I struggled with my next breath at the thought, at all of it being over.
Clay stood then, slowly, his eyes never leaving mine as he did.
“But that’s not what I want,” he continued, testing the space between us. “And it hasn’t been for a while now, no matter how I tried to fight it.”
The bitter breeze did nothing to cool my steaming cheeks as Clay took another tentative step toward me, but he didn’t close all the space. He didn’t reach for me, didn’t touch me, didn’t dare take the control he was granting to me.
“I want you,” he declared, and the admission must have pained him as much as it elated me. His brows bent together, nose flaring like he was laying himself down at my feet and handing me a sword, not knowing if I’d ask him to stand again or cut his head off. “I want you,” he repeated on a raspy breath. “And I don’t want to pretend anymore.”
I nearly sobbed when those words danced into the shell of my ear, when I realized every aching rip of my heart was one he’d felt, too.
It was real.
All of it was real.
And the only way I knew how to tell him that was with my hands sliding up his chest, arms wrapping around his neck, and toes pressing against the sidewalk until I could meld my mouth with his.
“I’m yours,” I whispered.
And then I was raked into his arms.
Giana
My back was slammed against my front door the second it closed behind us.
Clay pushed into me with everything that he was, the entirety of his body covering mine. His hips pinned me against the wood, my legs wrapping around him, heels digging into his ass and begging for more. His hands gripped my hips hard as he kissed me, lips soft and warm and somehow tender in their demand.
I opened for him, softening with every touch, releasing every bit of tension that had weaved itself into my bones since the night he walked away from me. And as if he could sense that was where my head had gone, he intertwined his hands with mine, holding them beside my head as he pressed his chest hard against my own.
“This was why I left last week,” he whispered into the space between us, his forehead to mine, our breaths labored between. “I walked away from you even when everything in my body begged me to stay. Because when I took you for the first time, I didn’t want it to be under the guise of any of this between us being fake.”
He squeezed my hands in his own, kissing my chin until I tipped it up and allowed him access to my neck.
“This isn’t fake,” he swore against my skin, kissing and nipping it along the way. “Nothing between us has ever been fake.”
His mouth was on mine in the next breath, and then I was being carried through my apartment — mostly blindly as I hadn’t had time to even turn a light on. The only one was from above my stove, and it just barely lit up the space, darkness battling with the light in every corner.
Clay was careful as he lowered me onto the bed, and I sat at the edge of it as he backed away from me, taking his heat with him.
With his eyes watching me, he reached for the back of his hoodie and tore it over his head, flinging it to the side before he did the same with the t-shirt underneath. I reached out, my fingertips just barely getting a taste of his abdomen before he peeled them away and sat them at my sides again.
“Strip for me.”
His words were hot, confident, and sealed with intention as he stepped even farther away and kicked off his sneakers before carefully ridding himself of his sweatpants.
He was a masterpiece there in nothing but his black boxer briefs, briefs that were strained as they held back his thickening erection. Clay’s eyes heated more when I grabbed the wrist of my hoodie, tugging it off one arm and then the other before I peeled it overhead.
My nipples were peaked under my tank top, the thin fabric easily disposed of in the next second. I snapped my gaze to meet his when my chest was bare, and his eyes dropped to take me in, a low groan rolling from his throat at the sight.
His hand slid down his abdomen and beneath the band of his briefs, stroking himself as his eyes trailed to where my sweatpants were still fastened around my hips. I reclined back onto the comforter, using my heels on the floor to push my hips up and slide the thick fabric down my thighs, my knees, until the pants pooled at my feet.
“Stop right there.”
Clay advanced on me, taking only a moment to slip out of his briefs before he was towering over me at the edge of the bed. I rested on the heels of my hands, panting, throbbing for him as he raked his gaze over every bare inch of me.
“Up,” he said, grabbing my wrist to help me. And once I was standing, he spun me, gathering my hair in one massive hand and pulling it to the side so he could whisper his next words against my neck. “Wanna know why you didn’t feel anything with him?”