Chapter 57
Fifty-Seven
Madison
I wake slowly, my senses returning in layers. Beckett’s arm is solid across my waist, pinning me to his chest. I’m cocooned in him, tucked so tightly against his heat that I can’t tell where my skin ends and his begins.
My stomach does a slow, dizzying flip.
I love you, damn it.
The words echo in the dark, clearer now than they were through the fog of my meltdown on the kitchen floor.
For years, I thought I was the broken variable in every equation.
I’ve chased success, burned through relationships, and convinced myself the hollowness in my chest was just the price of ambition.
I thought I was simply unlovable—a storm no one wanted to weather.
But lying here, feeling the steady, rhythmic thrum of his heart against my back, I feel… full.
I turn in his arms until I’m facing him. My eyes adjust to the shadows, tracing the rugged line of his jaw. I reach out, my fingers trembling as I press my palm to his cheek before burying my fingers in the thick darkness of his hair.
“Madi?” he whispers, his voice thick with sleep.
I don’t answer with words. I hook my leg over his waist and pull him flush against me. The friction of my skin against his sleep-warmed body makes me gasp as I feel him already hardening against my thigh.
“Show me again,” I breathe against his lips, my hands sliding down to grip his shoulders. “Don’t let me forget.”
Beckett groans a sound so primal it vibrates through my entire frame. He rolls, pinning me to the mattress with bruising intensity before his mouth finds mine in the dark.
His fingers grab the hem of my oversized T-shirt and pull it over my head in one fluid motion. When his bare chest meets mine, the contact is electric. I’m already slick, an insistent throb building in my pelvis that makes my breath hitch.
His hand finds me, his fingers demanding as they part me.
I cry out, my head tossing back against the pillow.
He’s clinical in his precision but feral in his intent.
He watches me, his eyes dark on my face as he drives two fingers inside me, his thumb grinding against my clit until I’m sobbing his name.
“Beckett, please.”
“Look at me,” he commands.
I open my eyes, blurring with tears, and see the raw hunger there.
When he frees himself, I can feel the sheer size of him pressing against me. In the next breath, he grabs my thighs, pulls me impossibly closer, and drives home in one deep, soul-shattering thrust.
I scream into the crook of his neck as my muscles clench around the stretch. When he’s buried to the hilt, he stills for a heartbeat to let me adjust.
In those seconds, he presses a kiss to each corner of my mouth.
Then he begins to move. It’s a punishing pace that brooks no argument.
With every movement, he makes me feel every bit of his strength.
I wrap my arms around his neck, my nails digging into the hard muscle of his back as the world dissolves into the friction of skin and the sound of our bodies colliding.
The pleasure is a jagged edge that cuts through the last of my grief.
I can feel the tension building, that familiar coil tightening in my gut until I’m vibrating.
Beckett senses it. He shifts his grip, his hand coming up to cup my jaw, forcing me to hold his gaze as he picks up the pace, his thrusts becoming faster, shallower, more frantic.
“Come for me. Right now.”
The command is the final push. My vision goes white as my orgasm ripples through me, my walls pulsing violently around him. I hear him roar my name as his body stiffens. His grip on my face is the only thing keeping me from drifting away.
We collapse together with his forehead resting against mine.
“Still annoying?” he murmurs.
I press a kiss to his temple, my body finally quiet. “The absolute worst. Don’t ever stop.”