Rowdy(28)

I was going to tell him I was sorry. I never meant to just drop out of his life altogether, but I was young and finally free from my father’s reins, so I had gone a little crazy and lost some of myself. I needed him to know he had been my best friend as well. I wanted to tell him how he was the only good I could remember from growing up but his mouth moved from my temple to my lips and just rested there.

He didn’t kiss me, didn’t breathe me in, didn’t tease me with his tongue. He just rested his lips against my own as we stayed pressed together in silence, tension thick and throbbing between us. I felt like I was stuck. Caught in some kind of slow-motion movie reel where every touch, every move he made was agonizingly deliberate and torturously drawn out. Those talented fingers of his were skating very close to the edge of where fabric and skin met underneath my clothes and he was no longer anywhere near my inner thigh but so much closer to places that were hot and damp. Places that were beginning to coil tight with want and need.

“What about you, Salem? Did you think of me as a brother?”

When he spoke I felt his words as they brushed across my mouth more than heard what he said. I gave my head a tight little shake and let my fingers curl into the strong cords at the base of his neck.

“No. I thought you were a beautiful and sad little boy and then I thought you were a clever and talented teenager.” I gasped and let out a tiny shriek of surprise because there was no longer fabric between his questing fingers and my wet and eager flesh. “Now I think you’re a gorgeous and complicated man, but none of my feelings for you have ever been familial. I never considered you like a brother, Rowdy.”

It was hard to get the words out, hard to breathe because he was touching me, stroking me from the inside out, and finally his mouth was rubbing achingly across my own. How was a girl supposed to have a single coherent thought when all of that was happening to her and the guy doing it looked and felt like Rowdy did? When he was the only bright spot in an otherwise cloudy childhood.

“Tell me you’re here for me.” His voice was low and I could practically feel the intensity of his gaze and he shifted me a little so his fingers could move deeper, play harder with all the most sensitive female parts of my body.

I didn’t want to tell him that. Even if it was the truth.

He kissed me. Really kissed me. His lips and tongue taking no prisoners as his thumb landed on my clit and pressed down with enough force to make me jerk in his hold. I kissed him back helplessly, sat there and let him play with me and my body like I was powerless to stop it . . . because I was. His fingers circled inside of me, his touch just right as he continued to ravish my mouth.

He pulled back and dropped a hard, biting kiss on my mouth. He leaned a little closer, his hand pressing in with him as he used the very tip of his tongue to touch the very center of my top lip and then he brushed a kiss across the ruby that sat right above my mouth. It made me shiver and had my nails digging hard into where I was holding on to him. I cried out and arched my back when he found that perfect spot, that magical place inside of me that not every man had found before. I saw a flash of white as he grinned at me and then it disappeared as he buried his face in the curve of my neck and started kissing and sucking along the taut flesh that was there.

“Tell me, Salem. Tell me you came here for me.”

I was so close, could feel pleasure and something more burning along all my nerve endings. I was squirming in his hands, my body was bowing and quaking against his, and I knew I was going to break apart at his touch any second now. My nipples were tight and aching. My skin was overly sensitized and everywhere he touched I felt it electric and sparking right where his hands were, not to mention he had honed in right on the coiled core of my desire.

“Rowdy . . .” His name escaped on a strangled groan, as his teeth sank into the side of my neck where my pulse was thundering. The noises I was making told him exactly how his touch was affecting me, it was over and he knew it. I felt him growl against my pulse, I felt his muscles go tense as my body broke and spasmed around his fingers. It didn’t just feel good and sexy-sweet, it shook me to my very core.

I liked sex, and had never been scared to admit it, but I had never been touched, never had a man put his hands on me and have it feel like I was better for it at the end like he had just done. I felt like he was showing me something new, teaching me something I didn’t know about myself, and it left me stunned.

Rowdy pushed back just enough so that we were staring at each other. He pulled his hand out of my shorts and rested it on the top of my bare thigh. We were both breathing hard and just watching each other. His eyes glowed and there was a grin and something else dancing across his face.