Can't Hold Back (15 page)

He didn’t wait for her to answer. He lay down next to her and drew her close and kissed her. Well, really, he licked her. Because that’s what she’d said she’d wanted, so that’s what she’d get. His tongue on her upper lip, following the curve of it, savoring the taste of it. His tongue sliding across hers. His tongue on her lower lip—he had to make himself not use his teeth, because she made him want to dig in and hold on. Then he went on a very delicate exploration of her face. More lips than tongue, really, except at the edge of her jaw and her ears, and then only the tip. Tracing and tasting.

Her skin was unbelievably soft. She thrashed when he drew a line from beneath her earlobe down to her throat. She moaned when his mouth found the pulse at the base of her throat. Her whole body arched under him when he nuzzled her neck.

So good. So gratifying.

The whole point here was to spend an eternity getting to his final destination. To make her spend that whole eternity thinking about where he was going and what he was going to do when he finally got there.

When his pain had been so bad, he’d thought a lot about how much he hated his body. How weak and easily broken bodies were. He’d seen so many bodies broken, so many lives bled out on rock and sand, and his pain reminded him of all of them.

Right now, he loved his body. He loved his hands (which were holding her immobile under him) and his tongue, which had found the upper curve of her right breast, and his cock, which was pressed against her leg in a way that was supposed to be casual but which utterly failed at casual because it kept throbbing and jumping to get more contact. He loved his body because it wasn’t causing him pain but giving him pleasure, but mainly he loved his body because it was giving
her
pleasure.

And her body was so receptive and so honest with him about how much pleasure he was giving it. All those quick indrawn breaths and little sighs, moans and groans and whimpers and squeaks, and those low, dark sounds she made, barely voiced breaths. Her nipples hard and tight, the salt scent of her rising arousal, goosebumps and shivers, a tremor that ran all the way through her. He wanted to thank her for it, for all of it, because no one had ever really given him that much before. That much
yes.

He circled one nipple, then the other, making sure to linger when she shivered and moaned, when his tongue teased underneath her breast and around the outer curve, when his nose accidentally touched ticklish skin under her arm—he stayed all those places and made sure he drew all the possible pleasure from her. He traveled down the planes and slope of her belly, slowly, so slowly, and dipped into her navel and lingered there, too, because it made her squirm.

“You’re
killing
me.”

“That’s the point.”

“Lower.”

He laughed wickedly and went on finding all the little spots on her abdomen that were ticklish and sensitive. Meanwhile, his hands moved lower and pinned her thighs, his thumbs so close to her center that he could feel her wetness on her leg.

And then he licked his way right down to the edge of her curls and stopped, to mess with her head. Because it made her all wiggly and pissed off, and that turned him on.

She smelled so good. Dark and secret and clean. He spent a while enjoying that. And enjoying the way she shifted her hips as his breath brushed her curls. He blew deliberately, cooler air across the damp, and she made a sweet little broken sound. He got closer and tried to see how hot he could make his breath, and how cool. How broad and soft he could puff air, how directly he could blow it like an arrow against her clit, which had stiffened enough to peek out.

She was impatient now. She was raising herself up to get closer, tilting and rolling for the sake of the motion itself.

He withdrew his breath and then gave it to her again, to see what she’d do, and she let out a gust of a sigh and tried to push herself into his face, but he pinned her hips hard with his hands and wouldn’t let her move. Then he savored the strength in those hips, the way she tried to lever herself back into favor.

“Something you want?” he inquired idly.

“I hate you.”

He laughed. “You might hate me,” he said. “But I know you love
this.
”

With the tip of one finger, he began tracing lines. The top edge of her curls. The junctures where her thighs met her torso, one on each side. And the seam of her sex. But so lightly he was only touching hair, brushing it so she’d feel the tickle of his touch. All the way down, skimming where her curls were damp and parted to reveal her, pink and glistening.

That line, over and over again. This time, skimming her clit with his finger so lightly he could barely feel it himself, but she bucked. And then dipping his finger so he could feel how slick she was. She was so wet that his touch could only just have registered, but there her hips went again, wild for contact.

He parted her painstakingly slowly, letting his thumbs glide over her slickness. Opening outer and inner folds to unveil her. He leaned in and touched the tip of his tongue to her swollen clit. Flicked. Then put the flat of his tongue against her and held still, to see what she’d do.

“Ohhh,” she said, and rocked her hips to slide her clit across his tongue. He held still and let her. “Don’t move,” she commanded.

Yes. Tell me.

He obeyed her for long enough to let her start to feel the tension build, then drew back. She groaned deep in her chest.

He spread her open again and licked her.

Unh.

So wet. So slippery, saliva, lube, one eager surface sliding against another, the glossy satin of her slick against his tongue. He was losing control again—she did this to him. It made him want to pin her and punish her, to constrain and control her so he could get his own control back, but she was moving under his mouth and his hands so frantically that he couldn’t keep her still, rising up to get more of him, wiggling against him, and finally the only thing he could do to master her was to draw her clit into his mouth and suckle it until she came, yelling and thrashing.

Whereupon he lifted his face and said, “If I don’t get inside you in the next three seconds, I’m going to come all over you,” and she said, “I want you to come all over me,” and he said, “Oh, God, Li,” which got lost in a groan, as he lurched to his knees and came all over her belly, barely aware of her hands joining his to squeeze and stroke the last drops onto the smooth pearl of her skin.

“I’m sor—”

“If you apologize, I’m going to kill you,” Alia said. “First of all, I asked you to do it. And like you said, I’m not good at asking. Well,” she said, reconsidering. Because it seemed that things had changed. Most things. Maybe everything. “I wasn’t good at asking before you. And also—it was hot.
I liked it.
It’s going in the porn library.”

“Well, good,” he said. “Because I seem to have very little control when it comes to you.” He went to the bathroom and came back with a washcloth and began to clean her up.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s nice and warm.”

Another thing to like about Nate. It had occurred to him to warm up the water to wash her. There were way too many things to like about him, actually. She didn’t want to like all those things about him, not when she had so little idea how he felt about her.

And right. She owed him—owed
herself
—a conversation. About what this was. About where this was going. About whether it could go anywhere at all.

A conversation that could have only one outcome that wouldn’t leave her heartbroken. Particularly after what had just happened. Not so much what he’d done to her—although,
oh, God,
what he’d done to her! But what he’d said.

You’re not very good at saying what you want, are you?

And what she’d said. What she’d admitted to.

It was me. Me being me.

Which was, in effect, her admitting to having loved him all along. So, really, there weren’t too many secrets left, were there?

“Nate,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She hesitated, because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. What she needed to ask.

“I don’t want to stop. Doing this. Being with you.”

Startled, he turned to face her. His expression softening. “Oh,” he said.

Just that.
Oh.

It held so much in it. His surprise, and his pleasure, too. How much he liked that she’d said that—she could see it, right there in his face. And the moment drew out and wound tight around them and she was suspended in it. Joyful and terrified.

“I don’t want to stop, either,” he said.

He pulled her close. Kissed her, not hard the way he had when he’d come into the room earlier after they’d edged each other up into madness, but so sweetly.

“But I have to.”

That had been in the
Oh,
too.

“I’m going to this super-small town where there’s nothing. Nothing for you. And you’re staying here. Where there’s nothing for me.”

“I don’t have to stay here. I—we—could go to Seattle—”

There was an edge of desperation in her voice she didn’t like. Didn’t like at all.

And he was shaking his head.

“I never told you. Why it matters to me. The store, and Braden, and the trip, and Suzy and Jim—those are J.J.’s parents.”

“No,” she said quietly. “You never told me.” And suddenly it seemed an enormous omission. One that she should have noticed. That she should have asked about. That she should have demanded he remedy.

“I want to tell you now. If you want to hear.”

Too little. Too late.

But yes. She wanted to hear. She wanted to know. She wanted every last bit of him he would give her, even if it made the heartbreak worse later. Because that was how things were now.

“Tell me,” she said, and tried not to think about how they’d used those words in another context earlier.

“When I first got here, I had this conversation with the guys. About promises. The ones you say out loud and the ones you keep to yourself. Like this guy who promised his buddy he’d take all the dangerous missions so the guy could get home to his wife and kids.”

He didn’t have to tell her how that had turned out. She saw it behind his eyes.

“And I was thinking about how even when you don’t say them out loud, some things are promises. Like when a guy leaves his wife to go off to war, there are promises. He’s saying,
I’ll come home.
She’s saying,
I’ll be here.
”

He looked into the far-off distance. Farther away than she’d ever seen him look, even in those early days when he’d been in so much pain. That seemed like forever ago already. Just a few weeks and he was a different man. Stronger. Sounder.

He didn’t need her anymore, not the way he had.

It made her happy, and it made her very, very sad. Because it had been how much he needed her that had made this all happen. And now that he didn’t—

“Anyway, I made a promise. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

She could feel dread pooling in her stomach. Because even when he’d told her the story of what had happened to J.J., and she’d known how much guilt he was carrying around, even when she knew that guilt was causing him actual physical pain, she hadn’t seen, not clearly, how inextricably tied he still was to the past. Now she could see it. Hear it. In the far-off look. In the word “promise.”

“It was a couple weeks before the RPG hit the tower. We were doing guard. Near the end of a four-hour shift, both of us tired as dogs. J.J. didn’t—he wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to talk philosophy. More, we’d just be both playing video games, and then he’d want to talk about who was hotter, Megan Fox or Kate Upton.”

She didn’t ask him who was hotter. He was serious, terribly serious now. Not the guy who’d wanted to play, who’d egged her on. This other man, someone she didn’t—

Someone she didn’t know.

“All of a sudden, he says, ‘It’s not what I thought. I thought I’d feel like I was seeing the world and having adventures, and instead it feels like I’m in a cage.’

“It’s J.J., and I’m still not taking him too seriously, so I gesture at the windows of the guard tower and say, ‘We are in a cage.’ But he gives me this look, and I shut up. He says, ‘I wanted so bad to get away from that store, and now all I want to do is get back there and run it. Hang with Braden, be a dad, take care of my parents. All the stuff that felt like a prison sentence before feels like freedom now. Everything’s upside down, and the adventure is the prison. You know?’ ”

Her throat was choked with it. With J.J.’s pain, and Nate’s. Her own felt very small and unimportant in comparison.

“I knew. I knew—”

A rift in his voice, and she knew he’d be silent until he could cover it, that he wouldn’t cry for her, not now. When he was pulling away from her, telling her why this couldn’t happen.

“I knew what it felt like to think your reasons were the right ones, or at least good enough, and to discover that—that they weren’t. So I said—I said—
fuck.
”

She put her arms around him, but he pulled away and put his self-control back on like a mantle, and said, “I said, ‘A few more weeks, dude. Just hang in a few more weeks, and you’ll be back there.’ ”

She could hear his breathing. Ragged. But she didn’t touch him.

“Maybe it doesn’t sound like much. But I feel like I lied to him. Like I promised him. And there are so many promises you can’t keep. So—God, I don’t know. I felt like there was this one I had left, and I had to keep it.”

But you never promised him you’d do it if he couldn’t!
she wanted to cry.
You never promised you’d take his place!

But she didn’t. Even though she saw all the twists in his logic. All the peculiar ways that what he was telling her didn’t quite add up. How taking over the store and fathering J.J. and being a surrogate son to Braden’s parents could never in a million years give J.J. or Braden or Jim or Suzy back what they had lost. Of course it couldn’t. Just like it couldn’t give Nate back J.J.

She stayed quiet, because he was telling her he’d lost something else, too. Some sense of being a man who could keep his word. Who could be counted on to mean what he said. He was telling her that there was a way he could have
that
back.

She couldn’t take that away from him.

She couldn’t ask him to break this one, last, promise.

“Do you—do you understand?”

Still, she couldn’t quite answer.

Finally, “It’s what you need to do. Of course I understand that.”

And the look on his face. The gratitude. It made her sure she’d done the right thing. And then the gratitude transmuting gradually into something else. Something greedy. Her body already primed to answer.

“Will you do something for me?”

She nodded.
Anything.

“Will you tell me what you want? I want to hear you ask for it.” That look in his eyes, that dark look so she knew exactly what he meant.

She hesitated. Nodded.

It was like being onstage at first. The words coming jolting and awkward. “I want…Nate, I can’t—”

“You can.”

Then, because he wanted it, because he’d asked for it, “Kiss…me. The…those…little kisses.”

She could drown in the sensations—the heat of his mouth, the nip of his lips and teeth—and in the emotions. Her hunger. His. The recklessness. The sorrow.

And when he pulled away, the expression on his face. She would do anything to make him look at her like that. She would do anything for the gratitude and the desire.

“I want your tongue.”

“Where?”

“In my mouth.”

He obliged. Lingeringly. Obliterating thought for a long time.

“Where else?”

“Here.” She showed him. “Here.”

“And here?”

“Definitely there.”

He groaned. When his tongue slid against hers. When his tongue flicked upward against her nipple. When his tongue slide down her ribs, tucked into her navel, found the matching heat between her legs. He groaned as if he were the one being touched.

That made it easier. It made it so easy. “Yes. Just like that.” And, “Slower.
Slower.
Tease me.”

And she could use her hands, too, to tell him, pulling him up to kiss her again, putting his hands where she wanted them, on her breasts, his fingertips against her face, hands grasping her waist, one hand cupping her greedy center, where heat had pooled and she’d melted into it.

“Rub. Like you did the other day. And touch my nipples.”

Then, when neither of them could stand it any longer, and he was inside her, moving, when his heat was her heat and there was really no distinction at all, she could ask with her body, with her hips, with her rhythm. With her nails, with the sounds that were coming out of her without her meaning to make them, breath huffed against his ear, whimpers into his mouth, a moan against his collarbone. Pleas.

She asked and she asked and she asked, for touch after touch, for more, for faster, for deeper, but it was like that childhood Christmas-morning sensation, how she could never recapture the moment of pure possibility she’d felt when she first saw the riches, glimmering, glossy, bright. It was like how as the day wore on and bounty turned to excess and still nothing quite fed the ache, each additional gift became a taunt. Something else you’d have to accommodate, something else you could lose. And she was reaching, asking for more, using every word to try to tell him all these things she knew he wanted her to ask for, when inside there were so many things she wanted to ask for.

Tell me how much you need me.

Tell me you could change your mind.

Tell me you know this is a kind of promise, too.

But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, say it, the words trapped and melting, like evaporation, like smoke shifting until it dissipated and was gone.

He stroked into her, his pace perfect, steady, speeding only a little as his eyes dropped closed and his body stiffened and the wedge of his hips against her sex pushed her over the edge.

“I want…I want…”

But she couldn’t find it. She had the shape and the texture, but not the name.