CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
“I’m not going to lie to you, Ash. I’ve spent the better part of the last few hours nostalgic and wondering what could have been.
We were kids. We could have fizzled out when we went to college.
We could have made it work and made memories together.
I don’t know, and it pisses me off that he stole those opportunities from us.
What I do know is that I’m a different person than I was then.
Just as you are. But it should have been our choice. Our decision. Not someone else’s.”
“I know,” I murmur and rest my hand on his arm.
This is the man I thought he’d become. Not the flashy elitist he was when he first entered town.
But this man sitting beside me with a heart of gold.
“You were the first boy, the first person, really, who looked at me without the shadow of my mother’s reputation staining me.
You showed me that it didn’t matter who she was, it only mattered who I was.
I think that’s why it hurt so bad. You knew me for me. He judged me for her.”
“This is where I ask that you do the same for me. I’m not my father, Asher.” His voice breaks on the word father, and I can only imagine how deceived he feels right now.
“I know you’re not.” I press a kiss to his shoulder and murmur, “I’m sorry about what your dad did.
If I weren’t involved in the situation, maybe I could justify his actions by saying that someday when either of us has kids, maybe we’ll understand why he did what he did.
But I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t hate him for taking those what-ifs from us. ”
“I know.”
We sit in the comfortable silence, in a house that feels a little less lonely right now, both coming to terms with these new truths, each in our own way.
“Well, hell. That was a lot more than either of us bargained for on a Friday night, don’t you think?” I say, desperate to lighten the mood and the profound sense of loss that this heart-to-heart has left me with.
I don’t know for sure, but from what I see, all of the wealth and power hasn’t changed the Ledger Sharpe I once knew.
“You can say that again.” Ledger presses a kiss to the top of my head that kind of melts me a little. “But at least it’s all on the table.”
“It is,” I murmur and, when I turn to face him, a startled breath falls from my lips at the proximity of his. “Would you like some wine? Some of whatever you have there in your bottle? I can go get some glasses.”
I scoot off the couch in a flurry of motion. The urge to kiss him is real, but so is my sudden bout of nerves, which is absolutely ridiculous considering hours ago we screwed in a bar bathroom.
“Yes. Sure.” His footsteps sound behind me and then stop, the weight of his stare heavy. “A glass would be great.”
I open and close my cupboards like a madwoman who doesn’t know where her own glasses are in her kitchen.
I open the wrong drawer for a corkscrew. Slam it shut only to have the wooden spoon flip up and prevent it from closing.
This is ridiculous.
I shouldn’t be nervous.
I shouldn’t look like a fumbling idiot.
I shouldn’t—
“Asher. Stop,” Ledger says as he takes my hands in his.
My heart is racing, my pulse pounding in my ears.
He stoops down so that we’re at the same eye level.
“I don’t know the answer to what this is here.
I don’t know what happens in two months or even tomorrow, but I know seeing you again brought me right back to those summer nights I spent with you.
Right back to wanting to see you again the minute I walk away from you. ”
“It’s scary, isn’t it?” I whisper.
His lips meet mine. Where earlier it was fire and heat, this time our first kiss starts with a slow build. Soft kisses. Quiet sighs. Murmured words.
His hand on my chin. My fingers threaded through the hair at the nape of his neck. The length of his body pressed against mine. His thigh positioned between the V of my legs.
Kissing him is a mixture of familiarity and newness, comfort and excitement, and longing and satisfaction.
Chills chase the featherlight touch of his fingertips down my arms. His stubble is coarse beneath my palm.
“Ledger.” His name is a breathless whisper he kisses over.
“Hmm?”
A soft tug on my bottom lip from him.
“What are we doing?”
“Kissing.” His tongue delves between my lips.
“But what are we—” I shudder as his hands find their way beneath my tank top and slide up the bare skin of my back.
Our mouths part and he stares at me with a cocky grin, desire darkening his eyes. “I’m proving to you I’ll be better at it next time.”
I laugh. It feels so good to hear it. “In that case,” I say before stepping in and tasting him again.
Our pace this go-round is slow. Leisurely. It’s a masterclass in taking one’s time. In enjoying each second for what it’s worth rather than rushing to the next one.
He laces open-mouthed kisses down the line of my neck, only lifting from my skin when he pulls my tank top over my head.
His shirt ends up on the floor by the kitchen table. My skirt is shimmied out of somewhere near the foyer. His shoes get kicked off in the hallway, a few feet apart. Our strip show continues until we’re standing in my darkened bedroom with only a stream of moonlight coming in through the window.
I take a step back, wanting to see him, needing to take in the whole of him, and knowing he needs the same thing from me.
To know this is real.
To grasp how far we’ve come in a few short hours.
We pull off our last layers of clothing with our eyes locked on each other’s. It’s an oddly intimate feeling to be stripped down physically and feel exposed emotionally too.
But hasn’t that been par for the course tonight?
I am the first to break our stare. My eyes roam over every sculpted edge of his physique.
Shoulders and biceps and abs right down to that sexy V of his hips.
And then there’s his hard and engorged dick set atop a pair of muscular thighs.
Good thing I already know how it feels or I’d be afraid it looks too good to be true.
When I crawl my gaze back up him again, I’m met with an arrogant smirk asking me if I like what I see.
Oh, I definitely do.
“You’re stunning,” he murmurs after he makes his own languorous appraisal of me. And then he steps into me, his palms running down my flank and then cupping my ass as our lips meet once again. “Simply fucking stunning.”
I ache. From the command in his touch. From the soft scrape of his stubble. From the heat of his body as he lays me on my bed. From the way he whispers my name in the dark.
Need builds. It’s just as poignant and ravenous as earlier but now is more reverent in nature.
His fingers find their way between my thighs. His groan as he tucks two fingers into me is a seduction in and of itself and only serves to make me wetter.
His fingers start to move. Slow at first. In tandem with his other movements.
His lips close over the peak of my breast as his fingers push in and pull out.
It’s a luxurious pace, much like our kissing, that elevates me to a heightened state of arousal where my orgasm is floating on the fringes, almost within reach, but not quite close enough.
“Spread your legs for me, Ash,” he whispers in my ear before tugging on my earlobe. “Let me admire what I fucked into oblivion earlier. What I made sore.” The slide of his tongue along the curve of my shoulder. “Let me kiss it and make it all better.”
His words are unexpected and yet so very expected. He’s a man always in control. A man used to his orders being obeyed. A man who always has his eyes on the prize.
And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on.
So I do as he asks when he leans upon his haunches between my thighs.
He sucks in a sharp breath when he sees me, his hands running ever so slowly and softly up and down my inner thighs.
That smoldering ache I had? Now it’s a raging wildfire of need.
His mouth follows the path of his hands, lacing kisses from the curve of my knee to the top of my pussy. And when he kisses me there, when he slides his tongue up and down and the warmth of it hits me, my entire body convulses with desire.
He breathes in through his nose. “God, I love the fucking smell of you,” he murmurs before he closes his lips around my clit.
I gasp as my hands fly out to grip his hair.
“The taste of you.” He hums against me so that the vibrations can be felt before leaning back upon his haunches.
“The fucking feel of you.” With his bottom lip between his teeth, he lines his cock up to my entrance and then thrusts his way into me.
More.
It’s my first thought.
It’s greedy and crass, but it’s true. I had this feeling only hours ago, I’m having this feeling now, and I know I’ll want him all over again soon enough.
But when he begins to move, thoughts aren’t possible other than focusing on how good it feels when the crest of his cock adds its friction against each and every nerve I have.
“Ledger,” I moan through the mounting pleasure swamping me.
His mouth meets mine again, the motion causing him to go even deeper inside of me. His tongue and lips own my mouth much like his cock does my pussy.
“Show me what you do,” he murmurs against my lips. “Teach me how to pleasure you, Ash. I want to know.” He takes my hand and moves it between my thighs. “Show me.”
I wait for the awkwardness to hit when he sits back up to watch how I work my fingers over my clit. I’m slow at first. A little clumsy from being watched. But his groan spurs me on. The way his tongue licks over his bottom lip adds to it.
And when he starts moving, when his sizeable cock begins to work in and out of me, I forget about how he’s watching me and get lost in the rhythm. I get lost in the feel of it. Of him inside and my fingers outside.
My body soars with sensations. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. Thrust by thrust.
My breath quickens. My muscles tense. My back arches. My toes curl.
“Ash.” My name is a panted breath.
The coil in my core twists tighter. And right before it snaps, just as I tighten around his cock about to fall over the edge and into blissful oblivion, Ledger grabs the back of my neck and forces me to do what he commands, “Look at me.”
And I do.
Amber eyes meet mine. They’re clouded with lust and determination and everything that’s Ledger.
Only Ledger.
The orgasm hits me like a tsunami. Hard, fast, and relentless. It surges through me, touching every part of me as it goes. It ebbs for a beat before coming back to wrack my senses again—a little gentler than the wave before it.
I’m lost in its warmth, in its swell, when Ledger’s fingers tighten on my hips and his gritted groan fills the room.
I have enough of my faculties to open my eyes and appreciate something I wasn’t afforded earlier at Connor’s—the glorious sight of Ledger Sharpe coming undone.
Of witnessing what I do to him. Of feeling the power of the moment.
His lips find mine again. Softer, gentler, desire sated for the time being, before he collapses on top of me.
Ledger’s weight, half on me, half off me, is a welcome feeling. My hand runs lazily up and down the line of his spine, our hearts pounding against one another’s.
I don’t know what happens in two months or even tomorrow, but I know seeing you again brought me right back to those summer nights I spent with you.
A soft smile plays on my lips because those will be my words to live by. That will be the mantra I repeat.
“I guess you’re right.”
I can feel his mouth curve into a smile against my shoulder. “About?”
“It was definitely better the next time.”
When he leans back to look at me, his grin is blinding.