Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Annie
Ishoulder open the front door just like always. Except, unlike always, everything feels different. Reed follows me inside, closing the door behind him as I drop the keys into the chipped bowl Aunt Lanie has kept on the entryway table since I was fourteen.
The quiet inside the house is almost oppressive.
There’s no TV blasting the current weather report from the Weather Channel.
It’s just me and Reed and, despite the fact that we’ve been married for over six years, I suddenly feel like the nervous nineteen-year-old who fell in love with the jock who also happened to be the heir to an empire.
That man now stands behind me in his work clothes, grimy from working on the project that’s taken over my life.
His hair is mussed, his clothes are dirty, and everything about him turns me on.
Less than an hour ago, he stood between me and the two women who’d taken every opportunity throughout my marriage to remind me that I didn’t belong in their world.
And then he told them that I was his world.
Reed looks around the empty house. “I’m having flashbacks.”
“Good ones, I hope.”
He looks down at me and there’s no mistaking the heat in his gaze. “They involve sneaking around with you. Grabbing every moment alone with you I could possibly get.”
“And now we’re married.”
“And yet, here we are, sneaking around.”
I lift my eyebrows. “What exactly do you think we came here to do?” His eyes narrow slightly as he tries to read me. “We’re supposed to be talking,” I remind him.
“Right,” he says, his gaze dropping to my mouth briefly before looking back to my eyes. “Talking. Of course.”
I let him wait for two more seconds. “You are so gullible.”
I fist my fingers into the fabric of his shirt and pull his lips to mine.
His mouth meets mine with a startled sound. He holds still for a beat, as though he’s afraid he’s missed a signal. But then the restraint is gone, his hands closing around my waist as he kisses me back.
My back meets the wall as he backs me up to the mouth of the hallway that leads toward the bedroom I’ve called my own since I came to live with Aunt Lanie when I was eleven years old.
His mouth is hot and hungry on mine. His movements are desperate, feverish, and I can feel every inch of his want against my hip.
I open my mouth to his and his tongue slides in, caressing mine. Gone is the Reed who was terrified he might overstep after the masquerade. In his place is my husband as he was when we first met, only now he kisses me as though he knows it could all disappear at any moment.
“Annie.” His voice breaks over the word as he claims my lips once again.
His hands find my sides, pausing at my hips. His breath is so ragged, he sounds as if he’s raced to get to me. And even though his body is desperately pressing into mine, he pulls back slightly, silently asking for permission.
“Yes, Reed,” I whisper.
He lifts me, my legs wrapping around him as his arms lock beneath me. His lips find my ear, my neck, as he negotiates his way through the hallway.
I make a sound that’s somewhere between a moan and a gasp as his lips find the sensitive place below my ear that he once claimed was all his. My hands grasp at his shoulders as he carries me into the same bedroom where, only days ago, he sat vigil beside me as I worked through a fever.
The curtains are open, the barest sliver of afternoon light spilling across the bed.
All the furniture is mismatched, nothing like the cold, carefully selected pieces that make up Stanhope House.
The walls are dotted with pinholes where I once hung posters of boy bands and far-off places I hoped to someday visit.
Reed lowers me onto the quilt, so careful that the tenderness nearly breaks me. He slides over me, the old mattress dipping beneath our combined weight. I tug his shirt free of his waistband. He kisses me, deep and slow, then pulls back, staring down at me.
“What?” I reach up, running my thumb over his jawline.
I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “I missed this, Annie.”
My hand stills against his cheek.
“I missed you. Even when you were lying beside me, I missed you, and I didn’t understand why.
” He draws a ragged breath. “I thought the rest of my life was something I had to manage so I could come back to you when there was time. I didn’t realize the whole time that I was letting my life suffocate you. Hurt you.”
“Reed—”
“I know this doesn’t erase anything.” His gaze stays on mine. “But I swear I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you know how damned much you matter to me. To me, Annie. Because, God, I love you.”
I’m certain that if I take a breath, I’ll break.
“I can’t keep calling you my whole world while treating you like the part that can wait.” He turns his face into my palm and kisses it. “You’re like the air that I breathe.”
I slide my hand into his hair. “Then breathe me in, Reed.”
His mouth comes down on mine.
There’s nothing to hold him back now. I pull at his shirt, and he rises long enough to drag it over his head.
My sweater follows, then my bra. His mouth moves down my neck as his fingers work open my jeans, kissing each new piece of skin as he uncovers it: my collarbone, the curve of my breast, and the soft place below my ribs that I used to cover when the injections left bruises there.
Reed presses a kiss below my navel, and my fingers tighten in his hair.
He removes my jeans and underwear together, drawing them down my legs before letting them fall beside the bed. His boots hit the floor one after the other, followed by the metallic click of his belt buckle. He kneels between my thighs.
“Reed.”
His hands slide beneath me, drawing me to the edge of the mattress.
Then his mouth meets my clit and I jerk against him, breath shuddering out of me. He tightens his grip, holding me to him as his tongue works me, one slow stroke after another. My head falls back against the quilt, and his name breaks out of me.
“That’s it, Annie,” he says against me. “Let me hear you.”
His mouth lowers again as my fingers twist in his hair.
I try to hold still, but there’s no way I can hold back now.
He can read me like a book. He knows where to press and when to ease back.
He knows how to make me beg. There was a time when he learned every sound I made because he loved drawing them from me.
Then came the schedules. The alarms. Nights when one of us had a headache or an early meeting, but the app said it was time.
The questions about whether I should stay on my back after.
The awful quiet when neither of us wanted to admit that what we used to reach for had turned into another thing to check off.
Now, I’m not even sure where my phone is and the last time I remember an alarm going off was before I left Stanhope.
Reed slides two fingers inside me, and I forget everything else. His mouth closes over me. Heat pulls tight through my center.
“Oh, God. Reed.”
He groans against me. I come with my thighs shaking around his shoulders, my fingers tangled in his hair, and he keeps his mouth on me until the last tremor passes through me.
When he rises, his lips are slick, and his chest is flushed. He shoves his pants and underwear down his legs, then looks at me as he settles between mine. I reach for him.
He stops just at my entrance. I moan, moving up toward him.
“You’re sure?”
I hook one leg around his hip. “I’m sure.”
His eyes stay on mine as he pushes inside me, slow and steady. The stretch draws a broken sound from my throat. His forehead dips toward mine, but he doesn’t look away; he fills me a little at a time until his hips press against mine.
“Annie.”
I hold the back of his neck. “Move.”
He withdraws and slides into me again, and the bed gives a sharp knock against the wall.
We both freeze.
He glances toward the headboard. “That seems louder than I remember.”
“Do you care?”
“God, no.”
He pulls back and then slides back inside me. I moan, meeting his thrust.
The headboard continues to knock against the wall. Once, twice, then there’s a steady rhythm that neither one of us cares about. Neither one of us is hiding this time. The entire UT Vols football team could push through the front door and there’d be no stopping us.
This bed is smaller than the one at Stanhope. The bed squeaks. The thread count is probably negligible. Reed has to keep one hand braced above my head so we don’t slide right into the headboard. There are no portraits hanging outside the room, ready to judge us for technique or lack of progeny.
There will be no Catherine to greet us in the morning with a judging eye and a suggestion that Lexi would be better suited for…everything.
Reed moves over me, warm and solid. Sweat gathers at his temple, and when I wipe it away with my thumb, he turns his head to kiss the inside of my wrist.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says.
I tighten around him.
His breath catches. “You feel so damned good.”
He thrusts deeper, and the bed knocks harder against the wall. I grip his shoulders as the tension begins building again.
For a while, I thought I’d lost this. Not the physical act; we kept doing that long after it stopped belonging only to us. I thought I’d lost the man who used to look at me as though there was nowhere else he needed to be.
He’s looking at me now.
His hand slides between our bodies. His thumb finds me, circling with each measured stroke.
“Reed.”
“I’ve got you.” His mouth brushes mine. “Come for me, Annie.”
The pressure climbs too quickly. I shake my head, already half gone, but he keeps moving.
“Let me feel you.”
My body locks around him, and the second release hits harder than the first. I cry out, not caring how far the sound carries through Lanie’s little house.
Reed curses against my mouth. “God, Annie. I can feel you.”
His rhythm breaks. He thrusts once more, then follows me over, shuddering as he holds himself deep inside me.