KATE
Creed’s kiss wasn’t sweet or gentle. It sure as hell wasn’t romantic. It was desperate and lonely, filled with guilt and terror and confusion. Overriding it all was raw male need. She kissed him back, went to war with his mouth, tried to convince him that he needed her, in all the ways she couldn’t with words. Her tongue stroked his like a plea. Come back to me. We were meant to be together. She’d had a year to get over her fears about what it truly meant to give herself to another person. She’d had a year to do a hell of a lot of thinking.
She wasn’t leaving there without him, or she wasn’t leaving. Period.
Her hands hid the warm, broad wall of his chest. His muscles were slick and damn with sweat. She dug her nails in to his shoulder and he grunted against her lips. She applied more force and he got the picture. He fell backwards, dragging her down with him. They fell in a crumpled heap on the ground, her dress twisted around his denim clad legs.
The breeze blew softly by them, cooling some of the sweat that beaded along her hairline and rustling a few of the leaves above them. The branches moved softly in the woods, but the only other sound was them.
The frantic nipping, licking, biting, sucking of their mouths on each other’s bodies, the swish and sway of fabric as their hands clutched furiously at it. Finally, the metallic zing of a zipper. Creed shifted under her, enough to get his damn jeans out of the way. He went for her dress next, rucking it around her hips.
Kate’s hands fell to his chest as she righted herself. His skin was damp. He was a wall of muscle, maybe even harder, firmer, more glorious than she remembered. Hard labor out in the bush had taken its toll, and god, it was beautiful. She inhaled sharply, taking in the crisp scent of the woods and the duskier, stronger, more potent scent of sweat and man. She dipped her head and traced her lips along the column of his neck. She tasted his stubble and below that, his collarbones, where the salty tang of sweat lingered. He invaded her sense, pushing each one to the brink.
Her heart beat frantically as she reached between them. His cock was heavy and hot in her palm. She traced her hand along his shaft, to the tip, which was already soaked. She smeared that wetness down the length of him while her body begged for it. She needed him to be inside of her. She needed to take all of him, over and over again. She needed him to take her to the brink, to make her feel what she’d never felt before, before him. She needed him to put back the pieces and make her whole again.
She gripped him in her hand and as her eyes slammed shut, she slowly lowered herself down. She didn’t take him right away. She let him slide through her folds, let him feel how wet and swollen she was for him already.
Creed groaned and shameless bucked upwards, trying blindly to find her entrance. She throbbed deep inside and her wild need clenched her insides in a tight, unrelenting fist. Creed’s hands circled around her hips, to the globes of her ass, where he gripped her hard.
“You don’t get to decide for me,” she panted. “Whether I love you or not.”
“Kate,” he moaned.
Her eyes flew open and she stared into his dark orbs. “Say it,” she demanded. “Tell me that you know that you don’t get to decide for me whether I love you or not. Tell me that you know that I’m strong enough to make that decision for myself and understand the consequences.”
“Lord, you were always meant to be mine,” Creed ground out. His fingers kneaded the flesh of her ass and tendrils of pain and pleasure shot through her. “Always. From the first second I saw you. I don’t know what it means to love someone. Not truly. You said yourself that you don’t believe in it.”
“I said I didn’t believe in romance. I made it pretty clear that I believe in love. I don’t know if either of us knows how to do it. Love.” She swiveled her hips and his cock slid through her folds again. He was soaked with her wetness and likely his own. “But we could learn. We could try. Instead of just fucking giving up.” She planted her knees in the earthy forest floor and rose up. “Or maybe I should go. Since you didn’t think you were missing anything all this time.”
Creed let out a growl that was so fearsome it shook the trees around them. He slammed her roughly against him, trapping his hard dick between them. Which much have heart like a motherfucker, but he didn’t even so much as wince.
“I tried to do what was best for you,” he ground out.
“Like some noble fucking hero.”
“Kate…” his hips hammered upwards, drilling his cock into the side of her thigh. A vein stood out at his forehead and throbbed at his neck. It did something wild to her insides, to see him like that, so out of control. “Please… tried- to- save you… from me…” he ground out.
She shook her head and gyrated her hips, grinding against him. “You forgot the most important part. You never asked me what I wanted.”
“I- do you have any idea- how hard it was to stay away?”
She bore down harder, his cock drilling uselessly into her leg. “As hard as this? Right now?”
Creed let out another growl that echoed around them. She rocked against him helplessly, because in truth, she needed him. Needed him everywhere. Inside of her. In her life. She needed him more than she’d ever needed another person, and that did scare her. It had scared her for her entire life, but she was over fear. She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted them.
“Fuck this,” Creed said heatedly. “I can’t play nice anymore. You want me? You have me now.” He spun her in one fluid, violent, shocking motion. He was on top of her and she was on her back, wet leaves and tree roots pressing into her spine and shoulders and neck. The cold of it was astounding, given that the sun was so hot above them.
Creed brought his cock to her entrance. He didn’t hesitate. He pushed inside of her, filling her up in one long, thick, heated stroke. He retreated, but he pushed inside again, harder, further. He did it over and over and she clenched around him. Her legs wrapped around his hard waist, her heels dug into the glorious muscles of his ass. She buried her fingers in hair that had grown out almost to his ears. She craved the rasp and scrape of his long beard against her cheek.
He fucked her hard, so hard her back sunk an inch into the dirt below them. He filled her up, every single inch of her. Kate buried her face in his neck and let her tears flow. They scalded her cheeks, not for what had happened or the year they’d missed, but because she finally, finally, felt complete. She’d been missing him, missing that piece of herself. Not just in the past year, but her entire life.
She let him claim her. She let him mark her. She let him fill her in so many ways that weren’t physical. Her body responded as Creed gave himself up to her. They were wild, the sex unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
She opened herself up. Body. Heart. Soul. Everything. She gave Creed everything and she knew he felt it too, the connection, the wild energy, the rightness that had always been there.
When she was close, her muscles straining, body aching, clenching all around him, he gripped her face in his hand.
“That’s it, Kate. Come for me. Come so fucking hard.”
He pushed inside of her, faster, harder, filling her, hitting spots that she hadn’t felt before. He went deeper, stroking her inside, caressing her, building the heat further, beyond anything she thought possible. She trembled below him, around him and then he tucked his hand under her ass and lifted her hips and thrust harder, taking everything to an entirely new level.
She felt the edge, felt it slip away, like a landslide under her feet. She screamed as she tumbled off that cliff, tumbled into the most insanely fucking painful, pleasure filled climax she had ever known. She came hard around him, her body squeezing, clenching, gripping.
Creed let out a low roar that was unlike anything she’d ever heard. His body tensed above her as he thrust hard, one more time. He came inside of her wildly, his body bucking and shaking, trembling violently while she did what she could to hold on. The violent spasms brought her to another aching climax, so close on the heels of the second, but sweeter, the waves taking her, tumbling her, throwing them together until it felt like they were sinking and flying all at once.
Creed collapsed against her, his body still trembling, his cock throbbing inside of her. “Fuck,” he rasped against her ear, and that about summed it all up.
“I think- we just did.” Her arms closed around him, around his chest and they just about met around his back. Almost.
He got an elbow under him and lifted his crushing weight off her chest. She could finally breathe again, but she missed the heaviness of him pressing her down into the earth.
She looked up into his dark brown eyes. “I’m not leaving.”
“Kate-”
“No.” She shook her head. “You think I’m just going to go back to my life after this?” she laughed, though it wasn’t actually funny. “No way. You’re wrong on so many levels. I do need you. I’m not some fragile piece of glass that is going to break. I think I proved that to both of us already. I need you and you need me. That’s how it is, so I’m not leaving. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Unless, you know, you want to move, or something. Then I’ll leave. With you. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I’m coming with you. Like a bad STD or something.”
Creed stared down at her in surprise then his lips parted, his face screwed up and little lines formed at the corners of his eyes. His shoulders shook as he laughed. “Oh lord. A bad STD. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted one of those before now.”
Kate laughed too, and god, it felt good. It felt good to be there, on the damn ground, leaves in her hair, dirt all over her, in the middle of the woods, the sky above them, looking down on them, with just the man she already knew she’d spend the rest of her days loving.
“I’m staying,” she said again, this time softer. “You can’t get rid of me.”
She expected him to argue, but when Creed turned back to her, it was clear he was done. “Alright then. Since we’ve done nothing conventionally so far, why start now. Marry me?”
She blinked. “Are you serious? Marry you? Why ruin a good thing with that?”
“I see your opinions of marriage are right up there with your thoughts about romance.”
“Marriage? Let’s just- well- if you agree to do it up here and not tell anyone, I think I’m okay with that.”
“That ashamed of me already?”
“No,” she giggled. “It’s just- I want it to be a promise between you and me. Just us. Just for a while. Before we let the rest of the world know.”
Creed eventually cracked a smile. “I like that,” he said, voice raw. “I like that a lot. You’re a strange one, Kate.”
“Right.” She wrapped her hands around the back of his neck. “So are you. I guess we make a good pair then.”
“The best,” he agreed, before he bent his head and gave her a lingering, searing kiss. “We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”
She threaded one hand through his long, dark hair. “I agree.” When she kissed him again, all the fire was back. She had every intention of making up for every single minute of that year apart. The spark in his eyes when she pulled away, told her that he was totally on board with her plans.