53. TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-EIGHT
EDEN
I should have walked away.
But no. That would have required me to have a little fucking decency and respect for Alex’s privacy, which, evidently, I do not possess. Because I’m still here, still lingering just outside the bedroom door—open, as promised—with a litany of new information I’m finding difficult to process.
Alex’s parents died.
Alex is adopted.
Alex is going to cut off all his hair to help my son win a school contest.
Each new piece of information slots into the puzzle. He lost his parents when he was ten. So young, and yet old enough to take his little sister under his wing and vow to protect her forever.
No wonder he’s terrified of relationships.
It isn’t love he’s scared of, but loss.
“What are you doing?”
I jolt, my head snapping toward him. “Oh, um, I was just getting something from my room.”
His brow arches. “Your room is on the other side of the hall.”
“Right, yes, but I—”
“Eden?” His fingers meet my chin for the second time today, tilting it up.
My stomach swoops, his proximity doing nothing to unmuddy my mind.
It makes it worse, actually, the warmth of his skin on mine, the gentle dominance of the gesture that has my body naturally leaning farther into his, my lips tingling like only the touch of his could make them stop. “How much did you hear?”
“All of it,” I whisper.
He studies me, dark, red-rimmed eyes burning into mine.
Oh my God, has he been crying?
“Are you okay?”
He blinks. Nods. But his eyes stay the same. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He smiles. It’s not a real one.
“Do you wanna talk about anything?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want your pity.”
I step toward him. It’s the closest we’ve been since I was writhing on a washing machine and his fingers were inside me. His eyes widen in surprise, but he doesn’t step back, so I take it as a win.
“I’m not giving it to you.”
He frowns. “Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“All sad and shit.”
Because I am sad. I’m sad for the boy the same age as my son who experienced something no child ever should.
I’m sad for the man he is now, who’s so afraid of being left behind that he won’t allow himself to love.
And I’m sad for me, because knowing what I know now, I can’t rationalize my heartache by villainizing him anymore.
And if I can’t villainize him, then all I can do is…
“Kiss me.” The words are out before I’ve thought them through.
“What?”
His confusion is fair. I’m not sure why I’m doing what I’m doing, not when the last time he kissed me resulted in us not speaking for several days and an unmistakable, ever-present tension in the house.
He was clear that we could never be anything more than whatever the fuck we are now, and I know that hasn’t changed.
But I guess what has changed is the fact that I now understand why.
I wrap my hands around his neck to bring his face closer to mine. “Just don’t ghost me this time, yeah?”
Despite my bravado, my lips are soft and shy when they meet his.
There’s still an element of insecurity glittered over my actions—a natural reaction to being rejected after your first sexual experience since your ex-husband, I’d argue.
But when his fingers move from my chin to cup my cheekbone, the tips of his fingers slipping into my hair, I forget everything but how he feels, how he tastes, how he sounds when he moans into my mouth like he’s spent the last few days grieving what we could be too.
My legs circle his waist as I climb him like a tree. One of his hands finds my ass to support me—or just to feel me up, I don’t care—the other anchoring me to him, strong and unyielding.
“Bedroom,” I plead against his lips, our mouths still fused, my nails digging half-moons into his shoulders.
But I don’t do anything to make the journey across the hall easier for him.
My teeth trap his bottom lip as my core grinds messily over his abs.
We bump into something, and Alex curses into my mouth.
But as long as he’s alive, there’s nothing that can stop what’s about to happen.
We’re inevitable, even if he doesn’t realize it yet.
This poor, sad boy who is more capable of love than any man I’ve ever known, yet denies himself the joys of it. I want to show him that this thing between us isn’t something to be scared of. Because if he lets it, it could be everything he’s needed since he was ten.
And yeah, I can’t predict the future. I don’t know if something will happen to me tomorrow or ten years down the line, but I do know that, whatever time I have, I want to spend it with him. And I think that, maybe, he wants to spend it with me too.
“Are you sure about this?” he murmurs against my lips.
“Yes, I’m—”
Suddenly, I’m airborne. My back hits the mattress with a soft thud, breath squealing out of me in surprise.
His face appears above me, dimples flashing. I don’t understand how he can look both wolfish and boyish at the same time, but he makes it look easy. “You were saying?”
“I’m sure.” Then, just in case that isn’t enough, I add, “I need you.”
I hope he hears the double meaning behind my words. That I need him for more than his body. I need him, his kindness, his heart, his pain, his perpetual summer warmth that glows around him like a halo. I need him to stop running from me and what we could have.
He falls over me, trapping me between two thick biceps that cage either side of my head.
“You have me.” His nose dusts over mine, our heavy breaths whispering across each other’s skin.
My head tilts. “Do I?”
Soft lips trace my own in a kiss so gentle it has tiny hairs across my body rising with a shiver. It isn’t an answer. Not really. But I understand it anyway.
He can’t promise me anything more than this moment.
His fear is still dictating his heart, even though it beats in perfect time with mine, even though I know it’s breaking from the pain of his denial of us, just as mine is.
I can see it in the way he’s looking at me, starry-eyed and spellbound, confirming that the sensation that’s been radiating in my chest for weeks now—the one I’ve been refusing to name—isn’t one-sided at all.
It’s heart-stoppingly, heart-breakingly reciprocated.
And as terrible an idea as I know it is, I will take this man in any way I can get him. For however long. Even if it means I’ll be left shattered in the end.
I place my hand over his heart and gently push him away. His eyebrows draw tight in confusion before he realizes why I need the space. I throw my discarded shirt across the room, not caring where it lands, then lean back on my hands, my now-bare breasts heaving with each one of my labored breaths.
His eyes darken to pools of starlit darkness.
“God, Eden.” His ragged voice breaks at the end. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
I’ve never known what it’s like to be looked at this way. Like he’ll die if he doesn’t touch me. It’s heady. It’s dizzying. It’s dangerously addictive.
He reaches behind his head to wrench off his plain black tee, tossing it away as thoughtlessly as I did, and even though it isn’t the first time I’ve seen him shirtless, it may as well be.
I swallow. “The sentiment is mutual.”
He smiles, and though it doesn’t carry the same playful cockiness it usually does, his shyness is no less charming.
With shaky hands, I reach for the hem of my leggings, but he bats me away.
“Let me.” His fingers hitch into the waistband, brushing bare skin. “Keep your eyes on me, Eden. I just…need to keep looking at you.”
I fix my gaze on him, not glancing away even as I feel the kiss of cool air between my legs. He grabs my ankles and pulls me down the bed so he can kneel on the floor between my legs. Still, I don’t look away.
It’s him that breaks the connection first.
A thick finger swipes through my wetness, and he tracks the path of it. “Fuck.” The word hisses between his teeth, so quiet I don’t think he intended for me to hear it at all. “So fucking messy, just how I wanted.”
Then he leans in and retraces the line of his finger with his tongue.
My back arches off the mattress. A deep moan rumbles up his throat, his hand clamping me on the stomach to keep me in place before he loses all control and feasts on me like a man starving.
I take it as permission to close my eyes and surrender myself to the warmth spreading rapidly through my body.
When his lips latch around my clit and he sucks it into his mouth, I grab fistfuls of his hair and pull with all my strength.
He grunts his approval, his tongue not ceasing for even a moment.
If anything, it incites him.
His tongue spears inside me, and despite the hand anchoring me to the mattress, I bow like a willow tree, twisting both away and toward him like I can’t decide if I want him to stop or keep going.
The climax shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. It creeps in, gentle at first, then sweeps me away on a tidal wave of heat and pulses and a deep ache that doesn’t settle until he’s wrung out every last drop of it from my body.
When he’s done, his face shamefully wet, I lie staring at the ceiling as my lungs fight for air. He laughs, lifting me from beneath my back and shifting me toward the middle of the mattress. “Look at the mess you made on my face. Are you ready to make a mess of my cock now too?”
And then he’s over me again, that same thunderstruck look in his eyes as he watches me, his breathing as erratic as mine.
“So. Fucking. Beautiful,” he repeats, punctuating each word with a deep kiss, tongue twisting into my mouth, searching and reverent. “Tell me you’re ready for me.”
Am I?
Yes.
No.
I’m stuck between needing a year-long nap and wanting to ride him until the sun comes up.
So, naturally, I nod and breathe out, “I’m on birth control.”
“I’m clean.”
There’s a long beat where neither of us moves, gazes locked together, the weight of what we’re about to do settling over us like a thick quilt. An acknowledgement that, after this, we’ll be irrevocably changed. For better or worse, I don’t know. But right now, I don’t care.
I just need him.
Inside me. On top of me. His skin sweaty and sliding over mine, our lips latched together, our bodies moving together like we’re one entity, and nothing, not even the world ending, could split us apart.
I need it all. And I need it now.
I lurch toward him, my mouth finding his despite having closed my eyes, like it can sense where it is.
He growls, one hand wrapping around the back of my head as the other fumbles to rid himself of his sweatpants. Then he’s closing in on me, settling his heaviness over my trembling body and guiding himself between my legs.
The first press of him stings. It’s been years since I’ve had a man inside me, and Alex is bigger than Sebastian.
He freezes when I tense, the pads of his fingers ghosting across my cheek. “Are you okay?”
I nod, begging my body to accommodate the stretch of him. I’m desperate to let him inside, shaking from the need of it. “Keep going,” I rasp, arching into him. “Please.”
He presses inside another inch, slow, steady, his thumbs stroking soothing little circles on my temple.
“So wet, so tight, Eden. So fucking perfect it hurts to look at you.” Another inch.
Then another. “Did you know that? How it kills me to look at you? And yet, not being able to look at you the past few days has been even worse. How does that make sense?”
I don’t know, but I get it.
I feel the same way about him too.
“Nearly there, baby. You’re doing so good.” His head drops to my neck, tongue swiping over my pulse point. “Do you feel how hard you make me? It’s all for you. Only you.”
His gentle praise is everything I need. My body relaxes, my muscles finally settling to make room for the rest of his length.
“Fuck, there we go.” His moan quivers across my throat, igniting one of my own. “Perfect. Goddamn fucking perfect. You’ve ruined me for all other women. Nothing will ever feel as good as this, as perfect as you.”
He’s rambling, the confessions pulled from him by some invisible force he can’t find the strength to fight right now. I hope when this is all over, he doesn’t go looking for it again.
“Is it okay if I start moving? I have to fuck you the way I’ve been dreaming about for weeks.”
God, he’s so sweet. So fucking attentive, and compassionate, and kind. I never stood a chance against the pure goodness of his soul. As distrusting as I was back then, I was done for the moment he fetched me a wet paper towel to clean the ink from my eye on the very first day.
What hope did I have? Of course I was going to fall in love with him.
“Please,” I rasp, and the sound has only just escaped when his hips snap against mine, at first gentle, then harder, spearing me until he’s as in control of his movements as I am of my heart.
“God, Eden, this isn’t gonna last long. You’re—fuck—everything. Everything.” He drops his forehead against mine, eyes pinched shut in reverie, sharp breaths tingling over my lips. “Leo was right. You’re a fucking riptide.”
I have no idea what he means, but I’m not in any position to ask questions right now. I don’t know how he’s able to talk when it’s taking everything in me not to scream from the pleasure coursing through my body and wake the whole damn building.
“Gonna need you to come for me, little riptide.” His fingers snake between us, finding my clit with expert precision and stroking until the flames of another orgasm start licking low in my belly. “Soak my dick before I embarrass myself again.”
He shifts the angle of his hips, his dick hitting a part of me I never knew existed. It has me keening and grabbing another handful of his hair. “Alex.”
“I’m right there with you, baby. Come on, you can do it.”
He pistons into me, and as the wave builds, my body—my soul—shaking, he drags his teeth to my neck and bites.
My pussy clamps down on him, fluttering like butterflies as I whimper through my release.
His thrusts grow erratic, his words jumbled as he groans things like “Give it to me” and “That’s it, just like that.
” When he comes, he does so with a roar buried in the side of my neck and my name on his lips.
And in the aftermath, as I lie panting on his chest, I finally let myself name the sensation that’s been holding me hostage for weeks.
I love you.
I hope he reads the confession in the softness of my kiss.
Please let yourself love me too.
I hope he feels my plea in the stroking of my fingers in his hair.
Please trust me enough to stay.