Page 95 of After All The Wreckage
I’d taken off my jacket while she was across the hall, and now she fisted my T-shirt, drawing it over my head and breaking our contact. She slid her hands over my chest, and I was glad that lifting crates and kegs and cases at the bar had kept me in decent shape.
I snapped open her bra’s front clasp, flinging it aside, and then feasted on the other breast while my hand worked the first. Her fingers dug into my scalp. I grunted at the pleasure of it just as she made another little whimper that had my lips returning to hers, claiming them.
Our hands were as desperate as our mouths and tongues. Touching, digging in, and then soothing. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more. I needed to have all of her.
I lifted her up and carried her to the bed, and as her back hit the mattress, I bent to slide down the zippers on her boots and pull them off. When I risked looking at her again, the green in her eyes seemed to have taken over the brown. Green flames. Want and need and trust…
I tugged off her jeans, toed off my shoes, and let my pants fall to the floor. Then, I knelt on the mattress, drawing a hand down the middle of her bare breasts, over her taut stomach, and down to the thin lilac fabric of her underwear. I cupped her and she writhed beneath me from just the simple touch.
My mouth found the soft skin of her inner thigh, and she embedded her hands in my hair as I found new pieces of her to worship. To taunt. To taste and lick.
Her breathing came in sweet little gasps as her hips bucked, and a shudder rocked through me, my control slipping further away. Something wild in me needed to absorb every sound, every emotion, every whimper that escaped her. As if by doing so I could absorb her heart and soul along with them. As if I could embed her into me one kiss at a time.
Thunder boomed, rattling the glass.
Inside, we made our own lightning. Shedding boundaries between our worlds as we shed the last vestiges of our clothes until there was nothing keeping us apart where we crossed an unknown barrier into a netherworld where pleasure and joy were all that existed.
I’d almost slid inside her, almost found my way into the delightful heat, when my conscience finally broke free enough for me to pull back. I rested my forehead on her chest, my shoulders heaving as my lungs tried to find oxygen.
“Fuck.”
“Don’t you dare stop, Gage Palmer. Do. Not. Fucking. Stop.” Her voice was all command and control I wanted to give in to. I wanted to heed her demands and let her lead the way.
My fingers slid down, curling into her, and she gasped, pushing into my palm. I circled her with my thumb, and she moaned, eyes fluttering closed.
We found a rhythm together, her hips shifting, my hand seeking, and I watched with glorious wonder as pleasure coasted over her face. The fierce beauty that was Rory became the joy of angels as her release burst through her body. She quivered against me, body shaking.
I kissed her, slower this time. In awe of what I’d seen. In awe of her.
Her hands slid down my back, squeezing my ass before one hand slipped around to surround the length of me. I growled in pleasure and twisted pain, my hips shoving into her palm.
“I need you inside me, Gage. I want to see those gray eyes of yours become a thunderstorm when you break apart. I need that. I need to know it’s because of me.”
My eyes searched hers. I ached to give her what she asked and cursed my stupidity for not planning this. “I don’t have a condom.”
Her brows went up. “I have a birth control implant. I haven’t done this with anyone without a condom. I’m clean.”
My breath hitched. The idea of her being with anyone like this made me want to lose my damn mind. A ridiculous and unwarranted jealousy raged through me, slicing through bone and marrow. But I finally caught up to what she’d said. What she wanted. She wanted me bare inside her. Feeling every slide of skin. Every pulse and flicker.
“I haven’t been with anyone in over three years. And I was tested after.”
The glimmer in her eyes grew. She leaned up slightly, taking my mouth with hers, dipping her tongue inside, as she shifted her hand, leading me to her center and the wet heat I yearned to sink into.
“You’re sure?” I asked her.
In answer, she spread her legs wider, digging her heels into the backs of my thighs, and I responded by sliding in. As I bottomed out, pleasure rippled through my body and the world grew hazy, until there was nothing but the fire burning between us and the honeyed sweet taste and smell that was Rory.
That overwhelming sense of having found home coursed through me all over again.
I belonged with Rory.
At first, our pace was steady and measured as we learned each other’s shape and angles, but it quickly grew frantic. Wild. As if we were consumed by nature and the storm that grew to a torrent both inside us and out.
The bed rocked. Another round of thunder boomed, and I hit the top, the crest of the wave, the eye of the storm. As I came, her body shook around me and a cry escaped her that was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. Pleasure and love and goddamn hope.
Our bodies slowed, the trembling of our limbs coming to a stop. I had no desire to remove myself from her, but I rolled slightly, bringing her with me, so that we were on our sides, joined in the closest possible way. Not just body parts. It was deeper than that. Holes in our souls had been filled as well.
It felt like peace.
