Chapter 42

Liv

The kissing is so tender. Like we’re kissing for the first time, or maybe like we’ve known each other for years and years and are so comfortable, one kiss flows into the next without awkwardness or trying. And his hands move gently in my hair, brushing it off my face, tugging handfuls, but not hard, just so my scalp tingles all over. And he keeps whispering my name, sometimes so quietly I’m not sure whether he means me to hear or not.

And when he carries me upstairs, he cradles me like something precious and looks into my eyes the whole time. It makes me want to cry, because I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me that way in my whole life. Not since—

Well, not since my mom, and I don’t really remember that.

He looks at me as though he sees exactly who I am and likes me exactly that way.

He sets me down on the bed and resumes kissing me, and these kisses are so slow, soft and sweet, like he’s tasting every corner of me. Like he’s filling every corner of me. And sometimes he stops kissing and just looks at me with those ridiculously beautiful Chase eyes, full of something. Not dark and naughty. Warm and wondering.

“Lie still,” he says when I reach for him, trying to hold him closer, trying to give him back the pleasure he’s giving me. “Just lie still.”

So I do, letting myself melt completely under him, while he drops little kisses along my jawline, while his tongue traces every curl and crevice of my ear, while he nuzzles along the hyper-tuned nerves of my neck until I’m whimpering and clutching.

“Lie still. Just let me.”

He spends forever on my breasts, licking like he’s painting me anew, spiraling in toward my painfully tight nipples, but then backing away, teasing. When he finally closes in on them, he spends what feels like hours there, sucking deep, flicking light, until I am arching off the bed and begging. Then he licks his way down the slope of my belly and parts my sex, licking into my heat.

“Oh my God.”

“Talk to me.”

“Like that. Just like that.”

His mouth is so hot, I want to push my whole self into it. He uses the flat of his tongue and the tip, alternating, strokes, circles, strokes, circles, broader, tighter, broader, tighter, until it feels like he’s drawing the shape of the orgasm to come—everywhere and perfectly focused—

“I have to be inside you. Have to.”

I seem to have lost all use of language. I whimper.

He slides up my body, and my raw nerves feel every texture—the crispness of hair and the hardness of muscle, the heat of his skin and the top of his foot fitting against the tender, sensitive bottom of mine, and most of all, the tease as he fits the head of his cock against the soaking wet opening of my sex.

He doesn’t tease, but neither does he rush us. He eases in, works his way in, and again it could be an hour or a hundred hours or just a minute that my body opens in invitation against his heat and heft and hardness. I don’t know. I don’t care. I only care about the feel of him, stretching and filling me, completing me.

He belongs there. I want to tell him that. You belong inside me. This is how it’s supposed to be. We’re supposed to be like this all the time.

But I don’t, of course.

I say, “More.”

And as if that were a reasonable request, as if he weren’t already buried in me so deep that I can feel him hitched high up against my pubic bone, he thrusts a little deeper.

“More.”

“Jesus, Liv.”

“More.”

He thrusts and withdraws, again and again, and it’s this perfect hot slide, this thick, intense, amazing deep hot slide, and my nipples tighten against the curls and heat of his chest and my hands find his ass because even though I have all of him, over and over, I still want more.

“More.”

He’s thrusting hard now, concentration tight in his face, lifting himself off me to brace himself up on his arms, and I watch him, feeling like everything’s of a piece: the expression on his face, the tension mounting where we’re connected, the emotions that threaten to drown me.

This is probably the last time we will do this.

I wrap my arms around him, tight, bury my face in his neck, and whisper his name as I come harder than I’ve ever come, spasm after spasm, until I grab him and pull him under, under, under with me.