42. Chapter 42
Two years. Two years of distance and unrelenting desire and holding his fucking breath culminated in a single moment.
Kissing her was like taking a lungful of air after breathing shallow for months—years—just to stay alive. His chest pinched at the familiarity of her body in his hands. Everything else had felt foreign since his dad got sick. Helen was a homecoming.
Graham smothered the stinging in his eyes with her breasts, sucking on them through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.
He couldn’t slow down, even if he wanted to brand every touch onto his skin in a full-body tattoo so he’d never forget the difference between existing and being alive or be stupid enough to let her go again.
Helen pawed at him, slicing his skin with the blunt edges of her nails, up his arms, down his back, his neck. Fuck yes. Let her do the branding.
For the quickest instant he felt a pang of guilt.
Lindsey was at the bar waiting for him to come back and she’d see the marks Helen left behind.
If it made him a bastard, he was a bastard who could finally breathe, and he couldn’t go back to pretending anything less than this—anyone other than Helen—would ever make him thrilled to be alive.
Graham bit a little too hard on her nipple and she jerked with a startled cry. Her nails carving hot tracks over his shoulders were a rough request for more. He sucked on the other one.
“That’s what you get for not wearing a bra,” he said, sliding his hands up her back.
“I don’t wear them at home,” she said.
“Not if I’m coming over.”
“You haven’t factored into my plans in a long time.”
It was a sucker punch, he knew. She couldn’t give herself back to him without making him work for it. He withdrew his hands from underneath her shirt and carefully pushed her dark hair off both shoulders. “That changes tonight.”
With the heated promise, he pulled her yoga pants down over her ass and hoisted her onto the kitchen island. “No underwear?”
She didn’t even try to make an excuse. Graham held her eyes as he took her pants off one leg at a time. Didn’t break eye contact when he brought her pants to his mouth and tasted the proof of her arousal on the seam. He knew she’d be fucking soaked.
He remembered this too. Her sweet, musky taste. Helen’s chin jutted out and her breasts rose with a deep inhale. Not one to be outdone, the tips of two manicured fingers began toying with her own clit.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered, inhaling her scent and relishing the sight of Helen touching herself. Lindsey never did anything like this—never took what she needed if he wasn’t giving it to her fast enough.
He dropped the yoga pants. Intent on the real thing, Graham lifted one leg, bending it at the knee, and set her foot on the island. He did the same with the other, leaving Helen open and gleaming on the edge of the black countertop. The tips of Helen’s nails disappeared inside her pussy and Graham—
Graham came completely undone.
He pulled her fingers from inside her and sucked her arousal from them.
Licking them fucking clean woke up something primal.
He didn’t nip sweet kisses along her thighs to watch her squirm, just dove straight between her legs.
She jolted, would’ve fallen off the island if he didn’t wrap his arms around her thighs and hold her firmly on his mouth.
She fell back on her hands. A stream of breathy curses turned to surprised cries as his tongue remembered the way she liked to be eaten.
He forgot how loud she was when she was excited, and how fucking much he loved being the one to bring unbridled pleasure to the woman who usually seemed too buttoned up, too controlled to lose herself in the hands of a man.
Graham was that man. Had always been that man. And if he had anything to say about it, he’d be that man for the rest of his life.
He groaned against her pussy. Helen had never been shy about taking what she wanted.
Tonight she was so fucking eager, she ran her nails through his hair and held his mouth on her clit.
His cock strained for release, angrily punching against his zipper to get inside the woman he loved who was fearlessly writhing on his face, on the cusp of fully giving in.
Shudders quaked down her back. With one hand, Graham unbuttoned his shorts and pulled them down over his erection. As her fist tightened in his hair and he thought she might actually smother him with her orgasm, he pulled away and stood.
“Not yet,” he rasped.
“You asshole,” she shouted.
Her anger was clipped by the sudden intrusion of his cock after he pulled her off the counter, directly onto his length.
Her eyes and mouth gaped. He gave her a single breath to get used to him, while a shiver rippled down his spine like tumblers in a lock falling into place. Home, the feeling said. She was fucking home.
He carried her around the island and laid her down on the small kitchen table, keeping his cock lodged inside her.
She was a goddess anywhere, especially sprawled out on her back, her breasts and legs spread, her hair fanned out in a black halo.
He worked her T-shirt with the wet spots on both nipples over her head.
She was shaking, hips twitching for the friction she needed to finish. Seeing Helen at his mercy, some of his own control returned. He set one hand on her stomach to keep those anxious hips on the table and used the other to grip her thigh. Slowly, savagely, Graham started to thrust.
Standing at the edge of the table, it was the perfect angle to savor her.
All of her. The strain in her eyes as she fought total surrender.
The lightly tanned shade of her neck, her stomach muscles pulled taut underneath his hand as it moved up her sternum.
The immaculately waxed skin between her legs, without so much as a stray hair to block his view of his length moving in and out of her.
He drew a thumb over her nipple. “I’m yours.”
She closed her eyes and groaned.
“Helen,” he said, his voice hardening from desperation to demand. She opened her eyes as he squeezed that nipple. “I’m yours.”
She didn’t answer, and he thrust harder, grinding her hips and back into the table.
“You’re an asshole,” she choked out.
He cupped her whole breast for purchase, and thrust faster, his balls slapping against her ass. “Fine. But I’m your asshole.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m on birth control?” Her eyes briefly cleared with the challenge.
“No. I don’t fucking care,” he said, and he pounded harder.
She groaned through gritted teeth. She’d always been on birth control to keep her cycle regular.
Did she think he’d forgotten? He needed her surrender.
Needed her to commit to him with more than a hasty promise of marriage.
There was no ring on her finger. He had come to Texas with another woman—slept with another woman that morning.
This sex could end, and Helen could realize Lindsey alone was too much to get over and kick him out on his ass. He couldn’t let it happen.
He needed to tie them together more graphically, more intensely than a reunion over expensive bourbon.
Graham dragged his hand down her body, his thumb stopping achingly close to her clit.
“I’m yours,” he repeated. “Say it.”
“Graham,” she sobbed. There were actually tears streaming from her eyes.
His thumb dipped between her legs, just above where their bodies were joining. Pressing his thumb into her swollen nub, a ragged cry left her mouth.
“I love you. I’m yours. Say it.”
Her back arched off the table. Every muscle in her body tightened around him and her mouth opened a few seconds before the force of her orgasm broke and she cried, “I’m yours.”
I’m yours. Over and over she surrendered.
Her promise ringing in his ears, Graham let go.
He spilled into her what felt like two years of seed that had been saving itself for Helen.
It fucking wrecked him. He clutched her neck and let his cock throb within her.
Tears almost leaked from his eyes. What the fuck was happening to him?
He dropped his head to her chest and they breathed. For a while, they just fucking breathed.
“I love you,” she whispered. Her fingers laced lazily through the damp curls on the nape of his neck.
It was almost enough. There was one last thing.
Something he’d never done and felt compelled to do to seal them together in this moment and for all future moments.
Graham kissed between the swell of her breasts and stood, pulling her into his arms and finally coming out of her.
He reached between their bodies, between her legs, and slid his fingers inside her, realizing he hadn’t properly fingered her yet.
He collected their spend on his hands and lifted his fingers to her mouth, expecting Helen to cuss and call him crazy.
Instead her sex-soaked eyes glinted with curiosity as he traced her lips, leaving a glossy trail behind.
Then those blue eyes darkened, and she sucked his fingers to the back of her throat.
“I love you,” he said. “And I’m yours.”
He took his fingers out of her mouth and kissed her.