18. Emmett
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Emmett
I want her.
I ache for her. I need her.
I haven’t felt hunger like this in years, maybe decades. It tears through me so completely that the rest of my life folds in on itself.
Every memory from the last five years, every endless lonely hour gives way to the warmth of her mouth, the taste of smoke on her breath, and the frantic pulse beating beneath my fingertips as if she’s calling every part of me closer.
She catches my bottom lip between her teeth and laughs, rich and throaty, like she’s daring me to lose whatever restraint I’ve got left, and I give it to her without a fight.
I scoop her into my arms, her knees locking around my waist while she keeps her burned hand careful. She buries the other in the back of my neck, her nails dragging across my skin until every nerve lights up.
I get her onto the counter without caring how clumsy I look because I need her against me, need every inch of her pressed into me until the only thing separating us is fabric and the ache that’s driving me out of my mind.
She feels so fucking good.
My chest tightens until drawing breath feels impossible, but I can’t pull away. I chase another kiss, tasting ash on her tongue, salt on her skin, before I finally tear my mouth free just long enough to bury my face against her neck and drag in the scent of her.
She shivers so hard I feel it through my whole body, her thighs tightening around my hips, pulling me closer, and the need inside me swells until I can’t think past having her here, now, again and again, until the whole damn world burns itself out around us.
Arizona kisses the side of my head, her bandaged hand clumsy as it slides across my scalp, and I realize too late that I’m shaking. She laughs, bruised and rattled, hooks a finger into my collar, and tugs me right back into her mouth.
Her jeans fight me, but I work the button free and drag the denim over her thighs while she lifts her hips without a word.
Beneath them, a scrap of black cotton already clings to her, damp with heat, and I bury my face against her, drawing in a deep breath as she laughs again, the sound breaking apart into a gasp that catches in her throat.
I’ve missed this feeling more than I ever admitted.
Desire strips people bare until every wall falls away, leaving only muscle, need, and the instinct to chase whatever feels good. Arizona grips the counter, then my hair, then reaches back for the counter again as if she can’t decide what’ll keep her together longer.
I want every trembling breath, every crack in her control, every piece of her that only comes free like this.
I slide my hands beneath her thighs and pull her to the edge of the counter until I can taste her through the cotton. She’s wet enough that the fabric barely matters, almost transparent against her skin.
I drag my tongue over her once before going back again, letting the heat and taste of her fill my mouth until she gasps and her legs start shaking around my neck.
I keep my mouth on her, working slow enough to feel every twitch of her body and every hitch in her breathing while her fingers wrap into my hair, loosen, then tighten again with another hard tug as though holding on to me is the only way to stay together.
I hook my fingertips behind her knees, ease her wider, and keep licking her, finally shoving the soaked cotton aside.
I give her another long stroke, then another, never letting her settle until she’s swearing at me through a breathless sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a cry, sending my cock throbbing behind my fly.
I want to take her apart one shudder at a time until nobody else could ever touch her without measuring themselves against this, against me. The next flick of my tongue arches her off the counter, her head falling back, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Emmett…” she chokes, and the sound rips through her as every muscle jumps beneath my hands.
I feel her trying to hold herself together, her thighs quivering against my shoulders while her fingers twist into my hair hard enough to sting, and I keep my mouth on her, drawing out every shiver, every hitch in her breathing, every desperate little movement she can’t control anymore.
She tastes like nothing I’ve ever known, like orange rinds, seawater, and sweat, and I can’t get enough of her. Every flick of my tongue makes her hips jerk, every breath catches higher than the last, and I know she’s balanced right on the edge.
I want to keep her there just a heartbeat longer, watch her unravel piece by piece until she can’t fight it anymore.
Then she breaks.
She comes so hard I almost lose my grip on her thighs. She clamps her bandaged hand over her mouth while her body rolls through one aftershock after another beneath my tongue, and I keep licking her through every trembling wave.
“Don’t stop, oh fuck, Emmett.” Her words are scraped so raw they barely sound like hers.
Eventually, I wipe my mouth and push myself to my feet, swaying as I straighten, and she looks up at me through lashes clumped with sweat and tears. Soot streaks across her flushed face, and the sight hits me so deep I want to carve it into the inside of my skull where time can’t touch it.
My hands still shake when I slide an arm beneath her legs and lift her from the counter, and I quit trying to hide it because wanting her has stripped away every reason to pretend I’m untouched by any of this.
She’s still catching her breath, her chest rising hard beneath the tank top bunched above her ribs, leaving a long stretch of pale stomach exposed, and I can’t stop looking at her because I want to memorize every inch.
My shirt’s in the way, so I strip it off one-handed and toss it onto the kitchen floor. Her gaze drifts over my chest, tracing the scar that runs from my shoulder to my armpit from old barbed wire, healed rough, before sliding lower to the deep brown trail of hair disappearing beneath my jeans.
Her jeans still bunch around her knees, so I drop to one knee and tug them the rest of the way down, dragging her boots off with them.
She flicks one sock at me, and it catches on my nose long enough to make her snort, the laugh still breathless and close to falling apart. I want to hear that laugh every day. I want to be the reason it keeps spilling out of her.
She peels her tank over her head, and her breasts are tipped with a perfect upturned nipple already drawn tight. Her skin makes me want to run both hands over every inch of her.
A pale scar curves across her right hip like an apostrophe, and my tongue aches to trace every part of it. I ease her back onto the counter, and she melts beneath my hands, glassy eyed and loose, giving herself over to me like she’s been waiting for this as long as I have.
I run my hands over her, wanting to know every inch of her body the way I know the old grain silo out back. Every pit and scar, every battered part.
She’s tough, all muscle and flex beneath my palms, yet she still shudders every time I touch her.
“Turn around,” I murmur against her ear.
She smiles and does it, rolling onto her elbows with her knees locked and her ass lifted toward me, her thighs already trembling.
I step in behind her without trying to hide the shake running through me, fumble my jeans open, shove them down. My cock springs free so hard it almost hurts.
Arizona glances back over her shoulder, her eyes molten, and the sight hits me so hard I figure if I died right now, I’d die ready.
I slide my hand between her legs and find her soaked, her lips slick and parted, and she presses herself back against my palm with a guttural, animal sound that drives every thought from my head.
I guide myself into place, rub the head of my cock against her once so she can feel how hard I am, then ease inside, taking my time with the stretch, the incredible tightness, and the cry she bites back. I want to fill her, own her, be the only thing inside her body for the next thousand years.
She takes me to the root with a greedy desperation that steals the breath from my lungs, arching so hard her shoulder blades stand out like wings above the small of her back. My hands have never held anyone who feels this alive, this gloriously untamed.
She’s wet enough that I slide into her with a slick, filthy sound that would’ve made me laugh if I could manage a breath. She’s so tight it borders on agony, every nerve in my body flaring as her whole frame drives back against me, taking me even deeper.
The counter rocks against the cabinets while she pants my name in rough, broken gasps, and the scent of her, of us, pushes the smoke aside until it’s all I can breathe.
I start with measured strokes, giving her body time to take the stretch, my palm spread across the base of her spine while I fight the urge to fold over her and hold her against the Formica.
Arizona has other ideas.
She throws her hips back harder, writhing against me, chasing a pace that drags me toward the edge so fast I have to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from spilling inside her.
I clamp both hands around her hips, hold her where I need her, drive deep, and stay there while we both shake, slick with sweat and starving for more.
She keeps rocking against me, desperate for movement, desperate for release, and every tiny pulse around my cock dares me to lose control. I can feel her getting closer.
Her breathing turns ragged, her muscles tighten a little more with every thrust, and she starts saying my name like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.
I don’t want to rush her. I want to feel every second of this, every quiver, every hitch in her breath, every frantic push of her body begging for more.
Holding back hurts, but watching her unravel hurts even better.
Then she comes.
Her whole body locks around me with a silent, convulsive scream before every muscle jerks and clenches so hard I almost lose my mind. I feel her gripping me, pulling me deeper, and the force of her orgasm tears straight through every ounce of restraint I’ve got left.
I groan and fight to hold on for her because I don’t want this to end. I don’t want any part of it to end.
Months of celibacy, years of loneliness, a lifetime spent missing this crash through me all at once until every nerve feels ready to burst between one breath and the next.
Arizona keeps writhing against me, still riding the last waves of her release, grinding back onto me until I’m hanging by a thread. I grab both her hips, drive myself as deep as I can, and stay there while every pulse of her body squeezes me tighter, every heartbeat daring me to let go.
I can feel it building faster than I can stop it, my whole body straining against the need to come while she keeps taking me, still trembling around me, still dragging me over the edge with every desperate movement.
My release tears through me before I can stop it, and I bury my face against her neck while we both collapse forward together, trembling, spent, and completely wrecked on the kitchen counter.
I stay buried against her neck until my breathing quits fighting me, one hand spread across her stomach while the other hangs over the edge of the counter.
Neither of us says a word. The kitchen smells like smoke, sweat, and coffee gone cold, and somewhere outside a bird starts up like the world’s still turning.
Mine isn’t.
I haven’t wanted anyone this badly since Sadie’s mom walked out the door.
That thought settles deep enough to make my chest tighten.
Years. Years of keeping people at arm’s length because it was easier than wanting them. Easier than wondering if they’d leave too.
Easier than pretending I still remembered how to need another person.
Then Arizona crashes into my life, kisses me like she’s got nothing left to lose, and tears straight through every wall I’d spent years convincing myself I needed.
I don’t know what the hell that means.
I only know that when I look at her, the idea of letting her walk out that door already feels unbearable, and that scares me a whole lot more than wanting her ever could.