Tryst

I was. And I do.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about his helpless plea and the heart-wrenching vulnerability on his face since that night. He asked me to stay with him. He said he could make me feel young again, and do all the things Tucker refuses to do. He felt abandoned, but I could tell it wasn’t just by me. It was by everyone. Ransom felt utterly alone and fraught for a co

Now more than ever, I want to go to him. But not for sex. I just want to hold him, make him believe that he’s not alone. But wouldn’t that be another lie?

“You’re not sorry for that.”

He lifts his gaze to mine and I see just a glimpse of that vulnerability now. It’s the same look he had in his hotel room. The same one he wore inside the tiny airplane lavatory. But just as quickly as I catch it, it’s gone. “No. I’m not. Do you want me to be?”

I tell him what he needs to hear because I don’t want to hurt him. I tell him the truth.

“No.”

Strained silence crawls all over our midnight-drenched skin like sleepy, little spiders. We stare at each other, waiting for the other to break the trance with a blink, but it never comes. Finally, Ransom releases me by looking away. But he hasn’t retreated. No. In the shallowest of breaths, he’s in front of me, leaning over me, pi

“Ransom . . .” It’s not even a whisper or a moan. It’s a sigh. Something done out of reflex.

“I’m not touching you,” he drawls, fa

“Then what are you doing?”

“Smelling you. Seeing you. Trying to let my other senses do what my hands can’t.”

He lifts a hand from the chair and slowly brings the back of it just mere centimeters from the bust of my nightgown. I open my mouth to protest, and he shushes me.

“I won’t touch you. Trust me.”

With that, he runs his hand up to my collarbone, so close that I can feel the sun on his skin. With maddening patience and restraint, he lets it travel down down down, until it stops at my breasts. I can almost feel him there, grazing my nipples with his knuckles, ru

“Look at you. Look how you respond to me . . . not touching you.”

I peer down to see that my nipples are hard and straining through two layers of satin, staring at him with pleading eyes. He chuckles lightly and his hand is on the move again, this time roaming over the expanse of my belly. Then he sits on his knees and leans back on his feet, letting both his palms hover over the tops of my thighs.

“I promise you, I won’t touch you. Even if you beg me to. I want to prove to you that I can do this, that I can kick this habit. I want to prove it to myself.”

His hands move down to my knees, and he makes a slow sweeping motion, willing them to part. And dammit, they do. I do. I open this door. I unlatch Pandora’s Box. He gave me the power to reject him, offered it to me from the tips of those massive, callused fingers, and I didn’t do it. I gave it back to him. I relinquished my willpower, my body, my soul to him, even without his asking.

I’m a bad wife. And an even worse publicist. But with my sex opening to him like delicate cherry blossom petals at full bloom, I am neither.

I am his.

At first, his hands just hover over my thighs, trailing a slow, languid path from my kneecaps to the fabric that covers my swollen clit. Over, between, even under, he teases me with his phantom touch, haunting me with his heat. I need him to touch me, but I can’t bring myself to beg. And even if I did, I know he won’t anyway. He’s enjoying this too much, dark mirth flickering in his heavy-lidded gaze. He’s showing me that he could drive me crazy without even touching me. That even if I never give myself to him again—and I won’t—he can still affect me. He can still fuck me whenever he wants.

“Lift your nightgown,” he commands, his voice gruff.

I tell myself that I won’t but my hands are already sliding down my hips and bunching the soft fabric. I fist the satin until the hem disappears inside my palms and cool air meets the heat of my sex.

Ransom looks down at it—at me—and sucks in a strangled breath. I watch him as he bites his lip so hard that it turns white under the pressure of his teeth. His fingers skim the air over my mound, trembling, pleading. Maybe he’s not as strong as he thinks he is.

“I won’t touch you,” he rasps, persuading me and himself. Yet, his hands come dangerously close to making contact. So close that I can feel him brush my short, soft hair at the very center, causing me to gasp.

“I won’t touch you.” He says it like he’s a dying man and this is his final plea. He repeats it again and again, making it his personal mantra. And while he denounces his carnal needs, he begins to shift. Down. His body is moving down between my thighs until his face is aligned with my pussy.

I’m afraid to move, afraid to speak. Just the barest flinch, and my clit will be against his mouth, my lips on his, falling into an unintended kiss. So I watch him watch me, not breathing, waiting for him to decide if he’s going to be a liar tonight.

He inhales. Deeply. He sparks me up, takes a hard drag, sucks me inside his body. The perfume of my slickness coats his nose and throat before he consumes the tiny molecules of my arousal. We moan together, pulling on a double-ended joint of lust and loneliness, letting it take us higher than high. We see the ceiling, know we should stop, but we’re going too fast. And there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to break through and survive the impact.

He scents my sex a half dozen more times, his reaction to my fragrance growing more vehement with every lungful. I’m so wet, so potent, that I can smell myself too, which only makes me ache more. That coupled with his hot breaths on my even hotter clit and the illicit sounds he makes in the back of his throat, and I know it won’t be much longer. I just need a little more . . . just a little more.

His moans morph into whispered words, and I still my own whimpers and the beating of my heart to try to make sense of it. Even through the pounding of blood in my ears, I hear him loud and clear.

She’s an angel without wings

Sent down to earth to destroy me

Fucking me so religiously

Take me to hell, you lovely, damaged thing

I thought I may have imagined it before.

That night we spent together in his suite, me flat on my stomach, him inside me, his belly pressed to my ass and his lips on my ear.

Ransom sang to me . . . is singing to me. Fucking me crazy with the magic of his tongue without physically touching me at all. I won’t make it . . . I won’t last like this. And if I give in to the stinging current this time, if I let him own yet another of my orgasms, will I ever be able to find my way back to the surface? To my marriage? To Tucker?

I know I look as ridiculous as I feel as I push his face back with trembling hands and scramble from the chair, careful not to touch him any more than I have to.

“Heidi . . . I’m sorry,” he stammers from the floor, but I just shake my head, unable to hear it. Because I’m not sorry. Not in the least. But I know I should be.

“It’s ok. I . . . I just need to go.” I pull my robe around me tighter, the move only adding more friction against my already tingling body. “I have to go,” I repeat. But it takes nearly twenty seconds before I regain the function to even move.