Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“You are thinking far too hard about Micah and Nathaniel now,” Rafael said.

I squeezed his hand and looked up at him. I let him see in my face that I thought him handsome and yummy. It was enough that he smiled. “Thank you for that, Anita, but I think we need to find a way to make you think more of only me.”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

“A little game of hide-and-seek.”

I frowned at him. “You’re a wererat; even in human form you’d smell me or hear my heartbeat from yards away. I can’t hide from you.”

“If I truly wanted you to hide, no, but I want to find you.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean?”

“Hide under a bed and I will pull you out and ravish you.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I shook my head. “Nope, sorry, I’ve had too many real bad guys drag me out of hiding. It would be more trigger for me than foreplay.”

He stopped so abruptly that it almost made me stumble with his hand in mine, pulling me up short. “I am so sorry, Anita, I forget for you some of the bondage games are too close to your reality.”

“It’s okay, you asked, I said no, we move on to a new idea.”

He looked away and his face was serious again. If this kept up and short of releasing the ardeur , we weren’t having sex today. I touched his face lightly and turned him back to look at me.

“Tell me what you want, Rafael. If it’s a chase and takedown, we can figure it out.”

“I feel the press of time, Anita. We are running out of it if we are to plan something elaborate between us.”

“Then maybe we should go simple instead of elaborate,” I said.

“What did you have in mind?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s like I can almost see a question in your eyes, Rafael.”

“What question,” he said.

“Ask it, and I’ll know.”

He took in a big breath of air and it shook on the way out. He looked a little to the side as if he didn’t want to watch my face while he asked. “I want to make love to you, Anita.”

“I’ve already said yes to sex, Rafael.”

He shook his head, and now he gave me the full weight of his dark brown eyes. “Let me make love to you tonight.”

I fought not to frown at him. “Okay, I mean haven’t I already agreed to that?”

“For this once, I don’t want to tie you up, or play the bedroom games we usually do. I would like to simply have sex with you.”

“I’m not really a straight missionary kind of girl,” I said, still not understanding what he was asking.

“That is what I thought, we come up with something that will make us both happy.” His voice was okay, but he looked away while he said it, hiding his eyes.

I squeezed his hand, trying to draw him into a hug, but he stayed turned away. I grabbed his suit jacket and pulled him around so that he had to look at me or over my head. There was pain in his eyes, as if I’d said something that hurt him, and I had no idea what had just happened to add to the weight of sorrow on him today.

“I feel like we’re having two different conversations here, Rafael. Please, just talk clearly with me. We were friends years before we added the benefits, so please just for a few minutes talk to me like I’m your friend that you have sex with, not just another crazy woman that you date.”

He smiled and then laughed. “You are not crazy, Anita, maybe you are not crazy enough for me to be comfortable.”

“Hey, I offered to set some of your belongings on fire if you needed me to be crazy for you.”

He hugged me. “No, please don’t.”

I hugged him back, my face pressed against his chest. “Then talk to me, just talk to me, not around me, or about what you think is in my head, but just treat me like you used to treat me before we started having sex. Talk to me like I’m your friend and we’ll go from there.”

He rubbed his face against my hair. “If you were my friend, I would say I am dating a woman who is into hot bondage sex and at first that was amazing and exactly what I wanted, but now I would like to make love to her. I would like to have sex with her that didn’t include tying her up, or chasing her, or even the delight of tearing her clothes off, though I would like to do that later.”

I settled into his body as much as his gun and knives and mine would let us. Nathaniel wasn’t wrong about the weapons getting in the way. “Deal on the clothes tearing for later, but we don’t have to have rough or bondage sex every time we’re together, Rafael. If you want to make love without it, we can try.”

“Try,” he said, and started to pull out of the hug.

I grabbed his jacket and kept him from going too far. “Damn it, Rafael, stop picking at every word choice I make and just listen to what I’m actually saying, not what negative shit is translating in your head.”

“I don’t know what that meant,” he said.

I fought not to sigh out loud. “It means if you want to make love without any bondage, then let’s do that.”

“I thought you only did bondage.”

“Not always.”

“Or only with multiple people at once like the three-way you offered earlier.”

“Look, we’ll discuss that later, but right now if you want to make love to me, then the answer is yes.”

“Yes, just like that,” he said, studying my face.

“Just like that,” I said, smiling up at his serious eyes.

“Is this where you tell me I should have asked sooner?”

I shook my head. “No, this is where I remind you that I said yes, make love to me, and you’re still talking.”

He smiled and then it blossomed into a full-out grin, which I don’t think I’d ever seen before. “No more talking,” he said, and took my hand in his and started leading me down the hallway.

9

RAFAEL GOT ME out of my clothes, so that I stood nude in front of him by the bed, but he was still wearing his dress slacks; even his belt was fastened. His feet were bare against the carpet, the hem of his slacks too long without the dress boots to hold them up. I traced my hands down the front of his chest; my skin looked even paler against the brown of his, and I liked the contrast. He took my hands in his.

“Your hands are so small, but you are the only woman that I have ever undressed whose pile of weapons beside the bed is larger than mine.” He smiled at the end of the sentence and raised my hands up so that he could lay soft kisses on my palms.

“You knew I wasn’t like all the other girls before you got me out of my clothes.”

“I did,” he said, and kissed first one of my wrists and then the other. His lips gentle, his breath warm. He began to kiss his way up my arms, first right, then left, until he came to my elbow. He kissed the bend of my arm, right, left. I expected him to keep kissing up my arms, but instead he went to his knees in front of me and laid a kiss on my stomach.

My voice was breathy as I said, “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

“This is the first time I have made love to you, not just sex, but lovemaking.” He looked up at me and there was something in his face that was tender, or vulnerable, or something I had no words for. “I want to remember to pleasure you before I take my pleasure; the pants will remind me.”

“Clever you,” I said, and traced my fingers down the side of his face. He bent forward and kissed my stomach again a little lower than the first time, and then lower still. He kissed one gentle touch at a time down my stomach, his hands on my hips either to hold me in place or just to have someplace to put them. He laid gentle kisses over the mound of me, and the sensation was even more because I shaved and there was no hair between me and his lips. He kissed as deeply on me as he could without spreading my legs apart and then looked up at me. His breath came out in a sigh that felt almost hot as it spilled between my legs. It made me shiver and touch his shoulders to steady myself.