Chapter 54 Rewrite the Stars #2
Come on. Be bold. Say it. Say it. Say it!
“That we were soulmates,” I blurted out, my heart hammering. “We got our wires crossed over time, but he knew it before I did that we were supposed to end up together.”
Ethan closed his eyes almost immediately, letting out a breath shaking with strain.
The strongest gust of suffering blew out of him and into me as he stood there, confusing and worrying my heart at the same time.
Panic set in almost instantly that he was going to leave and that I had gone too far, and the next words out of his mouth didn’t help relax that panic.
“How long do you think this date is going to last?”
Hurt couldn’t even begin to describe the pain that electrocuted my heart as he asked that damning question.
“Well, I had dinner and ice skating planned so, I-I don’t know… maybe four hours?”
Any hope or confidence I’d gained tonight was rapidly draining out of me as Ethan shook his head and exhaled a sharp sigh. His eyes ripped up and landed on me, as severe as anything I’d seen before.
“That’s too long.”
Offense dropped my jaw open to respond, but before I could say anything, Ethan charged forward and covered up any response I had with his lips.
The touch of his kiss exploded a lighting bolt of shock through my body. Every molecule I had fused with electricity conducted of pure, fully amped desire and like we’d never skipped a beat in our song, I melted right into him.
I threw my arms around his neck to draw him closer at the same time Ethan’s hands enveloped my waist, dragging my body flush to his.
His mouth pushed against mine, moved with it until the need between us was so raw and so desperate, I was clawing at his back for more.
More of him, more of us, more of everything he could give me.
“Oh my God,” I moaned, unabashedly loud, tilting my head back to feel Ethan’s lips ravishing heated kisses down my neck.
“I wanted to wait till the end of the night to kiss you,” he mumbled against my skin. Hot breath fanned my collar bone as Ethan moved his mouth across it. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t wait.”
One of his hands found the back of my head, bringing it up and face to face with him. “It took everything in me not to grab you and kiss you the moment you opened the door.”
“Then don’t stop.”
I pulled his lips back down to mine, sighing at the feeling of Heaven I’d missed for so long. I’d been at Heaven’s gates before and each time, I turned around before I could make a home there, but not anymore. There was no turning around tonight.
Ethan was my home, and I’d never run away again.
My hands broke beneath the warm barrier of Ethan’s coat as I pushed it off of his shoulders, hearing it hit somewhere on the ground.
Our kisses never stopped once as I worked my fingers along each of his shirt’s buttons, trailing my fingertips along each inch of smooth, bare skin I exposed.
Ethan let a groan vibrate between our lips as I flattened my hands against his stomach, greedy to get reacquainted with the muscles I remembered and fantasized when I was alone at night.
“God, I missed you,” I said, gasping for breath. “I missed you so much.”
“I thought about you every night like I said I would.” His voice was husky with lust and so seductive, sending shivers down my neck as he spoke against it. “Every night, I thought about you laying there next to me or in my arms and it made everything just a little bit easier.”
His hands caressed my naked legs as his mouth found my ear, and my neck went limp into his awaiting hand.
“I thought about how your body trembles every time I kiss you and how you curl your fingers when I nibble on your neck. I thought about how sweet your moan sounds when I’m inside of you.”
I gasped as his teeth scraped down the side of my neck before sinking into my shoulder. In his arms I squirmed, squeezing my legs together as the ache to be touched grew between them.
That ache only increased as the firm hands on my legs drug up and up until my dress was sitting at my waist and those hands snapped the band of my thong.
The sting of its snap heaved my chest with breaths teeming over with need as I reached forward until I brushed Ethan’s belt and fumbled with its fasten.
In seconds, we were walking backwards, pulling at each other’s remaining clothes until my backside hit the countertop behind us. Ethan hoisted me on top of it, sealing over my mouth with a kiss so sensual I cried out in sorrow when he pulled back.
“Hips up,” he ordered, and I followed without hesitation.
Holding myself up on my hands, Ethan looped his fingers around my thong, dragging the thin piece of fabric down my legs to expose me bare. The cool air breezed my center as Ethan spread my knees apart, settling himself between them.
My eyes were on his hands as they shoved his jeans and underwear down, between my legs dripping with anticipation as he pulled himself out of his briefs. Desire pushed my chest up and down as Ethan wrapped his hands around my thighs, tugging my body forward on the counter.
My naked thighs hit against his, and I flashed my stare up to Ethan. Hooded eyes locked onto mine as he lined himself up against me, our ragged breathing dancing together until they were one and our bodies followed suit.
Inch by inch, Ethan sunk into me, stretching me to fill up to the hilt and already, I was seeing stars. My eyes slammed shut to create a black canvas for the stars to twinkle across as Ethan pulled back his hips, knocking a cry off of my lips when he thrust back into me.
The ache of an orgasm was already beginning to creep in as Ethan moved inside of me, my head falling back against a cabinet to savor the feeling.
“Ethan,” I groaned, reaching out blindly until I touched skin and pulled him close. Hot, uneven breaths washed in pulses across my chest as Ethan rested his head right over my heartbeat, which had to have been singing him a song that only he could hear.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve dreamt of hearing you say my name like that.” Ethan’s voice fired up my blood, burning my skin as hot as the ache between my legs that was growing harder and harder to ignore with every thrust.
Needing to give him everything he ever wanted, his name came through my breathing again. “ Ethan .”
“Fuck,” he cursed, forcing yet another whimper out of me as his hands around my thighs clenched, imprinting whispers of marks he’d leave for me to find later as proof of our passion.
“I love that. Nothing sounds sweeter than my name on your lips, Slim .”
Slim.
That name snapped my eyes wide open, propelling my head up off of the cabinet and catching Ethan’s attention.
“Did you just call me Slim?”
Like it was the most obvious thing in the world, he nodded.
“Yeah, I did.”
My heart surged, swelling over with more butterflies than I knew were possible until it felt like my heart could literally take flight. “Do you mean it?”
Ethan’s thrusts slowed to a stop, a tender smile unfolding across his face. His hand rose to graze my jaw, cupping the side of my face in his hold. I leaned into it. His thumb brushed over my cheek softly as he mended every fracture disfiguring my heart with his next words.
“I have loved you every day we’ve been apart, and I’ll love you every day we’re together. You’ll always be my Slim.”
Inside my heart there was a tangible, breath-catching burst, and it popped my lips open and sprung tears to my eyes. I couldn’t decide what to focus on between the love glossing Ethan’s features, the love bloating his sentiments, or the love connecting our bodies together as one soul.
There was so much love. It was all around us and inside of us, creating its own draft in the room to swell around our bodies like the magic I always knew bonded us. Ethan and I were not a circumstance of luck or attraction or well-meshed personalities.
We were a circumstance of destiny and the true magic that love really was.
“I love you,” I whispered between our lips. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Ethan’s brows dipped, framing the awed shine in his eyes spectacularly. The magic in the air drew our foreheads together.
“Don’t stop.”
On his breath, I tasted his need for me to say it, to tell him over and over again how deeply and truly I loved him and always would.
“I love you.”
Ethan shut his eyes to my admission, and slowly, he started to move inside of me again. The pressure from before was back and deeper than I could describe, growing stronger with every stroke.
My love for him fell from my lips again and again as Ethan built us up, our breathing turning to pants and my moans growing louder.
My small kitchen was overwhelmed by the sounds of pleasure and skin slapping skin faster and harder until it was more than I could take, and the last word out of my mouth before I met the stars waiting for me was his name.
“ Ethan. ”
I cried like I needed his help to make it through the sensations piling through my lower stomach, twisting tighter and tighter. They were too much. Too powerful and I was too sensitive.
“I’ve got you, Slim,” he encouraged, his voice winded but so sincere. “Now and always. I’ve got you.”
More tears pricked my eyes but before they could fall, Ethan snatched my mouth up with his, sending my heart over the edge and pulling my climax with it.
I cried out against Ethan’s mouth as pleasure so sensational it wiped my mind clean of any words electrified my body.
Stars flurried behind my eyes as my legs shook through the orgasm as it ravished and pulsed wave after wave of pleasure through every inch of me until I was sweating and heaving through its wake.
Ethan swallowed my noises with kiss after kiss, moving his mouth over mine as he drank in every second of my climax.
His pounding hips drew my orgasm out to its fullest extent until a shudder raced through his body and he stilled inside of me, finding his own release in a series of toe-curling groans.
Our lips only parted once we were both spent and satisfied, Ethan’s head collapsing against my chest. I rested back against the cabinet and smoothed my hands over Ethan’s mess of hair as we both caught our breath, sitting in a haze of our affection.
After a few seconds, a bout of laughter bubbled up my throat.
“Isn’t that supposed to be a fifth date thing?”
Hot laughter fanned across my chest. “Eh, so we skipped a few steps.”
The weight of Ethan’s head disappeared, his lazy smile and eyes touched with humor coming front and center. “Seems fitting for us if you think about it.”
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We kissed, fell in love, had sex, and we weren’t even dating.”
At that, I had to laugh at the truth of it all. He was right. We never did things in the traditional order couples were supposed to, but then again, we’d never been traditional.
“Hell,” Ethan mused. “I even asked you to marry me, and we’d never dated.”
Any amusement holding my expression up faded with shock.
“You remember that?”
Ethan didn’t seem bothered at all by the memory. In fact, the lines of his smile deepened as did the adoration in his eyes.
“Of course I remember. I might have been drunk and concussed, but I’m not forgetting the first time I asked you to marry me. Even if you didn’t technically answer.”
“Well, there was a lot going on. Maybe try asking me when you’re not laying in a hospital.”
“Oh I plan to.”
Surprise jumped my eyebrows up three spots on my forehead, even as I tried to mask it. Ethan let out a quiet chuckle, moving a strand of my ruined hairdo back into place. “Not right now. We should probably finish up our first date before we think about marriage, yeah?”
“Yeah, you should at least wait till the third date to propose.” Ethan’s eyes sparkled as he caught my humor, and we laughed together in my kitchen—in our spot.
“You make jokes but remember what I promised you in your apartment last year?” I shook my head, even though I was sure I knew what he was referring to.
I just really wanted to hear him say it.
He settled in closer, the most content look dotted in his eyes.
“I told you when the time comes and I can finally hold you and kiss you—” His lips nudged mine just once, parting them to place his soft lips between them.
My heart leapt as I sunk into his kiss, our lips pulling at one another’s slow enough to feel the spell we created between them.
As gentle as our kiss, Ethan pulled back just enough to speak.
“And I can love you as freely as I want to, that I’m never letting you go. ”
Looking back and forth through Ethan’s eyes, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was and just how in love with this man I was either. Our love was the blood pumping through my heart, the air in my lungs, the imperfectly perfect piece of my puzzle that never should have fit, but did.
Against his lips, I spoke my truth that I’d denied for far too long.
“There’s nowhere else I want to be.”
At that, Ethan Black—the greatest love of my life, my star-crossed lover, my soulmate of soulmates—simply smiled.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Slim.”