Page 99 of Happy After All

He kisses me deep and hard, and I kiss him back.

I feel a sort of giddy happiness inside me, but this kiss isn’t giddy. It’s dark and rich, like everything with him.

He is the flourless chocolate torte of men. Powerful, overwhelming.

Except I don’t feel like I can overdose on him.

Every bit I have just makes me want more. That’s the only part that scares me a little bit.

I try to ignore that particular thought. I try to just be in the moment. To just be kissing him. To luxuriate in the feeling of his hands as they move up and down my body. As he grips my hips, as he pulls me forward and lets me feel how hard he is.

He is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. It’s the hottest sex I’ve ever had. I tell him that. Over and over, in clumsy, broken words against his mouth. Against his neck and his chest as I kiss my way down his body and take his cock into my mouth. As I try to show him with my tongue, my lips, just how amazing I think he is.

One thing that hits me hard is that I felt this way before I knew his story. Whatever his feelings are for me, this passion existed before he knew who I was either.

It is something that goes beyond emotion. It’s elemental. It’s chemistry. I am undone with it.

It makes me feel special just for existing. It makes me feel like I don’t need to be a character or a new creation.

Because it’s nothing other than us. Who we are. At our very essence, apart from anything we’ve done, anything we’ve experienced, anything we could ever do.

It isn’t being the love of his life. But it is pretty amazing.

I take him to the edge, and then he makes it his mission to take me too. Over and over again.

I gasp as I find myself bent over the vanity in the corner of the bedroom. As he thrusts into me from behind. We’re back in that dark, swirling chemistry that captured us first.

I can see him in the mirror. The intent look on his face. The concentration. The torment.

We aren’t teenagers experiencing the first taste of passion. It’s all the more powerful for it. Because we have lived life, experienced consequences. Heartbreak. And we’re still here. And this is as powerful as it ever was. It is inevitable.

I flatten my forearms on top of the vanity and lower my head because I actually can’t stand to look at him like this. It makes me feeltoo much. It makes me feel like if I ever don’t have him, I might die. And he’s already so deep inside me that I feel like I need him in order to breathe. Tobe. That isn’t what I wanted. So I try to just feel. But feeling is complicated. It isn’t just my body. It’s my soul. My heart. Everything. So when my climax finally takes me, I shatter completely. Shaking, trembling, calling out his name as he does the same with mine.

When he carries me to the bed and lays me down, he stays with me.

I don’t sleep. I hold on to him, and I hope he doesn’t leave. At one point during the night, he gets up out of bed, and I hold my breath. Waiting to see if he’s going to get dressed, waiting to see if he’s going to go. But he gets back into bed with me and holds on to me. And I hold on to him.

Only then do I drift off to sleep. Because something has changed. When I wake up, I know Nathan is going to be in bed with me. I don’t have to imagine that I’m in a TV show, or in a book, because right now my reality is better than any story anyone could ever make up. Drifting off to sleep with that feeling is the best one I can remember.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It’s Never Just Sex—sex in romantic fiction works to build feelings between the main characters, whether they want it to or not.

When I wake up in the morning, he’s still there. Sunlight filters through the curtain and reaches the edge of his bare shoulder. I touch it with my fingertips. Afraid that maybe he’ll disappear, maybe the light will disappear.

Both stay.

I trace a line down his skin, following the trail of the sunbeam. He opens his eyes, and my breath catches. I remember seeing him for the first time. Those eyes startled me then. Now he’s here, in bed with me. Looking at me. I know him now. Yet, looking at him isn’t any less impactful. Maybe it’s even more so.

“Good morning,” he says, his voice full of gravel.

“Good morning,” I murmur back.

We lie there for a while, in the quiet, in the realization that we’ve spent the night together. Or maybe that’s just me. “Shower?”

He nods. He gets out of my bed, naked, and I admire the broad expanse of his back, the fine musculature there. He is so hot. Genuinely. So incredibly hot.

And also, his ass, which is glorious.

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