Chapter 41 I Love You
E than’s kisses were even hotter against my lips with the frosty night air feeling across my back thanks to the still open front door. My body shivered against his, and I wasn’t sure if it was the dropping temperature outside or how Ethan’s tongue swept across my lips, parting them gently.
Either way, the tremble in my body was snuffed out as soon as the heat of Ethan’s determined hands moved from around my waist down to my naked thighs.
I hadn’t thought to change as I was rushing out of my apartment earlier and was left wearing my ballerina pink sleeping shorts for bottoms. The shorts were completely inappropriate for the weather outside, and Ethan took advantage of the flimsy material, slipping both his hands right underneath until it was skin meeting skin.
My heart hammered in my chest as he touched me like this, so intimate and sensual.
With every touch, Ethan and I were closing in on that point of no return.
Ethan’s mouth pushed against mine with a passion I felt weak from, undoing every stitch keeping me together. Both of his hands squeezed underneath my shorts, and a moan caught in my throat as the sensation of his rough grip struck right between my legs.
I could taste his need for me on his tongue that stroked mine in such a way that behind my closed eyelids, I saw the stars I instinctively knew came with each of his kisses.
Between the stars, his lips, and his hands all wrecking my body at once in the best destructive decision I’d ever made, I was quickly losing all of myself to this man.
“Ethan,” I cried against his lips, burying my fingers into his shoulders to try and drag him closer.
“I know.” His rasped mumble against my mouth confirmed that he was feeling it too—the impossibility of our bodies’ limits. If we could strip down our flesh and bones until we were nothing but souls intertwined, neither of us would hesitate.
That’s what we were after all. Mirrored souls who found themselves on the wrong side of time.
“Is anyone here?”
Ethan shook his head. “It’s just us for now.”
Good. I didn’t want to have to be quiet.
I didn’t want to have to be careful tonight.
What I wanted was one unapologetic night with Ethan to love him in every way I shouldn’t.
I had him all to myself for just one, selfish night.
One night to live out a lifetime of love, a lifetime of kisses and sweet nothings whispered in intimacy before tomorrow came and it all turned to just a memory.
Ethan covered my mouth with his again, showing me what it felt like to be cherished, to be worshipped with an act as simple as a kiss.
His tongue swept my swollen lips apart, and I sighed into his mouth, pulling myself closer to him.
Ethan kissed me deeper, consumed me completely, and picked me up off the ground like I weighed nothing.
My legs locked around his waist, Ethan walked us backwards towards the wide open front door.
The door closed with a thud as Ethan pressed our weight against it, the feeling of his stiff arousal pushing against the thin barrier of my shorts, and I whimpered.
“I want you,” I spoke through jagged breathing.
A pained sort of noise got strangled in Ethan’s throat. “I need to go slow with you, Slim.”
His calling of my nickname for the first time after uncovering its true meaning didn’t help Ethan’s wishes. In fact, it only burned my desire for him deeper, stronger, hungrier.
“I need you now .”
Against my forehead, Ethan shook his head and I got to watch the clear struggle on his handsome face as he fought between his primal desire and his need to drag this night out. “I’ve imagined this moment between us for months and not once did it involve me taking you against a door.”
“Ethan,” I whined, unashamed at my lust.
“Alice.” An excited breath cut through my throat as Ethan dropped his lips just below my ear, grazing down my neck. “I’m taking my time with you tonight. I want to remember every kiss I give you, every sigh from your lips, every tremble in your body. All of it.”
Oh God, his tender words were infusing my blood with raw, unadulterated love and turning my mind to mush.
All I could do was nod and chase his lips with mine until I felt the satisfying press of them again.
I would let him do whatever he wanted to me tonight and take as much time doing it as he pleased.
So long as I had him, everything else was background music.
Ethan moved us away from the door and I had no idea or care where he was taking us.
All I cared about was drowning myself in him until I literally had no air left in my lungs.
I threw my hands around his neck and hugged myself into him as tightly as possible, burying my head against his shoulder.
I felt like crying as I held him, emotionally, physically, and mentally overwhelmed by this moment with him.
After a few seconds, Ethan loosened his hold beneath my legs to set me down. I landed on the floor in light steps, turning to see where he’d taken us and finding a bedroom that was only slightly bigger than mine at the apartment.
“It’s a little messy. I wasn’t expecting any guests.”
He was right. It was a little messy with some clothes dropped here or there and two suitcases open with more clothes hanging out of them, both stationed on the far side of the room.
In the room, there wasn’t much. Just a bed, two nightstands and an awkwardly placed lamp standing in the room’s corner.
The thought that these items were all Ethan had left of his life that I had upended tried to worm its way inside my head, but like he knew my brain’s ability to self-blame, Ethan put a stop to the thought before it took hold.
He redirected my focus to my shoulder as he brushed his fingers along it, sweeping my hair away from it so his mouth could plant a kiss there.
I sighed at the feeling of his lips, freeing up the tension in my neck to let it drop to the side, allowing Ethan room to explore. His lips traced my skin like it was a land uncharted, staking claim over every spot he kissed as his and his only, forever on.
My stomach flipped as Ethan nipped at my flesh, teeth grazing down the hollow of my neck.
Slowly, Ethan turned me to face him, our chests brushing the other’s as we breathed in, eye to eye and heart to heart.
I knew he wanted to go slow, but damn if he wasn’t making it easy.
We had waited for this moment—our moment—for so long, and it was taking every restraint inside of me not to drag him right over to his bed.
Languidly like he wanted, I pushed my hands beneath the barrier of his shirt until my fingers touched bare skin.
My hands lifted along the ridges of his sculpted torso, fingertips sliding up and up, taking the fabric of his shirt with me.
At a point I couldn’t reach anymore, Ethan helped and pulled the rest of his shirt off, dropping it to the floor next to our feet.
Without blinking, I lifted my arms up and over my head and waited.
A flash of love, adoring and magnificent, glossed over his stare. Every affirmation I gave him that I wanted tonight to happen made Ethan look more and more like a man lost in love. Tonight, we would get lost together, and we wouldn’t find our way back out until morning.
Ethan trailed his fingers beneath my shirt, inching it up until the air in the room raced along my naked skin as he discarded my shirt on the floor with his. My heart thundered in my chest as he skimmed his touch along the clasp of my bra.
“Is this okay?”
His voice was as soft and as honest as the expression dressing his eyes.
I nodded, feeling heat flood my chest. Ethan leaned in, pressing his soft lips to my forehead, and my eyes fell shut at the tingles that prickled through my body from his kiss.
From head to toe, my body was singing so emphatically, I barely registered his fingers unclasping my bra until the clothing was falling off to join the pile we were creating on the floor.
I flattened my bare breasts against his naked chest and relished in how it felt to touch him like this. The warmth. The freedom. The vulnerability between our bodies.
Ethan’s hand tangled in my hair as he brought his mouth down to mine again, ravishing me with kisses both passionate and powerful. His mouth moved over mine until he owned me and I was a mess of desire, growing weaker and weaker for him by the stroke of his lips.
Unable to wait any longer, I kicked off the boots I’d shoved on to drive here and let loose some of my restraints by dragging him towards the bed, not once letting a moment pass with his lips not on mine.
He didn’t seem to mind that I was pushing things to escalate, thank goodness. In fact, he kissed me harder, bruisingly , ruining me for all other men with a kiss that scorched my mind in a blaze so searing, all I could remember was this white hot kiss.
That mind-muddling kiss broke as Ethan sat down on the bed, leaving me standing in front of him, panting and needy.
A cry broke through my throat as Ethan covered one of my breasts with his mouth.
Lust struck right between my legs as his skilled tongue circled my nipple, drawing sighs of pleasure from my parted lips.
“Ethan, please ,” I moaned louder as his hand cupped my other breast, thumb brushing across my nipple until it puckered for him.
His fingers tweaked the sensitive nipple while his mouth sucked hard on the other, every sensation he was giving me filling my head up with dizzying air as I panted for him.
A noise rumbled in Ethan’s chest as I begged for him, and finally, both of his hands dropped to the curves of my waist. His mouth left my breast as he peered up at me, his amorous gaze clenching my stomach muscles even tighter. God, he was handsome. More than handsome.