15. AVERY #2
Biting down on his lip with his eyelids dropped, he comes closer. As though my answer was all the permission he’ll ever need, he parts my legs and stands between them.
My hands are sticky from the frosting, and when he laces his fingers with mine, it’s like we’re being glued together. And I love the feeling of it as much as the idea.
“You don’t have to.”
My heart is beating so damn fast that I can’t reply without sounding like an adolescent boy about to drop his balls.
Come on, Avery! Get it together, girl!
Inhaling a deep breath, I try to ignore the thrum of my pulse in my ears and the scorching heat throbbing on the apples of my cheeks.
“I want to.”
“Okay.” He smiles with a nod, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop myself from burying my face in his chest and inhaling all I can of him.
A sound escapes me—low and involuntary, and not entirely decent—and a white hot shiver rolls through me when his breath catches against the top of my head.
The horses are stunning. I’m completely mesmerized by the way their hide stretches taut over thoroughly worked muscle. Their movement is so graceful for such a bold and mighty creature.
It’s everything I love about nature. And everything I miss about my life in DC.
I miss my job. It was one of the very few things that brought me joy.
Yet, standing in the middle of the field—watching the horses graze in the bright orange glow of the morning sun—I feel almost at peace. Lost in the natural quiet of the ranch.
“You ever ride?”
I turn to find Rhett standing behind me.
The sun tinges his skin a deep golden shade that highlights the lean muscles of his arms, the contours of his cheekbones, and the sharp lines of his bristled jaw.
His hair is still a little damp from his shower post-sugar explosion, making the roots look a few shades darker than the sun-bleached ends.
“No.” I shake my head. To fill the silence that follows, I add, “I used to watch people canter on the beach and on the dunes in Montauk.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, it was. My mom was devastated that I was too scared to give it a try. All the other girls loved it, but I always preferred the water.”
He looks at me fondly, as though he’s truly fascinated by what I’m telling him.
“You’re scared of horses?”
“No, not the horses. It’s the mounting and riding part that…
” I pause as a perplexed expression flits over his face.
“Every summer we used to go to Long Island, we had a house on the beach. One summer, I remember sitting on the porch waiting for the sun lotion to set, and this girl was riding by the water. One minute she was flying past, and the next she was on the ground.”
“Was she all right?”
“No, she hit her head on a submerged rock, and a few days later she died in hospital. That one incident was enough to scare me for life.”
“And yet, you’re not scared of swimming with sharks,” he muses.
“I know. I’m an oxymoron, and it’s a stupid fear.”
Rhett comes closer. Boldly, he threads our fingers together, squeezing our palms together, his tanned skin a fraction darker than my own. Veins pulse on the back of his hand as he flexes his hold on mine, kneading our flesh together, a kind of comfort no one has offered me in so long.
“Avery…” The soft whisper of my name makes me peer up at him. “There’s nothing stupid about you.”
The faraway sound of hooves pounding earth and satisfied neighs from closer by fade into a buzz as he fingers the ends of my bangs, twisting them away from my face.
The way he’s looking at me makes my insides warm, my lungs burn with the need for air. But it feels so thick, too thick to breathe it in. And I don’t want to breathe. I don’t want to think. I don’t want anything except for Rhett Reynolds to look at me forever in the way he’s looking at me now.
I want him to kiss me. I want him to kiss me and to touch me. I want him to devour me with every nerve, fiber, cell, and molecule of my being.
And maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it’ll never happen, but the longer he looks at me in this thought-consuming way…the more I need him to do it. The more I need him to make me forget everything.
Another gripping squeeze brings me closer to him, my heart beating so hard that it’s threatening to blow. The sun gleams in the dark golden threads of his thick hair as Rhett leans forward, so slow, and I wish it was faster because all I can think is that I’m about to combust.
His thumb skims the shell of my ear, down to my jaw.
Oh God.
The tip of his nose ghosts mine.
Oh Jesus.
My pleas echo in my thoughts, while all I want is to feel something. Rhett’s kiss. I want to know what his affection feels like. The taste of it.
“Rhett…”
Bright, ocean-green eyes bore into mine, darkening the longer we stand breathing the same air with our pulses hammering together between our hands.
“You’re killing me, Avery. I want to give you time, I do. I want to give you what you need.”
My hand flattens to his hard stomach, pushing and pulling. Unlike all the other times he’s given me room to maneuver around him, Rhett holds my hand tighter while his hand cups my face harder.
With my blood rushing hot and frantic through me, my pulse pounds and pounds so deafening inside that it drowns out all thought and feeling outside of it.
My fingers claw at him as he pulls me flush to him, his strength winning out, all the gentleness from the last several weeks gone.
The longer he holds me to him, the more I crave him. The warmth of his body thaws the ice in my veins and breaks down all the barricades I tried to erect around my heart.
“What if I’m not good enough?” I murmur as he releases my hand and my face, arms wrapping tightly around me until I’m tucked in his chest. “You might not want me.”
Cupping my face with both hands, he leans over me. “You don’t ever say or think that. You are more than enough. You are more than any man could hope to deserve.”
All the breath leaves my lungs, and my knees buckle at the fierce honesty in his eyes, leaving me certain that Rhett Reynolds is a fire that will consume me beyond control.
Like the core of the earth, he’s a molten magnet. Impossible to draw away from. Impossible to restrain. A force beyond anything I’ve ever known.
“You’re all I can think about,” he speaks into my hair, lips fluttering over my temple as I rest my head on his chest. “More than anything I’ve ever fathomed. God, Avery, I want you. I want all of you. Everything.”
His words fill me with possibilities…desires that I have no recollection of feeling before.
“You are and always will be pure fucking sunshine to me.”
The heat emanating from his body seeps into mine, our closeness setting my nerves alight. My heart pounds harder. My core throbs.
His hands meander down my bare back, to my sides, curling around my hips as he steps forward, feet planted on either side of mine.
I hold on to his shoulders as he presses his lips to my forehead, tipping my head back with the controlled force of his kiss.
“You are so much more than you’ll ever know.” Rhett breathes out around a smile.
The surety of his statement never wavers even in its gentleness.
“You are everything,” he whispers across my hot skin. “Avery…”
Rhett glances between my stare and my parted lips. Hands locking tighter around my hips, holding me flush to him. He’s warm like the sun and the longer he reins in his kiss, his need solidifies between us.
My hand twists in his T-shirt. The subtle breeze enveloping me with his scent, so that I am completely surrounded by everything that makes Rhett Reynolds the only man I could ever trust again.
Everything about him feels like home.
My entire being trembles at the realization. A soul-deep yearning comes to life inside me. Need unlike any the I’ve ever felt. For him. For all the promises glowing in his bright blue stare.
For him. This man.
“Kiss me.”
“What if I don’t ever stop?” He ghosts his lips over mine.
“Don’t stop…please.” I’m begging him, breathless and raggedly. “Please, Doc.”
My mouth dries as he runs the tip of his nose along my cheekbone, inhaling deep as his lips press to mine softly before he pulls away and a hand cups my jaw. He presses my head to his shoulder while his thumb rakes over my bottom lip.
The thundering of his heart is loud and fast. The sun is beaming, the early morning breeze wrapping around us, binding us tighter together.
And I cannot breathe.
I can barely hold myself up.
And then his mouth crashes onto mine. His hand coaxes me onto the tips of my toes by my jaw. The other rounding to the curve of my ass, keeping my body completely tethered to his.
Groaning, he nips at my cupid’s bow before licking the sting it leaves behind. His fingers sink deeper into my flesh, a welcome frisson of pain that sets my entire being alight. Every nerve and pore cry out for more as his tongue pushes into my mouth.
I freeze at my first taste of him. And I know there will never be anything like it ever again.
There’s nothing tentative or soft about his kiss. He pushes and pulls, gives and takes. A yin and yang of overwhelming sensation.
Sweet, commanding, and devastating. It shatters all I ever thought I wanted. All the dreams I ever held dear and clung to with all the hope in my being.
All there is, is Rhett Reynolds, and I cling to him like he could be all my tomorrows.