Chapter 21 #3
Twisted this way, I’m frustrated by the lack of contact.
Without breaking the kiss, I plant both hands on the backrest and climb onto the bench to straddle him.
He spreads his hands and gathers the bunched fabric of my dress before grabbing my hips.
When I lower myself, settling in his lap, his fingertips dig into my skin reflexively, and he releases a soft groan.
I want to bottle it—that sound and this heady mix of power and powerlessness as his hands roam, and I move against the hard ridge in his pants.
He slides his hands up my sides, over my rib cage, until his thumbs swipe over my breasts—gentle, maddening—and I wiggle closer.
I’m trapped in my long skirt, and I rise to my knees to yank at the hem when Caleb finds my shins, circling both in his broad palms. The surety of his hands makes me shiver, and I realize, absently, that I’m letting him touch my scars.
I don’t shrink from him as he skates across the damaged skin, which is numb and oversensitive all at once.
He doesn’t linger there, though, instead finding my bare thighs with his hands as he trails his lips and teeth along my jaw, my neck, my clavicle.
His beard scrapes against my flesh and his hair tickles my neck.
It’s a delicious mix of sensations and textures.
I tug at his shirt, finding skin that’s silk over granite.
I am an electrical fire, a misfiring fuse; the blaze radiates from each inch of skin spoiled by his attention to every part of me still crying for contact.
He leans forward into my touch, as hungry for me as I am for him.
When his hands slip under my dress, hands splayed over my ass, I drag his mouth to mine, and my restraint snaps.
I can’t get close enough, I can’t feel enough.
We’re tangled in clothes—bunched up, pushed aside, in the way—as I rock against the fly of his jeans.
He pulls me toward him, tighter, faster.
Caleb ducks his head and lifts my hips until his mouth is over my breast, a force of suction and wetness through my dress. I gasp, and he pulls away, his eyes glassy and unfocused as he looks at me and says, “Is this too much? I feel a little crazy.”
I hold his gaze as I slip the spaghetti straps from my shoulders and fold the elastic top to my rib cage.
I’m bare underneath, and his eyes go wide as he takes me in.
I whimper when he circles my nipple with his tongue, tugging me into his mouth as his hands roam.
I’m impatient and needy and fumble with his belt, relishing the clank of metal and tug of leather before working at his button and zipper.
And then I cup him over his boxers, and he opens his mouth over my skin, teeth grazing me, panting, releasing a little groan from the back of his throat.
“Eden,” he says, but it’s more like a prayer.
I sneak under his waistband, and he lifts so we can shove his jeans and boxers down enough for me to free him.
He’s perfect in my palm—impossibly hard, tempting, and hot.
He makes the most delicious sound at my first touch, some combination of my name and gibberish.
But I’m not prepared when he tugs the layers of fabric twisted at my waist so that there’s nothing between us but the thin scrap of my underwear.
I feel feral and free, like a forest fire ready to burn this place down. He pulls the elastic of my underwear aside and circles me with expert, calloused fingertips, but it’s still not enough. I’m aching for him. For all of him. And now that I have a taste, I want to devour him.
“Caleb,” I say. “Please, please, please.” He bites the words off my lips as he pushes two fingers inside me, rubbing me with his thumb in maddening, relentless pressure.
My hand falters in its rhythm—I’m so lost to the brink of bliss.
Caleb knows how to touch me, how to take me toward something that’s often elusive to me.
Thoughts fly in and out of my head, pushed aside by the primal need for this and more and all.
I don’t care that it’s fast, that the last person to touch me was a man I vowed would be the last, that I’m nearing climax in the cab of a truck with a man I didn’t know two weeks ago and didn’t like mere days ago.
I don’t care that there’s no guarantee but this moonlit moment at the lake, or that I may regret this tomorrow.
But regret or not, I know I will replay it and relish that I had him once.
I am close, deliciously close, but I guide his hand away, reaching into my purse as I send a silent thank-you to Cassie for her lack of boundaries.
Caleb scans my face for answers, and his brows pinch in confusion, then relief, as I find a condom.
He snatches it from me, sheathing himself in a few fluid movements as I rise onto my knees, positioning him against my entrance.
His breath hitches—wonder in his wide, shimmering eyes—before he smiles.
He holds my face in both palms and watches my reaction when I sink down an inch at a time.
“I swear I didn’t plan this.” Caleb releases the words between gusts of breath.
“Didn’t even imagine it?”
He holds my hips steady, and I sense we’re both overwhelmed. I might explode from the pressure and pleasure and clawing need to bring us both to our knees.
“I imagined it,” he says with his smile pressed against my lips. “But not half dressed in my truck.” He exhales, still holding himself back, letting me lead, but it looks like it’s killing him.
I finally settle low, until he’s deliciously deep.
He kisses me as I move over him, and he slides his hands over each patch of exposed skin.
His touch is light and teasing at first, but then he rises to meet me, and our rhythm becomes desperate and greedy—his fingertips dig into flesh as if he’s hanging from a precipice.
I know the feeling. I match each thrust, straddling wider to take more of him, all of him, as I hover over the abyss of relief, worried it’ll topple me too soon and too intensely.
I want to keep it at bay and keep him inside me forever.
I want to suspend this rash and wild moment.
I want to hold on to how it feels to be possessed by a man as self-possessed as Caleb.
But I’m too wound up, and my body is in a hurry, even as my heart hauls it back.
Caleb groans with his mouth open on my breast, his teeth grazing my skin, tongue finding the peak and gaze locked on mine, until it’s all too much, and I burst into flames.
I scream his name like an incantation, a chant, as my orgasm tears through me, cresting and cresting before I come down in shuddering waves.
I lose all sense of control—my limbs limp and hips heavy—and Caleb holds me steady as he drives into me once, twice, three times, before he buries his face in my neck to muffle the sound of his pleasure.
Reality comes back to me in a fragmented array.
The starbursts behind my eyes fade to black, sensation returns to my limbs, and I hear the wind through the trees and the soft surf of the lake.
I feel the scratch of Caleb’s beard on my shoulder and the warm gust of his breath against my neck.
He hums and drags his mouth along my throat until we’re kissing again.
This kiss is slow, a half measure of soft lips and the give and take of a quiet conversation.
He wraps me in a hug so tight and intimate, that I wonder how we got here.
But also, how did it take so long? Caleb feels inevitable.
From the first glance of his intense gaze from across the bar to every combative, comforting moment since, I’ve wanted him.
And despite the absurdity that we’re two adults who just had sex in a truck on a random Monday night in spring, nothing about this feels wrong or off or uncomfortable.
I drop my head into the crook of his neck and lift my hips so he can pull out of me. I breathe in his sweet, salty scent—wood, soap, and something primal. His proximity makes me drunk.
“We just had sex in your truck,” I say, a laugh caught in my throat.
He groans but then chuckles, grabbing my ass and shifting me higher onto his lap. “We did. You make me a little unhinged.”
My inner thigh scrapes against his open belt buckle, my foot hits the steering wheel, and my bad leg is throbbing at this awkward angle, and I don’t care. His hand travels up my back until he grips my neck, nudging my mouth to his again.
“Same. I’m not usually this . . .” But I don’t know how to finish the sentence, because I don’t want to admit how restrained, careful, and measured I’ve been.
I like this new freedom to feel, to let this beautiful, complicated man own me, to permit this unleashed version of myself to take what it wants when it wants it.
He smiles against my lips, and I think this is my favorite version of Caleb, too.
His hands skate over me, carefully adjusting my underwear and dress so I’m decent, unfolding the skirt until it hangs behind me.
As diligently as he pulled me apart, he puts me back together.
But I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.
I’ve never had sex like this, driven by need and left sated and calm.
“I like you,” he says, and I can’t help but laugh. He’s surprisingly cute.
“You let me defile you, so I suspected you might, finally.”
“I’ve always liked you.” He kisses my jaw, my cheek, my temple, resting there as he speaks into my hair. “The first time I saw you, I lost my train of thought. You were stunning, and I felt like I knew you or I was supposed to.”
My heart hiccups, stuttering to a stop before flooding me with warmth.
I remind myself that he recognized me from the portraits lining the walls at the house he grew up in, and maybe from a quick glance at Sonny’s funeral.
It’s not deeper than that. But it doesn’t explain why I felt the same way, why I couldn’t look away from him, why I’ve never felt this drawn to anyone.
I can’t say these scary words aloud, so I wrap my arms around his neck, holding on to the moment like it’s mine to keep.
“After we met the first time, you left the bar without getting my name or number.”
“I thought you were just here for the weekend,” he says. “And I knew I’d want to see you again.”
“Well, you’re in luck. We can’t seem to go a day without running into each other now.”
“I want to do more than run into you in your mom’s kitchen.
I want to take you out, take you home, and take my time with you.
” When he talks to me like this, I’d be willing to strip and let him take me all night, right here, but he’s not done.
“And I don’t want to wonder where we stand.
I don’t want to worry this was just some impulse of yours after a bad day. ”
His candor is a key in the lock of my reserve, tempting me to be honest as well. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” I say. “But this could get complicated. This is a small town, and I don’t know how my mom would react.”
“And I’ve never introduced Abby to anyone.”
The weight of the responsibility falls over me like a bucket of cool water, and I shiver. “Never?”
He shakes his head. “She’s been through a lot.”
I kiss him. The kiss is for all the times I wanted to before I could, for all the times his unexpected kindness made me breathless, for all the ways in which he’s such a better man than most. I kiss him because, in a different universe, he’s the father I’d want for my kids, and I’m glad sweet Abby has him in this one.
“Then we’ll just keep it to ourselves until . . .” But the reality intrudes like a ticking clock. Until when? There’s no use in telling anyone and confusing Abby and my mom, because we can’t last. “But I’m not going to be here long.”
He’s silent for a moment, pulling back until he’s looking into my eyes. He’s lit up from the moon, all soft light and shadow. “I’ll take however much time I can get.”
Time. Time is simple. I’ll give him as much as we can salvage, in secret or sunlight. But as my body shivers from the aftershocks of him, as my mind reels from the vulnerability he’s voiced, I worry I’ll have to give up more than my time. I’m afraid he might take my heart in the process.