He leans close. Kiss me. But his lips breeze past my cheek and stop at the hollow of my ear. “You remember how it all began?” His hands descend to my hips, diving towards my thighs. My fingers scrape along his toned shoulders, a sound tickling my throat.
I gather my breath to ask, “Me and you?” How we began. He guides me somewhere, my feet dazedly following his lead. And the backs of my legs hit the edge of the bed. A nautical comforter with tiny anchors printed across.
“You and me,” he confirms.
I wrack my brain for the time, place and date, my brows scrunching. “We were five…or six, right?” I should know the moment, but there are just so many that belong to Loren Hale. Picking out the first one would take decades.
“No, not as friends, Lil.” He lifts underneath my arms and sets me perfectly on the bed. He leans my back against the soft mattress, and he hovers over me, his legs tangling with mine. Those amber eyes puncture straight through my skin. And into my heart. “You remember how we began? Us.”
Us…
The memory strikes me powerfully, and tears suddenly begin to brim. We were on my parent’s yacht. This yacht. This room. Almost four years ago. We were both twenty and broken and struggling to find a semblance of peace. And then he uttered the words that changed everything.
Let me try to be enough for you.
“You remember,” Lo breathes, his thumb brushing a stray tear.
“It was here.” My voice is a whisper.
He nods. “It was here.” His hypnotic expression pulls me into him, my pelvis bucking against his. He never breaks his soul-bearing gaze from mine. “Back then,” he says, “I was so addicted to you.” He truly smiles, a very, very rare one. “I still am.”
I am crying, flooded with emotions that cannot fit within my body. They explode outside of me—and I don’t care to wipe them away. I just float through this bliss and let Loren Hale take me.
His fingers dip beneath my stretchy sweat shorts, and he tugs at the elastic, lowering them to my calves and burning my core with the slow, slow movement. “Back then, I asked you to be my girlfriend.”
My heart hammers in my ears. To think of a time where we weren’t even together, when I was no one’s girlfriend—it’s an ancient, dark era.
“And then I fucked you,” he states matter-of-factly.
He spreads my legs open and stands at the foot of the bed. Then he pulls me so my bottom is half on the mattress, half-off, and his semi-hard cock, through his jeans, puts pressure on a pulsing place of mine. My legs in his possession. I wonder if he can feel how wet I am—or if he can feel my heat drumming against him, craving him.
“I…I remember,” I stammer, losing control of my vocabulary.
He pauses for a brief second, his eyes traversing across my body in hot waves. “This is going to be a million times better than that.”
“Whaa…” I can’t even finish my statement. The declaration arches my back, and I try to grind against him. Closer. But he has my legs hostage, my cheeks salty and tear-streaked. I am a mess, and the way Lo is staring at me, I might actually be a sexy mess too.
He suddenly drops to his knees. Oh my God. And then he lifts my legs over his shoulders. Yesyesyes.
I have no strength to prop my body, but I tilt my head at the right angle, gaining a visual. His eyes lock to mine as he places a tender kiss on the inside of my thigh. My mouth is permanently ajar, and a breathy sound emerges.
“Lo,” I cry.
The feather light kisses continue, nearing the aching spot. He has to be only an inch away when he draws back. No!
He takes his sweet time lowering my panties to my ankles, shifting my legs again, and then he fishes them off my feet and tosses them aside. He hikes my legs back over his shoulders, and the image makes me squirm. I need him.
I want him.
Right inside.
“Lo.”
“I’m going to make you come,” he says with that Loren Hale sharp tone, deathly and alluring, “so slowly.” Yes. I cry in want, so ready, and his lips skim my leg, his breath warm and his teasing toxic. In the best possible way.
His hands rub against the soft flesh of my thighs. I reach out, placing my palms on top of them, hoping to guide them between my legs, but instead, they rise up to my ribs. Underneath my cotton shirt, up to my breasts.
Oh my God. He squeezes, his thumbs flicking my tender nipples. “I need you,” I tell him, tears creasing my eyes again. Only these are from pleasure that he stretches out in infinite frequencies.