“I know,” he said simply, softly.
“How did you know?” She was genuinely surprised.
They were both whispering, for some reason, like conspirators or symphony goers who don’t want to interrupt the music. And with every word they were drifting closer to each other, because that’s what magnets did.
And now he could smell the rain on her, and see that her shirt was clinging to her from it.
“The sun rises in the east, the earth revolves around the sun, you can see the Big Dipper if you stand out on the big rock near Whiskey Creek. That’s how I know. It was inconceivable that it would be otherwise.”
She smiled slowly, hugely. “You always were pretty damn sure of yourself.”
“Said the pot to the kettle.”
“And you’re always so bossy, too,” she added, almost hopefully.
And as they were close enough to blend right into each other, she addressed these words practically to his chin.
“I know,” he said on a rueful, sympathetic hush. “For instance, I insist we get you out of that wet shirt.”
He reached for the top button. And worked it open, slowly, deftly.
Her breathing was swifter, a counterpoint to the rush of the rain outside.
His fingers slid down to the next button and freed that, too.
And the next.
“Eli—” she whispered, but she didn’t finish the word because he stopped it with his mouth and kissed her.
And as her shirt slipped open, he pushed it away from her shoulders and used its sleeves to tug her tightly into his body. He kept her in that sensual little straightjacket for a moment as he trailed his lips, his tongue, to her throat, where he savored her pounding pulse, to her ear, where he traced it and heard the catch in her breath as bonfire after bonfire of sensation lit all over her body, and where he breathed, “no quarter.”
The title of one of their mutual favorite Led Zeppelin songs, as it so happened.
“Bring it,” she whispered.
He eased her away from him, peeling her shirt the rest of the way off her shoulders, and she gave a little half shimmy to send it fluttering all the way to the floor.
He paused for perhaps a heartbeat to feast his eyes. “Pretty,” he murmured of her teal-blue lace demi-cup push-up bra.
“Got it at Target,” she said.
He gave a short laugh. He unclipped the center clip with a sort of leisurely ceremony, even though he could have gotten it open like a ninja.
His hands were shaking a little.
Later the two of them would think of that click as one of their favorite sounds in the world.
When her breasts sprang free, he fervently muttered “Christ,” a prayer of thanksgiving if she’d ever heard one, and he filled his hands and sighed like a man crawling through a desert who’d just reached an oasis. He dragged his thumbs over her nipples, already hard as beads.
She made a sound she didn’t know she was capable of making. A purely animal sound of pleasure, and Eli pounced on that as though it were a mating call.
His hands were everywhere on her, hot and claiming, sliding over her bare skin, slipping into her waistband, cupping her ass, and they joined in a kiss that was just as demanding and thorough.
She plucked at his shirt and he got the message. He took his hands away from her long enough to reach for the hem and yank it off over his head. There was a terrible moment that lasted approximately three seconds but felt like an eternity where he appeared to be trapped in it. Working as a team they finally got it off and he all but hurled it across the room as if it had purposely attacked him.
Her head went balloon light when she saw him bare from the torso up, from the hard wedge of his shoulders tapering down to his waist and that lovely ferny trail of hair that disappeared into the jeans that clung to his hips and pointed to that fantastic bulge in those jeans.
Hewasa wall. Maybe a fortress.