By the Book (21 page)

“Look, let’s just go home; we can talk about it there.”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

Daniel only then met my gaze, and this time his expression spoke clearly—ironically, of
his
confusion.

Now you know how it feels, Cross
. I thumbed over my shoulder at the building behind us. “Back there it was like you couldn’t stand to be sitting anywhere near me.”

He gulped, and I imagined his Adam’s apple bobbing behind the turned-up collar of his leather. “You thought?”

“Maybe you’d have preferred it if I’d stayed up there and you could have gone home alone?”
Okay, stop now, Hutton
. I’d never liked anyone whining at me, so there was no way I was going to commit the same sin in conversation with Daniel.

“God, no. I asked you to come with me, didn’t I?”

“That was you
asking
, was it? Look, something’s up. I wish you’d just…” I stepped closer. Lord knew what I’d been expecting him to do. Back away? But he didn’t. “It seemed very much like—and I’m stumped here, so help me out—it seemed very much like you suddenly didn’t want to be at the cinema with me.”

“I didn’t,” he shot back, and his blatancy stunned me.

“You what?”

“I didn’t want to be at the cinema with you, Reece.” He took a step back, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cool breeze. “I wanted to be at home with you.”

I opened my mouth to speak. Couldn’t.

“Well?” He looked over his shoulder, just as he had upstairs in the auditorium.

And just like I had then, I followed him now.

Chapter Thirteen

Daniel held the door open for me—this time—and it was only after I’d stepped into his flat, apartment, whatever, that I gathered the courage to say it.

“Are you gonna tell me what caused the mood swing?”

His jaw stiffened as he leaned past me to lock the door without giving me room to pass by. Our eyes locked, but
his
threatened anger or some other emotion I daren’t articulate.

Leaving his key ring swinging from the lock, his hand curved around my neck, the coldness it had carried in from outdoors making me flinch, but the way he wet his bottom lip warmed me up again. “I think,” he murmured, and even in the space of two words, his voice cracked. So he gave up. And kissed me.

His lower lip dragged over mine just slowly enough for me to detect the trembling. His fingers snaked up to my hair, assertive in their tightening against my scalp, a counterbalance to his tentative kiss. “I think you know,” he whispered against my mouth.

“No.” I blurted the word out, the monosyllable exploding in the sliver of air between us like a firework. Or a hand grenade. “I
don’t
know.” Blinking slowly so I didn’t have to look at him, I took a deep breath. No matter how much I wanted to stare, sometimes the sight of Daniel Cross was too much and closing my eyes against him in temporary blindness was the only way to avoid permanent damage. “That’s why I asked.”

“In…” He bit his lip.

No, he can’t be nervous. Daniel Cross doesn’t get nervous.

“In my office earlier, when I got pissed off at the book. It wasn’t
that
which bothered me. It was…” His brows knit together as he searched for the correct wording.

I’m right here, Daniel. Right. Here.

“You’re here.”

I gasped as if he’d pulled the air out of my lungs, just as he’d pulled the thought from my head and voiced it.

“You were here earlier when I was trying to work, and
you
were what put me off.”

My eyes widened, but it was a reflex over which I had no control and something blinded me. Not Daniel. My own
need
for him. “I thought…” I gulped back air in desperation. “I thought getting out of the house and doing something else would help. Your writing, I mean. Taking a break.”

“God, no.” Daniel shook his head, and his lips threatened a watery smile. “My writing wasn’t the problem.
You
were. And I took the problem with me when we went to the cinema, didn’t I?”

I thought of the uncomfortable shifts in his body language back at the cinema. The way he’d leaned in the opposite direction from me, veering out of my aura and telling me he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there—which had been the truth—but not for the reason I’d believed.

“It was hellish sitting in that damn place and not being able to touch you.”

“Come on, Daniel.” I half laughed, the sound fading as his expression came into focus. A frown, thinned lips, and paling skin. “It’s not as if you’ve never touched me in a cinema before, is it?”

“Maybe so.” Those thinned lips at last curved, and he leaned closer, his breath warming the skin of my jaw. Though he didn’t make contact, I imagined I felt his stubble brush my skin, this image nothing more than a wish fueled by his nearness. “But I couldn’t exactly touch you the way I
wanted
to this evening, could I?”

I gulped, my mouth instantly arid. “Oh?”

“You must have known.” Daniel stood closer still, held his palm against the rise in my jeans, and I would have gasped had I still possessed the ability to breathe. “You must have been able to tell what was wrong with me.” A long, slow exhalation against my neck before he kissed me and his hand squeezed just a little tighter.

“Fuck.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Though I couldn’t see his face, I felt his smile against my skin as his lips curled. “God, I want…”

We both paused, gathering our breath.

And he lifted his head, looked me in the eyes, and said nothing. At least verbally.

I still knew what he was thinking. Maybe earlier in the cinema I’d been confused, but now I knew, and what I saw in his eyes scared the hell out of me.

But nothing I saw stopped me wanting it.

“Bedroom.” Both hands grasping my jacket, he pulled me with him as he walked backward down the hall, stopping occasionally to haul my jacket off or for me to unzip his and push it off his shoulders.

Jackets hitting the floor were soon followed by the muffled thump of shoes kicked off and the clink of belt buckles colliding.

I half stumbled against Daniel, half pushed him against the wall, unable to decide between pulling his shirt up and over his head and kissing him. Screwed both up, got my hands tangled in his shirt.

“Here.” He laughed, the sound turning into a throaty growl that I had a hard job not echoing when he tugged his shirt up and off and dropped it where we stood. We’d left the house bundled up in shirts, jeans, jackets and restraint, checking most of those at the door on our return. The hallway, now carpeted with discarded clothes and self-control, led straight to the bedroom, but we still couldn’t wait. Those damn clothes had to come off
now
or fall away, burned by our skin into a pile of ashes at our feet.

“The other time I…we…” Daniel’s words were all over the place, his hands all over me, and his breaths came in short, stuttering gasps. “It wasn’t enough.”

I’d known all along what he was getting at. Waited for him to say it.

“Jesus, you have no idea how desperate I am to fuck you.”

“Daniel.” I pulled back, frowned as I inclined my head, but he only gave me a second’s contemplation time before clasping my jaw in both hands and kissing me again.

Breathless with wanting, he had to keep stopping to draw in oxygen, but lust abbreviated his shallow attempts at doing so. I saw it in his eyes. A flash, a momentary
fuck it; I want you more than I want to draw breath.

“Reece.”

Who needs to breathe? Just kiss me
. “Daniel.”
I’m sure I was about to say something, but I just want to kiss you
. “I—”

There it was again, his tongue against mine, desperate, then gone as he broke off the kiss to breathe or utter a few words, gasping like a drowning man. “I want to—”

“I know.”

A frown played across his brow before desire made him forgetful of whatever had concerned him, and he shrugged. Kissed me. Again.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been wanted like this, and there was no way I was going to say no. Absolutely no chance of turning Daniel away when he was like this. He wanted to be inside me, and I wanted him to fuck me.

Oh God. I wanted him to fuck me.

We stumbled across the threshold into his bedroom, not even bothering to flick on the light. We knew where we were going, had walked this path a thousand times before, one of us sightless and walking backward, both distracted with wanting.

Daniel went for my belt, and in the half-light filtering in from the hallway, I saw his hands shake. He bit his lip, trying to hide it, but the jingle of my belt buckle gave him away. He couldn’t hold himself steady. “You don’t have to… I mean, you can say no.”

“Daniel.” When I said his name, he lifted his head, his face in shadow. I couldn’t clearly see what I held, but the rough stubble along his jaw against my palms was enough. “I don’t want to say no.” I heard his sharp intake of breath, and his stubble abraded my palms as he turned his head. When his lips made contact with my hand, my fingers twitched.

“As long as you’re sure.” Daniel paused, and I felt his gaze on me in this half-light. Another intake of breath and he came to life. Pulled my belt open and went for the zip. “Fuck it,” he said in between kisses. “I’m all fingers and thumbs.”

I could barely believe it. Here we were, in this situation, and
Daniel
was the nervous one. I took over, kicked off my jeans and shorts, and went for his belt, listening for the inevitable hitch in his breathing at each step along the way. When his belt buckle jingled. When I slipped the belt out of the catch. When I got fed up with taking things slow, hauled his belt loose, and went for his waistband button.

Jesus, I’m really doing this.

“Reece.”

At the sound of my name on his lips, I slowed. Slid down the zip and let my fingers trail over his cock, curving around it through the fabric of his shorts.

“Jesus.” My word became a hiss of breath as I moved; his breaths, warm waves of air against my face.

“You’ll make me come if you keep doing that.”

“Already?” I teased, the smile in my voice almost forcing out a laugh. A nervous one, but a laugh all the same. “But I’m not even touching you.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He held my wrist to still me.

“Then what are you going to be like when you’re”—I gulped—“inside me?”

“Oh
fuck
.” He shook his head, then leaned in so our foreheads were touching. “Christ, you’ve got no idea. No idea at all.” He slid trembling hands over my hips and walked me backward until my legs hit the bed.

We fell, or lowered ourselves, ended up lying on top of his covers, Daniel’s kisses more frantic and hotter than before. His hand went to my cock, and he stroked me slowly, just enough to let me know he was there and his last morsels of self-control had decided I wasn’t going to come until he let me.

“I have been thinking about this,” he whispered in my ear as his hand tightened. “All. Damn. Day.”

“God. Daniel, you’re gonna make me…”

“Not yet.” He lifted his hand away, laughing.

“What?” I tried to lift myself up, but he told me to lie back. The laughter was back in his voice. So too was his confidence. Now that he had me flat on my back and desperate for him to make me come, he knew who was in charge.

Daniel knelt on the floor, and though I knew what he planned, the way he took his time in going about it sent a shiver up my spine.

“I want to be inside you so badly.” His voice, little more than a desperate growl, sent a shiver up my spine. “But I have to taste you first. I fucking have to.”

I opened my mouth to speak, a helpless
yes
or
Jesus
or
Daniel
, but his lips closed around my cock before I could utter a word. No possibility of speech and hardly any of coherent thought.

I grasped the bedclothes even tighter with each dip of his head, screaming
oh fuck yes, just like that
inside my mind, silent on the outside but for the occasional attempt at breathing.

Every time I tensed and tried to pull air into my lungs, Daniel responded with a low moan, which drove me closer to the edge.

As I threw my head back, my eyes clouded over, either watering with the intensity of what Daniel’s mouth did to me, or with white sparks telling me I was seconds away from losing it.

“Oh
fuck
.”
So I can speak again
. “God, that’s…”
But only stuttering pleas for him to never, ever stop
. “That’s…”

His lips tightened as he took more of me in his mouth and just as the way his tongue flickered over my skin got to be too much, just as his hands moved over my hips, just as his thumbs moved back and forth over my hip bones, the room spun around me and I came.

And said the only word of which I was capable.

“
Daniel
.”

The mattress shifted as Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, hauling off his jeans and shorts.

Still short of breath, I watched his back, the light from the hall casting shadows below his shoulder blades and down the ridges of his spine as he moved. With each muscular ripple, his wings threatened to unfurl and lift off his back, and though tempted to reach out and lay my palm flat against the lifelike artwork there, I resisted.

Moving up the bed to lay my head on the pillows, I puffed out a groan and covered my eyes with one hand, the other resting on my abs, rising and falling with each slowing breath.

“You okay?” Daniel lay beside me, covering that hand with his own.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I uncovered my eyes again and nodded. “That was…” It didn’t matter that I couldn’t finish the sentence. Daniel had a way of looking at me that assured me there was no need.

He leaned in to kiss me and whispered, “Well, I sure enjoyed it.” Another kiss before he continued. “I love it when you’re so turned on you can’t speak. I love knowing I do that to you.” The hand over mine slid down to my hip, and he pulled me toward him, let his cock press against my leg.

And the nerves were still there, despite this wanting.