The Reality of You (20 page)

Chapter 22

My
hands tingled with anticipation, my mouth turned dry, and my eyes begged for the
sight of him. However, the task of undressing him was nerve-racking
enough, but being half naked myself
had my hand trembling as I reached out for the bottom of his shirt. The
sensual, smug look on his face didn’t help the brewing of anxious bubbles mixed
with eagerness that seemed to be caught in my chest and throat.

My fingers curled in
the soft fabric of his shirt and tugged up—revealing lovely ab muscles and the
defined shape of his pectorals—but getting it over his six-foot-plus frame
wasn’t going to happen with my lowly five-foot-five frame.

“A little help?” I
squeaked.

After another smug
look, he grabbed the shirt by the collar in front and yanked it off in one
quick movement. Skin over hard muscle stared at me. My hands instantly reached
out, tracing and caressing. Reese stayed immobile, watching me with
heavy-lidded eyes. Though self-conscious with his attention so focused on me,
my hands continued exploring, following the lines of his abs to the trail of
hair below his belly button. Embarrassingly, my hands shook a tad as I undid
his jeans.

Of course, Reese’s
jaw tightened and his gaze warmed at the sight.

Mouth dry, I pushed
his pants and boxers down in one swoop. Luckily for me, he helped by stepping
out of his clothes. Then I slowly stood, palms skimming over the sides of his
legs before I stepped back. This morning, things had moved so fast that it had
been mostly all feel, but now I planned to look, look, look. And wowzer. That
rowing did a body good. Real good. He was hard, lean lines of graceful muscle.
The sports enthusiast in me recognized the work it had taken to create his
body. The woman in me noticed something else, specifically his erection. Double
wowzer. The total package of Reese was pure perfection. Much better than my
lame imagination had ever tried to conjure up. He was quite a sight for horny
eyes.

“You’re amazing,” I
said under my breath, my eyes roaming over every inch of him, my hands itching
to touch, my body feeling like it was on the edge of an orgasm, which had me
recalling my drunken slur about him being Superpants. When my exploration
reached his face, the sharp, restrained expression he wore had me mentally
planning his loss of control.

Part wanting to play
with him and part wanting to save the best for last, I took a step around him,
my hand landing on his lower back. Within another step, my other hand roamed
over the perfect, tight curve of his ass. The part of him that always caught my
attention felt as good as it looked.

Eyes slits, Reese
peered over his shoulder, watching me.

He also had a
beautifully muscled back. My fingers trailed over his spine. Then my palms
traced his shoulder blades, memorizing the feel of smooth skin over defined
muscle. I strode around him, a palm caressing the hard strength of his hip.
Having circled him, I finally brought both of my hands—come to mama!—to the
length of his erection. His whole body
jerked as I gently wrapped my hands around him. In play mode, my caress stayed
slow, but I also wanted to savor every second, every inch of his hard, hot
skin, searing the memory into my brain and my palms. I wouldn’t be missing this
in my next daydream.

Even better than the
feel of my hands moving over the length of him was the sound of his breath
speeding up, the sight of his features held taut, and his hands clenched at his
sides. His reaction put me in overdrive. If I had been wearing panties, they
would have melted off.

Just as I leaned
forward, he grabbed me by the arms and whipped me around. “Toying with me, Ms.
Porter?”

“Um…more like
savoring you,” I retorted.

 
He jerked my shirt over my head. My bra hit
the floor even faster.

“Then time for me to
savor,” he said as he pinned my back to his chest with an arm around my ribs.
His free hand cupped a breast while his teeth scraped a path down the side of
my neck. When he pinched a nipple and bit the side of my neck, my body jerked
involuntary at the hot ping of lust he’d sent between my legs.

He tortured me with
a slow, tenacious demand. Lips and teeth along the skin of my shoulder. Palms
lightly circling over my breasts. Fingers sliding between my legs. I trembled
and panted. My hands gripped the arm holding me. Luckily, he was holding me
because my legs were turning to mush. Trapped in his embrace, the feel of his
gorgeous body behind me and the stroke of his fingers along my slit combined
with the press of his palm a bit higher, I began losing my mind. Again.

He nipped my earlobe
with his teeth. “Like being toyed with,
Naomi
?”

On their own hussy
whim, my hips moved to the rhythm his fingers and palm created. “Yes,” I
gasped. “I think I do.”

At that, he released
a groan in my ear then released
me
to
push at the small of my back.

Startled, I fell
forward, my hands falling on the end of the bed.

Seconds later, his
fingers dug into my hip as he leaned over me, pushing my hair aside then
pressing his lips to the back of my neck. My entire body trembled at the feel
of his erection sliding between my legs. Back and forth, he teased my wet
flesh. He continued leisurely kissing and licking along my spine. I tried to
push back and make him enter me, but the hand at my hip and his body pressed
behind me kept me immobile

“Still like being
toyed with?” he asked, the words against my skin, his cock sliding along my
slit.

“No,” I moaned,
maddened to feel a grin on my back. “Reese!” I said through clenched teeth. He
slipped against me again, hitting my sweet spot. A hiss of breath escaped me,
and then a litany of, “Please, oh, please,
please
!”

His chuckle came out
as more of a moan. “Sweet, sweet, Naomi, you don’t have to beg.” He gripped my
hips, buried his face in my shoulder, and slammed into me, bringing a touch of
pain and whole hell of a lot of satisfaction.

At last.

It was as wild as
the first time. Though my hands dug in the duvet and my back arched, I was soon
pushed face-forward onto the bed as he pounded into me faster and harder. The
pace he set, along with the position, let me do little but grasp and moan into
the bedspread.

There seemed to be
no end to the pleasure of it. I was going to die happily, on the edge of an
orgasm. Fucked to death by the man of my dreams.

Perhaps the perfect
way to go.

Then he commanded in
a harsh breath, “Touch yourself.”

Caught in a
near-orgasmic fog, I panted out a, “Huh?”

Still destroying my
brainwaves with his pounding thrusts, he brought my hand between my legs and
showed me what he wanted. Together, our fingers swirled my clit. Holy
unbelievably hot. But even more hot—like mind-blowing, erotically hot—was that,
with him behind me, I could feel the length of him moving, thrusting inside me
under my fingertips. Each. Hard. Thrust. It only took a few swirls and thrusts
more for my body to tighten, spin out of control, and evaporate into the cool
cotton beneath me.

****

Reese
lay against the tall, white headboard. I lay against Reese, between his spread
legs and against his back. We were shadows in the dark room. His hands trailed
over my waist and the tops of my thighs, back and forth, creating a languidness
that left me warm, content, and heavy lidded.

I was slipping
toward sleep when Reese’s fingers began tracing my abs. “You have an amazing
body too, you know.”

“Hmm…” I murmured,
half-asleep. “Nothing like a model or ballerina’s.”

I was instantly
awake the minute the words left my mouth. Damn, I hated my stupid mouth. All
the back fodder from my brain escaped from it at the worst possible moments.

His fingers paused.
“Let me help you understand something.” He bent near my ear, his mouth a warm
rush of breath. “Some bodies are like art, nice to look at. Others induce
images. Toned legs clenching around my waist. Stomach muscles dripping with
sweat above me. My hands gripping a tight, firm ass. Strong bodies are meant to
be fucked.”

Well, you would know.
Luckily for me, the words didn’t escape
from my mouth.

“And yes, I would
know,” he said as if reading my mind. “So let me repeat, your body is amazing.”
His hands gripped my hips. “I wanted to rip your bathing suit off every second
on that beach.”

His words left me feeling
warm and fuzzy. I was proud of how in shape I was—especially after the trauma
of the accident—but maybe popular culture had ingrained in me that the willowy,
stick-thin model or the small-hipped, big-boobed stripper were what all men
prized most. And though his assessment of my body had me warm and gooey and on
a happy cloud, I somehow muttered, “Glad to know I wasn’t the only one having
issues that day.”

He chuckled. “I was
already wound up from watching you play soccer.”

I turned my head to
look at him, but his profile remained a shadow in the dark. “Seriously?” I said
in an incredulous tone.

“Between your
obvious talent and your ego, you were quite the hot little player.”

“Ego?” I snapped.

“Oh, yeah. You knew
you were good, better than anyone on that field.”

Okay, I could see
that. Though I hadn’t played in quite a long time, I usually
was
the best player on the field.

“I was supposed to
go the Olympics,” I blurted, hoping to explain my cockiness, then added, “Well,
I never made it to tryouts but was considered a shoo-in.”

His fingers paused
their abdominal tracing. “Why didn’t you go?”

“Car accident,” I
said in a sad tone. Less than five seconds had taken away all of my dreams.

“The scar inside
your leg?”

I nodded and assumed
he felt the motion. I had wondered if he’d noticed the long scar inside my left
thigh, especially since I hadn’t been with anyone after the accident.

“How did it happen?”
he asked softly.

Flashes of steel
thundering, glass breaking, and pain seared through my head. The traumatic
experience would be forever etched on my brain, but when I’d become almost
whole again, the memories had become easier to recall.

 
“On my way to practice one day, a man had a
heart attack and ran into me, right into the driver’s side. I lived. He didn’t.
I ended up with broken ribs, a removed spleen, a concussion—of course—a
boatload of shards embedded in my skin, and both legs broken, the left in three
different places. I didn’t walk for four months and then spent six months in physical
therapy. Graduated a semester late.” I let out a sigh. “Even if I hadn’t missed
tryouts due to a year of physical therapy, my body would have never been able
to do what it did before the accident.”

Reese’s arms came
around me, holding me close, and his chin settled on my shoulder. “What a
horrible ordeal to have gone through. That you’re now healthy and active is a
testament to your determination.” His five-o’clock shadow scraped my shoulder
as he shook his head. “But to lose out on the Olympics…”

“Yeah, I have shit
luck. But that poor man didn’t even make it to the ambulance.” I didn’t want to
share more, yet after learning about him—accidentally—tonight, I felt like I
needed to tell the rest of the story. “That wasn’t the worst though.” I drew in
a deep breath. “The accident destroyed my carefully planned life map. The
Olympics, a coaching job, and an engagement all turned to dust.”

Silence followed
until Reese said in a stunned voice, “You were engaged?”

“For almost a year.
He was one of the team’s trainers. We’d been together for over two years. He
asked for the ring back three weeks after I was released from the hospital.”

“Because…”

I shrugged. “Because
I was a depressed piece of shit. Because I was so broken I couldn’t talk with
him when he visited me. Because, though he never said, my career was over and
he cared more about that than me. Pick any or all of the above.” The fact that
James had seemed to want an Olympic wife more than me had killed something
inside me and left me terrified of relationships, since I’d been so sure of us.

Reese’s arms
tightened around me, but he remained silent for several long seconds. “And
now?”

“Now?” I repeated in
confusion.

“Is losing him worse
than losing your career?” he asked in a tone I couldn’t read.

“I…don’t know.
They’re kind of wrapped up in one another, but am I glad now that I never
married him? Hell yeah.”

“Good to know.”

I held in another
sigh. As if it really mattered. Considering the date Reese had asked me to meet
him for drinks, we had about a week and a half left. Our time together might
not be an exact twenty-one days, but I was sure he wasn’t about to break his
long run of non-commitment. And like I’d told Kara, that was okay with me. It
was what I had signed up for. It kept the relationship thing out of the
picture, kept my fear at bay.