Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Once there, he lets me slide down his body until my feet hit the floor, and then he bends, cupping my face and setting his lips on mine, kissing me with a passion that obliterates my ability to think about anything other than the feel of him.
I make fists in his shirt, pulling him right up against me.
But Alec finds my hands, coaxing my fingers open. “Let me see you,” he says against my kiss, and then steps back.
He reaches out, adjusting the collar of his shirt on me, dragging his gaze down the length of my body and back up. Fire follows the path of his eyes and I feel it like sweet, tiny pinpricks all along my skin.
His neck flushes red.
“Do you blush like that when you come?” I ask, throwing his own teasing words back at him.
His laugh is a distracted, forceful exhale. I reach up, unbuttoning the shirt, watching the inky black of his pupils expand into the deep brown of his irises. The shirt falls to the floor and he reaches up, rubbing a finger over his bottom lip. “I like your underwear.”
“Thanks.” I slide a thumb under the elastic at the waist, snap it. “Yael got them for me.”
He coughs out a laugh, eyes bolting to my face. “You’re going to give her credit?”
“She picked them out.”
“They were my idea.”
This reminds me, and I hold up an index finger. “I have an important question for you.”
His attention has drifted to my breasts. “My answer is yes.”
“You have my red dress, don’t you?”
He nods, distractedly. “Stole it. Never planned to return it.”
Laughing, I reach for his hand, placing it on my hip and guiding it up my body, over my breast. My smile fades as longing spreads like steam through my veins.
His fingers immediately mold to the curve, his eyes falling closed.
Back and forth his thumb strokes across the peak.
I need his pinch, his tongue and teeth. Arching, I press into his hand.
He swallows before speaking. “I really thought this weekend—this morning—that I might never touch you again.”
When he opens his eyes, I’m already watching him, and the way his expression clears at the eye contact is so pure, his expression so ardent, I feel myself falling deeper into love as if it’s a physical movement.
It isn’t just a feeling of passion and tenderness and admiration; it’s feeling like the Gigi in love with Alec exists in an entirely new plane.
Alec slides his hand up my neck and steps to me.
My heart drops in my chest when his mouth touches mine again. A single kiss and then another, and the patience he takes seducing me with his lips tells me he knows we have a world of time to devour.
But, as usual, my body doesn’t care.
I send both hands into his hair, coming right up against him. The pressed fabric of his dress shirt provides maddening friction against my skin. A cool button presses into my breast. Once again, I am almost naked, and he is fully dressed.
His tongue feels like sex in my mouth, tiny flicks and tastes, teeth dragging against my lips, tugging. I would tease him like this if I could, but I can only chase. I’m forever the frantic greed to his focused patience.
“Are you going to tease me for hours?” I ask, urging him with me toward the bed.
“I’m sure going to try.”
At these words we both go still, eyes meeting as the painful echo rings between us.
With his hands on my hips, he walks me the last few steps to the bed, coaxing me down, coming over me.
The fabric of his dress pants is soft against my thighs, but he holds his hips away, hovering carefully above me.
“I’m not proud of how I acted on Friday,” he says.
“I just didn’t know what to do,” I tell him. “I wanted to apologize, to fix it, to be there for you, but you gave me absolutely no way in.”
He nods.
“Is that always how you react to a crisis?”
Alec shakes his head. “Remember how you once said I would need to be with someone who is very chill about things? I don’t think I let myself believe you were really that person. I felt like a live bomb. I was panicking. I didn’t want to add to your trouble.”
I shake my head. “My choices affected you. I own that. I wanted to help you. At the very least I wanted to weather everything with you.”
“I understand.” He smiles. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it. That means you’re willing to give me the benefit of the doubt if you hear rumors, and I’m not going to shut you out again.”
I reach up, running my fingers through his hair. “Deal.”
That focused gaze makes a full circuit of my face. “I love you.”
It’s dark in this room—night sky, my curtains drawn—but at these words, I feel like I’m lit up inside. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He smiles, and I reach up to gently poke a dimple with my fingertip. “Is it too soon?”
“Yes. But I want to say it, too,” I say.
“You don’t ha—”
I press my fingertips to his lips. “I’m gonna save it. Surprise you with it.”
Alec laughs. “Spring it on me?”
I pretend to smoke a cigar. “Yeah, see. Unexpected like.”
He finally settles over me, subtly flexing his hips into mine. Alec speaks the next words into the tender skin just beneath my jaw. “I bet I could coax it out of you.”
Goose bumps break out along my skin, and I snake my hands between us, tugging his shirt free, unbuttoning. “I bet you could.”
He pulls back and looks at me with a wicked gleam in his eye, shrugging out of his clothes. I glide my greedy hands over the smooth skin of his torso, and it occurs to me that I might not want to dare the man who, even under normal, non-making-up circumstances, enjoys making me beg.
First with his fingers, then with his kiss, and then with his body moving with disciplined focus into mine, he does get those three little words out of me.
He makes me say them, swear them, makes me beg him to believe them.
When he guides me over him, I say them again through a smile, staring down at the unmasked adoration on his face.
And I scream them into the pillow when he fucks me hard from behind.
I promise him I truly do when he rolls me onto my back again and pushes slowly into me, his arms caged protectively around my head.
Sweaty and tangled in the sheets, we tumble in a thump from the bed to the floor, where he braces over me, reaching between us to find his way back deep into me and slowing down to the smallest movements, his lips resting over mine, sharing my breath.
My hands are woven in his hair; it’s damp from exertion, and he kisses me so deep, groaning quietly at how good it feels.
Alec’s palm slides down my side, fingertips teasing along my hip, cupping my thigh, and bringing my leg higher around his waist.
“Do you love me when I’m deep like this?” he asks me.
I whisper into his mouth that I do, more than anything. Tight and urgent, I’m so close already, impossibly, with the promise of an unbelievable weight rolling down my spine, ready to obliterate.
“I think I’m starting to believe you.” Sweat beads his top lip as he stares down between our bodies. I’m desperate for the salt of his skin, the wet, messy slide of his kiss when he’s on the verge of falling to pieces.
Out in the apartment, we hear the front door open and close, and the sound of Eden dropping her purse and keys on the hall table.
That means it’s after two in the morning; we’ve been kissing, playing, making love for hours.
Alec stares down at me, cupping a hand over my mouth, and only now that I can’t make a sound does he give me what I want: the fast snaps of his hips until my pleasure sears through me one last time, sending my fingernails sinking into his back.
He arches away, face tilted up as he bites a white streak into his lower lip, coming with a quiet groan.
We stay like this, catching our breath as Alec stares down at me.
“You okay?” he asks, shifting so he can reach up, move some sweat-slicked hair out of my eyes.
I nod, cupping his neck.
“Let’s get you up.” He kicks away the sheets wrapped around his legs, and I groan, already sore.
Alec wordlessly helps me up onto the mattress, where I collapse, and he follows, turning me and tucking me into him with my back all along his front.
With his hand on my breast and his breath on the back of my neck, we crash together into sleep.
Morning sneaks in through the small cracks in my curtains. I’m pressed into the solid comfort of Alec’s chest, and pull away, gazing up at his sleeping face. Squinting, I roll over and reach for the phone on my nightstand. It’s just after six.
My article will be up.
When I bolt upright, Alec stirs, sending a drowsy hand up my spine. “What is it?”
“The article went live at nine Eastern. Seven minutes ago.”
He pushes up onto an elbow, leaning his sleepy face on my arm. We watch it load, and my heart scales my windpipe. There are already hundreds of comments. Silently, we read my story together. And then again.
When we’re done, Alec whispers a quiet, “I mean… this is perfect.”
He takes my phone and lies back down to read the story a third time.
I’m afraid to look outside this room to see the reaction from the rest of the world.
When it comes to my relationship with Alec, it doesn’t matter to me what anyone else says about this.
We have a bond that exploded out of nowhere and deepens every time he touches me.
I love him in the frantic grip of pleasure and in the soft, yawning light of morning.
But when Alec hands me my phone back and grabs his own, we stare at each other for a quiet, surreal moment. It might not matter to our hearts what people think, but it does matter.
“Do you think it’s safe to open Twitter?” I ask.
He grins, generously offering two irresistible dimples. “Is it ever?”
It’s true that he and I exist far beyond the reach of the internet, but my career hinges on this article being well received, and his hinges on people believing what Sunny has to say.
I kiss him once, eyes open and clear, before looking.
After only a couple minutes of scrolling, I can’t help the boasting laugh that escapes.
Alec is trending again, but this time he’s receiving an outpouring of love.
I swipe up, watching the fast scroll of hundreds and hundreds of tweets.
“This is wild. Do you see all of this adoration?” I pause to read a few and frown.
“You have a lot of marriage proposals.” Looking at him, I point to my screen.
“There is a person here who has offered to carry your baby if you are so inclined.”
He ignores this. “I already have a few requests for interviews.”
This makes me laugh. “Uh, I bet you do.”
A text from Eden pops up on my phone. I hear you laughing in there. I’m assuming the crushed flowers I found in the entryway last night mean that there’s a man in your bed.
Giggling, I text her back. Some random guy showed up. Good timing. Needed a rebound.
Does that mean Alexander Kim is single? Now’s my chance.
I laugh, and then a new alert pops up on my screen. It’s a follow request from @GigisBottomLip.
“What are you doing?” I ask, grinning over at him.
“Starting my fan account.”
Tossing my phone to the side, I launch myself onto him and let him pull that bottom lip between his. He nibbles his way down my neck and blows a raspberry into my shoulder.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk today,” I say.
“I’m going to be limping,” he agrees.
“You know what would loosen you up?” I ask, pressing my smile to his cheek.
“What?”
“A nice hot shower.” I hook a thumb over my shoulder, and he rolls over onto me, already laughing at what he knows is coming: “You’re more than welcome to use mine.”