Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

The Man You Deserve

Summer

The air in the fire tower sits heavy on my lungs, between us, as Levi follows me inside.

This spot, his spot, his home , that pulls me in like it’s mine, too, was all I could see before I saw him already waiting for me.

This is where I was being driven, first by my feet, then by his wheels. I didn’t have to, but I was going to walk all the way here to find him.

To question him, as I’m now questioning, in a way I never have before, these past years since that summer.

The moment of ticking calm we had in the truck, my hands squeezed together on my lap, both his squeezed around the wheel, stretches a bit longer as the space wraps around me. The tension in my body loosens, but my heart is still on guard as I walk deeper inside these walls, slow but steady, unable to stop moving through the jumpy feeling in my veins.

My nerves are ebbs of sickness through my stomach as I spin to face Levi, where he stands at the still open door, his eyes cautious but intent to all my movements, questioning too.

“Why’d you really buy this?” is the first one out of my mouth.

I told him I’d love to live in a place like this. I mapped the whole thing out and he set it up almost exactly like that. And I’ve read enough and seen enough to know where this could be going.

My blond villain being the book boyfriend hero again.

“Was it for me? Did you…hope one day I’d…”

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. “I hoped one day you’d…yeah,” he says through the rasp in his throat that scratches at the images of what he’d been doing, or not doing, within that hope.

“Bonny,” I prompt next. “The other girls. Why didn’t you…”

His cheeks warm a light pink, but his gaze stays steady. “Same small town. A lot of the same people.” He nods, a flare in his nose. “And yeah,” he repeats, reading all my thoughts and my own hopes. “No one was you.” He says these words almost like they’re simple. Like that’s where we’re at now, just us. No one but me, no one but him.

I spin back around with my next breath knocked out of me, away from something so hard to believe. It’s not that I think he’s lying, but he’s sounding too perfect.

Until I remember he’s not.

I want Levi’s open heart. I want to hear these things, but they sting like secrets, because they were. Things kept from me for years.

And there’s still more.

The click of the door, as light as it is, jolts me and my focus to that curtain, seeing another hiding thing, everything tight and hot and aching pushing me toward that area.

The white of a sail.

The white of a bedsheet—

I yank it down, and freeze.

Bookshelves. Built into the wall. With books.

There’s no organization to them, and not every shelf is filled, but…books, my favorite books.

He’s started a collection.

I step up to them, blinking at a building haze to see romances, thrillers—they look used. Lived in, as I’ve lived in my own copies. The romances look more spread open, the spines cracked.

I stroke my fingers down the fractures of one, the motion like a question that Levi answers.

“I’ve been reading them,” he tells me, low, and I only have one thought as I drop my hand.

He’s a spine cracker.

Then something in me cracks and I lift my hand again, in a point at the shelves, my stare touching every book and the curtain crumpled on the floor. “You hid this when you knew I was coming.”

“I had to,” he says, the words burdened with everything else he’s had to hide. Like he didn’t have choices.

He always had choices. We all did.

Thunder rumbles outside as my heart thuds against my ribcage.

Wind whistles as my breathing grows heavy.

The second downpour comes like hundreds of angry slapping feet on the roof as my hands slap at books, one gripped in each.

Spinning on Levi, I throw them at him, both sailing at the same time, before I grab more and throw those too.

Him, the books, it’s all a blur as I throw one after the other, each hitting his held up hands as he tries to fend them off, yet standing in the same spot, taking them like he deserves these punches, and I deserve the release.

He’s so fucking thoughtful and yet…he handed me over.

He stays with me and yet he handed me over.

He found me and I found him and yet he handed me over.

He does all these things with me in his mind and yet he handed me over .

“What was the point ?” I say through my teeth and another throw. “What happened ?” And another. “What happened to my life ?”

I’m out of books. They’re all on the floor, scattered around Levi.

I grip a shelf now, both hands, my fingers digging in as I slow my breathing. My heart, though, won’t stop racing, seeming to pound even more when I face him again and see a reflected wildness in his eyes.

“What happened between you and Adam that summer? He said you handed me over to him.” I clear the higher pitch from my voice. “You just said, here? Take her? When I wanted you back?”

Levi backs up, lifting his feet from stepping on my assault weapons, some of the books spread open, pages bent against the floor, and leans back against the door, his stare toward the roof. “He made it sound that way,” he sighs out, knowing, the smallest scoff like it’s not that way.

“What way was it?” I press, before blurting, “And could you not be so calm right now?” My insides match the storm outside, still simmering within me as it floods my voice, my body vibrating.

“I’m not calm, Summer,” he says, and I hear the strain coming through his voice, then I see the tension coiled through his arms. His gaze reconnects with mine, with that same wildness, tamed while he talks to me, because he has to.

He better.

“He never told you why he and Nadia broke up…” It’s a half question, and I feel my back meet the edges of the shelves as I shake my head. Nadia?

“He never wanted to really talk about her.”

Levi nods, then flicks his brows with a quick widening of his lids, like he doesn’t blame Adam, and there was a reason for it.

“When you met us, we were…at the first low point in our friendship,” he starts. “He was crazy about Nadia. She hung out with both of us…” he trails off, in his thoughts, and I meet him there, in a sensed conclusion about the three of them before he confirms it with a big breath. “One day she told Adam she was getting feelings for me, and it caused problems, and she broke it off thinking she’d swap him for me.”

My eyes drift to the floor with a squeeze of guilt in my stomach for how I’ve done the same in my head. But it’s only a moment before I’m shifting my focus back, processing where Levi is going, a reminder that Nadia and I are not the same. We didn’t start this from the same place.

“Then I dropped in,” I add low, pushing Levi to give me more, all the rest, in his quiet.

Levi slips his hands into the pockets of his shorts, and my jaw clenches at the motion. “It’s like you landed in my lap that night. And I knew you were meant to be mine,” he says, with an awe that unhinges me in all ways.

I remember how he was, his paused, uncertain stare, before. . .

“Then the phone rang,” I add next, half to myself, picking up pieces and clicking them in.

“Adam was the one going through a broken heart,” he continues, now taking me back to the question I pinned on him that night. “And it was my job to make him feel better, because it was my fault his girlfriend left him.” He says this like Adam pointed the finger, but Levi believed the blame too. “He thought you were my way of making that up to him, and you know how Adam is. He sets his sights on something, it’s his.”

“I’m not a thing,” comes out of my mouth as a snap.

“You’re something he wanted and he wouldn’t have talked to me again if I pursued you. So I tried to stay away from you.”

I swallow hard before stating the obvious as a kind of retribution for the unfair place he’s taking us. “We couldn’t.”

At the same time I say this, he gives a slow, acknowledging shake of his head, his eyes flashing like he’s seeing our memories, too, our kiss, how he pursued me, anyway.

“When he came back, he gave me an ultimatum. Our friendship or you.”

My eyes squeeze shut on a deflating breath, the roaring inside me, once again, matching the roaring outside.

“He really liked you, Summer,” Levi says, snapping my eyes open, the first pitch of pleading in his voice. “If he didn’t, I wouldn’t have—”

“Handed me over?” My teeth barely move with my words as I push out my own pleas. “You both took my choice away.” My tone is edged with a promise to myself I’m keeping now. No one is doing that again. “You knew how much having a choice meant to me.”

Levi straightens against the door, a shift to face me fully. “I knew Adam since we were kids,” he stresses, not quite as a defense but as a fact. “I knew you for a summer, and that was our first big obstacle, and I was seventeen,” he emphasizes. “And I didn’t know how to keep my best friend and my girl.” The steadfast claim staggers my already dragged inhales. “I didn’t know how to get out of the position I was in. I couldn’t fix it. I had to choose.”

He starts toward me, a step for a sentence, for a release, as I did as I was throwing the books, his feet careful in moving around them.

My heart races with abandon as he moves in closer and closer to me.

“And it was the hardest thing I’d done. I didn’t have feelings for Nadia—ever—but I had feelings for you…”

There’s a calmness back in his tone, but his still wild gaze, full of intention with each determined step, presses the edges of the shelves more into my spine. I don’t want to back away—I’m not trying to—but it’s me about to be knocked straight over.

“So I knew things would only get messier. I didn’t want to lose my best friend,” he says, like a regret. Like he is. Like he has. My heart races more, impossibly fast. “I already almost did over something else I couldn’t control. But now—”

“But now,” I say, a reflexive, breathy cut in repeat at the suddenness of his proximity, his hands sliding onto a shelf, boxing me in, his air now my air.

His gaze burns a hole everywhere it lands on my skin, but with less of the burn and more of his warmth.

The safety.

And I sigh into it, completely captured in his blues, knowing now why I haven’t spied that swirl of torment. He’s made a choice. He’s chosen again.

He’s chosen me.

“But now, I won’t lose you,” he says, and I practically sag against the shelves, the pain I should feel from their pressure on my back soothed by his fight for us. “Adam doesn’t deserve you, and honestly, neither do I, but I’m going to be the man you deserve. I let you go once, and I’m not doing it twice—”

“Then don’t,” I urge, another cut in, but the words are barely out before Levi’s mouth finds mine and our hands find each other in the same second. Mine grip his hair, remembering he liked that, as his glide under my jacket and grip into my back in a firm hold against him.

I tremble at the first taste of his tongue after so long. The feeling of his wanting. His eagerness sends tingling shocks through my body as we kiss like we’re making up for all the time we lost, the time that should’ve been ours, our hands a shared mind of their own, taking what we’ve waited years to have.

Our breaths are heavy, our bodies practically one with how flushed we are together, when our mouths and movements slow. Levi’s hand, now in a light grip on my neck, makes one more move with both framing my face as he pulls back.

I keep my eyes closed, holding to his wrists like my life depends on this. My heart definitely does. I don’t want to see in his eyes that he’s changing his mind.

“Summer, look at me.”

My fingers squeeze his wrists as I look at him through a fluttered blink, my eyes widening when they connect to the soft dance of his between mine, and I see the just as soft smile on his kiss-swollen lips.

“I’m here with you. I’m in this. You and me. I’m not letting you go,” he assures me, always hearing what I’m not saying. And that spark, always for me, in his so sure gaze, pushes me forward, even more flush against him, if that’s possible, in a shove for more room to have this back, to give myself over fully.

He catches me around the waist as I spring on my toes into another kiss, my grip back in his hair. His grip roams in a digging glide to my ass, cupping both cheeks to lift me more into his erection, straining through his shorts. His moan is like a jolt to my hips as I try to get some friction, rubbing myself against him.

We end up back against the shelves, one of Levi’s hands shooting out to cushion the crash, before that hand slips under my dress in a hot stroke to the back of my thigh. Lifting my leg high around his hip, he spreads me open to the friction I need.

I cry out like I’m desperate, because I am, when his mouth breaks away to my neck, my nails in his scalp to keep his kisses on my skin, that desperation added thuds of my creeping uncertainty in my heart…and of him having never—

“Levi.” I gasp out his name, and he responds with a groan as his mouth moves up to tease my ear. My brain’s in a stall but my body’s still going, too, tugging up on his shirt until he pulls back again and takes it off, discarded with a fling behind him. “I’m sure I want this”—my hands roam the hard planes of his abdomen—“I want you, but…are you sure—”

“Summer, you’re mine,” he rasps out, having my jacket down my shoulders and to the floor with a flick of his wrists. “You’ve always been mine and I’ve always been yours.” My dress is the next to go, my arms obeying his silent command and springing up in the air, all too eager, as he lifts the fabric over my head in one swoop. “Fucking yes, I’m sure,” he says through another groan, his gaze following a heady path over my bare boobs, down my stomach to my panties, as he holds to my waist now like his life depends on this.

Then he’s falling to his knees, that life depending hold sliding down my legs as he goes. He tugs at my wedges and I steady myself on a shelf edge as I obey another silent command, lifting my feet, right then left, as he takes off the shoes. I kick at the left one in a rush of impatience, and Levi watches it fly, then drags his heated eyes, with now a hint of amusement, up to me.

“Sorry,” I throw down at him with a curl to my lips, not sorry at all.

“Turn around,” he tells me, through the same building curl of his lips, and I release a sigh as I obey this command, too, again, all too eager for him, for this.

The curl now is in my fingers, around a shelf edge, as his hook into the waistband of my panties and pulls them in the slowest, tingliest track down to my ankles. I quiver from that and against his warm breath on my bare ass cheek.

I kick the panties away, too, and say through a burst laugh of frustration, “Are you enjoying taking your time?”

“Oh yeah,” he answers, the words air, soft and slow, and genuine, with an ache like he’s missed something. Like he’s missed this. Because he has. We both have.

My bated breath and tightened muscles half deflate with another sigh.

You can slow down.

“Do you need me to go faster?” he asks, with both a care to deliver and a tease for this torment, his fingers, too, light grazes up my thigh.

“No,” I push out, my back arching all its own, my ass even more in his face as I chase his touch, goosebumps like thousands of tickles all over me. “Just…keep your hands on me.”

He obeys me now, both hands grazing up my hips to my waist as he stands. I gasp as he tugs me against him, at the full feeling of his chest against my back, his hot flesh on my hot flesh.

I tilt my head as he moves my hair off my shoulder, a caress that closes my eyes, my body leaning more into him as his breath hits my neck.

He trails full-mouthed kisses, tasting a path up to my ear, ending with his lips in a returned curl at my lobe. “If I’m bad at this…”

My laugh is a heaved exhale. “You’re not. You’ve done your research, right?” I tease.

His smile stretches. “I still need to know what you like.” His fingers dig into my hips, low, a motion that arches my ass into him. “Show me how to touch you, Summer,” he says with a moan that vibrates through me, and I feel myself getting wetter from those words. “Show me where to touch you.”

My clit throbs in answer, an immediate pick me , but I stave her off a bit longer with a clench of my thighs and reach for Levi’s hand. I guide his touch up my stomach to my next favorite spot.

He cups my boob, groaning at the handful, and my head falls back as he squeezes. His other hand comes up to cup my other boob in another squeeze, and I press into the feeling, my lungs seizing as his thumbs circle my nipples.

“Are these sensitive?” he asks, his voice thick.

All I can do is nod, and he gives them both a twist, light, but I feel the sensation down to my toes, drawing a hiss between my teeth.

My eyes snap open at the sudden loss of his hands, only to see him bringing both to my mouth.

“Open,” he orders, and I listen, taking his thumbs into my mouth, one at a time.

When he returns his hands to my boobs, his thumbs, now moistened by my tongue, are twin shocks to my nipples that have me crying out and practically bouncing my body against his.

It isn’t simply that I’m being touched. I’m being touched by Levi . By the man who wants me and the man I want back. The man who moves with me, even here, holding to me and keeping us connected so tightly in his appetite for touching me, his breathing as ragged as mine.

And after this . . .

“Do whatever you want to me, Levi,” I say, a beg, with another arch into him that earns me another one of his moans, the sexiest sound from a man’s mouth. “I promise I’ll like it.”

His smiling lips stroke along my skin as one of his hands does the same down my stomach to where a thigh clench isn’t going to suffice anymore. “I’m gonna need you to hold real tight to that shelf and open your legs for me.”

My feet are already shuffling in opposite directions across the floor, my thighs parting as his fingers slip between my lips with ease. I gasp, my nails scratching into the wood of the shelf as he wets the pad of one finger at my entrance and drags it up to my clit in a single, teasing swirl.

“More,” I moan out. “Fill me.”

Levi releases a low curse, a rasp at my ear, with one more squeeze of my boob and play of my nipple before that hand follows the other, secured on my hip to help secure me, my legs already shaking.

They shake more as he continues to tease me, one finger a slow, caressing push inside me to the first knuckle.

“One?” he coaxes, pushing his finger inside me a bit more, then adding another slow, caressing push of a second one. “Two?”

“Three,” I bite out, the answer to what I need, and when he adds a third finger, I nearly collapse against him, giving myself over to the relief he’s finally giving to me.

He fills me, and through gasps that rock my entire body, I guide him with the only two words I can manage. “Slow. Deep.”

His fingers pump slow and deep, the heel of his hand coming in to rub pressure to my clit without me having to tell him to. Which is perfect, so— god —perfect, because I can’t speak anymore if I try.

The only sounds out of my mouth are incoherent noises as Levi pumps and curls and rubs, pumps and curls and rubs. . .

It doesn’t take long for me to get close, and when he says, “Summer,” through breaths as panting as mine, “you are soaking my hand,” warmth builds hotter at every soaked place he’s touching, my thighs spreading so wide.

I reach back to find a grip in his hair, holding him to me, my other grip leaving claw marks on the shelf.

Keep going, keep going chants through my head as I chase the bliss his hand is bringing me to, and when I come, he doesn’t stop until long after every cry and every shake has faded from my body.

“Floor,” I sigh out as he pulls out of me, not giving him time to do much else as I push against him to face him, shoving him toward the closest flat surface—the floor—as my impatience rushes back in to make him come apart for me in the same way.

A laugh jolts through his chest as he takes a stumbling step back and that’s where we land, on top of the rug and some books. He shifts to swat aside the books as I unbutton his shorts and yank them and his briefs and shoes off with all the power of my arousal.

He releases another jolted laugh as I toss everything somewhere behind me, his hand catching my wrist, his gaze catching my gaze. “Summer.” He doesn’t have to say more, because I see the rest in his burning blue eyes. You can slow down.

We’ll slow the fuck down next time. I need to feel, hear, see Levi come.

I climb over him, pushing at his shoulders, and he falls to his back with no more assurances or silent conversations. I straddle him, and he halts me with grips to my hips, and a groan, this one more of a frustrated protest.

“I don’t have condoms.”

I smile over that fact, thinking how he’s been waiting for me , for us, and over his use of the plural. “I love that you know we’d need more than one.” His cheeks color as his dimple pops, the sight moving me to line us up. “I’m on the pill,” I tell him. “And I just want you inside me.”

He breathes out another raspy, low curse, and my attention shoots down to where we’re so close to finally being connected as he palms his hard, thick, beautiful cock— god —and rubs it between my lips, wetting himself with me.

We shiver at the contact, then I’m swatting his hand away to take over, sliding down his length in the same slow, teasing way he did to me, and I bite my lip at the sight of his eyes rolling back.

“ Fuck ,” he growls out once I’m seated, stretched so, so good, my nails leaving marks in his shoulders as his leave marks on my hips.

I don’t waste a second finding my rhythm— his rhythm, the perfect speed to make him combust.

“ Summer ,” he says, with another growl through his teeth, the sound clenching me tighter around him. “If you keep riding me like this, I’m gonna explode.”

“Please,” I encourage him, moaning as he meets my movements with harder, deeper thrusts.

When he finally comes apart, crying out so gutturally, his release so hot inside me, I almost come again too.

Levi blinks his glazed gaze toward the ceiling as I start to slow, his body loosening except for his hold on my hips. “Holy…that…”

“Better than your hand, huh?” I tease through breaths.

And through his fluster, his eyes, reflecting my mischief, slide down to mine, his mouth stretching into a slow grin.

Then he hurls me off him, a squeak-like noise escaping my throat as I’m flipped to my back. My breathing, having stalled, increases again as he descends my body.

“What are you doing?” I ask, knowing well what he’s doing, and yes, yes .

“I’m cleaning up my mess, then I’m getting back inside you,” he says like the filthiest promise before his mouth meets my pussy, and I come again after all, with yanks on his hair, as he sucks up his cum and on my clit in tandem.

Then he’s back between my legs, lifting both high around his waist as he pushes back inside me with a single thrust. I arch into him as he starts a slow, steady pace, kissing and nibbling at my neck.

“Do you wanna move to the bed?” he laughs out.

“No,” I breathe, kissing and nibbling along his shoulder. “I like it here.”

Levi catches my mouth with his in kisses just as slow and steady, and we stay connected like this, wrapped in each other for what feels like forever.

Which is exactly how long we deserve.