Free Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) by Jennifer Blake

and speed. She took his thrusts, feeling herself softening with them like malleable clay, reforming, molding herself to a perfect receptacle for his tumultuous hunger. Their skins glowed with heat, grew slippery with moisture. In the black and silver world of the storm, they stared into each other's eyes with wild, near desperate yearning.
    Surcease took them unaware, in sudden, blinding reward. With it, they soared: released, windblown, pulsing with the consummate splendor that is the beating heart of life. They clasped it to them and rode it to its inevitable end.
    For long moments they lay stunned, with panting breaths and fused, trembling bodies. Finally Reid shifted his weight, easing from her. He drew her long hair from under his shoulder, brushing it away from her face. Drawing a silken strand down her back as if testing the length, he left his palm resting in the center of her back, where the strand ended.
    Outside, the rain fell with a ceaseless drumming that echoed the throbbing of their hearts. The lightning was only a dim, distant flicker.
    Reid spread his fingers, smoothing his palm in a slow circle. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to rush you.”
    “Did you?” she said in husky doubt.
    His low laugh feathered across her breast, making the nipple contract. “A little,” he admitted. “It's been a long time for me.”
    “For me, too,” she said. Shifting, she placed a forefinger on the flat coin of his pap and rubbed, watching the shadowy movement through eyes that were slumberous with remembered rapture. Her movement stilled. “At least, it's been more than a year since — but for the rest, the best, not ever.”
    He lifted his head. His voice taut, he said, “Never?”
    She moved her head in minute but precise negation. “Keith—”
    “—was a selfish bastard,” he finished for her. “And stupid.”
    “He thought he knew what he was doing, but he didn't. You did.” She turned her flushed face into the curve of his neck, hiding it. This was one more secret that she had never breathed to anyone.
    “Next time will be better,” he said quietly.
    “Will it?” she said in muffled incredulity.
    “I think it's possible,” he said, humor and wonder threading his tone. He cupped the gentle turn of her cheek in his long fingers and lifted her mouth to meet his. “Shall we see?”
     



   4
     
    REID WOKE WITHIN SECONDS OF THE TIME he had set himself, two hours after he'd closed his eyes. The rain had stopped. All that was left of the storm was the uneven splatter of water dripping from the trees outside.
    He lay still for long moments, consciously recognizing the coolness of the air after the rain, the feel of the smooth percale sheets under him, the softness of the mattress, the silken tickle of the swath of hair that strayed across his arm. Cammie lay against him, her hips nestled against his belly. God, but it felt right.
    He was motionless, impressing the feel of the woman in his arms deliberately, indelibly, upon his memory while his mind wandered back through the night. The sweetness of her, the way she had responded to his slightest touch and least urging, the small sounds of pleasure and need she had made, all these things shifted in his mind like a dream of glory. There was nothing coy, nothing vulgar in the woman he held, only grace and caring and frank sensuality. He had been honored that she had come to him, and he knew it. That he had taken as much advantage of it as he was able in the space of time given to him was something he could not help.
    He was sure that never, even when he was a wrinkled, wobbling husk of a man, would he forget how he'd felt when he knew he was the first to help her reach orgasm. It affected him so profoundly that he'd tried to give her double that pleasure for every time he took his own from her. And in doing it, had increased his own many times over.
    The memory would warm him on cold nights for a long time. As it warmed him now.