Epilogue #2
Fuck, she knew exactly what got me going.
My shallow thrusts grew sloppier, pleasure tingling at the base of my spine, telling me that this wouldn’t last much longer. Being inside her was too good, a tempting, tight heat that I never wanted to leave.
From the tension growing in her body and the desperate pants falling from her lips, I knew she was almost there. I let my fingers help me get her there, circling her clit in the way she’d shown me she liked. Not too much direct pressure, but just enough to have her shattering apart for me.
I’d pick up all the pieces and do it over again, every time. I lived to make her fall apart under me.
“ Josh. ” My name was a low whine from where I was lightly restricting her airway. I knew she liked the heady rush that came from coming this way, and I didn’t mind it one bit.
My nose traveled the column of her neck until it reached the spot behind her ear.
“Come on, little dove, give it to me. I want it—it’s mine.”
Dove shuddered, head thrown back in onto my shoulder as she orgasmed so brilliantly it coaxed my own out of me. She tightened almost impossibly, but I managed a few more thrusts, riding us through the wave, until she slumped in my arms, spent.
I wrapped myself around her and guided us down on the bed. I slipped out of her in the process, but I kept our bodies close. There was nothing better than feeling the aftershocks work through her body, knowing I was the one that caused them.
My hand traveled up and down her side, loving her curves, giving a few squeezing caresses as she came back to earth. She was always so responsive and needed a minute after to come down. Sure stroked the hell out of my ego.
I pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Alright?”
She nodded. “More than.” Her chest moved with a sigh, and I smiled into her skin.
“You gonna be up for touring the campus in a few hours?”
I didn’t have to see it to know she was rolling her eyes.
“You’re good, but not that good.”
“Oh yeah?” I frowned. “Do we have to do this every time?”
The hand that had been lightly tracing her skin dug into the softness of her side.
“No,” Dove gasped. “Josh!”
“Take it back.”
“I—” She collapsed in a fit of laughter, attempting to wiggle out of my hold. She pled through her giggles.
“Take it back,” I repeated, face aching from smiling. I never smiled as much as when I was with her. It was like the muscles just activated in her presence.
“Alright,” she gasped out. “I take it back! You’re the best I ever had!”
My fingers stilled instantly. “I already know that, baby.”
Not only because she’d told me that before, but because I was the only one to have her like this.
Knowing she’d waited because she wanted me to be the one to take her virginity never failed to get me going. There was something deep and primal inside me that loved it.
No one deserved this part of Dove. Sometimes I doubted I was even worthy enough for her, but I never told her that.
I knew she’d fight me on it, even if it was true.
I had no idea what I’d done to deserve her.
Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe instead she was the universe’s way of making up for the wrongs in my life.
For taking my mom the minute I’d entered the world and giving me a father that hated me for it.
Whatever it was, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Not even the shame of a small town’s disapproval would be enough to stop me at this point. I was too far gone, too addicted to what Dove brought to my life to ever give her up.
I had Dove and the world would have to pry her out of my cold dead hands.
Her fingers traced my shoulders, my eyes catching hers. The blue of her irises were crystal clear today, like a sky without a trace of clouds.
She smiled. “What are you thinking about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie. I know that look, that’s your deep-in-thought look.” She relaxed back into the pillows and brought me with her, urging me to lay on her.
I went but kept half of my weight on the bed. She wrapped one leg around my side.
“Don’t make me tickle you .” Her fingers dug into the skin of my sides, but she knew I was far from ticklish.
Playfully, I nipped at her breast. She yelped, swatting at me. “No biting!”
I smirked up at her. “I thought you liked biting?”
She huffed. “I do, but only?—”
Her phone gave a trill sound, reminding us that someone had been trying to get ahold of her.
Her hands began to shove at me, and I knew the time we’d carved out for ourselves was over, private bubble burst. The outside world was waiting for us to resume our responsibilities.
I stubbornly pressed all my weight on her, refusing to move.
“What if it’s Mitch?” Dove asked, worry tinging her voice.
“Mitch doesn’t have your number.”
“Yes, he does.”
“What?” I reared back to look at her. “Why?”
She stared back at me like I had two heads. “Because he’s our neighbor , Josh.”
Her phone gave another trill, and she shoved at me more persistently.
Grumbling, I rolled off her. I needed to get rid of the condom anyway, something Dove had tried to fight me on, but I’d been adamant about using. Maybe once she was done school, and we could have a deeper discussion about the type of life we wanted for ourselves beyond the one we lived now.
Despite her sound arguments that she was on birth control, there was an echo of something grimmer that fueled my excuses, a deep-seated worry rooted in the fact that childbirth had taken my mother from me.
But I refused to acknowledge it. We had plenty of time before I had to open that roughly healed wound.
“It better not be Mitch,” I warned while I tied the rubber off and chucked it in the bathroom attached to my bedroom. “He has my number. No need to bother you.”
Not that Mitch would ever do anything, he was a good friend.
I’d always had a sneaking suspicion he was gay, anyway.
He’d never said anything, and I never asked.
He was far closer to his own father than I was to mine, but there had been a reason Gareth was best friends with his old man.
They were alike in a lot of things. If Mitch was gay, I knew exactly why he’d never acted on it.
The same reason I’d never acted on my feelings for Dove.
Some things were just better left as secrets, especially if they were landmines destined to blow up your entire life.
Still. No one needed to be contacting Dove right now, not while she was supposed to be focusing solely on her future. Which meant farm business was tabled for the next day, at least.
Dove was laid out across the bed on of her belly, all that ripe skin on display as she searched for where her cellphone had fallen to on the floor. I curbed the intense urge to plant my hand on her ass, to coax pink handprints to life on her supply skin, stepping into my boxers instead.
“Oh.” She scanned her phone, a text thread pulled up. “It’s Rev.”
“Yeah?” I opened my dresser drawer and snagged a piece of clothing out of it. “What’s she want?”
She sat up, still reading. I stood in front of her, holding the hoodie out I’d picked for her to wear. We were on the cusp of winter and this apartment tended to be a bit drafty.
When she was done, she glanced up at me. When she saw what I was holding, she smiled.
“Want me to wear your clothes?” she teased.
“They look better on you,” I muttered, embarrassed. “Arms up.”
She obeyed, just like I knew she would. My clothes at the farm had started to dwindle the moment I arrived. She could blame it on the dryer all she wanted; I knew a thief when I saw one. She liked wearing my clothes just as much as I liked seeing her in them.
Her head popped out of the neckline and her arms slid through the sleeves. I gathered her hair from where it was stuck inside, letting it fall down her back. I combed my hands through the strands framing her face, pushing them back so I could plant a kiss on her forehead.
I let myself bask in happiness as my old life merged with the one I’d been forced to live for three long years. Seeing Dove in the apartment I’d always been so alone in gave me new perspective—I saw a future rewritten within these walls.
“What did Reverie want?”
Dove sighed, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I think she might have figured out a way to keep the farm going while I’m away at college. At least for a while.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, beyond intrigued. “How’s that?”
If it involved Reverie, I was skeptical.
Dove handed her phone to me. Reverie’s text was long-winded and riddled with exclamation points, but when I was finished reading, I was smiling.
My girl was smiling right along with me.
Damn it, that just might work.
THE END