Levi’s steps were hurried as he moved us up the stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. I’d been there before—could tangibly picture the memory—but the whole place felt new.
But it wasn’t the old house with its high ceilings and ornate fixtures changing the feel, it was the synchronization of us.
For so long, so many weeks and weeks, we’d been fighting this—fighting the possibility of one another. Even when we came together, the terms were rigid and the connection superficial.
Bodies, pleasure, and a means to a tension-filled end, we’d needed each of those releases.
But now, I needed him.
His body was better than I’d ever imagined it could be, and I ached with the demand to have him inside.
Moving and stroking, I wanted to feel his skin on the most sensitive part of mine.
“Levi,” I urged.
He nodded as he settled me on the bed and came down on top. Our bodies never broke, but the delicious feel of his weight made it feel like we’d been separated by miles before.
“Please,” I begged, and I felt the line of his mouth curve against my neck. He groaned there, coating me with the vibration and making my legs tighten further around his hips. “I need you inside of me.”
His head shook slightly, his lips skating along my skin on their journey to my mouth. His eyes were alight, and his hair was fully mussed as he smiled against the flesh of my lips and finished it with a nip.
“You don’t have to beg, Ivy. You couldn’t bribe me to delay this.”
A tingle tickled the line of my spine and buzzed through my head. I felt overwhelmed—almost drugged—by the intoxicating hum of avid participation.
We both wanted this—wanted each other—without a hint of regret.
Fingers bent, he dragged his hands up under my sweatshirt without stopping at the top, so I lifted my hands to ease his endeavor.
My bare skin pebbled in the dry, heated air, and my nipples stood up to peaks immediately.
He was ravenous, nearly insatiable, as he feasted on the newly uncovered bounty. The flesh of my breasts malleable and thick, he bunched them in his palms and sucked one nipple and then the other into his mouth.
I slid my hands down his back, scratching at the smooth, tanned skin with my nails until I made it to the waistband of his boxer briefs. I pushed and tugged, trying to force them over the cheeks of his ass, and he lifted his hips in an attempt to help me.
But his cock was too big and too long, and the front of his boxers wasn’t so willing to cooperate.
He stood up without prompting and pushed them down to the floor, and I got to watch.
Thick and sinewy, his muscles were defined under the surge of adrenaline. His veins stood out in relief, and I had to bite the flesh of my bottom lip to stop myself from coming.
Restless, I rocked on the bed, reaching up with my hands to call all of that perfect naked body back to me.
His smirk was devilish as he shook his head. “Not yet, baby. Your turn.”
I started to push at my pants and panties, but he didn’t make me do the work for long. He took over with ease and practice, ridding me of the pants and underwear in one smooth swoop.
“God, Ivy,” he groaned. “You are perfect.”
His weight came back quickly, and he scooted me up the bed. I went willingly with his every direction, raising my arms above my head to give him better access to full-body contact.
Instead, he paused at the movement of my hands and watched, reaching up with one of his own to pull them back.
Wrinkles pulled at the skin between my eyes as I tried to understand, but the mystery didn’t last long. He brought both hands to the space between us and studied them. The fingers, the palms. The scar from the coffee burn that first day at the station.
Tender and swift, he pressed his lips to the injured skin and breathed through his nose. Regret clouded the air between us, a physical, rolling cloud as it drifted off him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice no more than a breath.
The very last of the tension melted from my shoulders and into the bed, clearing the space between us for good.
Loving me slowly, he kissed my arms, my body, and freed my mind when he finally slid slowly inside—and turned everything I knew about sex, love, and affection upside down.
How could a man who was so rough in conversation be so soft in bed?
It was an unending question—for I feared I’d never have the answer.
After our first time having sex, I’d assumed the gentleness with which he’d treated me was a fluke. But two times down—two times he’d done his best to handle me with a careful firmness—I was beginning to think it might be more than that.
I stroked the skin of his chest, counting his steady, even breaths on the end of every exhale. He was up to 1,547 by the time I realized he hadn’t been sleeping, as previously suspected, for any of it.
“What’s on your mind?” he whispered into the top of my hair.
“Dichotomies.”
His chest jerked under my cheek, and a small air-filled chuckle rolled gently into the silence. “Shit, Ivy.”
The teasing tone of his condescension brought my head up and around, but I kept my body lax. Evidently, orgasms were a good mood stabilizer. “What?”
“Only you could be thinking about something as complicated as dichotomies during the post-coital glow.”
“Hey, it’s your fault,” I defended. “You’re the one who holds conversations like every word is part of a full-frontal attack and then makes love like he’s disarming a bomb. You’re the contradiction.”
“Makes love?” he asked softly, one gentle hand tangling easily into the tresses of my hair and then smoothing through to the ends.
I settled my chin on a hand on his chest. “I seem to remember you not liking when I called it fucking.”
He smiled, big and open, and the corners of his mouth made it all the way to his beautiful blue eyes. They were clearer like this—almost crystalline in nature—and he finally seemed to be at rest from the inside out. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Fucking is great. I’ve used it as an outlet for stress more times than you want to know.”
I scowled, and unbelievably, his grin only grew.
“But not me and you,” he whispered. “No matter how rough, how raw, how energized—no matter what we try—fucking will never be a good name for what we do.”
My skin tingled at the suggestion of all the ways we could be intimate with one another and the obvious promise that he would see to our accomplishment of all of them.
It made me think about everything he’d been through, everything he’d seen and lived in his life.
Everything he’d told me so confidentially.
“I won’t ever tell anyone,” I said softly.
His head jerked, and the space between his eyes narrowed as he searched mine. He was trying to follow how I’d gotten there—what I meant—but the chances he would get there without some explanation were pretty slim.
I was aware of the mental jump I’d made, even if I wasn’t completely sure how it’d come about.
“About everything you told me. You and Grace and what really happened,” I expanded. “I understand why you kept it a secret. I understand, and I respect it. I won’t tell anyone with production or anyone outside of it. I won’t tell anyone.”
His mouth moved from a curve to a line, and I had a twinge of regret for ruining his good mood. But it was important that he knew—important enough to ruin the moment if necessary.
“I’m sorry to bring it up.” He sighed, but I pushed forward. “But I’m more sorry I threw it in your face earlier.”
The brittle shell he’d pulled into place cracked a little as he tucked some of my hair behind my ear. “It’s not that, Ivy. I don’t blame you for being upset before, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re willing to keep all of this to yourself.”
My eyebrows drew together as I tried to figure out what that left to be upset about. “Okay…then why did your face turn—”
“Into an asshole again?” he interjected, and I laughed a little.
“Well…yeah.”
His sigh was heavy, but he tempered the impact by wrapping his arms around my back and running a finger through my hair.
“Because I have more to tell you. The rest of the story.”
“The rest?”
He nodded and searched my eyes. I thought at first it might be to see how I was feeling, but after a few moments, the real purpose became clear.
He was looking for a life raft.
Unease and unrest swirling in his gut, he was worried about telling me whatever was left.
“Go ahead,” I urged, despite the newfound pit in the bottom of my stomach. What the hell else was he hiding?
“Grace was pregnant.”
I gasped, the fingers of one hand shooting up to cover my mouth. He closed his eyes tightly at the sound, and I watched, transfixed, as a single plump tear rolled gently down from the outside corner of his eye.
With a gentle sweep, I wiped the tear away, hoping it was linked to his pain.
“Levi,” I breathed.
“It was really early. Six weeks. She hadn’t told me, and I don’t even think she knew. But the autopsy…” He choked, and I forced a sob back down my throat.
“Oh, Levi,” I soothed, pressing my lips to his cheek and watching, stunned, as two of our tears mingled on his face.
“Red covered it up. Asked the new coroner not to put it in the report. They’d been friends since they were kids, so he did it. No one knows except the two of us.” He grinned, though there was no happiness in it. “Well, the three of us now.”
“Why? Why hide it?”
“It felt wrong, adding to everyone’s burden. It felt wrong telling everyone when Grace didn’t even know. And it felt wrong, giving Gaskins another victim.”
My heart trilled and spasmed as I worked to make room in my heart. By giving myself over to Levi, I was giving myself over to a hell of a lot more. Grace, and everything she stood for. Levi’s pain at the loss of her and the effects of a relationship unresolved. And a tiny beginning of a baby, one who never got the chance to be loved.
Levi would walk through fire for the people he cared about; or in this case, he’d lovingly carry the entire load. Grace’s family didn’t have to hurt because Levi took on the pain for them.
“You’re a hero hidden in an asshole, Levi Fox.”
He smiled then. Even laughed—a small rolling chuckle.
“You’re an angel hidden in…” I raised a brow, challenging him to finish the rest. But he was ready for the test, and he’d studied all the right answers.
His wink was subtle but life-changing. “Hollywood. An angel hidden in Hollywood.”
“Appropriate,” I praised. “Los Angeles is the City of Angels.”
“You sure you can’t stay for some breakfast?” he asked as he pressed me into the hard metal of my car. Hands to my hips and eyes full of affection, he looked at me now in a way I’d only dreamed of in the past.
The morning air was soft and dewy with condensation and felt thick in my throat as I answered. “I wish I could, but I left without saying anything to Cam. I have to get back before she wakes up, and so I can get ready for work.”
“I can’t believe this is the last day of filming.” His hands tightened to the point of almost pain on my hips. “I can’t believe you’ll be leaving soon.” He laughed—just a tiny, broken chuckle. “I guess I’m finally getting what I wished for, huh?”
“We’ll work something out.”
The words were out before I even had time to consider them. Time to consider how ready I was to work to make them happen.
How to make them happen.
Levi had been right when he’d said fighting was part of feeling for us. But how could we focus on fighting each other when we had to fight the distance?
Levi leaned in and touched his lips to mine. His movements soft and slow, he swirled my tongue with his own and inhaled. In perfect unison, we stepped into bliss together and fell into an abyss.
I’d foolishly thought some of the appeal of Levi’s kiss had been the unexpected. We’d almost always gone at one another without prior consent or intent, and the passion was the potion.
But I was wrong. It was just as good as all of the times we’d taken each other by surprise.
And this time, instead of an end to an argument, it was the beginning of something better.