Chapter 19 Ford #2
Well, then, fuck. While she held Gus, I pulled her by the waist and lightly tossed her onto the bed. She let out a small yelp while clutching Gus tighter. I gripped her ankles and spread them wide. “If you get to kiss my pussy cat before you’ll kiss me, then I get to kiss your pussy.”
“Ford,” she gasped, “Did you even lock the door?”
No, I did not. “How about I press you up against the door and that way we’ll know if someone tries to come in.” I slid out of my jacket, and then fit my shoulders between her thighs, dragging her closer to the edge of the bed.
Pressing my nose against the fabric of her underwear, I groaned deeply. “Fucking hell, you smell good.”
I wanted to stay right there for the rest of the night, but I also needed to taste her.
My tongue darted out, licking along the seam.
She released Gus, and sank her fingers into my hair as I teased her, biting the pink fabric and tugging it away from her slick center.
“Ford.” She pushed me closer to her while tilting her hips forward.
I ripped the fabric to the side in a rush and swirled the tip of my tongue over her clit.
She released a sharp cry that was followed by the sound of a door slamming down the hall.
She froze beneath me, which was the only reason I paused.
“Shit. Hang on.” Her legs closed, forcing my head away. Then she jumped up and gently placed her ear to the door while sliding the lock into place. Once she turned back to face me, she whispered.
“Take off your clothes. If you’re going to sleep here, then you need to be out of your cut and jeans. I want to feel your skin against mine.”
I didn’t hate hearing that she wanted me here, so I did as she said.
She watched with a hazy gleam in her eye as I slipped my shirt up over my head and then pushed my jeans down.
I was in my socks and boxers when she finally pushed off the door.
Crossing her arms, her fingers gripped the hem of her tank top before pulling it up over her head.
I stared, dumbfounded, over how fucking perfect she was.
Her breasts lightly swayed as she pushed her delicate underwear down her legs.
I stared at her, taking in every small detail.
Every curve of her body, the way her belly button dipped, and how, when she walked backward, I saw how her pussy gleamed.
She clicked the lamp, plunging the room into shadow.
There was a small, glowing light from the corner of the room, but it was difficult to make out all the details that made her so perfectly defined.
I was obsessed with the bow of her lip, the freckle over her left breast, and the way she smirked when she felt challenged. Even if she never let me fuck her, I’d be obsessed with her. Even if all I ever got to do was stand there and study her. That would be enough.
“My father might kill you for being here.” Her fingers slowly traced near my throat, up along my jaw.
My eyes slid shut, and I tried to press the feel of her hands into my memory like a dried flower into a journal, so even when she chose her dream over me, I’d remember her.
I’d remember every touch, how she smelled like roses, how her eyes looked like the ocean at first light, and how her heart was as beautiful as that meadow she loved so much.
“Let him come, Rose. He knows better than anyone that I won’t be leaving your side.
If he wants to waste his energy fighting me, then he can.
I’ll find my way back up here into your bed, next to your fucking perfect skin and this hair that smells like a flower that I hope to God someone lays across my grave when I die because that scent has marked my very soul. ”
I caught her chin as it wobbled the smallest bit, and without another word she rushed forward and pressed her mouth to mine.
Cradling her head in my palms, I moved my tongue along her lips, making her gasp.
We walked backward toward the bed, where she pressed her knees into the soft mattress.
I followed her, my arms still cradling her to me while we eventually made our way down where her back was pressed into her pillows and her legs wrapped around my waist.
The truth I owed her was a heavy, incessant tap against my mind, drowning out all the filthy things I wanted to mutter against her ear.
I knew I had to come clean, I had to tell her, but I also knew the second that I did, I’d lose her.
And I couldn’t risk losing her when I’d just barely gotten her, not after watching her every move for so many years.
Not after loathing her just so I’d stop obsessing over her.
With my cock notched at her entrance, I slowly pushed inside her. My breath caught in my chest, a choked plea as her fingers ran over my scalp and her hips rose to take more of my length.
“Ford.”
Her broken gasp undid me. Gripping her hip, I pulled her closer, driving my cock deeper inside her cunt.
I needed more of her. Fuck. “I need all of you.” Our bodies moved ardently against one another, my desperate moans sliding along her throat while I lowered my mouth to her pebbled nipples.
My tongue slicked over one, while tugging the small bud into my mouth.
Her hips rose and fell in a brisk cadence while I rotated forward, pulling her closer.
“Fucking perfect. Fucking mine,” I rasped.
Her breathing was labored and sharp. Her moans were growing louder, so I quickly reached up and covered her mouth.
The second my hand was in place, she arched her back and released a scream behind my palm.
She was so fucking tight that I came too, letting out my own moan into her neck while I continued to rock into her.
Once I was spent, I slowly removed my hand from her mouth, and she gripped my wrist and pressed a kiss to my palm.
The action made my heart skip.
Once I pulled out of her, and we cleaned up, I slid back into bed. My head was down on her pillow, smelling her intoxicating scent when I pulled her against my chest.
“I could get used to this,” she joked.
It wasn’t funny to me, and perhaps she didn’t quite understand the gravity of this. “Fuck, please do, Rose. Because unless death is trying to tear me away from you, I plan to have you next to me every foreseeable night in the future.”
She turned toward me, slowly pushing her hands into my hair. A movement I was starting to love.
“Ford, what is this between us? You speak about me like—”
“Like I love you?”
Her eyes were so bright I could see how wide they’d grown even in the dimness of the room. When she didn’t reply, I chuckled lowly before stroking her side and up along her back.
“Does that scare you?” The sound of Gus purring could be heard from where he’d curled up near our feet. I urged again, “The idea of me loving you, does that scare you?”
The pads of her fingers moved over my lips. “No, it thrills me, Ford. I’ve wanted to be inside your head the way you’ve been inside mine for a long time.”
She still didn’t get it. “Rose, you’re not in my head. You’re in my veins, my fucking blood. You’ve consumed me for far longer than I think you’ll ever comprehend. When I was ten and I kissed you…”
“Then told me you wished you really hated me because it would be easier?” I saw her brow flick up, and I traced it with my finger. “It would have been easier. I wasn’t lying about that.”
Her voice was broken with awe as she asked, “You truly wanted to hate me?”
If only she knew the depths of how desperate I was to despise her. “It was either watch Connor tell everyone he’d grow up to marry you or hate you. It became easier to want distance from you.”
She stroked my jaw, dragging her finger over the hair there. “Must have been so hard for you when you found out I was staying in Rose Ridge.”
“Hard for me?” Connor left her here, just fucking walked away as if she was the kind of woman you’d find twice in one lifetime. Fucking idiot.
“You planned to go to college and had a full-ride scholarship. I always wondered what happened with your family that made you stay behind.”
I needed to find a way to tell her all of it, but she was stroking my jaw, and it felt so fucking good. Having her in my arms, and feeling the heat from her skin, it was too much. I couldn’t give this up.
“Do you want to know a secret, Rose?”
She leaned in and pressed a kiss to my chin. “Always.”
I sucked in a silent breath. “That night when I went to Connor’s and he said to give you that box…
there was something that snapped inside of me.
It was like this dam that I had tried to build with twigs and mud, it just burst. He was leaving you, letting you go, and I saw this box full of moments that didn’t belong to me.
Connor was just letting it all go, and I couldn’t seem to fathom it.
I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around it.
How could he release this one thing that I had envied of his all this time? ”
“So you kept the box?” Royce joked. I could hear the smile in her voice, and I wanted to swallow it.
“No, baby. I stole it. The life he wanted, the girl he loved, the dream…I decided right then and there that I’d take what he was so easily willing to give up.
I’d take it for myself, and I didn’t care how long it was going to take, I knew that one day we’d be here.
With you in my arms, and me confessing how fucking insane I am for you. ”
She didn’t say anything, so I pressed my mouth to her forehead in a gentle kiss. Then I brushed the space under her lashes and realized she was crying.
“You weren’t supposed to be sad about all that. I’m sorry, I know I’m—”
“I love you, Ford,” she cut me off with a raspy confession.
My chest grew tight as I froze and she continued.
“It’s easy to say that maybe I always have, but not like this.
Not this desperate, wild thing that seems to have burrowed deep into my heart over the past month.
I’ve known you my entire life, and yet these moments we’ve stolen and—I wasn’t ready to hear that you’d secretly pined for me. ”
I smiled, regardless that she couldn’t see it, I knew she’d sense it. “I’m feeling a little insecure because I think if I line it up, you fell for me after you met Gus.”
Her laugh was warm against my face, but went deeper, sliding under my skin.
When her arms came around me in a tight hug, I held her to me completely and utterly terrified that if I let up even the smallest bit, this moment would fade and somehow I’d wake up to find this all a dream.