Page 45 of Always Been You

Jess nodded. "Yeah, that morning I'd overheard my parents talking after they got off the phone with my doctor. The stent that I had put in didn’t give them the results they'd hoped for. I knew that if the treatment didn't work, I only had four to six weeks, tops.

"My dad held my mom as she cried and I slipped out the back door. I just needed to be alone and think. I was trying to figure out a way to make it okay for them that I was going to be gone.”

He stopped and turned to her. "I remember you telling me that you weren't scared for you, you were scared for your parents. You were so brave. You amazed me."

She let out a forced laugh. "I wasn't brave. I was just tired. I'd been fighting all my life, and I was exhausted." The corners of her eyes crinkled. "I always wondered what the boy on the dock thought of that day. Or if he thought about it at all. The day the crazy, dying girl kissed him."

"I think about that day all the time. And I never thought you were crazy." Ethan lifted his hand and brushed a strand back from her face. "It was brave. You are the bravest person I know."

"Is that the real reason that you asked me to be your fake girlfriend?" she was joking, but he sensed a vulnerability in her question.

"No. The real reason was I wanted an excuse to kiss you again. I needed to redeem myself, after all."

Her blue eyes twinkled in the moonlight. "And you think you have?"

That was a challenge if he'd ever heard one. He'd almost kissed her in the buggy, and as much as he wanted to do it now, he knew that a crowded street wasn't the right place.

"Actually, I think I might need another crack at it."

Thankfully, they were only about a block away from their hotel.

15

By the time the door closed behind them in the hotel room, Jess's entire body was engulfed in flames of desire. She stopped in the middle of the room as uncertainty overwhelmed her. She knew what she wanted to happen. There was no ambiguity on that front. Her challenge was not to let her mind wander to what the aftermath of this decision would be.

Ethan stopped behind her and slid his jacket off of her shoulders. Her inner muscles clenched with need as she watched his reflection through the glass of the window as he folded the garment and laid it over a chair. She knew she had it bad when seeing him do something as simple as that made her tingle from the inside out.

His hand traveled up her bare back and the heat from his fingertips danced along the base of Jess's spine. Her hair was half up and half down. He gently brushed the pieces that fell over her shoulder off, revealing her neck. When he did, Jess automatically tilted her head to the side, offering herself up to him like he was Edward and she was Bella from Twilight.

His lips brushed the tender skin at the base of her shoulder, and she shivered beneath his light kisses. He continued traveling up her neck and stopped just below her ear.

"Ethan?"

"Do you want me to stop?" He whispered against her ear, his lips grazing the sensitive area.

"No. Don't stop." Needing to touch him, she reached behind her and gripped his thighs. She felt the tension in his body amp up as his muscles clenched beneath her fingers.

His lips continued moving down her neck. "This, right here, this is where I've always wanted to kiss."

"You've always wanted to kiss me there?"

"Yes. Here." He pressed his lips to the hollow area. "And a lot more places."

The low, gravelly quality of his voice penetrated through her. She didn't just feel Ethan's mouth on her body physically, she felt it in her soul. So much of today had been a whirlwind of emotion, and it seemed to be getting even stronger. There was a tornado of feelings whipping through her.

His hand slid lower, over her hip and then beneath her skirt. Her body trembled beneath his self-assured touch as his fingers traveled up her leg, taking the material of her dress with him. Her bare skin pebbled with goosebumps as the cool air of the hotel room hit it.

Luckily, she had Ethan's body to warm her, and he was getting hotter by the second. She could feel his temperature spike as waves of heat radiated off of him. His lips caressed her skin in open mouth kisses, and his breaths grew shallower with each second that passed.

His hand dipped between her legs and brushed over the thin fabric of her lace panties. She watched his fingers graze her most sensitive area in the mirror and her knees buckled. Not wanting to be the only one losing themselves in this slow seduction, she shifted forward slightly so she could slide her hand up and over the bulge that had been pressing into her back.

He inhaled sharply as her fingers molded around the thickness of his erection. The next thing she knew she’d been spun around so she was facing him and his mouth crashed down on hers. Her lips opened on a gasp and Ethan drove his tongue into her like a conqueror claiming new lands.

She grew dizzy with lust with each pass of his tongue and grasped his broad shoulders to anchor herself to him and to this moment. Her body ached as she writhed against him, trying to get as close to him as humanly possible.

Wild need crashed into her with unrelenting, punishing force.

"I want…to feel...you...your...everything," she stammered between kisses as she tugged at his shirt with a jerky, unsuccessful effort.

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