10. That Peach Worth It Though #2
She smacked my chest, laughing too hard for it to land with any real sting, and tried to wriggle free like she actually wanted down, which she did not, her legs saying the opposite of whatever her mouth was arguing.
The water climbed my legs cold, then warm, then didn't matter at all.
She laughed against my mouth the whole way in, couldn't hold a kiss still for more than two seconds without breaking into giggles again.
The water reached my waist and we were still at it, still trying, salt mixing with whatever was left on both our lips.
She pulled back first. Just far enough to look at me, sunlight doing something unfair to her whole face, cover up ruined, hair a mess, still the best thing I'd ever laid eyes on.
"I love you, Ducky."
"I love you, Ru."
And that's when I heard it. Asher's voice came up out of nowhere, out of a parking lot four months gone…
You got all that but I got the one thing you really want. At the end of the night, she goes home with me. Never yours. You just the friend. You always gonna be just the friend.
I stood there in the Atlantic with Aurelia's legs still locked around my waist and her mouth still tasting like salt and answered a dead argument out loud in my own head. Not anymore, man. Not anymore.
Because here was the thing nobody in a magazine spread could've told me, nothing my father built, nothing my grandfather left me, none of it had ever once been the thing I actually wanted.
I'd wanted this. The one who'd seen me put a man's wrist in two directions it wasn't built to go and hadn't run from the truth of what that meant about me, just needed time to sit with it, same as I'd needed time to sit with everything ugly that ever lived in her.
A friend who never once looked at Capa Dillion or the tattoos or the star chase and saw a prize.
Just saw a boy from Roena County who cooked because a kitchen was the first place that ever loved him without conditions, and loved that boy same as she loved the man he'd built on top of him.
She didn't want whatever everyone else saw on that cover. She'd seen behind it seven years running and stayed anyway.
Her hands cupped my jaw, bringing me back to the moment.
"Hey. You okay?"
"Yeah... yeah, Ru, I'm good. I'm better than good." I pressed my forehead to hers. "I just—" I had to stop a second. "I spent so long telling myself I already had everything a man could want. Turns out I ain't have none of it."
"You have it now." She smirked up at me. "And you can have me right now, on this private beach."
"That right?"
"We did get interrupted last night."
"Had no idea you were such a greedy girl, Aurelia."
"You opened up my appetite."
"Your migraines. We can't stay out too long." I was thinking about the motion of the sea, the way it takes you and gives you back and takes you again.
"I'm not actively having a migraine, Dilly. I'm fine."
The water was calm, but too much sun wasn't good either.
"Trust me," she said.
I smirked and walked us out past the breakers, the water climbing to my chest, hers, weightless between us.
Not a soul on that stretch but gulls and the two of us.
Her arms locked around my neck. I held her against me with one hand, freed myself with the other, and she was already guiding herself down onto me before I could even ask if she was ready.
The gasp she made when I filled her, I'd heard it that night in my penthouse and I'd heard it last night when I put my tongue in her, and I would hear it until I died, God willing.
The ocean rocked us. There was salt on her lips when I kissed her, more on her throat where I bit her. Her breath went ragged against my ear.
"Dilly." My name broke apart in her mouth.
Being back inside Aurelia felt like floating flat on my back in the middle of the ocean, the water doing all the holding. Felt like Heaven, if Heaven's got salt in it. If Heaven is just this: a man weightless in the one place he finally stopped needing to hold himself up.
I moved in her slow, so slow, feeling every inch of her around me, hot and tight despite the cold water, her legs wrapped at my waist pulling me deeper.
"You feel so good," she sobbed against my neck, her body squeezing me. "You’re so deep..I’m…I’m so full…I needed you so bad."
"Not as bad as I needed you." It came out of me before I could file it under things a man keeps to himself.
"Please don't stop, baby," she begged.
"Never." I ground the word out, my hips finding a rhythm that pulled a cry out of her, that made the water slap between our bodies, obscene and holy both.
I pulled back slow, let her feel every inch of me leaving, then drove back in hard enough to steal the breath clean out of her.
"Never again, Ru. Feel how deep I am? That's where I live now. I'm here. I'm right here."
Her nails dragged down my back, half hold, half plea, like she needed proof I wasn't going anywhere that skin could keep. "Dillion—"
"Say my name like that again." My voice had gone rough, unfamiliar even to me, seven years' worth of holding still finally spending itself all at once. "Say it again, Ru. Let me hear what I've been missing."
"Dillion!" Louder this time, wrecked, her whole body drawing up tight around mine like it was trying to keep me there by force. "I love you. God, I love you."
"I know." I buried my face in her neck, breathing her in, salt and sun and everything I'd waited on. "I know, baby. I got you now."
"Yes..." Her nails raked down my back, stinging where the salt water hit the scratches. "God, yes. Stay there, stay in me. Right there!"
I rolled my hips, grinding against her clit with every thrust, feeling her tighten and flutter around me. "This pussy's mine now. Tell me."
"Yours," she gasped. "It's yours. It's always been yours."
"That's right." I pulled out almost all the way, just the tip of me still inside her, and held there while she whimpered and tried to pull me back with her heels. "Beg for it."
"Please." Her voice cracked, desperate. "Please, Dilly. Don't tease me. I waited so long."
I sank back in slow, excruciating, filling her inch by inch while the ocean rocked around us."
She was crying again, her body clenching around every inch I gave her. "Fuck me like you missed me. Fuck me like you own me."
I did. I gripped her hips hard enough to leave marks and drove into her, deep and fast, the water churning white around us, splashing up between her breasts, into her open mouth.
She choked on salt and moaned through it, her tits bouncing with every thrust, her head falling back.
"Look at you." I wrapped one hand around her throat, just enough to feel her pulse hammering against my palm, not having learned how to pace itself with me yet.
"Taking my dick in the middle of the ocean like it's the only meal you've had all year. "
"Harder!" She grabbed my wrist, holding my hand to her throat, her eyes wild, unfocused, gone.
"You sure?" I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. Some things you make a woman say twice.
"Don't be gentle with me, Dilly. I can handle it." Her hips found their own rhythm against mine, greedy, unashamed. "Don't I deserve all this good dick?"
"You deserve everything you want from me, Ru." I ground into her, making her feel every word. "Every. Fucking. Thing."
I fucked her like the ocean was trying to pull us apart and I wasn't letting go. Every thrust bottomed out in her, my pelvis grinding her clit, her screams mixing with the crash of the waves. Her legs tightened around my waist, her whole body coiling as she whimpered my name over and over.
"Comme ?a, ma belle. Ne te retiens pas."Just like that. Don't hold back.
"Papa, tu me baises tellement bien," she sobbed.Daddy, you fuck me so good.
"Tu es faite pour moi. J'ai été fait pour toi."You were made for me. I was made for you.
"Oui!"Yes!
"Je prends soin de toi. Tu prends soin de moi. D'accord?"I take care of you. You take care of me. Understood?
"Always! Like always Dilly!" she screamed, and I knew she was about to break. Felt it.
"Come for me." I slammed into her, again, and again, my grip on her hip tight enough to bruise, tight enough that I'd apologize for it later and mean it. "Come on my dick, Ru. Right now. Grip this motherfucker and come all over it, baby, please."
"I love you—"
"I know." My voice broke on it, rough and undone. "I know, pretty baby, I know. Come for me."
"Baby!"
"Come! Right fucking now, Ru!" I growled.
She shattered and her whole body seized.
Ru's center clamped down on me so hard I saw stars as I felt her body pulsing and milking me while she sobbed my name into the salt air.
I lasted two more thrusts before I buried myself to the hilt and came deep inside her, groaning into her neck, pumping everything I had into her as the ocean Baptized us right there in the afternoon sun.
Not a Baptism with a preacher's hand on the back of your skull and the whole congregation leaned forward waiting to see what your face looks like when you surface.
Wasn't a witnesses out here, no hymns — just two people who'd been running from each other for years finally blessed by ocean.
She bit my shoulder hard, as I kept spilling into her, marking her, claiming her, finally home as she continued to coat me.
Then I felt her breathing at my throat, and the pull of the tide, and her breathing, and the tide, till I couldn't tell which one was keeping time for the other.
What I knew for sure though, is that we were made anew right then and there.
Made one. She made mine, and me hers, and neither one of us going back up on that beach the same as we came down.
A wave came out of nowhere and took us under to finish the ritual. I held her tight going down.