“But right now? Right here? I get to choose. And I choose this. I choose you. And I don’t know what that means for tomorrow, or if we’ll even make it out of this in one piece, but I don’t care.”
I’m out of the chair before I realize I’m moving. Three strides across the room, my hands cupping her face, and I kiss her like I’m trying to swallow the fear right out of her.
She gasps against my mouth, her fingers fisting in my shirt.
“Not just tonight,” I breathe against her lips. “You hear me? This isn’t just tonight.”
She pulls my shirt over my head, her hands running down my chest. Her fingers trace the edges of bruises, careful and deliberate, like she’s mapping the damage and memorizing it at the same time. When her palm presses flat over my heart, she holds it there.
“Does this hurt?”
“Everything hurts.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “I don’t care.”
I tug the hoodie off her and find bare skin and the marks I left the night we were together in my cabin.
“You weren’t wearing anything under this?”
She grins. “Surprise.”
“You’ve been sitting next to me for hours in my clothes with nothing underneath?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I could’ve crashed the car.”
“But you didn’t.” She reaches for the button on my jeans. “Now stop talking.”
The rest of our clothes disappear in a mess of impatient hands and the sounds they make hitting the floor. And then she’s beneath me on that ridiculous floral bedspread, her hair fanned out like fire, her chest heaving, her eyes dark.
I take a moment to look at her.
She’s not the woman who called me a dog at the tavern. She’s not the woman who threw a mop at my head or argued about mushrooms in the grocery store or refused to let me carrythe bags. She’s not even the woman from my armchair, reckless and urgent, with guilt nipping at both our heels.
She’s just mine. And I’m hers.
“What are you waiting for?” she asks.
“Shh.” I brush my thumb across her bottom lip. “I’m counting.”
A softness lights up her gaze, and she pulls me on top of her. “Then let’s make every second count.”
I kiss my way down her body. Slow. Taking my time even though every nerve in me is screaming to rush, because she was right before. About the strings. About never getting to choose. So I’m going to make sure that every moment with me is a moment she never has to question. I press my mouth to her collarbone. The dip between her breasts. The freckle beneath her left rib that I found in the dark of my cabin and memorized by touch. Each mark I left on her skin the first time, I kiss those, too, like I’m retracing something I drew and want to make permanent.
My face settles between her legs and I look up at her, waiting.
“Yes,” she breathes before I can ask.
I press a kiss to the inside of her knee, then higher, dragging my mouth along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh until she shakes. She’s already wet. The scent of her hits me and my cock throbs hard against the mattress. I lick her once. Long and slow, from her entrance to her clit, and her body tenses.
She gasps, hips jolting, hands flying to my hair.
“Easy,” I murmur against her, and she whimpers. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Then I give her everything.
I flatten my tongue and lap at her, building her up from the inside out. I suck her clit into my mouth and flick, gentle then hard then back off, reading her body like a language I’ve been studying for months. I slide my fingers inside her, one then two, curling them just right, and she falls apart.
She rocks against my face, breath hitching, fingers tightening in my hair like she’s anchoring herself. Her thighs tense around my head, shaking, open just for me.