Chapter 25
Beau releases a soft curse but otherwise comes to me with an obedience that shocks me even more than my impulse to demand it.
He drops to his elbows, caging me in, and I pull at his waist until his body is pressed along mine.
He’s already hard, and the feel of him sends a pulse of want deep into my bones.
I hitch my leg around his hip, driving him closer.
His eyes track mine for an answer to this riddle: What the hell are we doing?
But when I tilt my chin, brush my nose along his, he groans, and it seeps straight into some primal place that takes charge.
And the only answer I can give is: I have no idea, but let’s keep doing it .
I find his bottom lip and tease it with my teeth, and he sinks his mouth into mine. Small, testing kisses, bites, brushes of lips until we lose ourselves and kiss like we’ve found a well in the desert. This is the best kiss of my life. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Beau’s mouth is overwhelming, stealing my air like it belongs to him. But that’s fine. I don’t need to breathe. I just need to keep kissing him. I need his tongue and his lips and his entire body sealed to mine. I need to skip the foreplay and second-guessing.
His hands slide to my waist, my hips, under my lower back to lift me closer.
I dig into his hair and hold him close as he drags his mouth to my jaw, my neck, and along my collarbone.
His breath teases me, and I arch into him, aching to get closer as he toys with the hem of my tank with a soft swipe of his fingertip.
He’s whispering something about my scrap of a shirt.
How I’m killing him. I shimmy out of it, and the light from the streetlamps outside casts a stripe across my bare skin.
He pulls back to take me in and makes a guttural sound from deep in his throat—and then he’s everywhere.
Rough hands on my ribs, gentle teeth on my nipple, his hips moving with mine in a building rhythm.
I tug at his clothes, but he’s traveling out of reach, down my body, two fingers hitched into the waistband of my shorts before he drags them down with my underwear and tosses them aside.
He crouches forward, trailing kisses up my bare torso, circling my nipple with his tongue, closing his mouth over me until I gasp.
When he slips a hand between my thighs, where I’m wet and ready for him, we both whimper at the contact.
He watches as I lose control at the feel of him stroking me, strumming me as if he knows me too well.
I try to kiss him, but he stays out of range, his face awash in wonder at my pleasure.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I know this is a horrible idea, but my body is in control, and it disagrees. And that tortured look on Beau’s face is gone, replaced by resolve—and something that might be relief.
It feels like my skin has thinned and I’m only nerves, keyed up by every touch. The cotton of his clothes scratches me. I’m naked and he’s still fully clothed, and I’m impatient to have all of him.
I drag the hem of his shirt along his sides and pull it over his head before he stands and sheds his pants in one motion.
He’s backlit as he slides onto the bed, so I study him through touch, taste, scent, letting my hands trail across his shoulders, his chest, down his abs.
But Beau grabs my wrists, regaining control and coaxing me to lay back on the bed.
He drops a kiss to my navel before lifting his head, his chin grazing my skin, and mutters a soft, “This okay?”
I know I should think about all the reasons it isn’t.
I should save us from this fever dream. But this is the first thing in forever that feels better than okay.
It feels Yes , and More , and Please . So instead, I say, “It beats talking about feelings,” attempting—and failing—to lighten the mood because my voice comes out strangled.
Beau chuckles as he trails his mouth from my navel to my pubic bone, before pressing it between my legs.
I gasp at the warmth and contact, sucking in a breath as he spreads one hand over my stomach and hooks the other around my hip.
He’s still watching me as he pulls me into him and teases me with soft kisses and swipes of his tongue.
My mind flashes to a memory of him as a kid hovering over a broken radio, focused, intent, puzzling out how to fix it with patience and dexterity.
But then he slides a finger, then two, into me and moans into my skin, and all thought is gone.
There’s no version of him but this one, the one who has wound me tight enough to explode and is unraveling me with every perfect press of his mouth.
I grip the headboard and cry out as he finds the fuse that powers every cell in my body.
Beau whispers something I can’t hear as my body blurs into static energy and sparks, then explodes.
Beau slows, gentles, but doesn’t stop as I shiver and collapse into a puddle.
I’m already impatient to feel him on top of me again, so I tug on his elbow to pull him up.
When I find him with testing strokes of my palm, he drops his head into the crook of my neck, his breathing labored and heavy. “You smell so good.”
“Like cupcakes?” I ask, my hand finding a rhythm as I learn what he likes. And this is safer. Teasing. Banter. Being in control.
“And vanilla and strawberries, and fuck,” he mumbles, finding my mouth to swallow the words perched on my tongue.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he says.
And something about that makes me hesitate.
I don’t want to be his guilty pleasure, the temptation he succumbs to against his better judgment.
But as soon as the thought flairs, it’s gone, replaced by the sensation of his calloused hands, warm mouth, and delicious weight, by the feel of him in my hand growing impatient and needy.
“Wait.” He releases a pained breath and crawls off the bed.
But before I can fear—or hope—that he’s come to his senses, he exhales a relieved sigh, emerging from his duffel bag with a strip of foil squares.
And thank God he has them. But, “Why’d you bring those?”
“Same reason I brought snow chains on a summer road trip.” He lays beside me, spreading his palm on my stomach, along my rib cage, over my sternum. “I like to be prepared.”
But that’s not an answer. “Did you think we’d sleep together?”
He laughs, loud, throaty, and then grows serious. “No.”
“So who were you planning to hook up with?”
He shakes his head and growls. “We can spar in the morning, Phe. But right now, can I be with you, finally?”
An ache gathers low in my belly as he traces lazy fingertips over my thighs.
“Finally?” I ask.
He hums, dragging his mouth along the column of my throat and inhaling. He didn’t shave earlier, and I’m grateful to feel every texture—scruff, callus, satin. “Finally.”
He tears the packet open and rolls on the condom as I watch.
I’ve never seen Beau this way—undone, unguarded, uncoiled—and it makes me want to keep him just like this, to protect this sliver of honesty.
I think about our first kiss. Days later, we started high school and immediately spun out into different orbits.
Will this be another collision that sends us hurtling apart?
But I don’t want to think about that right now.
I capture his mouth in mine, and he lifts me until I’m settled over his lap, my hands exploring the hard planes of his chest—collarbones, sternum, pecs.
He clasps my hips in his grip, and I lower myself over him, holding my breath and pinching my eyes closed as he fills me.
Beau releases a string of expletives, and I swim in them—until I begin to drown in him , in our movement, a perfect rhythm that sends me climbing again too soon.
He tilts my face to his with hands on either side of my face, fingers threaded in my hair.
When I open my eyes, he’s watching me, and his expression resembles awe; it’s so tender that I can’t handle it.
I find his mouth open for me and give myself over to sensation—the air on my skin, his coarse palms on my skin, all of him inside and under me.
“You’re perfect,” he says through kisses. “How can I make you feel good?”
But I can’t answer because I already feel more than I can process—hunger and satiety, ecstasy and ache. Finally, he had said. Finally.
He flips us with an arm around my waist—hovering over me, blocking out light and distraction, and thrusting back into me so deliberately and deep that my breath hitches, and my body pulls taut enough to shatter. “Hey,” he whispers in my ear, “talk to me.”
“I’m good,” I say, but it’s inadequate. Language and thoughts are second to the reality of Beau—who has known me longest, been cut by my raw edges, grasped at my undone threads, and held on anyway.
“I wish I’d known.” Beau bites my bottom lip and soothes it with his tongue as he hooks my knee in his elbow and opens me wider for him. “That this is what it would take to shut you up.”
I laugh, but it comes out ragged, and I think he senses that I’m losing it because he brushes my hair away from my face and tries to catch my gaze. I’m powerless and give in, letting him care for me and take me apart with each glance, movement, and word whispered in my ear.
“Beau,” I gasp. “Please—” I don’t know what I’m asking for, but he answers anyway, finding me, circling me with the pad of his thumb as he drives deep until I go off, arching under him, legs shaking, clawing at his shoulders, and dissolving.
His mouth is open on mine, inhaling my gasps, giving me air, pulling every ounce of pleasure from my body until he gives in and unravels after me.
And as I fall apart, I wonder how I’ll ever put myself back together.