Chapter 9 #2
“This place is so you,” she said as her gaze panned around the kitchen and open living area. “Everything in its place. Neat. Is your whole life this orderly?”
The question hit hard. “I try to keep it that way.”
“Why?” It wasn’t an accusation, just genuine curiosity.
I swirled the beer in my glass, watching the lacing cling to the side. “Because the alternative is chaos. I learned long ago that the only thing you can really count on is what you build for yourself.”
Her expression softened with understanding. “I have a confession to make.”
Her lips were full and so damn kissable. “Oh? Beer tends to lead to confessions.”
“I’ve spent the last few days trying to focus on genetic sequencing while the only thing I can think about is kissing you. Being with you.” She closed the small distance between us, her hand coming up to rest on my chest, right over my thumping heart.
“At dinner,” she continued, “you were right. I’ve been checking boxes my whole life, chasing a version of success I’m not even sure I want anymore. Coming back here, seeing you… it’s made me question everything.”
I covered her hand with mine, lacing our fingers together over my chest. “Me too. All this order, this control… it’s how I function. And you’ve completely dismantled it. I can’t focus on anything else. No matter where I look, all I see is you.”
That was all it took.
She rose on her toes, and I met her halfway, my mouth finding hers.
This was slow and deep, a conversation all its own.
It was a confession of twelve years of longing, of days of denial, of the undeniable truth that we were standing on a cliff’s edge.
I tasted the citrus from my IPA on her lips, traced the sexy curves of her body against mine, reveled in the soft sound she made in the back of her throat as I angled my head to deepen the kiss.
“I want you, Braden,” she said against my lips. “Now. Here. No more waiting.”
A thousand reasons why this was a catastrophically bad idea flashed through my mind.
She was leaving. It would end in heartbreak, again.
It was temporary. It would destroy the careful order I’d built.
But as I stared down at her, I couldn’t latch onto a single one of them.
The only thing that was real was her. In my arms. “Bedroom’s down the hall. ”
The words barely left my mouth before I was moving, pulling her with me. The pretense of a slow seduction evaporated in a single heartbeat. My mouth crashed down on hers again. It was all teeth and tongue and twelve years of pent-up hunger.
She met me with equal force, her hands gripping my shirt and yanking me closer as we stumbled out of the kitchen.
Her back hit the hallway wall with a dull thud, and a gasp escaped her, which I promptly swallowed.
I pinned her there, one hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back while my other hand went for the buttons of her shorts.
They were small, difficult, a maddening delay.
A frustrated growl rumbled in my chest.
“Let me,” she breathed, her fingers a blur as she unfastened them.
While she shoved her shorts and panties down, I went for my own. We were a clumsy, desperate mess of limbs and raw need, kicking away clothes until they formed a pile of denim and cotton on the hardwood floor.
My hands slid from her bare waist to her T-shirt.
I hooked my fingers in the collar, intending to pull it over her head, but it wasn’t fast enough.
The fabric was a barrier, and I was done with barriers.
I ripped it apart, and the sound of tearing cotton was shockingly loud. Her eyes flew open, wide and dark.
“God, Braden,” she gasped, the sound a perfect mixture of shock and arousal.
That look broke the last thread of my restraint. Her hands were on me then, hot and sure, wrapping around my shaft in a grip that sent a jolt through every nerve in my body.
“Tessa,” I groaned, throwing my head back against the wall as she stroked me once in a slow, deliberate motion that was exquisite torture.
“Yes,” she whispered, her mouth finding the pulse point on my neck. “God, I want you.”
That was it. I hooked an arm under her knees and lifted her, her legs automatically wrapping around my waist. She was gloriously, completely naked against me.
I could feel the heat of her core pressed against my stomach.
Her breasts were crushed against my chest, the nipples hard little points of friction.
I half-walked, half-stumbled the last few feet to my bedroom door, never breaking the seal of our mouths. I shouldered the door open, the momentum carrying us inside. The afternoon sun cut through the blinds in sharp slats, striping the bed, the floor, and our bodies.
I didn’t place her on the bed. I fell with her. We landed in the center of the mattress in a tangle of limbs, a chaotic collision of skin and heat and desperation. She ended up on her back and pulled me down on top of her, her nails digging into my shoulders, her hips arching up, seeking mine.
Her breath was a ragged wrenching. “Braden.”
My name on her lips wasn’t a word. An invitation. A plea. And I was more than ready to answer.
My mouth left hers, trailing a line of fire down her jaw, over her throat, to the valley between her breasts.
I took one hard peak into my mouth, sucking hard.
She cried out, her back arching off the mattress.
While my mouth worked her over, my hand slid down her firm stomach and found the hard pearl between her legs.
I pressed down, circling with my thumb, and her hips jerked, a broken moan tumbling from her lips.
“Jesus, yes.”
Her hand found me, closing around my length.
She wasn’t gentle. Her grip was tight, demanding, her strokes matching the frantic rhythm of my fingers against her.
It was a feedback loop of pure sensation.
I studied her every reaction to what I was doing to her.
She was unraveling, and her coming apart was driving me wild.
My thumb never left her, and her hand on me became a desperate, greedy fist.
The friction built too fast, a firestorm threatening to consume us both. Her eyes snapped open, locking with mine. They were wild, dark with need.
“I can’t wait,” she gasped, her knuckles white where she was gripping me. “I need you inside me.”
I pulled away from her, the loss of contact a physical pain. I rolled off the bed and fumbled in the drawer of my nightstand. My fingers finally closed around a foil packet, and I ripped it open.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her dark-red hair spilling across my pillowcase. The sight of her in my bed, waiting for me, stirred something primal and possessive within me.
I rolled on the condom and moved over her, but before I could settle between her legs, she shifted.
In one fluid motion, she twisted, rolling me onto my back and straddling my hips.
She took me in her hand, guiding me to her entrance.
Then she sank down, taking all of me inside her in one slow, deliberate slide that made us both hiss in a sharp breath.
We both went still for a heartbeat, adjusting to the overwhelming feeling of being joined. Then she began to move.
She rode me with fierce intensity, her head thrown back, her hands braced on my chest. I could only watch as she took control, setting a pace that was both agonizingly pleasurable and utterly unsustainable.
I gripped her hips, my thumbs pressing into the soft flesh, trying to anchor myself as she drove us both toward the edge.
It was too much.
With a growl, I flipped us over, reversing our positions without breaking contact. She landed softly on the mattress, a surprised gasp escaping her as I surged up, pulling almost all the way out before driving back in, deeper this time.
Her legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me impossibly closer as we collided. It was a desperate rhythm aimed at a single purpose. I held her gaze as the first tremors of her climax began.
“Tessa,” I demanded, my voice a rough command. “Stay with me.”
“Braden,” she cried out, and that was it.
The sight of her falling apart beneath me, her body clenching around mine in tight, pulsing waves, triggered my own release with devastating force.
I drove into her one last time, a raw, wordless roar tearing from my throat as I poured all my history, all my hunger, all my twelve years of waiting into her.
I collapsed on top of her and buried my face in her neck, my body shaking with the aftershocks. Our breathing was harsh and loud in the quiet room.
Slowly, reality filtered back in. The weight of my body pressing her into the mattress. The sweat-damp sheets tangled around our legs.
I rolled off her and pulled her against my side. She came willingly, her head settling on my chest, her hair fanning out over my skin in a dark-red curtain. I stared up at the ceiling, my mind utterly blank for a moment.
Until a single thought came through with perfect, damning clarity.
The word temporary was a joke.
It was the worst lie I’d ever told. Because this—Tessa in my arms, in my bed, in my life—wasn’t temporary.
It was inevitable, like something I’d been waiting for since the moment she’d driven away twelve years ago.
And in less than eleven weeks, she was going to leave again.
I tightened my arms around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and wondered how the hell I was going to survive it.