Chapter Bloom #2
Harper melts into the kiss. Runs her hand down my neck, down my chest, pushing the shirt from my shoulders until I break away to quickly shrug it off.
She coasts her fingertips across every line of muscle.
Traces every scar, as though those marks are worthy of worship.
And when she’s ready, she gently rolls us both over until she’s straddling my hips.
She stares down at me, dragging the straps of her dress over her shoulders.
The sweetheart neckline falls down enough to reveal her nipples, the titanium bars and opal balls shining in the dim light.
“So perfect. Like you were made just for me,” I whisper as she takes my hand and guides my fingertips where she wants them.
Against her lips for a kiss. Along the pulse in her neck.
Down her throat. Over the ridges of bone beneath her skin.
Across one piercing and then the next until my erection aches beneath her weight and heat.
“Do you know how much I need you, Nolan?” Harper says as she drags my fingers down the center of her body. “How badly I want you?” She guides my hand to her thigh, then up beneath the hem of her dress. “How much I love you?”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to hearing her say that.
Harper lifts her hand away and spreads her legs wider.
I trace the edge of her lace panties. She jolts beneath my touch when I circle her clit beneath the soaked fabric.
I take in every hitched breath and every tremor in her body as I press a little harder, swirling my touch over her sensitive nerves.
I manage to tear my fingers away just long enough to raise my hips and shimmy my remaining clothes off with her help, and then Harper bundles the skirt of her dress with one hand, pulls her panties aside with the other, and sinks down onto my cock.
I’ll never forget this moment.
The feel of her heat wrapped around me. The pace of her rolling onto me like waves. The rise and fall of her breasts as she moves. The love in her silver eyes.
I rake a hand into her hair and draw her down closer. “My god,” I whisper as I let my gaze trail over her face. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
An adorable blush climbs her neck to settle in her cheeks.
She rocks her hips, taking me deeper, her breath a tremor in her chest. “You know what I thought when I first saw you?” she asks.
I’m tempted to say something ridiculous—something about ballmeat, maybe, but when she rolls her hips again, I momentarily lose the ability to speak. “That you were obscene.”
My burst of a laugh becomes a moan as Harper kisses my neck. “Obscene . . . how sexy.”
“It is.” She lets another kiss linger on my neck as her gentle touch coasts just beneath my eye. “Those beautiful eyes are obscene.” Her finger trails down my cheek. “Those fucking dimples are obscene.” She traces my jaw. “This fucking jawline that could cut glass is obscene.”
“So you’re saying you liked me right away.”
“Maybe for a few minutes, until you left presents in my bird feeder.”
“Hmm,” I say before plunging my tongue into her mouth. She rakes sharp nails down my chest and I thrust up into her before breaking the kiss. “I think you still liked me after that.”
“Cocky.”
“I saw the way you looked at me at the river.”
“Like I wanted to kill you?”
“Just a little bit,” I reply. “But maybe for you and I, hate and love were always two sides of the same blade.”
Harper slows for just a breath, going still.
It’s the first time in my life I wished I could stop time.
Sheathed by her body, surrounded by her scent, basking in her radiant warmth.
The world and all the things we worry about could just disappear.
And I wonder if she feels the same. Like maybe we can’t stop time, but can stretch it.
Build a life here together made of moments just like this.
A relationship that blooms in defiance of the conditions in which it started.
She leans down. Presses her lips to mine. And then she moves.
Her rhythm is steady. Long, rocking strokes, her hand braced on my abs, her eyes locked to mine.
Words aren’t needed anymore. I can see everything she feels written in her furrowed brow, in the flush of her skin, in the glow of sweat on her collarbone.
Just like she feels everything in me. The obsession in my unerring gaze.
The reverence in my touch as my hand folds around her throat.
The need that shudders through my body as she glides over my length.
Harper’s motion grows a little more desperate, her moans come a little louder.
I graze a hand up the length of her thigh until I’m pressing my thumb to her clit, providing the last pressure she needs to send her spiraling into pleasure.
She whimpers. Her back bows. I tighten my grip around her throat, capturing every rioting beat of her heart.
Her pussy clenches around my cock as she comes undone.
She keeps going, keeps rocking against me as she claims every moment of her unraveling.
And then I fall into rapture after her.
Maybe the euphoria of release shouldn’t feel any different than it has all the times before.
And yet, somehow, it does. When I spill into her, there’s a connection that I’ve never experienced with anyone until now.
It’s more than a physical sensation. It’s as though a new layer of a bond has unfurled between us.
I was prepared to love Harper without knowing if she could love me back.
I’d accepted that I might never hear the words pass her lips.
I didn’t think it mattered. But it does.
Harper collapses onto me and we stay like that for a long while, recovering our breath, grazing our fingertips across each other’s sweat-slicked skin.
And then I take care of her, like I always do.
We go to sleep in our bedroom, wrapped in each other.
And the next morning, that feeling that something has changed still remains, as though it’s been burned into me.
This is the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. I’m going to make sure of it. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her.
I know what I need to do.
When Harper heads to the manor house, I leave the cottage and walk into town.
My town.