Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
COOPER
My fingers find the end of one of her curls framing her face. Running the springy auburn strands between the pads, I let it go. Drag my hand slowly to her cheek. Tilt her face up in my direction.
“Give me one night. Give me till midnight, that you’re mine.”
“Cooper—” Her tone feels like a pot of water on the precipice of boiling.
“One night, Sutton.”
She gulps. Head swaying to the right, trying to pull away from me.
“You called me Sutton.” The blush on her cheeks spreads, down her neck into the top of my sweatshirt. It’s the same color as her hair, this deep red that only happens when I say her name.
Sutton used to get embarrassed by the way she full-body blushed, self-conscious about how red she’d become, but I love it. Loved making her blush, then and now.
“Look at me.” I assist in bringing her gaze back to me.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s your name.”
“No, Cooper. What does it mean to be yours?”
Oh.
It means that you’re the only girl I’ve ever loved or wanted.
It means that you are the first and last thing I think about when I go to bed—fuck, with her, she also consumes every other waking thought.
I don’t know where one ends and the next one starts.
It means you are the one who grounds me, but also makes me feel alive.
It means you are my home, my family. It means that I’d do anything for you, to make you happy, to have you.
I’d give up hockey if it meant having Sutton.
“It means this.”
I cup her cheeks and pull her lips to meet mine. Sutton is on her toes to reach me. Her hands curl around my biceps to stabilize herself.
Her lips part, and I seize the opportunity to slip my tongue into her mouth.
My hands slide up her cheeks, palms resting high on her cheekbones. Fingers sliding into the roots of her auburn curls.
Sutton’s kisses sting. A shock to my cold and dying heart. Reviving me with bursts of color and life. The waves of doubt and societal pressures recede, drawn back by her. She coats me in a layer of stillness, peace, of comfort.
We keep kissing. Our tongues and lips are now dancing. You’d think we’d been doing this for years with the way we are in sync.
She lets out the littlest, most delectable whimper when I drag her bottom lip between my teeth.
I don’t know how I’m ever going to return from this. Kissing her again. Tasting the way she’s sweet, slightly innocent, but there’s a creature in her that’s clawing its way to the surface.
I always knew she was the start of my world, but I think she’s going to be the end of it too.
Sutton grabs my hand.
Her eyes never leave mine, her head turned over her shoulder, as she leads us blindly to the bathroom, snatching the key off the bar counter where we set it earlier.
The hand not in mine pushes open the bathroom door. Sutton steps away from me, spinning on her heels. Irises flaring, the hazel shifting to a blue-green with each sharp inhale.
Giving her space, physically and mentally, I push my back into the door, flipping the lock behind me.
I want her. I want her so bad, but I’m going to let her take the lead here.
She’s always held the leash to my heart. A collar wrapped around it, a dog tag hanging from it that says: If lost, return to Sutton Davis.
“I—” Her bottom lip disappears between her teeth. Hands flexing at her sides. Eyelids rapidly blinking. She’s thinking this through.
My little genius. My little overthinker.
I’ll accept whatever outcome this is, but there is one I’d prefer, and I sense it brewing in her.
“Do it,” I encourage.
“Do what?”
“Whatever is spinning in that beautiful mind of yours.”
“You mean it?”
“Yeah, Sutton, I fucking mean it.”
“But—”
“You can do it.” Sutton swallows slowly. “Say it, Sutton baby.” She drags her bottom lip between her teeth, again, nibbling on it. “Admit you’re mine tonight. Tell me you want me too.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not what I said. And what have I told you? I need your words.”
Sutton sways forward and backward, barely noticeable, and I watch the way her chest hitches with a sharp inhale. Eyes closed, she starts to say, “I’m—”
“Eyes on me while you tell me the three words I’ve been desperate for years to hear.”
Eyes now a bright, mossy green lock onto mine, destroying all of my walls, beckoning me to her. My heart seizes with anticipation. “I’m yours, Cooper.” Sutton pauses. “I want you—” She pauses again, then attaches two words that I hate hearing. “For tonight, and I want you to make me feel good.”
For tonight. For forever. We’ll see which one wins.
“You’ve always been such a good listener. Haven’t you, baby?”
As if she needs permission, she asks, “Can I kiss you again?”
“Never have to stop.”
Mouths colliding and hands in a frenzy all happen within a blink.
There’s barely any space between us, but I need her closer. My free hand tugs at the fabric of my sweatshirt she’s in. The movement pushes my knee between her legs. Sutton accidentally bites my lip with a small gasp at the friction.
“Sorry,” she whispers. I kiss the apology away.
Unlike our initial kiss, which, for the record, was out of this world, this is as if we are both starved. Have been stranded in the desert, and this is the first drink of water we’ve had in years.
I can’t get enough, so I take more. I grip her hair, twist the braid around my fist, exposing her neck as I bite and kiss over it. Push at the collar of the crewneck to get to more of her soft, silky skin.
Sutton grinds herself on my thigh. Working herself back and forth. She mewls, and my grip on her tightens, my knee inches higher, and she moans.
“Cooper. Cooper, what is—”
Sutton is soaked. I can feel it through both pairs of sweats separating us.
I begrudgingly pull away from her neck, a mark already forming. But that internal annoyance is lost when I see her. A hand pushed into my hair, the other braced on the wall. Head tilted slightly back and mouth falling open. Eyelashes ricocheting off her cheeks, but her gaze locked on me.
She’s close, I know it.
But she’s hesitating. Stalling her movements, and I can sense that she’s unsure. A rush of previous comments she’s made about her exes come to me.
“Let go, Sutton,” I start to talk her through it. Let her know that what she’s feeling is good and nothing to be scared of or embarrassed by.
“But…”
“It’s okay.” I kiss her temple, then correct myself, “More than okay.”
“I-I don’t—help me.” Gladly.
My hands find her waist. The left gripping her tightly, guiding her. The right finding her clit through the cotton and pressing down with my thumb.
Sutton curses, moving faster.
“You’re always beautiful, but fuck, I wish you could see…
” The words die on my tongue when I spot our reflection from the corner of me eye.
“Turn your head. Look at yourself in the mirror.” Our cheeks are pressed together, as we watch, and I describe what I see.
“Radiant. Truly alluring and pulchritudinous.”
Giggles sneak out between whimpers, and I come a little from the sound. Could she be any more perfect?
Junior year of high school, I studied for three weeks straight to beat her in our county’s regional spelling bee. She lost while trying to spell pulchritudinous.
I apply more pressure to her as her movements become uncoordinated. Quick and short till my name is rung out of her like a plea.
If I weren’t already bewitched by her, I utterly am now.
“You good?” I ask, touching our foreheads together, stroking the side of her cheek.
“Better than good.” Sutton tilts her chin up, steady kisses but more frenzied hands.
Her hand reaches for me, and if I never make it to Team USA I should at least earn a gold medal for this because I stop her. Circling her wrist, I drag and pin it behind her back, taking the other one with me.
It’s been me, my hand, and fantasies of Sutton for almost two years. Call it wishful thinking or manifestation or stupidity. I’d combust if she touched me, I’m barely hanging on as it is now.
“I want to make you feel good too.”
“Trust me.” An eyebrow flicks up, and I stifle a cocky response. “You have.” Her cheeks and ears tip pink. “Later,” I tell her, peppering her neck with kisses. Later as in tomorrow and every day after.
“You promise?”
“Yeah, baby, I promise, but I’m not done with you yet.”
In one fluid motion, our positions are flipped. Her back flush with the wall.
I sink to my knees in front of her, keeping eye contact the entire time. “Is this okay?” Sutton nods. “Thank fuck, because I’m starving.”
“Still?” Sutton blushes.
“I’m never not starving for you.” She blushes harder.
I push up her top, exposing the waistband of my sweatpants rolled three times, and the drawstring is pulled tight around her waist. I have to use my teeth to get the knot undone.
“Geez, Dave. Didn’t want anyone in your pants, did ya?”
“You know, when I was putting them on, it did cross my mind that my best friend of almost fifteen years was going to take them off of me.”
I smirk up at her. “Best friend?”
Sutton doesn’t have any makeup on, her lashes naked from the dark mascara she typically wears. Her eyelashes are thick and long, and a light shade of red. She’s peering down at me with such desire in her eyes. It grows by the minute.
Sutton shrugs a shoulder and rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“It’s going somewhere else.” I wink as her pants fall to the floor, flooding her ankles in gray.
I suck in a hot breath. Grinding my jaw.
Her baby pink underwear is a soft material with a dainty lace trim. In the center, like she’s something to unwrap, is a small white bow.
I kiss the center of the fabric.
Snaking my pointer fingers into the band, I pull them down her legs. Sutton shifts to help me get them over the curve of her ass and muscular thighs.
I kiss a triangle of freckles on the inside of a thigh just above her knee. “I’ve always loved these.”
“That triangle?” she questions between a weighted laugh.