Chapter 15 First #2
“I'd work you up real fucking slow.” My mouth drags back up her throat. Stops just below her jaw. Her pulse is fluttering wildly against my lips. “Get that pretty skin all flushed.” My hands stroke up her back, pressing her closer. “Your legs shaking.”
I drag my thumbs slowly up her ribcage until they're grazing the underside of her tits, through soaked lace that's hiding nothing. Her nipples are hard. I can feel them.
I brush across one stiff peak with my thumb.
The sound she makes goes straight to my cock.
“That,” I say roughly, against her skin. “That sound. I’d learn every single one.”
I slide one hand into her wet hair and tip her head back. Her throat exposed, her lips parted, her eyes gone dark.
“I'd take my time everywhere,” I murmur against her jaw. “Kiss every inch of you. Your throat. Your tits. That pretty virgin pussy. Until you're shaking and soaked and begging me for more.” My mouth drags to the hollow beneath her ear. “You know I’d make you feel so fucking good.” My grip tightens as a shiver runs through her. “But the thing is, darlin’… if I got a taste, a taste wouldn’t be enough. I’d need you in my bed every night.”
Her fingers skim down my chest.
All the way down.
They stop just above the waistband of my swim trunks and rest there, light as anything, like a question.
“Sounds good to me,” she breathes.
I nearly groan.
Her lips are parted and wet and so close. She's looking back at me like she wants me to close this distance more than she wants her next breath.
My hand tightens in her hair.
Her breath catches.
One kiss. That's all it would take. One kiss and her fingers would slip past that waistband and I'd have her back against the pool wall with her legs wrapped around me.
“If I could,” I murmur, “I'd lay you out right here under these stars. Take all night with it. Take you apart so slow that you’ll know what it feels like to be worshipped.”
I already know it would be unlike anything either of us has ever had.
Yes, I could have her.
But I would want to keep her.
And I don’t know how I’ll ever give her up.
Better to walk away now. Better now than when we're so deep there's no finding the surface.
Better now than when it turns into the kind of hurt neither of us comes back from.
I let my lips drag one last slow path from her jaw to the shell of her ear. Give myself that much. Give us both that much.
“You waited this long, darlin,’” I rasp. “Wait for the man you're in love with.” My voice comes out like it’s been dragged through gravel. “You deserve that. You deserve all of it.”
She makes a small sound. Like the words hurt her.
They hurt me too.
I take one breath.
Then my hands span her waist.
Fuck, she's so soft, she's always so soft.
I lift her clear out of the water in one motion. The droplets scatter as I set her back on the pool ledge above me.
Now she's looking down at me. Me looking up at her. Both of us breathing hard.
I make myself let go. I need to be sensible about this, about whatever this is. This wordless tug. This feeling like she’s mine to keep close and guard like a precious jewel.
No matter what my primal instincts are telling me, she's not mine.
Even if tonight she came home to me.
The look in her eyes is complicated. A little fiery, like she’s ready to call me chickenshit again. A little bit wounded. But a whole lot of understanding too. Like she sees me. Sees past all my layers, tough as worn out leather these days, and she understands something about me that I don’t.
My hands have migrated to her thighs again of their own accord, caressing up and down, so I wrench them away now.
“Get some sleep, baby,” I tell her.
The endearment just slips out. Blame that on the whiskey too.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “You too. Good night, Walker.”
She gets to her feet. The lace is useless. Beautifully useless and a form of torture at the same time. I can see everything. Her round ass and hourglass curves, every inch that I’m dying to touch and taste.
She picks up her dress off the deck and drops it back over her arm without putting it on. Doesn't seem to care that I can see everything.
Fuck.
Then she turns and walks toward the house, bare feet slapping on the warm concrete. Wet hair down her back. My eyes linger on the transparent lace. The sway of her hips.
I curse my self-control. I press the back of my head against the pool edge and stare at the sky.
Three years.
Feels like three hundred right now.
“Sadie,” I call out before I can stop myself.
She turns back, one hand on the door frame. “Yeah?”
I should be wise here. Say something that doesn't reveal how much I wanted her to come home tonight. How the house felt empty without her in it. How much I fucking missed her and how good it feels to have her with me again.
“I'm glad you're home,” I say.
Her expression softens. “Me too.”
And then she pads over to me. Gets down on her knees, bends forward, and kisses my cheek.
It’s a good thing I’m too shocked to move, or else I would have wrapped my arms around her and crushed her to me.
But by the time I’ve recovered, she’s slipped away.
I won't sleep tonight, I know that already. I'll be pacing my room til sunrise, fueled by whiskey and remembrance of things past. I'll think about all my shitty life choices that took me away from everything that matters, everything that’s real.
I'll think about two years of silence where there used to be music.
I’ll think about everything I've broken that I can't fix.
But I'll think about Sadie most of all, swimming beneath the stars and smelling like summer, looking at me like she understands more about the mysterious contents of my heart than I do.