More Than Words
Page 36

“Except with alcohol and … partying,” I said. Women. A thought I pushed aside. He was opening up to me, baring his heart, and I wanted desperately to know this part of him.
“Yeah. For a while I could numb myself enough so his words were muted, just background noise. But it’s been harder and harder to do that.” He kissed my shoulder. “Until you.”
I bit at my lip, a surge of hope filling me, the feeling that he needed me. The problem was, I didn’t want to be needed only as some sort of muse for his music. I wanted to be loved. “Do you have any kind of relationship with him now?”
“No.”
“What about your mom? You never mentioned her …”
“No.” So much pain in that one word. “She died when I was eight. An overdose of prescription meds. They said it was an accident, but … I don’t know. She had been depressed for as long as I could remember.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, wishing he’d told me about that when we were children. It would have explained more of the sadness in his young eyes. I’d lost my own mother to illness, and that had been hard enough to deal with as an adult. What would it be like for a sensitive eight-year-old to lose his mother to something that may or may not have been an accident? Especially when the parent he had left sounded like a mean bastard who had probably been little comfort, if any at all.
He was silent for a while and felt sort of tense, so I moved my hand down the ridges of his abdomen, seeking to distract. His muscles bunched, and he drew in a breath. “Did I ever tell you that I hear music in my head sometimes, too? The one that’s playing right now goes a little something like this: bow chicka wow wow.”
He laughed, the sound deep and sexy right next to my ear, and I tipped my head, grinning at him. “That’s good stuff,” he said.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Come here, Mozart, and give me that wandering hand before you and that sexy beat give me ideas.”
“What sort of ideas?”
“Ideas that your body needs to rest from.”
“Hmm,” I grumped. “Maybe just for tonight.”
“Just for tonight.” He pulled me close and his heat enveloped me, the scent of him—warm male skin and some piney-smelling product he’d used recently—bringing security and comfort. I sighed, and after only a few minutes, drifted back to sleep.
* * *
I woke to the feel of something hard at my back and a hand kneading my breast gently. I moaned, pressing my butt back against Callen as he sucked in a sharp hiss. “I want you,” he whispered. “Are you still sore?”
I was, just a bit, but I didn’t care. I was turned on, and I wanted to feel the fullness as he entered me, the sweet invasion as we became one. “No.”
I turned around and gazed at him, the soft midmorning light bringing out the chocolaty highlights of his hair and the traces of blue in his gray eyes. His jaw was rough with stubble, and his lips looked swollen from sleep and all the kissing we’d done the night before. He was beautiful, my prince finally returned, and I knew I loved him. Maybe I’d never stopped.
“I had planned to get up early and take you to a museum near the château. The château we never made it to,” he murmured, biting softly at my ear.
I smiled, running my hand down his chest. “You’re my museum,” I whispered, pushing him gently so he rolled to his back. I threw a leg over his and kissed his neck as he groaned. “So much to see and experience,” I murmured against his skin, my hand grazing the ridges of his stomach, moving down to trace a finger along the hollow at his hip. “The art offered here is a study in form and”—I went lower, wrapping my hand around his hardness as he hissed in a tortured breath—“function.”
I slid my hand slowly up and down, glorying in the hot throb beneath my fingers, and he arched his back, a burst of garbled words rasping from his mouth. I held back a grin. “Hmm. Do you offer studies in antiquated languages, too?”
He laughed, though it was infused with a groan. He put his hand over mine, stilling it momentarily so he could roll me to my back, taking charge, leaning in and flicking my nipple with his tongue. “Only one, and it’s as old as time itself. Want me to teach it to you?”
My smile turned to a sigh of pleasure. “Oh yes.”
We made love slowly, a leisurely quality that hadn’t been there the night before, when we’d both been greedy with the newness of discovering each other’s bodies.
He kissed down the curve of my neck to my shoulder and ran his hands up my inner thighs, before flipping me over, causing me to laugh, a chuckle that turned into a moan as he ran his fingernails over my backside and nuzzled his prickly jaw on my shoulder blades. It seemed as if he wanted to explore all the places he might have missed the night before, to see every part of me in the morning light. We have time, I wanted to say. We have all the time in the world. But I knew that was a lie, and I didn’t want to think about it, so I pushed it away. The feel of his hands on my body became my focus, and I lost myself in the earthy male smell of his skin after a night’s sleep and how it spoke to every feminine part of me.
We lay together afterward in satisfied repletion as I snuggled into him. A goose feather from the duvet spiraled upward with my movement and then floated lazily downward in a gossamer shaft of muted sunlight. Callen reached up and tried to grasp the fluttering piece of down, laughing when it danced away. He turned to face me, his hand running down my back as he pressed a quick kiss to the side of my mouth. “Do you know how I found that boxcar? The day we met?”
“No. How?”
He glanced upward, a smile playing over his mouth. I reached up and let my thumb glide over the perfect indent in the center of his bottom lip, unable to resist touching anywhere and everywhere that drew my interest. I felt hungry to experience him in every way I could … while I could. He kissed my thumb once, then pulled back. “I followed a feather.” He paused, taking a piece of my hair between his fingers and rubbing them together, feeling its texture. At this point he must know the feel of every single part of me, and yet he sighed as he watched his own fingers move, seemingly captivated by the strands, perhaps as hungry as I was. The thought made me warm and content. “I’d had a run-in with my father, and I’d left the house. This feather … caught my attention, and I followed it.” His gaze met mine. “I followed it to that boxcar, where you found me only a few hours later. I didn’t even remember that until recently.” He leaned in and kissed me, and I was lost in him once again.
The day went by in changes of light and the steady rise and fall of pleasure, his fingernails grazing my skin, his mouth seemingly everywhere. He called downstairs and ordered croissants and coffee and then later, more sandwiches and an upside-down fruit and pastry dessert called tarte tatin, which we again ate on the floor picnic-style.
Callen leaned forward and kissed me, licking the bit of caramelized apple on the side of my mouth as I laughed. He groaned. “We’d better take a shower. I don’t have any more condoms with me.”
I raised a brow. “I’m disappointed in your lack of preparedness.”
He smiled, and it was sweet. “No, I wasn’t prepared for this, Jessie. For you. But somehow …” He kissed me again.
“Somehow what?” I whispered.
“Somehow I got lucky, far luckier than I deserve.” He seemed pensive as he sat back, beginning to gather the wrappers from our lunch.
I didn’t want this day to end, not the intimacy of the small bed, the whispered words, eating picnic meals naked, wrapped in blankets, and so I smiled, nudging him. “Well, I guess your luck has run out.” I stood, letting the blanket drop at my feet. “I’m going to take a shower and think about all the things we might be able to do without a condom.” I put my finger on my chin in feigned consideration. “There probably aren’t any, though I’m pretty inexperienced—”
Callen stood so fast, he startled me and made me yelp out a laugh. “I’m feeling lucky again.”
We used far too much hot water before we emerged, pruney and laughing and me educated on the delights of shower benches and mouths, body wash and naked skin.