Time and Again (A Time For Love #3)

CHAPTER 1

COOPER

Heat.

My body feels like a damn furnace as mind-numbing, delicious heat spreads through every inch of me. It moves slowly, lazily, making me melt into it, burning me from the inside out, and I let myself sink into this awesome dream.

I hug my pillow tighter as the heat builds, and I move with it, wanting more. God, yes, more. My mouth parts, but the words won’t come out. There’s only soft moaning and harsh breathing.

Fuck, am I moaning in my sleep?

Oh fuck, this—

A choked-off whimper breaks from my lips as the heat stretches, throbs, pulses.

This isn’t a dream. The realization comes as my surroundings start bleeding into my consciousness.

Spicy orange and lavender. Warm skin against my back. Familiar lips mouthing my nape.

Thick fingers working me open.

My hands are already fisting the sheets under my pillow when my eyes crack open blearily, and every sensation increases ten-fold as sleep releases me completely.

“Li?” I breathe against my pillow case that is already wet from my slack mouth, chasing the languid movement of his fingers inside me, a sound of protest slipping out when they retreat, leaving me empty.

“Shh, I’m here, Coop.” Liam’s deep voice brushes against the shell of my ear, making my skin break into goosebumps. “Relax, sweetheart,” he murmurs soothingly as he sheathes himself inside me in one long, deep stroke that takes my breath away. “Let your fiancé fuck you awake.”

And fuck if the possessiveness in his words doesn’t make me melt, my mind going hazy, my body surrendering to the slow, hot fucking he’s giving me.

God, I love it when he takes me like this.

When it’s morning and our day hasn’t started, and Liam takes his time waking me up, making me feel everything.

When everything is still quiet around us, the city barely awake, but we’re in our bedroom, sweating through the sheets and losing ourselves in each other.

We can go like this for hours.

But not today. Not with what he just called himself.

Sliding my hand out from beneath my pillow, I thread my fingers with his on my hip, pushing back harder against him, our rings a searing reminder in our clasped hands.

He groans when I meet his thrusts, and I glance at him over my shoulder with a feral smile, at my Li, with his disheveled, sandy-blond hair and his forest-green eyes—eyes that are wild with need right now for me. For his fiancé.

My heart rate is all over the place, and it’s not just because he’s hitting me so damn good where it counts.

“My fiancé, huh?” I mumble, arching my ass to take him deeper and craning my neck to brush his lips with mine.

“That’s the third day in a row you’ve woken me up like this.

” It’s a good thing we came back from our camping trip, because Liam and I have been going at it like animals in heat since his proposal a few days ago.

When my best friend asked me to marry him.

I manage to see Liam’s lips tip into a smile before I’m moaning around his tongue, my eyes sliding shut as he kisses me as thoroughly as he’s fucking me.

“Obviously, I need more practice,” he whispers hoarsely before diving in again, licking into my mouth and riding my ass in a way that’s making me stupid.

“M-more practice?” I croak, opening my eyes with difficulty but needing to see him, to fall into that bottomless heat and love that always stares back at me.

He never takes his eyes off mine as he brings our locked hands to his mouth, placing a tender kiss on my ring, and turning me liquid.

“Yeah, baby. I need to learn how I can make sure my fiancé doesn’t wake up until I’m balls deep inside him and he’s moaning my name in his sleep.” He rolls his hips in a way that makes me gasp, and his eyes sparkle with a pleased glint. “I think I almost made it this time. What do you think?”

I swear under my breath, a chuckle mixed with a whimper escaping me when our bodies start slapping together harder, faster.

“Do you expect me to—ah—have a normal conversation when I’m—oh, fuck—seconds away from coming all over your cock?”

That’s what I say, but I’m smiling like crazy, my chest so damn full.

“Is that so?” Liam says roughly, lowering our hands to my hard dick, both of us giving me a firm stroke that makes me tremble. “Are you about to come, Coop?”

“Yeah, Li. Oh God, yes, Li.” Fuck, he’s going to make me lose my mind.

His thrusts are brutally accurate, pleasure radiating through every inch of me.

Damn, he knows how to work me so well.

“Whose cock is making you come?” he growls, squeezing our fist, milking me. He’s fucking milking the orgasm out of me. “Whose cock, Cooper?”

“Yours. Yours, Li,” I pant desperately. And because I know it will drive him crazy, I add on his lips, “My fiancé’s cock.”

His expression melts into raw adoration even as his body takes me apart.

He dips his head to kiss me so softly, it makes my heart ache, his eyes focused on me, watching me as blinding ecstasy washes over me, and I come helplessly, unable to hold back any longer.

Perfect bliss floods my body as I shake in Liam’s arms, covering our hands in cum, tightening around him. I feel his deep groan of relief in my own chest as he lets go as well, pouring himself inside me and holding me tight enough to leave bruises.

We breathe hard for quite some time as we come down, but the moment he softens enough to slip out of me and I’m confident I can kiss him without dying from lack of air, I twist in his embrace, finally facing him fully.

He’s already smiling when I do.

“Good morning, handsome,” I whisper, voice raspy from sleep and sex. I lean up to kiss him properly, eating the purr that rumbles up his throat, the grin that stretches his lips at the cheesy pet name he secretly loves.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he murmurs, hitching my thigh over his hip and pulling me in even closer. “Did you sleep well?”

“Mhm. Woke up even better.” I arch, stretching my sore muscles as much as I can before I sigh and sag against Liam once more. “I wanna wake up like this forever.”

His eyes burn into me.

“You will.”

The promise makes me shiver, and I’m pretty sure I have never blushed more in my life than during the months we’ve been together.

“That sounds like a great plan.” I go for a quick peck on his lips, but he grips my nape and kisses me deep and hard, leaving me dizzy when he releases my mouth, but not my nape or my thigh, holding on to me possessively.

“Are you going to work today?” he asks, for some reason still expecting me to be functional enough to answer him.

Work? What work? I haven’t gone back to the coffee shop, despite the fact that our trip was just supposed to be a quick getaway. It’s not like we’re not both busy with a hundred things, especially now that Liam’s physio clinic has completely taken off.

I really hope my café is still in one piece and that Lily is holding down the fort.

Liam massages my thigh, and damn if the calming touch doesn’t make me melt.

I suppose being almost constantly cum- and love-drunk, as I have been since we returned—and waaay before that, honestly—really dials down any work-related stress.

“I have to.” I pout, because, apparently, I do that too now.

You know, aside from being stupidly in love with my best friend and taking his cock every chance I get.

“But I don’t want to, Li. I want to stay here with you,” I confess, feeling my heart speed up in answer to his, feeling myself drown in the achingly soft look he’s giving me.

His fingers come up to graze my cheek, and I rub against them instinctively.

“How did I get so lucky?” he says roughly, and I have to swallow thickly at the longing in his voice, a longing I never knew he carried for years.

My eyes burn as a shaky exhale leaves me.

“Hey, Li?”

“Yeah, Coop?”

“I don’t want to wait.”

His breath hitches.

“What?”

I pull myself closer, wrapping my arms around his neck as his go around my waist.

“I don’t want to wait to marry you.” Li’s eyes are wide, green, and lovely as they bore into mine, his pulse jumping on the side of his throat. “We’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?”

He watches me for a few long seconds before he nuzzles the cooling sweat on my temple, my eyes sliding shut at the tender gesture.

“Yes, love,” he rasps, and my heart soars. “We’ve waited enough.”

I burrow deeper into his arms and bite my lip to keep my ridiculous smile in check.

We’re getting married.

I’m marrying my Li.

“Good. There’s only one problem now,” I mumble, and Liam hums in answer, one of his hands straying lower to cup my ass, effectively short-circuiting my brain.

“What is it?” His lips travel down my throat, pressing small, hot kisses to my skin while his fingers slide over my rim, playing with my loosened hole and reducing me to a distracted mess in 0.2 seconds.

“Huh?” I ask, not even pretending I’m not chasing his fingers.

The bastard chuckles, and I would smack him if what he was doing didn’t feel so fucking good, or if I wasn’t crazy about him.

“You said there’s a problem, Cooper.”

Oh. That.

“We have to tell everyone.”

His movements still, and his kisses pause before he groans quietly against my throat, which makes me chuckle.

“Yeah, you forgot about that, didn’t you?”

His teasing touches resume, and I can feel his smile on my skin.

“Baby, I forgot the fucking world exists the moment you said you’re marrying me.”

Well, that settles it. I’m not going to work today either.

“Li…” I sigh, letting him do anything he wants to me, loving how he always takes care of me, how he knows what I need.

My breath briefly catches when his fingers touch me softly, gathering the cum that’s leaked out, and gently sliding it back in, making me feel marked, owned.

His. “We can have one more day off, right?”

He doesn’t answer with words. He just fists my hair tightly enough that I gasp before he feeds me his tongue.

We lose all sense of time and reason after that.