I LOVED NATALIE.
That was something I couldn’t lie about, not even if she’d be better off not knowing. If she didn’t know, then she couldn’t accidentally say something to a police officer or a lawyer, she couldn’t accidentally bring it up in court if it came to that. But I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, and so now it was out there.
With any luck, it wouldn’t come back to bite us both in the ass.
We were back at my place after I finally convinced London that I wasn’t anywhere close to finished with all the groveling I needed to do.
And now I needed to set about showing Natalie how much I loved her. This time, I couldn’t hold back. Words weren’t enough. Especially not since some of my actions proved my words to be true while others made me out to be a liar.
Maybe it was the middle of the day, but I didn’t care. As soon as we were back in my house, I took Natalie straight to my bed and kicked Snoopy out of the room, ignoring his whine of protest.
She was already reaching for me before I made it back to the bed, using her other hand to fumble with the latches on her brace.
“Let me,” I said, because it would be quicker. I unhooked all the clasps as fast as I could and carefully took it off her leg.
But there was nothing careful about the way Natalie was reaching for me. She had one hand digging into my hair and the other making a fist in my shirt, tugging me until I almost toppled onto her.
And then everything was a blur of need. Clothes flying everywhere. Tongues and teeth and hands on every bit of bare flesh we could find. Skin, sweat, salt… My mind went blank to anything other than the woman beneath me. She tasted like heaven.
With surprisingly strong and determined hands, she pulled me closer.
“Slow down, baby,” I said, dusting her collarbone with my lips.
“I can’t. I can’t slow down. I need you.”
But she already had me, in more ways than she could possibly understand. I’d meant it when I told her I was hers. She owned me in every way that mattered.
I slid a hand between our bodies. Slick heat welcomed my touch. She felt so good I couldn’t stop my groan as I pumped my fingers into her core a few times, imagining how that same heat would feel around my dick.
“Please,” she said, her voice soft and shaking as she dug her fingers into my shoulders.
I rolled the pad of my thumb over her clit, spreading her wetness and making her writhe beneath me.
“I want you inside me,” Natalie ground out, her entire body shaking with the need for release. She bit her lower lip and tried to glare at me, but she was too close to orgasm for that to really work out.
“Not yet.”
She whimpered in frustration.
“I want to watch you come first,” I explained.
Then I put all my focus on her—watching the way her eyes shifted focus when I altered the way I teased her clit, listening for the slight change in her breathing when I picked up the pace, noticing the gradual shift as her skin turned from pale pink to a dusky rose.
Her orgasm was so quiet I would have missed it if not for the way her mouth fell open and her eyes scrunched closed.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” I said as I lowered my head for a kiss. She tasted like apples and rain. I wanted to drown in her, and she seemed willing to open up and let me do exactly that.
Shifting my weight off of her, I reached for a condom in my nightstand and shucked it free from the wrapper. I’d barely rolled it on before Natalie was trying to drag me back on top of her.
She shifted her hips and raised her knees, her body becoming a welcoming cocoon. I sank to my knees and buried myself in her in a single stroke.
Her heat was so intense I almost melted. It’d been too long for me—much too long since I’d experienced the pleasure of a woman’s body, and even longer since I’d been with a woman I loved. I tried to hold my weight off her—the thought of hurting her was more than I could bear—but she wrapped her arms and legs around me, clinging to me, and it was all I could do not to lose control.
It was all happening too fast. I wanted to last, but every time I tried to slow down, she angled her hips in a new way or slid her hands across my ass, grabbing hold of my flesh and dragging me back to her.
“You’re holding back,” she said, panting. “Don’t do that. I need you.”
“I’m not. And I already told you—you have me.”
She took my face between both of her hands, forcing me to look deep into her eyes. “You’re holding back,” she repeated.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Natalie kissed me hard, her tongue working against mine the way she’d used it on my cock before. Her teeth nipped my lip—just hard enough to make me suck in a breath of air—before she released me. “You won’t hurt me,” she said adamantly. “That’s not who you are.”
She had a lot more faith in me than I did where that was concerned. I’d already hurt her enough that she’d felt the need to leave.
But Natalie seemed uninclined to give an inch on this. She fisted a hand in my hair, kissing me with tongue and teeth and fervent hunger. Wrapping her legs around my waist and fusing our bodies together with a power in her thighs I didn’t know she possessed, she drew me deeper than ever.
After a few more blind thrusts, her pussy clenched and quivered around me, which was all it took to send me over the edge. I buried my face in a pillow next to her head and shouted with my release.
When I rolled off her, I drew her over with me until she was halfway draped across my body. Her limbs were warm and lax. Warm breath feathered across the slick skin of my chest.
She tipped her face up toward mine and stared into my eyes, her fingertips dancing gently over my chest.
“If you keep touching me like that, I’ll be ready for round two in about twenty seconds,” I said, trying to laugh it off even though I was entirely serious.
A soft chuckle fell through her lips, followed by her tongue darting out to wet them again. “Ethan?” she said, suddenly tentative and uncertain, when moments before she’d been demanding and in control.
My gut clenched at the return of her timidity. “Hmm?” I replied, hoping I hadn’t gone and fucked up again already.
“I think I love you, too,” she said.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and within moments, her breathing evened out. She was asleep before I could question her. She thinks she loves me? Did that mean she wasn’t sure, or did she not know how to be certain? Or maybe she was just scared to admit the truth.
Whatever it was, I wouldn’t be getting any sleep for a long time to come. My chest felt full and heavy, like my heart was too big to fit and my lungs were over capacity.
Natalie loved me. Maybe she wasn’t sure about it yet, but I was. She was choosing to trust me with her heart—her broken, battered, bruised heart.
The weight of responsibility that came with her love was easily as heavy as what I felt when it came to raising Carter.
I couldn’t fuck this up.