I could tell her that I’ve fallen in love with her, but she’s not ready to hear that yet.
I could tell her that I hate what she’s going through, but she’d throw what she perceives as my pity back in my face.
I could tell her that I want to be there for her because I wasn’t there for Chloe, but that would just undermine how important she’s become to me.
In the end, I say the only thing I can say. The only thing that makes sense to me right here, right now. “I think it’s probably time to change that, don’t you?”
And then I lower my mouth to hers, putting all the things I can’t say—all the things I want to say—into this one kiss.
Chapter 21
Tori
I don’t know why, but it feels different when he kisses me this time.
Maybe it’s the fight we had earlier and how angry I was at him.
Maybe it’s that this is the last part of making up from that fight—something I rarely bother to do with a man.
Or maybe it’s because he really is different. Because we both are—so different together from who we are when we’re apart.
Whatever it is, it makes this kiss feel more intimate, more important, more…just more…and I can’t help but revel in it. Can’t help but meet it—and Miles—head-on.
Leaning into him, I cup his too-perfect face in my hands. Stroke my thumbs over his cut-glass jaw. Tangle my fingers in the silkiness of his hair. And give myself over to this. To him.
I can tell the moment he feels my surrender. It’s in the way he pulls me more tightly against him. In the way his hands slip down to rest possessively on my hip. In the way he slides his tongue between my parted lips and into the deepest recesses of my mouth as if he, too, feels the difference.
I open to him—of course I do—and brace myself for the heat and the rush. For the flash and the fire.
It doesn’t come.
Instead there’s warmth and care and a tenderness so sweet it makes me tremble in a whole new way. And when he stands, when he pulls me to my feet and then sweeps me up into his arms, I do more than let him. Do more than wind my arms around his neck and hold on tight. I melt into him, melt into this one perfect moment in the middle of my violently imperfect life.
He doesn’t lift his mouth from mine even as he makes his way down the hall to the sweeping staircase that starts in the foyer. Doesn’t stop kissing me even as he carries me up the stairs two at a time. And he doesn’t stop touching me—doesn’t stop skimming his lips across my jaw, down my neck, over my shoulder—even as he lays me in the center of his bed.
Instead he follows me down, his mouth and hands and body pressed against mine like he’s afraid to let me go, even for a moment.
I know exactly how he feels. How can I not when the same desperation is clawing at me?
Heat builds with each second that passes, the fire I was expecting earlier beginning to haze my mind and burn along my every nerve ending. As it does, I pull at his T-shirt, wrap my legs around his hips, press my body against the lean, strong length of his.
He’s hard, his dick pressed so tightly against my sex that it might have been painful if I didn’t want him so much. Need him so much. But I do need him—around me, inside me, filling up the emptiness I’ve felt for as long as I can remember.
Part of me thinks it’s absurd that I expect him to do that, but another, bigger part knows it’s not ridiculous at all. Just like it knows that he’s already filled so many of my empty places just by being him.
I’m not sure how we got here in just the space of a couple of days, how we went from a year’s worth of swiping at each other to this hot, desperate sense of rightness, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful. If I tried to pretend that I wasn’t enjoying every single second of having Miles’s beautiful, hard body covering mine.
I slide my hands under his shirt in silent entreaty, then lift my hips against his in an invitation he can’t ignore.
But he doesn’t take the bait. Instead he pulls away—not far, but it’s still enough to have me whimpering in protest. To have my fingers clutching at his shoulders and my legs tightening around his hips as I try to keep him against me.
“Shhh,” he murmurs, pressing soft kisses to my cheeks, my collarbones, the tips of my breasts. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
And he does have me, completely and absolutely. Normally, that would be a difficult pill to swallow, but it’s hard to resent how much of myself I’ve given—how much I’m giving—to this man when the way he’s touching and kissing and looking at me says I have him just as completely.
I don’t know what to do with that—what to do with him. But that’s okay, because right now he seems to know enough for the both of us.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, his hands slide over my body, his fingers skimming my collarbone, tracing the tops of my breasts, smoothing along the waistband of my yoga pants. It feels good, so good that I’m already panting even though he’s barely touched me.
“Please,” I whisper, my hands twining around his biceps as I try desperately to pull him closer, to make him go faster. There’s a vulnerability in the word—and my voice—that I hate, but I can’t do anything about it. Not when Miles is holding me, touching me, like I’m the most precious thing in the world.
“I’ve got you,” he repeats as he kisses his way across my collarbone. “I promise.”
And then he’s slipping my tank top over my head, sliding my yoga pants and underwear down my legs. Flipping me over so that I’m lying facedown on the sheet, my legs spread and my body wide open to him. Completely defenseless.
With any other man, I’d be rolling over. Rolling us both over so that I was the one on top. The one doing the teasing. The one in control.
But from the moment Miles took me in his arms on that dance floor the other night, I haven’t been in control. Of him. Of my life. Of anything.
And while I hate it—hate the vulnerability and the uncertainty of it—I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want this with Miles. Because I do. Just this once, for just this one moment, I want to open myself to him and see where it goes. And if the thought makes my hands tremble just a little, so what? Miles never needs to know what it is that’s making me so shaky.
He leans over me, presses a string of hot, wet kisses along my spine, from between my shoulder blades to the dip at the bottom of my spine. I melt all over again, my whole body going lax as he straddles my hips and digs his thumbs into the tight muscles of my neck and shoulders.
I start to question him—to ask why I’m getting a massage when I thought we were going to fuck—but he’s really good at this. So good that it scrambles my synapses and renders me unable to do anything but moan as I turn boneless beneath him.
He laughs a little as he works his way down my body, his callused inventor’s hands finding and destroying every knot of tension my muscles have manufactured in the last few days. At the same time, he’s leaning forward, licking and kissing and nibbling his way over my shoulders, down my back.
I giggle as he presses kisses to the backs of my knees, the bends of my elbows, the dimples at the base of my spine. He grins, his lips curving against the sensitive skin of my hip as he kisses me yet again. Then he’s moving down between my legs. Moving me up onto my knees. Resting his hands on my inner thighs and spreading them even farther apart.
We stay like that for long seconds, me waiting for him to fuck me and him just looking at me. Just waiting, though I don’t know for what.
I turn my head, glance back at his face. There’s an intensity there that takes my breath away, a need so powerful that I can feel it, his eyes nearly black as he stares at my body. At my sex.
It terrifies me, the intensity of that scrutiny, even as it turns me on. I want to cover myself, want to bring my thighs together, want to roll to my back and pull him over me. Anything to take this vulnerability away. Anything to make me feel less exposed.
He’d let me move—I know he would.
If I voice just the beginnings of a whimper, Miles will turn me over himself. He’ll cup my cheek in his hand and press kisses to my face as he whispers nonsense to me. As he takes care of me yet again, instead of letting me take care of him.
I don’t want that for him—or me. Not now, not this time. If we ever have the chance of working out, I need to trust him to understand me. Need to prove to him that I’m his equal, not some fucked-up mess he needs to take care of.
And so I wait, just as he intends. Just as he wants me to. It might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, kneeling here as he studies me, my sex, my body—my soul—completely open to him. More than once, I think about closing my legs, think about rolling over, think about doing something, anything, to make his scrutiny more bearable.
But I don’t. I hold myself still and let him look his fill in what is the most intimate experience of my life.
“You’re so beautiful, Tori,” he tells me, voice aching, as he strokes his thumbs down my sex. As he spreads my labia and opens me even more to his gaze. “So goddamn beautiful.”
A whimper—high-pitched and desperate—escapes my throat despite my best intentions. This is too much—he’s too much and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. How much more vulnerable I can let myself be.
“It’s okay,” he soothes. “I’ll take care of you.”
I want to take care of you. The words are right there, on the tip of my tongue, but before I can get them out he leans forward and licks a long, hot path along my slit.
I gasp at the sensations rocketing through me, at the pleasure that lights me up from the inside. My shaky arms finally give up the fight and I collapse, hitting the bed so hard I bounce.
Miles laughs a little, a dark and smoky sound that has my every nerve ending standing at attention. And then he’s slipping one hand beneath my hips, lifting my hips even higher. Putting me even more on display as he slides his tongue deep inside me.
“Miles!” It’s a high, keening cry as I go into sensory overload. His strong hands clenched on my hips, his silky hair tickling my thighs, his warm, wet tongue plunging inside me over and over again. I want to turn around, want to grab his dick in my hand, want to slide it into my mouth and give him even half the pleasure he’s giving me. But I can barely move, can barely breathe as pleasure swamps me.
Desperate, overwhelmed, chasing an orgasm that’s so close I can all but taste it, I clench my fists in the cool cotton of the sheets. Bury my face in the softness of a nearby pillow. Rock my hips against the heat of his mouth.
He groans a little then, his hands sliding down to press my thighs open even more. I love the heat and the roughness of them, love the fact that I can feel his calluses and his need as he strokes along my sex and around and around my clit. Love the feel of his stubble scratching against the backs of my thighs as he thrusts his tongue deeper, deeper, deeper.
Love even more—love, the most—how I can feel his hands tremble with the same want—the same need—that’s rocketing through me and yet he can still be gentle. Still make me sigh when I usually scream. Still make me feel cherished.
It’s not the same as all the other times we’ve made love—there’s no desperate race to completion, no frantic fumbling in an effort to get him inside me as soon as I possibly can. No less powerful for that, no less real and raw and devastating.
Because I love him.
The knowledge hits me like a tsunami, rolling through me in waves so powerful that they slam me over the edge, hurtling me into orgasm and the abyss that follows, where nothing but pleasure—endless, soul-destroying pleasure—exists.
Miles makes a sound deep in his throat as I come. He takes me through it, takes me higher and higher and higher, until tears stream down my face and my body feels like it belongs more to him than to me. Like I belong to him instead of to myself.
It’s a terrifying thought…and a comforting one, made bearable only by the knowledge that I love him. And that in this moment it feels right, feels necessary, to give him this. To give him all of me.
I start to come down, just a little, and he rolls me over onto my back. I reach for him, try to wrap my arms around him as I expect him to slide between my thighs. To slide his rock-hard erection deep inside me.
But he doesn’t cover me, doesn’t slide inside me, doesn’t fuck me as I so want him to. Instead he drapes my legs over his shoulders and once again buries his face in my sex.
I nearly shoot off the bed at the first stroke of his tongue on my oversensitive flesh. “Miles, no,” I gasp, trying to wiggle away from the pleasure so keen it’s almost pain.
He doesn’t answer, at least not vocally. But his hands tighten on my thighs, his tongue stiffens as he works it around and around my clit and I go back under without a fight. I drown in sensation, drown in him, because right now I can refuse this man nothing. Can hold nothing back as he claims with tenderness what so many other men have tried to take by domination.
And then I’m coming again, words I barely hear let alone comprehend spilling from my mouth as I reach for him.
“Please, Miles. Please, baby, please. Please. Please.” The words are a desperate mantra, motivated more by emotional than physical need as I clutch at his shoulders, as I try to drag him up and over me. As I try to convince him to come inside me even now that my brain is mush and my body is sated.
As I try to convince him to finally, finally, take away the last of the emptiness deep inside me.
He must understand—or maybe his rigid self-control has finally reached its breaking point—because for the first time since he put me on this bed, Miles slides up to cover my body with his own.
It’s a shock to feel him—hot and hard and naked—against me, as I don’t remember him shedding his clothes. But he feels so good that I don’t care about the logistics. All I care about is wrapping my legs around his thighs and sliding my sex against his cock.
He makes an incoherent sound that might be my name, and then he’s cupping my face between his big, rough hands. Tilting my head back. Licking his way deep inside my mouth.
It’s almost enough to take away the emptiness, almost enough to sate this need inside me that has only grown with the two spectacular orgasms he’s given me. But then he’s pulling away and I’m whimpering, clutching at him, winding myself around him in a desperate bid to keep the man I have somehow fallen in love with exactly where I want him. Where I need him.
He curses softly, leans down to kiss me again even as he reaches out and fumbles in the top drawer of the nightstand. Then he’s pulling away, opening the small foil packet with his teeth. Pulling out the condom.
He starts to put it on, but I take it from him and bat his hands away. No matter how desperate he is, he always remembers to take care of me and here, now, I want to take care of him, too. So I slide down until my shoulders are between his knees. Then I lift my head and take him in, not stopping until my nose is against his abdomen and his cock is all the way down my throat.
“Fuck, Tori!” The words are ripped from him as he tries to pull back a little, determined—even now—to make things as easy for me as he can.
But I don’t want easy, not now, not with him. And so I follow him, sitting up even as my hands slide around to cup his ass and jerk him forward.
“Tori, baby, I don’t want to hurt—” He breaks off with a groan as I slide my tongue back and forth along the underside of his dick, before flicking gently at the spot where the head meets the shaft. I use my hands to pull him forward again, use my mouth and tongue and throat to take him even deeper.
And then he’s cursing even as he leans forward and braces a hand on the headboard. “Are you sure?” he asks, his voice hoarse and dark and desperate. And still he’s gentle as his hand slides down to cup my cheek, as his eyes search mine for any hint of doubt.
I have none, not now, not with Miles. And so I do the only thing I can do, clench my hands on his gorgeous ass and pull him even deeper.
It must be the right thi
ng to do, because suddenly Miles loses all that gorgeous control of his. Suddenly he looks—and feels—as desperate for me as I am for him.
He groans deep in his throat as he lets loose, his hands tangling in my hair to hold me in place as his hips hammer forward again and again and again. He’s powerful and overwhelming and nearly brutal in his intensity as he fucks into my mouth, into my throat, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not when one look at his face through my tear-filled eyes tells me how much he’s enjoying this, how much he needed it. And not when for the first time in my life, I feel like the emptiness that’s haunted me—that’s taunted me—for so long is finally gone.
And when he finally comes—so deep down my throat that I don’t even have to swallow—he fills me up in a way no one and nothing ever has. It’s finally enough. He’s finally enough—and so am I.
Together, we’re finally enough.
Chapter 22
Miles
It’s one A.M. and I can’t sleep.
There’s a storm outside, churning up the ocean and sending the wind howling through the trees, and if I didn’t know better I’d think it was the end of the world.
It feels a little bit like it, if I’m being honest.
Tori is cuddled up in bed beside me, her soft, silky body wound around mine like a clinging vine. She’s beautiful, so fucking beautiful. And fragile. So, so fragile.
Oh, she’d jump down my throat—maybe even take a swing at me—if she heard me describe her as such, but just because she won’t acknowledge it doesn’t make it any less the truth.
She may have a big attitude, may seem larger than life when she’s awake and on her game, but right now as she lies next to me in bed, all I can see—all I can think—is how tiny she is. How defenseless. How much in need of my protection.
As if she senses my thoughts, she moves restlessly. Moans a little. Then curls herself into a ball like she’s trying to protect herself from yet another blow.
It makes me crazy, has rage boiling in my veins all over again as I think of what brought her to this state. Or more like who. Alexander fucking Parsons.