I feel him grin against my lips. “Let’s go to bed, baby.”
“I like the sound of that…”
We turn toward the entrance, eager to get inside. Impatient, after hours of delay, to finally bealone, skin on skin, enjoying a few scant hours together in the privacy of a hotel room before we’re forced to board the bus in the morning, heading for Indiana.
Five hours.
Not nearly long enough for everything I want to do with him.
We keep it PG as we walk through the lobby, fully aware that prying eyes are never far away. But as soon as the elevator doors close behind us, all pretense of propriety disappears. Ryder backs me up against the wall, hands sliding beneath my thighs as he hoists me up against him. My dress rides high as my legs wrap around his waist. My head lolls back as his mouth kisses the column of my throat, torturously slow as he nibbles his way from the hollow beneath my ear down to my collarbones.
“God, Ryder,” I whisper, threading my hands into his thick hair. “I feel like…”
“What, baby?”
“Like I’m not even real unless you’re touching me. Like this, your hands on my skin, is the only time I truly exist.”
His eyes meet mine, burning with intensity. He doesn’t respond — not verbally, at least. His mouth crashes against mine, a brutal attack, an unequivocal declaration that he feels the same way. When the elevator doors chime open on the penthouse floor, he walks out with my legs still wrapped tight around his waist, his mouth never disengaging from mine as he carries me to his suite.
He pins me to the door with his hips so he can retrieve the key from his back pocket. My bones turn to liquid at the contact, my fingers flexing in the fabric of his shirt as he shoves the key into the slot, snarling with impatience. I giggle as the entry finally gives way, swinging inward with a jolt.
All traces of humor quickly fade as Ryder kicks the door shut, carries me toward the king-sized bed, and throws me onto the mattress. He follows me down, so we’re kneeling face-to-face, kissing me as his hands work at the side-zipper of my dress. My fingers yank at the loops of his belt.
We are both restless, jittery with need that has been suppressed for far too long. We’re out of our clothes in record time, staring at each other in the middle of the bed, our eyes devouring, our hands desperate.
I lean forward to kiss the tattoo over his heart, reveling in the groan he unleashes when he feels my lips on his bare skin.
He pulls the pins from my hair, sending it tumbling around my shoulders in soft waves.
“Felicity,” he growls, his forehead dropping to hit mine. I feel his breaths on my lips, coming fast as his heartbeats. I feel the rigidness of his body as he holds his desire on a short leash, even as his hands rove over every square inch of my skin. As though he’s memorizing me. “It’s been so long since I held you. So long since I’ve done this…” He swallows roughly. “I don’t know if I can go slow. I don’t know if I can be gentle, or—”
I stop his words with a finger on his lips. “Ryder.”
His brows lift.
“I don’t want gentle.”
Without waiting another instant, he pushes me back onto the bed, eyes glittering in the darkness. Just the look on his face is enough to make my mouth go dry.
He knocks my knees apart, and I barely have time to take a breath before he’s inside me — so deep, so hard, tears spring to my eyes. His name tears from my throat on a moan. It’s so loud I think the whole floor hears me. Maybe the whole hotel. The whole damn city.
“Felicity.” His mouth hits mine, crushing it in a carnal kiss. “God, Felicity.”
His weight deliriously heavy as he presses me into the mattress, each thrust fraying my nerve endings, each swivel of his hips driving me a little further over the edge of oblivion.
“I love you,” he gasps, driving deeper. Pushing further.
His eyes never waver from mine. And as I stare up at him, I’m overcome by that same feeling I get when we’re onstage together, singing like there’s not another living soul in the word. That same feeling I have when he looks at me with those mismatched irises and everything somehow falls into place, even when the world is coming apart at the seams.
I built my home out of a man, not a place.
“I love you,” I mange to echo, as my whole world dissolves.
I’m finally home.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ryder