SAM CARRIED ME through his house and straight to his bedroom, our mouths only breaking as he set me down near the foot of his bed. Aside from a sliver of moonlight filtering through the blinds of a single window, the room was completely dark, and I instantly became lost within my own self-awareness. The way my heart pounded in his presence. The quickening of my pulse under the intensity of his stare. How my entire body ignited with the promise of being wholly devoured and thoroughly appreciated by this beautiful man.
Calm and looking as though he didn’t know where to begin first, he stood in front of me, his chest rising and falling in short heaves of anticipation. My mouth went dry, and I shifted on unsteady feet, my head dazed and my equilibrium off balance from the knowledge of what we were about to do. This was it. The moment that would change everything. The point of no return. After this, there was no going back. No turning clocks. No pressing rewind.
Are you ready for this, heart? Please be ready for this.
I closed my eyes, breathing slowly, trying to catch my bearings.
Callused hands framed my face, their gentleness sending a rash of heat to skate down my neck and spine. Sam barely touched me, yet I felt him everywhere, like an electric current zinging through my veins, tingling the tips of my fingers and curling my toes. Leaning in, he brushed his lips over mine in a feather-light caress.
Once. Twice. Three times.
A silent question. An out. He was giving me a chance to change my mind, but retreating wasn’t an option. I wanted this, more than anything, even though that want didn’t come without fear or anxiety.
We were treading along the edge of a two-hundred story cliff, ready to jump off into this unknown abyss. The climb alone had been long and hard, but the fall, the fall terrified me.
What lurked beneath the surface?
What would happen once we hit rock bottom?
Reaching up, I grabbed Sam’s wrists, anchoring myself to him, and it dawned on me, that’s what he had become—my anchor. Over the past two months, when the waves had come crashing down, he’d been there to keep me steady. He’d prevented me from floating adrift, from drowning in my own sea of sad misery.
“Be patient with me,” I whispered, knowing he would but needing to speak the words anyway. “I’m not sure I remember how to do this.”
His thumbs stroked my jaw, those eyes of his boring into me with such tenderness it made my heart clench. “There is no way in hell you could ever get this wrong.”
I swallowed hard at his words, the way his fingertips glided down my neck and across my exposed shoulders. His hands disappeared beneath the neckline of my dress, pushing the gray cashmere free from my arms, and I watched as the fabric slinked and tumbled to a ringed pile at my feet. Standing there in nothing more than my undergarments and boots, I shivered. Not from the cold but from the powerful energy flowing between us. I’d been naked in front of him before, but each time had always been without expectations.
Tonight, there was a whole host of them, and the idea that I might somehow disappoint him worried me.
“Jesus, Cassi,” he rasped, reaching out to drag his fingers along my bare skin. He touched me as if he’d never touched a woman before, and I let out a slow, shaky breath. “You’re so fucking beautiful, baby.”
Another full body shiver jolted through me at the gruff, huskiness of his voice, the unmistakable desire in his tone. The look in his eyes, the adoration, it made me feel sexy, wanted.
Gingerly, I lifted my chin in silent surrender.
With my face turned up to his, Sam stepped forward, completely erasing the space as his mouth parted and captured. He ran his tongue lazily along the seam of my lips, tugging at the lower and then the upper. Soft nips and gentle traces. After a few moments, he dipped it inside to tangle it with mine, and I gripped his shoulders for support, my knees weakening with every stroke.
This kiss was different than the ones before it. Not rushed nor frantic but slow and sensual—as if he were learning my pieces in order to find their perfect fit.
When that wasn’t enough, when it was clear he needed more, he wrapped the length of my hair up in his fist, drawing my head back. He deepened the kiss, spinning me in one swift motion and walking me toward his bed. My legs collided with the mattress, and Sam guided my fall, laying me down in the center. He didn’t follow. He took a measured step back and stood there, unmoving. Dark eyes drank me in from head to toe, and my chest stuttered at the way he stared at me, my body shaking with unsettled nerves.
“Sam,” I begged, voice a mixture of raw need and vulnerability. Need. Yes, I thought. I needed him. Needed him closer. Needed him to quiet my restless and self-deprecating thoughts. “Please.”
Looking like a man on the verge of losing control, he stalked forward, his strong arms holding him up as he leaned over me in a predatory stance. He slipped a hand behind my back, unclasping my bra and tossing it aside at the same time a primal groan erupted from his chest. My nipples hardened in expectation, and he wasted no time covering them with his hot mouth, his tongue swirling and creating lazy circles over the rosy flesh before darting due south.
Barely there kisses, one after the other, were pressed to the area right below my navel. Heat flared and engulfed, fire igniting wherever he touched. It was almost too much, but at the same time, not enough.
I wanted more.
I needed more.
Sam trailed his lips lower and lower, my body twitching at the way his stubble scratched at my sensitive skin. I craned my head to the side to watch him, and as he kissed me through my panties, the warmth of his mouth burning through the delicate lace, my fingers twisted in the sheets and my hips jerked. He did it again, and there was no muting the lust filled gasp that punched from my lungs and floated toward the ceiling.
“Does that feel good?”
I bit my lip and nodded, my heart fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. He hadn’t even touched my clit and it was already throbbing for attention.
“Good.” A prideful grin stretched across his face. “There is a lot more where that came from.”
I didn’t doubt it.
His movements were slow and sure as he pulled back to tug the boots from my feet, one by one, taking my socks with them and discarding them onto the floor. It wasn’t long before his hot hands returned, splaying along and riding up the outside of my thighs where they stopped at my hips. Nimble fingers curled around the thin strings of my thong. He dragged them down just as slowly, the speed torturous as I lay there in the dark, on the way to being completely bared to him.
All the while, my eyes never left his.
Watching him watching me was not only intense but titillating, erotic.
Once Sam had me completely naked, he straightened himself. He wet his lips, appreciating his work—appreciating me.
“Every time I think you’ve managed to steal my breath for the last time, you prove me wrong.” Pressing a single knee to the mattress, he spread my legs wide and placed a passionate trail of open-mouthed kisses from my ankle up to my center. “I’m desperate to show you just how damn breathless you make me.”
Wet and warm, the soft tip of his tongue licked out, running the length of my crease, and I moaned.
Oh, my hell.
My back arched, and my insides melted. Gone. I was completely gone. Dragged into a world of sensation and all-consuming pleasure. My right hand moved, curling into his soft hair, tugging at the strands.
“Fuck. You taste incredible.” He licked again and again in short and long strokes, like he couldn’t get enough of me, and I instinctively pushed against him, wanting more. “That’s it, baby. Take whatever you need from me.”
Everything. I need everything.
“Ah God,” I whimpered through sharp, bursting pants. “Just like that. Please don’t stop.”
Sam groaned, the hum of it pulsing deliciously against my throbbing clit, and I swear his next words only heightened my arousal. “I won’t. Not until you’re coming on my tongue.”
Muscles tightened and tightened. A tingling started in my belly, gathering at an intense pace, and I writhed beneath him, chasing the high my body was desperately seeking. My hips lifted with each skillful flick of his tongue, and as my orgasm reached its peak, he clamped down on my thighs, rendering me helpless. He sucked on my clit, hard. I floated for a few minutes in a white cloud full of stars before falling into a muddled mess of weak limbs and post-sexual bliss.
I barely registered him crawling over me, barely registered his eyes drinking me in as if he were ready for a second round at the bar and I was his liquor of choice. Begging and unyielding, his heavy cock pressed into my stomach, and I was too far gone, in too deep, to deny myself or him of this pleasure.
Pushing up on my elbows, I claimed his mouth, tasting myself on his tongue.
My God. I think I loved the taste of me on him more than I loved his mouth on me.
Shaky hands flew to his waist.
Clumsy fingers fumbled with the hem of his shirt.
He assisted in its removal, propping his weight on one arm while tugging at the collar and yanking it over his head. We kissed for a few more minutes before he rolled off me, standing to toe off his boots and unbutton his jeans. He shoved them and his boxers down his thighs and turned momentarily, fishing a condom out of his nightstand drawer before returning to his former position. As he hovered, the pale glow of the moonlight flashed along his naked chest, and my entire world slammed to a screeching halt.
The air in the room thickened, choking me.
Suffocating.
Tears sprung to my eyes but didn’t fall.
They collected and pooled, blurring my vision.
Despite the uncontrollable shaking of my hands, I reached up, tracing the gnarly red scar that started below his neck and descended along his breastbone. The skin was fully healed but shiny. I hadn’t seen it before this moment, at least not in its entirety, and Sam, as intuitive as he was, sensed my frailty.
“Cass ...” My name sounded like a sad plea as it fell from his lips.
I glanced into his soulful eyes, curious as to what I might find and not at all prepared for what awaited. The emotion staring back at me was so overwhelming, and for the first time that night, I saw a tiny glimpse of the fear I felt.
Sam was afraid, too.
“We can stop,” he offered.
I studied him for a few long, erratic beats, my heart lost in a discorded rhythm of my past and my present, possibly my future. My fingers smoothed away from the scar, down the dips and ridges that made up the rest of his strong torso. Corded muscle tightened and contracted with each one of his timid breaths, and I couldn’t get over how devastatingly handsome he was.
I’m not sure why it even came as a surprise.
Everything about Sam was beautiful—raw, real, intense. He had no filters. He didn’t need them. What you saw was what you got. And for a second, I wondered what it would have been like if I’d met him first—if I’d fallen in love with him first, if I’d had a chance to give him my whole heart and not its shattered and damaged pieces.
“We don’t have to do this, Cass.” Like the gentleman he was, he began to pull away.
I held him still.
“I need you,” I said in a rush, my head and my heart finally finding themselves together on the same page. “I need you, Sam. More than anything.” I smashed my lips to his, kissing him as if my life depended on it, and perhaps it did. He kissed me back, and we kissed until I wasn’t sure if it were my lungs doing the breathing or his performing the action for me. “Make me whole, please.”
Everything from that point forward happened so fast I could hardly keep up. I heard the crinkle and tear of the condom packet, felt the brush of his knuckles along my inner thigh as he sheathed his steely erection. One hand slid behind my back, settling at the base of my spine and pulling me closer, the other flattening against my palm. Fingers threaded and locked. Breaths came in shorter, almost dizzying spells. Anticipation mounted. Sam rocked forward, probing hot and hard against my slick entrance.
I lifted my hips and curled my legs around his waist, my heels digging into his tight ass.
On one steady and controlled thrust, he slid into me, deep.
My back arched high off the bed, and a cry of pleasure ripped from my throat as he buried himself as far as he could possibly go—our hips flush and bodies intimately molded. It’d been too long. The sensation of being filled, his thickness and length and hardness, the overwhelming pressure, it all took me longer than normal to catch my breath.
Sam’s nose trailed along mine, his grip on my hand remaining firm. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, barely able to speak around the intense pleasure. “More than okay. Are you okay?”
“Never been better.” He smiled against my lips before capturing my mouth in a searing kiss, and I became sublimely blind to the world around us.
All I felt was him.
All I saw was him.
All I wanted was him.
Sam.
He rolled his hips, slow at first, as if testing the pace, and when I pressed up into him, seating him deeper, he found a rhythm that had me closing my eyes and matching his thrusts. His palm slid against mine as sweat collected on our skin, the temperature in the room feeling like one thousand degrees under the weight of him, but he didn’t let go.
He never let go.
He made love to me the way I imagined he created his art, handling me with care and delicacy, piecing me together slowly before mending and permanently closing all the jagged fissures of my shattered heart.
His mouth alternated between kissing my lips and devouring my neck, his tongue trailing hot over my collarbone. He sucked on my breasts, licked at my nipples, and then returned to my ear, whispering how good I felt.
“Fuck, you feel good.”
Our breaths mingled in heavy and needy pants, and his name fell from my lips in pleading whimpers as the tension inside me continued to climb. A hand snaked between us and went straight for my clit, his fingers pressing down and circling.
And circling.
And circling.
“Oh God, I’m going to …” I cried, feeling everything in my body tighten.
Sam moved faster, harder, our bodies coming together and combusting in one heady explosion. The aftershocks of pleasure came in drugging waves, knocking me back and dragging me under, and as I sank into the mattress, limbs boneless, Sam collapsed on top of me. I held on to him, my arms banding around his torso to prevent him from moving.
We lay still, hearts erratic but beating in tune. When our breaths slowed, and our chests evened, he propped himself on his elbows, his hips still pinning me beneath him. With trembling hands, he shoved the wet hair from my face and rested his forehead on mine, keeping his eyes closed as if opening them would pull us out of this moment.
Life wasn’t perfect, but it had perfect moments, and it was in moments like these where we found ourselves, where we realized that maybe the heartbreak was worth the pain, because even in pain, there was beauty, and in beauty, there was undeniable happiness.
When Sam finally opened his eyes, he immediately sought my gaze. His expression was hard to see in the dark, but the way he stared down at me, as if I were his entire world and the only thing he’d ever need, filled that last remaining crack in my once broken heart.
The intensity of what we’d done, what we shared, hit me like a rogue wave, and I couldn’t breathe. Frantic, I clawed my way through the surface of my emotions, trying to figure out exactly what it was I felt.
Not guilt nor regret.
Not fear nor shame.
Not grief.
Love—it was love.