For a short measure of time, everything right and wrong with the world collided in one place. Right there, in the first pew, between Sage and Belmont. Right, because she’d just allowed her heart to sing out loud and his expression was breathtaking and fierce and beautifully Belmont. Wrong, because he’d been suffering in silence all by himself.
The scrap of time hovering between them was fragile. So fragile. Because she wanted to cling and croon and cower against the world with him, but it couldn’t be that way. Support was a good thing. A great thing. But their individual strengths had been lessened by relying too heavily on each other. She’d been there with him, and while it was divine, they were capable of more. Standing on their own foundations and loving each other separately, as well as together. So words were needed first. Understanding. Before they could give in to the pull between them.
“You love me, Sage.”
“Yes. Yes.”
He turned away with a rough sound and came back. “I’ve been doing better. I haven’t been crowding you as much. Is that why?”
She wanted to dive forward and lay her head in his lap, but she forced herself to remain still. “Love like mine for you doesn’t hinge on anything to be true. It just is.” His hands were shaking and flexing with the need to reach for her. She could see them and she ached, but clarification was needed first. “I want us to touch and make love, Belmont. I need that.”
His chest expanded, dipped, grew larger than before. “Come over here to me. Just come a little closer and I’ll hand you everything inside of me.”
“I will,” she fairly wheezed under the effect of him. “But I need you to know it’s not because I feel sorry about the story you just told me. I do. I’ll be sad about it forever, straight through until the next life.” She searched for the right words. “But I want you to feel my comfort through words. I—I want my hands on you to be about something else, though. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” His voice left no room for doubt. “Need. Not neediness. We’ll learn together, Sage.”
The confidence in his deep tone bolstered her own. “Look how far we’ve already come since you came to Sibley. Someday I’ll just wrap myself around you whenever I feel like it, without having to worry or explain, like we’re doing now. And it’ll be okay. Won’t it?”
“We’ll make it okay.” His throat muscles worked. “Thank God there’s a way for me to be good for you. Thank God for that.”
Gratitude flooded Sage, but it was eclipsed almost immediately by desire so powerful, she fell forward onto her hands and knees, requiring her to crawl to Belmont. There was a heavy moment where they hovered, hovered, right on the brink of touching, before she was in his arms, heat swamping her belly like boiled syrup.
This time was different. In the gymnasium, their touches had been hesitant. That was not the case now. Belmont settled her onto his lap, straddling him. His hands were everywhere at once, sliding over the curves of her bottom, burrowing into her hair. She could barely keep up with the demands of his tongue; he stroked it against hers without ceasing for breath, their lips struggling to be wide enough. But the wicked fervor inside Sage built until she matched Belmont’s desperation, scooting close enough on his lap to meet his insistent bulge and riding it, sliding the still-damp cotton of her panties up and down his rigid fly.
“Belmont,” she moaned, her head falling back. “I need you now.”
“Sage.” He clasped Sage’s cheeks, his eyes so deep she almost fell into them. “I love you, too. You already knew, right? Tell me you knew every single time I looked at you.”
“I knew,” she whispered, laying a hard kiss on his sculpted mouth. “But I really don’t mind you saying it.”
Their laughter was exhilarated, like fizz inside a champagne bottle. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life right now. I thought you should know.”
“I’m so happy, too.” Beneath her, Belmont rocked his hips and they both groaned, teeth gritted. “It’s so silly,” Sage said, conforming her palms to his muscular chest. “But I w-wish we were somewhere warm so I could…”
“So we could see each other without clothes on.” His big hands coasted up her rib cage and covered her breasts, massaging them with reverence. At the juncture of her thighs, his erection swelled, pushing up against her panties. “I want that, too. Your breasts…I haven’t seen them yet and I already want them for my last meal. But I wouldn’t be able to think straight if you were cold.” Leaning forward, he closed his mouth around one of her nipples and sucked hard through the dress, his growl breaking every inch of her out in goose bumps. “Me, on the other hand…”
Belmont sat back in the pew, shrugging off his coat and stripping free of his shirt, buttons popping off and clinking all over the church floor. And then he was bare-chested in front of her for the very first time. If Sage had been thinking lustful thoughts before, they rioted through her mind now, overturning buses and setting structure fires. “You can’t—” She broke off and started again. “I don’t want your shirt off around anyone but me.”
He fell back against the pew, a frown marring his features, but there was a quirk on his lips that told Sage he was a touch amused. “I work on a boat, sweetest girl. It comes off now and again.”
Oh, she could see that. He was…golden baked and one hundred percent brawn, with moles in strategic places. Like the angels themselves hadn’t been able to stop kissing him when he wasn’t looking. “I know.” Even as she slammed her eyes shut, she reached out and traced the lines of his meaty pectorals with greedy fingertips. “That wasn’t even realistic of me—”
His hand locked around her wrist. “The shirt stays on going forward.” Keeping her attention, he licked her middle finger from base to tip. “Such a small thing to make the center of my universe happy. You think I wouldn’t jump at that chance?”
So they could drown in each other, no matter what, it seemed. “Is there a small thing I could do that would make you happy, Belmont?”
“Happier?”
She ducked her head.
He brought her attention back up. “You could let me button you into those dresses of yours every morning. The ones you wear…especially the bird one. That’s my favorite.”
“It’s my favorite, too,” she managed. “You just want to button them up?”
“Yes.” He moved in and traced her neckline with his tongue. “At the foot of my bed.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not a small thing, though, Sage.” Another drag of that tongue. “It’s a huge thing.”
Her thighs were beginning to tremble on either side of his hips. “I’ll let you do it anyway.”
“Because you love me.”
“Yes,” she whispered, a split second before they dove back toward each other’s mouths and consumed, because there was no other description for how they worshiped each other’s lips. Their bodies moved so close, they couldn’t have been pried apart if God himself had walked down off the altar. Sage felt not an ounce of shame as she pushed Belmont back against the creaking wood of the pew, undulating the softest part of herself over the hardest part of him. Making him shudder and groan into her mouth was the greatest triumph she could imagine, even though she knew Belmont allowed her assault. Loved it. Was man enough to let his strength be pinned by a girl half his size.
And she wanted more reaction, more awe, more lust. As much as he could give and as much as she could stand. So with barely a coherent thought, she yanked down the neckline of her dress, the bra beneath. She ended the kiss, leaning back so Belmont could see her topless for the first time, but she only caught a hazy peek of male starvation, before he jackknifed and bent down all in one move, burying his face between her breasts with a choked recitation of her name. “Beauty. You little beauty.” He turned a matter of inches, rasping his rough cheek over her right nipple…and then he sucked. Sucked her breasts in turn, as though they contained the elixir for eternal life. “You don’t know what it did to me, knowing you were one room over. Or one seat behind me in the Suburban. So classy with your legs crossed and your back straight. And all I could think about was the color of your nipples. If they would get redder when I sucked them. I should have been ashamed of myself. By the amount of times I pictured you showering or getting ready for bed. Just one room over. One room.”
Amazing. Amazing when she’d been so uncertain if he saw her as a woman at all. Turned out, he’d been holding back out of respect. Of course he had, her Belmont. “They’re yours now,” she murmured, in between gasps for air. His mouth. “You can lift up my shirt whenever you want to see.”
Sage opened her eyes to find his expression was one of pain, even though his low grunts spoke only of satisfaction. His mouth on her breasts had distracted her mind from his distended flesh, but certainly not her body, since she continued to grind down on him without cease. “Sage…” He groaned, his head pitching to one side. “I don’t want to rush you. You feel so perfect on top of me, but that part of me you’re moving on, sweetest girl…it hurts. I thought you were making it ache before, but now…watching you moan and hump me—”
“I’m sorry, honey, I’m sorry.”
His pain cleared like clouds parting. “Honey?”
“Yeah.”
She scooched closer to kiss him and boom—the agony flew back into his expression, the cords in his neck standing out like a road map. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.”
Belmont rarely cursed and she loved that about him, but that loss of his composure turned Sage on now. Big time. “Do we need…” Heat bloomed in her cheeks and neck. “I think we n-need protection. Even though it’s our first time and all, and—”
His eyes were overflowing with affection when he pressed a finger to her lips. Then his hand dropped to his pocket, taking out a black, square packet with gold writing. “Kiss me while I put it on?” He wet his lower lip like the swing of a hypnotist’s watch. Sage planted one hand on Belmont’s rock-mountain chest, using her other to help him unzip. The kiss was different this time, more provocative. More baiting. It seemed only right that he close his teeth around her lower lip and hold, while they helped each other roll the latex down to his pulsing root.
“I want you to take your pretty yellow underwear off, but I don’t want you to stand up.” His voice coasted over her like warm oil. “Tomorrow I’ll make sure to buy you more, but right now I’m going to rip them, okay? Because I don’t want you anywhere but against me.”
“Okay,” she managed on a choppy breath. “I don’t want to be away, either.”
The rip echoed in the silent church. It turned him on. She could see it. His eyes flared, a low sound coming from deep in his throat as he dropped the torn material onto the pew, never taking his attention off her once. “I’m just going to…to tuck the top of it inside you, Sage.” Saying the words seemed to undo him, his eyes squeezing shut. “After that, it’ll be up to you how much to take. And how much time you need. I won’t rush you. Even if it looks like I’m hurting or frustrated, you don’t rush. Okay?”
“Yes, Belmont.” Both of them held their breath as the thick head of Belmont’s erection slid inside her entrance, making a wet, slippery sound between them. As soon as those first couple inches were inside Sage, Belmont’s hands flew out to the sides, gripping the pew behind him, stretching and flexing the muscles of his powerful chest. Having him inside her, watching the display of male beauty up close, made Sage start panting, triggered her heart into a gallop. “It feels so good.” She reached down and circled his hardness, rolling her hips forward to take another length of flesh inside her. “You…do you have any idea how much I want you?” She breathed. “I don’t even think I knew what that meant until right now.”
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, his teeth were cinched together, that massive chest was heaving. “Explain it to m-me.”
The feminine thrill quivered in Sage’s belly, sparking out to her limbs. She was on top. She was in control. Tonight wasn’t about her, it was about both of them, but her words, her movements were bringing him pleasure. The encouragement in his eyes to free the secrets she’d been keeping, both mental and physical…it broke an undiscovered part of her loose.
Sage dug her fingernails into the meat of Belmont’s shoulders, loving his satisfied grunt. “You’re so hot,” she murmured against his mouth. “You’re so huge and hot and you don’t even realize it. Some mornings, when you follow me to get coffee and you’ve got the car keys in your hand…you look like the master of the world. And I’ve wanted you to…”
“What?” he prompted hoarsely. “Tell me.”
She pressed herself down, taking another two inches of his erection, stopping just at the point of pain, his strangled groan splitting the air. “I’ve wanted you…to want to…fuck me.”
“Sage,” Belmont ground out, surging forward. He wrapped a forearm around her back and those muscles strained, as if he wanted to yank her the final distance onto his arousal, but just managed to restrain himself. “I’ve wanted that, too, but I can’t do that—”
“Will you say it?”
“I can’t fuck you—” His body shuddered hard. “Not like I want to. Not the first time.”
“I know,” she said, rubbing their lips together. “But you want to.”
“Yes. Yes.” The forearm around the small of her back dragged lower, his palm closing around the left cheek of her bottom. “But, no. No extra pain for my Sage. I’ll die first.”
“Just a little?” she whispered, barely aware of what she was going to ask, until the question was out. “Just a little. I want to remember you taking it.” My virginity. “I want to remember exactly how it felt when—”
“When I push all the way in, Sage?” His hand turned to a fist on her backside, the opposite one making the pew groan within its grip. “I’m only halfway in right now and you’re already trying to close your thighs on me.” His gaze danced over every bit of her face. “Do you really know what you’re asking for?”
“Yes.” Her fingertips skated up his chest and neck, tangling in his hair. “Belmont, please.”
Sage was on her back within seconds, the wood creaking beneath her. Belmont’s size was too substantial for the pew, so looming above her, he braced a knee on the wood and one foot on the floor, both of Sage’s legs still spread around his waist. “I love you. God help me. I love you. God—” With a bitten off growl, he thrust the remainder of his thick flesh into Sage, resting their foreheads together and keeping their gazes fastened. “I love you. I love you. How can you feel this good? I love you.”
She was so mesmerized by Belmont’s intensity, she almost forgot about the shock of discomfort. Somehow in the low candlelight, the blue of his eyes blazed, every emotion known to mankind taking turns swimming in their depths. His hair fell all around his face, obscuring some of the beauty, and Sage frantically attempted to push it back, not wanting any part of him hidden. “I love you, too,” she whimpered. “It doesn’t hurt when you’re looking at me.”
“Then I won’t stop.”
“Don’t.” Sage shifted her hips and their moans crashed together. “Don’t stop.”
What came next was what Sage had been dreaming about in heated snippets for as long as she’d known the man so intimately connected with her body. Belmont’s hold on his control weakened just a touch, the animal eclipsing the man, and her body became the object of his lust. Flesh that he couldn’t stop himself from possessing in a base, fundamental way.
His face found the crook of her neck, a place to groan her name as he pumped, pumped, sliding her a short distance up the pew, before dragging her back and entering her harder, faster. He held her down the way a man clings to his final day on earth and Sage gloried in it. She opened her thighs as far as the bench would allow, dug her nails into his backside and urged him on, memorizing his harried words of gratitude and praise and rapture.
“Am I hurting you, Sage?” He near shouted, even as he pushed her knee higher, giving himself an angle that made his jaw go slack. “Jesus. It’s just that you’re so small inside here. I’ve never…there’s nothing else this tight. I can’t believe how you feel.”
That’s when she finally managed to stop marveling at the man moving inside her and focused on how it felt. Good. The answer was good…at first. He was all smooth and sleek, reaching places that were untouched only moments before. Absently, she decided to watch Belmont operate his boat at the first opportunity, to witness the way he moved, because she’d had no idea. No clue he could roll so fluidly, his hips slowing and angling and maintaining such a wicked cant. And then he found the right place to rub and all coherent thought turned to mist.
“Oh. Oh, there. Right there.” Her back arched all on its own. “The way you’re sliding on me.”
His sudden focus zapped like an electrical surge, his scrutiny fell over her like a blanket. “I’m not moving. I’ll stay right here.”
“Please.”
“You don’t have to say please to me, sweetest girl.” Belmont’s hair was draping down on either side of his face again, so she could only see the way he bore down on that bottom lip with white teeth, only catch the occasional glimpses of hot blue eyes, but her hands were too busy clinging to his thrusting bottom to tuck the strands behind his ears. “You have no idea, Sage. No idea what it’s doing to me…knowing I can make you feel good this way. Look at you. Do you want me to fuck you harder now?”
“Y-yes. Keep going.” Ohh. Oh, the part of him just beneath the latex was grinding on her clit. So good. So amazing. She was still so sensitive there from his mouth, and every slick ride of his hips was building that firestorm again. Watching Belmont’s tongue lick at her had pushed her past the breaking point last time, but now his clenching abdomen muscles, his rough-cut, straining arms, and that connection—that connection that boomed between them—were the light show she couldn’t stop staring at. And this was her man, forever, till death, and no one had ever touched the flesh he drove into her. Harder and harder, while his breath grew shorter, her name on his lips getting more biting and desperate. As he twisted his hips and cursed, dragging his steel erection sideways over that bud—
Sage shot through the atmosphere to a place that didn’t allow for breathing or thinking. She hung there as the most immense pleasure she’d ever experienced pierced the lower half of her body, contracting every available muscle and wringing, wringing her out like a sponge as she screamed.
“Belmont.”
“I’m here,” he rumbled, his voice like a revolution of a tornado. It was right in her ear, his breath funneling right into her mind, where she needed it.
His body was poised to snap and she responded automatically, frantic to ease her mate, undulating her hips and encouraging him to break with her. Which he did…in the most beautiful, monstrous way. She could only cling and accept as Belmont bore down, her back squeaking on the pew as he pumped, pinning her to the creaking wood one final time and shouting her name into the dark church.
“Sage.”
His giant frame quaked, his face screwed up in the same blissful agony she’d just experienced. It seemed to go on for hours and she wished it would. Could have lain beneath this man and watched the orgasm gut him forever, knowing she’d been the one to share it with him. But when he fell forward and gathered her close, she amended that wish. There was nothing better in the entire world than being held by Belmont.
“Sweetest girl,” he said into her hair, his voice made of gravel. “I need you. I need you.”
“You have me.” She kissed his cheek, his chin. “I’m right here.”
“Forever, though.” He pushed up on one elbow and found her eyes with his own. “You asked what a day is like for me. I never want a day like that again. When I call you, I need you to know it’s me on the other end, because you know my breath so well. I need to share the tide with you in the morning and the night. I think maybe I have been, even when you weren’t there. Let’s not face days alone when we can face them together, Sage. Promise me that’s possible.”
Sage couldn’t predict the future. Monday morning—the coming months—were so uncertain. Would Belmont force his way past her resolve and into the mine? Or would she find a way to block him? There were no answers tonight, though, except the one in her heart. Her life was intertwined with this man’s. Looking down at her, he was past, present, future. So she couldn’t deny his request to face their days together. Wouldn’t they always share the tide together, whether they were beside each other or apart? In the moment, nothing was more certain. “I promise.”
His answering smile told her it was the right answer. That they would be fine.
Amazing how a few hours could change everything.