16. Nora
Chapter Sixteen
NORA
That’s why we’re right together.
Gabriel’s gruff words sent a shiver coursing through my entire body right before he filled me. My body was chasing that sweet relief as he reached between us, teasing over my swollen and slippery clit. My orgasm was racing toward me, its force unstoppable.
“I know,” I gasped as he drew back and filled me again, the sensation delicious and drugging.
“Come for me.” His next words were the last push. “I love you.”
My orgasm hit me in flying sparks, the pleasure piercing and sending my entire body into rough tremors as I gulped in air.
He plunged into me once more, and I felt his cock pulse when he shuddered against me.
My head fell to his shoulder, and he held me in his strong embrace as I sat there on the counter with my legs dangling around his hips.
This wasn’t the first time my counter had seen some action with us. We had already christened every surface in my small house.
When he brushed my hair away from my eyes, I felt unsteady. My heart felt turned over in my chest, vulnerable and exposed. I swallowed, trying to catch my breath amidst the emotion spinning in the aftermath of my orgasm.
For the second time, Gabriel asked if I was going to send him home. For the second time, I didn’t.
We fell asleep in my bed with his arm curled around my shoulders and my head tucked into the curve of his neck. I loved sleeping beside him. Because I felt safe. Safety and security were the two things I craved most in life.
Gabriel was strong and his touch sure. When we were asleep, I could pretend my baggage wasn’t always in the way, bumping around and kicking people out of my life.
When I woke the following morning, it was still dark.
Opening my eyes, I stared out the window beside my bed.
The early glimmers of dawn winked, with the darkness a smudgy, charcoal gray and a few stars still visible in the sky.
A thin glimmer of light shone above the mountain range in the trees as the first rays of the sun stretched up to the horizon.
I’d slept straight through the night, a rarity for me. That was a holdover from my childhood. My childhood had mostly been our mother and us. Flynn had been the most stable force in my life, if only because things were quieter when he was around.
In the night, if my stepfather was around, my parents argued. He wasn’t violent; he was just an asshole. My mother always wanted more from him. She would go into the bathroom and lock the door and cry. He would go into the living room and watch television.
I would lay in my small bed, a familiar cold knot forming in my stomach as I worried about how to make it all better for everyone.
I craved my father’s love and attention, yet I knew, even when I was really young, that I would never get it.
It didn’t change that little emotional lurch every time he appeared, and the uncertainty that followed because we were just waiting for when he would leave again.
My father didn’t always leave for a woman.
He simply wasn’t built for commitment, or that was what he said to my mom time and again.
I once heard him tell her he’d never planned to have children either.
Apparently, he wasn’t a fan of birth control, at least not with her.
To this day, I wondered if we had other half siblings floating out in the world, unknown to us.
When Gabriel slept with me, I slept through the night, and I forgot all of that uncertainty. Oh, how I loved it. I savored it. It was like wrapping cold hands around a warm mug, the sensation of warmth comforting as it radiated everywhere.
This morning, Gabriel was curled up behind me, spooning me in his embrace.
His knees were hooked into the bend of mine, and his palm was splayed over my belly.
I wiggled my bottom back just a smidge and discovered the hard length of his arousal.
He was almost always aroused in the morning. He swore it was just the way he was.
I felt it the second he came awake, a little vibration of awareness skating through his body.
His palm tensed slightly on my belly before he relaxed it and moved it upward in a soothing stroke to cup one of my breasts.
My nipples perked up, eager for his knowing touch when he lightly teased one with his fingers.
His hand shifted, smoothing up over my shoulder before he brushed my hair away from my neck.
Then I felt a light, barely-there kiss right where my shoulder met my neck.
A sweet, hot shock reverberated through my entire body as all of my cells fired to life.
I was so ridiculously turned on by this man. He turned me into a needy, needy girl.
“I have a confession,” he murmured, the motion of his lips on my skin sending jolts of sensation through me.
“I’m not your priest,” I teased, letting out a little gasp when his hand moved down again and teased my other nipple.
“That’s okay. I just wanted to tell you the truth.”
His hands were still teasing me, mapping my body, and it was hard to focus. I tried to clear the haze and pay attention.
“About what?”
“I don’t always wake up hard.”
He flexed his hips, and I felt the presence of his arousal nestling between the cheeks of my bottom—hard and hot.
“You don’t?” I gasped again when his teeth grazed my neck.
His hand moved down over the curve of my belly and dipped into the core of me. I was wet. It was entirely Gabriel’s fault.
“Only with you,” he murmured. “Only with you, Nora.”
He rolled away from me, and I let out a protesting whimper, instantly missing him.
But then I heard him reaching into the drawer beside my bed and the crinkle of a condom wrapper.
In a second, he was rolling back toward me as I felt him smoothing it on.
He lifted one of my thighs and sank smoothly inside me.
We made sleepy love as dawn broke. A ray of sun crested on the horizon just as he sent me flying and shuddered against me with his own release.
I loved it. I loved waking up with him like this, and I loved that he told me he was only like this with me.
We showered and had coffee. And it was all so very good and so much of what I wanted.
Yet I struggled to hold on to faith in him, in me, in us. Well-worn paths of doubt blazed to life after he left. Because this was how good it felt before. How could I trust it?
Annoyed with myself, I spun around and grabbed my laptop, stuffing it into my backpack before I hustled up to the resort.
Gabriel was headed out for some flights today, and I had some resort business to take care of.
I handled all the scheduling and booking for flights as well as the resort.
Daphne helped me with some of that, but the kitchen was her domain.
I told myself not to think too hard about Gabriel. I told myself all those silly things they recommended in self-help books. Believe in yourself. Hope for the best. Just let life unfold. Fuck.
I hated sayings like that because they annoyed the hell out of me.
I felt good this morning, though, good in a way I hadn’t in a long time. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could believe Gabriel loved me.
There was a pretty big “maybe” to that, though.