Chapter 26
Vivi was looking at him like he was the last slice of cake at a party she’d crashed, and his brain snapped somewhere between “Is this real?” and “Holy hell, I am the luckiest SOB alive.”
The early twilight hung heavily around them, sunset painting her in silver, fireflies buzzing like tiny spotlights in the sky. When her eyes met his, everything else vanished. Beneath the lust there was something raw and unpolished and it made him pause.
Vivi's life had been a series of letdowns. He wasn't about to be the next one added to the pile. Walking away wasn't an option but neither was fucking this up.
"Are you sure?" he asked, giving her the out, bracing himself for the fact that—God help him—she might actually take it.
Instead, she tangled her fingers in his hair, dragged his mouth to hers, and—holy hell—his prayers got answered.
Boone groaned into the kiss, tilting her closer, taking her tongue like it was an invitation he'd been waiting on for years. Her hands skimmed all the way down his chest, slipping dangerously close to the one place he'd been aching for her to explore.
And if that isn’t a green light, buddy, then I don’t know what is.
He rolled her over and caged her against the ground, hips and bodies molding together like they'd been made to fit. Heat radiated off him, off everything between—pent-up tension, raw need, bone-deep want. All of it combustible.
He flipped them again, scooped her up and set her on top of him, pressing himself into her, tracing seductive kisses down her neck.
She smelled incredible—spicy and drugging.
Her hands were brazen, undoing buttons, pulling at his shirt, discovering every inch of him with a hunger that made his body ache.
He was more than ready to let her take whatever she wanted.
He knew he should carry her home, make love to her properly in that soft bed of hers. But he wanted a few more minutes under this sky with her hands on him exactly like this—like she couldn't get enough.
She must have felt the same because she pulled back, looked down at him and, without a word, lifted her arms in invitation.
Boone RSVPed in no time flat, easing his thumbs under the hem of her tank and slowly pushing it up. The higher he tugged, the harder he became—until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, and he stopped.
"Is this where you want to see what color my lace is?" she teased, eyes half-lidded, the slightest daze in her gaze. "Because I promise you—one more inch and you'll know."
"But then the anticipation dies," he murmured, voice rough.
"It will, won't it?" A sexy laugh bubbled out of her and, before he could blink, she yanked the top over her head and tossed it onto the grass.
Boone's breath stopped because no amount of imagining could have prepared him for this.
Tiny waist. Flat stomach. Perfect breasts, bare, unadorned, and completely his.
He'd noted every detail of her he could get away with for weeks—the way she moved, the curve of her when she bent over the table, the flush that crept up her throat when he got too close. None of it had come close to this.
"Still wondering?" she whispered.
"Just memorizing," he said—his hands moving slowly, tracing the band of her jeans, sliding over her hips and cupping her. He took his time. He'd been waiting long enough that he wasn't going to rush any part of it.
His voice dropped. "I've been thinking about this since the barn."
She leaned back on her hands and gave him a view he was going to carry for a long time. "Isn't the real thing better than wondering?"
"You tell me," he rasped, peeling her jeans down in one fluid move before lifting her onto his lap. He took one breast into his mouth, then the other, taking his time there too—lips, tongue, teeth, just enough to make her shiver—just enough to make her want more before he gave it.
Her moan was a spark. He followed it down—trailing kisses along her ribs, the soft inside of her thighs, laying her back until he pressed one slow, intentional kiss right through the fabric of her jeans.
"Not as much heat as I'd hoped," she challenged, arching into him.
He lifted his head and looked at her. "Hold on to something."
With practiced fingers, he tugged her G-string to the side and then he gave her fire.
He teased, coaxing until her breathing came in short gasps and her body hummed beneath him like a live wire.
He pressed her legs wider, pulled the fabric all the way to the side, and slid one finger in, meeting sweet, slick heat.
Her whole body tensed as he slid in another, loving the way she fisted her hands in his hair and held him there like she was afraid he'd stop.
He had no intention of stopping.
He started moving and her hips pressed forward to deepen the friction. The way she closed around him when he went deeper was enough to make a man lose his mind entirely.
"Hot enough?" he rasped against her.
"Hotter," she gasped.
He curled his fingers and found the exact spot what he was looking for and pressed into it.
She arched her back and let her head fall back, so he did it again.
And again. Until the heat rose past the surface of the sun and rounded into something that had no business existing outside of a fever dream.
He lapped and licked, his fingers still pumping.
"Your peach is incredible," he groaned against her.
"My peach is about to come apart."
That was all he needed. One well-placed graze of his teeth against her swollen, slick flesh and she shattered—thighs clamping around him, her whole body shuddering in one long, perfect wave while he worked her through every last second of it.
She was still in an orgasmic-bliss when he unzipped and—because this was apparently a just-in-case moment he was deeply grateful for—he covered himself with a condom. Her legs wrapped around his waist without thinking, pulling him in, and Boone slid home in one urgent stroke.
Vivi gasped—high and breathless—and he went still.
Didn't move or pull back, he just held her, pressed close, and let himself have the moment he'd been quietly building toward for weeks.
Her body was everything he'd imagined, but none of the imagining had prepared him for how completely, unreasonably right it felt.
When she shifted her hips against him—tightening—his hands followed the curve of her back, gripping and mapping, learning her body the way he'd been wanting to since the first moment he’d spoken to her at the coffee shop.
She swiveled and rocked like she'd been built to take him apart, her breath hitching, her chest rising against his.
The world narrowed. Heat, friction, the sharp perfect edge of want. She lifted, clenched, pushed up to take him deeper—and Boone knew he was done for.
He pressed his face into her neck. "Christ, you feel so good."
She lifted her head and looked straight at him like he was one of the good ones—and something shifted. Real and fast and impossible to walk back.
Boone moved faster, deeper, more intentional with every thrust. He wanted to make this last, wanted to dismantle every doubt she'd ever had about the two of them.
But then she clenched again, those magnificent breasts arching toward him, soft sounds escaping her lips that officially drove him past the point of no return.
The pressure built, hotter and higher and he held on until he felt her start to shake beneath him, felt her push down as he pressed up. And the sweetest sound he'd ever heard was his own name on Vivi's lips.
Which worked for him, because he was saying hers right back as he finally let go. Everything went dark and he dropped his head to her shoulder, pressed his face to her throat, and breathed her in while she collapsed against him.
Both of them lay there wrecked and breathing hard. Neither of them in any hurry to move.
A long time later, after the sun had nearly finished its slow descent behind the mountains and he'd tasted her peach twice, Boone lay on his back with Vivi tucked against his side.
He watched the clouds scatter across the dimming sky, a slow grin on his face he didn't bother trying to hide. They hadn't put their clothes back on, but Vivi had stolen most of the blanket. He wasn't complaining about either of those things.
Today had been, without question, the best day he'd had since before his parents died.
For the first time in over a year he had clarity—that soul-deep, bone-certain conviction that there was something bright on the other side of grief.
That it wasn't just something people said to get through funerals.
Vivi was that brightness.
The problem was he didn't know where her head was.
He knew where her body stood. Her heart was a whole other territory—and that made him nervous in a way he hadn't expected.
The kind of nervous that meant it mattered—that she mattered.
More than he'd given himself permission to admit until right now, lying in a field with her hair across his shoulder and the last of the sunset going gold above them.
"I can practically hear you thinking," she whispered. "Want to talk about it?"
"I was thinking about how I solved the whole orgasm-with-someone-in-the-room problem," he said, deflecting on instinct.
She smacked his chest. "First. This was a group project. And second. We're not in a room."
"Which means next time we need to find one."
"That's a bit presumptuous," she said. "But that's not what you're thinking."
No, it wasn't.
What he was thinking was inside thoughts, the kind he kept locked down and didn't hand to anyone. But something about lying here with her, wrecked and warm and more settled than he'd felt in months, made him want to say them out loud.
"I was thinking about my mom," he said and the admission surprised even him.
She raised up on an elbow and met his gaze. "Tell me about her."
Her question settled in the air and he felt that unfamiliar pull—the urge to give her the real pieces, not just the surface version he handed to everyone else.
The fact that he wanted to surprised him.
He wasn't the type to let anyone in like this but with Vivi it didn't feel like a risk—it felt like it might mean something.
"When I was maybe five, I wanted to do everything on my own."
"Not you," she said, laughing.
"You want to hear it or not?"
"Go ahead."
"I got up early one Saturday to make her breakfast. Pulled out the cereal and bowls, grabbed the milk but it was too heavy and I spilled it all over the floor.
" A small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
"She came in before I could grab a towel but instead of scolding me, she laughed.
Said, 'Well, the mess is already made, so let's have fun with it.
' And then we turned the kitchen into a slip-and-slide for the rest of the morning. "
He exhaled slowly, letting the memory settle between them like a low, warm light.
Vivi's expression softened in a way that made something thump in his chest.
"What an amazing mom," she said. "Mine would've cleaned it up before my dad even knew. What she gave you was something rare. It was love without perfection. Joy even when everything's messy."
Boone looked at her and the world felt quieter—somehow smaller. Like it had contracted down to just this—the blanket, the dark coming in at the edges, her voice, the warmth of her pressed against his side.
"Now, if I could just figure out how to apply that to my adult relationships," he said, trying to lighten the weight of it.
But the ache hummed underneath—his parents gone in that crash, that single wrenching second that took everything—and, surprisingly, he didn't try to bury it. He let her hear it, quietly and without fanfare, the way the truest things always came out.
He thought she might be worth that.
He was starting to think she might be worth quite a lot.