“Um, no, it’s the woman in the bed.” He growled and rolled me to my back before hungrily attacking my lips again. I wrapped my arms around him and parted my lips, allowing his tongue to dive in for the taking, and take he did. He took every last drop of restraint and willpower I had. I wanted to be with him. I couldn’t wait any longer. I reached up and caressed his cheek, my eyes clouded with lust and love. “I love you so much that it’s physically painful,” I whispered. “These stolen moments are more than I could ever hope for, but at the same time I’m afraid they’ll come to an abrupt halt. I’m all yours, Mattie. Are you mine?”
He growled and lowered his lips to my jaw, kissing his way to my ear, where he sucked and nipped at the lobe until I was writhing under him. “You’ve always been mine,” he ground out, his breath tickling my ear. “This isn’t going to end, Honey. Now that I’ve had a taste of your sweetness, I’m addicted.” He trailed his lips down my neck while he thrust his pelvis against me. “I always knew I would be. That was the reason I stayed hands-off for so long. I knew the first time I kissed you that it would be over. I would be a goner. Can you feel how true that is?” he asked, rubbing his hardness against my leg.
I pressed my hand against the front of his boxers and his moan was long, low, and feral when he bit down on my chest gently. “You don’t know how much I want you to touch me right now.” I slid my hand up and down the length of him slowly. Just enough to tease him into wanting more. He twitched uncontrollably, and his breathing turned ragged almost instantly.
His lips were back on my chest then until he traced his tongue along the ridge of each breast, dipping it into the crevice between them. The sensation ripped a moan from my lips. “Touch me,” I begged.
His hand slid inside my tank top and cupped my breast gently. My eyes closed as he teased me with his lips and tongue, his moans filling my head and heart.
“You’re incredible,” he whispered between kisses. “My fantasies couldn’t hold a candle to how incredible you are.”
He rested on his knees and grasped the bottom of my tank top, making eye contact with me until I nodded. He ripped it over my head, my breasts falling free and his breath hitching at the sight of me half-naked before him. His hand slid between my breasts where he rubbed my chest in a tender sign of love. It was so touching I nearly cried in that moment.
“You’re gorgeous.” His eyes were closed, but his hand stayed over my heart. “I’m overwhelmed. I’m sorry. I need a moment.”
I put my hand over his and squeezed it. “It’s okay, Mattie. I feel the same way you do right now.”
“Like you want all of me wrapped around all of you, so you can live in my love forever? That’s how I’m feeling right now.” His gaze swept across my face before his hand slid down to rest on my belly. The moment he saw what his hand had hidden was the moment my chest rose and fell once under its own volition. His finger traced the small red and white flag I had over my heart. “What is this?”
“It’s a tattoo, silly,” I teased, twining my fingers in his.
“Why did you get Denmark’s flag on your chest?” He peered closer and retraced it with his finger. He paused when he noticed the hidden letters. “MJ.”
“Mattie,” I started to say, but his finger came down on my lips as he stared at it.
“Because this way, you always had a part of me with you, right?”
“I always had you on my heart. Maybe that’s dumb, but I don’t regret it.”
He reared back and pulled his T-shirt off, raising his right arm. I sat up, my finger trailing over the tiny bee on his upper ribs. “I’ve never noticed this before, and I’ve seen you shirtless.”
“I made sure to get it in a place no one would see it. If anyone asked, it was easy to explain it as something I did when I was young and drunk. The truth is, it was something I did when I was sober and wishing I could be with the one person who understood me completely. I wanted her with me for all time.”
His lips captured mine again. The force of his tongue pushed me back into the pillows, and he had his way with my lips until even that wasn’t enough. He trailed kisses down my chest where he grasped a nipple in his mouth, making me gasp and moan, arch and cry out for him to keep going, keep touching, and keep loving me forever. His hand slid down to my tiny sleep shorts, and he ran his finger under the waistband, making my stomach quiver with anticipation.
“If we do this, we’re never going back to where we are right now, sweetheart. You understand that, right?” His tone was one I’d never heard before. It was deep intensity, fear, and wanton need wrapped into one desperate sentence.
“I don’t want to be where we are right now. I want to be where we’ll be an hour from now.” I wrapped my fingers in his hair and tugged him to my lips. He pounced, one hand holding my face while his other worked the shorts down off my hips. Once they were free of my legs, he kissed his way down to my belly, where he rested his chin and gazed up at me. “I love you.”
His hands held my hips with tenderness, and his lips kissed across the long-ago scar that still marred my skin. I trembled the closer his lips got to the part of me that had always ached for him. He kissed, nipped, sucked, and teased until I was ready to come apart from the sheer pleasure he offered.
“I always knew your honey pot would be the sweetest I’d ever tasted. I wasn’t wrong,” he hissed, his breath hot on my bare skin. “I’m never going to get enough of this sweetness.”
His tongue lapped against me and I cried out, grabbing his hair and dragging him to me. I kissed him with the pent-up frustration of a woman in need of the man in her arms. When I broke the kiss for air, I held his gaze, my hands running up and down the supple skin of his chest. His hard muscles rippled against my palms as I trailed my fingers to his waistband. “Take your boxers off. Now.” He didn’t make a move to follow my instructions, so I hooked my fingers in his waistband, took a deep breath, and lowered them. I made sure to do it painfully slow. He wanted to torture me, so I’d do the same. He sighed, moaned, and called my name when the silky material slid down his hips to reveal his need for me. My hands fell away at the sight of him, and he finished the job before sitting beside me. He took my face in his hands and rubbed his thumb across my lips. “You don’t have to be scared. I can see it in your eyes. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. “I know you won’t, but I don’t know what to expect. You’re, you know, large.”
He smiled and kissed me gently, then took my hand and guided it to him. “I’m not, baby. Just get used to how I feel in your hand. It’s okay. I promise, I’m going to take care of you.”
I stroked him, running my hand up and down his skin, gauging his reaction to each different rhythm and listening to how his moans changed in intensity. He kissed his way down my neck to my chest, where he laid kisses across my heart. His lips sucked gently on my breast, and I moaned, the sound loud in the quiet room. The longer I held him, the louder his moans became until his lips fell away from my nipple. He grabbed my hand and held it still against him. “Honey, it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman. If you don’t stop, things are going to come to a screeching halt. Unless that’s what you want,” he whispered, his tone nonjudgmental. “We can pleasure each other in other ways without having to go all the way the first time.”
“What I want is you,” I whispered, lying back and pulling him with me. “I want you enough to put the fear aside and trust you.”
His eyes sparked on the wordtrust, and he placed a kiss between my breasts. “You can trust that I’m going to make you feel like you’ve never felt before. We’re going to start slow.”
His hand slid down to snake between the folds of my legs, parting them with a finger and caressing me up and down. “Mattie,” I cried, thrusting upward to find some relief from his torture. He slid a finger inside me, dragging a moan from my lips until his came down to steal it away. He slipped a second finger inside me, and I grasped his wrist, stilling him. “What are you doing? Trying to make me come apart before you do?”
He laughed wickedly, and I raised a brow. “I wouldn’t object if that happened, but no, I’m just making sure you’re ready for me. I don’t want to hurt you.”
