49. you, me, us
CHAPTER 49
YOU, ME, US
IVY
The sound of a car starting as we exit the garden almost knocks me off my feet. I’d be on my ass if Lincoln didn’t catch me.
“Is that Astrid?” I squint through the dark, but all I can make out is a tan coat. It’s almost midnight. “Where is she going?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” he says, but his concern saturates every word. When I check, his expression is pinched, stress hardening the corners of his eyes, mouth.
“Hey,” I say, squeezing his hand. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” There’s an ache in my chest, to dig in, distract, offer solace with hands and lips and teeth. But the line between real and role is already too blurred, and I’m too tired to fake a smile if he refuses. “Maybe she has a secret lover,” I joke.
“Excuse me?”
“I asked her about Paris, and she answered like she’d snuck out her window to make out with someone.”
“I do not want the details.”
“Party pooper,” I say as we watch Astrid quietly ease her car down the driveway.
“When it’s your mum, we’ll see how you like it.” Okay, fine, he has a point.
“Still, I’m kind of proud of her. Sneaking out to see her secret boyfriend? It’s so sexy.”
Lincoln growls, and before I can react, he picks me up over his shoulder and walks through the side entrance and up the stairs.
I bounce as he drops me onto the bed, momentarily blinded by my blood singing in my veins. I’m going to need him to do that again. A hundred times. Then follow me onto it and cage me in and ravage me. I’m disappointed when he doesn’t, merely standing at the end of the bed while he slips his jacket off and folds it. Fuck if that isn’t doing it for me, though.
“Never use the words sexy to describe my mum.”
“Oh, she’s too old to be sexy?”
“No one’s too old to be anything, especially that. But that doesn’t stop her from being my mum.”
“Well, I think she’s incredibly sexy. It must be where you get it from.” Finally he climbs onto the bed, covering my mouth with his hand while I giggle underneath.
“Now where were we?” he asks, kissing me.
The first time we slept together, it was fire and heat, and I wanted it faster, my blood racing in my veins.
Now time slows, and I want to stop it, take our time, soak in every touch until I know the shape of it as well as my own face. I can’t let him go long enough to make it easy, but he doesn’t seem to care. We kiss, long, sweeping arcs of tongue, remembering and relearning all at the same time.
I think I’m babbling. Can hear hushed promises between breaths, between kisses, the words pouring out of me as neatly as water.
“Oh god,” I say, pulling at his shirt, tugging up, up, up, until it’s off and I finally get my hands on his skin. “We could have been doing this for weeks.” I’m scrambling to get my hands, my mouth, on those tattoos.
“Slow down,” he says. But he’s just as eager, pulling my dress up over my head. “We have all night.”
It’s not enough time. A lifetime wouldn’t be enough.
“Hey,” Lincoln says. With his hand in my hair, he tips my head back and holds me there, his eyes dark. Everything in me calms. “I love you. Everything I am is yours.”
Oh god, this is it. It’s real.
Words escape for the second time tonight, but it’s okay, because he knows. Just like he’s always known. What I need. Who I am.
I can’t get enough of him, barely leaving enough space for either of us to undress, but he manages it. So capable. Fuck, I love him.
“Fuck me,” I gasp, and Lincoln responds by wrapping his thick arms around my back and lifting me into his arms, our mouths never separating as he settles me in his lap. I can feel how hard he is, and I moan into his mouth at the thought of him inside me again, finally, after all this time.
When he starts to pull away, I stop him. I don’t want anything between us. Not anymore.
“I’ve got the all-clear if you want to go without,” I tell him.
Lincoln digs his fingers into my ass with a low growl. “Fuck, of course I want you. Are you sure?”
I nod, frantic.
“All right,” he says, kissing me and adjusting his grip to tease my clit with his fingertips. “Nothing to report for me either,” he adds, softly stroking me.
My thighs are wet already, and I rub against his cock, making sure he knows how sure I am. I want this. I need him.
“Fuck, darling. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
He lifts me up with one hand, using the other to position himself. We fumble it the first time, but I don’t care, because he’s here, and he loves me, and I get to touch his laughter with my tongue and drink in his groan when he finally slides inside me, raw.
Yes.
Lincoln runs his hands up my back, tangles them in my hair, and I let my head fall back. He takes the opportunity to run his teeth down the sensitive part of my neck before soothing it with his tongue.
All while being buried deep.
I swear I can feel his heartbeat through his cock. Or maybe that’s mine. He attacks me with a kiss when I squeeze around him, my silent plea for him to move, to fuck me like he promised.
“I love you,” he breathes into my mouth, rising to his knees and slamming his hand against the wall behind me.
Then he moves.
God. Fuck. How did I ever exist without him? Without this?
He fucks me with the same single-minded determination he uses for everything, filling me in long, deep thrusts, his fingers leaving bruises on my hip. His words stamping their place on every corner of my heart.
“I want every part of you, all of it. I love your messes. Christ, you don’t know what it does to me to wake up and see you in my apartment. You don’t even have to be there, just leave something behind?—”
I tangle my hands in his perfect hair, gripping it between my fingers, kissing everywhere I can reach, rolling my clit against him.
“Whoever and wherever you want to be, I want you. I’ve looked my whole life for you. I’m not letting go now.”
When I come, it rolls over me in a wave so overwhelming I bury my face in Lincoln’s shoulder, my cry muffled against his skin. Sweat sticks my hair to my forehead, and he pushes it back as he picks up his pace, and god, his thighs must be burning, but he doesn’t stop until he’s groaning into a kiss, and I feel the hot pulse of his dick as he comes inside me.
Exhausted, we slump into the bed in a conjoined heap, neither of us seeming to want to let go yet. If it didn’t mean staying in this cold monument, I’d stay like this for a week.
Lincoln dots a series of gentle kisses over my face, his palms searing as they cup my cheeks. I’m too busy floating to do much more than lie there and sink into them.
Because this isn’t any other Ivy, and it isn’t Lincoln playing a game. It’s him and me and us, and the ice my heart has been treading over has completely and utterly melted, slipping into the warm bath of his affection.
It’s incredible.
No holding back, not anymore.
No, I’m going to give everything over, because he wants it, but more than that, he can handle it. Gently. With care. With love. And he does.
“Love you,” I whisper when he disappears and returns with a washcloth, cleaning me up with a tenderness that threatens to spill my heart out onto the sheets.
I should probably do something back, not just lie here and soak in the pleasure, but it’s hard enough to think. Besides, he doesn’t look like he’s complaining. He likes me this way— compliant, supplicant. Loves it.
So do I.
Strange to think all I needed to do was give myself permission for this. A lifetime of worrying about chasing passion, and why?
Maybe the rest was fleeting, but Lincoln isn’t. Could never be. He’s immovable.
Persistent.
When he says he’s going to prove his love, over and over, I know he means it. And even though he doesn’t need to prove it beyond this, because I believed him before he ever said the words, felt it in every kiss since the beginning, before I would ever let myself accept it, I know he won’t stop. I won’t stop.