Page 67 of The Christmas Competition

His gaze snagged hard on mine. “Nisa.”

My muscles tightened around him once, then twice, and with a shock I realized that it was going to happen again. Two orgasms in one session was a first for me.

I gripped his hand tightly as he increased his pace, his other hand leaving my face to lift one of my thighs and drive deeper. “Is this okay?” he asked me, breathless, and I practically yelled “Yes, yes!” in response.

Then his hand left mine to slide between my legs, dipping into my wetness and circling slowly, just above where we were joined, and that was it. I came apart, stars bursting across my vision as I tightened violently around the length of him.

My orgasm rolled down him in wave after relentless wave, and his rhythm derailed as he finally let go, his climax catching and becoming one with mine as he groaned my name.

He collapsed onto me, and I drew him in, my arms tight across his broad shoulders as he breathed into my neck. “Nisa. You’ve killed me.”

“No,” I managed to get out between my panting breaths. “That phase of our relationship has passed. I no longer want to kill you. Just screw you senseless.”

He chuckled against my neck, and I stroked the smooth skin of his back in response.

25

Kerr

I GLANCED AT Nisa’s bedside clock, but only five minutes had passed since I’d last looked. Somehow, it felt like hours.

I lay back, arms behind my head as I stared at the ceiling. After we’d had sex we’d stayed in bed, with a brief interlude where I’d gone downstairs to fetch us a snack (and give the insatiable Izzy a treat). After Nisa and I had eaten she’d asked me to stay, and there was no way I could say no to those dark doe eyes.

But then after a few hours, sleep had eluded me and I’d woken around four a.m., unable to get any more rest. So I’d watched her sleep for a while, dark locks spilled onto her white pillow, still unable to believe that a woman so beautiful and vivacious had allowed me into her bed. And more to the point, that she’d wanted to know the things about me that we’d discussed before I’d taken her to bed.

The problem was, I was struggling with the fact that I’d told her all that stuff. She hadn’t been the first to delve, and normally it was easy for me to deny the love interest or friend who was asking the questions. Normally I would turn silent and change the subject, and eventually they got the hint and stopped asking. It was like second nature to me. But there was something about Nisa that had brought down those naturally forged defenses, despite them being rock solid for years. And I could no longer fool myself that telling her was easy because she already didn’t like me, or vice versa. Because that phase of our relationship, as she’d put it the previous evening, had passed. We were now well and truly into uncharted territory.

And it scared the shit out of me.

I had never been in this position before. Sure, I’d had lovers and girlfriends, but I had never given so much of myself, been so vulnerable with them even well into a relationship, never mind at the start. Hence why none of them had thought I was enough. Because I couldn’t let them in.

The danger here, and the reason I surmised I couldn’t sleep, was that I was putting myself out there—​fully at her mercy. And if I was right, and I really wasn’t enough for someone as glorious as her, then the fall when she inevitably realized that and left me was going to be devastating. Like being abandoned by my mother all over again.

I scrubbed a hand over my face, cursing myself for being so quick to give her the answers to those questions. So quick to be myself and vulnerable around her ever since the fire. I should have kept my guard up for longer. At least until I could see where this was going.

She shifted next to me, and I turned my head to see her eyes fluttering open, a sleepy smile on her face. “Hey.”

I turned onto my side to face her. “Hey,” I said softly. “Did I wake you?”

She shook her head, hair rustling on the pillow, and reached for me. And goddamn it I immediately obliged by shifting closer, into her touch.

She stroked the side of my face. “I was dreaming about something that woke me. What time is it?”

“Six a.m.”

“Can’t you sleep?”

I shook my head, certainly not ready to tell her why. “What were you dreaming about?”

Her smile broadened, and she moved even closer, lifting a leg over my hips and making to straddle me. A dark wave of desire thrummed down into my core.

I turned fully onto my back and slid my arms around her waist as she bent her head to kiss me, locks of her hair showering around me and infusing the air with the scent of her shampoo. Lust rippled under my skin as her pillowy lips explored mine, her skin soft under my fingers and the sweet scent of her in my nostrils.

“I was dreaming about this,” she breathed, in between kisses.

And just like that, I had gone from existential crisis to hard as a rock, having her again the sole thing on my mind. I thrust a hand into her hair, grasping her head and pushing her mouth down harder onto mine. She emitted one of those little moans that drove me fucking wild, and I bit into the soft skin of her throat in response.

She shifted to the side and I about growled in frustration that she was creating any distance between us. Then I realized she was going for the condoms in the top drawer. She took one out, opened it, and I laid there unashamedly admiring the curves of her naked form as she rolled it onto me, getting impossibly and achingly harder with every second, until she granted me some partial relief from my anticipation by rising up and then easing down onto my length, inch by exquisite inch.