“I will.”
“Now, Zeke. Prove it now.”
Bringing her hand to my lips, I kiss her fingers. “I never kissed her . . . I couldn’t kiss her,” I admit, a little ashamed. For a man like me, kissing a woman was more intimate than fucking one.
“Why?” she whispers, just as the song starts over again.
I run my thumb across her bottom lip. “Because these are the only lips I want.” She closes her eyes, and my knuckles graze the tear streaks on her cheeks. “I didn’t touch her either.”
She leans into my touch. “Tell me why.”
“Because I knew she wouldn’t feel like you.” My words are directed toward her, but it’s like as I say them out loud, the truth of them is registering for the first time with me too. “She didn’t smell like you. She didn’t taste like you.” I pause, narrowing my eyes at my own confession. “She wasn’t you, Diem.” Dropping my voice, I place my forehead against hers. “None of them were you.”
“You mean that?” she whispers, still sniffling.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t even like me.”
I smile. “You don’t like me either.”
She laughs, and I didn’t realize how much I missed the sound. We just sit a minute, both of us looking down at our intertwined fingers in her lap. “I can feel my control slipping, Zeke,” she says, her head leaning a little heavier against mine at the admission.
“What are you so afraid of?”
After a long pause, she finally answers. “Weakness.”
“You don’t have to be strong all the time, Diem. You can let go. With me.” She raises her head to look at me, her eyes guarded as she studies the sincerity in my expression for a long time.
“Don’t treat me like your whores, Zeke,” she says, and the warning can be heard loud and clear. “You told me I was different from them. I was different from my mother. Make me feel that way.”
Unsure of how else to prove it, I kiss her. Not a fast kiss to hurry up and get the ball rolling, but a slow, torturous kiss that has her melting in my arms. She doesn’t taste like cinnamon or tequila or ice cream. It’s just her mixed with a hint of smoke—the perfect concoction.
I wrap my arm around her waist, flipping her until she’s beneath me—not on her knees in front of me or between my legs, but to where I’ll have a full view of her face when she falls apart. Her hands fist in my hair, and I easily grasp them both in one of mine and hold them over her head. She struggles with the loss of control, and I drag my lips to her ear.
“I got you.” I run my hand under her shirt, lazily dragging my fingers up her side until she relaxes. I squeeze her hands, letting her know to keep them there, then release them and fist her shirt in my hands. I pull it over her head, to find her not wearing a bra. It’s only been two days since I’ve seen her tits, but they’re better than I remember. Her nipples harden with the intensity of my gaze. “They’re fucking perfect,” I say, watching them pucker further when my breath blows over them.
Her back bows off the floor when I take one in my mouth. She whimpers in need and I massage her other breast with one hand, using the other to unsnap the button on her shorts. My tongue trails down her stomach, where the bruises have almost completely faded. I kiss along the hem of her shorts and in the wake of my lips, I leave a path of goose bumps.
My fingers curl around her shorts and she lifts her hips. I drag my eyes back up her body—she’s naked and shaking in anticipation for me. For Zeke. Fuck, she’s beautiful. Breathtaking, gorgeous, submissive, vulnerable, needy . . . all the things I’ve never seen her be. Like this, she’s a stranger to me. And I don’t know what way I like her better. Maybe because I like them all.
I stand over her, watching her eyes grow hungry as I remove my boots, my shirt, then my jeans. Her breath catches at the sight of my cock, hard and ready for her.
Only her.
Diem.
I sheath it with a condom, torturing her further by prolonging the process. When she presses her thighs together and grinds her hips looking for release, I finally show her mercy. Laying back across her body, I support my weight with my arms. Her knees separate, inviting me in. Slowly, her warm, wet pussy surrounds my cock, and I groan at the feel of her tight walls as they clench around me, pulling me further inside.
I fuck her slow, not letting one moment of her response to me go unnoticed. I don’t fuck her hard and fast, even though her heels dig into my ass, urging me deeper. I don’t want to fuck her like before. I don’t want to fuck her like I have any other woman. Because they were all whores. So I give her a side of me I’ve never given to them.