The Perfect Wrong, page 26
I sweep toward her without waiting for a second word, haul her out of her chair, and pin her against the wall.
My lips find hers, starving, silencing her questions and smothering every sane thing I came here to do.
What the hell are you doing, idiot? I ask myself.
But she knows better than I do.
Delia must feel the heat in my lips and the frustration in my blood.
My dick finds the softness of her belly, her pussy, and I grind hard, reliving our first liaison on the beach.
I tear my lips away before I fuck her with the door still open, where anyone can hear or look in. I lead her to my room instead and kick the door shut, then walk her to the end of the bed.
“Why are you here? Can’t you just use your words?” she mutters.
“No need for manners, babe. They won’t help us now. Everything I want to do to you right now is as uncivil as it gets. Put your hands on the bed.”
I barely sound human, growling these words, a prisoner to my own insane urges.
“Can we stop with the head games and talk?” Her big brown eyes twinkle as she shakes her head. “I don’t know if I can take this. This hot and cold, on-again, off-again crap.”
I frown.
Guess our last talk by the pool did more damage than I realized.
Pangs of regret knife through me.
I almost apologize.
I almost come back to my senses.
I almost set her free from the carnage I’m going to unleash on her life.
If only it weren’t against my nature, humbling myself with words.
Better she find out how sorry and conflicted I am when I’m balls deep in her, curling her toes.
She’ll understand then I never meant to hurt her.
Never meant to blow us up.
Never meant to drag this out till it’s becoming a reckless addiction I just can’t quit.
Cannot.
Heaving out a breath, I reach out and cradle her baffled face in my hands.
My mouth finds hers.
I lead her tongue in a whirlwind, stealing every whimper from her lungs, greedily taking all the sweetness she has for me.
“Christopher...what are you doing?”
The hairs on my arms bristle when she says my full name.
Fuck.
When I hear it from Ma, it’s like a curse, knowing she’s the one who named me.
On Delia’s lips, that damnation becomes divine.
“Love isn’t meant to be easy, princess.” Her eyes light up when she hears the L word. I don’t give a shit, there’s no more hiding it now. “We’re going through a rough patch. Blurring lines. Only one way I know to work through it is this.”
“Love? Is that what this is? And you think sex can fix it?” she whispers, so unsure, like I’ve said the right thing but she doesn’t believe it.
“You’d be surprised. I couldn’t leave you hurting and wondering, thinking I don’t care,” I say, huffing out a breath.
I care too fucking much and that’s the entire problem, I want to say, but I don’t.
She stares at me, trying to decipher what I really mean.
“What do you want? Just say it,” she demands, her delicate fingers slowly skimming up my arm.
Goddamn, she really wants to know?
I’ll show her.
She has to know I’m in the grip of total insanity.
So I reach under her sundress, find her panties, and rip them straight down her legs.
“What do I always want, Miss Delia?” I rumble, inhaling her wet scent that has me in thrall.
She moans as the fabric snaps around her smooth calves. I lift her feet one at a time, helping her out of her panties.
“Also, you didn’t answer me,” I growl, moving one hand to her breast while my fingers sink into her. Shit, she’s even wetter than I thought, and my cock jerks when I feel how ready she is. “How much do you think my cock cares about speaking in code, this soap opera shit? You think that fight we had matters when I’m hard as a brick, and you’re leaking all over my hand?”
“I don’t...I don’t—”
Know?
No, she fucking doesn’t.
And I’m not interested in saying more that can’t be said with our bodies. It seems like the only way to sort out what I really think and feel.
I don’t kiss and make up.
I don’t fall in love.
I don’t get my head screwed up by girls I’m not supposed to be railing in the first place.
Except I’m doing all those things right now.
I crossed the goddamned Rubicon the first time I fucked her and apparently I can’t stop, no matter how much it’s bound to hurt like a motherfucker when summer runs out and hard reality drags us apart for good.
Why should I do it prematurely, though?
The fact that I’m this indecisive, a mess of second-guesses, screams the effect she has on me.
Honestly, I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore unless I’m buried in Delia.
My thumb circles her clit, rendering her speechless, pushing her full, bare ass into the ridge under my jeans.
I’m about to explode instantly.
Amazing.
By now I should’ve fucked the urge to come every time our skin touches out of my system, but it seems like it’s just getting worse.
I don’t understand, and it pisses me off.
I don’t get why I can’t just do what I came here for and shut this madness down.
Still, I take her to the edge with my fingers, looting her hot cunt while my thumb works her clit, eager to feel her convulse on my hand.
“Let fucking go, beautiful,” I snarl, pulling out of her core and urging her a few steps away from the wall.
I take her hands, lay them firmly on the tall bedpost, and unclasp my belt.
She’s a treasure. A war prize. A captured Siren.
Everything I’ve dreamed about since I first saw this bed, the only good thing in this house besides her.
Delia gives me a small whimper of surprise when I drag her hands up over her head, getting her at the perfect angle, lashing her to the post with my belt.
“What the actual hell? We’re really doing this?”
She sounds so excited I want to laugh.
Instead, I shove my pants down once she’s bound, grab her waist, and pull her sweet ass against my cock.
“This isn’t about mixing it up with ropes and blindfolds. I just want you around till I’m good and done fucking you. This is us talking,” I tell her, swallowing thickly. “And maybe if we both listen closely, if we both speak loud enough, we’ll walk away with an understanding.”
And she listens good as I part her legs and sink inside her.
Delia’s voice cracks in this sexy, splintered moan that nearly makes me blow.
Thank fuck for all the discipline I’ve built up over the years.
I slide my hands over her, feeling her tits.
I pinch her nipples so hard, loving how she gasps.
It’s the signal I need to swing my hips up, digging deeper, claiming what’s mine.
We go hard, rampant, finding the understanding in rhythmic flesh and breathless strokes.
Until today, I’ve never fucked a woman with such desperation. It’s always been the other way around.
Now, my need is so intense I can feel her heartbeat in the silky flesh wrapped snug around my dick.
It makes me thrust harder, quickening the frenzy, stroking her so deeply from the inside out that I want to break her, smear us both together just like her lurid paints into blinding new colors.
“Chris!” she whimpers my name, tossing her head back, her lips peeled open in rapture.
“Fuck everything about you, Delia Burr,” I whisper, grabbing her softly by the throat and pulling her head back to kiss her deeply. “You’re too good for me to ever quit.”
Then her pussy tightens on my cock.
She’s coming out her soul.
I have to work to keep thrusting through it to avoid going off with her.
For the first time in my life, I wish I had a cock ring.
Her pussy milks me with a need that flays me open. It’s like she’s got a second tongue down there sucking me off, teasing the come from my balls.
I kiss her again, fisting her hair.
Her lips meld against mine mid-climax, stealing a shrill whimper. I taste her lust boiling back on my tongue.
“Don’t. Fucking. Stop.” It’s all I can thunder as I slam into her, fucking straight through her release, feeling like an armed grenade.
She’s practically boneless now.
My thrusts are the only thing still holding her up.
Her knees shake, wanting to buckle and send her crashing down before she hits her second wind.
I don’t let that happen.
I slow my strokes just enough to stay sane and grab her by the waist, pushing my tongue in and out of her mouth.
Even when I’m filling two holes at once it’s not enough.
Her lips are mine.
Her pussy belongs to me.
I meant what I said.
Everything about being wrapped up in this woman feels so goddamned right I just can’t leave her.
When I feel her heartbeat in every kiss, every moan, every movement of her pink velvet over all ten inches of my dick, I am fucking gone.
If I really am a robot, I ran into a fatal bluescreen glitch when Delia tumbled into my life.
All the BUD/S lessons and military psych training in the world can’t undo what she’s done.
She’s found her way inside me.
I feel her under my skin as I deepen my strokes, pulling one hand off her tit to stroke her clit.
It warms her up all over again.
I watch her head fall against the bedpost, fighting for leverage, completely swept away by the pulsing elation.
“You feel it coming, Delia?” I growl, twisting her hair around my fingers, mouthing fire in her ear. “All yours, babe. Every fucking drop. All you’ve got to do is beg.”
I tug on her long dark locks, relishing the messy noise she makes.
The sound.
That little cry of chaos when she’s coming undone.
My thrusts can’t impact her hips fast enough.
She moans again, trying to form words, sticky need oozing out of her.
That’s when I realize how utterly screwed I am.
This fuck was supposed to set us straight.
I was supposed to take full control again, to spell out what this means, but I’m the one going down like a confused titan in a truth I’m afraid to acknowledge.
I can’t fucking leave her.
Then I hear her, shrill and otherworldly. “Chris, please. Come inside me!”
Shit!
I’m finished.
With her locks wound around my hand, I hold on to her waist and go hard.
Her wrists pull tight in my belt as I throw myself into her again and again, so frantic and mad and messy I feel like a stag in rut.
I want to fill her completely.
And I do a second later when my balls ignite, my cock swells, and my spine becomes all corded fire.
The first rope shooting out of me stalls my breath.
I plow myself in to the hilt, holding her until it hurts, pouring myself out in her womb like it’s the medicine we’ve needed.
In this wild moment, it is.
All my tension, all my seed, all the rawness in my heart I’ve always hidden spills out.
Whatever happens next, I can’t guess to save my life.
Sweet little Delia has permanently torn me in two like a shredded veil.
We come together until we can’t.
We come until we finally understand.
We come until we know what this means, but not what the fuck we should do about it.
We come until I can’t imagine drawing another breath without her.
And what I might do to keep her scares me to the bone.
* * *
What the fuck just happened?
The question rings in my head on a repeating loop when I finally come to.
We’re both panting, fighting to replenish precious oxygen in our lungs.
The mess I’ve left inside her trickles down her thighs.
My heart thumps with pride as I run my hand between her legs, feeling what we’ve done.
“Chris?” she whispers my name, soft and unsure. “My arms are getting tired.”
Grinning, I reach up and unfasten my belt, hurling it on the floor.
Then I turn her to face me. We kiss so long and sweet it drains the venom in my soul. Her eyes are practically glowing, and I’m hard again in no time.
The rest of the evening is a red blur of filthy words and dirty passions.
Kiss by kiss, fuck by fuck, I’m finished playing games.
Done hiding what I feel for her.
It’s only a matter of time till our parents find out.
Evie has a nose for drama like a bloodhound, and I know she’ll try using Bruce against us. She’ll tell him I’m the bad guy who defiled and corrupted his precious daughter.
I don’t give my worries voice, though.
I just let Delia ride my cock, holding my hand over her mouth the entire time.
She bites down sharply when she comes, and my balls erupt more fire.
I’m crazed to pump it into her at some primal, caveman level I still don’t understand.
Later, she’s curled up on my chest like an exhausted kitten, running a lazy hand over my stubble. It feels good, natural, as incredible as her soft brown eyes gazing into mine.
“Maybe you were right about this talk,” she whispers. “We can finally stop pretending this is just a fling, right?”
“I already said the L word once, princess.” I snort. “You’re not getting more unless I hear it first.”
Her eyes heat like soft brown stars as she kisses me slowly.
“I love you, lunk. Happy?”
She laughs as I slide my hands between the well-used softness between her legs.
Goddamn.
If she said it a million times, I’d never get sick of it.
My fingers work slowly through her folds, feeling the wetness, the fire, all the pent-up energy we’ve unloaded with our friction. I wait till she’s on the edge before I break down and say it.
I hold my lips to her ear, loving the way she always fights me by twisting her head.
“In case you didn’t figure it out yet, Delia, I fucking love you. I love you and I won’t stop.”
I don’t let her respond.
She clenches her jaw, trying her damnedest not to scream as I circle her clit, sending her over the edge into blinding ecstasy.
Somewhere in the maelstrom, my hand pulls away.
I flip her over, pin her hands over her head, and shove her legs up.
I go hard and deep, another storm of flesh somewhere between hyperconsciousness and pure dumb pleasure.
I can’t believe I said it.
Hell, I can’t believe I didn’t say it sooner.
If I can’t have her, I might drop dead of jealousy before any bullet ever finds me.
Thinking about letting her go off and live a rich girl life, finding some other bland asshole to sink his dick in, makes me want to start tearing the whole world apart.
I’m seething at all the boys I’ll never let her have—all the men I’ll beat the ever-loving fuck out of if they so much as sniff her.
She’s mine, goddammit, and that’s never been truer than tonight.
I thrust harder for emphasis, savage long strokes to the hilt, my lust in full control.
“Fuck, babe, I’m coming!” I bow up and empty inside her.
She wraps her legs around me and screams, fighting to put her hands on my body, but I keep them pinned down.
I’ve laid my claim.
I’ve given it a voice, and I’m still not done.
Mine tonight. Mine tomorrow. Mine forever.
It’s like a mantra with a mind of its own, one that makes me harder, hornier, and so possessive. When we’re collapsed next to each other again, I reach between her legs and hold my seed inside her.
Fuck yes, I’ve lost it all.
I still don’t know how the hell we make this work.
But we will.
If I fail at keeping this magnificent woman in my life, then I’ve lost everything.
17
Dancing Gold Stars (Delia)
Summer drifts on in a haze of passion and tension.
I should be happy.
Ever since the night he barged in and told me the truth—told me he loved me—I’ve been in pieces.
By day, I’m making good progress on my paper, thrilling the professor with every update...as much as a high-strung boiled egg like Thosser can be thrilled, anyway.
At night, Chris waits outside my balcony, rapping softly on the glass.
Always waiting with the same feral green flame lashing in his eyes.
Always biting my bottom lip until I let him in like it’s our very first time.
Even with all the recent trouble simmering in the background—on pause rather than resolved—I’m so grateful we have our secrecy.
Evie’s still a broken mess, possibly too messed up to notice what’s going on. Which is surprising, considering she wanders the house late at night.
Sometimes I hear her light, aimless steps scuffing the floor outside my room.
When I have Chris in my bed, that always scares me.
I worry we’ll make too much noise at just the wrong time, or she’ll freak and break down my door, igniting a shitstorm of epic proportions.
Dad’s been strangely distant, too. He practically lives in his home office whenever he’s home at all.
When he isn’t, he leaves the house staff to send hourly updates on Evie’s condition.
He’s still worried sick about her, and I hate it.
I also hate that he won’t open up and share his struggles, his fight to heal her that must be eating him alive.
School is all he talks about with me over the odd breakfast.
A couple times, he teases me about some hot new guy intern working for him as his PA, and I blush.
Of course, I pretend to laugh it off, paying the weakest lip service to a date with this fraternity kid in business, who I have zero interest in meeting.
My lips find hers, starving, silencing her questions and smothering every sane thing I came here to do.
What the hell are you doing, idiot? I ask myself.
But she knows better than I do.
Delia must feel the heat in my lips and the frustration in my blood.
My dick finds the softness of her belly, her pussy, and I grind hard, reliving our first liaison on the beach.
I tear my lips away before I fuck her with the door still open, where anyone can hear or look in. I lead her to my room instead and kick the door shut, then walk her to the end of the bed.
“Why are you here? Can’t you just use your words?” she mutters.
“No need for manners, babe. They won’t help us now. Everything I want to do to you right now is as uncivil as it gets. Put your hands on the bed.”
I barely sound human, growling these words, a prisoner to my own insane urges.
“Can we stop with the head games and talk?” Her big brown eyes twinkle as she shakes her head. “I don’t know if I can take this. This hot and cold, on-again, off-again crap.”
I frown.
Guess our last talk by the pool did more damage than I realized.
Pangs of regret knife through me.
I almost apologize.
I almost come back to my senses.
I almost set her free from the carnage I’m going to unleash on her life.
If only it weren’t against my nature, humbling myself with words.
Better she find out how sorry and conflicted I am when I’m balls deep in her, curling her toes.
She’ll understand then I never meant to hurt her.
Never meant to blow us up.
Never meant to drag this out till it’s becoming a reckless addiction I just can’t quit.
Cannot.
Heaving out a breath, I reach out and cradle her baffled face in my hands.
My mouth finds hers.
I lead her tongue in a whirlwind, stealing every whimper from her lungs, greedily taking all the sweetness she has for me.
“Christopher...what are you doing?”
The hairs on my arms bristle when she says my full name.
Fuck.
When I hear it from Ma, it’s like a curse, knowing she’s the one who named me.
On Delia’s lips, that damnation becomes divine.
“Love isn’t meant to be easy, princess.” Her eyes light up when she hears the L word. I don’t give a shit, there’s no more hiding it now. “We’re going through a rough patch. Blurring lines. Only one way I know to work through it is this.”
“Love? Is that what this is? And you think sex can fix it?” she whispers, so unsure, like I’ve said the right thing but she doesn’t believe it.
“You’d be surprised. I couldn’t leave you hurting and wondering, thinking I don’t care,” I say, huffing out a breath.
I care too fucking much and that’s the entire problem, I want to say, but I don’t.
She stares at me, trying to decipher what I really mean.
“What do you want? Just say it,” she demands, her delicate fingers slowly skimming up my arm.
Goddamn, she really wants to know?
I’ll show her.
She has to know I’m in the grip of total insanity.
So I reach under her sundress, find her panties, and rip them straight down her legs.
“What do I always want, Miss Delia?” I rumble, inhaling her wet scent that has me in thrall.
She moans as the fabric snaps around her smooth calves. I lift her feet one at a time, helping her out of her panties.
“Also, you didn’t answer me,” I growl, moving one hand to her breast while my fingers sink into her. Shit, she’s even wetter than I thought, and my cock jerks when I feel how ready she is. “How much do you think my cock cares about speaking in code, this soap opera shit? You think that fight we had matters when I’m hard as a brick, and you’re leaking all over my hand?”
“I don’t...I don’t—”
Know?
No, she fucking doesn’t.
And I’m not interested in saying more that can’t be said with our bodies. It seems like the only way to sort out what I really think and feel.
I don’t kiss and make up.
I don’t fall in love.
I don’t get my head screwed up by girls I’m not supposed to be railing in the first place.
Except I’m doing all those things right now.
I crossed the goddamned Rubicon the first time I fucked her and apparently I can’t stop, no matter how much it’s bound to hurt like a motherfucker when summer runs out and hard reality drags us apart for good.
Why should I do it prematurely, though?
The fact that I’m this indecisive, a mess of second-guesses, screams the effect she has on me.
Honestly, I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore unless I’m buried in Delia.
My thumb circles her clit, rendering her speechless, pushing her full, bare ass into the ridge under my jeans.
I’m about to explode instantly.
Amazing.
By now I should’ve fucked the urge to come every time our skin touches out of my system, but it seems like it’s just getting worse.
I don’t understand, and it pisses me off.
I don’t get why I can’t just do what I came here for and shut this madness down.
Still, I take her to the edge with my fingers, looting her hot cunt while my thumb works her clit, eager to feel her convulse on my hand.
“Let fucking go, beautiful,” I snarl, pulling out of her core and urging her a few steps away from the wall.
I take her hands, lay them firmly on the tall bedpost, and unclasp my belt.
She’s a treasure. A war prize. A captured Siren.
Everything I’ve dreamed about since I first saw this bed, the only good thing in this house besides her.
Delia gives me a small whimper of surprise when I drag her hands up over her head, getting her at the perfect angle, lashing her to the post with my belt.
“What the actual hell? We’re really doing this?”
She sounds so excited I want to laugh.
Instead, I shove my pants down once she’s bound, grab her waist, and pull her sweet ass against my cock.
“This isn’t about mixing it up with ropes and blindfolds. I just want you around till I’m good and done fucking you. This is us talking,” I tell her, swallowing thickly. “And maybe if we both listen closely, if we both speak loud enough, we’ll walk away with an understanding.”
And she listens good as I part her legs and sink inside her.
Delia’s voice cracks in this sexy, splintered moan that nearly makes me blow.
Thank fuck for all the discipline I’ve built up over the years.
I slide my hands over her, feeling her tits.
I pinch her nipples so hard, loving how she gasps.
It’s the signal I need to swing my hips up, digging deeper, claiming what’s mine.
We go hard, rampant, finding the understanding in rhythmic flesh and breathless strokes.
Until today, I’ve never fucked a woman with such desperation. It’s always been the other way around.
Now, my need is so intense I can feel her heartbeat in the silky flesh wrapped snug around my dick.
It makes me thrust harder, quickening the frenzy, stroking her so deeply from the inside out that I want to break her, smear us both together just like her lurid paints into blinding new colors.
“Chris!” she whimpers my name, tossing her head back, her lips peeled open in rapture.
“Fuck everything about you, Delia Burr,” I whisper, grabbing her softly by the throat and pulling her head back to kiss her deeply. “You’re too good for me to ever quit.”
Then her pussy tightens on my cock.
She’s coming out her soul.
I have to work to keep thrusting through it to avoid going off with her.
For the first time in my life, I wish I had a cock ring.
Her pussy milks me with a need that flays me open. It’s like she’s got a second tongue down there sucking me off, teasing the come from my balls.
I kiss her again, fisting her hair.
Her lips meld against mine mid-climax, stealing a shrill whimper. I taste her lust boiling back on my tongue.
“Don’t. Fucking. Stop.” It’s all I can thunder as I slam into her, fucking straight through her release, feeling like an armed grenade.
She’s practically boneless now.
My thrusts are the only thing still holding her up.
Her knees shake, wanting to buckle and send her crashing down before she hits her second wind.
I don’t let that happen.
I slow my strokes just enough to stay sane and grab her by the waist, pushing my tongue in and out of her mouth.
Even when I’m filling two holes at once it’s not enough.
Her lips are mine.
Her pussy belongs to me.
I meant what I said.
Everything about being wrapped up in this woman feels so goddamned right I just can’t leave her.
When I feel her heartbeat in every kiss, every moan, every movement of her pink velvet over all ten inches of my dick, I am fucking gone.
If I really am a robot, I ran into a fatal bluescreen glitch when Delia tumbled into my life.
All the BUD/S lessons and military psych training in the world can’t undo what she’s done.
She’s found her way inside me.
I feel her under my skin as I deepen my strokes, pulling one hand off her tit to stroke her clit.
It warms her up all over again.
I watch her head fall against the bedpost, fighting for leverage, completely swept away by the pulsing elation.
“You feel it coming, Delia?” I growl, twisting her hair around my fingers, mouthing fire in her ear. “All yours, babe. Every fucking drop. All you’ve got to do is beg.”
I tug on her long dark locks, relishing the messy noise she makes.
The sound.
That little cry of chaos when she’s coming undone.
My thrusts can’t impact her hips fast enough.
She moans again, trying to form words, sticky need oozing out of her.
That’s when I realize how utterly screwed I am.
This fuck was supposed to set us straight.
I was supposed to take full control again, to spell out what this means, but I’m the one going down like a confused titan in a truth I’m afraid to acknowledge.
I can’t fucking leave her.
Then I hear her, shrill and otherworldly. “Chris, please. Come inside me!”
Shit!
I’m finished.
With her locks wound around my hand, I hold on to her waist and go hard.
Her wrists pull tight in my belt as I throw myself into her again and again, so frantic and mad and messy I feel like a stag in rut.
I want to fill her completely.
And I do a second later when my balls ignite, my cock swells, and my spine becomes all corded fire.
The first rope shooting out of me stalls my breath.
I plow myself in to the hilt, holding her until it hurts, pouring myself out in her womb like it’s the medicine we’ve needed.
In this wild moment, it is.
All my tension, all my seed, all the rawness in my heart I’ve always hidden spills out.
Whatever happens next, I can’t guess to save my life.
Sweet little Delia has permanently torn me in two like a shredded veil.
We come together until we can’t.
We come until we finally understand.
We come until we know what this means, but not what the fuck we should do about it.
We come until I can’t imagine drawing another breath without her.
And what I might do to keep her scares me to the bone.
* * *
What the fuck just happened?
The question rings in my head on a repeating loop when I finally come to.
We’re both panting, fighting to replenish precious oxygen in our lungs.
The mess I’ve left inside her trickles down her thighs.
My heart thumps with pride as I run my hand between her legs, feeling what we’ve done.
“Chris?” she whispers my name, soft and unsure. “My arms are getting tired.”
Grinning, I reach up and unfasten my belt, hurling it on the floor.
Then I turn her to face me. We kiss so long and sweet it drains the venom in my soul. Her eyes are practically glowing, and I’m hard again in no time.
The rest of the evening is a red blur of filthy words and dirty passions.
Kiss by kiss, fuck by fuck, I’m finished playing games.
Done hiding what I feel for her.
It’s only a matter of time till our parents find out.
Evie has a nose for drama like a bloodhound, and I know she’ll try using Bruce against us. She’ll tell him I’m the bad guy who defiled and corrupted his precious daughter.
I don’t give my worries voice, though.
I just let Delia ride my cock, holding my hand over her mouth the entire time.
She bites down sharply when she comes, and my balls erupt more fire.
I’m crazed to pump it into her at some primal, caveman level I still don’t understand.
Later, she’s curled up on my chest like an exhausted kitten, running a lazy hand over my stubble. It feels good, natural, as incredible as her soft brown eyes gazing into mine.
“Maybe you were right about this talk,” she whispers. “We can finally stop pretending this is just a fling, right?”
“I already said the L word once, princess.” I snort. “You’re not getting more unless I hear it first.”
Her eyes heat like soft brown stars as she kisses me slowly.
“I love you, lunk. Happy?”
She laughs as I slide my hands between the well-used softness between her legs.
Goddamn.
If she said it a million times, I’d never get sick of it.
My fingers work slowly through her folds, feeling the wetness, the fire, all the pent-up energy we’ve unloaded with our friction. I wait till she’s on the edge before I break down and say it.
I hold my lips to her ear, loving the way she always fights me by twisting her head.
“In case you didn’t figure it out yet, Delia, I fucking love you. I love you and I won’t stop.”
I don’t let her respond.
She clenches her jaw, trying her damnedest not to scream as I circle her clit, sending her over the edge into blinding ecstasy.
Somewhere in the maelstrom, my hand pulls away.
I flip her over, pin her hands over her head, and shove her legs up.
I go hard and deep, another storm of flesh somewhere between hyperconsciousness and pure dumb pleasure.
I can’t believe I said it.
Hell, I can’t believe I didn’t say it sooner.
If I can’t have her, I might drop dead of jealousy before any bullet ever finds me.
Thinking about letting her go off and live a rich girl life, finding some other bland asshole to sink his dick in, makes me want to start tearing the whole world apart.
I’m seething at all the boys I’ll never let her have—all the men I’ll beat the ever-loving fuck out of if they so much as sniff her.
She’s mine, goddammit, and that’s never been truer than tonight.
I thrust harder for emphasis, savage long strokes to the hilt, my lust in full control.
“Fuck, babe, I’m coming!” I bow up and empty inside her.
She wraps her legs around me and screams, fighting to put her hands on my body, but I keep them pinned down.
I’ve laid my claim.
I’ve given it a voice, and I’m still not done.
Mine tonight. Mine tomorrow. Mine forever.
It’s like a mantra with a mind of its own, one that makes me harder, hornier, and so possessive. When we’re collapsed next to each other again, I reach between her legs and hold my seed inside her.
Fuck yes, I’ve lost it all.
I still don’t know how the hell we make this work.
But we will.
If I fail at keeping this magnificent woman in my life, then I’ve lost everything.
17
Dancing Gold Stars (Delia)
Summer drifts on in a haze of passion and tension.
I should be happy.
Ever since the night he barged in and told me the truth—told me he loved me—I’ve been in pieces.
By day, I’m making good progress on my paper, thrilling the professor with every update...as much as a high-strung boiled egg like Thosser can be thrilled, anyway.
At night, Chris waits outside my balcony, rapping softly on the glass.
Always waiting with the same feral green flame lashing in his eyes.
Always biting my bottom lip until I let him in like it’s our very first time.
Even with all the recent trouble simmering in the background—on pause rather than resolved—I’m so grateful we have our secrecy.
Evie’s still a broken mess, possibly too messed up to notice what’s going on. Which is surprising, considering she wanders the house late at night.
Sometimes I hear her light, aimless steps scuffing the floor outside my room.
When I have Chris in my bed, that always scares me.
I worry we’ll make too much noise at just the wrong time, or she’ll freak and break down my door, igniting a shitstorm of epic proportions.
Dad’s been strangely distant, too. He practically lives in his home office whenever he’s home at all.
When he isn’t, he leaves the house staff to send hourly updates on Evie’s condition.
He’s still worried sick about her, and I hate it.
I also hate that he won’t open up and share his struggles, his fight to heal her that must be eating him alive.
School is all he talks about with me over the odd breakfast.
A couple times, he teases me about some hot new guy intern working for him as his PA, and I blush.
Of course, I pretend to laugh it off, paying the weakest lip service to a date with this fraternity kid in business, who I have zero interest in meeting.
