The Beauty Series by Skye Warren Page B

Everything didn’t always have to devolve into sex.
    So when she turned those lust-dazed eyes on him and smiled sexily, he pulled the DVD case out of his jacket and held it up like a goddamned shield.
    She blinked. “ Phantom of the Opera ?”
    “You always brought a movie when you came over,” he explained. “Since I was coming over, I wanted to bring something.”
    Her look was sweetly reproachful as she connected the characters. “Very subtle.”
    “Hey, it was either this or Beauty and the Beast .”
    “At least in that one they end up together.”
    “Because he turns back into a normal man,” he reminded her. “There are no happy endings for the beast.”
    Her expression dimmed. She crawled to him, straddling his legs with hers, and shit, how was he supposed to restrain himself like this? His dick was right there. A few layers of cloth could disappear and he’d slide inside her. She plucked the DVD from his fingers and tossed it to the side table.
    “What are you doing?” he choked out.
    She slid down to the floor between his feet. Her eyes flicked up, troubled and wicked. “Proving you wrong.”
    She proceeded to do just that, using her tongue and lips and breathy sighs to drive him to ecstasy. The truest form of pleasure, a pure and potent happiness that was not what he’d meant but so much better. He wanted this all the time; he wanted her forever.
    Beneath her seductive touch, he trembled with need, with hope. But he’d wanted things before, and they’d exploded right in front of him. He’d dreamed these things before and woken up alone.
    He tried to resist, to accept the satisfaction of having her in his arms without the promise of a future, but it overwhelmed him. Like a tidal wave it swept him along, dragged him under, further away until he couldn’t see the shore.
    There was only an endless expanse of him and her together, of sex and love and hope converging on the horizon. He was lost then, hips jerking upward in helpless thrall and coming copiously into her warm, waiting mouth. Dragging her onto his lap, he licked and suckled and teased her breasts until she rocked her hips down onto him. In barely minutes he was hard again, an aching erection ever ready to serve her need. It wasn’t even about sex then but sharing. None of it mattered without her, not the beauty or relief.
    He impaled her onto him; this is what you do to me. He pushed up into her; feel me, take me, never let go. Her mouth was open in wordless entreaty while her eyes…dear God, her eyes. They burned with something more poignant than lust—there was knowledge. She knew what she did to him with her body, how low he could fall. She knew how hopelessly he thrust into her, desperate for more of her all the while aware it would never be enough.
    “Don’t hide from me,” she whispered.
    But he didn’t even know what she meant. He was looking at her, head on. She could see the worst parts of him, in the ugliness of his face and the degenerate use of her body. He showed her every dirty, unkind desire and God help her, she never told him no.
    He realized she was murmuring something. Not a wordless sex-chant, but something more. “Let me see, let me see,” she moaned, and he shuddered beneath. He writhed, and it must have looked like pain. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. A fucking tear—how had that happened? He didn’t know, but it hovered there on the brink, and he was unable or unwilling to reach up and wipe it away. She wanted to see? He would show her what a coward he was, and even then he wouldn’t let her go. Mine.
    The teardrop slipped from his eye, falling over skin that should have died. But it wasn’t dead, it was wholly, painfully alive. It burned all day and all night as if the explosion had never stopped. The moisture of a single tear wasn’t nearly enough to put the fire out, but she rested her face against him, right there. Her soft skin was a balm anywhere, but there, on his burns, it was a