Chapter 39
39
When I woke up, I could see a glimpse of sun peeking through my bedroom window. I yawned, exhausted after staying up so late. We hadn’t wanted to stop touching or kissing but finally, we’d been unable to stay awake any longer.
I turned to see Ethan beside me asleep on his back. Like me, he was only wearing underwear, and I eagerly snuggled against his bare chest. His arm came around my shoulder and he mumbled, pulling me closer.
God, I could get used to waking up beside him.
‘Are you awake?’ he asked sleepily, his eyes still closed.
‘Yes but I don’t want to move,’ I said, placing a hand on his chest. It was warm and strong like him and as I stroked his skin, I marvelled how much had changed in such a short space of time. I would never have guessed I’d end up curled in his nook feeling like I had come home. ‘I ache in places I didn’t know I could ache.’
Ethan chuckled, and I felt the rumble through his chest. He leaned down to kiss the top of my head. ‘Who needs the gym?’ He tightened his arm around me and I sighed contently. There was a beat of silence. ‘So, you’re okay about last night?’ he asked softly.
I lifted my head off his chest slightly to see his eyes had opened and he was looking at me. ‘I have a feeling I won’t be able to stop smiling today and everyone will be very annoyed with me.’
‘I won’t be.’ He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine. ‘I want to make you smile every day.’ Then he looked at me so deeply, my heart started to speed up.
‘I think you can easily do that,’ I said, smiling happily.
He pulled me back for a kiss that turned hungry and frantic again. ‘Ruined,’ he gasped between kisses. ‘I’m totally, utterly ruined and I couldn’t be happier about it.’
‘Me too,’ I breathed as I shifted higher, pulling him closer, curving my body around him. Ethan grunted in approval, his free hand coming around to touch my face gently. I wrapped an arm around his neck and when our tongues met, my body was suddenly eager to carry on with last night. I was about to suggest that when his phone started to vibrate on the bedside table.
Ethan sighed as he pulled away. ‘I remember Juliette saying something about seeing a venue today. And then us all having dinner together.’
I groaned. ‘We have to leave this bed?’
‘If I want to keep Juliette as my friend and restaurant partner.’
We looked at one another as his phone stopped vibrating then giggled.
‘She doesn’t mean that much to me,’ Ethan added.
We kissed again then I leaned back. ‘Knowing Juliette, she’d never let you cut her out,’ I said.
‘Good point.’ Ethan leaned over to grab his phone and return her call, turning back to look and smile at me as he did so. Last night passed like a precious secret between us as Ethan arranged to meet her in an hour.
‘I suppose we’ll have to get up now,’ I said. I sat up in bed and stretched. I eyed the handcuffs tossed on the floor with empty condom wrappers, and I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe we actually used the handcuffs.’
‘You were very keen if I remember correctly,’ Ethan said, leaning over to plant a kiss on my bare back. His hands rubbed my shoulders and then he moved my hair over to one side to press gentle kisses under my ear and down my neck.
‘Don’t,’ I said, shivering. ‘When you kiss me there…’ My words disappeared as he trailed kisses down to my shoulder and then his hand moved up my side to cup one of my breasts. ‘There isn’t time.’
‘There’s always time,’ he whispered, stroking my skin. ‘So soft,’ he said. I turned my head to smile, and he caught my lips with his. His fingers found my nipple and it hardened instantly under his touch. ‘I don’t how I’ll keep my hands off you today,’ he said, pulling back to give me a mischievous grin.
‘Then don’t,’ I whispered, turning fully to face him. Hooking my arms around his neck, I pulled myself onto his lap. ‘Will Juliette ask what’s happened between us?’
‘There is no doubt. If she asks if we’re together, I want to say yes. What do you think?’ Ethan asked me, looking seriously into my eyes, his hands firm on my waist as I sat astride him, feeling that he was just as aroused as I was.
I beamed at him. ‘It’s a yes from me too. It’s yes to everything,’ I managed to murmur as Ethan moved my thong to the side and eased two fingers inside me, curling them in a way that hit me exactly where I needed it. I let out a moan, and he grunted contentedly. ‘We need to be quick,’ I gasped as his mouth came down onto my nipple, sucking it deeply into his mouth .
‘You know I don’t like that,’ he complained, flashing a grin up at me.
‘Ethan,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Please?’ I tried batting eyelashes at him.
He groaned but leaned over and grabbed a condom from the bedside table. ‘I don’t know how we’ve got ourselves into a situation that when you beg me, I have to do exactly what you want but…’ He slipped it on and lifted me easily on top of him, both of us sighing when he slipped inside me. ‘It feels so good.’
‘Hmmm,’ I agreed, rocking on top of him. ‘So good.’
Ethan gripped my hips. ‘No one else will make you feel this good.’
‘I don’t want anyone else,’ I breathed. Ethan’s hands moved up to stroke my breasts and I moved faster on top of him, both of us letting out an appreciative moan. I ran my hands through his hair. ‘Are we really together now?’
His hand moved down to touch me, rubbing me exactly where I needed him, making me cry out with pleasure. ‘Sweetheart, we were together as soon you begged me to kiss you; it just took us a while to figure it out,’ he said huskily.
His words felt just as arousing as him inside me, touching me, looking at me reverently. The words rolled over me as pleasure built deep inside. This was fast and eager but still just as good as when we went slow. ‘I’m so happy we’re together.’ I gasped as my release came suddenly, and I shattered on top of him, my body throbbing with satisfaction.
‘I’ll never get tired of watching you come,’ he said, panting, thrusting into me. He cried out my name as he joined me, then rolled me down onto the bed and looked at me tenderly. ‘This is real,’ he promised me.
‘I know it is.’ I wondered how I had ever been unsure if this was real between us. Nothing had felt more real to me than this .
I could feel him trembling as he kissed me and we both held on to one another tightly as we came down from the sweetest high.
While Ethan and Juliette went to see a venue together, I got ready for the day and sat down at my writing desk to work on my book. I only had a few chapters left to write – my characters’ sex scene, which I had been nervous to start but after my night with Ethan I now knew would be a breeze, and my leading lady deciding to move to Paris to start a new chapter of her life with the man she had fallen head over heels in love with.
My phone rang on the desk beside me, and I saw it was Gita, my editor.
‘I finished reading the last chapters you sent me,’ she said without preamble. ‘I’m really loving this book, Tessa. It’s romantic and compelling like all your books and your characters are so well drawn, their dialogue is perfect and Paris is like its own character. But most of all, I love the message about making sure you love yourself as well as being in love with someone else.’
‘I’m so happy you’re enjoying it,’ I said, beaming from ear-to-ear. ‘I only have a few more chapters to write.’
‘I can’t wait to read them. Did you have a think about a title so we can get working on a cover?’
‘Actually, yes…’ I said, explaining it to her.
‘Oh, I love it,’ Gita said. ‘It’s perfect. I’ll get talking to your cover designer.’
‘I’m sorry I had to push my deadline back,’ I said then.
‘Don’t be. You did the right thing waiting to be able to write this. I think it will be your best book yet. And I think it’s going to be a huge hit. You know Stevie will make sure it is.’
I laughed. ‘I have every faith in her. I can’t wait for her wedding in the autumn.’
‘We will all raise a glass to your books, that’s for sure. Now, let’s speak after you send me the final chapters, and I’ll keep you looped in with the cover. And Stevie will be in touch about promotion soon.’
‘Thanks, Gita.’
I hung up and went back to my book. I started to write the sex scene, my mind going back to last night – and this morning. I had been so comfortable in bed with Ethan. I’d never felt like that before. I knew it was partly how comfortable I felt with him, and how special he made me feel, but it was also saying my final goodbye to Joe and the chapter we’d spent together. I knew that feeling I wasn’t good enough for him had been wrong. It was him who wasn’t good enough for me.
My time in Paris had shown me that it was okay to be me. No, not just okay. It was bloody fantastic to be me. To be myself.
Ethan and our friends had shown me that I was worthy of being loved. Maybe I even deserved love. In all the forms it came in. Because it wasn’t just about romance, was it? The search for the one. Love was all around us. Love had all forms. And all of them were just as important, maybe even more so. Friendship, family, pets, yourself; hell, the love of life itself. So I had gone to Paris feeling like love was gone. That I’d never find it.
But I’d had it inside me all along.
I thought about what Gita had said about my novel, and its message about making sure you love yourself as well as being in love with someone else. It made sense that I had put that in my book as that was something I had realised in Paris and had come home changed by it. That was what helped me take the risk with Ethan. Because even if it didn’t work out, although I had a sneaky suspicion it just might, I knew I wouldn’t fall apart again.
I’m happy with who I am.
Looking out of the window of my flat, I spotted a blossom tree. There were beginnings of pink flowers on it. Signs that the new season had arrived. That even though winter could feel like it would last forever, it never did. Spring always arrived.
It was the same for life. Peaks and troughs. Ebbs and flow. The bad days followed by good ones. I had been stuck in winter for what had felt like forever. Letting myself wallow in hurt and disappointment, angry and bitter, thinking that betrayal meant that I’d been foolish to open my heart in the first place. But Joe had been the fool, not me. It was never a bad thing to let yourself fall. I knew now that I was able to get back up again.
And I always would get back up again.