Читать книгу Uncover Me - AM Hartnett - Страница 7

Having him in her space put her on edge.

Her knees wobbled as soon as she opened the door. She charged on through with Brendan trailing behind her. She found she couldn’t breathe as she stood with her back to him, stripped off her coat and tossed it on to the edge of the sofa.

She was terrified.

‘This is where all your money goes,’ he said quietly, and Carrie turned.

‘Excuse me?’

He stood in front of the door, gaze roaming over every inch of her apartment. ‘You’ve got nice things, expensive things.’

Carrie crossed her arms over her chest, mostly to keep her hands from shaking, but also to show her annoyance. ‘So I like nice things. I buy nice things. What else would I do with my money?’

‘How much did that mirror cost?’

‘What does it matter?’

Brendan shrugged. ‘Just thinking of the other fun things you could have bought with the money.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s a knock-off. Forty bucks at Pier One.’

‘Forty bucks could still get you a lot of goodies to show off.’

He glanced at his shoes and then at her, and with a smirk pushed them off his feet. A mad little panic skittered through her belly.

If he gets too cosy, I can’t push him out the door.

‘Do you want to give me the tour or should I just make myself comfortable?’

‘Right. Sorry.’ She stepped to the centre of the room, ‘This is the living room, obviously. Behind you to the left is the kitchen. It’s not huge or anything, but I only cook once a week and … what?’

He was grinning. ‘I’m not interviewing you for a lifestyle magazine. I just need to know my away around.’

Carrie sucked in a deep breath and tried to relax, but she couldn’t bring herself to unclamp her arms from across her chest. ‘I’m sorry. I’m nervous.’

‘Then you’ll have to settle down.’ He padded around the sofa in his socked feet. ‘Allow me. Living room, obviously.’

As he went to every corner of the room, touching and feeling her things, Carrie just got tighter and tighter. The enormity of what she had done grew with every step he took. As he peered from her window onto the street, she suddenly wanted him out, but now that he was in she had no idea how to make that happen.

Her head was a mess. Part of her wanted to go forward. Part of her wanted to go back to her safe little life.

‘Kitchen. Tiny, but a little bit of counter space,’ he said as he walked through the hall. ‘Bathroom. Big. Big enough for two or more.’

She followed and stood in the doorway as he sized up the tub. ‘You’re looking at every single surface in here and gauging it for … for …’

‘Stability? Comfort? Fuckability? No, not really. Anyone can fuck anywhere if they want it bad enough, but now that you mention it –’ he stepped into the tub and sat down ‘– it’s been a while since I had any fun under running water. Too tricky unless there’s enough room to move. I wouldn’t fuck in here, but there’s definitely enough room to play.’

He stretched out his legs and rested his feet on the lip of the bath, then folded his hands behind his head. ‘You have another camera, don’t you? One with a tripod. Is it waterproof?’

Carrie nodded. The thought of being wet and slippery under the spray with him … oh, my.

‘I always wondered …’ he began, then shook his head. ‘Never mind.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s just, the way you come off in those pictures it’s obvious you like the appearance of being fucked. I was wondering if that’s why you decided to go almost completely bare.’ Carrie just burned as, chuckling, he extracted himself from the tub. ‘I’d say that one day you indulged a little while shaving, and you’ve been that way ever since because you like the way it looks and feels.’

The butterflies in her stomach went mad as he paused in the bedroom door. ‘Now this is telling me something. There’s never a good shot, but I had my suspicions.’

‘What?’

‘This bed.’ He hopped onto the mattress and knelt at the foot of the bed, one hand on the iron poster and the other resting on the throw tossed over the footboard. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ, this is the type of bed a woman buys when she wants to be fucked hard.’

She stepped forward and fingered one of the sheer curtains. ‘I bought this because –’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever. You bought the bed so you could block out as much light as possible. You bought it because it was on sale. You bought it because it was the only one on the showroom floor. You can come up with a hundred reasons but experience tells me otherwise: a woman doesn’t buy a bed because it’s pretty, she buys it to get off in.’ He grinned and leaned back. ‘My dick’s wet just imagining the things you could get up to in this bed.’

And just like that, the mood shifted in the room. Brendan’s smile didn’t waver, but his eyes lost their merriment and softened. The heat of embarrassment that had been simmering under the surface of Carrie’s skin lost its sting and cooled to a warm, liquid river that ran through her.

Brendan’s presence seemed to give off an atmosphere all its own. It surrounded her.

She knew she would follow where he led her.

She curled her fingers around the curtain and waited, speechless, for Brendan to say something.

‘How many men have been in this bed?’

None, she tried to say, but the word stuck in her throat. It gave her enough time to change her mind.

‘A few,’ she lied, badly, and lowered her gaze.

‘Carrie.’ He came swiftly to the side of the bed where she stood and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. ‘I’m not here to help you keep your secrets. Do you want to be fucked in this bed?’

It seemed to take for ever, but Carrie managed to meet his gaze. Still, she couldn’t open up to answer his question.

Instead, she said, ‘I won’t do it without a condom. If you don’t have one I have some in the bathroom cabinet.’

‘We don’t need condoms today. That’s not what I have planned for you.’

‘Then what?’

His fingers pressed down on her pulse. The corner of his mouth turned up at one corner. ‘Your heart is going crazy.’

‘I don’t know you and here you are on my bed.’

He placed his other hand on her waist and pulled her closer until their thighs touched. ‘I want to watch you blush like that when you don’t have a stitch of clothing on you, watch you get breathless and crazy and wet.’

He slowly moved his hand across her hip to the small of her back, then lower, until his fingers splayed across her bum.

Closer.

She stirred to move, to do anything, but he clenched his arm around her. ‘Don’t. Not yet. Feel how hard I am.’

‘I feel it,’ she whispered, her voice rasping from the ache that was throbbing everywhere, but nowhere more than where his cock pressed through the layers between them. Carrie kept her gaze on his mouth as arousal oozed through her.

If he hadn’t been holding her, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to stand on her own feet.

‘This morning when I was getting dressed,’ he said, ‘I wanted to jerk off so bad, but I didn’t. I waited. The thought of laying you down and spreading you open followed me around all day.’

‘And here you are,’ she whispered. Her voice was thick, unrecognisable. Like … Maggie.

God, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted his tongue gliding over hers, licking, sucking, devouring. She tipped her head back, but he just kept watching her.

‘I’ll bet you’re as wet as I am hard right now. I’ll bet you’re dripping through your panties.’ His tongue snaked out, quick as lightening, and skimmed over her bottom lip. Carrie was electrified in an instant. His grip loosened. ‘Unzip me. Take my cock out.’

The hardest thing in the world at that moment was separating from him. To be that close, to be in that timeless moment of promise, was perfection.