Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Something in him exhales. His forehead drops briefly to mine, and his eyes close for just a second. When he opens them again, there is something quieter and more certain in them, the question still there, but the terror of it is reduced to something he can carry.
“I need you to feel every single second of this,” he says, low and direct. “I’ve been wanting you for so long, Sophia.”
“Then have me,” I say.
His mouth finds my neck and breasts, beginning to travel, slowly and deliberately, his lips and tongue tracing a path down my stomach that makes my muscles contract beneath him. My hands move from his hair to the sheets because I need something to hold onto.
“Tate…”
“Let me,” he says against my skin. “Let me have you. I want to taste you. I need your scent on my tongue.” His mouth presses against the inside of my thigh, and I gasp. “You’re so fuckin’ perfect, Sophia. God, you do things to me no one else ever has.”
The words move through me like a current.
And then his mouth is where I need it most.
I stop breathing entirely.
His hands spread across my hips, holding me steady, completely certain, and his mouth moves against me with that same relentless, unhurried patience he gives to everything. He reads every sound, sharp intake of breath, and involuntary lift of my hips toward him.
“Tate, I can’t…”
“Yes, you can.” His response is low and commanding. “Give it to me.”
His tongue keeps moving, steady, building, and when his fingers push inside me slowly, I cry out, my hands gripping his hair, my back arching off the mattress.
“You’re so wet,” he breathes out against me. “You taste incredible, Sophia. Absolutely incredible.”
“Tate, please…”
“Let go,” he says. “I want to feel you let go.”
His fingers curl, and his tongue moves. I shatter completely and entirely, his name torn from my throat, my whole body shaking through wave after wave while he keeps going, drawing every last tremor out of me until I have nothing left.
I am lying there afterward, breathing hard and feeling genuinely, completely light.
He slowly moves back up my body, pressing his lips to my stomach, ribs, and collarbone, as if he is in no hurry to be done with any part of me, and lies over me on his forearms, his eyes finding mine.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
“Hey,” I manage back.
His eyes move over my face, completely open in a way I have never seen from him before. Unguarded and entirely his.
“You okay?”
I look up at him, at his green eyes, his jaw, the tattoos, and I feel the strength of him above me, and something so complete moves through me that I can’t speak for a moment.
“More than okay,” I say.
He almost smiles.
His forehead drops to mine and stays there, not moving, just breathing, the two of us in the morning quiet with everything that has just shifted sitting warm and certain between us. I close my eyes and feel the full weight of this moment and let myself have it completely.
Then he moves.
Slowly at first, deep and unhurried, like he is learning the feel of me, like he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it. My hands find his back, and I feel the muscles moving beneath my palms with every stroke.
And his heart is still hammering. I can feel it against my chest, where our bodies press together, that rapid, insistent beat that has nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with what this means to him.
This man quietly carries everything, never lets anything show, and his heartbeat right now is the most honest thing he has ever said to me.
It undoes me completely.
I exhale his name against his jaw, and he turns his face into my hair.
“God, Sophia,” he breathes out. “You feel incredible. You have no i-idea…” His voice breaks slightly on the last word, and I feel that break somewhere deep, because this is Tate, who keeps everything contained, files everything away, doesn’t let anything show, and he can’t contain this.
He can’t contain me. That knowledge does something extraordinary to every part of me.
I pull him closer, my legs wrapping around him, drawing him deeper, and he groans against my throat, low and rough, his hips pressing into mine with more intention now, the slow, deliberate rhythm beginning to build into something considerably less controlled.
“Eyes on me,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at me. His eyes are burning, completely open, nothing careful left in them. It’s just him, this moment, and everything he’d been holding back for months. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” I breathe out. “I’m right here.”
Something moves across his face at that, the relief of a man who has been alone in something for a very long time and has finally been found in it.
Then he moves harder.
The rhythm changes, deeper and more urgent. I gasp, my fingers dig into his back, and he buries his face in my neck. I feel him everywhere, every stroke deliberate and building, his mouth against my skin saying things that come out broken and half finished, because he is past the point of words.
“You feel so good,” he manages against my throat. “Sophia, you feel so—”
“Don’t stop,” I say. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
“I’m right here,” he whispers. “I’m right here.”
His hand slips between us, finding exactly where I need it, his thumb moving while he moves inside me, and I cry out, my head falling back, the combination of it building into something I have absolutely no defenses against.
“That’s it,” he says against my jaw, his voice rough and completely undone. “Give me that. Give me everything.”
The pressure builds, wave after wave, and I feel myself tightening around him and hear the sound he makes at that, something between a groan and my name, his rhythm faltering as his own control begins to slip entirely.
“Sophia…” His voice is rough, urgent, completely him.
“Me too,” I breathe out. “Tate!”
When I come apart, it is completely. His name tears out of me, my entire body arches into him, and everything I’d been carrying for months releases at once in one long, devastating wave.
I feel him follow me over the edge a moment later, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, both hands gripping me like I am the only solid thing in the world, a low, broken sound against my skin that is entirely unguarded and entirely his.
Some moments are too full for words.
This is one of them.
Afterward, we lie in the quiet.
His arm is around me. My cheek is against his chest. His heartbeat is under my palm, the same heartbeat I’d woken to, the same warmth, but entirely different now in every way that matters.
The ceiling moves with the pool light.
Memphis is still at the door.
Lying there, I wait for what I am supposed to feel, the guilt, the grief, the weight of everything this means, and what arrives instead is simply this…
Warm.
Right.
“Hey,” Tate says quietly into my hair.
“Hey,” I say back.
A beat of quiet between us.
“You okay?” he asks.
Thinking about it honestly, the way I always try to, even when the honest answer is complicated. “Yeah,” I say. “I am.”
He is quiet for a moment, his hand moves slowly in my hair, absent, unthinking, the ease of a man who has stopped being careful.
“Me too,” he says.
The desert outside is beginning to lighten, that pale shift from dark to almost day, the sky going from black to deep gray blue at the edges. Lying against his chest, I watch it through the glass doors and try not to name what this is, what comes next, or what any of it means beyond this moment.
This moment is enough.
More than enough.
This moment is everything.