Chapter 18
Noelle
My whole body seems to throb as Leif drops to his knees and slides my dress up my thighs. It’s not just how badly I want him. It’s how much I love him. Seeing him on his knees before me, his expression so earnest; his eyes searching mine with every word I say—I’d give him anything. Everything.
The soft fabric of my dress slips easily over my tights, and I arch my hips up so he can get it over my ass.
When he takes in my underwear, visible under the sheer tights, he makes a growling sound low in his throat. “I knew if I ever got so lucky to touch you again…I dreamed about doing nothing but giving you pleasure.”
I moan at both his words and the way he tugs my tights down with an urgency that belies his words.
He doesn’t take them all the way off, though. He just lifts my knees, pressing them against my chest. While he kisses me, his knuckles brush down over my most sensitive spot, the fabric of my underwear still between us.
He groans into my mouth and I know he’s felt my need for him—I felt it slicking my thighs even before he got the tights off. He slips his fingers under the gusset of my underwear and then dips one inside of me.
I gasp at the feel of him in me, but it’s not enough. My clit throbs, needing him.
“I need more,” I say, pushing my legs down. He removes his hand and tears off my boots, then my tights, while I shamelessly reach for his belt buckle.
He lets me unbuckle it, then issues a gruff, “No. Not yet.” He drops down, spreading my legs wide. “Fucking perfect,” he growls, before lowering his face between my legs.
Time seems to stop as his tongue dances across my swollen clit. First slowly, then with more pressure, Leif devours me like a starving man.
Pleasure curls through me as I wrap my legs around his neck. I feel my climax building, and I grip the sides of the chair, lifting my hips toward him.
It’s coming; I’m on the crest of the wave. “Leif, I’m going to—”
But he pulls away. “No.” He licks his lips. “Not yet.”
I crash back down to earth, nearly out of my mind with need for him. “Leif, please!”
He reaches into his wallet and procures a condom.
I try not to wonder how long it’s been there.
I think about him using it on someone else in all the time between we were apart, and my body goes hot with a roiling, seething jealousy I’ve never known.
When it was all theoretical—when we spent whole years apart—I told myself it would be fine if he was with someone else. It would be expected, really.
But now, with him and me and this precious, private space between us, this moment where the whole universe is right here in this dusty back room on an ancient chair—it’s unfathomable that there would be anyone else but us. Not then, not ever.
“Did you ever—”
I cut myself off. Can’t judge him for what he says. It’s not realistic.
But Leif meets my eyes as he sheathes his cock. “This condom has been in my wallet since the day after that first night, Noelle. I swapped it out once, just because I needed it to still work if the moment ever happened.”
I choke back tears. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t. But I do. He’s mine. He’s only ever been mine.
“Are you ready?” Leif asks, notching himself against me.
“Yes,” I say, my eyes on his. I’ve been ready for years.
“Me too, my love,” he says. I didn’t know I said that part out loud.
But it doesn’t matter, because just then he thrusts inside me, slowly, like he’s savoring it.
The incredible sensation of him filling me must go both ways, because he lets out a long, low, “Fuuuuck.”
Leif braces an arm on the back of the chair next to my neck, meeting my eye. “It’s better,” he says. “I didn’t think it was possible, but it feels better than I imagined.”
“More,” I say, my voice growing thick with the feeling of him there—with the need to have more of him; all of him.
He tilts his hips, pressing his other hand against my lower back to pull me onto him until he’s at the hilt. “It’s not enough,” I whisper.
“Here.” He pulls me off the chair, lowering me onto his lap, his hands on my bare hips.
I roll my hips against him as he rises up again and again, his arms wrapped around me, his face buried in my shoulder. “Noelle,” he whispers. “Noelle, Noelle, Noelle…”
I feel myself building already, waves of pleasure rolling harder and faster with every movement he makes. When he brings his thumb down to tease my clit I cry out, rocking harder against his body, riding his cock with a greedy need I’ve never known.
“I love you,” I gasp as I get close. I didn’t mean to say it, but now that it’s out I don’t know why I resisted.
I gasp as he thrusts himself deep into me once more, his eyes meeting mine. His brows slant, his eyes locked on me. “Say it again, Noelle.”
He fits me perfectly, like our bodies were made to join like this. “I love you, Leif Kelly,” I say, my whole body tensing. “It’s you. It’s always been you, next to me or apart, it’s you.”
Leif chuckles softly into my hair, slowing for a moment.
“What? Was that corny?” I whisper.
“No. It was perfect. I just—I was going to be cornier.”
I laugh. “Tell me.”
He brushes hair from my cheek, rolling his hips so pleasure ripples through me, threatening to steal my attention.
“I never told you, but I already knew what was up there, between the stars. I knew before I went up. I knew the moment I met you.”
“What was it?” My words are tight as my climax threatens to take me.
“It was you, Noelle,” he says. “It was always you.”
He presses both sides of me with his hands then, one splayed on my back, the other on my belly, his thumb working my clit fast now as he thrusts hard now, my body bouncing on his.
A moment later we reach the precipice and leap off together, both of us rigid and shaking and crying each other’s names.
I don’t care how corny it is. I don’t care about anything but Leif and me and how right in this moment it feels like all my wishes have come true.