Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sierra
I search his face, my eyes tracing over his mouth. The same energy hums through him as the night he kissed me like a punishment and blew this whole thing wide open again.
Cupping his jaw in my palm, I tilt his face down to mine, our noses barely touching as I stare deeply into his eyes. “What are you waiting for? Wreck me, Everett.”
There’s nothing soft about the kiss. Nothing careful. His mouth takes mine with eleven years of hunger behind it, his tongue sliding past my lips like he owns the right.
I moan into him, and the sound snaps whatever leash he’s been holding.
He spins me so I’m facing him. My back hits the counter, trays rattling, and then his hands are everywhere—under my shirt, palming my breasts, dragging down my sides with a possessiveness that makes my knees try to give.
“I’ve thought about this,” he growls, yanking my shirt over my head and tossing it somewhere into the dark. “Every night. What you’d taste like now. Whether you’d still make those sounds.”
His mouth finds my throat. Bites.
“Whether you’d still say my name like it’s the only word you know.”
“Everett—” I gasp, and his laugh against my skin is dark and satisfied.
“Exactly. Just like that.”
He unhooks my bra one-handed—of course he does—and his greedy mouth is on my breast a second later, his hot tongue circling my nipple with absolutely no mercy.
I arch into him. Grab his hair. Try to drag him closer even though he’s already consuming me.
“I used to dream about this room,” he says against my skin, moving to my other breast, sucking hard enough to drag a cry out of me. “About bending you over this counter. Making you come so hard the chemicals spill. Ruining you for anyone else who ever tries to touch you.”
“You already did.” The confession slips free before I can stop it. “Ruin me. Eleven years ago. There’s been no one else—”
He goes still. Pulls back. Looks at me like I’ve just walked into his chest, shut the door, and called it home.
“No one?”
Heat rushes up my neck. I swallow, but I don’t take it back. “No one.”
Something shifts in his face. Reverence. Fury at himself. A vow.
“I know I should feel like an asshole for being that happy about it,” he says, voice low and lethal with promise. “But I don’t. Because I’m about to make sure it stays that way.”
“Confident, aren’t you?” My laugh comes out shaky. “Prove you’re worth the monopoly.”
One quick, heated grin later, he drops to his knees. Right there on the darkroom floor, with his photograph dripping above us and the red light painting everything in shades of want.
His fingers find the button of my jeans. Pop it open. Drag the zipper down with agonizing slowness.
“I remember this too,” he says, peeling the denim down my thighs. “How you taste. How you shake when you’re close. How you choke on my name like you can’t decide if you’re worshipping or cursing me.”
Both. Always both.
My jeans hit the floor. My underwear follows.
And then his mouth is on me.
I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.
He's not gentle. He's not teasing. He licks into me like a man starved, his tongue finding my clit with unerring accuracy, his fingers sliding inside me while his other hand pins my hips to the counter.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god—
“Don't.” He pulls back just long enough to issue the command, his breath hot against my slick skin. “Don't muffle it. I want to hear every sound.”
“Someone could—”
“I don’t care, let them.”
He seals his mouth over me again, drags my thigh over his shoulder opening me to him farther.
I stop caring about anything except the devastating rhythm he's building.
His fingers curl inside me, hitting a spot that makes my vision white out. His tongue works my clit in relentless circles, his stubble burning the insides of my thighs with each pass in the best possible way.
The pleasure coils tighter and tighter, a spring wound to breaking.
“Everett—” I gasp out, my hands fisted in his hair, my back bowing until my head thunks against the wall, the picture of him drying dangling overhead. “I'm going to—”
“Don’t you dare, Sierra.”
He pulls back. I sob at the loss.
“What—”
“I’m damn well going to feel that strangle my cock. So you’ll wait.” He rises to his feet and unbuttons his shirt with deliberate slowness, holding my gaze the entire time.
“Ohhh.” It slips out before I can catch it, because seeing him like this—bare-chested in the red light, eyes black with want, mouth still wet with me—almost sends me over the edge right there.
That's me on his lips. Me he's been devouring. Me he's been dreaming about for eleven years.
“I’ve waited too goddamn long for this and I’m not missing another second.”
He unbuckles his belt. The metal clinks loud in the quiet.
His jeans drop to the floor next and and before they even land, he’s hooking his thumbs in his boxer briefs, and sending them to meet them.
And god, I'd forgotten. Or maybe I'd made myself forget, because remembering would have made the loneliness unbearable. But seeing him now—hard and thick and straining toward me, a bead of moisture already glistening at the tip—it all comes rushing back.
Every stolen moment in the back of his truck. Every desperate fumble in the Shred Shack. Every time I touched myself in the dark and pretended my fingers were his.
“Come here,” I breathe.
He scoops me up onto the counter—chemicals be damned—and steps between my thighs. The tip of him presses against me, teasing, not pushing inside.
Not yet.
I whimper. Actually whimper. And I don't even care.
“Say it,” he demands, his voice low and gritty. “Say you want this.”
My fingers dig into his shoulders. “I want this.”
“Say you want me.”
“I want you.” I wrap my legs around him, try to pull him closer, but he holds back, making me earn every inch. “I've always wanted you. I never stopped wanting you. Please, Everett, please—”
He fists my hair and forces my gaze to his. With a harsh thrust, he buries himself deep in one long, devastating stroke.
We both freeze.
Both gasp.
Both grip each other like the world is ending and this is the only solid thing left.
Full. Finally full. Finally whole.
“Fuck.” His forehead drops to mine. His whole body is trembling with the effort of holding still. “Fuck, Sierra. You feel—I can't—”
“Wait.”
The word comes out before I can stop it.
He freezes, then pulls back just enough to look at me, panic flickering in his eyes. “What's wrong? Did I hurt—”
“No.” I shake my head, rolling my forehead against his. Back and forth. Breathing him in. “No, I just—I need—”
I can't get the words out. My chest is too full. My throat too tight. Every nerve ending in my body screams at me to move, to chase the pleasure, to lose myself in the feeling of him finally, finally inside me.
But I can't. Not yet.
Not until I give him this.
Not until I give myself this.
He says it so easily. Has always said it so easily. I love you falls from his lips like breathing, like it costs him nothing, like the words don't terrify him the way they terrify me.
He’s said it God only knows how many ways since we broke this thing back open.
And I’ve never said it to him… never… not even back then.
Once the words are out, there’s no taking them back. There’s no pretending indifference. There’s no hiding all the ways this can cut me to the core.
My gaze drops to his mouth. Those lips I've kissed a hundred times. Those lips that have always said I love you even when they knew I wouldn’t—couldn’t—say it back.
I force myself to meet his eyes, and really look at him.
He watches me with that expression—the one that's always undone me. Open. Vulnerable. Completely unguarded.
Waiting for whatever I need to give him.
Even if it's nothing.
“Everett.”
“Sierra.” My name is little more than a whisper, but he flexes inside me as he says it. A subconscious subtle claiming as he waits me out.
I take his face in my hands. His beard brushes my palms with a delicious scrape I want to feel every day for the rest of my life.
Pulsing inside me, he’s still buried to the hilt—still trembling with the effort of holding still.
I trace my thumb over his bottom lip, and meet his gaze again.
“I love you.” The words fall out of me. Simple. True. Finally free.
Something tight snaps inside him. His shoulders drop. The tension bleeds out of his jaw. A rough breath shudders out of him like I just pulled an old splinter straight from his chest.
“I loved you then,” I continue, my voice cracking but steady. “I love you now. I never stopped. Not for a single day. Not for a single—”
He moves.
Not slow. Not gentle. He pulls back and slams into me with a force that makes the trays rattle, that makes me cry out, and obliterates all thoughts running through my head.
“Say it again.” Half growl, half demand, he drags himself almost free, teeters there, and slams home again.
My body jerks with the force, a cry falls from my lips, but I never look away.
“Sierra—say it—”
“I love you.”
He groans and thrusts again. Harder. Deeper. His hands grip my hips with bruising force as he drives into me over and over.
“Again.”
“I love you.” I'm gasping now, my nails raking down his chest, my legs wrapped around him so tight I can feel every muscle in his body coiling. “I love you, I love you, I—”
He swallows the words with his mouth, kissing me, consuming me, memorizing the shape of them against his lips.
The pleasure builds. Coils tight. Every thrust pushes me closer to the edge, and I'm clenching around him, squeezing him, pulling him deeper.
“Fuck—” He breaks the kiss, panting against my mouth. “Every time you—god, Sierra—you're choking me—”
I tighten around him again, deliberate this time, and watch his eyes roll back.
“You're so tight,” he manages, his rhythm faltering. “Every time you squeeze—every time you say it—I can barely keep from—”
I nip at his jaw and then his bottom lip, delighting in the fiery growl he makes when it snaps free from my teeth. “Then stop holding back.”
Something snaps and he hooks his hands under my knees, spreads me wider, changes the angle so he's hitting a spot that makes me see stars.
And then he takes.
No more restraint. No more control.
Just raw, desperate need pouring out of him with every thrust.
“Eleven years,” he growls against my throat. “Eleven years I've been waiting to hear you say it—”
“I love you.”
“—dreaming about it—”
“I love you.”
“—imagining what it would feel like to hear those words while I'm inside you—”
The orgasm hits me without warning. One second I'm teetering on the edge, the next I'm shattering, my whole body convulsing, my inner walls clamping down on him as the sensation drags his name from my throat.
He follows me over within seconds, burying himself to the hilt and breaking with a sound that's half groan, half sob.
Pulsing inside me, his body shudders in waves as he empties himself deep with my name on his lips.
Mine. Finally, finally mine.
Breathing hard, hearts pounding in tandem, we cling to one another.
He buries his face in my neck, arms braced on either side of me, elbows locked, every muscle in his body strung tight as he trembles from head to toe.
Above us, his photograph drips steadily onto the floor.
The red light hums.
And then, so quiet I almost miss it, his voice vibrates against my skin. “I love you too.”
When I pull back and look at him, I find the single most beautifully shattered smile and warm brown eyes wet with unshed tears.
“I love you,” he says again, louder this time. Steadier. “I've always loved you, Sierra. Through every year I stayed gone. Through every night I spent wondering if I'd ever get to say it to your face again.”
He presses his forehead to mine.
“But hearing you say it?” His voice cracks. “That's the only dream I've ever really had. And you just made it real.”
Tears spill down my hot cheeks. I don’t know when they started. I’m laughing through them anyway, and he’s kissing the salt off my cheeks, and everything is a wreck—wet and sticky and perfect. Exactly wrong and exactly right all at once.
I won’t be able to go back to the way we’ve been tomorrow. I won’t be able to stomach hiding.
“I'm sorry it took me so long,” I whisper.
“Don't be.” He kisses the corner of my mouth, his lips curving against mine. “You were worth every miserable second of the wait.”
A shaky laugh slips out of me. “Remember you said that when my brothers start plotting your murder.”
“Deal,” he murmurs brushing a lingering kiss over my lips. “At least I’ll die happy.”