Page 93 of All I Ask
Teagan laughs and then runs her thumb across my lips. “I’m going to need to go slow.”
“Are you trying to give me an out?” I ask as I lean back, pulling her up with me.
“I’m just giving you the reality.”
My finger slides under her chin and I lift it so our eyes meet. “I don’t need fast. I don’t need to tell people—right now,” I say because I won’t be able to lie for very long. “I’ve waited a very long time for you, even when I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. We can go as slow as you need. We can tell as many or as few people as we want. The only thing you can’t do is tell me this is all we get.”
Time is fleeting. It doesn’t care that the reasons she may have are valid, because when it runs out, you can never get it back. I won’t live like that again. I know what I want. I see my life in front of me and every aspect has Teagan in it.
I’m buying that house because one day, she’ll live in it. I don’t know when, but it will happen. I don’t care if every room in that house has to be renovated, I know that it’s where Teagan and I will be.
Her eyes are warm and her smile soft. I lean in, pressing my lips to hers.
Because I can and because I need her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Teagan
Present
Kissing him like this is everything. It’s coming up for air. It’s drowning. It’s feeling as though I have everything I want, but not really knowing if it’s real. Derek’s hands cup my cheek, his thumbs brushing against the skin in soft caresses, and I melt.
I give myself permission to just feel and catalog the senses. I inhale the sea air, allowing the slight sting of the salt to flow through me. My fingers run though his soft hair, the strands feeling as though they were meant for this exact moment.
He licks against my lips and I open to him. I’m his right now. I am taking and giving because resisting him is the last thing I want to do.
“Teagan.” His deep voice rasps over my name, and I vow never to forget the way he sounds. How full of need his words are.
Derek’s fingers drift down my arms and then snake around my back, pulling me tighter against his chest as the kiss goes on.
Time seems to stop or maybe it disappears completely because this moment is perfection.
Every time that I imagined this, I was so far off. I couldn’t have known that it wouldfeelthis good. There’s not anyone who would have been able to articulate how one kiss could make my world flip upside down, but that’s what he’s always been for me.
A game changer.
“Tell me you feel this,” he says against my lips.
“I feel it all.”
Derek pulls back, the moonlight behind him, which should make it impossible to see him, and yet it’s as though the sun is around us both. I can see the desire in his eyes. I can taste the want that pulses between us and the apprehension that we’re both trying to make sense of.
I want him, but God, if it doesn’t terrify me.
Giving in to this has a potential for disaster.
“If I had known…”
I touch his face. “You would’ve what?”
“I would’ve come for you. I would’ve not been such a fucking pussy and told you everything. I would’ve been at your door each day until you let me in and forgave me.”
“You wouldn’t have had to work that hard. I don’t know that I could’ve resisted you,” I confess.
He smiles with a soft shake of his head. “I think we both know you wouldn’t have been that forgiving.”
“Maybe not,” I admit as I rub the beginning of his five o’clock shadow. “I might have made it difficult for you, but I think we would’ve been right here after a few days.”
