Chapter 11 #2
“Yes.”
“If you keep doing that, I won’t be able to stop.”
“Who asked you to stop?”
He kissed her instead of answering.
Not gentle. Not careful. He kissed her like he’d been waiting half his life, because he had.
Her mouth opened under his, and she tasted like wine and chocolate and the dinner he’d planned for her, and the thought that she was here, in his lap, in his arms, after all those years of absence—it hit him harder than any kiss had a right to.
She kissed him back, her fingers sliding into his hair and pulling him closer. He groaned into her mouth, and she swallowed the sound like she’d been waiting to hear it.
“Bedroom,” she said against his lips.
He pulled back. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve been sure since I was sixteen. Take me to bed.”
He stood, raising her with him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and laughed against his shoulder as he carried her down the hall. The sound of it cracked something open dead center in his heart.
“I can walk, you know.”
“I know. I’m making a point.”
“What point?”
“That I’ve got you.” He set her on her feet beside the bed. The lamp on the nightstand was still on, casting gold across the pillows. “And I’m not letting go.”
She turned, gathered her hair, and lifted it off her neck. Deliberate. An invitation.
He stepped close and found the zipper. The sound of it parting was the loudest thing in the room. He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck as the fabric slipped, and her breath caught, and the sound shot straight through him.
She wiggled the dress free and let it fall. Black silk pooled at her feet. She stepped out and turned.
There was a freckle on her shoulder he’d forgotten about.
He’d kissed it a hundred times when they were seventeen, behind the field house, in the library stacks, in every hidden corner of Ashford they’d claimed as theirs.
He bent and put his mouth there now, and she exhaled like she’d been holding the breath for years.
“I’ve missed you,” he said against her skin.
She lowered herself onto the bed and looked up at him, her eyes holding a question she wasn’t asking out loud. Her dark hair spilled across his white pillows.
“Stop staring,” she whispered.
“Give me a second.” He couldn’t stop looking. “I’ve been waiting to see you like this for half my life. Let me have the view.”
She reached behind her back, unclasped her bra, and let it fall. “Then come here and do something about it.”
He pulled his shirt over his head. His belt came loose, his pants followed, and then he was over her, braced on his forearms, close enough to count the flecks of amber in her eyes.
“I need you to be sure,” he said. “Because after this, I’m not letting you go a second time.”
She reached up and rested her hand along the side of his face, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He kissed her. Deep and slow, his tongue sliding against hers while one hand fisted in her hair. She arched into him with a sound that made his hips press forward on instinct. Her thighs opened to make room for him, and the thin lace of her underwear was the only thing between his body and hers.
He was shaking. Actually shaking. Gabriel Sterling, who’d negotiated hostile takeovers without a tremor, was trembling over a woman he’d loved since he was a kid.
She felt the tremor in his arms and didn’t look away. “Gabriel.”
“I know.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Terrified.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’ve wanted this for so long, and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“You’re not messing anything up.” She pulled his mouth back to hers. “Keep going.”
He kissed down her throat while his palm found her breast. When his thumb brushed across her nipple, she gasped, and the sound undid what was left of his restraint.
He closed his mouth over her and lingered there, learning the way her body responded, the way her hips shifted when he grazed his teeth across the peak and soothed it with his tongue.
“More,” she breathed. “Please.”
He gave the other breast the same attention while his hand slid down her stomach. Her muscles tensed under his palm. When he hooked his fingers in her underwear, she lifted her hips before he could ask.
“Yes,” she said. “Take them off.”
He pulled the lace down her legs and dropped it somewhere behind him. And then she was bare beneath him, the lamplight tracing every curve, and he stopped breathing.
“You’re staring again.”
“I know.” He sat back on his heels. “Let me.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t cover herself. She lay there, open, watching him watch her. The trust in her face was the most humbling thing he’d ever seen.
He settled between her thighs and pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee.
Then higher. Slow kisses along soft skin while she trembled under his hands.
He took his time. He’d been dreaming about this since he was a teenager, and the reality of her—the warmth of her, the scent of her, the small desperate sounds she made when he breathed against her—was better than anything his imagination had conjured.
By the time he put his mouth on her, she was already gasping. He learned her with his tongue, finding the rhythm that made her fingers tighten in his hair, the pressure that made her back arch off the mattress. He slid two fingers inside her and curled them, and she cried out.
“There. Right there. Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He stayed with her, steady and relentless, until she came apart around him—her whole body arching, her voice breaking on his name. He felt every tremor, every wave, and he didn’t pull away until she went limp against the sheets.
He crawled up her body, and she reached for his boxers immediately.
“Off,” she said. “Now.”
He stripped them away. Her eyes dropped, and her lips parted.
“Wow.”
“Too much?”
“No.” She wrapped her fingers around him, and the contact tore a groan from his throat. She stroked him slowly, her grip warm and sure, while he fought to stay still. “It’s been a while,” she whispered. “Go slow.”
“We go at your pace. Whatever you need.”
He found a condom in the nightstand. She watched through heavy lashes as he rolled it on. When he settled between her thighs, the heat of her made his vision blur at the edges.
“Look at me,” he said.
Her eyes met his. In them, he saw everything—the girl she’d been, the woman she’d become, all the years they’d lost and the future they might still get to have.
“I don’t want you to pretend.” Her hands framed his face. “I want this. I want you. I’ve wanted you since I was sixteen.”
That was the answer. The only one he needed. He kissed her, and then there was no more talking.
He entered her slowly, watching her face. Her mouth fell open, her eyes fluttered closed, and then opened again, bright and wet.
“Stay with me,” he murmured.
“I’m here.” Her voice trembled. “I never thought I’d have this.”
They stayed there, foreheads touching, while her body adjusted to his. The intimacy of it—the stillness, the weight, the quiet—was more than sex. It was a door closing on every year they’d spent apart.
“Move,” she whispered. “Please.”
He began carefully, drawing back and easing into her again, finding a rhythm that made her breath catch on every stroke. When he shifted his angle, she gasped and gripped his shoulders.
“There. Right there.”
He gave her what she needed, steady and deep, watching her climb higher with every thrust. She tightened around him, her nails raking down his back, and then she was coming—hard, silent, her body lifting off the bed.
He followed three thrusts later, pleasure crashing through him until there was nothing left but her name and the dark.
He collapsed against her and buried his face in her neck. Her arms came around him immediately, holding him there.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Their breathing slowed into the same rhythm.
“That was—” he started.
“I know.”
He shifted to his side, took care of the condom, and pulled her back against his chest. His arm wrapped around her waist like it belonged there.
“Stay,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The second time, she rolled on top of him and pinned his wrists above his head.
“My turn,” she said.
He let her take control, watching her move above him in the lamplight, her hair falling around her face, her lips parted. When she leaned down and whispered, “You feel even better this time,” against his ear, he nearly lost it right there.
She rode him slowly at first, then faster, until he grabbed her hips and drove up into her, and she cried out and collapsed against his chest.
Afterward, they lay tangled, her head on his shoulder, his hand tracing lazy circles on her back.
“We should’ve done this at Ashford,” she murmured.
He laughed. “We weren’t ready.”
“We were idiots.”
“That too.”
The third time, he woke her at three in the morning with his mouth on her shoulder, on that freckle. She turned in his arms, still half-asleep, and pulled him over her without a word. It was slow and quiet and felt like a promise neither of them had said out loud yet.
At some point, they slept.
Gabriel woke to the first gray light of dawn with Tessa curled against him, her breath warm on his chest, her palm resting over his heart. The sheets were a disaster. One pillow had ended up across the room. He had no idea where his boxers had gone.
He lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling.
Something had shifted. He’d been falling for her since he was a teenager, probably before that, and he was done letting fear decide what he did with his heart. She’d been the one who got away because he’d let her get away, and he wasn’t making that mistake twice.
His arm tightened around her. She murmured in her sleep and pressed closer.
The city hummed fourteen floors below. Tessa’s breathing matched its rhythm, steady as a promise he hadn’t earned yet but was going to spend the rest of his life keeping.