But it was so good Amazing. Just a few strokes, careful and controlled. He wouldn't come inside her, just enjoy some unprotected bliss for a few delirious moments. She loved it, too. He could feel her soft body quiver beneath him. But the intensity of his bare flesh inside hers was driving him out of his head. His thrusts grew harder, deeper.
She was trying to speak again. He kissed her words away, didn't want to hear them, wanted to stay in the spell. But she was shoving him, pushing his face away. “Please, don't,” she said.
Seth stared down at her, horrified at the tears trembling in her eyes. He could have sworn she'd liked it. “What?” he demanded.
“Don't use sex to control me.” Her voice shook with anger.
He was dumbfounded. He studied her for a long moment. “I didn’t know I was doing that,” he said. “I just wanted you.”
“You're good at manipulating. You use whatever weapon comes to hand. But don't use sex against me.”
He was shivering, even though he still felt as hard and hot as a brand inside her. He withdrew from her clinging heat, flopping onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. All his past relationship fiascos paraded through his mind. The air felt cold and inhospitable on his dick, which lay, wet and disconsolate against his belly. He tried to think of something to say, some way to convince her that it was different than she thought No words came to him.
“I'm sorry,” he said finally, just to say something. Anything.
Raine pulled herself up onto her knees and looked down at him silently. She laid her hand on his chest. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“For what?” His voice sounded gruff and ungracious, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“That was a very nice apology,” she said. “I liked that there were no ifs, ands or buts attached to it. It was very simple and effective.”
“Oh.” He squinted, bewildered. “I'm, uh, glad you liked For the first time, he'd gotten something like this right, but not by intelligence, or sensitivity, or technique. Just by pure, dumb luck.
The thought was not a comforting one.
“So you're, uh, not mad at me anymore?” he asked cautiously.
Raine smothered a laugh with her hands, and shook her head. She leaned over, and placed her hands on either side of his head, gazing into his eyes with searching tenderness. Her hair hung around them like a perfumed tent and her breasts dangled like lush, ripe fruit above him. All he wanted was to seize them, stroke them. She leaned down, dropped a kiss on his lips, a light, brushing touch.
He thought that was his cue to pull her closer, but he got it wrong again. She stiffened, pulling back with a nervous murmur.
He let his arms drop and opened his hands. Afraid to speak, afraid to breathe. No threat, he fried to say with his body, with his eyes. No moves, no agenda, your call He couldn't bear to feel her flinch away from him again, so evidently frightened.
She gave him a tremulous, uncertain smile, and he let out a sigh of relief, which turned into a gasp when her hand slid down and seized his cock. “Lie still,” she whispered.
She twisted her hair into a loose spiral behind her neck and seized him in both hands, stroking and pulling with a bold caress that made him gasp and jerk up onto his elbows. A drop of moisture formed on the end of it. She bent down and licked it off.
“God,” he muttered. “What is this, Raine? Are you trying to prove something? Trying to get back at me?”
“No,” she whispered. “I want to give you pleasure.”
The warm brush of her bream against his cock as she spoke was the sweetest caress he'd ever felt, until she put her mouth to him. It was so wet and soft, deliciously tender. Her eager tongue darted and swirled, under, over and all around. Oh, God, he was in for it.
She had lost all her awkwardness. She cupped his ass with one hand, pulling him even closer to her luscious, suckling mouth, and the other cradled his balls, rolling them tenderly around in her fingers. She licked around and over the head of his cock, then up and down the whole length of him until he was slippery and wet; and then accompanied her mouth with her hand, gripping and sliding as she took him in. Her hot mouth clutched and pulled, tongue swirling lazily as if she were savoring something very good to eat, then sucking him into another long, gliding caress.
He'd gotten plenty of blow jobs in his time, and he'd thoroughly enjoyed every one of them, but this was different. This was so tender and intimate, it was almost agonizing.
He couldn't afford to feel so vulnerable. Not in Lazar's house. He slid his fingers into the cascading tresses on either side of her face and stopped her.
She lifted her head. “You don't like it?”
The irony almost made him smile. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords wouldn't connect. He took a deep breath and tried again. “It's incredible. But I'm wide open. I can't take it. We've got to get away from here. Try this wild, sexy stuff once we get to someplace safe.”
Her eyes were soft with perfect understanding. She reached across him and seized a foil packet from the bedstand. She knelt beside him and smoothed the condom over his cock with tender, careful strokes. Still, he waited, afraid to make another wrong move. She seized his hands, lifting them up and pressing them against her breasts. “You can touch me now,” she said shyly. “I've calmed down.”
He touched her as carefully as if she were made of fragile glass. He couldn't afford to mess up again. Raine had to make all the moves this time.
She lay down alongside him and tugged his body on top of hers. “Let's go back to our tropical paradise, Seth “ she whispered.
He poised himself above her so that the whole surface of his body was in light, kissing contact with hers. He let her do it all. She was the one who opened up and adjusted herself, she was the one who reached down and guided his penis into her body. He even waited until she grabbed his ass and pulled him in before he took the plunge.
They wound their arms around each other. At first it was slow and careful and tender, men it melted like a spring flood and rushed them over an endless fall, united body and soul. He finally understood the futility of trying to batter his way towards the fusion that he craved.
They clung to each other for a long time, until Raine began to disentangle herself. She sat up and perched on the edge of the bed. “There's a ship on the horizon “ she said.
“Huh?”
She looked back over her shoulder. “One morning the pirate queen and her sailor stud are making love on the beach. They look up, and there's a full-rigged ship on the horizon. Their idyll is over. You can't run away from the world forever. Sooner or later it always catches up.”
He sat up, chilled by a sudden feeling that something precious was slipping away from him.
She got up. “I need another shower.”
“I'll shower with you.” He reached out for her.
She dodged his hand. "No, you will not.”
They got ready in absolute silence. She chose some stuff from the armoire, which of course looked great on her. Everything did.
They were dressed and ready. There was no putting it off any longer. Seth took the kit out of his bag and fished out the transmitter. She took it, turning it over in her hands. She started to speak, but he put his finger over her lips, and shook his head.
Raine's lips pinched into a quivering line. She slipped the tiny transmitter into her pants pocket.
He shrugged on his jacket, suddenly thinking of his dream.
The circle is getting smaller. He didn't know what it meant, but he could feel it happening. Like fingers tightening around his neck.