Page 282 of Falling Backwards
I do.
For him, because of him.
Trembling, clinging.
When it passes, my hands find his face, draw it over mine, all my clenched muscles relaxing even as I wrap my legs around him.
“Do it too,” I murmur.My breath is jagged.“Forme,Luke.”
We take each other’s mouth, and he hums desperately.
His hand between us sweeps around under the small of my back, shifting me even more tightly against him.
Another rock of our bodies together.
Then his hips hit mine and stay there.They press while he comes, too, press mine into stillness as our kiss slips away, but I still send a hand down his spine to hold him to me.His back rises and falls with his sharp breaths.
I love it.
His voice comes out in the same tremble that’s in his body—the same tremble my own body had known.“God Almighty.This is….”
Even though he doesn’t finish the thought, I know what he means.I nod into turning my head to touch my lips to the arm by my face.“It’s so…you’reso….”
Balmy breath drifts down my neck before his lips deliver their own gentle kiss to the scar there.I can’t help squeezing his body with mine at how sultry and sweet it is at once.I can feel the tension creeping out of his muscles, settling him on me in the most comfortably caging way.
Not for long, though.We’re soon shifting, rolling, lying to once again face each other.I instantly miss our most intimate point of connection, wonder if we should’ve tried to make it last longer, but peace is coming up fast as we settle into slumps and work on slowing our breathing.
We intertwine our fingers together between our chests.Our eyes have adjusted to the shadowed room enough that we can easily see each other, so I look at him—at those sated eyes, his soft expression, mussed hair, bare shoulders and collarbone and chest.
The word that whispers through my mind has me belatedly realizing I didn’t finish the sentence I started before.
“Glorious,” I whisper.
I find his gaze has been wandering over me too.It comes back to mine.“Hm?”
“That’s what you are.What being with you is.”I bring our hands closer to my face so I can nuzzle his.“What beingyoursis.”
The corner of his lips curves up.He adjusts his other arm between us so he can unhurriedly thumb at my scarred eyebrow.
“Oh,” he whispers back.“That’s my word for you too.”His expression warms with stark love, with the ghost of all that desire.His thumb brushes inwards across my eyebrow and down the slope of my nose.“The most glorious fucking thing, Maggie.You.Being with you.Being yours.”
Maybe it’s silly that him echoing those sentiments plants a lump in my throat; maybe it isn’t.
I scoot into the small space separating us, my free fingers seeking out his chest so I can touch some other part of him on my way to wordlessly ask for another kiss.
He understands the silent question and answers it right away.The sink of our lips together and the mutual squeeze of our hands make us sigh.Make us smile even more so, breaking the contact just slightly before we push back in.
But then a thought comes back to me, and we’re interrupted again.
“Hey, what shoulder thing were you talking about earlier?”
Luke almost immediately erupts into deep, hearty chuckles, shaking his body and mine a little bit too.Even as I smile more fully, I can’t help wondering whether the slight hoarseness to those little laughs is cute or sexy.
Both,I decide as they cascade over me.It’s both.
“Ah, that,” he murmurs.He untangles his hand from mine and rests it on my back, then starts a light up-and-down rub.“Well….”
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