Page 32 of Dirty Ginger

“Oh, no,” she said, holding up her hand, slowly backing away. “You wait right there. If you touch me, I’ll get distracted.” She spun quickly and headed for her closet, which had an old door with a vintage keyhole. After she grabbed something out, she turned back to him and held a shoe box. She took a seat on her bed, and he joined her right as she opened the box.

One look inside at the contents and his heart flipped in his chest. “You’re kidding me?” He reached inside the box, taking out a photograph of them in his old beat-up 1970’s bright blue Ford. He’d loved that truck and had driven it until it died on an old country road. “Jesus, look at us, we were just kids.”

“I know, right? We look like babies, and to think we thought we knew it all back then.” She reached in and took out a stack full of photographs from the time they started dating right up to just before she left for school. High school football games, prom, summer parties, every moment of their lives were right there in the box. “Look, this is the movie stub from our first date.”

“You kept this?” He took the ticket and examined it. He’d taken her to see scary movies at the old theater in town that had been demolished a few years back after the property was sold.

“I kept everything,” she said, with a certain sweetness in her voice. “All of it. Every little bit of our life together.”

He studied the contents, spotting the little notes he’d respond to when she’d pass him in the hallway before he graduated a few years before her. Everything was there. All of their adventures, their happy memories, and even the harder ones, when Beckett looked thin and tired.

When he glanced up at her, he found tears in her eyes, “Every man that I dated after you had to compete with this.” She waved out to the box. “All these wonderful memories.”

“They were good,” he agreed.

“Good and near impossible for anyone to compete with,” she said, gathering up the memories and placing them back in the box. “Because how can someone compare to something that’s perfect?”

His breath hitched at the emotion on her face and in her voice, even in her words, as she rose and stood next to the bed. It took all of Beckett’s strength not to reach for her and claim her, but he wouldn’t rush her. He didn’t want to miss a moment of the way she watched him, so lovingly, so open, like tomorrow and every day after it, she’d always look at him like this.

He grew hard when she reached up and slid her shirt over her head, leaving her in a white lace bra he wanted to rip off her. “But you still remember exactly how to touch me,” she said slowly, stepping out of her jean shorts. “You always did know me better than anyone else.”

“Because I was the first one to touch you,” he managed, need flooding him, thickening his voice. “We taught each other what feels good.”

“Yes, we did.” She held his stare in a way he hadn’t seen in a very long time. The veil of distance had been broken and all the love between them flourished again.

Consumed by all she offered, he rose on trembling legs. “You’ve got to stop looking at me like that.”

She pressed her hands against his chest, pouring heat into him. “How am I looking at you?”

“Like I can have all of you,” he murmured. “I’m trying to do the right thing here. Be what you need me to be. But I have my limits.”

Her eyes searched his, intensity blazing in their depths. “What if you I said you can have all of me?”

He froze, his muscles quivering. Years he’d waited for her to look at him like this. To have a single moment when she saw all of him. And there, she was, his Amelia. “I don’t want to disappoint you,” he managed.

She unhooked her bra, letting it fall down her arms, and then removed her panties.

His hands clenched into fists. His gaze roamed over her, every spectacular inch from her light pink painted toenails, up her toned legs to the ginger curls between her thighs, to her rounded belly, to her rosy, taut nipples, and then past her parted lips, begging for his kiss, to her half-lidded eyes. He swallowed. Deeply.

She stepped closer, until all her softness pressed against his hard planes. “Well, you’re not intending to disappoint me, are you?” she asked, staring up at him with glistening eyes.

“No, I’m not,” he said, roughly.

“Then I think we’re done talking.” She slid her touch across his cheek and cupped the back of his head, pulling him down to meet her mouth.

Any control he had left snapped at the feel of her heated kiss. Between their open-mouthed kisses, he rid himself of his clothes before gathering her in his arms. Once he laid her out on her bed, he settled between her thighs, gazing upon the soft curls between her legs. He didn’t hesitate, driven by desire he could not control. His hands shook with adrenaline as he dropped his head between her thighs, desperate for the taste he’d longed for. He groaned as he slid his tongue across her slit, tasting her arousal when she moaned deeply. Well aware how she liked his mouth on her, he licked her again, lighter this time, teasing and tempting her.

She moaned again, dropping her head back, and he reveled in the way she trembled. He reached for her breast, holding her tight in the way she’d always loved.

Another moan, and she ground her heat into him. She smelled like Amelia, a scent belonging only to her, sweet and so seductive, the aroma drove him to forgo his idea of teasing her. He focused his tongue on her clit, swirling, nipping, sucking, until she lifted her hips off the blanket beneath her.

“Oh… don’t… stop,” she gasped.

He nearly laughed at the thought but was more determined to get her there. “Do you want to come, Amelia?” he asked.

“Yes,” she panted.

He nipped her clit, and her legs began to shake. “How long has it been since you’ve found pleasure like this?”

---