Finally rising from his knees, he kissed her long and deep before pulling back to look into her eyes. Just as he had every time they were together, he needed to make absolutely sure that he wasn’t moving too fast.
“Is it too much?”
“No. God, no. It isn’t nearly enough.”
He slowly moved his hands to the top of her jeans. “What about this?” He slid the button out of its hole. “Will this be too much? Because I’ll stop if you need me to.”
On a little frustrated growl that shot straight to his groin, she slid her hands from his hair to cover his over her zipper, and yanked it down. The next thing he knew, she was shimmying out of her jeans...and was standing before him in nothing but little white lace panties, at once both totally innocent and the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
“I can’t think when I’m looking at you,” he confessed in a half-whisper, half-groan. “I need a second to get a grip.”
But instead of giving him a chance to pull himself together, she put her thumbs in the slim sides of the lace that barely covered her. “I’ve wanted this with you since that first night. Since our first kiss.”
“I have, too,” he told her, but he still made himself cover her hands with his so that she had to hold the lace up against her hips rather than pull it down. Because once she was naked...
When she realized he wouldn’t let her strip off her underwear, she looked up at him with equal parts frustration and desperate lust. “Then why haven’t you? You’ve been so gentle, given me so much space and room it’s nearly driven me completely crazy. Especially knowing that you’ve done this with so many other girls, but not with me.”
“You’re not like the others, Serena. You’ll never be like the others.” She made him want to be a better man. “You’re special. You need to know how special you are.”
“You’ve always made me feel special.” She shifted her hands beneath his so that they were palm to palm. “Always. Even that first night, the way you held me, the way you kissed me, the way you looked at me...I’d never felt like that with anyone else.”
This time when they kissed, there was more than just need. More than just desire. More than just desperate lust. And when he touched her, when he made her come, he knew it wouldn’t just be about giving her physical pleasure…it would be about making her happy in ways and places that even the best sex in the world couldn’t reach.
Still kissing her, he slid his arms around her shoulders and beneath her legs, then lifted her. He felt her smile against his mouth, loved the soft sound of her happiness as she laughed in his arms while he carried her over to the bed. But after he laid her down and finally slid the lace from her hips and down her legs, never once did his gaze leave her eyes. Not until she put her hand over his and slid it up her bare thigh to her hip bone.
Knowing that she was finally giving him permission to touch her made him feel like his heart was going to rip out of his chest, it was beating so hard. “Show me,” he begged her. “Show me what you want. Show me what you need.”
His name was on her lips as she slid both of their hands over her sex. The moment he caressed her slick, hot flesh, her breath left her lungs in a hard rush, her free arm clinging tightly to him as she buried her face in the crook of his neck.
“So soft.” He barely knew what he was saying, just that he had to tell her what touching her like this did to him. “So wet.” He had to slide one finger down over her once, then twice, then a third time. “So perfect.”
She pulled him even more tightly against herself, trembling from the force of trying to get closer to his hand as he stroked her. “I’ve dreamt of you coming for me,” he whispered against her ear. “Of how you’d sound. Of how you’d feel.” He nipped at her earlobe. “And of how you’d beg me to make you just keep coming, again and again and again.”
“Oh God. I feel—” She didn’t finish her sentence, but the way she opened her thighs even wider for him, then bucked up into his touch, told him exactly how she was feeling.
Tangling his free hand in her hair, he pulled her head back, gently, but far enough that her eyes met his. “I need to see you,” he ground out from lungs that felt like they’d never be able to take in enough oxygen ever again. At least not when Serena’s naked body was wrapped around his. “I need to know that everything I do, that everything we do together, feels good.”
“Good,” she gasped against his lips a beat before he covered hers to pour all of his pent-up, barely controlled need into a kiss. “So, so good.”
Her eyes were dilated nearly to black when he finally allowed himself to slip one finger inside.
“Oh!” The sound caught in her throat, and broke into several pieces as he slowly moved over her clitoris, then just as slowly slid back inside. “Oh God.”
He built the rhythm as deliberately as he could given his wild, insane need to make her come apart beneath him. Soon, she was rocking against him, growing even wetter, even hotter, so that he almost forgot to be careful, almost forgot not to tear off his own clothes and just take.
But he would never let himself forget that this morning was about Serena. About showing her pleasure. And even more important, proving to her that she could trust him—that she wasn’t wrong to have forgiven him for doing and saying all the wrong things.
Between the breathy little sounds she was making and the way her inner muscles were clenching around his finger, he knew she was close. Brushing back the hair from her face, he cupped her cheek gently in one hand as he played over her with the other.
“Come for me, beautiful.”
Her eyes had fluttered nearly closed before they suddenly flared open with so much pleasure that it floored him to watch her give herself over so completely, so incredibly, not just to her climax...but, amazingly, to him, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Everything was perfect, and Serena felt like nothing bad could ever happen to her again. Not when she was feeling like this, all softly melting and brilliantly sparkling at the same time.
And still...there was more. More she wanted. More she needed to finally experience.
She’d been naked plenty of times in her life as she changed backstage at fashion shows, and while designers had pinned and draped fabric over her. Her mother had always been there to watch the proceedings like a hawk, so there had never been the slightest bit of sexuality to her nakedness while she worked. On the contrary, she’d always felt as if she was no different than a plastic mannequin standing cold and lifeless while waiting for someone to dress her in the latest fashions for a display window.