Chapter 11
eleven
GEORGIE
I can’t catch my breath.
I’ve had sex, I’m not a virgin, but every touch from Drew has me trembling like one.
Every touch, every kiss, feels new and yet familiar. It’s as though we’ve done this a million times before.
There’s no awkward bumping of teeth or noses.
No brush of lips or fingers that isn’t exactly what I want—what I need.
And the sounds—pleasured groans, tortured moans—he’s making, the harsh rushed breaths, tell me what I’m doing to him in return is just as good.
Our hands are everywhere at once. My skin is covered in goosebumps, my nerves electrified with pleasure and anticipation. Every part of me is buzzing with arousal so intense it feels as though I might tear apart.
“I need—” His hand slides between my legs and I shove them wide, give him room to move. “Yes!”
My back arches at the first contact of his rough fingers on my clit. One stroke and I’m lighting up like the town tree. Waves of pleasure wash over me. Again and again, my body pulses with release so sharp it borders on pain.
The force of it should wilt my body into the bed beneath me, should satisfy me, but it only ramps up my desire. Turns it up a notch from burning hot to blazing incineration.
Pushing up, I try to tip him over onto his back, but he’s having none of that. With a predatory gleam in his eyes he hovers over me, pushing me back down and flattening me beneath him.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere!”
“Good. Because I’m not done with you.” His lips press down on mine and his next words are said against them in a whisper. “I may never be done with you.”
I can’t stop from smiling. The idea of Drew wanting me like this forever fills me with joy. It’s not what I expected or what I ever really thought about having.
“You like that idea?” His eyes sparkle with happiness, the small creases beside them showing how rarely he smiles.
I plan to change that. I want to see this man smile every day. I don’t care how I do it, or that this soon in our relationship I want to do it so badly I ache with it.
“I like it when you smile,” I confess.
He lifts his head. His gaze takes on a curious edge. “You do?”
“Yes. And you don’t do it enough.”
“No. I never have,” he explains with a serious face that makes me want to laugh.
I don’t. Instead I say, “I can see that, but a smile is free and can make someone’s day.”
“Your smile makes my day.” His still serious gaze bores into mine.
“It does?” I know my lips have stretched wide, I can feel the tug in my cheeks.
“Yes. It’s the highlight of my day getting to see you smile.”
“Then stick with me and I’ll be sure to smile for you all the time.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere.” He rocks his hips against me. “And it has nothing to do with the fact we’re naked in your bed and I want to fuck you so badly my teeth hurt.”
“Oh.” My core clenches. His words aren’t especially dirty, definitely not practiced, but the realness of his emotions does more to increase my desire than if he was waxing poetic about loving me.
Drew isn’t one for flowery words—or words in general—and I’m here for that because there’s nothing worse than a man trying to be something he’s not to be with you.
Been there, done that, and sent him packing.
“What’s that look?” He traces a fingertip from my temple to my chin.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, it was something.”
“It had nothing to do with you and it’s not appropriate to talk about other people when we’re naked in bed together.”
“Hmm…”
I hope he doesn’t push for more information. I don’t have a problem talking about past partners, just not when I’m in bed with my current one. To get us back on track I slide my hand down his sides, around to his butt which I give a squeeze before saying, “I thought you weren’t done with?—”
Drew’s mouth crashes down on mine. His tongue presses in, thrusting against mine with a fierceness that takes my breath. Moaning, I open my jaw wider and let him take whatever he wants.
It’s what I want too. With a depth I’ve never felt with anyone else.
But our connection isn’t just physical. I wouldn’t be in bed with him after only three dates if there wasn’t something deeper between us.
I know what I think this is. I don’t know if it’s a forever kind of love except I’ve been ‘in love’ before and it didn’t feel like this. It was nothing like this.
What I said earlier is true, I’m ready to hear the three words I think he wants to say. I have the urge to say them in return.
It’s ridiculous. We’ve barely spoken in the years he’s lived in Evergreen Lake and only been dating a few days. Not even a week.
And yet I can’t imagine not being here with him. Not seeing him through the window of the library when he drives by in a Sheriff’s cruiser or his own truck.
This isn’t territory I’ve walked before and I know I need to take my time and think about what we’re doing, where we’re going, except I have no desire to do so.
Those thoughts are only because I think it’s what I should do—what we should do.
Except there are no rules when it comes to the heart and who it loves. It may be fear of when this ends that has me thinking we shouldn’t be here yet.
“Get out of your head,” he growls into my mouth. “I don’t know what has you distracted but I can’t be doing this right if you’re not focused on me.”
“I’m thinking about you. About what you make me feel. That we’re here so quickly after agreeing to date—” I gasp when he nips my bottom lip.
“I know. I get it. I’ve thought the same or similar but I’ve wanted you for years and?—”
“You have?”
“Yes. And as much as what I said last night is what I think is the right thing to do, my instincts are screaming something else.” He lowers his forehead to mine. “I feel like this is where we’re supposed to be. That I’m supposed to be with you. That I’ve found what was missing in my life when I didn’t realize it wasn’t whole in the first place.”
Wow. He might be a man of few words but when he speaks he reveals more than the number of words should imply.
He’s as caught up in what’s happening as me. As unsure if this is the right thing and yet feeling like it is.
I smile. “At the risk of sounding like a parrot…ditto, everything you just said. Ditto.”
“Okay. So we’re rushing and we both have concerns about that.” I nod. “What’s your biggest concern?”
I swallow. I want to be completely honest with him on this. “That you’ll leave me like everyone else.”
His eyes meet mine and I can see sympathy and concern in them. “I can’t promise to never leave you. I have a dangerous job even if I live in a place with little crime. But if it’s in my power to stay with you, I will. At this point, nothing short of death could take me away.”
My gaze blurs, my nose stings, and I have to swallow hard to clear the lump from my throat. It’s not a declaration of love but it might as well be. It feels like one.
His words are a promise and a vow. One I’ll gladly return.
“Ditto.” The word just squeaks out through my constricted throat.
He lowers his head and brushes his nose along the length of mine. “As much as I want to have a deep and meaningful discussion with you I think we should forget everything for now. Let’s concentrate on this physical need we both have tonight.”
I nod. “I’m on the pill and I had my annual checkup in July. Clean bill of health.”
“I don’t remember when my last checkup was so I probably need to book in for that, but every one I’ve ever had has been clean and I haven’t been with anyone since before my ex left.”
“But that’s…”
“Yeah, nine years. Give or take.”
“You haven’t?—?”
“No. I haven’t wanted to. Until you. From the second I laid eyes on you, I wanted you.”
I know my mouth is hanging open and my eyes are probably a millimeter from falling out of my head, but I can’t get my brain to work to change it.
“Yeah.” His hands cradle my face. “You were so young, still are, and?—”
“I wasn’t.” I shake my head as much as I can in his hold. “I’m not.”
“I know. Except I was so numb when I came here and there you were, smiling and flushed with life. I thought you were a teenager.”
“I was twenty-three.”
“Your grandmother made that very clear.”
“She did?”
“Yes. And I’ve never been able to work out if it was a warning to stay away or a green light to get closer.”
“Why now?”
“I don’t know. Keeping my distance got harder every day until I just couldn’t do it anymore.” A sheepish look flits across his face. “And then you came out of the library on Monday night without a care in the world and the thought of what could happen to you after dark snapped something inside me. I was angry with you for putting yourself in the crosshairs of possible danger.”
“Evergreen Lake isn’t exactly a hotbed of crime.”
“No. But with the influx of tourists...” His shoulder lifts in a shrug. “Thinking about you being hurt or worse...” He closes his eyes.
“I’m careful.” His eyes open and bore into mine. “I don’t take my safety for granted. I grew up in a big-ish city, I know what can happen, and I promise you, I would never put myself at risk.”
“My reaction was irrational, I know that, but it made me realize I was fighting a losing battle. I don’t know how this will go, but I do know I want to see, I want to give you the chance to decide if we should be together or not.”
“We should.”
“I think so and by staying away from you, in a misguided attempt to protect you from me, I took away your choice. That’s why I asked you out.”
“Even though you didn’t really want to,” I say with a grin.
“Oh, I wanted to, didn’t think I should though. I’m old, jaded, and set in my ways. You’re young, see the good in life, and readily adapt to life’s whims.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I think you’re not so much jaded as tired of seeing and experiencing what people can do to each other. I think it’s why you moved here. And I already told you my dad was an older dad and in some ways he was better because he had years of experience to draw on when it came to raising his kids.”
“I always wanted to be a dad.”
The wistfulness in his voice has words rushing up my throat, sitting on the tip of my tongue. I’d gladly help him achieve that. In spite of how quickly we’ve come together and how quickly it might end, I know he’d never leave me with the burden of a child if we had one together.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump that on you.”
“It’s fine. I’ve never really thought about being a mom until we talked the other day. And I have to admit, I really like the idea of it now that I am thinking about it.”
“Yeah?” He presses his erection into the V of my legs.
“Yeah.” I smile. “Maybe not yet. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t practice until I’m ready.”
“I can get on board with that plan.” His smile is big. Bigger than I’ve ever seen and my stomach does a flip at the sight of it.
Tightening my thigh muscles, I bend my knees and wrap my legs around his waist. “All aboard!”
I laugh at the look on his face. A second later the laugh turns to a gasp when the flex of his hips has his shaft rubbing through my slick sex, the mushroom tip of his penis pressing between my folds and lodging in my opening.
“All aboard,” he murmurs before shunting his hard length inside me.
My cry is pleasure and pain and triumph. My hands grip his shoulders, my fingers curling to claw at his skin. My breath is gone, pushed from my lungs by the pressure of his entry into my body.
With an agonized growl, Drew pulls back and shoves forward. The glide of his shaft eases with each thrust inside my clenching sex.
It’s rough and raw, an uncivilized joining of two bodies, and I love every second of it.
This isn’t like any sex I’ve had before. It’s like the sex scenes I read in romance books. The push and pull, the desperation of our movements, the depth of our emotions.
Nothing has ever felt this good or this real and when he seals his mouth to mine while slipping a hand beneath me to palm my ass and hold me still so he can power into me harder, faster, I burst open like I didn’t have an orgasm minutes ago.
I cry out. His name. A victory call. Whatever it is, it’s not quite faded away when Drew hollers a cry of his own.
I feel his heat fill me. Feel his shaft pulse and twitch as he lets himself go, deep inside my body.
And as I struggle to catch my breath I know there’s no way either of us is going to be able to take this slow.
We’re on a freight train speeding down a mountain track with no brakes.
It just remains to be seen if we crash at the bottom or manage to maneuver the curves and continue on.