Every Part of You Taunts Me Read Free Page B

up to sheathe him, cupping his balls for a moment. Watching his face. His lips, wet from her climax. The furrow of his brows when she stroked him, head to base.
    “I want you,” she told him.
    He kissed her, pushing her back on the bed. He cradled her for a moment, and she wondered if he wasn’t going to fuck her, after all. But then he slid a hand between them to fit his cock inside her, inch by delicious inch.
    “I want you, too,” he whispered against her.
    “Let me make you crazy, baby,” Simone said.
    Then he started to move inside her, and she had no more words.
    *   *   *
    Elliott was not used to a woman in his bed. He’d lain awake for a long time last night, but woke at his normal time even though he was exhausted. He’d stared for a while at the ceiling, waiting for the room to get light enough for him to see, but ultimately, the soft, relentless sigh of Simone’s breathing beside him had pushed him from the bed.
    It wasn’t that he didn’t want her there. That wasn’t why he’d gone downstairs without waking her, or why he now sipped coffee as he stood outside on the back porch and watched the sun get higher in the sky. It was because although it had taken him awhile to fall asleep, waking beside Simone had felt so natural that he couldn’t imagine not doing it every day.
    She had driven him crazy the night before.
    He wanted her to drive him crazy again.
    The creak of the stairs was as familiar to him as the sound of his own heartbeat. How many times had he forgotten to skip that fourth step from the bottom when he was sneaking out … or sneaking in? He knew the sound of the floorboards in this house, too. The squeak of the linoleum. Still, he didn’t turn, even when he heard the click of the screen door opening behind him.
    “I got up and you were gone.” Simone yawned.
    She had indeed helped herself to one of his T-shirts, a V-neck. It hung to her thighs but shifted to reveal a hint of her perfect breasts when she leaned on the porch railing to look out over the backyard. She nudged him with her hip.
    “I get up early,” Elliott said.
    “I know. You told me that. Remember?”
    He held out his coffee mug without a word, and she sipped from it with a grimace before handing it back.
    “Too sweet,” she told him.
    “I can get you your own.”
    She smiled. “I can get it.”
    She didn’t wait for him to stop her, just went inside and helped herself to the cupboard for a mug. Filled it. Dug around in his fridge for cream, too, though she didn’t take sugar.
    She looked at him watching her. “What?”
    “It’s just…” He stopped himself.
    Simone looked at him, the mug held in both her hands. A kind of understanding dawned in her eyes. She looked at the cupboard doors, several of them still hanging open. Then the mug in her hands.
    “Oh. Guidelines,” she said.
    Elliott walked past her to shut the cupboard drawers, the sound of each a lot louder than he’d intended. When he turned, she’d settled herself at the table. She turned the mug around, around and around. He didn’t sit across from her. He stayed standing at the counter.
    “I’m very particular,” Elliott said.
    Simone laughed. “Baby, I know that. You like things a certain way. You’re very precise.”
    “I’ve lived alone for a long time, that’s all. It’s my house. I like it to be the way I like it.”
    “Nothing wrong with that. I like my house the way I like it, too.” She paused, looking around, then back at him. “How long have you lived here? I asked you last night, but you never answered.”
    He hadn’t on purpose, because answering it would require explaining other things he didn’t want to get into. “A long time.”
    “Was it your parents’ house?”
    He hesitated before replying; she was so freaking astute. “My stepmother’s house.”
    “You lived here when you were a kid?”
    “No. Not until I was seventeen.”
    “That’s still a kid,” Simone said.
    Elliott frowned, thinking