Chapter 10

Cade

I stared down at Amelia, my heart tightening amidst its thunderous beat. Damn. Amelia was glorious when she let go. Her throaty cry was music to my body, strumming every fiber. She sat before me on the counter, her long legs curled around my hips, her cheeks flushed, and her lips swollen. Her channel clenched around my fingers, its pulses slowing. My gaze dipped down to her breasts—full and lush, her nipples damp and dusky pink. I hadn’t forgotten any of her, yet everything had faded. The sharpness of now pierced me straight through the heart. All of her—how she looked, how she felt, the way we felt together—was blinding in its shimmering brightness, and I could barely catch my breath.

She sighed, her legs relaxing around my hips. I managed to drag my eyes up to find hers waiting. Before I had a chance to form a thought, she was shoving my jeans down around my hips, and my cock bounced free. Amelia pushed me back swiftly as she shimmied her hips off the counter. Her hand stroked me lightly before she dragged her tongue up one side and down the other. My knees almost gave out when she looked up. Her lashes were glinted with gold from the sun angling through the windows, framing her eyes dark with desire and a hint of mischief there. She loved having me at her mercy and knew quite well she had me there now with my cock in her fist and her lips a mere inch away.

She waited a beat—her eyes locked to mine—and then dipped her head, swirling her tongue around the end of my cock and drawing me into her mouth. I’d have liked to think I had more control. Hell, I was way past being young and quick. But I’d gone seven long years without the one and only woman who could slay me—body, heart and soul. Her warm mouth around me—her tongue and lips making naughty with me—and I was so close to release, I gritted my teeth. Another slow drag of her tongue along the underside of my cock before she drew me in again, and that was it. My release thundered through me.

Amelia slowly drew back, not batting an eye at the fact I’d just spent myself in her mouth. She’d never been a prude before and wasn’t now. She straightened and leaned her hips on the counter. Somewhere in the midst of my roaring release, I’d rested my hands on the counter behind her, leaving her standing in the cage of my arms. My breath heaved a few more times as I tried to get back to some place of control. I finally straightened and met her eyes. The corner of her mouth curled in a smile, her cheeks pinkening slightly.

Watching her, I wrestled with what I wanted—to lift her in my arms and cart her upstairs to where I figured there must be a bed. Taking that step seemed almost dangerous—too intimate, too much of what I wanted, too much of everything I wasn’t sure I could have. Not until we took the time to untangle the mess of regret and misunderstanding between us. It was one thing to state the facts of what happened—a well-timed fabrication sent us spinning away from each other—and yet another thing to get through to the other side of the emotional mess between us with years apart layered on top of it.

We stood like that for several minutes. Amelia’s half-smile faded, and she started to look anxious. She masked it well, but I knew her probably better than I knew myself. I shook my head. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she countered.

“Don’t go wherever it is you’re going in your head. I didn’t mean to, well, let things get out of hand, but it’s not like we don’t both know what’s right here between us.”

She was quiet and finally nodded. It should have felt awkward—hell, we’d just about lost ourselves in each other—but it didn’t. I tried to recall the last time I hadn’t practically raced away from a woman I’d been skin to skin with and couldn’t recall a single one…except for Amelia.

I stepped back, trailing my fingers along her arm, a subtle buzz of satisfaction rolling through me when I felt her skin pebble under my touch. I forced myself to take another step back and leaned down to snag her shirt off the floor. Rather, it was my shirt, but she was wearing it. I gained an odd sense of satisfaction to know she’d been wearing my clothes.

After she’d hidden her way too tempting breasts behind her bra and my shirt and I’d buttoned my jeans, she rounded the low counter and glanced over her shoulder. “Coffee? Or something else?”

I stared at her and found myself nodding because I didn’t know what else to do. What was the usual thing to do when I’d missed her fiercely for seven years, when I had plenty of resentment at the way she’d shut me out without a chance to set the story straight, and when I’d finally been able to give into what I’d missed almost as much as I’d miss air if I couldn’t breathe?

Well, it seemed the mundane was the best option, so coffee it was. I hooked my boot over the rung of a stool and tugged it away from the counter. Sliding onto it, I leaned on an elbow and watched her start the coffee.