The second Cooper closed his bedroom door he lifted me up, gripping my thighs through my white dress. I wrapped myself around him, crossing my feet behind his back, draping my arms around his shoulders.
“Do you want to hear something, Wills?” he asked in a low, sexy whisper, his accent clipping every other word.
“No,” I said honestly. I just wanted him to kiss me until I couldn’t think.
He pinned me hard to the wall, and the dresser a few feet away shook, rattling the items strewn across it. “I’ve wanted to do this since night one.”
“When you came back here with a hard on?” I asked breathlessly.
He coaxed one of my hands from around his neck, giving me a grin when I tightened the grip my legs had on his body, and kissed the inside of my wrist. “Further back.”
I moaned as he skimmed his other hand along the low cut, elastic line of my panties. “That was our first night,” I pointed out. I ignored my conscience when it yelled at me that that night was only twelve days ago. People had screwed a lot earlier.
Yes, they had. So f**k off, Conscience.
“We had to meet, right?” he asked.
“Lunch?” I squeaked, and he nodded slowly. He drowned my surprise out, slanting his lips over mine, demanding that I open them for him. I did.
“I want to be inside of you, Willow. I want to watch your face when I’m inside of you, when you sigh, when you come for me. And Willow?”
He was using my whole name again.
“Yes?” I asked.
He released me, standing me up in front of me, with his hands on either side of my shoulders to steady me. I automatically moved toward him, as if a magnet pulled me, but he shook his head, keeping me in place.
“You’re going to tell me right now if you’re not for sure,” he said.
“I want you, Cooper. I don’t know what the f**k else I want anymore, but I want this right now.”
That’s all it took. He gathered me in his arms, holding me close as he carried me to his king-sized bed. I sighed when he sat me on the edge and scooted backwards, until I was in the center with the blankets bunched around my hips.
“You look so sweet,” he said. The way his body moved as he crawled up to me was the most sensual thing I’d ever seen, and I gave a hoarse cry as he pulled me beneath him, kissing my lips until they were sore. “Relax.”
“What are you going to—”
“Just . . . do it, Wills.”
His fingers scorched my skin as they traced up my legs, inside my thighs, stopping at my center. I gasped and bolted up when he stroked the outside of my panties, but he squeezed my thigh.
“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Not my body, but my heart?
I fell back against the pillows, closing my eyes as he dragged my panties off, shivering when the cool air from the ceiling fan above us hit my bare flesh. He made a rough noise in the back of his throat, and I felt the corner of my mouth tug up. “It’s cold.”
“Open your eyes, Wills.”
The moment my eyelids fluttered apart to meet his gaze, he dipped his head between my legs, pushing his tongue against me. “Mmmmm,” I moaned. I started to lift my hands from where they were bunched in the covers, but he locked his fingers around my wrists.
“We’re alone and I need to hear this from you,” he growled. “Let go for me, Willow. Please?”
I had a feeling those words would stay with me for the rest of my life, regardless of what happened after tonight, so I nodded. “Yes.”
And then he bent down again, with my legs draped over his shoulders and the soles of my feet sliding up and down the hard lines of his back. When my body went numb, he groaned; when I relaxed, he sighed; and when I tensed up again, finally going limp beneath his hot mouth, he released a low, sexy moan.
“Cooper?”
“Yes?” He traced his lips up the center of my body, as he slid my dress up along with his kisses.
“Kiss me again,” I said.
When he reached my lips, I tasted myself and mint, and I shivered as I sat up a little so he could drag the white dress over my head. I heard it fall beside the bed. He shrugged my lacy strapless bra down around my waist, and the cool breeze from the fan made me shiver once again, but then he covered my br**sts with his mouth, warming me, driving me crazy.
“Cooper, please?” I gasped, and he groaned against my damp skin. He started to pull away from me, from the bed and I fell back against the soft sheets. “Where are you going?” I murmured.
“The lights. I told you I wanted to see all of you.”
My heartbeat raced, but for all the wrong reasons.
“Don’t turn them on!” I whispered frantically, scrambling up on my knees, the mattress sinking a little. He turned back to face me, and I grasped his wrist. “Please . . . no lights?” I pleaded, surprised at how desperate my voice sounded.
He leaned in to kiss me, in that sensitive spot beneath my br**sts, and brought my hand between us, wrapping it around him. “You’re beautiful, Wills. I want you. Surely—”
He was wrong.
I wasn’t beautiful.
I was damaged.
I felt stupid for letting myself forget that.
“I can’t do the lights,” I whispered.
Gripping my hips hard with his hands, he laid me back down, kneeling over me, and mumbled against my skin, “Do you know what this is doing to me? You naked and so f**king shy?” Whatever I was doing to him, it wasn’t anger. His voice just sounded amazed—broken and sexy and just a little rough.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t always been shy like this. That if things had gone different, that if my body wasn’t scarred, I probably would have been the one jumping out of bed to flip on every light in the room.