Chapter 57
Emmett
It’s hot .
My entire side is damp with sweat, my leg bent and too warm.
Grumbling, I go to kick the blankets off, but they don’t budge.
I’m too groggy to realize why until the entire bed beneath me shifts and something lands on my thigh. Pulls my leg higher. Makes my knee brush against something stiff.
I crack open my heavy lids even though it feels like they’re glued shut and Tristen is right there. His chin taking up my view, his plump lips parted.
“You’re quite the cuddler,” he rasps and my stomach flips.
“I’m sorry, I—”
His arm tightens around me when I stiff arm him, prepared to propel myself across the bed, his palm pinning my hood to the back of my neck.
“Stay.”
Just one word. One quietly whispered command and I crumble. Back to the foundation of his chest. The safety of his embrace.
I feel nearly weightless as I press my cheek to his chest, his heart thundering beneath me. His life pounding back against the pressing silence.
Fingers curl around my knee, holding my leg across his waist and I swallow against the feel of his hardness beneath my thigh.
My stomach turns for the briefest moment, a voice in my head that doesn’t belong to me threatening to surface.
But this bubble that we’re in feels too delicate. Too important. Not that I could explain why it is or how I know.
I just feel it.
Deep down inside me.
This should be good. It is good.
And even though he never heard my promise, I know I need to do everything I can to keep it.
“I don’t know what to do with my hand,” I murmur, and Tristen’s chuckle vibrates through my cheek.
“Wherever it’s comfortable, bubs.”
Setting my palm against my own leg just feels wrong. Weird. So, I move it to his shoulder, which feels like more of a stretch than it should.
Why is this so difficult?
“Bubbles,” he says in the soft, commanding tone that has me peeking up at him with a fluttering in my stomach. “My chest and stomach are okay to touch.”
I blow out a long breath and flatten my palm against his sternum, right in the space between the two.
It takes a long moment for my body to release the stiffness, but when it does … it’s like a sip of blueberry tea.
Warm. And nearly peaceful.
For a moment, he makes me forget where we are. Why we’re here. What’s happening outside of this tiny bedroom that saw too many shitty nights when I cried myself to sleep.
It makes me feel like maybe I can keep my promise after all.
“Thank you,” I whisper to the dusk-filled room, too nervous to say it much louder.
He takes a moment to respond, and I know that he understands that I don’t just mean for letting me touch him.
“I meant it when I said we’d figure it out together.” His grip on my knee and the back of my neck flexes. Not tightly, but enough to know he’s there and I… I really like that he is. “I should be thanking you.”
My brows pinch. “Why?”
He just snorts. Turns his head into mine and presses his lips to the hair covering my forehead.
My breath hitches and my face flames.
“For letting me be with you. That’s why.”
The backs of my eyes burn fiercely, and I blink hard when my vision goes watery.
“Can I … can I kiss you?”
Thundering below my ear grows louder as I trail my hand up his torso, the feel of his muscles ripping through his tank top like a featherlight touch. Almost as if his body is caressing me back.
I touch the base of his neck, fingertips dipping in the space between his collarbones where the moth lives, just in time to feel him swallow.
“Always, bubbles.”
The rumble of his certainty has me finally sliding my head back to find his hooded gaze already darkened and on me.
A chill races down my spine and my lips part with my breath. When I dart my tongue out to wet them, his gaze drops and his length flexes beneath my leg.
I … I like that.
It feels like I shouldn’t like it. That my stomach shouldn’t be flipping around, and my heart shouldn’t be sputtering over its next few beats.
It shouldn’t feel safe, but it does.
He does.
Bracketing the side of his throat, I arch up, close enough that I feel the ghost of his touch, the tip of his nose brushing mine. His breath quickens and his pulse beats fast beneath my palm.
I like that, too.
“Is this … okay?” I ask gently and his breath shakes from his lips.
“Yeah, bubbles,” he whispers. “Full green.”
I hide my smile by pressing it to his lips, and he groans when we connect, his hardness pulsing beneath me.
It does all kinds of stuff to the swirling in my gut.
Is it supposed to be like that?
I shift against him, my hips digging into his, and gasp when there’s pressure I wasn’t expecting. It throws me off, making me stammer against his mouth.
“I-I-I’m hard.”
“Mmm, I feel that.”
He says it like it’s a good thing, his voice rich and raspy, his lips soft and welcoming. They part, his lips, and I squeak when his tongue touches my bottom one.
I open automatically, letting him in.
Without a clue of what to do, I chase his tongue like last time, curling mine around the muscle, and it’s like I pulled another one of those sounds from him.
Deep and vibrating, it radiates down to my bones.
Awareness of his touch shoots to the forefront of my mind, stealing all my attention.
All my focus. It’s all I can think about, his hand on the back of my neck and circling my knee, and it’s …
Sexy?
If that’s what it’s called, I’m not sure, but I want more. More of his touch. More of his warmth.
More like last time, before I fucked up.
“Tristen,” I murmur into his mouth and it’s like all the things I feel inside me come out on his name. It’s weighted and desperate, just like me, as I lift closer and plunge my tongue between his lips.
My movements are chaotic and feel clumsy but that doesn’t stop the soft grunts he makes, or the swipe of his tongue over mine.
A buzzing I’ve never felt before flitters beneath my skin, stealing my breath with each second that Tristen’s allows me to stay pressed against him.
“Fuck, baby,” he moans against my mouth, and I feel it all the way to my groin. To my toes. To each of my past lives and in all of my next ones.
It’s not until I hear the sheet rip that I realize his grip left my knee and fisted in the fabric—the knee that’s nearly straddling him—and I yank back with panting breath.
“What’s—”
“Jesus Christ, Emmett,” he almost whines, his head tipping back enough to show me the thick cords of muscle running down his throat and how tight they are. “I’m so goddamn hard, it hurts.”
His chest heaves with his racing breaths, a flush to his face that makes mine feel hot.
Suck it back—
I shake my head, my intake whistling.
Don’t ruin this. He can’t ruin this.
“I-I don’t know wh—” I huff, cutting myself off and instead whisper a soft, “fuck this.”
The whimper that escapes Tristen’s throat as I settle my weight on top of him makes it easier to focus on him. His reaction. The way his shocked eyes flip to mine and get swallowed up by the black center until there’s nothing but desire staring back at me through thick, black-rimmed glasses.
At least, I think that’s what it is. It’s what all those actors looked like in the movies when they were about to kiss someone.
I want Tristen to kiss me again.
Just the thought of his lips claiming mine again has a shiver coursing down my spine.
I want him to do more than just kiss me.
His hands lay beside him, his jaw tight as he watches me grab each of his wrists and flatten his palms to my hips.
He’s hard. Standing straight up in his shorts and settled between my legs.
I’m just as hard and right there. So close to touching him.
“Can I … please, baby, can I touch you?”
My nod is as immediate as it was earlier, this swirling thing beneath my skin buzzing louder and harder.
Tristen’s just as fast to respond with a sure grip to the back of my neck, hauling me down to devour my lips once again. It has sounds I can’t explain exploding from my mouth and into his as our bodies pin our erections between us.
The pressure is … amazing. Terrifying. Consuming.
I can feel his length slotting along mine through the fabric, the pulse of him so hard, it’s almost like a stroking grip.
“Okay?” he gasps out against my lips, his fingers curling into my hip. My neck.
God, it’s like he’s everywhere.
“Yes,” I moan against his tongue, my hips flexing on their own accord.
“Fuuuck, bubbles, do that again.”
I do and his fingers twitch against me.
“So good,” I whimper, my voice not sounding like my own, my hips rolling against his.
“So, so good, baby. You feel so damn good.”
The words cover me like a warm blanket, safe and inviting.
It makes my stomach twist up tight, a roil building low just like last time I was in Tristen’s lap.
“Don’t stop,” he rasps out, his grip of my hip pulling me closer, then dragging me back. Over and over, I grind against him at his direction, our pace slow but deliberate. “God, don’t stop, Emmett.”
Mouth against mine, our panting breath mingling, Tristen’s eyes roll back behind his glasses.
That coil in my stomach winds tighter.
“Fucking … amazing … so good … I’mgonnafuckingcomebaby,” he chokes out and arches his head back, his glasses sliding up his nose.
The caged sounds he makes has my skin tingling, my movements stuttering.
My balls drawing.
Warmth floods between our bodies, the wet heat soaking my length.
I’m not sure if it’s mine, or if his is seeping through.
Leaning close, I kiss the fluttering pulse of his neck as he gasps, his chest pumping hard beneath me.
“O-okay?” he rasps out, licking his lips as his arms come up to drape over my shoulders.
I keep my face buried in his neck, his scent filling my chest with something I have to business feeling.
Home.
“Y-yeah … I’m okay.”