Chapter 39
DELANEY
I don’t wait for him to do it.
A second is as long as it takes for me to seal our lips, fifteen years of love between us rekindling with a smack.
I use my hold on his shirt to keep him anchored down, unable to slip free just yet.
It’s unnecessary. Darren uses the hand in my hair to drag me with him as he leans his head back against the couch and then takes my hip into his hold.
Moving with him is the most natural thing I’ve ever done.
It’s as simple as breathing but as enthralling as sitting at the top of a roller coaster, counting down the seconds until you drop.
I don’t know where the confidence in my actions is coming from, considering the lack of experience I’ve had, but maybe that’s just how it was supposed to be with him.
He makes everything easy because he’s the only one I was ever meant to do this with.
I release his shirt with one hand and slide my fingers through his hair instead. As fucking if he’d ever go bald. The hair curling around my fingers is soft and lush, and I have to pull on it to keep from letting it slip free.
We’re supposed to be talking tonight.
The movie intro credits have ended, and the pop-up menu for Legally Blonde keeps replaying the same song on the TV speakers.
Our dinner is growing cold on the table behind me.
Chicken and a Greek salad that’s heavy on the tomatoes and cheese, just the way I like it.
There’s an article still open and perched on my dream built-ins with my name printed alongside Darren’s, featuring a photo of his bathroom.
And he was there. He was at the funeral.
Screw talking. This is the only thing I want tonight.
“Elle.” My name is a weak groan on his tongue.
“Only tell me to stop if you mean it.”
“I won’t be able to let you go after.”
I pause, retreating one lonely inch. “It’s about time.”
He pushes forward, reclaiming my mouth with a demand that creates a blooming pulse between my thighs.
I suck in a sharp breath at the pleasure and shiver, my nervous system crashing.
His hands abandon my hair and begin to roam with the new approval.
From my neck to the curve of my breast and to the flat of my stomach, he touches me softly, like he’s nervous to press too hard.
I breathe out against his mouth and keep my hands where they are, unsure in a way that he doesn’t seem to be. He remembers where to touch me, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from moaning when his fingertip strokes the sensitive underside of my ass.
Surely, it’s not supposed to be this hard, but I’m out of practice. So much so that I realize I’ve stopped kissing him with all of my thinking.
“Did I go too far?” he asks, slightly breathless despite our lack of movement.
“No. No, I’m—” I swallow and drop my eyes, staring at the gap between our bodies. “You heard me. At Peakside.”
There’s a shift in me as he rolls his jaw, nostrils flaring. “I heard you, Delaney.”
“So, you know how out of practice I am.”
“You’re not taking more inches tonight than my fingers can offer you, baby. No ridges or rainbows either,” he drawls, dipping his head to kiss beneath my jaw.
My throat bulges against his lips and the sear of his tongue. “It’s not only that. I’m out of practice with everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, Darren. Stop making me repeat myself.”
His eyes appear when he focuses them on me again, the brown deeper, darker than when I arrived tonight.
“Do you think I’m not also out of practice?
What you see right now is a guy trying to remember the way you liked to be touched ten years ago and hoping I don’t do anything you don’t like.
You’re different now. Even if we hadn’t been apart, your body isn’t the same it was then. Mine isn’t either.”
He takes my hand and pushes it down his chest. Wide-eyed, I watch as it moves further and further down until he slides the hem of his shirt under my finger.
“Explore me, and I’ll explore you, Elle. Just like the first time we ever touched like this.”
My moan is involuntary, but I feel the tensing of his abdomen in response to it. Carefully, I lower myself flat to his lap and sit back to make room to take over for him. I pinch the bottom of his shirt and start to work it up his body, exposing an inch of skin and then another.
He releases a tight exhale when I follow the shirt with my other hand, letting it stroke the bare skin I expose.
The muscles he had in high school have changed.
Grown thicker and stronger beneath the new trail of hair leading beneath the band of his jeans.
There’s so much more of him now, and I’m having trouble comparing this new him to the one who took my virginity.
It hits me hard. The rush of heat beneath my skin mixes with the electric thrum in my ears, driving me to move quicker. Suddenly, his shirt is above his pecs, and I’m clawing at it, desperate to be rid of it.
He hesitates to help me get it over his head, but before I can ask him why, he’s pulling it off and dropping it on the couch beside us. I jerk forward on his lap and hiss a breath when I feel the outline of him beneath me. That’s definitely still the same. I forgot . . .
“What is that?” I blurt out, my gaze snagged on the chain around his neck.
Or more specifically, the ring dangling from it.
Darren loops his finger through the ring and lifts it off his chest. “It’s your ring.”
“My ring,” I repeat softly.
“Your promise ring.”
“Why?”
“It’s yours,” he states bluntly, voice gruff and deep.
A bone-deep shiver moves through me. I hold his shoulder and roll my hips forward, searching for the press of his erection against me. The length of him beneath my middle chases my shock away, replacing it with a pleasure so sharp I lose my ability to breathe.
“When you want it back, I’ll hand it over. Until then, it’s staying right here,” he says tightly. Hands bracket my hips, guiding me back and then forward again.
“Darren,” I gasp, spine straight and my head falling forward to watch us move together.
“Not like this, baby. Not after this long. Let me make you come properly.” His face scrunches, almost like he’s in pain. “Please.”
My eyes nearly cross at his plea. “Yes. Yes , do that.”
He shoots off the couch with me in his arms. I don’t even have a chance to hold on to him properly before I’m falling back onto the couch. This time, he’s above me, and I’m sinking into the thick cushions at my back.
“I should have made sure you were fed first,” he murmurs, staring down at me with this sense of . . . claiming. Like I’m something he’s been coveting all this time and finally has in front of him.
I’m starting to believe that’s exactly what I am .
“I’m not hungry.”
His eyes rove all over me, the muscles in his jaw tight. “I am.”
“We can eat first,” I murmur, fighting the nerves.
“My appetite doesn’t involve anything besides you, Delaney.”
I throb between my legs. It’s strong and slow, lingering. The tightness in my breasts makes my nipples scrape my bra, heightening the need for relief. I start to close my legs when Darren lurches forward and holds my knees, keeping them spread.
“Has anything changed?” he asks while lowering himself to his knees.
“What do you mean?”
His smirk is criminally filthy. “Do you still like to be touched the same way, or has anything changed with what you need to get off?”
“Isn’t that cheating?” I ask between sharp inhales.
Fingers stroke my calves and then behind my knees. Not even the tights can hide the goosebumps on my skin.
“You’re right. I’ll figure it out for myself.”
There’s no time to ask him to clarify exactly how he plans to do that before he’s lowering himself to his knees once again, this time between my parted legs.
I choke on nothing and hold my breath while he glides my dress up my legs.
He leaves a hand there, holding the hem of my dress while another sneaks beneath it to rub circles above the band of my tights.
“I only need to know what you’re okay with me doing, Delaney. Tell me if there are lines I can’t cross with you tonight because I don’t trust myself enough not to take things too far once we get started. I need you to give me boundaries.”
“I thought you already decided what we could and couldn’t do tonight. Nothing longer than a finger.”
His head falls forward as he groans and squeezes my lower thigh. “That’s my boundary, not yours. Give me something else.”
“No. ”
It’s settled.
Darren looks up again, and I shudder all the way down to my toes at the starving look in his eyes. I’m weaker when it comes to him than I originally thought, but right now, I don’t see anything wrong with that.
“You can always change your mind,” he promises.
“I know.”
Watching him hesitate after being given approval, I decide it’s up to me to convince him that I really am okay with this. My dress is soft in my hand as I lift my hips and pull it out of the way. His hand is still frozen on the band of my tights, so I take the other side and push them down.
He watches with unbreakable concentration as I tap his fingers and urge them to do the same thing. We both stare at the nylon as it moves down my thighs and my black, lace panties appear.
“Fuck,” he mutters, his voice as tight as it is garbled.
I let that word run up my body before the heat of his palms smothers all other sensation.
He creeps my tights down to my knees and leans over them, his shoulders pulling taut.
The first stroke of his fingertips up my inner thighs yanks a mewled noise up my throat.
I pant and let my head rest back against the couch as I sag into the cushion.
“You’re still sensitive here,” he notes, stroking me again.
The only thing I can do is nod.