Page 54 of The Seascape Between Us

“Was it Jack?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No… Sort of… Not just him.”

“I meant what I said,” I told him. “We’ve never been anything more than a hookup when it was convenient. I haven’t seen him in ages, and definitely not since I started seeing you.”

“I know. I believe you. We haven’t been together for years. I know we’ve seen other people, both of us. I’m not that naïve. It’s just seeing him while we were out. He just looked like he fit your life better than I ever could.”

Something in my chest squeezed tight, and I wanted to pull him against me, press him down onto the couch and show him how well we fit. “I don’t know how you could say that.”

“Your life is big and amazing. You’ve done so much since we were last together, where I’ve been running the same hotel I was working at when we first met.”

“You havenoidea how much you’ve done for the people you care about, your community.” He opened his mouth like he might argue, but I pushed on. “As for you fitting into my life, even with almost twenty years apart, no one knows me better than you do.”

He shot me a doubtful look. “What about Finn?"

“Not even him.”

He swallowed visibly, nodding slowly. “It’s the same for me. No one has ever known me like you did, like you do right now.”

“What about Ryan?” I asked. After all these years of believing that Daniel had chosen him over me, speaking the man’s name without the familiar burn of resentment felt strange—but not unwelcome.

Daniel’s mouth twitched as if he were holding back a smile. “Not even him.”

I leaned in, tangling my fingers in his soft hair and catching his mouth with mine. I nipped at his lips until they parted, immediately taking advantage with my tongue. I kissed himslowly, deeply, infusing it with the filthy promise of everything I wanted to do with him, to him. When I pulled back, his eyes were dark, and his breath was coming faster.

“I want to fuck you,” I said. My fingers still gripped his hair, and I could see the hard outline of this cock pressed against his pants. “I want to strip you down, spread you out on my bed, and bury myself inside you, but before that, I want to make you crazy with my mouth and my hands until you’re begging me to let you come.”

“Shit,” Daniel said in a breathy whisper. “Yeah, I want that.”

We left the couch and went into my bedroom, where we both undressed. Daniel moved slower than I did. Probably because he kept stopping to watch me as I stripped off my shirt, pants, and underwear and left them in a heap on the floor.

Naked, I crossed the short distance to him and helped him with the buttons on his shirt, opening each one before pushing back his shirt and exposing smooth, wide shoulders. He was beautiful—perfectly made. I wanted to touch and taste every inch of him. He opened his pants, and I helped drag them and his underwear over his hips and down his legs. With his clothes pooled at his feet, he kicked them away, and he was standing naked, glorious, in front of me.

I kissed him again, tasting his hungry desperation as I guided him backward toward the bed. The mattress hit the backs of his legs, and he toppled backward, bouncing slightly on the bed. We grinned at each other.

“Scooch up,” I told him, climbing onto the bed between his legs.

“You look so good,” he breathed as I leaned over him, sliding my hands down his inner thighs, pressing them wider apart, opening him like a decadent gift just for me. I leaned down, trailing nibbling kisses across his chest, catching his nipple between my teeth and tugging lightly.

“I used to think about keeping you here like this,” I told him, whispering against his skin. He smelled of evergreen and the ocean, and I didn’t think I would ever get enough of it, his scent, the feeling of his smooth, warm skin beneath my touch. “About taking your clothes away, just like I did when you first got those stitches, going to work knowing you were naked and waiting for me in my bed—that when I got home, you'd be there for me, ready to be taken as if you belonged completely to me.”

He did belong to me, and I belonged to him. It had always been that way between us, even if we'd refused to see it, even if we hadn't been ready to admit it.

Tonight, though, I would show him he was mine, and when we were done, he would never again question who he belonged to.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Daniel

My head buzzed, and everything inside me felt warm and soft, like honey warmed in the sun. The combination of Grey’s hands roaming possessively down my chest, spreading my legs, the sharp sting of his teeth tugging at my nipple, combined with his words—holy shit, the things he was saying—and the low hum of his voice had shorted out the connection between my brain and body, leaving me hungry, pliant beneath his touch—and achingly hard. I couldn’t remember ever being this hard before, and he hadn’t even touched my cock.

“Would you like that?” he whispered between nibbling kisses. “To be kept naked in my bed—just for me?”

His hot breath whispered over my cock, but he didn’t take me in his mouth. My hips jerked upward in desperation, but his hand gripped my sides, pinning me firmly to the mattress.

“I’d take such good care of you, baby,” he murmured. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to take care of you.”

I closed my eyes against the sudden wave of emotion rolling over me. Thank god, I was already lying down because the impact would have knocked me off my feet. The things he said, I probably shouldn’t want them. They shouldn’t make me ache the way they did, but part of me craved the idea of belonging to him—of being his, of him being mine. But I knew better than to rely on anyone. It never lasted.

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