22. RHETT
RHETT
The morning comes too soon with the sun glowing red and the birds chirping glory. With the curtains wide open, the room is bathed in golden light, shimmering over Avery’s soft skin. She looks peaceful as I brace my head on my hand and peer down on her.
With her back to my front, we’re sandwiched together, and every time I’ve tried to move my arm from around her waist, she stirs with a grumbly whine that makes my heart squeeze tight.
I’m beginning to understand how Callie can mean so much to Rowan.
Why Jo is so desperate to join Duke. It’s all down to her and her little girl.
I would do anything for them, and that includes asking a favor from the last person I ever would want to bring back into my life.
Last night can’t happen again. Carl can’t keep coming here and screwing her around. He’s done enough, and it’s time he disappears out of her life. For good.
With a soft sigh, Avery shuffles closer, her bare ass rubbing over my morning wood. A low groan rumbles through my chest before I can stop it, and she does it again—a slow, sleepy roll of her hips that tells me she’s not as asleep as she’s pretending to be.
“Good morning, Doc.” She smiles.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
“I like it when you call me that.” Her smile broadens, and she wriggles her ass.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” I tease her with a buck of my hips that has her ass tensing. “I’ve given you fair warning, Avery.”
“You always give me fair warning.” She finally opens her eyes to mine when I slip my hand down her belly, grazing the top of her pussy with my fingertips.
How can someone be so damn beautiful?
Her chestnut hair is a tangled, thoroughly fucked mess on the pillow, and her lips are a little ruddy and chaffed from last night while her eyes are smudged from the makeup she wore on our date. Still, she’s a sight for sore eyes.
“I give you warning because with you, I have no control.” Pressing my middle finger to her clit, I circle once, relishing the way her body squirms for more. “See? No control.”
“None?” Gnawing on her lip, she focuses on my mine while her hand comes to rest on my thigh.
“Nada.”
When I stroke through her wet flesh, a soft groan escapes her.
“Well,” she breathes, tracing her hand to my ass, “I like it when you lose control with me, Doc.”
“Me too,” I tell her, adjusting her so that her pussy lines up with my throbbing dick. A sharp hiss pushes out of her as I press inside her tight cunt. “That’s it, sunshine. You take me so fucking well.”
Her pussy clenches tight around me at my praise.
My girl likes being told how good she is.
Avery’s so goddamn tight that it feels as though I’m going to tear her apart, and maybe it’s sick or twisted, but I like the thought that she’ll feel me inside her even when we leave this bed.
Avery’s leg hooks over mine, pulling me deeper.
“Oh God,” she sighs tremulously as I round my groin, my arm wrapping around her chest before I cup her face.
I hold her to me as close and flush as we can get.
I can’t get enough of her—of the way she feels in my hands and how my heart craves her. It yearns to be her home in a way that it has never needed anything else.
“It feels so good,” she cries softly, a hand squeezing my wrist as the other holds on tight to my ass. Like she’s trying to keep me buried inside her. “This feels so good.”
Undulating on me, Avery trembles in my arms. My cock hardens further with a painful and unrelenting need to feel her come undone for me.
“You feel good, sunshine.” Lowering the hand on her belly to her pussy, I swipe my thumb from her clit to her entrance, where my dick slowly pulses into her clenching cunt. “Fuck, I can’t get enough of you…your sweet pussy…Jesus, fuck…”
The hand around my wrist tightens as my hold on her face closes a little more. Her other digs deeper into my glutes, nails biting the skin.
Avery’s shaking as she turns her head to the side, like she wants to see me, and murmurs my name. “Rhett…?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?” I nudge the tip of her nose with mine, running it up and down.
When I open my eyes to her earthy ones, the hand on my wrist cups my face, lowering it down to hers so that our foreheads touch. The hypnotic swirl of green, amber, and blue in her eyes ripples with all the things she wants to say. Bright. Deeper than still waters. Hotter than a blazing inferno.
Her lips meet mine, and the hungry bite of her teeth and lap of her tongue says all the words she’s scared to.
I love you.
I love you too, I tell her as I thrust deeper and harder, my strokes bottoming out and pushing the breath from her and right into me.
No one’s ever made me feel this way. No one has ever made me feel like my world begins and ends with them.
I would do anything for Avery. She has a power over me unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It’s transcending of every right or wrong. Of past and present or future…
God, I love her more than I ever thought possible.
Her soft whimpers vibrate between us with my increasing pace. Her body shakes, and her pussy clenches tight around me.
“Eyes on me, Avery. Let me see you, sunshine.”
Hazel eyes flutter open with my kiss on the tip of her nose. Shifting us so she’s facing the dresser mirror, I hold her gaze in the reflection.
“I want you to see what you do to me.” Her eyes try to wander, but I tip her chin up. “No. Look at yourself, Avery. Look at how beautiful you are right now.”
My beautiful girl swallows hard, half-lidded eyes blinking with doubt. I fucking hate the voice in her head that’s spent years telling her she was nothing. I’m going to fix that. To make sure it never gets to breathe again.
“You see that woman?” I thrust slow and deep, watching her lips part in the glass. “She’s fucking perfect. And she’s mine.”
“Rhett…”
“Yeah, baby, you’re all mine.”
Her hips work with mine, driving us both to our climax, and with every thrash of her head, her eyes widen, her pussy fists tighter…
“That’s it, let go…give me everything…” I grit out as my cock swells, the feel of her walls clamping around me too good to hold back.
Neither of us looks away, even as curses flurry from our lips and heat our skin. We don’t look away as her body racks with the pleasure I’m giving her, and I pour everything into her.
We give and take.
Avery holds me, and I hold her. And I can’t imagine ever not having this. I can’t fathom letting her go ever again.
She’s mine. She was born to be mine. Just as I was born to be hers. And my search is over. I’ve found her…my heart. My soul. The reason for my existence. And I’m going to keep her no matter what.
“Coffee! Gimme, please!” Avery makes grabby hands at the cup in my hand while peering out to the front of the house from her vantage point on the kitchen island.
She’s been on the lookout for Callie and the girls since we came downstairs.
It’s obvious she’s desperate to have Iris back, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t too.
The more I think about last night, the more it bothers me that Carl would show up here just to see Iris when from all accounts he’s not father of the year, and after the way he spoke to Avery last night…
I’m still kicking myself for letting Jesse stand in the way.
I have a feeling no one would give a shit if the asshole went missing, never to be seen or heard from again.
Still, my feelings aside, it’s Avery and Iris I’m worried about.
I’m worried about losing them. I don’t want to let them go—don’t think I can either.
Just thinking about it makes my chest tighten and my stomach knot painfully.
“You shouldn’t frown,” she tells me when I part her legs, standing between her thighs with her coffee in hand. Running a finger between my knitted brows, she adds, “You’ll get lines.”
I put her coffee down to the side and brace myself closer to her. “If you look closely, you’ll see I already have them.”
Scrunching her nose, Avery cups my face, giggling, “Only very closely. Like this…”
Sitting straighter, she leans toward me, closing her eyes for a moment as she inhales deeply. When her eyes open on mine again, her lips tip up to one side right before she kisses me.
All the barriers and walls she’s had in place are gone as the tip of her tongue licks tentatively into my mouth with her stare boring into mine, gradually gaining confidence to explore with my low groans.
Fingertips stroke from my jaw to my temples with her nails raking against my stubble with her quickening breaths and dilating pupils. Her feet hook around me, bringing me flush to her as my hands mold to the top of her ass.
Every inch of her, every dip and curve, is perfect.
So. Fucking. Perfect. I can’t actually believe she’s mine. For all my bravado, I am clueless as to how this incredible woman could want me.
Nipples hardening beneath my shirt, she moans into my mouth with every light touch. Still, her eyes never close, much like this morning.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been kissed. By so many different women. Yet none of them have stolen my soul the way she has with her soft smiles and timid touches. Nobody has seen me like she does—past all the rights and wrongs, virtues and sins, appearances and possessions.
Avery doesn’t care about any of the bullshit; she’s all about heart and soul. That’s what makes her special. It’s what makes her impossible to forget and so damn easy to love.
“Not even this close,” she murmurs, licking her lips as though she’s still savoring our kiss.
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“I was pleasantly distracted.”
“Really?”
“You’re kind of handsome.” She blushes, gaze meandering down between us, over my bare chest to the bulge straining against my creased shorts. “Beautiful, actually.”
“Is that all?”
“You’re intelligent.” Avery peers up at me from beneath her lashes with a coy gnaw of her lip. “And…talented.”
“Talented?”
The bashfulness that makes her even sweeter deepens the flush of her cheeks. “Yeah.”