He rolls his eyes. “Did you doubt I would?”
“Never.” I think I could swim all the way across the lake, and he would still come after me. When I lick my lips, I taste the briny water clinging there.
I wrap myself around him. Legs around his hips and arms around his shoulders. “Now that you have me, what are you going to do with me?”
“I suppose that is up to you.”
Our chests brush, and the bulge beneath his pants thickens. I pretend not to notice, but the sensation of him settling against where I ache is impossible to ignore. His confession from all those nights ago drifts through my mind. Secret desires that mirror my own.
“I want you to touch me like no one is watching,” I whisper, my heart pounding in my breast. “To mark me as yours. To taste my most secret places and fill my body with yours. To hear my name on your tongue when you shatter.”
Ever groans, his forehead falling against mine as his calloused hands bracket my thighs and slowly glide up to my hips until he’s clutching my backside with only my thin undergarments between my skin and his.
My legs tighten, grinding my aching center against his hardness?—
Heavens…
That feels…
I move again, harder, stoking these flames erupting between us.
Yes. More. Yes.
Ever’s lips skate along my neck as he uses his grip on my backside to rock me against him. His hips roll, creating the most mind-bending friction even as his tongue swirls over the hollow of my throat.
A tongue that isn’t smooth but scratchy, like a cat’s.
There probably are a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t be with him but in this moment all I can think about is the reason I should.
Because I need to know what it feels like to give in, to take for myself.
So I fill my hands with his hair, tug his head back, and slam my lips to his.
Ever’s fingers dig into the flesh of my backside, pressing me closer as he opens his mouth to devour me.
He kisses with the same controlled violence I’ve sensed in him from the very first day I caught sight of him at the well. He could destroy me, crush me, kill me in one practiced move, yet he holds me with such reverence as his tongue slips past my parted lips, finding and scraping against mine.
I can’t get close enough; even the silk separating our chests is too much.
Thisis what I’ve been searching for.
What I’ve been missing.
To choose anyone else would be settling.
I don’t care if the whole of Rosehill turns against me, I want this man and no other?—
A broken sound climbs his throat, and he jerks back. Ever reaches behind his head, unclasping my hands, his hold vanishing as he lets me drop back into the water. “This is wrong.”
“No, it’s not. I have never felt anything as right?—”
“I belong to someone else.”
36
“Vows spoken too soon are not nearly as painful as vows spoken too late.”
Willow Gathin, A Observation