K. Bromberg - Slow Burn

I suck in a broken breath as he speaks with such raw honesty about the things I feel, and it scares me that he can see inside me so well. And even worse, if he sees that truth, what else is he seeing that I don’t want him to? Shit just got real, real quick, and I didn’t want it to.

I swallow over the lump in my throat and deny him any reaction to his commentary, hoping that will save my sanity some if I just move on. It’s my turn to ask a question, and of all the things that I want to ask him, I can’t get my mind off the exotic Deena. I need to know if he slept with her the other day after he left me at the farmers’ market. I don’t know why. If he did, was he comparing us? Was he thinking how much less complicated she is than me? I don’t want to waste my question on this, but I can’t pull my head elsewhere.

“Did you sleep with Deena?”

He gives me a puzzled look and then says, “No. I can’t believe you’d wonder about that or waste a question on it. Don’t you get she could never hold a candle to you?”

His words warm parts deep inside me that I don’t want warmed, and I realize how stupid this game is immediately. How he’s an open frickin’ book to my volumes of closed ones.

I shift to stand up, wanting to change the topic and end this game right here, right now before he gets any closer to things I don’t want him near.

“Nice try,” he says, shifting us back so that I am flat on my back and he’s sitting astride my waist with my hands cuffed at my sides. We seem to keep ending up in this position.

And hell if I’m going to complain.

“What’s wrong, Haddie? Was that answer a little too real for you? Did you realize that we are , and you can’t handle it once again, so you want to bolt?” He leans down and hovers over me as the truth in his words hit my ears. “Guess what. I have the only car keys. We’re not going anywhere or doing anything until you give it a chance.”

I stop moving beneath him, let the anger burn out when I hear the emotion in his voice. There are so many things I want to say to him, to explain to him, but the fear and its ever-constant presence are the dam preventing any deluge of truths.

“Haddie …,” he says, and I wonder what it is he sees right now as he looks at me. Does he see the fear—the scared little girl needing someone but afraid to get too close—or does he see the confident woman who’s playing a game with his heart?

I wonder which one I’d see if I were in his shoes. Because neither one is attractive or admirable.

He leans forward and rests his forehead on mine, my eyes drifting closed with our lips barely touching. “I’m not going to make you talk. I could never force you to when whatever it is that puts the look in your eyes you have right now breaks my heart.” He pauses for a beat, and I’m not sure if he does so for him or for me, but I appreciate it. It gives me time to try to clear the look from my eyes and inflate my lungs since he just robbed them of all air. “Give us today. Forget whatever it is that’s making you push me away over and over again, and give us a chance. We’re good together…. Can’t you see that? Push whatever it is aside, and if after today you still want to fight against this connection we have, then I say go ahead. Walk away without your goddamn strings tied tight because I know you won’t.”

I don’t even realize that I’m holding my breath again or that my body has gone completely lax from his words. My mind skips and homes in on the key words he’s speaking, unable to fully process the generosity behind them because all I can focus on is my own desperation, which they evoke. I want this. I want a chance not to think and feel and fear, and yet I know the chance to do that will only lead to the ties I fear are already there. The ones he’s already tying into double knots so I can’t walk away.

I want the ability to feel, to think, to hope without the fear tingeing the edges. Even if for a day. I want to give myself this one thing, give us this even though I know how selfish it is.

He mistakes my silence for discord and continues. “Whatever this is between us is worth a shot, Haddie. You’re worth it. I just want you to give me the chance to prove I’m not going to hurt you. I just wish you’d let me in to show you that I mean it.”

Chapter 21

The emotion I feel is so strong that I don’t think I can speak, so I try to show him. I press my lips to his as my hands roam down the strong lines of his back. I’m desperate as hell to take and sate and feel, but at the same time I want to linger and memorize every sound and taste and sensation.

“Haddie.” He murmurs my name, an oath and a curse at the same time, and I steal anything else he planned on saying by slipping my tongue between his lips and taking everything I need to keep the seams holding myself together from unraveling.

“Make me feel, Becks.” And this time when I ask, when I whisper it against his lips, it’s not to make me forget the grief of Lexi’s death but rather to own the emotions I now feel for him. The ones I can’t deny anymore.

Together we begin the slow dance of undressing, removing his shorts, lifting up my skirt, and pulling down my panties because right now we both need this connection between us more than anything. I sit up and push him back, my hands on his shoulders, my lips on his. I move my hands ever so slowly so that my fingernails scrape down the firm lines of his chest until I hold his cock in my hand. And the feeling, the notion that I can make him so hard, so fast, is a powerfully intoxicating one.

He groans out as I encircle him and stroke my hand up and back over his steeled length. I drag my mouth from his, my lips tasting the salt on his skin, my nose breathing in his scent, my hands feeling him pulse and ask for more without words. I lick and nip at the flat disks of his nipples, earning me a hiss of breath and a hand fisted in my hair in response. His hand urges me farther down his body with a hurried desire while I prefer to take my time. To lick, and kiss, and tempt him with my mouth. To kill him with the slow descent so that by the time I reach the crest of his dick, the anticipation is so intense, he’ll lose that stoic restraint and cry out my name like he owns it.

I slide my mouth over his infinity zone, and when my nipples scrape through the fabric of my bra over the top of his thighs, I moan at the eroticism that just heightens every single incredible sensation. I finally reach his cock and pump it once in my hand while I close the wet heat of my mouth around the crest. Becks’s hips jerk in reaction and “ Fuck, Had ,” falls from his mouth, and his hand fists even tighter in my hair.

I position my body so that I’m sitting astride one of his thighs, my own sex grinding against his leg with each draw up and down of my mouth on his dick. I lick my tongue along the underside of his shaft, adding pressure there before sliding back up and circling the crest. I tease him like this a bit more, only allowing my lips to close over his head and denying the rest of his length the suction of my mouth while my own body trembles from the sensations I’m creating for myself.

His fist in my hair urges me to slide him all the way in my mouth while his other softly caresses my cheek and underside of my chin in an oddly intimate way for this carnal action. I take my time with licks, my fingers teasing his balls with scrapes of fingernails and then a gentle pulling motion down and away when they tighten up.

“Goddamn it, Had. Suck me.” His voice breaks, and his hips urge up in a plea as I moan, my clit getting the perfect friction with his movement. “Fuck me with your mouth.”

And his words urge me on to give him what he wants. To bring him the pleasure he deserves for always being such a generous lover with me. I place my head over him and slide him all the way into my mouth until I can feel him hit the back of my throat. And when I do, I remain still for a moment until I can’t take it anymore before I slide it slowly back out, hollowing my cheeks and adding suction with the withdrawal.