirt off the floor without breaking eye contact. Slowly, he scooted closer and dropped it over her head. She poked her arms out. His shirts swallowed her like a tent. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Jake backed up, propped himself against the headboard, and made sure the sheet covered his lower body. He expected to have to coax her onto his lap, but she scrambled to get there and suctioned herself to his chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He forced himself to be gentle when he wrapped his arms around her, but he couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice. “I’m holding on by a thread, cupcake. Please, please don’t apologize to me. I don’t know what happened, but I can guess the basics well enough. You don’t have to talk about it. You don’t owe me anything. I’ll listen anytime you want, but right now I just want to be whatever you need, as long as that doesn’t mean letting you go. Please don’t ask me to let you go.”
She nuzzled his neck and snuggled closer. “You wouldn’t, would you? You’d never make me tell you.” The awe—the shock—in her voice made him hurt for the girl she’d been as much as he ached for the woman in his arms.
“Never, ever.”
“They all tried to make me talk about it, after the case was settled. The press wouldn’t leave me alone for months. I still get calls now and then. Some people don’t get the meaning of NDA. Or they don’t care.” NDA, a nondisclosure agreement. Most people called them gag orders. Rayah sat up, hand sliding over his arm to thread their fingers together. She rested the mass in her lap. “Now you’re shaking,” she murmured, calmer somehow.
At least one of them had a grip on their emotions. Jake was running through all the ways he could figure out who the bastard was without asking her. It probably wouldn’t even be hard. The filing record of the court case would be public. Unless she’d been a minor.
