Let Me Fly (9 page)

Bryn tried to evade his hand, but he easily overpowered her. Within seconds, he had her flipped onto her back. His touch turned gentle as he ran his fingers up the outside of her bare leg, over her hip, then underneath her t-shirt. He groaned when his fingers reached her lacy bra, brushing her erect nipples.

“It’s dangerous to tease a lascivious man, Bryn, especially while lying with him on a very large bed,” breathing onto her neck as he traced the vein in her neck with his tongue.

“Lascivious?” Bryn panted as he continued to suckle on her neck, moving behind her ear.

“Hot, aroused, horny…pick one, Bryn.” He pulled her shirt over her head, looking at her through hooded eyes, “You’re incredibly sexy, kitten.” Gripping her around her ribcage, he pushed his hands up near her chest, catching the bottom of her bra with his thumbs, pushing the material up and over her breasts. His thumbs brushed her very erect nipples, making a tremor ripple through her body. Bryn moaned when Charlie did it again.

“Very sensitive nipples…I will have to remember that.” Charlie was lowering his face to her chest when a loud pounding on the door made them both jump.

“Dude, seriously. We have extremely thin walls and I can hear every fucking thing you say. I’ve got to finish this bookwork before I go into town, and I can’t do it with you two moaning in there. Got it?” Corey was using his Alpha Male voice, making it hard for Bryn not to laugh.

Charlie mouthed the word
‘busted’
, before he gave her one last kiss, pulling away from her. Grinning, he threw Bryn her t-shirt from off the floor. Bryn watched as he adjusted his very noticeable arousal, sighing as she pulled her bra back down, covering her breasts again. Pulling her t-shirt back over her head, she bounded off the bed, reaching the door in two strides. She yanked open the door, but thankfully Corey wasn’t standing there anymore. Bryn was pretty sure she might deck him for being such a dick.

Charlie grabbed her arm, pulling her out to the living room to sit on the couch instead. He brought the box of first aid supplies with him. “Okay, let’s fix up your leg and we can head out. We can stop at Torrey’s to pick up a picnic basket lunch and head out for the day. You can’t go swimming in the lake because of your ankle, but bring a swimsuit, so you can lie out at the beach. Bring some jeans along; we’re going to go riding after supper.”

B
ryn lay on a lounge chair, half in the water off the beach of Lake Manitowoc. There was very little she could do near the water without Charlie having a coronary. He didn’t want her lying in the sand, because it could get under her bandage. Not allowed to even dip her toes in the water, a rogue wave could come up and splash her ankle. The only thing he would allow her to do was lay in the sun, after he slathered her with SPF 30 sunblock. She giggled as she thought back to the restraint it took Charlie as he touched every inch of her body with the lotion, spending extra time to get plenty on her rear-end. Telling him that she didn’t plan on taking off her suit to sunbathe, Charlie just shrugged and said,
yes, but you can’t be too careful.

He had yet to come back from Mr. Denhart’s house. The aging man just lived across the lake from Charlie, but it took twenty minutes to get to his house by road. They could see him waving to them across the lake, for the past half hour. Charlie had tried to ignore him, giving Bryn a short tour of the property, and eating a delicious picnic lunch together. He finally gave in, waving back to Mr. Denhart now that he was coming over. Bryn started to worry if Charlie had any time to himself at all. Even here, at home, he had to continue to be Dr. Glynn. “He really is a nice old man, but he is a borderline hypochondriac,” Charlie had told her as he climbed into his boat.

So for the past hour, Bryn watched across the lake as Charlie stood patiently next to Mr. Denhart, assessing every part of his body that he pointed to. Finally, Charlie threw his hands in the air, stomping about on the front lawn of the lake home, near the beach.

Bryn decided that maybe Charlie needed a distraction when he got back. It was obvious that Mr. Denhart was stretching every bit of patience that Charlie had. It would be fun for both of them to get rid of some of this tension that had built up between them today. Plus, she wanted to show him that he could be just “Charlie” with her, not “Dr. Glynn.”

Quickly, Bryn jumped off her lounge chair, racing for the long set of stairs to the cabin. She stopped on the second landing to catch her breath, and to check the burn on her ankle. Charlie was right, her ankle was extremely sore today, but he’d shoved some over-the-counter pain meds in her mouth when they were eating lunch. The skin pulled as she climbed the stairs, but not bad enough to cause any concern.

Charlie’s cabin was at the top of a very steep hill that ended shortly before the beach to Lake Manitowoc. The entire lower level of the cabin was hidden from the other side of the property because it was embedded into the side of the hill. The basement was only visible on the lakeside of his property. Charlie had told her that when he first bought the property, it was in shambles. The walls of the lower level were wearing out from age and the brick was crumbling. He recently hired a local eco-friendly contractor to make the cabin more energy efficient, adding solar panels, and geothermal heating and cooling as well as replacing the wall on the lower level with glass. Charlie was so proud when he told her all the schematics from the build, including telling her that the glass was the same kind used on the Sears Tower balconies.

Bryn could hear Charlie’s boat as it sped back across the water, inching closer to the dock. It didn’t take her long to reach the sliding door to the cabin, stepping into the cool air. She quickly tried to catch her breath, as she watched Charlie tie the boat against the dock. Bryn gasped when Charlie fumbled with the bumper in his hands, the boat slamming against his fingers, pinching them against the fiberglass dock. Shaking his hand out in pain, Charlie shook his head as he turned to walk back to the beach. There was a stern set about his jaw that had her wondering what had happened across the lake.

I had better get his attention before he blows a gasket when he can’t find me on the beach. I need to give him a distraction.
Without thinking too much about what she was doing, Bryn slipped out of her swimsuit, grabbing one of Charlie’s clean white t-shirts in the laundry room, pulling it back down over her head. She walked back outside with her swimsuit in her hands, padding barefoot in the grass to the stairs.

Bryn yelled down to him, “Hey, hottie!”

Charlie had already made it to the landing when he stopped to look up at her. Before he could reply, Bryn held up her swimsuit, giggling as his jaw dropped open. She could only squeak as Charlie took off at a full run up the last of the stairs. She just barely made it to the glass door, as he grabbed the back of her shirt.

“Gotcha, you little tease.”

Charlie gathered her up in his arms, spinning her as he crushed her chest to him. He had ditched his shirt at some point, his bare chest slick with sweat. “Did you think you could get away from me that easily?”

“Wasn’t trying to, stud.” Leaning forward, she tried to brush her lips against his, but he was pulling back, frowning at her. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”

“I’m trying to take things slow here, Bryn. You’re not exactly making that easy,” he answered as he pulled down on the hem of her t-shirt.

Bryn looked down at his chest, wanting to lick the beads of sweat that were running down his pecs. Her insides were screaming at her to jump him, but her mind started racing around in turmoil. Charlie was right, she needed to slow down. He was a great guy and all, but she hadn’t had sex with a man since she had been raped. She didn’t know how she would react to that level of intimacy.
Would she panic? Would she try to hurt him again?

Her inner devil quickly made up her mind for her, deciding that she needed to start somewhere. Charlie had slowly been lying down a foundation of trust between them over the last twenty-four hours, and Bryn had finally realized it. She did trust him. She just had to let go of her insecurities. She had to give intimacy with Charlie a chance.

“Charlie, I don’t know what is going on between us, but I think I want…no, I
know
I want to stop being cautious. Not just with this,” she waved her hands back and forth between them, “but with everything in my life. Can you handle that? Can you handle me?”

Charlie clenched his arms down to his sides as he dropped down to plant a soft kiss on her lips. “Oh yeah, kitten. I can handle that. We’ll talk more in a minute. I need a shower. Go upstairs, and lie down on the bed, face up. I’ll meet you up there in two minutes.” Holding up two fingers, he grinned at the pout on her face. “You can wait, kitten. Now go,” smacking her rear as she turned around, she shot him a dirty look. “And Bryn, leave the shirt on. That’s so fucking hot.”

Bryn saluted him as she backed into the house through the sliding door. She quickly climbed the spiral staircase to the first floor, thankful that her ankle wasn’t aching anymore. It wasn’t as cool up here as it was downstairs, but her nipples were still painfully erect, the friction from the thin cotton shirt was almost too much for her to handle. Maybe being tortured for the last two days by this uber hot Alpha male was more than her libido could handle. Bryn lay on the bed, but she couldn’t keep her body still. Her eyes drifted shut as she imagined Charlie lying next to her, running his fingertips up and down her overheated flesh, making her skin pebble. It didn’t take long for her fingers to drift down to her pussy, her fingers teasing her lips. Lost in her own pleasure, she hadn’t heard Charlie coming up the stairs.

“Oh God, you are fucking killing me, you know that, Bryn,” he groaned his appreciation as he stretched out on the bed next to her. “Would you like some help with that, kitten?”

“Oh, please, Charlie. Please, please, please.”

“I gotcha, baby,” Charlie said as he grabbed her borrowed t-shirt, bunching it up around her upper torso, pulling her hands up as he slipped the material off. He latched onto her wrists, forcibly pushing them into the pillows.

“Leave your hands right here. Do. Not. Move.” The way his voice dropped an octave made Bryn’s inside clench, fanning the flames on her skin.

Releasing the grip on her arms, he slowly sat back on his haunches. Time seemed to slow, as he watched her, making no attempt to touch her. Charlie looked at her like she was his prey, licking his lips as his eyes blazed a trail down her naked body, slowly back up to her face. Bryn’s breathing became erratic, her chest heaving as her need grew by every passing second. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, slowly letting it back out. She willed each part of her body to let go, relaxing into the bed.

“Good girl.”

Those two little words made her insides melt like butter. She smiled a languorous smile, feeling the bed dip beside her as Charlie inched closer to her. His body smelled like mint; drops of water from his hair were dripping onto her arm and then her neck as he crawled up her body like a panther.

“I fully intended to wait until later to explore this gorgeous body, but since you are offering it to me so willingly, I have no choice but to revise my plans,” his lips softly brushed across hers, and then pulled back. He softly kissed her again, this time tracing the seam of her lips with his tongue. “Open for me, kitten.”

When she opened her mouth, she took in a cleansing breath as he tilted his head, fusing their lips together. His tongue delved into her mouth, sweeping across her tongue in a dance. As he pulled back, Bryn whimpered against his lips, chasing his tongue with hers. She could feel his smile, “I need to ask you a question before we go any further, kitten. Do you have any triggers? Anything that you don’t like? I don’t want to make you panic.”

The words slapped her right across the face, as the ease she felt quickly turned back into panic. Bryn pressed her eyes together, pulling her hands down from above her head. She wrapped them around her waist as she curled up into a ball, facing away from Charlie. Her lack of sexual history wasn’t something she really wanted to discuss right now. Having consensual sex twice before being raped doesn’t make good pillow talk. She didn’t want to have to explain her lack of experience, since he was obviously sexually adventurous.

Damn it! Slow, easy breaths, Bryn. Pull it together, be honest.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been with a man since…since,” the sob that tore through her made her stomach ache. Trying to get up from the bed, Charlie grabbed her arms, pulling her towards him. She buried her face into his chest as traitorous tears fell from her eyes.

“Hey, Bryn. I’m sorry. Ah, shit.” He softly kissed her hair, gently resting his chin on top of her head. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just didn’t want to do anything to hurt you. Maybe you’re not ready.”

“No!” she pulled from his arms, jabbing her finger into his chest. “You are the first person that I have trusted enough to even go on a date with in a very long time, Charlie. Don’t give up on me. I was embarrassed, that’s all.”