Spiral of Bliss 02 Allure (16 page)

A memory of the commune felt like cool water soothing a scorching burn. My breathing was fast and shallow, but I felt lighter, as I always did after I talked about what had happened. Though I’d only ever told a therapist before, telling Dean reminded me that I’d put myself back together. That I
hadn’t
ended up like my mother.

“It’s why… why I shut down for a few years, why I hate feeling trapped,” I explained. “I blamed myself. I’d had the sense that if I didn’t comply with what Justin wanted, something even worse would have happened. It was only after Twelve Oaks and enrolling at community college that I started thinking I could actually get back on my feet again.”

Dean didn’t look at me. Tension drenched the air around him.

I swallowed hard. “Dean, I… I haven’t held on to my virginity because of some moral code. I just… I’ve been so
afraid
of everything. Afraid of what people would say, what they would think of me, what would happen next. I didn’t date for years after I left Twelve Oaks.

“You’ve been the only man I’ve felt like I could trust. And that first time, when you kissed and touched me, I got scared because I liked it so much. I liked you. How you made me feel, and I… I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do with you…” I dragged in a painful breath. “Dean, why… why can’t you look at me?”

“What?” He straightened, his eyes blazing suddenly. He crossed the room and reached out to grab my wrists. “I can’t look at anyone
but
you, Liv. I can’t
see
anyone but you. I… I’m so fucking crazy about you that it’s scaring the shit out of me.”

I could hardly understand him through the pounding inside my head. I smothered the shame, fighting to focus on the here and now.

“I know, Liv.” Dean tightened his grip on my wrists. “I know what it’s like to blame yourself. To be forced into doing something you don’t want to do, then have it crash and burn around you. I’ve known for twenty-five years. And it’s bullshit. You have no reason to feel ashamed. None. Those bastards… goddammit.”

He stopped and pulled in a breath, as if trying to regain control of himself.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Liv. I don’t think you even know how strong you are. You didn’t let your mother or any of those sick bastards define you. You started a whole new life
twice
. That takes a courage most people can only dream of.”

I stared at him. I had never thought of it like that. I didn’t even know it could be looked at that way.

“God knows,” Dean said, “I haven’t started a new life even once.”

I loosened one of my hands from his grasp, sensing that his own self-blame was rooted in his family situation.

“Now you know why…” Tears stung my eyes. “Why I wanted you to…”

I gripped the front of his shirt, trembling with the urge to confess everything I felt for him.

“I knew there was more, Dean, I knew it could be good. Not like it was for my mother or… or me. I so wanted to know what… what it could be like… and with you it
is
. It’s been what I wanted, what I’d hoped for…”

“There’s more.” He lifted his hands to the sides of my head, tangling his fingers into my hair. “You deserve so much more. I want to give you so much more. Not just sex, but—”

“You were wrong.” I blinked back a fresh wave of tears. “When you said I didn’t expect anything from you, you were wrong. And I lied… when I said I didn’t want you to fix me… oh, God, Dean. I think I knew you were the only person in the world who
could
.”

His mouth came down on mine, swift yet tender. Relief surged through me, diluting my anguish as our bodies sealed together like the pages of a closed book. My hands were trapped between us, and I spread my fingers out across his chest. Warmth collected around us and slid into the frozen places of my heart.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I… I don’t want to be someone who expects more from you than—”

“Stop.”

“But I…”

Dean lifted his head, his hands still in my hair. Our breath merged between us.

“You don’t need anyone to fix you, Olivia, least of all me.” Dean pulled me closer, his eyes never leaving mine. “Because you’re not broken.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Olivia

fter I’d told Dean everything there was to tell about me, we became nearly inseparable. As I’d expected, as I had known, he didn’t retreat. He was ever more determined to give me what I’d never had. And one late Saturday afternoon in mid-November, I knew. It was a moment of instinctive clarity, like sensing the exact time to plant a tulip bulb or pick a ripe apple.

I hadn’t had a shift at Jitter Beans, so I’d spent the day at Dean’s apartment, both of us doing very little. He worked some, I studied some. I watched a movie. He read an architecture journal. We ordered out for pizza, watched funny video clips on the Internet, played backgammon.

Backgammon.

I almost smiled. Despite evidence to the contrary, we were not incompatible. Not at all.

I put my book aside and looked up to find Dean watching me. He was sprawled out on an easy chair with a sports magazine spread over his thighs and his bare feet on the coffee table. He was all rumpled hair, intent gaze, hard-edged stubbly jaw.

My heart thumped. I sat up slowly, smoothing my skirt over my knees. Delicious tension tightened my belly.

“Dean.”

“Right here.”

He knew too. For an instant, he just looked at me. Something indefinable passed across his features before he pushed to stand.

“Come here,” he said.

Breath in my throat, heart hammering, I crossed the room until I was standing in front of him. He didn’t speak for a moment. He looked at me with those dark brown eyes, so gentle, so reassuring, that I wanted to melt right into him. He slipped his hand beneath my chin and lifted my face for a lovely, feather-soft kiss that made light shimmer through me.

He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I tentatively slipped my hands underneath to touch his skin. Warm, muscled ridges. Oh, he felt so good. Everything about him felt unbearably good and right.

I tilted my head back to look at him. He’d waited a long time for me. His gaze searched mine.

“Thanks for waiting,” I whispered.

“My beauty,” he said, “I’d wait for you forever.”

He took my face in his hands and kissed me again, with a delicious glide of his tongue across my lower lip. I opened my mouth to let him in, and then it was a deep kiss that tasted of pent-up urgency.

I felt one of his hands fumble at my neck, tug at my ponytail. I reached back to unfasten the clasp and let my hair fall loose. Dean skimmed his hands into the long strands and angled my head to deepen his kiss.

You’d think that after nearly three months of keeping our attraction at a slow burn, we would have been in a hurry, but he was determined to take it slow. For my sake, I knew. And I was so enraptured by his intoxicating kisses that I just wanted them to last until the end of time.

He touched my breasts, stroked the nipples through my bra, causing shivers to ripple through me. Our mouths met again and again, his hands sliding over the top of my clothes, my fingers moving restlessly over his back to the waistband of his jeans.

Then he eased my skirt up and pressed his hand between my legs. The warmth of his palm burned through my underwear. I curled my fingers reflexively around his wrist, pushing my hips forward. He muttered something under his breath, then reached around to stroke my rear and lift me against him.

It was exactly as sexy as it sounds. I wrapped my legs around his waist and bent my head to kiss him as he managed to get us both into the bedroom without tripping over anything. I felt the heat of him clear through the denim of his jeans. I started to writhe against his crotch before he’d even lowered me to the bed.

He looked down at me, a faint smile on his lips and his eyes hot. I twisted to unfasten the zipper of my skirt and pushed it to the floor. He reached for the fly of his jeans and flicked the top button open.

That was when I got anxious. My throat went dry and I closed my legs. I was breathing hard and my heart pounded with wanting him, but sudden fear froze every muscle in my body.

Dean paused. His eyebrows drew together. “Okay?”

“Yes.” My voice quavered a little.

He stopped unfastening his jeans and put his hands on my bare legs. Slowly he stroked my thighs from my knees to the hem of my shirt, never reaching far beneath it. I relaxed a little under the gentle rhythm of his touch, but nerves still knotted my stomach.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

“No.”

“If you need me to—”

“I know. I know.” I tangled my hand in the front of his T-shirt.

He stroked down to my knees and back up again. “You’re nervous.”

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. It didn’t make a lot of sense that I was nervous now when I was so comfortable with him every other way and when we’d done some very sexy, intimate things already. But I was.

“So am I,” he admitted.

I wasn’t sure I believed that, but then I noticed his hands were unsteady as he moved them farther up my thighs. I swallowed hard.

“I don’t want to mess this up,” I finally said.

He laughed, a low, rumbling sound. “Beauty, if you had any idea…”

He moved to caress my inner thighs. I flushed when he brushed against my damp panties—no denying
that
evidence—but he didn’t ease his fingers beneath the elastic.

“Take my clothes off,” he said.

“What?”

“Go ahead.”

I pushed myself onto my elbows and gazed at the bulge in his jeans. I wanted to see him completely naked, and if I were undressing him, he wouldn’t be undressing me. Yet.

I pulled my shirt back down over my hips. Dean sat beside me on the bed and waited for me to drum up my courage. My hands started to shake as I took hold of his T-shirt and tugged it over his head.

His chest was so beautiful. Muscled, defined, the ridges of his abdomen warm beneath my touch. I put one hand against his chest and pushed him to lie on his back. Then I cupped my palm around his erection. He shifted.

I glanced at him. He was watching me with that anticipatory gaze that made my blood pound. Anxiety twisted through me again, but because I was in control I knew it wouldn’t overwhelm me. I lowered my head, and a curtain of hair fell across either side of my face—concealing Dean from my view and, hopefully, me from his.

I felt his hand brush against my hair for an instant, as if he wanted to push it aside, but then he stopped. Relieved and emboldened with my face hidden, I tugged at the buttons of his fly. His erection pressed against my fingers, his evident need making my own body quiver in response.

I pulled his jeans and boxers off, my breath escaping in a rush. I shot him a quick glance through my veil of hair. My heart leapt, catching in my throat at the sight of him stretched out on the bed—all tense urgency, taut skin, lean muscles, and jutting cock.

“Liv.” His voice was strangled. He reached down to grab my wrist and guide my hand to his shaft. “Touch it.”

I wrapped my fingers around the base, feeling heat pulsing beneath the smooth skin. I pressed my legs together as an answering pulse throbbed in me. I started stroking him tentatively at first, until his hips jerked upward as if he wanted me to move faster. I did, entranced by the sight of his muscles tensing, the swell of arousal.

“Wait.” He pushed up on his elbows, breathing hard.

I stopped. “Did you want me to—”

“Everything. I want you to do everything.” He put his hands around my waist and pulled me on top of him. He pushed up the hem of my shirt and cupped my rear, kneading and stroking. I started to twist against him as the ache uncoiled.

He slipped his fingers beneath my panties and rubbed the cleft of my bottom before dipping below to my sex.

“Jesus, Liv. You’re killing me.”

“I need you,” I gasped. “I’m ready. I—”

“I want to see you first. All of you.” He pushed me up so I was straddling his waist. I felt his cock throbbing against me through my panties, and the sensation made me moan aloud.

“Take your shirt off,” he said.

I got a little tense again, but grasped the hem of my shirt and pulled it off. Before I could hesitate, I unhooked the front clasp of my bra and tossed it aside. Air brushed against my damp skin, sensitizing my nipples. I shuddered, curling my fingers against Dean’s flat stomach.

“Fuck, Liv. You’re incredible.”

Incredible.
I wasn’t, but I knew he believed I was. Especially when he stroked his hands up the curve of my waist to touch me. My full breasts nestled right into his palms as if I’d been made for him. I watched as he caressed me, his fingers gliding over my nipples, his body hot and hard between my legs.

“Dean.” Strain threaded my voice, but my nervousness had shifted into a different kind of tension, one that was beginning to desperately need release.

He plucked at my underwear. “Take these off.”

I slithered the cotton over my legs, then flushed again when he ran his fingers down my belly and into my wet curls.

I gasped. He cursed. His cock throbbed against my bare backside. He eased a finger into me and stroked his thumb over my clit, and before I could prevent it, I came—sharp and fast and surging.

“Dean… oh, God, Dean…”

I was still shuddering when he put on a condom, then rolled us both over and pushed my legs apart with his knee. I grabbed his hips to encourage him to move faster.

“Wait.” His breath rasped against my forehead as he held himself off me with one hand and slipped his other hand between my legs. He slid two fingers into me and groaned when I clenched around him again. “You’re so tight, Liv. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” I panted, twisting as he stroked my inner flesh.

He’d make it good. I knew it. He moved the head of his cock into position and eased into me slowly, his muscles corded with restraint. I clutched his hips tighter and pushed upward.

With a mutter of surrender, he sank into me, stretching me with his thick length. A sting burned me from the inside out. I gasped, gripping him harder, swimming in the conflicting sensations of both pleasure and pain.

“Liv.” Strain threaded his voice as he stilled, holding himself off me with his hands on either side of my head. His gaze searched mine.

“I’m… I’m okay.” I wasn’t entirely sure that I was, but I knew I would be soon. I squirmed beneath him, drawing air into my lungs, every part of my being sensitized to his touch.

I cried out when he pulled away and pushed slowly back into me, like a key fitting into a lock. He stopped again, his chest heaving, and waited for me to adjust to his size.

My nerves sizzled. My heartbeat pounded in my head. My body pulsed around his cock, the feeling of overwhelming tightness dissipating into a throb of urgency.

“Okay?” He shifted. His jaw clenched.

“Okay.” I forced my muscles to relax and arched into him. Sweat trickled down my neck. “I want this… want you…”

He eased back and pushed forward again, levering his upper body off me. I lifted my knees to hug his hips and met him halfway, stunned by the slick ease of our bodies sliding together. He pushed his hands beneath my thighs and spread me wider, sinking into me until he could go no farther. I drew in a gasp, lost in the sensation of us finally becoming one, forgetting where he left off and I began.