Chapter 25 – Reese #2
“Did what?”
My voice was pathetically breathy and I didn’t care one fucking bit. Having Dakota on top of me like this, touching me and being so undeniably himself was the only thing I wanted. Ever.
“Went bare-ass naked for me.” He started to slide his hand around my hip, and I grabbed onto his wrist and squeezed.
“Hey! No, I didn’t. I took a shower and—ah, fuck!”
I jerked when he sank his teeth into my shoulder, then lifted my hips to rub myself against him.
“I’ll just pretend you did it on purpose to tease me. I like that. It’s less perfunctory.”
“…perfunctory?”
“Yeah. I just learned that word from Val. I like it. Did I not use it right?”
“No, I think you did, I just…” I slid my hands beneath his shirt, the skin of his back so fucking hot. He shuddered on top of me, then wrapped his arms around me and crushed me to him so hard that I couldn’t breathe.
“Fuck, please don’t stop touching me. I missed your hands so much,” he whispered, and I wrapped my legs around him to squeeze him as hard as he was squeezing me.
“Just my hands?”
“Maybe other parts.”
“What other parts?”
He started to slowly grind on top of me, and when the fabric of his sweats brushed against my bare cock, I gasped.
“All of them,” he moaned, biting down on my pulse point. I scraped my nails down his back and arched into him as he sucked, the sensation of his tongue rolling over my skin sparking a fire in my blood.
Dakota drew back until that dark gaze found mine. His eyes lowered to my lips and he murmured, “Especially this mean little lying mouth. That’s my favorite part.” He rubbed his thumb across my bottom lip. “Go on, darling. Lie to me. Tell me you didn’t miss me.”
I had missed him so much it hurt. The kind of pain I hated, that riotous, uncertain ache that only knew how to grow, how to multiply, until it had spread through every inch of me. So destructive and volatile that once it started moving, there was no stopping it.
The kind of pain that meant he’d carved himself a place in my soul, and no matter how I tried to cut him out, it was impossible.
He’d spread his roots, was fully embedded in my psyche, and that meant…
It meant I was doomed.
“I didn’t miss you,” I whispered, threading my fingers through his hair. “Not for a single second.”
His lips quirked up. “I knew it.”
He lowered his mouth to mine, and I had never been so glad to be doomed if it meant I got to keep this.
I’d endure a lifetime of pain and heartache for just a few more moments with him.
When he pulled back abruptly, I made a frustrated noise in the back of my throat, staring up at him in confusion.
He brushed his hand over my longer strip of hair, looking down at me with such an earnest expression that it flayed me open. My heart raced as I searched his eyes, and then he grabbed one of my hands and pressed it against his cheek, rubbing it over his skin. “I never told you how I felt.”
“What?”
He turned his head and pressed a kiss into the palm of my hand. “You asked me how I feel.”
“Oh.” That felt like ages ago, like we’d been here for a lifetime already, and I wanted three more lifetimes. Ten. A thousand.
“I feel like pouncing on you every time I see you. I feel like you could touch me for days and it still wouldn’t be enough. I feel like you hide all your hurt because you’re afraid of someone adding to it, but you don’t have to hide with me.”
I tried pulling my hand away from his, not enjoying this feeling at all.
Enjoying it way too much.
Hating that I enjoyed it.
Being seen.
He saw everything, and I wasn’t afraid of that at all.
Dakota just smiled and held my hand against his face even more firmly, not letting me get away. “Hold on, I’m not done.”
“Dakota—”
“I like you. How pissed off you get. I never knew I could feel this way about another person. Never really imagined myself ever feeling like this, but now that I do…I don’t ever want this feeling to go away.
It’s… honestly, it’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever felt.
When I’m with you, I feel like…like I could do anything.
Like I could be anything.” He seemed to think about something for a moment, then shrugged and said, “Or not. I could fail in the most embarrassing way, but it would be okay—because you’d be right there, helping me try again.
Or just glaring at me, like you’re doing now.
I dunno, Reese, I just…I really fucking like you. ”
“Dakota…”
“And I really like it when you say my name like that.”
I tried swallowing past the thick lump in my throat. “Like what?”
“Like I’m the only one who can give you the answers you’re looking for.”
Fuck.
“Can you?” I whispered.
He brushed his nose against mine. “Depends on the question.”
What if the question was can you ever forgive me for lying to you? Can you ever truly love me when I’ve never been one hundred percent truthful with you? What is this? What are we doing? What are we?
I was too afraid to ask him any of those things. Too afraid to admit what I’d done, too afraid of saying the wrong thing and pushing him away, too afraid of not saying the right thing and having him walk away.
The thought that I would be the reason he ultimately left was too much. My throat thickened, and I closed my eyes to try and stop the tears, but that was pointless because they came anyway.
“You’re just trying to turn me on, aren’t you?” he murmured, brushing away the tears.
A wet laugh mixed with a sob choked from my throat, and I sputtered out, “Shut up, asshole.”
But fuck…
He made me laugh, even as it felt like I was being smothered by this horrible sadness. He made me laugh, and that…that was the most beautiful thing. He took my pain and turned it into something beautiful.
He peppered my face with tiny kisses, and I’d never felt so much deep affection for someone that wasn’t my family.
I hadn’t felt like this about anyone, and it had been such a long time that I’d cared about another person on this level that I’d forgotten how much I’d missed this kind of connection.
A connection I didn’t deserve.
But in spite of feeling so undeserving, I was crushingly desperate for him. For this. For everything he had to offer—everything he was offering me.
I knew how dangerous desperation could be. How it easily it could drive someone over the edge, to plunge them into a darkness within themselves they didn’t even know existed.
It was awful and all-consuming, and I never wanted to be desperate for anything in my life.
Ever. But I was desperate for him, desperate for his nearness, his touches, his smiles and the sadness he hid deep inside and pretended wasn’t there.
His love and his laughter. I was desperate to have all his attention, just like he wanted from me, and that…
terrified me. Truly terrified me, right down to my brittle bones.
But the fear wasn’t enough to make me stop.
Nothing short of death would kill this desperation, I was pretty sure.
I wanted so badly to give him everything he was giving me in return, but I wasn’t sure I was capable. I wasn’t sure I could even come close to reciprocating in the same way. He said he liked all my parts, but I was missing a lot of vital ones.
“I’m…I feel like you should get to know me better before deciding whether you like me or not.” A bitter laugh scraped up my throat, and when the intensity of his gaze became too much, I tried to turn my head away.
“I think I know you pretty well by now.” He grabbed my chin and turned my head back up. “You’re a pretty little tiger with the sweetest center. You’re precious and vicious and contentious and all the other words ending in ious that I can’t think of. I’ll have to ask Val.”
I huffed out a laugh.
“And I want to be everything to you,” he said softly.
I had a horrible feeling he already was.
And then his lips quirked up at the corner. “Actually, I think I already am.”
“What?”
“You told me something very, very interesting last night.” His smile grew wider as my heart raced.
“What? What did I tell you?” What the fuck had I told him? What could I have told him that would make him this happy?
He looked into my eyes and said, “You told me that you’ve loved me forever. That you fell in love with me when you were a kid.”
Oh, fuck. The horror that rolled through me was slow and thick and awful. “No…no, I—that’s—”
He pressed his finger to my lips. “It’s okay. So all this time you did know who I was, you just pretended not to?”
I shoved his finger away. “No, I didn’t, actually. I only realized a couple months ago. And I only watched you for a few years; after the accident I didn’t have any interest in anything to do with violin.”
His expression sobered, and he murmured, “Ah. Makes sense. Well, I’ll pretend it’s been for all that time.”
When I didn’t say anything, he put his thumbs at the corners of my mouth and pulled, then squished my lips together, the fucking weirdo.
“Are we okay?” he asked, moving his hands from my mouth to my hair and petting the soft fuzz.
We.
I was part of a we?
And what were we?
I shoved the question away before it could leap from my lips.
Fuck, now I’d be spiraling for a different reason.
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.”
“Good. Because I like it when you’re mad, but I really hate it when you’re mad at me.
” He pressed a chaste little peck to my lips that made my heart skip a beat.
When he drew away, he narrowed his eyes.
“And I also don’t like it when you get so angry you try and fight everyone.
Can you stop fighting every single person that pisses you off?
Please? It scares the shit out of me and I don’t want you to get hurt. Or arrested.”