Page 69 of It's Always Been You
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gabe
Itoss my tux jacket onto a chair and scrub my hands over my face.
I’m exhausted and wrung out, but also, strangely relieved. I knew Molly was holding something back. Something big. I still know her well enough to understand that dance was the key. It was the one thing she never wanted to talk about.
It was a risk, taking her to the studio tonight. Molly doesn’t like to be pushed, and after the way we ended, I didn’t have the right to try. But we’re here at Berkeley, revisiting the scene of the crime, so to speak, so I took a risk.
Her shattered eyes in the studio almost broke me. I’m no stranger to grief, and that’s exactly what was in Molly’s eyes when she ran her hand along the barre. Grief for the loss of dance. For the loss of me.
And anger.
So much anger that I know without question she has been holding onto for all this time. She never told anyone. She didn’t even tell herself. But she told me. She gave me her anger and all her truths, and that has to mean something.
Maybe a barrier broken or a river crossed or chasm mended. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the kind of anger that signaled an ending.
It was the kind that hails a new beginning.
And the kiss outside her door. God, the kiss. It felt like she was pouring all of the feelings into it she couldn’t put into words. It felt like a revelation.
And for that, I’m hopeful. More hopeful than I’ve been in a decade that there can be something new between us. Something real and true and unbreakable.
Something that looks like forever.
Just the word has me smiling to myself as I empty my pockets onto the dresser, toss my tie on the chair with my jacket, and slip on my glasses because there’s a CIA spy thriller waiting for me on my nightstand. If I’m not spending my night buried inside Molly, reading about CIA analysts who save the world with computers and smarts is the next best thing. I mean, it’s not really, but the alternative is laying awake in bed, pining away for the girl who is sleeping literally thirty feet and a single wall away. I do still have some pride. Not much though. I think her dress tonight wiped most of that away, along with my remaining brain cells because fuck. It was so hot. She’s so hot. I think I would burn down the world for the chance to sleep next to her tonight.
I’m just unbuttoning the last button on my shirt when I hear the knock on the door.
Molly.
Anticipation lights me right up, and I’m in front of the door in two strides, yanking it open. Molly is standing there, barefoot, still in her dress, her hair tumbling wildly over her bare shoulders and down her back. Her eyes are filled with lust and heat and something else I can’t quite read. But then I can, and what I see has my heart taking off at a gallop.
We stare at each other for the span of a heartbeat and then, as if we make the decision at the exact same time, we fly at each other. The door slams shut, and our bodies collide, mouths crashing together in a frenzy of teeth and tongues and panting gasps.
I cup her face in both of my hands and kiss her deeply, tongue licking into her mouth, slicking against hers. Molly grips my waist tightly, standing up on her toes to bring our bodies flush and press our mouths tighter together. I push my hands into her hair and angle her head to take the kiss even deeper, rocking my hips forward, wanting her to feel exactly what this kiss is doing to me. What she is doing to me.
Molly slides her arms under my unbuttoned shirt and around my waist and presses her body against my already rock-hard cock, tightening her arms and rolling her hips. She whimpers into my mouth and the sound, a mixture of arousal and frustration at the barriers between us, reminds me exactly how easy it would be to get carried away. To get lost in her the way my cock is screaming at me to. But this is too important to get wrong.
The way I love Molly is overwhelming. All consuming. She is the beat of my heart and the breath in my lungs, and if I’m right about what I saw in her eyes when she knocked on my door, we have to talk about some things first.
I break the kiss and rest my forehead against hers, breathing her in.
“Why’d you stop?” she manages, her breath coming in fast pants. Then she leans her head back, giving me a wicked grin and rolling her hips against me again. “Don’t want me? I think this…” She rolls her hips again. “Proves otherwise.”
“Fuck, Rory, of course I want you. I’ve wanted you since we were eighteen. I wanted you when I never thought I would be able to have you again. I’ve wanted you every day and every nightfor fourteen years. But if this is about to happen—and god, I really hope it is because you are the hottest, sexiest woman in the entire world, and I want to peel that dress off of you more than I want to take my next breath—I think we need to talk.”
I can see the agreement in her eyes, and I feel my whole body relax. But Molly always has been a contrarian, and she’s a brat when she’s turned on. So, before I can open my mouth, she tightens her arms and rolls her hips against me. Again. The friction on my cock and her hands on my skin almost have me blowing in my pants. Again.
Fuck. My brain flashes with all the different ways I’ve punished her little displays of brattiness in the past, and all the ways I can do it now. I have to clench my ass cheeks to keep from coming entirely untouched.
“What’s the problem, Gabe?” Molly’s voice is filled with amusement and heat, like she can read my thoughts. And fuck, she probably can. “Don’t want to fuck me right here, against this door? Don’t want to slide your fingers into my hot, tight pussy and feel how wet I am? How just kissing you already has me dripping for you? Go ahead, Gabe. I know you want to. You did it on the plane and it was so, so good.”
“This isn’t that,” I grit out, just barely managing to keep my voice under control. “This is different. I need you to know it, too. Please, know it, Rory. If you’re not ready for different, that’s okay. We can stop right now. I’ll wait as long as you need. I’d wait a hundred years for you. But if you stay, if you let me have you tonight, if you let me slide inside you, feel you, fuck you, put my hands on every inch of your gorgeous body and remind both of us what’s it’s like when we’re together, then we are going to belong to each other in every way there is for two people to be bound together. Not just tonight. Forever. Always. You and me, the way it was always supposed to be.”
I run my hands down her face to hold the sides of her neck, drifting my thumb over her throat, relishing in her sharp intake of breath, feeling the hammering of her pulse. Then I lean in and ghost my lips over hers before pulling back and locking our gazes together. My world shrinks to the distance between my body and hers. Nothing and no one else exists. We are the only people on earth.
“So, what do you say, Rory? Are you mine? Am I yours?”
