From his face, one moved to his nape where she clutched his hair with surprising force, her fingernails grazing his skin. The other trailed from his shoulder down over his pectoral, making his nipples stand at attention beneath his wet T-shirt. She then moved her touch down his ribs, and his cock leaped as though it could reachher.
Jacques’s breath stuttered when she found the hem of his shirt and her cool, damp hand pressed against the thermonuclear surface of hisabs.
“Rainey—” Her name was an urgent plea formercy.
“Jacques…” His own name had never carried such plaintiveneed.
At the sound, Jacques experienced both a burgeoning of his desire and a mastering of it. His focus shifted from the sensations she gave that threatened to overwhelm him to the way she responded to histouch.
And Rainey responded to histouch.
He moved his mouth to her angelic neck, the place he’d dreamed of returning to since their night in the courtyard. And when his lips and teeth marked the favored spot, Jacques had to wrap a steadying arm along her back as Rainey sagged with a sigh. With his free hand, he traced the V of her open collar, and he brought his lips up to her leftearlobe.
Suckling on the darling, he whispered. “You’re so beautiful.” And a shudder passed through her. Jacques wanted to make her shudder again. Countless times. His fingers worked open the first button of her blouse. Then her second and third. He kissed his way down her neck, her collarbone, into the now open valley of her blouse where her creamy breasts rose and fell with her panting. He kissed the tops of each, nipping the skin through the lacey edge of herbra.
“Jacques—” The hand in his hair tightened again, and Jacques grinned against her cleavage. She sounded impatient, fretful, and knowing it was for him — that she had just as little control and just as much desire for him — made him absurdlyhappy.
He had enough presence of mind to lift his gaze and scan their surroundings. The storm raged on, and not a soul had entered the park. He looked down at Rainey, and her half-lidded eyes rose to his. He couldn’t read the words in her gaze, but she lifted her mouth to his, and he felt her affirmation, giving him back the kisses he’d taken momentsbefore.
As they kissed, his left hand cupped her breast through her lace, and the cadence of her breath changed. Jacques tugged at the bra cup and freed her right breast, the weight of it in his hand becoming one of the most sublime pleasures he’d ever known. As soon as his fingers closed on her tight nipple, he knew touching her would not beenough.
With three kisses against her lips — an unspoken promise that he’d return — he let his mouth fall to her breast, claiming the sweet flesh for his own. A tortured cry ripped from her throat, and while his eyes were half-closed, Jacques felt her buck beneath him. Keeping his mouth at her breast, suckling and teasing her nipple with his tongue, Jacques let his hand ride down the curve of her waist, down along her belly, and into her lap. With each suck, he could feel the way her thighs clenched together beneath her skirt, and Jacques quickly decided that flared skirts were his absolute favorite feminine article ofclothing.
His eager fingers skated over the fabric of her plum-colored skirt until they met her bare thighs. He traced a figure eight against her skin, and as if in response, he felt her hand along his stomach respond in kind. The sensation nearly chokedhim.
“Easy now,” he murmured against her breast, and to his surprise, Rainey gave a throaty chuckle, but she stilled her hand by pressing it into his stomach, splaying all five fingers as a kind of tacitsurrender.
Unable to forget the touch of her hand and its proximity to the fly of his jeans, Jacques pulled in two steadying breaths through his nose and threw his being into the worship of her body. She had not stilled his hand or stayed his advances, so he let his fingers glide up her thighs, making a deliciously slow journey beneath her skirt until he touched the searing, silken fabric of her panties, and he heard Rainey’s breathcatch.
The lovely sound made him wish to return to her mouth, so he captured her kiss again, wanting to be close to her breath, her voice, and any words she chose to utter in this state. She received his kiss with such ardor and urgency that Jacques felt his heart turn over. Wordlessly, he understood that he had not been alone in all of his yearning. All these weeks, she’d carried that inside of her,too.
He understood why. He didn’t need for her to explain her fears any more. Jacques could only hope that her surrender was a sign that she’d overcome them. They’d be together. As they should have been from the beginning. And he’d show her — over and over again — that he could be trusted with herheart.
The fact that she trusted him now with her other delicate parts made him feel about ten feet tall. His fingers traced over her soft mound, and she gave a muffled cry. He repeated the motion, and her body trembled again. He gripped her tighter around the back as his fingers slipped under the band at herpanties.
Heat and her wetness met his fingertips, and this time, it was his moan that filled the cab of theImpala.
“Rainey… my God,” he breathed against her mouth. He stroked her yielding, liquid-hot flesh, imagining its pinkness, its dizzying perfume — all woman, all Rainey — and he promised himself his mouth would journey there soon — when a Chevrolet center console and gearshift didn’t stand as chaperones, and he had space and time to lay her down on a bed and feast on every inch ofher.
Music flooded his head as the tip of his middle finger found her most sensitive spot, and he stroked a rhythm he was sure they both could hear. Rainey’s head tipped back exposing her neck again to his mouth, and he allowed his middle and index fingers to bury themselves inside, his thumb keeping time to the song theyplayed.
The percussion of Rainey’s breath sped ahead, far quicker than he’d have imagined possible. And soon after, tiny vibrations encircled his fingers, the promise of a building crescendo. Jacques knew he was in grave danger of ascending with her, even though his sex was still tucked safely in his boxers and jeans. He’d never found himself about to come just from having his fingers inside a woman, but clearly Rainey was no ordinarywoman.
She washis.
The moment this thought burst into his head, he couldn’t hold onto it. Jacques pressed his lips to Rainey’s ear. “I’ve got you,” hewhispered.
And whether she heard the words as assurance that she could let go or as evidence that he was staking his claim — both meanings could not have been truer as far as he was concerned — the words must have meant something to her because at their utterance, Rainey arched her back, clutching the hair at the back of his head even tighter, and clamping her thighs together as much as his devoted fist couldallow.
“Jacques!” Her cry came as hidden muscles clenched around his fingers. Again. And again. And again. And Jacques looked down at her face just in time to see the most adorable frown of concentration and culmination smooth out over her perfectbrow.
He bent down and placed a gentle kiss on her flushed lips as he slowly withdrew his fingers, and he watched her eyes flutter open. Her pupils were dark pools, deep and otherworldly. He smiled down at her, certain this was a view he’d never tire of seeing. Not if he lived a thousandyears.
Rainey smiled back at him. Then she blinked, and he watched as her gazecleared.
“Oh, my God.” She gently pushed his hand aside and resettled herskirt.
“What’s wrong?” Jacques asked, frowning at her suddendistress.