Chapter 35
JANE
It hit me like a slow, devastating realization every time, this irrational, undeniable chemistry between us. Alex kissed deliberately, with intention, his tongue sweeping into my mouth like he wouldn’t stop until he’d kissed every thought out of my brain and every other man out of my history.
I turned into goo underneath him, liquid heat pooling between my legs and everything else quickly fading away. All my life, I’d insisted on keeping a tight grip on the reins. I never let go. Never allowed someone else to take over.
Tightly wound was the expression I’d probably most been associated with until I’d met him, but with Alex, I felt safe. Safe enough to let go and to hand over the wheel so he could drive. His hand settled at my waist, firm and possessive without ever crossing into force.
Alex never rushed. He controlled the pace like he controlled everything else, confident enough to take his time. My fingers curled into his shirt, my heart doing something reckless and traitorous in my chest.
God, he’s dangerous.
But not in the way I’d thought before I’d gotten to know him. It wasn’t because of the money, or the power, or the way people bent around him without realizing it.
For me, it was because of this, the way he made me feel chosen. Like there was nowhere else he’d rather be and no one else he’d rather be with.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine and he murmured against my lips. “You’re thinking again.”
I let out a soft laugh, tracing my fingertips across the sharp lines of his jaw and just looking at him, this impossibly gorgeous man with that lock of dark hair hanging over his forehead and the warmth in those mossy eyes. “I can’t help it.”
“You can,” he said. “You just don’t trust it yet.”
He was uncomfortably close to the truth, but I just smiled, not even bothering to deny it. “Does it help to know I was thinking about you?”
“Oh yeah?” A slow, wicked grin spread on his lips as he ran the flat of his palm along my side. “What were you thinking?”
He braced himself over me, holding himself up on one of his elbows and making me feel the weight of his presence.
Bedroom Alex was the sexiest thing I’d ever encountered, his dominance not loud or performative, but made up of quiet certainty, steady hands, knowing exactly what he wanted, and making space for me to meet him there.
His hand finally brushed my thigh, gently sliding under my skirt. I squirmed underneath him, my fingers sliding into his hair. “I like it when it’s just us.”
Fierce protectiveness flickered behind the warmth in his eyes. “Me too. It’s just easy.”
I searched his face, looking for even a crack of insincerity and finding none. “I started this thinking you were a distraction. A way to avoid the last of my life falling apart.”
“And now?” he asked.
“I think you might be something else entirely,” I said. “It scares me a little, if I’m being honest.”
His expression softened, his thumb brushing along my cheek. “I would never hurt you, Killer. Not in a million years or for a billion dollars.”
Dipping his head back down to mine, he took my lips in a deep, slow kiss that melted my brain and narrowed the world to only what was happening between us. I felt pampered in his attention, cherished in the way he touched me like I was something precious instead of broken.
“Alex?” I murmured as I brought my fingers to his chest and slowly started undoing his buttons one by one.
“Yeah, baby?”
My heart skipped and I smiled against his lips. “You’ve never called me that before.”
“Haven’t I?” He pulled back only far enough to let me see the smirk sliding across his lips. “Do you like it?”
“I don’t hate it.” I moved my hands to the back of his head to guide his mouth back down to mine, then remembered what I’d been about to say. “Is all of this feeling, I don’t know, different to you?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, then finally kissed me again. “I don’t hate it.”
Chuckling, I pushed his shirt off his shoulders and sat up like a puppet on his strings when he moved back to pull my shirt up over my head. For a moment, he just looked at me, eyes on mine before they dropped to my chest.
I had on a new black lace bra. One of the garments he’d bought me and had placed in his dresser here, and he groaned as those eyes drank me in like he’d eat me up if he could.
As if he’d read the thought, he suddenly closed his fingers around my ankles and spread them wide, then grinned as he shoved my skirt up to my hips and hooked his fingers into the waistband of the matching panties.
“I picked these out myself,” he murmured, sliding the panties down too slowly for my liking. My breathing hitched, my nipples peaking against the lace. “I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve pictured you wearing them.”
“Yeah?”
He made a soft, almost scoffing sound and glanced up at me after tossing the panties into the relative darkness of the room. “Oh, yeah.”
“You’d think you’d have kept them on a bit longer if you spent so much time anticipating the moment,” I teased quietly, beyond relieved he hadn’t actually left them on. “What did you do, all of those times you were picturing it?”
He cocked a dark eyebrow at me, his expression devilish as he shrugged. “What do you think I did, the fucking dishes?”
Heat crept from my chest to my cheeks, my heart suddenly hammering in my ears. “You didn’t do the dishes, did you?”
“Nope.” He pushed my ankles even further apart and crept between my legs, lowering his mouth to the inside of one of my thighs. “You’ve been driving me crazy since long before I ever got inside you, baby, but nothing, not even my wildest fantasies, comes close to the real thing.”
Clearly done talking, he nipped the inside of my thigh and then moved his mouth further up.
My insides clenched in anticipation, an involuntary moan escaping before he’d even touched me.
I felt him tremble slightly in response to the sound, and I lay back.
My bones turned to jelly at the thought that a mere quiet sound from me could do that to a guy like him.
At the first touch of his tongue to my slit, I arched my back and slid my fingers into his hair, once again struck by how surreal it was to surrender like this. I still couldn’t believe how naturally it came with him, but it really did.
Right now, I had no desire to take control. No fears about what might happen if I just let go. Only one thought broke through the haze of need clouding my mind, and that was that I trusted him. Implicitly.
And not even that scared me as much as it should have.
As he slid a finger into me, sucking my clit into his mouth at the same time, I nearly shrieked at the sudden pleasure of the momentary overload.
Then he started moving his finger and his tongue in unison and my hips rolled, my body already chasing the orgasm I knew now from experience would be creeping up on me before I even knew it.
The familiar pressure built up at the root of my very being, and a tiny part of me was scared to let it go. Alex wasn’t having it, though. A second finger joined the first, his tempo picking up until I didn’t have a choice.
I leaped head first off the cliff, my toes curling and my muscles locking up as a truly sensational orgasm spilled over me. Alex licked me clean in the aftermath, then kissed me hard without worrying about the taste of me in his mouth or the wetness on his jaw.
I moaned again, a primal sound that had come unexpectedly from someplace deep inside. Because it felt like I’d marked him somehow. Like I’d written my name on his soul and now he was mine.
My skirt and his pants disappeared while we were kissing, a tangle of hands and limbs until he sat back on his knees and helped me up to straddle him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and lowered myself down, my breath catching at the thick length of him slowly sliding in.
Pure bliss ghosted across his features when he bottomed out, suddenly not a trace of tension or even arrogance remaining.
It made me wonder if he was giving himself over to me as I did the same with him, but I didn’t stop to ask, just slanting my lips over his once more and moving slowly up and down above him.
He didn’t stop kissing me, just moaning openly into my mouth when I started moving faster. Speeding up his thrusts to meet mine, he lay back on the bed and gripped my hips with one hand and my hair in the other.
We moved together just like that until I felt him tense and went tumbling right over the edge with him.
Weirdly, in that moment, I wished there wasn’t a condom between us, and though I knew it was probably just because my brain was nowhere near online right now, I wondered if we would have made a baby together if there hadn’t been.
In the aftermath, I realized that was probably something else we needed to talk about. Condoms. Babies. The future.
We finally settled into the bed, our limbs tangled together, as he pulled me into him. His arm was heavy over my waist and my head was resting against his shoulder, and I decided a conversation that serious could wait.
This felt too amazing to ruin the moment. Right now, we could just be us, enjoying this quiet, intimate bubble before the world came crashing back in.
I knew, even now, that it wouldn’t last, but I let myself believe in it anyway. That we would have a future together and that in that future, we could have every conversation we needed to have because we would still be together to have it.