This Could Be Us (Skyland, #2)(107)

“I missed you back,” I whisper, taking his bottom lip between mine. He eases me down onto the chair beneath him and cups my cheek, tugging my mouth open, and spoils me with caramelized kisses—sweet heat and sensuality melted, poured over us. I’m drowning in it. He doesn’t let up, and I lose breath, coming up for air to pant at his throat. His hand explores beneath the hem of my cropped T-shirt, squeezing one bare breast and then the other.

“When you were doing your nightly cyberstalking,” I gasp between kisses, slipping my hand into his jogging pants, “did you see what DTF2000 suggested I should do to put me to sleep?”

He groans when my hand moves up and down over him. He presses his forehead to mine, a long breath wrenched from him. “I did see her suggestion.”

He pulls back to peer into my face, searching for the answer to a question he hasn’t voiced yet, but it’s clear in his eyes.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

Am I?

“I’m sure that I want you.” I sit up and pull the T-shirt over my head, distracting him with my breasts as I knew I would.

He grabs his sweatshirt at the neck and pulls it over his head, exposing a T-shirt beneath that molds itself to the muscles of his shoulders, back, and chest. He tugs that over his head, too, and I trace the sculpted topography beneath with eager hands. He slips his jogging pants and briefs off while I shimmy out of Lupe’s bottoms. Forgot I wasn’t wearing panties underneath.

Ooops.

One thing I did take care of since I last saw him was tending the bush. Even though he didn’t seem to mind a little bit o’ hair down there when he ate me out twice, I still waxed her up real nice for such an occasion as this.

“Does it sound goofy to say I’ve been dreaming about this?” he asks, studying my naked body like I’m a buffet and he’s been fasting.

“Not at all,” I tell him, rushing to lock the shed door. “The girls are asleep, but just in case.”

I cross back over to the chaise longue more slowly, stopping to stand between his knees. “Did you happen to bring a condom?”

“I did,” he replies, pulling one from his pocket. “Just in case.”

“Let me guess.” I straddle him, setting one knee and then the other on either side of his powerful thighs. “You’ve got a jumbo box of condoms in that tote bag.”

“Only need one,” he says, his voice smoky and rough.

“Don’t underestimate yourself.”

He grips my ass, lifting me slightly above him to take one breast and then the other into his mouth. I drop my head back, my hair rushing down my spine in a river of cool waves. My hips start a rolling motion, readying for the rhythm that, even after only once, my body remembers. The wrapper crinkles as he unwraps the condom, and I glance down.

“Let me.” I take it from him and clutch it in one hand for safekeeping. I scoot back but, instead of putting it on him right away, slide to the floor between his splayed knees and grip him in my hand. Holding his eyes, not breaking our stare, I bend my head and take him in my mouth.

“Sol,” he moans, slumping back, the dark brown of his skin gleaming against the garish pink brocade.

I’d forgotten how good I am at this. How much I enjoy it. I roll him in my hand, work the length of him, suck and lick until his hand fists my hair and he forces my head down to take more. I gag a little but breathe through it, wanting him to have this, but he reaches under my arms after a few minutes, dragging me up to his lap. He grabs the condom, wraps up, and touches between my legs.

“I want to make sure you’re ready,” he says, his breaths ragged. “You’re soaked.”

“What can I say?” I shrug and rise, poised to take him in. “Making you feel good does that to me.”

When he slides inside me, it’s different from the last time. We stare into each other’s eyes as I rise and fall over him. It’s like our bodies bookmarked this spot so we could take up exactly where we left off on New Year’s Day, dragging us deeper into a vortex of passion. And each touch, each stroke, each kiss is quantum, propelling us forward fast, far into a moment that exists nowhere but here. A place in time we claim as ours alone, insulated from the world beyond these walls. Sealed between our hips and bellies. Something made from our molecules meshing, cells colliding into a new us where we are inseparable and all things are possible. A miracle of intimacy. A faith grounded in the rhythm of our bodies and the gasps of our souls.

He tangles his hand in the length of my hair, dragging me forward and ravaging my mouth, plundering until I offer up all my secrets—until my lips tell him everything he wants to know without yielding one word.

“I want this all the time, Sol,” he says, trailing kisses down my chin, my throat, over my shoulders. “Should I pretend I don’t?”

I don’t have words to answer him because this melding of our flesh and souls and spirits strips me of thought, blurs my reason and my reasons. Blocks my doubts and hesitations. When we’re joined like this, I would give him anything, and that may be the most dangerous truth of it all.

When we’ve plastered the walls with our muffled cries, I lie against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. It races and then evens out, until it is once again steady as a metronome.

“I didn’t mean to put pressure on you,” he says after a few minutes of quiet, his fingers playing over the damp, naked skin of my back. “While we were… I shouldn’t have said that.”