Chapter 26 #2
“Because I haven’t stopped thinking about that kiss since you ran out that door,” he admits, easily, as I blink furiously through the snow flurry.
“And I don’t think you have either.” He makes no attempt to hide his intentions, those eyes boldly dipping to my lips before locking with mine.
“Doesn’t have to mean anything. Unless…you have feelings for me?
” he taunts, his fingers finding new purchase in my hair as he shows me just how much of a hold he has on me.
“I don’t,” I lie, schooling my expression into one of ambivalence and lifting my brows. All the while, my heart slams against my ribcage.
“Great. So kiss me, Sloane.”
And at the sound of those words, falling from his lips, all the air on this roof, in the world, isn’t enough—I have to take it from him.
That’s how hard the feeling washes over me, how intense the urge to fall into him and let him sustain me is.
Because he’s called my bluff, seen around the curtain, is holding up the mirror.
Because he knows I’m stubborn and I hate to be wrong.
So I lean into him, but only an inch. And I let my anger and the tension spiral into something seductive, gazing up at him through my lashes. I lean in and sink my lips into his, bracing myself against the shock of it.
And just this—his lips against mine—heats me like a furnace, has me forgetting the snow still falling in uneven flurries.
It’s everything our last kiss wasn’t, a kiss on my terms. A match to the box, gasoline on the fire.
The battle between our lips, the reckless tangle of tongues, as I slide my hands over his shoulder and pull myself close to him, has him groaning, has him incapable of coherence and in the sea of pleasure that is his skin against mine, I can feel the fear receding.
This is what I wanted, I think as we tip over and into each other, hungry and unrestrained as our breaths coalesce, our touches deepening into something desperate.
I taste him, the wine, the peppermint, our tongues twining around each other in slow torture and when I slip my hands under his sweater, his shirt, driving him crazy with the brush of my finger tips against his warm skin, he shudders.
Face buried in my neck, he lays bruising kisses that I can’t help but arch into, that pull the softest whimper from me.
Our coats come off in a haze of lust before I find the band of his jeans, desire coiling around my core.
He looks at me with this heavy gaze, heated and hazy, like he can’t think straight, and it only spurs me on more.
I push him down to the blanket, run my teeth along the hard edge of his jaw, suck and taste and inhale the cologne on his neck, the sharpness piercing the last of my self control.
The way I want this, with brutal intensity, with hot, all consuming recklessness, claws its way to the surface when I make my way down his chest. His heart beats so loud I can hear it, feel it against my hand as it rakes down the fabric of his sweater.
I look up at him, one hand pressing against his jeans, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip as I stifle my smugness and hide just how much I want—
“Sloane,” he says, his voice hoarse like it literally had to grind to a halt.
I raise my brows and lift the edge of his sweater, trailing my lips along the warm, dark blonde hair dusted skin I find there, never taking my eyes off him. The moment he shifts out of carnal desire—I catch it, silently cursing everything.
“You’re rushing this.”
My breath runs ahead of me, and I fight to calm the anticipation still coursing through my veins. “Am I?” I grin, eyes narrowing, desperate to lose myself in those whims again. To stop talking and lose myself in pleasure.
“You know you are.” He reaches toward me, brushes my hair back, looks at me in that gently enough that I bristle. “What are you so afraid of?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head, my grin slowly falling the longer he peers into my eyes, the longer he only looks at that part of me when so much more is on offer.
“You sure?”
Beneath his cashmere sweater his chest rises and falls, his restraint evident in the bob of his throat. I seize on it, climbing up him until we’re face to face, my hand on the cold ground around his head, our noses almost brushing.
“Maybe you’re afraid. What if you’re a disappointment?”
“I’m not worried about it,” he murmurs, drawing me in with the overwhelming press of his hand on my low back and brushing his lips against mine. And when I hungrily dive into the kiss, he inches back, a subtle smile playing on his lips.
“If we do this, Sloane, we’re not pretending,” he tells me while every part of him is pressed against every part of me.
“Why would I? I’ve got nothin’ to hide.” I smirk, dipping to press my lips against his when he flips us and grins down at me from above.
“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.”
My breath hitches as he drags his lips across my skin, softly kissing up my neck, my jaw. He presses another kiss at the base of my neck, his breath fanning across me until goosebumps erupt, dragging my pleasure through me like a hot scythe.
“Look at you, Sloane. I’m barely touching you.”
I moan as he grips my hip with one strong hand, holding himself up with the other, running his thumb over top of my jeans, over my hip, squeezing. I clamp down around nothing, feeling out of control as he finally dips down, parting my lips with his and sliding his tongue along mine.
I’m boneless, limp, putty in his hands. His gentle caress could undo me, I think—nothing else required.
His fingers make slow, tantalizing circles on my waist, as he kisses me with just as much tenderness, like he did at his door.
When he grinds himself against, I want him to hear my whimpers, want him to know he can touch me everywhere.
Like he can read my mind, he slides his hands up, palming my breasts before torturing me with a brush and a tug and a pinch and—my voice isn’t even mine at this point.
It’s a mess of moans and almost cries, a long desperate plea that is new and not at all what I’m used to.
It runs away from me, like a barrel rolling down a hill.
“I can’t believe I’ve gone this long with really touching you,” he mutters, his mouth just inches from mine as the need for him overwhelms me.
“I need—” I start to say before his hand snakes down to where I’m lifting her hips, desperate for friction. He pulls back, locking eyes with me when his touch ghosts past buttons and zippers, and he sinks two fingers in.
“I know what you need,” he has the audacity to say, a cocky smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Just like I knew you’d be soaked.”
“Tends to happen when anyone’s touchin’ you like this,” I grit out as I tense around him, frustrated and flustered, because this would happen with anyone. He’s practiced, and I almost tell him that in less than pleasant terms when he pulls out, circling my clit.
“Anyone?” he asks as I gasp. He drags in and out of me, drives me to a euphoric wall of nothing because he’s holding back. I shut my eyes against the strain, grinding my teeth before forcing them back open.
“Yup.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
It’s done something, my denial, my complete avoidance of the elephant on this roof—that every touch feels different. He moves down my body, still driving his fingers into me with impossible attention to every detail he’s already mapped to memory.
“Because you’re arrogant,” I try to tell him, but it’s swallowed by the cry I choke on when I feel his mouth on me, hot and wet, working in tandem with his fingers to push me over the edge.
And I do, shatter around him and into him, tugging his hair, clawing at his head, pressing my hips up, surrendering against him, as he wrings the last of it from me.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his jaw going slack as he looks up at me, like that wasn’t his plan either.
And even though I just came apart, I need it again—I need more.
I push up, everything urgent all of a sudden, and he does the same, seeking me out.
We collide, and that’s really how it is.
Catastrophic. Seismic. Torrential, a fucking typhoon of lust and longing that we couldn’t side step any longer if we tried.
I can feel the way he can’t have enough of me.
His fingers digging into my skin, his lips rough against my skin, and I feel the hunger slam into me like a ton of bricks.
He slides his hands under me, and it only urges me on, sinking my fingers into his scalp, raking my nails against it as he hoists me into his lap with no effort at all.
His hands frame my face, hold me as he angles our kiss so it’s deeper, one wrapping itself in my hair, before he suddenly breaks away to let his heavy-lidded gaze roam over every kiss swollen part of me.
It’s too long. He looks at me too long, with too much goodness for someone who I know doesn’t usually find anything holy in this.
“Are we doin’ this or what, Spellman?” I whisper, wetting my lips, trying to look past it.
Heart in my throat, he sets me down, laying me back on the blanket before hooking his fingers over the waistband of my jeans and tugging them off me.
He turns to toss them on our coats, reaches in his wallet for a condom, and I pull my knit sweater over my head, the cold immediately biting into my sensitive skin.
He turns, sees me, our gazes locking when he realizes my intention.
I brush my hands across the blue lace of my bra before reaching behind me, before letting it fall to the ground.
Slip my fingers beneath my underwear and shove them away.
“You could’ve—” he stutters, blinking past the reverence lodged in his gaze. “You’re gonna freeze.”