The Virgin: Redemption (6 page)

I wanted to start over.

I wanted a chance with Drake.

Was I going to go do this?

I didn’t know.

The thought of it terrified me.

The thought of
not
doing it terrified me more.

It was that thought that pushed me to turn off the water, to reach for one of the towels, hanging on a heated rod. I wrapped it around my body and then grabbed another, drying the water from my hair. My hands were shaking the entire time though. As I dried my hair, as I wrapped the towel around my head, as I finished toweling off and as I slicked some of the lotion I found on the counter over my skin.

Even as I brushed my teeth, I could see how my hands shook. When I finished, I reached for the towel and let my wet hair spill down around my face, using my hand to finger comb through the loose curls, wincing as I felt the lump that had ended up putting me in this predicament.

Once I’d finished, I lowered my hands to the counter and stood there, staring at my reflection.

“Pull yourself together,” I said to the woman in the mirror.

Without waiting to see if she took my advice, I adjusted the damp towel back around my torso and turned to the door.

Cool air kissed my flesh as I opened the door and moved into the wide open living room. There was a fire roaring in the stone hearth and in front of it, sprawled in a chair was Drake. The golden light from the fire set the deep red of his hair to flame and he was lost in thought, staring into the glass of bourbon he held in front of him.

I stood there, watching as he lifted it, looking down into it without drinking it.

I took a step forward and froze as his gaze cut to me.

It was like the fire in the hearth reached out to lick my flesh. I was flaming hot, and all because he’d looked at me.

The wooden floor under my feet was the only thing that felt cool. Even the air was supercharged, heated against my skin as I took another step, then another. Soon, there was no more steps left to take and I stood in front of him, wearing nothing but the towel, looking down at him while he swirled the whiskey in his glass and then tossed it back. “You should be resting.”

“I’ve done nothing but that for the past day and a half.” I reached out, touching the glass with my fingertip. There was barely a swallow left. “Can I?”

He gave it to me, his gaze burning on mine.

I lifted it to my lips and followed his example, tossing it back, relishing the heat as it burned down my throat. I put the glass down on the table next to his chair and then, straightening, I held his gaze and dropped the towel.

His eyes went black.

It was strange, but as I eased in, the nerves that rippled inside me faded. Bracing one knee beside his thigh, I rested a hand on his shoulder and then brought up my other knee. My heart knocked hard against my ribs and need was a scream in my blood. Lifting my other hand up, I slid them along the wall of his chest. My senses felt heightened, too much, so that the nubby fabric of his sweater abraded my palms. The sweater covered hard muscle and I could remember, so vividly, how it had felt to have him pressed against me.

“Shan.”

His hands gripped my waist. I could feel the imprint of each finger, the callouses an exquisite torture against my skin. But he didn’t pull me closer. He just waited. My breath caught in my throat as he stared at me.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice a gruff whisper.

“Doesn’t take much to figure out.” I pressed my mouth to his. “Not really.”

A groan rumbled out of him. His hands tightened. But his lips remained firm, unmoving, under mine. I caught his lower lip between my teeth and tugged. Then, slowly, I lifted my head and rested my brow against his. “I spent ten years alone, miserable with it. I’m tired of it.”

His green eyes held mine as I slid my hands down, worked them under the hem of his sweater.

Heated flesh met my palms as I dragged them upward, baring his chest. “I’m tired of wondering. I’m tired of wishing. I’m tired of dreaming. I’m tired of being lonely. I just want to…”

I stopped, biting my lip as the words froze in my throat. Instead of trying to force the words out, I pressed a kiss to his brow. Then the hard, carved line of one cheekbone. The other. I worked my way back to his mouth and said softly, “I want to feel. I’m tired of
not
feeling. You’re the only one who ever really made me feel anything.”

His hand tangled in my hair and my breath caught as he wrapped it around his fist. “Is that what this is about? You want to feel something?”

“I’ve always felt something with you.” We were so close, I could feel his breath dancing over my lips. I freed a hand and pressed it to his cheek. “Whether it was the way you dazzled me and made me burn inside ten years ago, or the hurt that came after. When I finally stopped hurting, I felt something else. I was mad…so mad.” Leaning in, I pressed my lips to his, rubbed them back and forth as a shiver raced down my spine. “I kept telling myself that anger was still there even up until…”

His hand molded over the back of my skull as the words died. I had to clear my throat before I could continue and when I did, I was no longer even sure what I’d started out to say. “I’m tired of existing in the past. I just want to start living again.”

I pressed my lips to his.

His fingers tangled almost painfully in my hair and his eyes glinted, sunlight shining through the fog. The only warning I had was the way his body tightened beneath mine. We moved and in a blink, we were flat on the low-lying table that stretched across the floor. His chest crushed me and I reached up, gripping his torso. My heart raced, desire, hunger ripping at me.

Need had vicious claws and it left me breathless. Drake braced one hand by my ear, raising his head to look down at me. “I can make you feel,” he rasped. Then he shoved up on his knees and tore his sweater away. He came back and I almost sobbed at the feel of him pressed against me.

A big, hard palm cupped my breast, his thumb circling my nipple.

I felt that—all the way down to my core where I already ached for him. I’d been empty, longing for him, for
this
, ever since I’d walked away.

Desperation roared inside me as he kissed a burning line down my neck to take my nipple in his mouth. At the same time, he cupped me in his hand. I cried out, reaching for him. He pushed two fingers inside me, twisted. “Shan,” he muttered.

I panted as he worked me closer and closer to orgasm, something that had been elusive until he’d taken me. Now, I raced toward him and as he sent me flying, just like that, his name echoed inside my mind, although I didn’t even have the breath to whisper it.

There was no time to catch my breath, either, because I hadn’t even had a chance to drift back down when he started to blaze another hot, open-mouthed trail down my torso, my belly, until he could nuzzle the curls between my thighs. Instinctively, I tensed even as he urged my thighs wider apart. “Feel this,” he said against my flesh, the caress of air against me another teasing torment.

Then he licked me, bold and demanding, stabbing at my clit while I twisted and shuddered. Beneath my back, the table was hard and unyielding. Against me, Drake was every bit as hard, and he wasn’t much more yielding than the wood, but those kisses…hot, hungry kisses against my pussy, his tongue taunting my flesh until I was arching up to meet each teasing flick.

Nothing else seemed to exist. Just the flickering flames as they danced across our skin, and his hands holding me tight as he worked his torturous magic on me.

I loved it, and I hated it because it wasn’t enough.

I reached down and fisted my hands in his hair, pulled insistently. Demands fought to form in my throat, but I couldn’t get anything out except, “You.”

He caught my clit between his teeth and tugged, humming against my swollen flesh.

“Drake, damn it…I want
you
.”

“You have me.”

Snarling, I twisted and arched against him and he laughed, started his way back up my body. “You want to feel,” he said, bracing his weight above me. There was no laughter in his eyes now and his gaze was hot, molten. Quicksilver. “Feel what I’ve felt. Desperate. Frustrated. Dying for what you think you can never have.”

Stroking my hands down his chest, I toyed with the button of his jeans. “So I can’t have you?”

Under my hands, I felt the heavy column of his cock and yearning flooded me, wrapped itself around me. If he pulled away, I might cry. I might break. I might throw myself at him and beg—

“You can have whatever you want.”

I freed the button and fought with the zipper until I managed to drag it down over his length. “I want this,” I said once I’d freed him. Wrapping my hand around him, I stroked him, fumbling until I caught the rhythm and watched his eyes go opaque. “I want to feel you inside me. Now.”

He reached down and caught my hand, pinned it down by my head, pressed it there. “Now.”

The blunt tip of his cock probed between my thighs and I shifted, my breath catching as he slowly pushed inside. “Do you feel me now?” he demanded.

Twisting my hips, I tried to take him deeper. “Yes…” I groaned, closed my eyes. “More. Please.”

Instead, he withdrew until we were just barely connected. My eyes flew open and I stared up at him. “Drake.”

“Watch me. See me. I want to see you come apart, see you as I fill you.”

The rough, velvet timbre of his voice was another caress and I shuddered all over again as he started to push inside me. Again, he stopped without filling me, withdrawing and holding there, watching me. I tightened my grasp on his hand, digging my nails into his skin in desperation. He was going to drive me crazy—“Oh!”

He drove in hard, fast, deep. The sound of my cry bounced off the walls and then he did it again and again, while I lay there, open and helpless, craving every deep, ruthless twist of his hips. “Feel me,” he snarled, bending down to catch my mouth in a deep, drugging kiss. “Have me.”

His mouth left mine to kiss a burning path down my neck and there, at the curve where neck met shoulder, he sank his teeth in, sucking hard and fast, a delicious little suction that added another sensation to my already overloaded system.

He let go of my hand and shifted his grip, moving to hook my thighs over his elbows. I felt almost bruised from him now as he sank so deeply inside me. “Say my name,” he muttered against my ear.

“Drake.” It stuttered out of me, my throat dry, my heart pounding. “Please…”

“Please what?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Please don’t stop. Please don’t leave. Please love me.

There were a hundred ways to finish it, but I couldn’t think beyond anything more than
please
…

Staring into vivid green eyes, I just gasped it out again. Heat built inside me, the orgasm looming in front of me, so close, so very close. I strained toward it, and as though he knew exactly what I wanted, what I needed, he let go of my right leg, smoothed a hand along my inner thigh, placed it against my belly, his thumb just brushing the curls between my thighs. “You’re so close. I can feel it…your pussy is grabbing at me like a fist.”

Heat rushed to my face and I groaned, looking away.

That hand that had rested on my belly slid up now, along my torso, up my neck until he caught my chin, thumb along one side, his fingers spread across my other cheek. “Look at me. I want to see what I do to you.” He twisted his hips and again and I cried out, arching up as I felt a harsh, twisting spasm of pleasure ripple through me. “I want to see it in your eyes, feel it here—in your pussy.”

“Drake!”

He laughed. “You make me feel, too,” he said, coming back down over me, crushing me into the unyielding wood at my back. “You always did. You make me feel stupid and greedy and determined to have everything from you I can get. All your blushes, all your sighs…come for me, Shan. Let me have this.”

Then he slid his hand back between us and I cried out as he started to circle the aching knot of my clitoris. Pleasure, lightning hot, ricocheted through me and I arched my neck, a soundless scream ripping out of me, like it was torn from my very soul.

The bed was soft under me. At some point, he’d moved us from the living room into the bedroom and I could see the ocean, spreading out in front of me through the windows.

Drake lay behind me, his arm was hard around my waist. The heat of his body was like a furnace at my back.

For one sweet, sweet minute, I let myself just lie there and enjoy it.

In the past ten years, this was the closest to peace I’d ever come.

Actually, this was probably the most peace I’d ever known in my life period. I hadn’t really been looking for peace as a kid—seashells, crabs and fun—I’d looked for those. But not peace.

What did peace matter when you’re young?

Snuggling deeper into the blankets and Drake, I thought back to those days. Days I’d never thought to appreciate at the time. How can you, though?

I guess we just never think about it, never realize how wonderful it is to be able to simply spend the days on the beach, or even to go to school and have nothing more to worry about than getting good grades, talking with your friends on the bus, and whether or not you’d have enough money to buy a cute shirt with your allowance.

It had never once occurred to me how quickly it could all just…go away.

Just as it never occurred to me that I should treasure all those moments with my parents. How lucky I was that they’d been there, that they’d loved me and that they’d given up
their
dream once they realized they couldn’t make it work anymore. Because they wanted to make sure I’d be able to have the things I wanted out of life.

Wiggling around, I turned to face Drake, hampered by the deadweight of his arm. Some people looked peaceful when they slept. Drake didn’t. He looked like he was still working out mergers, deciphering blueprints and planning world domination via Gallagher Enterprises.