“I hear what you’re telling me,” Beat said, grazing their lips together, his eyes zeroed in on her mouth. Tortured. “You need complete trust or nothing at all. A partnership. Full disclosure always. I’ll give that to you. I need to give you that.”
“I want to believe that.”
“Please.” He captured her mouth and her neck went limp, requiring his hand to cup the back of her head. He held her up, while his lips opened over hers, slanted, then took her with long, devastating strokes of his tongue. “Believe in me again, Mel. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I know,” she whispered, kissing him back hungrily. “I know you are.”
“I’m your boyfriend. Fiancé. Soulmate. Call me all of them. Or just one. I’ll take one.”
The ache that had burdened her for the last three days swelled up like a life raft, pushing her ribs out from the inside. All the time she’d spent doubting herself, staring at her phone and hoping it would ring, the emptiness. If he’d trusted her the way she trusted him, they would have avoided it all. “I can’t right now.”
He growled brokenly against her mouth. “Maybe I’ll make you say it.”
Her intimate muscles contracted, leaving wetness behind. They were a mile into dangerous territory now. Past the point of no return. His erection was thick and ready between their bodies and her stomach cradled it, rubbing side to side. Unconscious, desperate moves of a woman in love, even when she’d been wronged. “Maybe I . . . want you to try.”
Beat moaned above her head, his hands raking down her breasts, squeezing them roughly in his hands. “You’re not taking me back,” he rasped, dipping his head to lick her hard nipples through her thin sweater. “But you’re going to let me fuck you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to hurt me back?” he demanded against her mouth.
“No. No.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t. Not my perfect Melody.” His kiss was filled with longing, his hands trailing down the front of her body, fingertips tucking beneath the hem of her skirt to raise it up, up and over her hips. “Although I would let you, wouldn’t I? I would beg for whatever you’d give me. Love, pain, forgiveness.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to offer those things. And this isn’t going to solve anything,” she whispered, her fingers wrestling with his belt. She unfastened the buckle, sliding free the button of his pants and dragging down the zipper over the bulging crotch of his briefs. “But I can’t help wanting to feel close to you.”
“I’m going to get so close.” His mouth was back on hers, kissing her feverishly, his fingertips diving past the waistband of her panties, parting her flesh with his middle finger, finding her clit in one stroke. “There’ll be nothing but us.”
He would get close. He would, but it would be a temporary fix.
And she was starved for that fix.
“Now,” she gasped against his mouth. “Now, now, now.”
“God yes. But only because you’re wet enough.” He boosted her up against the wall with nothing but a roll of his hips, hooking his index finger in the material of her panties and dragging them to one side. “I take care of you. That’s what I do.”
“No, Beat. That’s not how it works.” She wrapped her thighs tightly around his waist, her body shaking with the anticipation of being filled. Feeling that hardness invade her, give her pleasure, use her. Fuck her. “We take care of each other.”
She could see the moment it all clicked for him, a line forming between his brows, his hands pausing in the act of guiding his shaft between her thighs. At the outset of their relationship, he’d kept the blackmail a secret, then the identity of his father. He’d locked her out. The night of the snowball fight, he’d promised to change. He’d felt changed. But he’d fallen back into his old pattern. Refusing the trust, to burden anyone with his problems. After all the progress they’d made, of course this would be a blow to Melody.
Beat’s breath raced in and out as he pressed himself inside of Melody and bucked home—hard—snapping his teeth against the curve of her neck. “I love you so much, Mel. I’ll never lock you out again.”
Her back slid up and down the wall with every thrust, her fingers digging into his shoulders to balance the quickening deep in her sex. “Beat. Beat. Beat.”
“That’s the name of your soulmate.” His mouth found hers and shredded her final thread of rational thought, kissing her like it was the first time. Or last time. She couldn’t be sure; all she knew was that her heart climbed high in her throat and she clung, thighs scrambling higher around his waist. Her tongue tangled with his greedily, her body an inferno for this man she’d become addicted to and robbed of in such a short span of time. “You hear my name in your sleep, Peach, the same way I hear yours.”
“Yes,” she whispered, opening her knees and leaning back slightly, craving the sight of him entering her, thickness into slick, hard into soft, best friend into lover, soulmates blurring into one. “I always will.”
Beat’s eyes flashed. “You always will, because I’ll be in bed beside you, whispering it in your ear, Melody.” He bared his teeth against her mouth. “I’ll be moaning it while I lick between your legs. I’ll call it out loud when I walk through the front door every night.”
Images were bombarding her, reviving the hope that had withered during their separation. She wasn’t quite ready to embrace it, to trust the happiness that came along with it, so she focused on the raw throb that increased with intensity every time his hips punched upward, slamming her buttocks into the wall of the elevator, his beloved fingers leaving bruises where they gripped her thighs and hips.
The words “I love you” were razing the inside of her throat. They wanted to be set loose so badly. She couldn’t yet, though. She couldn’t speak that truth until she could commit to him, to trying again, completely. To do otherwise would be cruel.
Distract yourself.
“Deeper,” she whispered. “Get it deeper.”
He let out a muffled roar into her shoulder, hooked his elbows beneath her knees to draw them higher and dialed the rhythm up to eleven. Based on the way she elevated even farther against the wall, she guessed he was going up on his toes to grind into her. The image of that made her clench uncontrollably, his name turning into a hoarse chant coming from deep, deep in her throat, her thighs starting to quake.
“God, I would love to get you pregnant someday, you know that?” His voice was rich and guttural in her hair, his mouth planting kisses on her hairline, her cheeks. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it since we talked about having kids. I want to be the man who makes it feel right for you. I want to take the good inside of you and double it.”
“Beat. Please.”
“Am I going too far? Good. Soak me into your bones the way you’re in mine.”
That was it. She lost her footing on the balance beam and went crashing down to the ground without a harness. “I need you so much. I need you so much.”
His sturdy frame started to shake, a choked sound leaving him. “Melody.”