Chapter 21 #3
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and her eyes follow the movement. Her face colors deeper, but she doesn't look away.
I move closer.
Slowly.
I brush my mouth over hers.
She tastes herself there and makes a tiny sound against me, half embarrassment, half hunger. Her hands come up to my face. At first, her touch is careful, almost testing, as if she wants to make sure I am real before she decides what to do with me.
Then her fingers curl against my jaw.
She kisses me harder.
The room narrows to that. Her mouth. Her hands. The heat of her body is still open beneath mine. The stunned silence after my confession pressing between us, asking for an answer she doesn't owe me, and I have no right to demand.
I pull back first.
It costs me.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I tell her.
Her eyes search mine like she is looking for the trap. The fine print. The clause that lets love become another thing someone can revoke.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispers.
I press my mouth to her palm. “Neither do I.” I shrug. “And it’s three of us. Will we fuck this? I hope not because I love the two of you too fucking much to lose you.”
I lower myself over her until our bodies touch from thigh to chest, careful not to trap her. She lets me come close. More than lets me. Her knees part around my hips, and the movement is so trusting, so instinctive, it knocks the air from my lungs.
“I love you,” she says.
The words leave her in a rush, almost like she tried to catch them and failed. Her eyes widen the second they are out. Panic flashes across her face, immediate and naked.
Then she says it again, quieter, “I love you.”
Fuck.
My forehead drops to hers.
Her hands tighten in my hair. “Creed.”
“I’m here.”
“I need you inside me.”
My body answers before my mind can pretend to be civilized.
Still, I make myself lift my head. Make myself look at her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says. No joke this time. “I’m sure. I want you. I want this. I want you close enough that I can’t talk myself out of believing you.”
My hand comes to her face, and I kiss her once, hard enough to make a promise, soft enough not to bruise. Then I force myself to leave her for the few seconds it takes to reach the drawer.
Her eyes track me.
That should not undo me, but it does. The way she watches. As if she is afraid I might come back different. As if tenderness has a time limit.
I shove my pants and boxers down with less grace than I’d prefer, kick them aside, and reach for the drawer.
I grab the condom, tear it open with hands that are no longer as controlled as I would like, and roll it on. She watches that too, breath uneven, lips parted. When I move back over her, she reaches for me.
She brings my mouth to hers before I can say anything that might protect me. Her kiss is deep and a little desperate, and I feel the exact second she decides not to run from her own confession. Her legs slide around my hips. Her body lifts to mine.
I guide myself to her and pause.
Her breath stops.
“Look at me,” I say.
She does.
I push inside slowly.
Her mouth opens against mine, and the sound she makes is quiet, stunned, almost hurt by how good it feels. I stop the second I’m in, not all the way, just enough to let her body take me. Her hands grip my back. Her nails press into my skin through my shirt.
“More,” she whispers.
I give her more.
Inches. Breath. Restraint. The last of whatever distance I thought I could keep.
She takes me with her eyes open, and that is what makes it feel less like sex and more like surrender. I kiss her because I need somewhere to put the feeling.
She kisses me back like she is angry at love for arriving with my face.
I move slowly at first. Too slow for my body. Exactly slowly enough for hers. Her heels press into the backs of my thighs, urging me deeper, and I give her what she asks for without making her beg. She has spent too much of her life having to earn care. Not here. Not from me.
She pulls me down and kisses me so hard our teeth catch.
I lose the careful rhythm.
My hips drive deeper, my hand slides under her knee, lifting her open, and she cries out into my mouth. The sound takes the last clean thought from me.
This is not fucking.
It has heat. Hunger. Need. It has the raw edge of our bodies taking what they have wanted for too long.
Still, it is not just that.
This is me loving her with the only part of myself I haven’t learned how to edit.
Her body tightens around me. I feel her getting close again, feel it in the way her breath trips, the way her hands stop moving and simply hold on. I press my forehead to hers.
I slide my hand between us, find her clit, and touch her the way I learned minutes ago. Her body answers instantly. Her eyes go wide, almost panicked, and I slow my hips, keeping her right there, right on the edge with me.
“Oh fuck,” she whispers. “Creed—”
“I’ve got you.”
She comes with my name in her mouth, her body locking around mine, her face turned into my neck like she wants to hide and be held at the same time. I follow her a breath later, buried deep, my own release tearing through me with a quiet violence that leaves me stunned.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
She is wrapped around me, one hand still in my hair, the other flat between my shoulder blades like she is making sure I stay.
I do.
I stay inside her. I stay over her. I stay in the quiet after the confession, after the damage, after the pleasure, after every door we opened without agreeing what to do with the rooms beyond them.
Her lips brush my temple.
“Creed?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m scared.”
I close my eyes.
There is the truest thing either of us has said.
I turn my face into her neck and hold her closer.
“Me too.”
She exhales, and the tension leaves her by degrees, not gone, just shared.
That is when I know.
Not because of the sex. Not because of the words. Not even because she loves me.
Because she told me she was afraid and didn’t apologize for it.
I kiss her shoulder, calm now in a way I don't deserve.
This is where I begin.