My breath stopped once his other hand flicked each button until my blouse fell open. One swift tug later, he’d unhooked the front clasp of my bra and pushed the cups aside.
Trace smiled. “Pink. I knew it.” A muscle in his jaw pumped. “God, I could look at these all night.” He leaned his forehead against mine and continued to stare down at them. Embarrassed, I tried to cover myself. “Naw,” he said. “Let me see you.”
Cupping me, he tortured the damp peak with his thumb, then his lips did a slow dance down my neck to my breast. My mind went blank as he suckled my nipple, drawing so hard on it that my sex clenched in pleasure. He plucked every nuance with an expertise that left me breathless, and once he covered my mouth again, his lips were soft, warm, and wet.
“Has he ever made you feel like this?” Trace asked.
I couldn’t lie. Not to him. “No.”
“He ever make you come?”
A flash-fire bled over my face. “What?”
“An orgasm. He ever give you one?”
I slowly shook my head ‘no.’
“Good,” he whispered.
“But we can’t—”
As if from a distance, I felt him raise my skirt, felt him tug my tights halfway down my legs, felt his fingers make a slow descent to stroke me through the thin cotton of my panties. The way his lips worshipped my mouth, the way his hand played me like a fiddle, the way he moved my panties aside and greeted my wet flesh, shoved me to the brink and back. He stroked one spot, that glorious bundle of nerves, over and over with thumb and forefinger, until I stiffened, until I cried his name, until I begged him to put me out of my misery.
“Time to fly,” he whispered into my mouth.
Two strokes later, I did just that. Trace took me to the cliff, tossed me over the edge, and my body exploded in a burst of flames. He was right there, cradling me through it all. Every convulsion was met with a kiss. Every moan earned another caress, every sigh a word of encouragement, until I wilted against him.
Noises filtered in from the open window. A siren wailed. Two dogs traded barks. A cat meowed. The tinkling of a bottle echoed, replaced by a distant crash. Another sad song spilled from the radio. “My Funny Valentine.”
Trace slipped his hand from my panties, sucked his damp fingers into his mouth, taking his time to savor me before he feathered his lips back over mine and I tasted myself.
“It’s just like I knew it’d be,” he murmured in between kisses. “Honey sweet.” He rubbed his thick length against me, his rhythm slow and steady. “You got any idea how bad I want to be inside you?” he breathed into my neck. “You make me so hard, I could…” He circled his hips, once, twice, then again. “I could come just from doin’ this.” He picked up the pace. “Aw…fuuuck.”
Still trembling from the intense pleasure he’d given me, I swallowed his groan, dug my nails into his back, urging him closer, my hips moving in time with his. But somehow my engagement ring twisted 180 degrees and the gem scratched his bare back. He didn’t notice, but I did. The moment I realized what had happened, reality diffused the sensual fog.
Darien. Guilt hit me like a cold slap. Stop before it’s too late. The same voice had guarded my body for twenty-six years, but God, how I wished that voice would shut up!
With his hips still thrusting, Trace dipped low to capture my nipple. He nursed on it, luring me back into the whirlpool.
Grinding. Licking. Tugging. Sucking.
Wedding. Family. Darien. Shame.
I made a weak attempt to push his shoulders. “Trace….”
“Mmm hmm.”
“St-stop.”
Tug. Tug. Tug. “Hmmgh?”
“Stop—oh, God.” He sucked harder and drew me under again. Blinking to clear my mind, I blurted, “I’ve never done this.”
One by one, the muscles in his body slackened. He pulled back and searched my eyes, his hand cupping my damp breast. His fingers lingered and teased while his breath fanned my face. “You trying to tell me you’re a virgin?”
“Y-yes.”
“At twenty-six?”
I nodded, avoiding his eyes as I struggled for air.
Shock painted his face. He put me down and stepped back, watched me yank up my tights with awkward hands. I was a tangled mess. Hair flying. Lips swollen. Skin burning. I didn’t bother fixing the bra. I just fastened my shirt, not caring if the buttons suited the corresponding eyelets.
They didn’t.
Trace’s hazel eyes were dark with raw hunger and disbelief. His chest rose and fell and the bulge below his belt pressed violently against his zipper as if it might burst through at any moment.
I tried to fuss with my clothes again, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking so I just gave up.
Trace was already on the sofa. “C’mere,” he murmured, adjusting his erection. He held his arm out. “I said, c’mere.”
I hesitated, then wandered over to him. Once I sat, he pulled me close to cradle me in his lap. His penis pressed hard against my thigh.
“I’ve heard of being a good Catholic girl, but this is…hell, I don’t know what it is.”
“Well, I haven’t been to confession in ages,” I admitted.
“Then why’re you still a virgin?”
All my reasons swarmed me, but the most painful eclipsed everything. Finally, at Trace’s prompting, I said, “I didn’t have a boyfriend until freshman year at Sarah Lawrence.”
Trace frowned, clearly baffled. “Why?”
“Because,” I said. “I thought once I got to college, the talk would stop.”
“Talk? What talk?”
“They knew about Mother there too,” I muttered. “You know, somebody remembers reading something, then passes it along. This one tells that one, and suddenly, you’re the main event on campus.”
He was playing with my hair, twirling it absently in his fingers. “What does that have to do with your virginity?
“Everything.” I sighed. “The gossip didn’t stop after the trial. When it was over, I had to deal with a new set of problems.” He didn’t look convinced. “What do you think people would have said if I’d gone out with a boy, and as boys have a tendency to do, he made up stories about me?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes.
“I had to protect myself. And while I’ve never been completely intimate with a man—”
“Never?”
I scowled. “No, but—”
“It’s your reason for not doing it that bothers me. If it were just a matter of principle, then yeah, I could accept that. But you did this ‘cause of Lilith. Now to me, that’s sad.”
“Don’t pity me. You don’t know what it’s like.”
He didn’t even blink. “Yeah, I do. I’m the Butcher Boy of Temptation. Murderer and mutilator of poor, helpless women. Your mama was stabbed four times, but ‘legend’ says it was twelve. Bev heard twenty the other day.”
“That’s my point. People embellish things.”
His eyebrows curled up. “Don’t take this wrong, but you made a life-altering decision based on somebody else’s bad rep.”
Pain gripped me like a cold fist. ‘Bad rep’ was an understatement. During the trial, Darien and the defense agreed the killer had acted with an abundance of rage. And testimony from two lovers and five previous employees helped paint her in an unsympathetic light. All five were young and handsome and were let go for one of two reasons; they’d either refused Mother’s advances, or they’d given in and were later fired—with generous severance packages—when she’d tired of them.
Of the five, just one, a gay man, hadn’t bedded Mother. The others weren’t scarred or resentful. In fact, Darien along with Trace’s lawyer, Andrew Gartner, frequently admonished them during the trial for their bawdy comments. The media had a field day too, deeming them, “Bradford’s Boy-toys” and “Lilith’s Harem.”