Page 128 of Between the Lines

We’re silent and still for moments on end. I think I see tears forming in his eyes, but it’s that moment he chooses to grunt, to grip my hip and lift me until the head of his cock is teasing my opening. I fall back in his embrace, only his big hand splayed over my back keeping me from hitting the floor, because Nathan with nothing between us?

Oh, I could die this way.

“Damnit.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this man curse, but with his cock seated fully inside me, he hangs his head, squeezes me to him, and presses his lips to mine.

“I’m so sorry. The condoms are upstairs.”

If someone has to think straight between the two of us, it for sure isn’t going to be me. No, I’m clearly theirresponsibleparty in this relationship, because I tilt my hips.

“We should use protection,” he grunts, stilling my motion.

“We should….” I nod, staring over his shoulder at the midnight sky behind him. But then, he bucks up into me, instinctually, and I bite my lip. “But I need to feel youso bad, baby.”

He grips my hips, then swallows, steeling his gaze like he’s trying to keep his head on straight. Trying to line up his words.

“I…” he pauses. Swallows. Squeezes my waist tightly enough in both hands that I stop and pay rapt attention. “I don’t want kids.”

He chokes it out, like those words are rusty nails scratching up his throat. I think back to watching him sway on the dance floor with the kiddos from the banquet tonight, wondering if that was a future he envisioned, but all of a sudden, that image vanishes.

“Nathan, I don’t want kids either. I’m on the pill.”

Time halts for a fraction. It’s a conversation that can wait for another time, because those two admissions together create an all-consuming inferno. The thought that we could be on the same pagewith our futures? That has my chest constricting in a way I didn’t know it could.

“I’m clean.”

“Me too,” I nod rapidly, clenching on him.

“I couldn’t tell you the last woman I was with, but there hasn’t been another since you, Claire.”

I press my forehead to his, nuzzling his nose with mine as I whine, “No one but you, Nathan. Only you.”

I run my hand up his bare chest—still partially constrained by his opened button-down, and honestly? This is makingeverythinghotter.

The fire consumes us. I start grinding back and forth as Nathan thrusts up into me, our pants matching, breaths seeming to coincide like our heartbeats are in sync. We can’t get enough of each other. Hands are frantic and everywhere, my thighs squeeze him like I can’t get closer. And all the while, it’s our eyes that remain a constant. I can’t take mine off of his. Behind the fogged lenses is a window straight to his soul.

The need I’ve felt, the magnetic pull like our souls have been searching for one another all along, the twin flames that have been dormant for way too long, all come to a head.

It’s his eyes that I’m staring into as he pulls off his glasses and presses our foreheads together.

It’s his eyes that I’m struggling to watch as my walls begin to clench.

Too soon, too soon, too soon.

And yet, somehow, I know that this is only the beginning.

It’s his eyes that spawn wide open as he warns me on a low grunt, “Going to come in you, Claire,” and I hold on tightly to him, pleading, “Please, Nathan. I’m yours, make meyours.”

We explode in tandem, and I wonder briefly if a galaxy was born of our ecstasy. It might have, since the intensity of this orgasm sent me spinning into the stratosphere.

It takes us ages to come down, but eventually, wedohave to deal with the consequences of sex without a condom. I’m still shaking as he pulls out, but he steadies me with his soft lips and soft hands and a new softness in his eyes that, as he cradles me in his arms and carries me up the stairs, screams that he isn’t going to let me go.

fifty-one

claire

“I have something exciting to share,”I say. I’m sitting on Nathan’s desk, my dangling legs swinging between his spread ones. He lifts a brow, then tilts his head for me to continue. “I applied for a summer social work internship, and I got in.”

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