Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
RYDER
Just like with every night this week, as soon as we enter Elizabeth’s apartment, we can’t keep our hands off each other. I have ten years to make up for. Ten long years of wanting her to be mine. And now that I have her in my arms, I will never let her go again.
We stumble down the hallway to her bedroom, not once breaking our kiss. Elizabeth jumps into my arms, the slit of her dress opening when she wraps her legs around me. Her tongue does wicked things with mine, and my cock, which has been hard most of the evening, wishes her delectable lips were wrapped around it instead.
“Ryder, I need you to make love to me more than I need my next breath.” She pulls the pins from her hair, and it falls down her back and shoulders in a blond waterfall. “I want you to strip me out of this dress and fuck me. Right now,” she demands.
There’s nothing in the world that can stop me from doing just that.
“Hold on, baby,” I tell her before tossing her on the bed and crashing down on top of her.
“Get this damn dress off me.”
Elizabeth must decide that I’m going too slow. She takes charge, unknotting the sash at her waist and slithering out of her dress, so all that remains is her sinful-as-fuck pink lace bra and matching panties.
“You are so goddamn sexy.” I pull my shirt up and over my head.
She goes straight for the button of my jeans. When she gets it undone, she jumps off the bed and kneels to push my jeans and boxers down my legs. The sight of her on her knees in front of me short-circuits my brain. I can’t believe this is happening. This is really, finally, truly happening. Just the sight of her almost naked body alone has me ready to explode like a virgin prepubescent boy.
Elizabeth doesn’t help matters when she fixates on my dick. I watch as she licks her lips, raises those gorgeous green eyes up at me, and slides her tongue across the top slit.
“God, baby,” I moan, sinking my fingers into her hair.
She wraps her hand around the base of my cock and takes me deep into her warm, wet mouth.
Elizabeth works her sultry magic, the vibrations of her moans as she sucks bringing me closer to the point of no return. She glides her mouth down and back up again one last time before releasing me with a kiss to the tip.
Her hands grasp my hips, and she works her body up mine, never once breaking eye contact. I watch with lust-filled eyes as she unhooks and removes her bra, then pushes down her panties until she is standing completely naked in front of me.
We both seem to understand that what’s about to happen is something monumental. The promise of it causes our frantic movements to slow and the flames of our desire to simmer. Now is not the time to go fast. It’s a time for exploration. A time for us to intimately discover each other. A time for us to experience the slow burn of pleasure, not just the quick release of passion.
A quiet falls over the darkened bedroom. I lightly rub my thumb back and forth over her bottom lip. She gifts me with a smile that makes my heart expand and ache at the same time. Elizabeth lays her palms flat against my chest and turns them wide, feeling the bunched hardness contrasting with the softness of the dark scattering of hair that covers it.
“Your body is magnificent,” she murmurs, her tongue outlining my tattoo.
A couple of months after Elizabeth disappeared, Jayson, Julien, and I went to a bar, and using our fake IDs, got completely hammered. We needed just one night’s escape from our shared misery. As soon as the bar closed, we staggered our way to the nearby tattoo parlor, and each of us got her name inked on our chests right above our hearts. I had the guy add a princess crown and notes to the song she wrote for me.
Elizabeth takes her time examining my tattoo before she moves her hands across my chest, down my abs, then traces her fingers up my spine to my shoulders. Her teasingly light touch sets off a million explosions across my skin. With her mouth, she begins to explore every part of me that she just touched with her hands, making love to my body with her gentle kisses.
When her mouth makes its way back to mine, I pull her tightly to me and devour her, needing her to feel what I’m feeling. When her head lolls back on her shoulders, it exposes her graceful neck. I use my teeth and tongue to hit every pleasure point, her gasps and moans telling me everything I need to know.
I spin her around and press my front to her back. Sliding one hand under her breast, I cup its fullness, teasing her nipple into a tight bud. Elizabeth widens her stance when I seek her heat, and I waste no time trailing my fingers through her folds, wet with desire. She trembles when I penetrate her with two fingers, my thumb pressing down on her clit. The delirious moans she makes are headier than any aphrodisiac.
“Ryder, please.”
I remove my fingers, her essence coating them. She turns in my arms and takes my wrist, pulling my index finger to her mouth and sucking it clean. Kissing her, I steal her taste from her lips as we tumble onto the bed. Her legs go around my waist, ankles locking together, her arms around my neck, mine around her torso. We meet in another deep, soul-wrenching kiss. Just one little push, one tiny thrust of my hips, and I will finally be able to claim the only woman I have ever loved.
But there’s a problem.
“I don’t have a condom.”
When I try to lift up, Elizabeth shakes her head. “I’m on the pill. I want you, Ryder. All of you.” She curls her fingers into the cheeks of my ass and pulls me back down.
She wants me to take her bare?
“Elizabeth, are you sure?”
Something deep and pure and primal radiates from her gorgeous green eyes. There is no hesitation in her response.
“I am more than sure.”
“I’m clean,” I tell her, and then to make sure she truly understands the importance of what she’s asking me to do, I confess, “This is my first time.”
She caresses my cheek. “For me, too.”
Elizabeth doesn’t remember being with Jayson, so for her, this feels like her first time.
And she chose me.
“I want you so much, Ryder,” she whispers. And then the one thing I have so desperately wanted to hear from her passes through her kiss-swollen lips. “I love you.” She frames my face between her hands. “I love you, Ryder. I hope it’s not too soon for me to say it, but I need to. I feel so much for you. It’s scary and thrilling and overwhelming. But I need to say it. I need you to know. The day in the student center when you found me, I had a memory of you that night. I remembered you holding me. I remembered you telling me that you loved me, and I remembered saying it back.”
My heart pounds like thunder as her words settle between us, a wish I’ve longed to hear for years but never dared to believe would come true. My chest swells with a wave of emotions so consuming, I can barely contain them—a joy so fierce it borders on pain.
Her declaration propels my determination to claim her, possess her, and finally make her mine.
“I have loved you since the day we met,” I tell her, slowly pushing my cock past her resistance. Her sultry gasp melts into a low moan of satisfaction. I’ll never get enough of that sound. “I have loved you for a lifetime.”
I watch her face, wanting to memorize our first time, how beautiful she looks. I take a moment to breathe her in, savoring the scent of her skin. The fragrance of us.
“I loved you before, I love you now. I will love you always, Elizabeth.”
With one final, lingering kiss, I sink my cock into paradise. Her body bows to meet my thrust, and a long sigh of pleasure escapes her lips.
“You feel so good,” she moans.
My body feels overly sensitized and completely aware of hers. I have never felt anything like this before. This woman is my forever. She’s everything I have ever wanted, everything that I will ever need. And she’s finally mine .
I drive into her, over and over again, lifting her leg higher so I’m able to hit the spot my fingers had the pleasure of discovering only days earlier. The place I know will cause her to detonate within seconds.
I bury my face in her chest, kissing her breasts. Elizabeth arches in my arms, calling out my name, as her orgasm obliterates every nerve ending in my body. Her release triggers my own, the intense rapture of coming inside her exquisite.
We’re slicked with sweat, twin breaths coming out in harsh exhales.
Elizabeth hums a sated murmur. “That was—” She presses her nose into the crook of my shoulder.
“Too quick. I promise to make it up to you.” I cover her face in velvety kisses.
Her smile blossoms with her laugh. “Not what I was going to say.”
I nuzzle behind her ear. “What were you going to say?”
“Being with you was…it was… everything .”
I raise up on shaky arms, not wanting to crush her. “It was more than everything,” I reply, so completely happy. “I love you, Elizabeth.”
She tilts her head and kisses my hand. “And I love you. You were perfect. This is perfect.”
I roll over onto my back, bringing her to sit on top of me. We’re still intimately connected.
Tenderly pushing damp strands of her hair behind her ear, I tell her, “I’m not good with words, and this is probably going to come out sounding corny, but thank you.”
“For what?”
I press my hand to her chest. “For the gift of your heart. And your love.” I trace the butterflies along her side. “And your body.”
Her back curves in a sensuous arch under my touch.
“I love how you touch me. You make me feel so safe. So protected. And what you said isn’t corny. It’s how I feel, too.”
The way she’s looking at me stirs my passion again, and I start to get hard while still inside her.
Her eyes brighten, and she gives me the cheekiest grin.
“Want to take a shower?”
She rolls her hips forward, then back. “I think we have something more important to do first.”
She bends down to take my mouth, her hips rocking, picking up speed, my cock fully hard now.
Not until hours later do we make it to the shower.