CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Gavin leads me upstairs and I know what’s waiting for me—a massive white cloud of a bed, with my side and his. I see his pale blue T-shirt draped on the bed and I give him a questioning look.
“It smells like you,” he explains, looking sheepish.
“I was wearing it because it smelled like you,” I say, and let him pull me close and pull my T-shirt over my head. My jog bra has smashed my breasts into a uniboob and I’m sure my pits don’t smell that pleasant, but Gavin’s on a mission.
My shorts hit the floor and I balk, knowing my vintage-2006 granny panties don’t typically inspire lust. But Gavin’s eyes glide across my skin, sending pricks of sensation across my body as he undresses me and then lets me undress him.
Reality is so, so much better than my imagination.
I peel off his shirt and feel his skin, cool to my touch but solid beneath my fingertips. I roll his jeans down over his hips and find the vee in his torso that drove me wild in photos I stared at for too long.
I see reckless tattooed beneath his collarbone and trace it with my tongue, following the backward letters as they reach his throat, kissing my way up his neck and stubbly chin. When my mouth reaches his lips again I hear a rumbling sound of pleasure, and he pushes me back on the bed, his body covering mine, his whole weight bearing down on me.
“Beryl,” he pants, his mouth inching down my chest, finding my nipple and teasing it between his teeth. “Promise me. No more running.”
“I promise.”
“Anything that’s wrong—we can fix it. As long as we run toward each other.”
“I will.”
“I will, too.” And then I lose myself to the sensations Gavin draws from my body, the sweet and the gentle and the sharp and the hard. His hands roam my chest, my hips, my legs, and I open to him, pulling him closer.
His hand finds my center and I feel him gentle, exploring the edges, asking for permission. I give it. His mouth stays hot on mine, his tongue stroking me as urgently as his fingers. I urge him deeper, my hips bucking against him.
And then he finds it—that switch, the catch he said he’d find and touch and take to turn me on and send me up to a crest of pleasure. My back arches and I ride the first wave, feeling weightless even as he presses harder against me.
I curl my legs around his, locking my knees behind him as I bring him closer. I want him every way I’ve imagined and more, and this time what’s real makes everything sweeter and stronger.
Gavin stops. He presses a firm kiss on my lips and reaches for a foil packet in the bedside table. He rolls it on and I know this is new—of course I snooped in that drawer and there were no condoms there. He planned for this. He wants me.
The thought makes my heart soar as Gavin settles above me, positioning himself. His pale blue eyes pierce my hazel eyes, forcing every stray thought from my mind.
“I want to be a part of you; I need you to be part of my life,” he says, and I answer him yes again.
He drives into me and I cry out, gripping his shoulders as he plunges, filling me to overflowing. I wrap my legs around his hips and draw him closer, wanting to erase the lines of our skin where one person ends and another begins. I’m flying.
I stretch my body to embrace his rhythm, feeling him hot and hard and so good that I can hardly stand it. I feel his ferocious need pouring into our connection, I grab his ass and pull him closer, tilt my hips to take him deeper.
My body tightens as another orgasm rips through me and Gavin’s growl becomes a roar. I cling to him as we fly past the furthest edge, a high beyond anything I’ve experienced. His eyes are wild and I can tell he’s flying, too, his body uncoiled, unfurled to a thundering pleasure.
We collapse in a heap, sated, still joined, our breath hot on each other’s skin. I feel his pounding heartbeat in his chest, smell his sweat-slicked skin and kiss his neck to taste it.
Gavin turns his mouth to mine, a starving man sated. He kisses me gently, as if I’m a precious object that he is the first to discover. I close my eyes and bask in his warmth, feeling his lips touch my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids, and the tip of my nose.
“Beryl.”
“I’m glad you said that. For a moment there, I think you made me forget my name.”
I feel laughter rumble in his chest as he pulls back, releasing me from beneath the delicious weight of him. “You made me forget everything. Except you. And now I’ll always remember the way you felt around me and beneath me.”
“Don’t say that. You make it sound like ancient history.”
“My mistake. You’re my past, present, and future now.” Gavin’s genuine smile echoes mine.
“And you’re mine. If you don’t watch out, I think I might just go all fangirl on you after that performance.”
“So long as you let me repeat it.”
“Yes.”