Chapter 33 #2
I’m not sure how it happened, but we’re standing inches apart again, forever doomed to orbit only each other.
He looks away as he rubs the side of his jaw. “Do you want to forgive me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s the only thing that does.”
I swallow past the tears that threaten to overwhelm me and brush past him. “If you want me as much as you claim, you would have apologized,” I say over my shoulder.
“The book is the apology!” he shouts, forcing me to come face-to-face with what was clear from the first page. I stop walking.
For seven years, I’ve operated under the idea that West hates me.
The article is the evidence, and cutting him out of my life was the conclusion.
It was painfully easy to draw a line from A to B to C, until Drought came along and upended the premise.
If none of my carefully drawn lines make sense, what does that mean for the one I’m keeping between us?
“I was trying to speak your language, Jupiter. Our language. The way we did from the very beginning. I was trying to get the words exactly, perfectly right, because I knew I’d only get one more chance.
I didn’t contact that journalist before my book was out, because at the time, a public apology felt like a cop-out.
It would have been too easy. I wanted to give you the apology that you deserved, and that wasn’t with some online statement that you had no reason to believe.
It was only once I’d finished Drought and put it out into the world that I thought there was even a chance you’d forgive me. ”
I close my eyes and take a bracing breath.
West is wrong about one thing. There were days I was so sad and months that were so dark I would have accepted a public statement or an email or a note sent by carrier pigeon.
Instead, he wrote me a whole damn book. A love letter on every page.
He devoted the last several years of his life to apologizing the best way he knew how.
I turn toward him, one foot on a tightrope, unsure which way the wind will blow.
He takes a shuddering breath. “I don’t know if I deserve your forgiveness, but you once told me that’s not the reason to give it.”
My chest squeezes until I can’t breathe. Heat and fear and longing coil tight in my center.
I look at the strong lines of West’s jaw and the broad planes of his shoulders, and it’s hard to see the boy I fell in love with underneath the confident, determined man standing before me, but there are traces.
In the rhythm of ink-stained fingers tapping against thighs.
In the slow dip of dark lashes against his cheeks.
In the way my brain settles when I’m with him, if only I can stop fighting instinct.
And forever in the way he looks at me, and how I savor the heat of his gaze all the way down to my bone marrow.
Truth after truth piles up in my brain like a mudslide until I’m left with one question: Am I willing to make myself miserable just to prove a point? I find the answer in West’s eyes, and it’s the same as it was a decade ago.
I lick salt and rainwater off my lips. “Go.”
A whisper of a word crosses his features before he steadies himself and nods. Heartsick.
“If that’s what you want,” he says, and takes a step back.
“West. I’m saying go.”
He stares at me for a few breathless seconds, but when my meaning registers, he pounces.
He reaches me in three strides and threads one hand through my hair until his palm rests on the back of my head.
With his other hand on the small of my back, he pulls me in to him and holds me tight against his body as he bends his face to mine.
His tongue sweeps over my bottom lip, and my mouth opens for him as I struggle to keep up.
He is tall and hot and hard, his body firm against all my soft curves.
Our clothes are soaking wet and paper-thin, and I press and press and press, needing him closer.
He kisses with abandon, his jaw working furiously, his tongue sweeping across mine.
I tip my head back as his lips fall to my neck, then scrape my nails through his hair, pulling a low groan from him that crackles hotly at the base of my spine.
“I’ve waited so long—so fucking beautiful—wanted to tell you—” He mutters words I barely comprehend as he marches me backward toward the car, his hands still firmly in place, his body steering me, holding me upright when my knees threaten to buckle.
We reach the truck, and he presses me back against the cab.
He catches my bottom lip between his teeth and pulls, dragging slowly until it pops free.
I’m drowning in sensation and the aching need to touch him everywhere, but my hands are shaking with nerves and years of anticipation.
My breaths come out shallow and fractured.
Without breaking the delicious, wet contact between his lips and my neck, West gathers my wrists in his hand and holds them steady against his chest. “Breathe with me.”
I drag air through my teeth and exhale through my nose, and I cannot believe I’m getting this worked up over a kiss, like it’s the first time I’ve ever been touched. “Should we talk about this?” I gasp nonsensically.
“Respectfully, I’m tired of talking.” West drops my wrists and wrenches the back door open.
“Get in,” he demands in a hoarse voice. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard.
It’s a torch pressed against sensitive skin.
A swallowed match. I’m smoking, melting, turning to molten lava.
I put my heel up on the running board and lift myself up into the back seat.
He sees something on my face that makes him smirk.
“What?”
He shakes his head and puts his hands up on the doorframe. When he leans in for a kiss, I hold a finger to his lips. “Tell me.”
He presses his lips together, still fighting a smile. “In the past, I’ve asked you what you want. Now I know you like it better when I tell you.” He breaks into a wicked grin.
“West!” I shriek.
He tips his head back, laughing. All these years later, it still makes my insides glow.
I still want to tattoo it on my eardrums. I lean in and press my lips to the hollow at the bottom of his throat.
His laughter turns to a low groan. I flick my tongue against skin, and his hand shoots up to my thigh, under the hem of my dress. He swears under his breath.
I do it again, and he shakes his head, even as his tight grip holds me in place. “Wait, Mars.”
I pull away in surprise. “What?”
He grits his teeth as his chest heaves with the effort of holding back his wandering hand. “Help. On the way. If I— If we start—I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”
“Okay. Right. That makes sense,” I say through deep, shuddering breaths, even as my face grimaces. I writhe against the seat. I’m so turned on it’s almost painful.
He exhales through his nose and makes a quick decision as he pulls me out of the truck.
Like before, he presses me against the cab, this time bracing his thigh between my legs.
The noise that escapes me would be mortifying if I had the means to care.
“Don’t move,” he says as his hands settle low on my hips and he shifts me farther up his leg until I’m in a position to grind against him.
He pulls his head back. We make heated eye contact, electricity gathering in me like a storm cloud.
After several motionless breaths, his hands slowly and deliberately roll my hips over his thigh.
He raises an eyebrow. Can I? Will you? he asks silently.
I nod, and when he does it again, I gasp and scrabble for contact, sinking my fingers into his forearms. “There, yeah?” His mouth tilts up in a cocky grin.
On the third press, my head falls forward to his shoulder.
He gradually increases the pressure and pace until my hips are moving on their own, grinding down hard as he murmurs unheard words into my drenched hair.
A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me. “I can’t believe I’m grinding on you like a teenager,” I gasp between whimpers.
West flashes his wolfish grin. “I feel perpetually nineteen around you, Darling. I can’t help myself.” His fingertips sear into my hip bones as instinct takes over and my movements become desperate and jerky.
“That’s it, come on,” he says, the rasp of his voice enough to drag me to the edge.
The tension coiling tight inside me becomes almost unbearable.
“Come for me, Darling,” he whispers, and the exquisite friction, combined with his coaxing plea, is my unraveling.
My orgasm hits hard and fast, and I bite my lip to keep from crying out as I muffle my face in West’s neck.
With one hand on my nape and one on my lower back, he holds me to his chest as the aftershocks subside, and I slowly melt into him. It takes a long moment for my breathing to settle, but when it does, I hide my grin in his chest. “Nineteen again, huh?”
“Fuck, Mars. I’d forgotten what it’s like with you.” He laughs in joy and disbelief, then presses a kiss to the crown of my head.
I glance between us, stomach fluttering again at the sight of his cock straining against his jeans. I move my hand down, but he stills it with his own as he reaches to smooth my dress over my thighs.
“Keep that thought, but not yet.” I’m about to ask why when he nods over my shoulder at the approaching truck. “Help has arrived.”