Chapter Twenty-Eight Barrett #2
She hummed, easing her legs from around my waist until her feet touched the ground. Having the use of both of my hands meant I could touch more, and touch her I did. Her breasts were high and full, and I skimmed my fingers over the tips until she shivered, her eyelids fluttering shut.
“You’re such a shit,” she sighed. “You make me think I’m in control, but I’m not.”
I dipped down, my hands coasting over her hips until her backside was firmly in my palms. I wrenched her tight against me until I could talk against her lips.
“You’re not,” I whispered. We kissed again, so deep and so wet, my appetite for her ratcheting up to a dangerous degree as our bodies pressed together.
When she broke away, Lily’s eyes flared with the unmistakable light of challenge, and she gripped my hand, marching us toward my bedroom. Then she paused. “Wait. Which one is yours? I’ve never been up here.”
Since my mouth was busy skimming over the line of her shoulder, I laughed quietly against her skin. I gripped her hips and propelled her forward. “Second door on the left.”
“Big bed,” she said as we cleared the door. “Not much else.”
“Don’t need much else.” From behind, I cupped her breasts in my hands, and Lily arched her back with a sigh, her hands pushing at her leggings until I had no choice but to let go.
Worth it, though, as she shimmied them down her long legs, and I got my first look at the incredible sight of her long, lean body.
There was a flash of ink on her shoulder blade.
When she turned, I could hardly tear my eyes away from the impossibly small lace scrap of underwear cut high on her hips.
There was ink there, too, just underneath the strap.
So much to discover. I shoved at the waistband of my joggers and pushed them down my legs.
Lily’s lips curved into a smug smile and she licked at her bottom lip. “Oh yes. This works for me. I can deal with all your aforementioned flaws if you know what to do with that.”
My muscles tensed from the restraint it took not to throw her on the mattress and wrench her legs open.
“On the bed. Time for show-and-tell, pretty girl.”
When she reached the foot of the bed, she spun around slowly, her hands coasting down her body in a sensual way that spoke of comfort in her own skin, especially as she carefully tugged off the lace underwear.
“I’m on birth control,” she said conversationally, like she wasn’t standing stark naked in front of me for the first time. God, look at her, I thought. My gaze lingered over every inch, every curve, slowly making my way back up to her face.
“Good,” I said roughly. “Because I don’t own condoms.”
Her lips curled up in a secretive little smile. “And if I told you I wanted you to wear one?”
My eyes didn’t move from hers. “Then I’d go out in the storm of the fucking century to get them.”
Lily’s gaze burned bright and feverish when I took myself in hand, her tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip. “That wouldn’t be very neighborly of me. Let’s not do that.”
“Let’s not,” I managed. “You said you had something to show me.”
“Why don’t you try and find it?”
My eyes locked pointedly on the space between her legs, and she tipped her head back, a throaty laugh filling the room and warming my chest. “Not that, you fiend.”
I strode toward her, catching her in my arms as we toppled onto the bed, our mouths fused in a searing kiss, one with tongue and teeth and the trading of breaths from her lungs to mine. My hips worked restlessly, my hardness pressing against her stomach as I stretched out on top of her.
Slowly, I worked my way down her body, stopping to kiss along her collarbone. Then between her breasts, lingering on the right breast, then the left, blowing first on the tips until she arched her back; then I kissed each one. Soft, sucking kisses. Worshipful kisses.
I followed the line of her ribs, my hands pressing her thighs open so I could slide my fingers between her legs.
“You . . . you’re not looking hard enough,” she gasped, gripping my head as I sucked on the skin over her belly button.
“Sure I am,” I said. I bit the curve of her hip bone, and she flinched as a breathy laugh escaped her perfect lips.
My fingers worked between her legs slowly, where she was wet and soft and hot, and when she moaned my name, I had to close my eyes to fight the snapping urge to push up and inside.
To rut and claim and listen to all the ways I could make this gorgeous creature say my name.
All the ways she could scream yes and more and right there.
I wanted to hear it all. Wanted to make sense of all the things building in my chest at the sight of her in my bed.
I pressed my forehead to her trembling stomach and breathed her in, then added my thumb between her legs, and she raked her fingernails along my shoulders.
I set my chin on her stomach and watched.
Watched as she tipped over the edge. Watched as her eyes glazed over and her chest flushed pink and pretty.
“Beautiful,” I whispered. “You’re so beautiful.”
She sighed as she came down, her hand threading through my hair.
Still, I watched the play of emotions over her face.
The way she licked her lips, her slow blinks as her body settled after such a violent burst of pleasure.
My eyes tracked over her heaving chest, the pink flush over her breasts, and the rise and fall of her stomach as she caught her breath.
And it was as I watched that I saw what she wanted to show me: reddened skin underneath her ribs, the side I hadn’t kissed, hadn’t touched. Reddened skin and ink.
Slowly, I smoothed my palm over the soft skin of her thigh and up her waist, dragging my fingers underneath the newest mark on her body.
She hummed in satisfaction. “You’re getting warmer,” she sighed. “Much, much warmer.”
I leaned up on one elbow and carefully ghosted my fingers over a delicate silhouette of new ink.
A snowflake.
Lily cupped the side of my face, her thumb rubbing lightly over my bottom lip.
“That’s for you,” she said, her eyes full of something she might not want to say yet. But I saw it. I saw it so fucking clearly that my ribs pinched. “I got it before I went and yelled at your brother,” she said sheepishly.
“Lily,” I said, completely undone by this woman, “I don’t know what to say.”
She took my hand and laid it over her heart. “Do you even remember what you said to me? When I got the call from the vet?”
I shook my head, let my palm absorb the steady thrumming of her heartbeat under her skin.
“Let me come with you,” she said. “Let me. Like it was for you. You stepped into something you didn’t even understand, showing up for me in a way that no one had in a very, very long time.
” She closed her eyes and pulled on my arm until I was eye level with her again.
“I didn’t ever want to forget that moment.
” She cradled my jaw and pulled me down for a sweet kiss.
“Didn’t want to forget you,” she murmured against my lips.
She wouldn’t. I wasn’t letting her go, not after this. There was something unbelievably precious about the way she’d allowed herself to tiptoe into these feelings. At her own pace, in a way so uniquely her. She did it not knowing if I’d ever be aware, and somehow that made it even more humbling.
I kissed her again. Slower and deeper. Then again. And again. The weighty emotion turned a corner, heat nipping at its heels until flames licked at my spine. She clutched at my back as I held her to my chest and slid my tongue into her waiting mouth, her leg hitching up on my side.
There was a time for words, and this wasn’t it. Everything inside me screamed to take this moment, to make her mine, let Lily make me hers.
I already was. God, I was already hers.
Did she know? I wanted her to know she owned me, in all the ways that mattered.
I reached between us and lined myself up, stealing her mouth in a slow, tongue-heavy kiss as I worked my hips forward. She whimpered into my mouth as I pulled back and then pushed in farther.
Heat and warmth, tight and perfect, had me gritting my teeth, and I let my weight settle on her, gripping her wrists and holding them on the bed above her head.
Lily tossed her head back as I thrust in again, deeper this time.
Harder this time. Each sharp roll of my body wrenched sweet moans from her throat, had her breasts rubbing against my chest. Her skin was so warm and firm, her body sweet and responsive.
A possessive urge caught at the back of my throat, words I’d never said to another woman helplessly seeking a release.
“Mine,” I growled, unable to stop myself.
“Yes.”
I snapped my hips forward. “Mine.”
Lily arched underneath me eagerly, her hips rolling to meet the motion of my own, her hands clutching at mine where I held them down.
Everything I felt about her crystallized, the world going slow and soft as I let those feelings pool steadily in my chest, bleeding out through my entire body as I worked her into a writhing mess against the mattress.
This was worth waiting for. No matter what I’d been through or what I’d missed over the years, every minute, every day had been worth it to get to this place with her. I’d wait another decade for this woman and she’d still have me on my knees.
In the cradle of her thighs, I pitched forward. Harder again. And harder. She let out a sobbing moan that set my blood on fire. Sex had never felt better, sharper, clearer, more perfect than it did right now.
“Fuck, Lily,” I groaned. “It’s so good. You feel so good.”
“Yes. Yes, Barrett.”
My body screamed to go faster and harder, to let sweat pool on her skin until she broke apart, until I did too. But my heart wanted to draw this out, to move slow and let the pleasure linger, let it build until she was incoherent for a release.
Wanting both sides of that coin—the driving urge for raw, sweaty sex crashing against the part of me that wanted this to last forever, wanting her in all the ways I could have her—came with a lucid burst of truth.
“I love you,” I said tightly, knowing it might be too soon, knowing she may not say it back, but I didn’t care. The words came from someplace right and true, tied to my heart as we kissed through each snap of my hips. “I love you.”
“More,” she gasped. “Right there. Oh, right there.”
I held her tighter, releasing her wrists so I could brace myself. Through heavy-lidded eyes, sweat gathering at the base of my spine, muscles burning, I unleashed all the things I wasn’t able to say in the smack of my skin against hers.
That I wanted her forever. Wanted her with my ring on her finger. Wanted to see her round with a child someday. It was nothing more than a flicker of a thought, no longer than a heartbeat, but heat licked up my back and chest, a territorial flame that caught and spread.
She was practically mindless now, bracing her hand on the headboard while I worked ceaselessly between her legs.
Her breath caught on a ragged moan, and I felt the moment she tipped over, her body a trembling, needy, whimpering mess beneath me. Her legs shook around my sides as she sobbed my name.
That was all it took. The heat gathered in my hips, sharp and blinding, a roar of sensation so big that I felt the tremor in my bones.
“Lily,” I groaned, my lips dragging over her skin as I slowed my thrusts, came down from the dizzying peak.
Moments later, drained and exhausted and so fucking satisfied that it was amazing I was conscious, I buried my head into the curve of her shoulder, and her hands smoothed over my back as my weight slumped over hers.
I gathered her in my arms and turned us onto our sides, unwilling to pull from her body just yet. We kissed softly, the sweat cooling on my back as she dragged her hands over my skin. Her expression was bliss, and it made me smile as I pushed the tangled hair off her face.
“Oh yes,” she sighed, kissing my cheek, the edge of my jaw, then the corner of my mouth. “This will work for me just fine.”
I laughed, kissing her more deeply, coasting my hands up and down her back. “Good.”
Lily grinned as she pulled away, a devious light in her eyes that twisted my heart with a pleasant ache. “You love me, huh?”
I let out a disgruntled sigh. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
I kissed her again, lingering a bit longer this time. “Probably.” Then I tickled her side. “And you got a tattoo for me. What does that say?”
Her eyes softened. “Oh, I can’t tell you that yet,” she said quietly.
My heart swelled, hope surging in my chest. “No?”
“No.” She snuggled against my chest and sighed. “Can’t make it too easy on you.”
I smiled against the top of her head. “Yeah, I’d hate that.”