Lost to You (19 page)

“I never said I wanted you to.”

The spat of air he released from his nose rustled through my hair at the top of my head. The sound reflected the moment, relief and tension and building anticipation.

Christian shifted me so he could lean forward. “Excuse me. We’ve had a change of plans.” Christian gave him his address. The driver nodded and turned down the next street in the direction of Christian’s apartment.

We settled back into silence.

Waiting.

Wanting.

The short ride felt too long. Christian paid the fare and climbed from the backseat, never once losing the hold he had on me. He glanced back over his shoulder as he lightly tugged at my hand. Slowly, he led us inside his building and up the three long flights of stairs. Expectation swelled between us, echoed in our footsteps and in the heavy breaths we forced in and out of our lungs.

I clung to him, my hand tight in his, the other wrapped around his wrist as he walked a step ahead of me.

I was nervous. Excited. Terrified. Not of
this
, but of what I didn’t know, of all my inadequacies and deficiencies.

He stopped at his door and fumbled through his pockets to withdraw his keys. Metal scraped as the key was inserted in the keyhole, the sound piercing in the hush of the hall.

Christian pushed the door open wide, pulled me in behind him, and spun to close it in the same movement he edged me up against it. Cold fingertips brushed over my cheeks and down my jaw. He began to slowly unwind the scarf from my neck. Christian’s eyes were all ablaze, smoldering as he stared me down. He slipped the scarf from my neck and dropped it to the floor. He palmed the heated flesh there, sent chills flying through my system.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and I looked up at him and answered in all honesty. “I’m a little nervous.”

Okay. Maybe not completely honest. I was really nervous, so out of my element. My body quaked uncontrollably, these long rolls of trembles that I couldn’t stop no matter how hard I tried. They vibrated between us. Palpable. Clear.

Sex had left a rancid taste in my mouth, a bitter mark on my soul.

But I wanted this. I had for so long. I wanted to explore what Christian had created in me.

The arc of his mouth was tender. “Elizabeth, whatever happens tonight is totally up to you. I’m not going to lie. I’ve been dying to make love to you since the first time I met you, and whenever you let me, I will cherish it. But I don’t want it until you’re ready.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

“God, Elizabeth.” He blinked hard and his hold intensified on either side of my neck. Raging blue eyes opened to me. “You couldn’t. It’s not even possible. Is that really what you’re worried about?”

Chewing on the inside of my lip, I nodded.

This anxious sound seeped from the back of his throat, and he dropped his arms. “I’ve never been so nervous in my life.”

“What? Why?” The words tripped from my mouth as one.

“Because it’s you, and I don’t want to mess this up. When I touch you”—he reached up to trace a straight line from my chin to the hollow at the base of my neck—“I don’t want to leave behind any question of how much I love you.” His low laugh was almost pained. “And what I want most is to wipe the memory of anyone else touching you from your mind.”

Again, our distinct differences made us the same.

“All I want is you, Christian.” With my gaze pinned on him, I fumbled to let the first button of his coat free. “For us to forget everything and everyone else, because none of that matters anymore.”

I was still shaking as I worked through the rest of his buttons. Christian just stood there, watching me. When I finally released them, I pressed my palms to his chest and ran them up to push his coat off his shoulders.

Christian’s muscles twitched, jerked at the contact. Shrugging the rest of the way out of his coat, Christian tossed it to his couch, turned and slowly unbuttoned mine. He threw it on top of his.

Then he stepped back and took me in. His gaze slid softly from my face, his eyes flicking to the exposed skin at my shoulder, to my breasts, caressed down my jeans, and back up again.

He took my hand. “Come here.”

His room was down the short hall. It was dark inside, and I could only make out the subtle silhouette of his bed in the backdrop of night. He pulled me behind him as he went to his desk along the opposite wall. He flicked on the small lamp resting at the far corner of the desk, clicking through to the lowest setting. It cast the room in a faint glow, illuminated his beautiful face with subdued light.

I reached out to trace his face, the sharp angles, the bold lines. My fingertips smoothed against his strong brow, played along his soft lips.

Christian just barely kissed them, his lips parting as I freely explored.

I felt the smile on my mouth. “You’re so beautiful,” I whispered.

Christian laughed quietly, as if what I’d spoken was absurd. “Look at you, Elizabeth.” His fingers tickled along my collarbone. “You are perfect.”

His mouth caressed along mine as one of his hands twisted in the mass of my hair. The other burned into the small of my back.

I snaked my hands under his shirt. My touch was fevered as I splayed my hands and ran them up his stomach, to his shoulders, and tore his shirt over his head.

What hid under Christian’s shirt was glorious.

Lean, taut muscles jumped beneath my hands. Christian sucked in a desperate breath. “One touch, and you’re killing me already, Elizabeth.”

A smile twitched on his flirty mouth, but his expression spoke of so much more than that. This was a need that had captured us, a love that had left us completely undone.

His mouth went to my shoulder. “Do you remember that night?” He tugged my collar farther off my shoulder and pressed his teeth into my skin.

My breath caught.

It wasn’t enough to hurt, just enough to weaken my knees. I clung to his arms. I knew he wouldn’t let me fall.

“This right here is what finally threw me over the edge.” He kissed along my flesh, drawing in a shaky breath as his hands made their way under my sweatshirt. Heated palms grazed my sides.

Slowly he dragged my shirt over my head, his gaze drifting down over the black lace of my strapless bra. With a single finger, he traced over the lace ridges of the cup. His face was painfully close when he reached around with both hands to unclasp its hold.

It fell away, and goosebumps flashed across my flesh. I swallowed the thick knot that formed in my throat when Christian stepped back and brazenly contemplated me in nothing but my jeans, his eyes roaming, memorizing.

And it wasn’t awkward or any of the things I worried it might be.

Christian reached out and dragged his knuckles over the bud of my breast. “You are perfect,” he said again.

One hand slipped to the back of my neck and the other grasped my side, his mouth urgent on mine as our bare chests met.

I caught fire. “Christian,” I begged through a whimper.

“I know, baby, I know,” he mumbled between kisses, nudging me back toward his bed. He eased me down onto it, and I grasped at him when he didn’t follow.

He caught my hands, climbed to his knees on the bed as he pinned them over my head, left them there as he traveled down my body and kissed me on my belly as he slowly unbuttoned my jeans.

I was gasping for air.

He got back to his feet, pulled them from my legs, and dropped them to the floor.

He stood at the end of his bed where he’d left me in only my panties, my knees twisted to one side and my arms draped over my head.

I felt exposed. Vulnerable.

For the first time in my life, I wanted to be.

He was so beautiful as he stood there soaking up every inch of my body. My eyes wandered and did the same, watching as he slowly released each button on his jeans. He pushed them down, stepped out, and kicked them aside.

Heat flooded my face as I took in Christian in nothing but a pair of tight boxer briefs. My heart beat fast, spurred on by this insane desire to touch him and for him to touch me.

Kneeling on the edge of his bed, he gently spread my knees apart with both hands. He dipped his head, dropped a kiss to my inner thigh, and crawled the rest of the way up my body to settle between my legs.

I gripped his shoulders, and Christian brushed his fingers along my cheek, smiled down at me before he kissed me long and slow. He rained those kisses along my jaw, pressed them to my chest, captured my breast in his mouth.

I was adrift, my fingers in his hair as Christian’s skimmed up and down my sides. My body vibrated, resonating with emotion.

He rose to his hands and abruptly his shoulders dropped as he dove down to press his mouth to my hipbone.

I sucked in a sharp breath as my hips jerked from the bed.

He rocked back up on his hands, his eyes chaotic as he stared at me. He didn’t look away as he wrapped his hands around my waist, his fingers sliding down to gather the edges of my panties. He wound his fingers through, palmed my backside.

I was half exposed.

A suppressed moan broke from his mouth. “You have the sweetest ass, Elizabeth.” He squeezed once before he shimmied my panties down, for one second shifting to my side to pull them off.

I was squirming, this unknown need Christian had created in me knotting my every muscle.

Kneeling between my legs, Christian stared at me as he grazed the back of his hand up my inner thigh. “I’m going to touch you, okay?” His voice was hoarse, his attention flicking down between my legs then back up to me.

Somewhere inside, I searched for embarrassment, to find a reason to be ashamed.

But it was nowhere to be found.

This wasn’t like the few second fumbles I’d had with Ryan. This wouldn’t leave me feeling dirty and used, and Christian would not send me away disappointed.

“Please.”

Christian watched over me as I looked up at him. His fingers found me. My mouth went dry.

In seconds, I was breathless, couldn’t fathom how free I felt, this need to experience with Christian everything I’d never experienced before.

My back arched as pleasure built.

And I was saying his name, begging, pleading, because he was driving something in me no one had ever managed to reach before.

It twisted tighter, wound higher.

Then broke.

I cried out, my heels digging into his bed. Christian braced himself with one hand, dipped down to kiss my stomach as he led me through my release.

My entire being slumped to the bed, overflowing with satisfaction that oozed and bled, shone as sweat across my body and contented every crevice in my heart.

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

A low rumble echoed from Christian’s chest as he crawled back over me and pressed his mouth against mine.

“You are amazing,” he mumbled between kisses.

“Pretty sure that was all you. And yeah, amazing.” I kissed him hard.

I felt him smiling against my mouth, his fingers winding in my hair. “Yeah?”

“Uh, yeah.”

He pushed up on his hands. A look of adoration crossed over his face, this softness that radiated from his spirit while every inch of his body remained hard, twitching as he held himself in restraint.

I stared up at him as he caged me, my hands shaking as I reached between us to push his underwear from his hips.

“Elizabeth...baby...” His voice came in a harsh whisper as he tucked his chin to look between us where I struggled to get them down past his thighs. He moaned, twisting out of them while he continued to hover over me, and kicked them off his feet.

He turned his face back to me. He clenched his jaw when I wrapped one hand around him and the other around the back of his neck. A shudder traveled from his pelvis, over the ridges of his perfect stomach and up his chest, emitted as a stuttered breath from his lips that spread across my face. “Elizabeth,” he rasped, blue eyes boring into mine as his tongue darted out to wet his lips.

Lust flared in his eyes, and he clutched the sheets on either side of me. He rocked into my hand, muscles rippling along his back, bunching over his shoulders.

Fragmented tremors rolled through my body as I surrendered to this abandon. I’d never understood what it felt like to both desire and feel desired. I sucked in a strained breath as I explored him, my eyes never leaving his face, feasting on the pleasure I brought him.

He reached down and covered my hand with his. “Elizabeth, baby...I think you need to stop. That feels way too good and this is not how I imagined ending this night.”

Christian kept a hand on my hip as he rushed to sit up, tore open his side drawer, and rummaged around inside. He pulled out a little foil packet and ripped it between his teeth.

My legs shook as he knelt on his knees between my thighs. Air heaved in and out of my lungs as unbridled need spun with a loose thread of apprehension. It coiled as a hunger deep in my stomach, throbbed between my legs. Christian quickly covered himself, his hands coming down to run up the underside of my thighs as he tugged me closer to him. My legs dropped open to make him room.