Bella

Fucking finally. I fall into him and put my mouth on his.

Against my lips, he whispers between kisses, “You taste like watermelon.”

I cup my hands around his neck and tilt my head back, so he can grace the underside of my chin with his lips. Warm hands slide under my shirt and squeeze over my bra as he tastes my mouth again.

I rock against him, moving my mouth back to his. “I want you,” I tell him, “show me you want me.”

He lifts me up, so he can free himself and in a whir of hands, my dress is off. He crushes my mouth back to his, slides my panties down my legs, and leans back, staring at my naked body.

I blush, and he whispers along the skin of my legs, “I want to know what you taste like everywhere.” He parts my legs, nuzzling his head between my thighs, before swiping his tongue over where I need him most. Ah, it feels so good.

My fingers weave patterns through his dark hair while he works his mouth over my wet heat, and I lean my head back, closing my eyes, moaning out my pleasure.

His hands cup my ass, as he moves his tongue over my clit and I skyrocket toward my orgasm. But I want to feel him inside me when I come.

I can’t take it anymore. I pull Evan up, kissing his mouth and tasting myself there. “I need you,” I say to him.

He flops onto his back, grabs a condom, then moves me over to straddle him. I ease down on his thick length, and he closes his eyes with a satisfied groan. Even though he’s locked deep inside me, I somehow crave him closer; a kind of closeness that can’t be satisfied through the physical. His hands move from my back to my hips and he pushes me down harder, grinding my body against his until I’m moved from being tipsy to drunk on him.

“Bella,” he grits out, “I can’t …”

“Don’t stop.” He stills for a moment, and I let my head fall to his shoulder as I beg him to keep going. “Please, please, please,” I whisper in threes.

He holds me so tight I can’t move. “If you even breathe, I’m going to come.” He grips my hips and then shifts himself, so the angle is just right, reaching the place inside me that aches for him to offer the sweetest of relief. I strangle him in my hold as he drives into me, smothering his mouth with my wet lips.

My legs shake from how hard my orgasms consumes me, and I’m set free from the yearning, yet now a prisoner to want him again and again.

“Fuck,” he exhales, letting go and groaning through his own orgasm. He kisses me in quadruples and tens, hundreds and thousands. At least, that’s how it feels in my love drunk head. That’s how it feels on my overheated skin. That’s how it tastes when he holds my face close to his as we descend from Heaven and fall back to Earth.

Evan pulls me to his chest and we just breathe together. I listen to the rhythm of his heart under my ear, running my hands up and down his chest. The massive black dragon tattoo becomes a map for my fingers to follow, along the spine and sweeping neck of the beast. Evan shivers under my touch and I rest my chin on his stomach, so I can gaze up at him. His fingers delicately play through my hair as he silently watches me, deep in thought.

“So,” I say quietly, “What story am I touching here, Evan?” I trace the face of the dragon as it eats away at a second head attached to it.

“Not a good one,” he replies, his eyes still gazing so deeply into mine. “I was a bit like you; I didn’t have a very good family life or a good father.”

“What happened to him?”

“He took off when I was a kid. My mom raised me up all by herself.”

I kiss his stomach. “I’m glad you had her, at least.”

“Yeah.”

He’s quiet again and I don’t want to pry, but the art is too aggressive, too purposeful to not ask about it. “Does this have something to do with how you feel … about your father?”

“I thought the dragon was cool when I was younger—just walked into a tattoo shop and picked it out off the wall, so stupidly.” He laughs. “But, I grew up a little and started to realize I didn’t want things in my life to just haphazardly happen. I wanted to be in control of life. To make something of myself. I wanted my mom to have a good life after she spent hers taking care of me.”

“She must be really proud,” I smile.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “She died a while ago.”

He goes quiet and I don’t push any further, tonight. I move myself up into his arms and he rolls so he’s tucked securely behind me, his fingers strumming up and down my arm like a wispy feather, until I’m so content and warm in his embrace, my eyes grow heavy and I drift off to sleep.

When I wake, he’s stretched out on his side of the bed, arm above his head and torso on full display like fine art. I watch the rise and fall of his chest, steadily breathing as he sleeps peacefully. My heart longs for his touch. My body begs for it. I crawl to him and caress his bare stomach with my chin and lips until I rest my head on his chest and lie there. Evan comes to life, pulling me to him until I’m on top and locked under his arms with my breasts mere inches from his mouth as I slide my arms under his head. He puts his mouth behind my ear and along my neck until I’m panting his name.

“What do you want, baby?”

I don’t want; I need. I need him to put out the fire he started. I need to be able to take a full breath and have it catch within my chest. I feel like I’m spiraling out of control and he’s the only one who can stop it.

I lower my face to his and kiss his mouth. “You.” I kiss him twice more, telling him each time that I want him.

Evan moves his palms to frame my face as he looks up at me in the darkness. “Do you want to come or do you want me to make love to you? There’s a difference. And I’ll happily satisfy either.”

“Both.”

He rolls me in his arms, sinking me down under him until I’m pressed and pinned to the mattress. He kisses me until I see stars.

Until I can barely breathe.

Until I claw at his shoulders and beg for more.

He puts his forehead on mine and whispers over my lips, “Lift your hips and hold me there.” I lock myself around him. “That’s how you’re going to come, Bella.”

And I do.

Not once.

Not twice.

Because we do everything in threes.

I’m so restless in my dreams I can actually watch myself from above as if having an outer body experience. Some kind of lucid dream where I float to the ceiling and watch myself struggle with the sheets, fisting them tightly as I try to swim toward a drowning man in the ocean. I can’t free him from the bottom, it just keeps pulling him deeper, and I have no air left in my lungs to fight.

When I crack the surface I gasp, sitting up straight in bed. Evan’s bed. The room is hot and sweat trickles along my neck. Then my heart jumps as the front door closes. The neon lights of a clock sitting on the bedside table blinks 3:33 am. I sigh hard. Why is it always in threes?

Footsteps sound down the hallway, and Shep’s whines stop. “Hey, buddy,” Evan’s voice whispers down the hall.

Then the door knob twists, and Evan enters the room. I pretend to sleep.

“Bella,” he whispers into the still of the room.

I don’t answer. I don’t know why I don’t, but I remain in my faux nap, and listen as he moves around the room.

His phone beeps and he whispers into it, “Now what?”

I can’t hear who he’s speaking to, but I don’t dare breathe trying my best to hear.

“I can’t talk now. But, yes, I’m with her now.”

He listens for a while to the person on the phone, nodding his head every so often.

I try to listen as best I can. I wish I had some sort of supersonic hearing. Something that would let me hear.

“Yeah, we can’t move on Tucker until he gives us something.”

My ears perk up, and I hold my breath.

“I’m trying with her.” And then he hangs up, and tosses the phone on the bedside table.

With who? With me?

I stir, pretending to wake, squirming in bed just a bit. Like I just woke up. Like I didn’t just hear him. “Evan?”

“I’m here,” he says.

He warms me with his lips, tasting my mouth, carefully, sending my thoughts into a tailspin. His hands snake under my shirt, and I’m rendered speechless.

I swallow as he shoves my shirt above my bare breasts, his hot hands kneading me, pinching my nipples until they stiffen into perfect peaks for his mouth. Fire courses through my veins as I watch him suck and moan my name with every lick and twist. “There’s nothing I want more than you,” he laments. “Even if it costs me everything.”

“Evan …” I moan out his name as he shoves me back on the bed. His power somehow makes me feel brave. I grab a fistful of his shirt and tug him harder, wanting to feel every inch of him on me, in me, and everywhere in between.

“Easy,” he warns, cupping my head before it can land on his pillow. Evan pulls a gun from underneath, so casually, like it belongs under his head as he sleeps. It makes me swallow my heart. He sets the gun on the nightstand and then softly eases my head down on the pillow, kissing me tenderly, but with a claim on my lips, as if I were a deadly weapon, too.

He moves his mouth to my neck and I try to find the air that has vanished from the room. I’m suffocating under the spell of his mouth on me and his hands all over me.

A tiny voice inside of me whispers, ‘come back down’ as if I’m still sleeping, stuck somewhere in that all too real dream where a man is in need of my breath in his lungs to rescue him from drowning.

When he bites my neck, I see the crystal blue of his eyes flash behind my closed lids.

Instantly, I push him off, panting as he stares back at me with flushed lips and heated eyes.

“Stop,” I say in a rush, my breath still vacant in my lungs.

“I’m sorry, Bella.”

“Who was that on the phone?” I ask, shaking my head to rid myself from his spell.

“It’s not important.”

“But you were talking about Tucker.”

“Bella, there’s some things about my job I can’t tell you about, ok?”

“Were you talking about me?” I sit up in the bed, pulling the covers to my chin.

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, I was.”

I leave the bed, unable to be here any longer. “What about me?” I ask as I throw my clothes on.

He catches up to me, cupping my face in his strong hands. His eyes blaze into mine. “Bella, you have to trust me.”

“Trust you? I don’t even know you.”

He drops his hands from my face. “You don’t know me?” he asks. “How can you say that?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t mean it like that, but there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”

He steps closer. “You know me, Bella. Trust that feeling you get whenever we kiss.” He wraps an arm around my waist.

“Evan, I want to trust you.” And I do. I do feel something every time we kiss. I feel it right down deep inside my chest. I haven’t forgotten the lovers card he pulled. Or the profound meaning attached to it. I lean up and take his lips in mine.

He pulls me closer, our lips melting together like wax from a flame. I let him kiss me deeper, and I don’t stop him as he groans down my throat with his need.

I have my own needs too. I have my own wants.

And it’s all this man.

It’s all him.

“I just worry about you,” I whisper against his mouth.

He smiles. “Don’t.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

He kisses my worries away and then stares into my eyes. “I worry about you more. I worry about your safety being near a crook like Tucker.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “He isn’t a good guy, Bella.”

“I know. I’ve tried to tell my mother.”

He shakes his head. “She’s too far gone with him.” He studies me for a moment, before he kisses me once more, like he’s about to reveal all his secrets to me. “I promise I’ll tell you everything soon.” He smiles. “You have to trust me, ok?”

I smile back. “If you trust me to help you, ok?”

He doesn’t answer, but he kisses me three times. I let everything about his phone call, and the fact he left in the middle of the night slide, just because I want more of him.

He’s a cop.

They have a job to do.

And I shouldn’t question it.