Page 50 of Near Miss

Those are gone next. My mouth dries out a bit because he’s impossibly hard and quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I blink when he tenses, gripping himself.

“Condom?” he asks, voice rough.

“Top drawer.” I point to my dresser, and it’s really something—a once-in-a-lifetime experience, probably—to watch someone like him, sculpted and honed from years and years of this thing I think he loves and hates, walk across your room naked, muscles tensing and tightening, for him to look only at you when he rolls a condom on.

He stares at me when he does it—and then he’s hovering over me. His voice is just this groan, rough all over but makingeverything else about me, all my rigid lines and rules, feel soft. “You’re sure?”

I blink up at him, nodding, and he inhales sharply, hand moving between us, scoring down my centre, pausing where I’m entirely soaked.

He flexes his hips, a strangled moan coming from him as he pushes inside me. I inhale sharply against the pressure, but it shifts to something that feels wonderful before I can give it much thought. He buries his head in my neck, teeth scraping skin, and my hands find his back.

We stay there for a moment, hearts beating through chests and sweat-slicked skin pressed together, before he lifts his head, dropping his forehead to mine.

We start to move at the same time—and maybe it shouldn’t feel as natural as it does, but it’s sort of like our bodies know each other.

He presses his lips to mine, tongue sweeping across the seam of my mouth. “Tell me what you like.”

You, I think. Everywhere he touches me feels like it’s on fire, like I might spontaneously combust and die, happily, because Beckett Davis and his tongue were my cause of death.

But I say something else.

“I like—slower.” I arch into his chest, nails digging into the valleys of muscle spanning his back.

He pauses, hand fisting the pillow beside me, his other palm finding the headboard, flexing his hips upwards. “Like that?”

“Yes,” I rasp, teeth coming down on my bottom lip. My hips rise to meet his. “What do you like?”

Beckett’s lips part, the muscles in his neck and shoulders tense, voice nothing but a rough groan. “I think I’d like anything with you.”

That—the idea that maybe it’s me, me with this scar and this once-missing piece of her body, who gives too much away, thatmaybe I’m whole enough for him, to make his body feel the way he makes mine feel—has me arching even further, my fingers digging into his back and a moan tumbling from me.

It’s too intimate, the whole thing, but I can’t concentrate on that thought—it’s fleeting, melting away into nothing when his hand leaves the headboard to travel across my chest, down my rib cage, stopping at my centre where his thumb starts to move in small circles.

I can feel every part of him touching every part of me, and it’s too late because I think I will combust, I’ll die right here.

It’s his name on my lips, the low moan in the back of his throat, the pressure of him inside me, and the sweep of his thumb—it all turns me into nothing but kindling, and I go up in flames.

His hips roll up faster, and I feel it when he comes, see his eyes close, his lips parted with a groan in his throat before he stills. He breathes for a moment before he blinks slowly, and there they are—emerald eyes that have no business being that beautiful.

Beckett hovers above me for a moment longer, eyes dark and breath heavy, lowering his head so his lips can brush mine before he rolls his shoulders back and moves to lie beside me with a groan.

Hair matted to his forehead and eyes entirely alive, he holds a palm up with a lazy, contented grin. “Excellent business meeting. Got a lot of work done.”

And for the second time, I smile, and I raise my hand to meet his.

Greer

“Great bathtub.” Beckett grins at me, stepping back into my room, running a hand through messy hair.

I arch a brow. “Are you big into baths?”

“Fuck yeah. Love a bath. Ice or otherwise.” He nods, stretching an arm across his chest, making all the muscles in his obliques and abdomen flex. He hasn’t put a shirt back on, only his shorts found their way back to his body.

He’s made no moves to leave at all, actually.

He laid in bed beside me, fingers toying with the ends of my hair, wandering over my shoulders and down my arms, while our breathing slowed and the stars winked to life in the sky through the window.

I don’t think it was friendly to sit there like that, talking to one another, naked, and to carry on casual conversation while we stood and got dressed, for him to tell me I should put on the grey pajamas because he thinks the colour is nice. To smile at each other and laugh.

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