Chapter 6

We had arrived back at the apartment in a little under twenty minutes. Zak had barely put the car in park and turned off the engine when he was suddenly by my door opening it for me. I gazed up at him underneath my lashes. The pale rays of the moon shone down on his back casting the front of him in shadow.
He reached out a hand waiting for me to grasp it with my smaller one. My heart raced; my palms shone with a light sheen of sweat. How had it come to this? How had we gotten here? I mean…this was Zak Bagans we were talking about. Not some everyday person from my hometown. This was ZAK. BAGANS.
I took a deep breath and grasped his hand in mine. I couldn't help but worry about his reaction to holding my sweaty palm in his, but all he did was gently tug me out of the car and close the door shut behind me. Before I could move forward, Zak pushed me up against the car door pressing his body close to mine. I could feel the heat of his body radiating off him in waves and soaking into my own warm skin. He brushed his hand down my cheek with a smile. That one little crooked smile made my legs turn to jello beneath me. If Zak hadn't had me pinned against the car I would be collapsed on the ground at the moment.
He gently cupped my face. "Your face is hot," he stated with a knowing smile.
"Well, you had the heater blasting at my face the entire car ride home. It's no wonder I didn't collapse from heatstroke," I retorted with half the sassiness most of my comebacks came with.
"Then allow me to carry you," he suggested. Before I could so much as reject or accept his offer, Zak swooped me up in his arms and held me tightly against his chest.
"There. Now you won't have to worry about your legs giving out from…heatstroke," he said with a sly smile playing along with my lie.
He took the stairs two at a time and reached the top in half the time it would normally take for me to climb the stairs. Zak glanced down at me with a raised eyebrow. It was then that I realized during our ascent, I had wrapped my arms tightly around his neck clinging to him in fear he might trip and fall.
"Thanks for the lift," I half chuckled. "You can set me down now."
The deep chuckle rumbled against my side and made me look up. The heat in his gaze made me weak with anticipation. Desire, hot and strong, was there plain as the nose on his face. He strode towards my apartment door and easily maneuvered his hold on me to swing open the door only to kick it closed behind us when we entered. My heart stumbled in my breast as he spun around and let my legs slide free, but kept his arms vised around me, crushing me between the hard, hot, muscled length of him and the cool wood door.
I moaned his name, and he pinned his hips to mine, holding me like a butterfly against a swath of black velvet. The image shifted to one of pure pleasure as he lowered his lips to my ear and rasped, "I want to take my time with you, Aerolynn Richards, but I don't have the strength to wait that long."
His lips teased the edge of my ear as he nibbled a path down the tendon in my throat. Warmth swept up from my toes, as desire began to build.
"Let me have you now, Aerolynn," he begged. "We can go slow later."
Bereft of words, overwhelmed by need for this man, I tilted my head back and tightened my arms around his neck. Sliding the tip of my tongue along his bottom lip, I bit it and had the satisfaction of watching his eyes glaze over. I needed to torture him as much as watching him and wanting him had tortured me.
His lips took mine in a ravenous kiss; using teeth, tongue, and lips, he drove every thought from my head but one. Now.
He came up for air before diving down to sample the deep V of skin above my red shirt, licking and nipping the skin until the heat from his mouth seared a path from the depths of my cleavage to the base of my ear.
"Zak!"
He reared back, nostrils flaring, mouth in a firm straight line. Unsure what he waited for, trying to ignore the way my heart opened to him, ready to let him in, but afraid if I did he'd leave again, I murmured, "Please?"
His grin was quick, but lethal. "Yes, ma'am."
His mouth fused to mine as his hands got busy unzipping my vest before gripping the ends of my shirt and tugging it off over my head. He unclasped my bra and slowly began slipping the straps off my shoulders and easing it off of me to fall to the floor with my top and vest. His groan of pleasure sprinted through me as he filled his hands with my breasts, teasing them into hard, pointed peaks as his head lowered to sup from their bounty.
"I can't—" Breathe. See. Stand. Pick one; all I could do was feel. Zak was igniting flames of desire in so many places at once my brain couldn't keep up.
My breasts ached and my lips tingled… and then he found the lacy thong I'd put on earlier with him in mind. Why in the world I had decided to wear such a thing with as cold as it was outside, I had no clue. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was how the night was going to end.
Naked. I'm not sure how he'd managed it so quickly, but I'd lost my top, my lacy thong…even my mind.
"Now," I demanded, pulling him closer. "I want you naked…NOW."
In a whirlwind of passion and his clothes being torn off in the mix, Zak and I finally made our way to my bedroom with my brother's words echoing vaguely in my ear about keeping it in my room. We fell back onto my bed, lips fused together along with our arms and legs tangled with one another's.
Zak lifted his head; his lips were bruised and wet from our passionate kissing.
"I just want you to know I love you. That I didn't only say that to get to this point," he murmured brushing his lips across my collarbone. Shivers raced down my spinal cord.
"I know," I breathed wrapping my arms loosely around his neck.
"I would have waited for however long it took to convince you that I want no one else, but you," he continued talking.
"Zak?" I sighed.
"Hmm?"
"Just shut up and make love to me."
Our lips fused together once more in a slow, heated kiss. His hands traveled from my breasts down to the curves of my hips. He gently spread my thighs apart and positioned himself between them.
That night we both lost ourselves in a sea of burning desire not entirely sure we would come out alive later that day.