AS SOON AS Rick had excused me for the rest of the night, Blake and I had run out of the bar so fast I wasn’t even sure we’d said goodbye.
Soft lighting and the smell of flowers brought a smile to my face and the way Blake’s hand tightened around mine puffed up my heart a little more. I hoped he liked what I had done with the hotel room.
Battery operated candles trailed from the door all the way into the room and were scattered around on various furniture. Rose petals were drizzled on top of the bed, mimicking what Blake had done on our first date. Only this time forget-me-nots were mingled amongst them, creating a meadow effect. Dozens of photos of us were placed around the room, and on the bedside table lay two journals. One new—and one old.
“I can’t believe you did all this,” Blake spoke from behind me. His hands rested on my hips, the tops of my thighs flush with the side of the mattress as we stared at it.
“I didn’t know what else to do to prove to you that I wouldn’t run anymore. To remind you . . .” My voice lowered as it trailed off, uncertain of how to finish that thought.
“You can’t forget what it feels like to live, Angel.” I turned to face his heavy words. “You were always here.” He took my hand and placed it over his heart. Each pump touched my senses as I collected a few of his beats as well. “When it broke, it destroyed me.”
“I’m sorry I put you through that. I broke my promise to you once. I won’t break it again. I hope you believe me.” The fact that I had lost his faith stung worse than anything.
“I believe you.” Though the shadows of the pain that I’d caused him still lay in the lines of his forehead, his eyes portrayed strength. Faith. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
Those words opened up my lungs, letting in a fresh wave of new air. Even after his song at the bar, I was worried we wouldn’t be able to overcome all the hurt. That once we tried, the poison would be too deep in our veins to work past. But I see now that was foolish. This was us. Two as one until the day we take our last breath of life and stop living one another. I’d make sure of it.
I tapped two fingers over his heart. “Mine?”
He rested his palm on my heart. “Yours. It could never not be yours.”
He stepped forward, the backs of our hands coming together as the fronts still felt the other’s heartbeats. We stared at each other, reacquainting with the other’s features. He brought his hands up to cradle my jaw, his fingers splayed over my cheeks as he studied me, feeling me, learning me again. Brushing my hair from my face, he moved in to place a tender kiss on my lips before pulling back to look at me once more.
His fingers roamed the sides of my neck, back up to my face through my hair as though he were coveting each inch, each piece. With a soft smile, he leaned in to brush his nose along mine. We locked eyes, both of us silently reassuring the other of our devotion, relishing in the feel of coming back together.
His thumbs slid over my parted lips before he licked the seam, inviting himself in for a taste. A burn crept through my middle as he invaded my being—touch, smell, and everything Blake coating me from the outside in.
It was so hard to restrain from taking my fill of him, but I wanted to take my time exploring him, and I could tell by his lingering caresses, he felt the same way. Sex was one thing, and it was powerful when it was with someone you truly loved, but two souls coming together was something else entirely. It was heart-pounding and genuine and needed to be done delicately.
Blake’s fingers mingled into the spaghetti strap at the top of my shoulder, and he kissed it away, dropping the elastic down my side before repeating the same action on the other shoulder, causing the material to pool at my waist. “I missed your skin.”
He grazed his hands along my collarbone and up to my neck again. Grabbing each side, he used his thumbs to dip my head back, opening my neck to him. I panted, closing my eyes as he licked a line from the divot in my collarbone, up to my chin, and then stuck his tongue in my mouth in one motion. I gasped into his mouth, taken aback by the demand in his lips, the needy softness. He was taking me slowly, but with a possessive touch claiming stake to my being. The feeling of it made my insides shudder with the thought of belonging to him again.
“I missed your everything,” I purred when he finally freed my lips.
He dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes closed, his lips glistening with our combined moisture. “My unicorn.” The last part came out as a hushed whisper.
“Not anymore.”
Blake’s eyes opened, confusion swiped along the hard lines on his forehead. In a soft voice, I clarified, “Unicorns disappear. You thinking of me that way was never a good thing. I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I want to be the stays-around girl. Not the runaway. Statue of Liberty. Call me that.” I smiled, only half joking.
Blake laughed. “Does your torch only light for me?”
The flutter in my heart sobered me. “Until my last breath.”
Blake’s smile faded as his mouth descended to mine once again. Cradling my face, he paused a hair away from my lips and spoke against them. “You take my breath away.” He found my eyes and sank his gaze into them.
“You give me mine back.”
A soft groan left his throat as he massaged his mouth with mine, stealing my thoughts. Lip locked, Blake gently urged me backward. His weight covered me as my back sunk into the mattress, a few petals fluttering around us. He took his time, his tongue dipping in for little tastes of my mouth as his hand skidded softly down the side of my face, his fingers combing my hair, feeling my neck. Tucking my fingers beneath the cotton of his shirt, I groaned at the feel of the tight skin of his back. I dug in, dragging my fingers up the muscles that lined the dip of his spine until I reached his shoulders. I cupped my hands around them, bringing him closer to me, but it wasn’t enough. I needed his heat.
Bringing my hands back to the hem of his shirt, I yanked at it. “I need to feel your skin on mine.”
Blake sat up and drew his shirt over his head before tossing it to the side, and then he was on me again, the warmth of his body melting into mine. On instinct, I arched my back, pushing my chest into him as I brought my arms around him once again and curled a leg over his hip.
“Yes.”
He felt like heaven in the sun on a warm day. The kind you close your eyes at with a smile and tilt your head toward, trying to soak it up so you can carry around the happiness it gives you for a little while.
And he was all mine.
A hiss escaped my lips as he moved the thin lace covering my breast aside and licked the pebbled nipple into his mouth. I moaned and pushed up, wanting him to suck, but Blake had other plans. Two of his fingers worked my other nipple to a peak while he swirled his tongue around my breast, swiping under the heavy flesh at the bottom. I moaned, tingling from holding back as he moved to my other breast and repeated his attention there. I ground myself into him, burning with a need only he could fulfill.
“Bla—”
His tongue was in my mouth again, his weight leaving my chest as he pushed his erection between my legs with a soft grunt. My hands roamed the curves of his biceps, feeling them tense with the effort of suspending himself above me. They glided back up and to the front of his body, down the hard peaks of his pecs, down each ripple of his chiseled abs, before finding the waistband of his jeans. I popped the button and lowered the zipper, then turned my wrist and slid my hand inside, eager to unwrap my prize when I was happily greeted by his hard length—commando. I smiled against his mouth.
“Easy access?”
“I couldn’t be bothered with unnecessary things. I just wanted to get to you.” He moved his hips, forcing his cock to slide in and out of the circle of my fingers.
I stared down the hard landscape of his body, the crests and valleys of each defined muscle protruding from his smooth olive skin, down to the head of his cock poking out from the denim. A glisten sat on top of it, and I licked my lips, eager for its taste.
“I want you so bad,” I moaned, tilting my head back as Blake suckled at my neck.
“You have me. Until my last breath, you have me.” Blake pulled back and rested a forearm next to my head. He brushed the hair from my forehead with his middle finger before resting his palm on the side of my face, seeking out my eyes. “I won’t lose you again.”
“You never really lost me. I just lost myself,” I confirmed, resting my hands on his lower back. “When I’d sit in a quiet room, I could hear you inside of me. It was always so loud. I couldn’t take it.”
Blake answered me with a soft kiss. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you’re okay. From now on run to me. Not from me.” His gaze seemed to imbed his next words into my soul with more meaning than just words alone. Reassuring everything I was with everything he was. “I love you, Angel. So much that the words seem insufficient. You make me everything and reduce me to nothing all at the same time.”
A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. Hearing him reconfirm his love for me, laying in the same bed we had first made love—now sharing the moment we promised forever—brought everything full circle. We were coming together, newly reinforced in an unbreakable bond. Something in me was sure of it. As it had once before in a horrible situation, my life with Blake passed before my eyes. I saw a future filled with laughter and love, blue-eyed babies, and blonde-haired girls. I knew he would keep me safe—do anything to help me breathe in a life that always seemed to be stealing my air.
I lifted up on my elbows and clasped his lower lip between mine, sliding my tongue along the sweet taste resting there. I breathed him in through my nose, tasted him on my tongue, mingled my fingers into his hair as he moaned, sending his voice into my lungs, ensuring that all the air filtering through me would be infused with him.
“I love you so much, it’s almost too much to take. I feel so swollen inside, like I could explode if I squish one more piece of you into me.”
A devilish smirk slid across Blake’s moistened lips. “Well, I hope you have room for one more piece because I need inside of you.”
His openmouthed kisses began at the hollow of my throat and trailed deliciously down the center of my chest. I leaned into him as he continued past the soft skin of my torso, stopping only to dip his tongue into my belly button before swiping the pad from one hip bone to the other. I bucked when he passed an extra sensitive spot, pebbles breaking out along my skin as I fisted the bedspread. Together, his strong hands pulled off what remained of my shirt, my pants, my panties—licking, sucking, nipping, but purposely missing the one place I longed for him.
After discarding both of our clothes, he spoke between kisses up the length of my leg as he stared at me. “Your body looks different, more defined. I didn’t think you could get any sexier, but clearly, I was wrong.”
I gasped as he bit into the flesh of my upper thigh. “I’m glad you like it.” I swallowed, my words wispy as I was held together by a mere thread.
Blake deliberately dragged his nose over my clit as he went for the other thigh. “You still smell the same, though. And your taste . . .” He sucked the skin inside my leg and then came to my center, lightly biting my full lips from the side.
“Ahhhh,” I moaned, raising from the mattress with a pant. “You’re killing me. God, just do something, please,” I begged. The build-up inside was too much.
Starting at my opening, Blake flattened his tongue and dragged it up the inside of my folds, staring at me. My head dropped back with a hiss as he continued up, over my pubic bone, back up my torso, and settled himself between my legs. He held himself above me with one arm while he pushed a finger into my core. “Tell me you’re mine, Angel. I need to hear it one more time.” He primed me, stoking the fire building within.
“I’m yours. I was always yours.” I placed my hands on his face, not wanting to take this final step with any uncertainty lingering in his head. “I just want to be one with you again. I nee—”
My words were halted when the head of his dick replaced his finger. It probed at me, seeming to request acceptance. I widened my legs as he pushed in slowly. With his eyes pinched shut and his lips open, I felt every centimeter of him add to the one before. I could tell he was savoring the feel of me sliding around him. I closed my eyes, too, so I could focus on the sensation of it. The feel of slowly filling up with Blake. When the heat from his pelvis met the top of my pubic bone, Blake paused, dragging a heavy breath into his lungs. The fullness of my heart matched the fullness of him inside of me, and the weight of it at the same time was too much to keep me anchored. As if a dam broke, tears began to spill down my cheeks while my chest hiccuped with tiny sobs.
Blake took my face in his hands. “Angel? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” He began to pull out, but I grabbed his ass and pushed him tighter inside of me.
“No, of course not. It’s just the feel of it. It’s too much.”
Blake smoothed his thumbs along my cheeks, mingling them with my tears. He kissed the tip of my nose, quieting my sobs, before kissing each of my eyelids.
I steadied my breath and covered his hands that still rested on my cheeks. “I can’t believe how close I came to losing you—to never feeling this again.” It felt like no matter how deep inside he reached, he would never be close enough.
Blake answered with the soft rocking of his hips as his lips sought out the delicate skin at the base of my ear. “Close your eyes, baby. Feel this with me.” Blake’s air entered through his flared out nostrils and exited through the part in his lips.
I closed my eyes, trying to put myself in the same realm as him as he slowly moved in and out of my core. Any remaining doubt that Blake and I would be okay blasted into particles and floated away on a puff of his building breath.
His forehead dropped to mine, and he kissed me. “Can you feel that?” Blake shuddered.
“You’re all I can feel in every fiber of my being. I feel like you crawled inside of me.”
“Keep me there.” Inch by inch, push then pull, Blake dragged his cock seductively in and out, each slide opening up a little more of my wetness. The slicker I became, the more urgent his movements became.
Curling my arms around his back, I wrapped my legs around him and sucked him into me, my pussy drawing him in as my body held onto him as though I would fall into an abyss if it let go. I urged him on with my heels, eager to feel him come apart inside of me.
“More,” I moaned. “Give me more. Faster, baby,” I panted against his earlobe.
When Blake’s eyes opened to find mine, they glowed a startling blue. His fingers sent tingles over my scalp as he dragged them into the hair at the back of my head. Blake pulled my hair, tilting my head back at the perfect angle to nip and suck.
“There won’t be anything fast about this. You’re gonna come slow around my cock so I can feel every drop of you.”
I gasped as the head of his dick met me deep inside. The weight of his pubic bone sat heavy on my clit, awakening a need that couldn’t be tamped down. I gyrated against it, mewing as my head swirled with lust. A fire seemed to break out along my skin as I moaned, digging my heels into the hardness of his ass. Blake pulled out slowly and then pushed inside of me again until he filled me to the hilt. Over and over, he repeated the motion, waves of pleasure rippling around me, keeping me breathless and filling me with life. With him.
My insides cinched together in a tight ball, and I knew I was close. Instinctively, I used my legs to try to urge him faster, feigning to release, but he kept his pace.
“You’re right there. I can feel it.”
Sharp jabs of breath broke from my throat, and all I could respond with was an exhausted moan.
“Come for me, baby. Let me feel you.” Blake’s words hit the over-sensitized skin next to my ear as his hips gently swiveled, bringing with it the first tidal wave of pleasure.
Small bucks quaked in trembling waves, seeming to go on forever as his own release pulsated inside of me. Blake took my lips in his then, sucking in my air as we finished. Every inch of me was numb and buzzing as I kissed him lazily, drunk in euphoric bliss.
Blake rolled off of me, bringing me into the crook of his arm. “Sleep, baby. That was only the beginning. We’re not going anywhere for a long time.”
I drifted off into a blissful slumber, wrapped in a cocoon of Blake, never feeling more at peace.