Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
“Avery.” Camryn snaps a finger in my face. I frown and knock her hand out of the way.
“Where the hell are you lately?” She grumbles something unintelligible.
“I’m right here in front of you.”
“You’re with Gabriel.”
I run a finger through the air, parallel to my body. “Try that again.”
“You’re with him mentally.” Cam grabs a notebook and flips it open to a fresh page.
We’re supposed to be planning a simple food menu for the wedding, but I’m distracted.
“Lara should be here any minute,” Camryn says, glancing at the front door. “Before she arrives, I think we should talk about a little surprise bachelorette party. Small and tame, you know, but…”
Gabriel and I are seeing a movie tonight. Maybe he needs a clear sign, an unmistakable green light. I can use my voice, for once, and actually ask for what I want. My stomach turns at the thought. Maybe not.
“Oh my God,” Cam wails, dropping her pen. “Just go. You’re no help. Go to Gabriel, you hormone addled, lovesick fool.” She throws her hands in the air. “It’s bad enough I have to be around Dad and Lara, but at least they have sex and then function in life.” She steers me toward the front door. “Go get laid, and then come back here. I want you sated and ready to work.”
I shake my head, trying not to trip as I walk backward. “Cam, you don’t understand, Gabriel and I?—”
Cam shakes her head back at me. “Haven’t done that yet? You’ll be fine. It’s sex, not swimming with a pod of killer whales. It’s meant to be enjoyed. Go.” She grabs my purse from the entryway table and pushes it to my chest.
I stop at the threshold. She drops her arms and reaches around me, opening the door. “I’ve never had good sex,” I admit.
Camryn’s head tips to the side and she shrugs. “I don’t know much about good sex either. I’ve only done it once, and it was awful. But everyone seems obsessed with it, so there must be a reason. Go find that reason.”
A throat clears behind us.
Lara hovers a few feet back, holding three brown paper grocery bags. “Hi, girls.” Her smile wavers. She has definitely overheard us.
“Some advice, Lara?” Cam calls. “As far as I know, you’re the only one of us having good sex.”
Lara’s cheeks flame.
“These walls are paper thin,” Cam adds.
A boiled lobster blush hits Lara’s cheeks.
She tries to recover, taking a step closer and clearing her throat. “Well, I, uh—” She looks at me. “I think you should do whatever you want to do, and don’t do whatever you don’t want to do. Sex between people who love each other can be really special.” She gulps, looking from me to Cam and back again.
Obviously, she’s talking about our dad. While it makes me want to vomit, it’s also kind of sweet.
“Gabriel hasn’t even tried,” I admit.
“Men are funny that way,” Lara says. The red in her cheeks has faded to pink. “When sex doesn’t mean anything, nothing stops them. When it means something, it terrifies them.”
“See?” Cam says. “That makes perfect sense. Now, go see Gabriel and drop it like it’s hot right onto his firefighter lap. He’ll know what to do with you.” Cam lightly shoves me out of the house. “Lara and I have work to do.”
Lara winks and sidesteps me, going into the house.
Cam closes the door in my face.
I’m mildly annoyed, but I’m not sure with who anymore. Cam for being insistent, Gabriel for not being insistent enough, or me for not being able to be direct.
Gabriel answers when I call, and says he’s changing the oil in his truck.
I don’t tell him I’m on my way over. We make small talk, and I say I have to go.
This turns out to be a good move on my part, if the look on his face right now is any indication.
He’s grinning, happy to be surprised, as he steps away from his truck’s hood. He runs a red rag over his hands, watching me climb from my car.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, meeting me in the driveway. He kisses me. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s a good surprise, but you said you were helping your sister today.” He’s wearing sweats stained with motor oil, and nothing else. He’s dripping in masculinity, in that rough caveman way.
I press a fingertip to his chest, drawing a heart. “I was having some trouble focusing. She kicked me out.”
He chuckles and motions for me to follow him into the house. He stops in the closest bathroom and washes his hands. The outside air temperature isn’t yet hot enough to make him sweat.
I lean against the doorframe, holding on to it as his muscles flex simply from soaping up and rinsing his hands. I have never, ever wanted someone the way I want Gabriel. I didn’t know it was possible for all my cells to yearn for something. For someone .
I can do this. Open my mouth and use my words. Tell Gabriel I will melt, right here and right now, if he doesn’t take me to bed.
Gabriel finishes drying his hands and tosses the towel on the counter. He faces me, reaching up to grip the top of the doorframe with one hand. “Trouble focusing?” He leans closer, the timbre of his voice rattling my chest. “What’s the problem?”
My shallow breath turns to honey, sticking in my throat. “I…um…I…”
Something passes over his face, maybe it’s understanding, or maybe it’s what I’ve been feeling since the moment I met him.
Like it’s all so big, so much, so overwhelming. Like we are us, but we are also a mammoth wave, hurtling our direction, preparing to sweep us out to sea. We will be the ones to drown ourselves. That is what this feels like. A storm we’ve created, and willingly put ourselves in its path of destruction.
I drag in a heavy breath, and my tongue slips out to moisten my lips. This small movement tips the scale, and Gabriel hauls me flush against his chest. We pivot, my back against the wall, and Gabriel’s mouth is on mine. I open for him, and his tongue sweeps inside. This action isn’t new for us, but the tone is different. Somehow he is both tender and demanding, hands on my cheeks, my neck, sliding down my rib cage. My hands roam too, over his perfect chest and his even better shoulders, wrapping around him as I press myself as close as I can get with our clothes on.
“I want you,” Gabriel whispers, slipping his hand under my shirt. “Is that ok?”
I answer with, “I want you, too.” Look at me, using my words. Kind of.
He pulls my shirt over my head, stares at my breasts with open appreciation, and buries his face between them. “Want you so badly,” he groans against my skin.
“I thought maybe you didn’t, because…” I falter when he looks up at me. Desire burns in his eyes. The sight of it sets an ache at the apex of my thighs.
His tongue swipes over the top swell of my right breast, his teeth sinking lightly into the flesh. “I was trying to take it slow,” he says against my skin. “Be a gentleman.”
My fingernails rake through his hair. “Don’t be a gentleman with me. Not right now.”
Gabriel locks eyes with me, holding my gaze, and I see the moment it happens. He goes from sane to crazed. His hands slide down my body, cupping the backs of my thighs and lifting me onto him. When he gets me situated, he reaches for my bra, flipping down one of the cups. Through his house we go, my flesh in his mouth and my hands twisting in his hair.
We make it to his bedroom, and my back hits the soft sheets of an unmade bed.
Gabriel dips a knuckle into the hollow of my throat, dragging it down the centerline of my body, his gaze heavy and steady on mine. He keeps it there until he comes up against my jeans. He flicks them open and tugs them over my hips.
I sit up, reaching my fingers into the waistband of his pants. They drag back and forth, not going any lower, and he takes a sharp breath. I end the torture, and push his sweats down. He steps out of them and kicks them away.
He is beautiful. Every inch of his olive skin is muscled, taut. Hunger sweeps through me. I reach for him, and he folds over me, urging me to lie down.
Gabriel kisses me softly and pulls back to look at me. His eyes rake over my face. “Are you good?”
Considering I have the most incredible man I’ve ever met naked and on top of me, I’d say I’m better than good. I’m fantastic.
I lift up on my elbows, catching his lips with mine. “I’m so much better than good.”
He smiles against my lips. Two of his fingertips slide over me, pushing their way into the seam of my thighs. I open for him, the same way I opened my mouth for him in the hallway.
He moans quietly when his fingers hit their mark. His eyes remain locked on mine while his first finger goes to work. “You’re gorgeous, Avery.” I am his focus, his attention undivided, and something about that elevates the experience.
I gulp, my breath hurtling from my throat, as his second finger joins his first while his thumb works in tandem. It’s a delicious, exquisite sensation, and he watches me experience it. With one palm flat against his chest, fingers curled around his muscle, I tip my head back and rise.
Higher.
Higher.
Higher.
Then I’m there, weightless and floating. My thighs quake, my hands tremble as I fall back to earth, shattered in the very best way.
I open my eyes.
A lopsided smile tugs up one corner of Gabriel’s mouth, brown eyes deep and dark. “I love watching you. You’re beautiful.”
Maybe I should feel shy, but I don’t. Not under his gaze that’s simultaneously worshipping and extracting from me a part of myself that is mostly unexplored.
I wrap a hand around the back of his neck and pull him down to me. He kisses me reverently, tasting and enjoying, and all I want in this exact moment is everything.
Gabriel leans over onto one forearm, using his other hand to push my hair back from my face. He hooks an arm under my knee and lifts, pressing himself against me. He moves, just enough to cause friction. Leaning down, he kisses the corner of my mouth. “Please tell me you’re on birth control. I have condoms, but”—he shakes his head, and he’s still rubbing our centers together, and I’m on the edge again—“there’s no way I can allow a barrier between us. I have to have you, Avery. All of you.”
“It’s our lucky day.” My hands grip his shoulders. “I’m on birth control.”
Gabriel enters me, so slowly, sucking a breath through his teeth. His head swings side to side like he’s in disbelief. “I knew you’d feel this good.”
My mind is a mixture of thoughts, but they all pale in comparison to the emotion hurtling through me. Gabriel’s words, his actions, his presence and his scent, it all mixes to create a heady experience.
Gabriel rolls over, taking me with him. He sits up, and I am astride him. His hands are on my hips, guiding me. We are forehead to forehead, nose to nose, lips to lips. I swallow his moans and he drinks in my gasps. I’m there again,
climbing,
floating,
falling,
and Gabriel is with me, jerking and stilling.
We come out of a daze we created, and still he holds me, fingers brushing my back and soft kisses dotting my shoulder. I’m draped over him. My bones have liquified, rendering my limbs useless. “That was so good,” I murmur, my lips on his neck.
“Yes.” He’s still catching his breath. “Incredible. I knew it would be.”
“Why did we wait so long to do something that good?”
“Sometimes, fires are too hot to enter.” He kisses the top of my head. “That’s what you feel like. Or, what I feel when I’m with you. My feelings for you…they’re intense. If I had to compare it to my job, I’d say it’s the hottest fire I’ve ever come up against.”
Wow. That answer definitely works.
“Avery?”
“Hmm?”
“Is it too soon for me to tell you I love you?”
Surprise makes me regain the use of my body. I pull back to look at him. He looks serious, and vulnerable. Happiness bursts inside me, and I tell him, “I don’t believe love has a timeline. So, no, it’s not too soon.”
He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Then I love you.”
My smile spreads slowly, like melting chocolate. We’re naked, but I lay it all down, baring my heart and my soul. “I think I’ve loved you since I met you, hero.”
Gabriel closes his eyes, a low moan vibrating his throat. “Baby, we’re in trouble.”
I kiss the space beside his ear, my heart flip-flopping at how he called me baby . “What kind of trouble?”
“The kind that buries you alive, and all you can do is hope rescue never arrives.”
“I like that idea.”
“Being buried alive?”
“Being inundated. That’s what I want to be. Inundated with you. By you.”
Emotion moves over his face. I’m not sure how to define it, except to say that it’s good. I lift myself up and kiss the scar above his lip. “How did you get this?”
“Microform cleft lip.”
When I don’t say anything right away, Gabriel adds, “I was born with it. It was minor, no surgery needed.”
I kiss it again. “I like it.”
“I hated it when I was a kid, but I honestly don’t think I’ve noticed it in years.”
“Funny how things stop mattering after a while.” I lift my forearm. “See these white spots?” I point at my polka-dotted arm. “They’re called reverse freckles. I hate them.”
Gabriel rolls me over. He grabs one arm and studies it. “They’re barely noticeable.”
“And yet I hate them.”
His lips press against the inside of my wrist, mouth skimming my forearm. “I like them.”
“Why?”
His lips remain on my skin, but his gaze finds mine. “Because they’re on you.”
The love I feel from Gabriel opens up a floodgate, and everything rushes forward. What I’ve been missing my whole life is suddenly right in front of me. I need only to reach for it.
So I do.