Wide Open (10 page)

I pause, looking around the apartment hesitantly.

Is he seriously striking up a conversation with me while he takes a dump?

“Uh, yeah,” I answer slowly. “Great time. You?”

“I was until about ten minutes ago.”

“Yeah.”

“You a friend of Lilly’s?”

“No. I work with Colt.”

“Me too. But you sound too pretty to be a football player,” he chuckles.

I smile. “I’m not. I’m a documentary film maker.”

“Oh snap! You’re with the movie people. The ones doing all the interviews with the team.”

“That’s us.”

“When are we gonna sit down and talk, huh?”

“Right now, apparently.”

He laughs loudly, the sound echoing off the bathroom walls. “I hope you’re not recording this.”

“Never assume you’re not on the record. Not when we’re around.” I back away from the door. “I’ll leave you to your war. Godspeed.”

“Adios, mi amor!” he grunts painfully.

I pick up the pace, distancing myself from his situation. It’s getting too real for my taste.

There are multiple bedrooms in this apartment, meaning there’s got to be more than one bathroom. I’m banking on a master bath off the largest room. I’m not disappointed. I leave the light off as I cross to the white marble room glowing in the flickering light from outside. A group has gathered on the streets to set off smaller fireworks in the road outside the building, casting shadows across the dark bedroom. Sparks reflect like falling stars through the bathroom.

I leave the door open as I lean over the deep sink, splashing cool water on my face and neck. I linger there with my bare feet freezing on the cold tile, my warm skin rejoicing in the cool feel of the water, my limbs loosening and relaxing. It’s quiet here. Contained and comfortable, and I start to feel like myself again. I feel like I’m seeing clearly as the light from outside sparks red as blood. I watch it reflect around the room, dancing erratically before dying out. Before leaving me cold. Alone.

The towel next to the sink is blue and soft on my skin as I dry my face and hands. I walk carefully across the large, echoing room, back out to the bedroom. Right into his waiting eyes.

Kurtis is there, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark. He’s wearing gray swim trunks and nothing else. Nothing but the masculinity that emanates from his every pore and hits me hard as a slap in the face. I’m breathless looking at him, drinking him in.

His chest is broad and bronzed, cut from stone in effortless, smooth strokes. Dark hair blooms from the center of his chest, trailing down the rippling ridges of his stomach, disappearing inside his swim trunks. His hair is everywhere; his head, his chest, on his arms, his long, thick legs, his jaw. My body responds violently before my mind can understand why, but then it’s clear. He’s not a boy, not a child, not even a guy. He’s too serious for that; too wearied, too worried. He’s a man. All man, from head to toe, inside out, and I want to know what it’s like to be touched by one. Kissed by one. I’ve been craving it since the day I met him, yearning for what I’ve never had. What I desperately need.

A man.
This
man.

“I came here for you,” he tells me quietly, answering the question I can’t ask. “I thought I was coming to prove a point to them, but I was lying to myself. I was lying to them. But I won’t lie to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to lie to me.”

I take a steadying breath, my toes curling inside the plush carpet under my feet. “I came here for you too.”

He nods solemnly. He knew that, but now he
knows
it, and what do we do with it?

I step farther into the room, reaching behind me to the strings dangling at my back, holding my bikini together. My eyes dart from his to the closed door of the bedroom. A door I didn’t close when I came in.

“I locked it,” he promises, his voice as dark as the coming night. I shiver in the wake of it, excitement flooding my body.

I take another step toward him, my eyes locked on his. He watches with raw need as I tug slowly at the strings. They give way easily. I pull the loose fabric from my chest, up over my head where it tangles in my hair. He watches my face as my hair cascades down around my shoulders, finding freedom from my top. I toss it carelessly to the side.

Kurtis takes his time looking at me. He mesmerizes me, draws me in smooth, even strokes with a brush from his eyes that I can feel like breath against my skin. His face is perfectly calm when I step closer, hooking my thumbs inside my bikini bottoms, but in the flickering light from outside I can see his pulse in his throat. It throbs, quick and angry. In time with my own heart hammering in my ears.

When I’m close enough to touch he reaches for me. His hands still mine on my hips, pulling them from my bikini and dragging them to his shoulders. His skin is hot under my hands, hard as steel over his shifting muscles. He opens his legs, pulling me between them until I’m staring down at him; breathless, topless. His hands are on my hips, his eyes on my body, and the moment is too real, too strong to be ignored.

I kiss him first. I cross that barrier and he dives headlong over it with me, delving his tongue deep into my mouth on a satisfied groan. His hold on my hip is bordering on painful, but I melt into his touch. I make it hard for him to hold me as I fall apart under his lips, his breath. The taste of bourbon and the smell of cologne. The feel of a man putting his arms around me, grabbing my ass, tangling his hand in my hair and his tongue in my mouth. It’s heady, addicting. My body feels foreign as he touches it. Supple and pliable in a way I’ve never known before.

In ways I’ll never be able to forget.

KURTIS

Her tongue tastes like coconut. Like paradise and sunset on a warm sandy beach. It’s different than her flavor in the stairwell. That was taught and tormented. Twisted up in a way that swirled with a dark desire. This is something else. Something saccharine and easy. Hot. This is sex in a whisper. One soft, yearning sound that sets me on fire:

“Please.”

Harper sighs as my hands glide up over her stomach. I feel the bare skin tremble under my touch. It’s cool and inviting, soft in a way that doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t seem possible. Her hands take hold of my face, pulling my mouth hard against hers as I move my palms higher. My fingers trip over her ribs, making her twitch, making her moan as I cup her full breasts in my palms. She whimpers excitedly against my lips. Her fingers are tangling in my hair, pulling painfully, urging me on.

I slow my tongue, slow her, slow my hands and this night because I want to enjoy it. I want to make it last, for her and for me. I lick a line across her lips, devouring the last of that sweet taste until there’s nothing but hot breath passing fast and urgent between us. It builds as I squeeze her in my palms. It peaks as I touch her nipples, hard and waiting. Ready.

“Please.”

I don’t know who says it this time. It might have been her, it might have been me, or maybe it was the air around us demanding that I don’t stop. Not now. Never again.

I roll one hard peak between my thumb and forefinger. She shivers violently, her face rising from mine to look down at me. Her heart shaped mouth is open to bursting, her lips wet with my kiss. She’s looking into my eyes and she’s in the moment, in my hands, and nowhere else. She’s one hundred percent with
me
, and the open, expectant look on her face makes my dick jump hard in my shorts.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she whispers from the precipice. “If anyone ever found out—“

“I know.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

I run my palms up over her chest, her breastplate, onto either side of her neck. “You’re going to lie with me.”

I wrap my lips around her breast, tickling her with my tongue. Her breath hitches in her throat, an eager moan slipping out and raining down on me.

I release her, asking, “Can you do that, Harper?”

“Can you keep it to yourself?” she counters.

I chuckle roughly. “There are two things I’m very good at. Keeping a secret is one of them.”

“What’s the other?”

I pull her head down to kiss her gently. “Hold on tight. I’m about to show you.”

She smiles, laughter on her lips. It quickly turns to a gasp when I spin her around, landing her on her back on the bed. She watches me step out of my shorts. She stares intently as I take hold of her white bathing suit bottom and slowly pull it down her long legs. I toss it aside, lost somewhere in the dark with her top.

Her naked body is illuminated in the crackling light from outside. Green. Red. Blue. White. An array of color rebounding with an impossible radiance off her skin. Every inch of her is so sinuous and still so tight. So feminine it hurts in the worst possible way. Her hair is like ink spilled across the bed. It’s the black of the night sky, her green eyes glimmering like stars staring up at me. I feel disoriented looking at her, like it’s all wrong for me to be here this way with her, and it probably is, but I’m not turning back now. I can’t. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want Harper. I’ve never looked at a woman and found the beauty I see in her. She is celestial. She’s gravity that’s pulling me in, and I’m sick of fighting it.

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper as I straddle her thighs, kneeling on the bed above her. “How are you so beautiful?”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

She reaches out to touch my thigh where it’s planted on the bed next to her. “So are you.”

Her fingers dance over the coarse hair to the inside of my leg. It’s sparser there. Softer. It leads her higher to the hypersensitive skin around my balls where’s there nothing to mask the delicate burn of her hand. Her eyes hold mine with ease as her fingers brush against me. I buck involuntarily, my body begging for more. Her chest rises faster and faster as her fingers ride higher. She caresses my shaft, guiding her hot, small palm up to the head. I lean forward on the bed, my hands on either side of her head, my hips pushing forward. I push into her palm, slowly fucking her hand as she tightens her grip around it. My breath bursts from my lungs in shattered fragments that fall over her face staring up at me. She squeezes me tighter, rolling her finger over my head, and I fuck her faster. Harder. I shouldn’t because I don’t know how long I’ll last, but I can’t stop. I can’t look away from her eyes that urge me on. That tell me to go forward, to let her take me where she wants me; undone, unbound. Unhinged in every way where all of my insides will burst to flame on the outside. All of my secrets will be laid bare.

I stop, breathing heavily as I push her hand gently away. I kiss her, thanking her silently. Her hands find my shoulders. She pulls me closer to her, onto her. She tries to pull me into her but I push my knee between her legs to open her wider. I drag my lips down her jaw, across her chest. Over her breasts that rise to me. Down her stomach that shies away from me. She gasps when my hands touch her thighs, pushing them wider. As my lips kiss hers. As I taste her, take her, licking and sucking my way inside her.

“Shit,” she groans roughly. Her head is thrown back, her hands in her own hair. “Oh fuck.”

A thin whine escapes the back of her throat. It sounds like singing. Like music. I play the sound again. And again. She sings every time, louder and sweeter, her body rising and falling, both hands clawing at the comforter under her. I follow the sound, pulling it from deeper and deeper inside her every time. I’ll chase it where it leads me because that’s the trick. That’s my secret. It’s so simple but true. If you listen to a woman, she’ll tell you exactly how to make her happy. And I intend to make Harper very, very happy tonight.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “Kurtis, stop. Stop.”

I shake my head against her body. “No.”

“But I’m—“

“I know.” I kiss her gently. “I want you to.”

She breathes raggedly. I can feel her tightening. I can feel it bearing down on her. She’s fighting it, but I won’t let her because the singing says she wants it. Her song is changing, her whimpers like crying. Like pleading.

“Please. Please. Please,” she chants, the words coming faster and faster with each repetition.

It doesn’t take long to reach the end of the song. It’s shorter than I’d like but more beautiful than anything I’ve ever heard before. She takes hold of my hands hard as she rides the wave, gripping them to her body with a possessive need that makes me growl inside my chest.

I don’t wait for her to relax. I don’t give her a moment to breathe. I find a condom in the nightstand drawer, pull her hips to the edge of the bed, and lift her ankles up onto my shoulders. Her eyes are still dreamy, rummy and unfocused from her orgasm as I lean against her. Inside her. She gasps as I groan, both of us coming to grips with the feeling. It’s intense. Almost overpowering. I feel high, like my senses are tightening. Refining. I can hear the sharp crackle of fireworks outside, the gentle puff of her breath past her lips as I retreat and surge forward. I see every detail of her face in the fading light. I see the color of her eyes. The depth of her want. I feel the pulse of her heart in the heat of her core, wrapped around me like a loving embrace. And when I move I can feel myself falling. I’m losing perspective, losing control, and I don’t care. I knew it would be this way. I knew I’d give her everything whether I wanted to or not.

“Kurtis,” she gasps. Her hands reach out for me, looking for comfort as she loses herself again.

I release her legs to take hold of her. She grips me tightly, desperately. Her legs fall on either side of my hips, and I lean onto the bed, her hands held under mine. Our fingers laced together. She falls apart around me, her reaction too vulnerable to stand. Her lips are trembling, her eyes holding hard to mine, capturing me and keeping me hostage. Begging me to stay with her as she disintegrates helplessly. Then my name is on her breath and it’s my undoing. It sends me flying after her, going stiff inside her. It leaves me shaken to the core. Broken and wide open, bleeding over the bed in a bath of red light sparkling like fire.