my fingers around his wrist and moved his hand down to the hem of my skirt, then up again to replace his palm against my panties. “Let’s not pretend anything else.”
I thought, for one brief, strange second, he was going to turn me down. The heat of his hand seeped through my panties, but the flash of ice in his eyes left me cold. Suddenly I had no trouble remembering why I’d left him.
He didn’t let me pull away. “Fine. I’m not pretending.”
“Good.”
“Good,” he said. His fingers slipped inside my panties and found me already wet. Again, his gaze flickered. “Fuck, Paige.”
“Yes, please,” I said.
He’d always been bigger than me, but in the years since we’d broken up he’d gone from a bulky football player’s build to the harder, leaner muscled frame of a man who made his living working with tools. He might have quit the construction job with his dad’s company, but whatever he was doing kept him in tight, hard shape.
At first I thought he might not kiss me. We’d done it before, fucked without kissing each other on the mouth. We’d fucked angry, rough. We’d done it tender-soft, too, and sweet.
So when Austin pulled me closer and brushed his lips across mine, I was already tense and waiting. He kissed me softly and pulled away. He looked into my eyes.
“I was sure you’d bail on me.”
I frowned, not wanting to talk, and when I opened my mouth he took my words away with another kiss and the restless stroking of his hands. I’m not ashamed to admit I stretched under his touch, so familiar no matter how long it had been. We kissed for a long time, all the way up the stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. I kissed him with my eyes closed, trusting him to lead me so I wouldn’t stumble. We kissed the way we always had, but it was different, too. We stopped just inside his bedroom door and pulled apart, both of us breathing fast and hard. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone had seen me the way he did.
I was made of feathers when he lifted me, but I became flesh when he laid me down.
It was a new bed, new sheets. The smell of fabric softener was the same, and my heart seized, going still before it lurched to life again. His mouth ate my gasp. He swallowed my breath.
I’d worn clothes he could ruin without me caring, but Austin didn’t tear or rip anything from me. Kneeling between my legs, staring at me on his pillow, he only put his hand on my belly. The muscles jumped.
When he smiled I almost couldn’t remember what it had been like not to love him, but I forced myself to. This was not going to be anything but what I’d intended it to be. I spread my legs a little as I inched the skirt up over my thighs.
Austin put his hands to the hem of my shirt and lifted it to run his fingers over the swell of my breasts. He looked me over as if he’d never seen me before, like he hadn’t once spent long hours cataloging every inch of my skin.
I liked the way it felt when he looked at me.
When his gaze met mine, we both smiled, which was a relief. There had been a moment at first when I thought this might turn awkward. Either sentimental or angry. We’d fucked a few times after I left him, and it hadn’t always been a good choice.
It probably wasn’t a good choice now, but when he ran his hands up the insides of my thighs, and a finger underneath the elastic of my panties, I stopped worrying about it. I arched into his touch, my eyes closing in anticipation. He slid a finger along my clit, then another down to press gently at my opening. That’s when he stopped.
I looked at him. “Austin?”
He opened his pretty mouth, but all that came out was a hiss of air as he pushed inside me. I groaned as he crooked his finger against my sweet spot. He used his thumb on my clitoris at the same time, the familiar double whammy that had always worked for me.
“You like that?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I like that.”
He hooked his other hand into my silk panties and eased them down one side at a time as he kept up the in-out stroking. His eyes left my face to watch the motion of his hand, and I was glad. I didn’t want to watch him watching me.
He stopped only for a few seconds, long enough to pull his shirt over his head. I used the time to pull down the side zip of my skirt, and he helped me off with that, too. My shirt went next. We moved together, coordinated, until I lay naked on his bed.
“Take off your pants.”
I returned his hard stare. We’d never spoken much during sex. Now we were practically reciting the Declaration of Independence. I toyed with my nipples, teasing him as he unbuttoned and unzipped. He wasn’t wearing the loose boxer shorts I’d expected, but tight boy shorts cut high on his thigh.
“Nice underwear,” I told him.
The old Austin smirk came back, and he stripped them off quickly before getting back on his knees again. His cock stirred, half-hard but rising, on his thigh. “Thanks.”
“Did you put those on just for me?” I got up on my elbows to look at him.
Austin just raised a brow. “What if I did?”
It wasn’t the smart-ass answer I expected, and consequently, I had no answer.
“Paige.” His hand went stroke, stroke, stroke, and I was hypnotized. “Open your legs.”
I did, because I wanted him there. I thought he’d use his hand, but Austin got on his belly on the bed, instead. He wriggled up between my legs before I knew it, his breath hot on my inner thighs and finally, at last, my cunt.
I cried out when he kissed me there, but stifled it with my fist. When he licked me, I drew in a breath that tasted of my own skin. It had been a long time since a man had gone down on me…since the last time I’d been with him, as a matter of fact.
His lips worked my rigid clit as he pushed a finger, then two, then three, inside me. Rough but not harsh. He found my G-spot and I convulsed around his fingers. Pleasure took my voice away.
I pushed my hips upward in lieu of command, and he fucked me with his mouth and hands until I gasped and trembled. Shaking, I looked down at him, nestled between my legs. Passion had hazed my vision, but everything became crystalline when he paused to look up at me.
“Don’t come yet.” Austin’s voice had grown impossibly deeper over the years. Now it went lower still. His breath drifted over my hot, wet flesh and the motion of his lips tantalized me mercilessly.
He moved up my body and captured my wrists with his hands as he pushed mine over my head. My fingers curled around the wooden spindles as I stared him in the eyes. I wasn’t the same girl he hadn’t taken to the prom, and I wasn’t the same girl he’d married. I was a different woman now. But I held the headboard anyway, watching him as he fumbled in his nightstand for the package of condoms and slid one on.
When he moved back over me, one hand on his cock to guide it inside me, I tensed. My eyes closed as he filled me. When he moved, I moved with him. It was easy to remember how.
He fucked into me slowly, then faster. He pushed up onto his hands to drive his cock deeper, and I took the pain of his thrusts and turned it into pleasure. My hands gripped the wood. His eyes never left mine, not even when he slid a hand between us to stroke my clit in time to his thrusts.
“Now,” he grunted from between clenched teeth, “you can come.”
I hadn’t been waiting for his permission, but my body took it anyway.
“Say my name.” His fingers left me and he pushed his face into the side of my neck. “Say it, Paige.”
I tipped into the swirling oblivion of orgasm, and I gave him what he wanted with his name, if he could decipher it from the moan. But I also let go of the headboard. My nails raked his back as I came again,