32. ashton
thirty-two
ashton
. . .
Raining On Sunday - Keith Urban
It rains all night and for most of the next day.
Ordinarily I’d be mad—it rains plenty in New York, and it’s not often I have someone here.
Someone I want to share the city with. But this time I can’t find it in me to care about the rain.
Instead of exploring, we spend the time indoors, rewriting the memories I have of this loft before I leave it for good.
The kitchen counter becomes the place where we bake cookies in our underwear, his hands on my bare skin at all times.
The sofa is where he holds me close, tugs a blanket up to my chin and kisses the top of my head, limbs tangled like we’re two hearts in one body.
The shower is where he does unholy things to me, worshipping and blaspheming at the same time.
Since he told me he loved me in the rain at Times Square, hardly an hour has gone by without one of us saying the words again.
I’ve felt it for a long time, and I know he has, too.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever known before, and at the same time, it’s as familiar as my own name, as innate to me as breathing.
I feel it in the way his enormous hands cradle my face so tenderly, his long fingers tangling in my hair and gripping like he daren’t let go.
The way he kisses me hard, the way he sucks on my bottom lip and sets my skin on fire.
The way my stomach swoops and somersaults as his hands encircle my waist, holding me flush against his body like he can’t bear to have even an inch of air between us.
Loving Brooks—letting myself love him, being loved by him—is easy. Comfortable. Like coming home.
It feels like I can, and I should, and my god, do I want, want, want.
“I am,” Brooks says, kissing down the length of one of my legs.
“So fucking crazy for you.” Each word is punctuated with a kiss, and I can’t help but giggle when his mouth meets my sensitive feet.
He grips my ankle in one large hand, sweeping his palm up my calf.
His exploration of every inch of my skin is curiously innocent and erotic at the same time, punctuated by gentle kisses until he reaches the apex of my thighs.
He pushes my knees apart and settles between them.
“You are a fucking masterpiece,” he whispers.
I’ve never really had body image issues, but I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt beautiful.
Not until now, under Brooks’s heated gaze, with all of me on display for him and quite obviously turning him on.
Here in this bed, naked and loved, I feel like a goddess.
“You gonna come for me, devil?” He looks up at me, one eyebrow raised and one corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.
It’s almost a challenge, and it’s one I’m not going to back down from.
If this man is offering me an earth-shattering orgasm, I’m going to take it.
A beautiful thought crosses my mind and my lips curl into a smile as I give voice to it.
“I don’t know. You gonna make me?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear a small growl tears from his chest as he dips his head, burying himself between my legs.
For all the times we’ve been here before: in my cabin and in his, in his truck, in the stables, and plenty of places in between, it’s never felt like this.
Nothing has ever felt like this—like being loved completely, and being free to love without fear.
I’ve spent my whole life wanting him. Wishing that one day he might feel the same.
Hoping that at some point, the revolving door of cookie-cutter blondes would stop spinning and he’d choose me instead.
And when the movement of his lips and tongue tip me over the edge, when I cry out his name, he reaches out to pull me into his embrace. Safe. Warm. Loved. Home.