Page 121 of Single Dad Dilemma
And it was as I watched that I saw what she wanted to show me: reddened skin underneath her ribs, the side I hadn’t kissed, hadn’t touched. Reddened skin andink.
Slowly, I smoothed my palm over the soft skin of her thigh and up her waist, dragging my fingers underneath the newest mark on her body.
She hummed in satisfaction. “You’re getting warmer,” she sighed. “Much, much warmer.”
I leaned up on one elbow and carefully ghosted my fingers over a delicate silhouette of new ink.
A snowflake.
Lily cupped the side of my face, her thumb rubbing lightly over my bottom lip.
“That’s for you,” she said, her eyes full of something she might not want to say yet. But I saw it. I saw it so fucking clearly that my ribs pinched. “I got it before I went and yelled at your brother,” she said sheepishly.
“Lily,” I said, completely undone by this woman, “I don’t know what to say.”
She took my hand and laid it over her heart. “Do you even remember what you said to me? When I got the call from the vet?”
I shook my head, let my palm absorb the steady thrumming of her heartbeat under her skin.
“Let me come with you,” she said. “Letme. Like it was for you. You stepped into something you didn’t even understand, showing upfor me in a way that no one had in a very, very long time.” She closed her eyes and pulled on my arm until I was eye level with her again. “I didn’t ever want to forget that moment.” She cradled my jaw and pulled me down for a sweet kiss. “Didn’t want to forget you,” she murmured against my lips.
She wouldn’t. I wasn’t letting her go, not after this. There was something unbelievably precious about the way she’d allowed herself to tiptoe into these feelings. At her own pace, in a way so uniquely her. She did it not knowing if I’d ever be aware, and somehow that made it even more humbling.
I kissed her again. Slower and deeper. Then again. And again. The weighty emotion turned a corner, heat nipping at its heels until flames licked at my spine. She clutched at my back as I held her to my chest and slid my tongue into her waiting mouth, her leg hitching up on my side.
There was a time for words, and this wasn’t it. Everything inside me screamed to take this moment, to make her mine, let Lily make me hers.
I already was. God, I was already hers.
Did she know? I wanted her to know she owned me, in all the ways that mattered.
I reached between us and lined myself up, stealing her mouth in a slow, tongue-heavy kiss as I worked my hips forward. She whimpered into my mouth as I pulled back and then pushed in farther.
Heat and warmth, tight and perfect, had me gritting my teeth, and I let my weight settle on her, gripping her wrists and holding them on the bed above her head. Lily tossed her head back as I thrust in again, deeper this time. Harder this time. Each sharp roll of my body wrenched sweet moans from her throat, had her breasts rubbing against my chest. Her skin was so warm and firm, her body sweet and responsive.
A possessive urge caught at the back of my throat, words I’d never said to another woman helplessly seeking a release.
“Mine,” I growled, unable to stop myself.
“Yes.”
I snapped my hips forward. “Mine.”
Lily arched underneath me eagerly, her hips rolling to meet the motion of my own, her hands clutching at mine where I held them down.
Everything I felt about her crystallized, the world going slow and soft as I let those feelings pool steadily in my chest, bleeding out through my entire body as I worked her into a writhing mess against the mattress.
This was worth waiting for. No matter what I’d been through or what I’d missed over the years, every minute, every day had been worth it to get to this place with her. I’d wait another decade for this woman and she’d still have me on my knees.
In the cradle of her thighs, I pitched forward. Harder again. And harder. She let out a sobbing moan that set my blood on fire. Sex had never felt better, sharper, clearer, more perfect than it did right now.
“Fuck, Lily,” I groaned. “It’s so good. You feel so good.”
“Yes.Yes, Barrett.”
My body screamed to go faster and harder, to let sweat pool on her skin until she broke apart, until I did too. But my heart wanted to draw this out, to move slow and let the pleasure linger, let it build until she was incoherent for a release.
Wanting both sides of that coin—the driving urge for raw, sweaty sex crashing against the part of me that wanted this to last forever, wanting her in all the ways I could have her—came with a lucid burst of truth.
