Getting lost in her warmth.
In those eyes.
Her hand slipped up to cup my cheek.
“Ryder.” She whispered my name. A question. A plea. And I eased back so I was kneeling between her thighs, watching her close as I pressed two fingers deep into the well of her body.
Her back arched from the bed, her nipples so hard they peaked toward the ceiling, and I couldn’t do anything but ease forward so I could draw one tight bud into my mouth. I ran my tongue around the nub while I started to drive my fingers into her heat.
Fingers burrowed in my hair, tugging hard. “Ryder.”
“I’ve got you,” I rumbled at her flesh, moving to lick at the opposite tit, laving my tongue over her sensitive flesh that had her squirming below me.
“I want to feel you,” she wheezed.
A pained groan rolled out of me because the only thing I wanted was to sink into her.
My dick pulsing, raging with need.
But I knew I’d already taken this too far. That she was going to hate me in the end. And still I was taking a little more, and I grabbed my cock and ran just the tip through the lips of her pussy, dragging it up until I was rubbing the metal ball of my piercing against her clit.
Dakota bucked, and the sound coming out of her was so desperate that I nearly gave in and thrust into her. Instead, I started rocking over her like a teenager who was hunting down his first orgasm.
Rubbing my dick in all her sweetness without fully giving in.
She was slick, coating my flesh. I propped my hands on either side of her head and looked down at her while I angled so the head of my cock was rubbing against her with each erratic thrust.
Blunt fingernails raked at my chest and up to my shoulders, trying to draw me closer while she gasped and whimpered my name.
“If I could have you, Dakota. If I could have you…” It panted out of my mouth as that energy banged through the room. Hitting the walls and bouncing back. Rising up and growing higher.
Pleasure gathered, running my spine, and I could feel the tension wind in her, and I rocked faster, creating a friction that flickered and flared in the space between us.
She split at the same second as I did.
The girl fireworks.
Flashes of colors and light as she clung to my shoulders as the orgasm tore through her. I could feel it rush like a flashfire across her skin.
Consuming every inch.
Right as everything inside me burst.
Racing out.
Flames that licked and blazed and incinerated.
And I knew it was never going to be enough as I dumped my cum all over her stomach. That this ache was going to remain as she gasped and tremored.
Knew it as I gazed down at the girl who had the ability to snatch my heart right out of my chest.
I couldn’t give it. Not like this.
But she dragged her fingers over that achy spot like she could get to it anyway, and I knew what was in her eyes as she looked up at me. I grabbed her hand that she balled in a fist and pressed her knuckles to my lips, air wheezing in jagged heaves from my lungs. “Cookie.”
Had to beat back the urge to confess it all right then.
Just fucking tell her.
Lay it out.
But I couldn’t accept her rejection yet, not before I’d set it in motion and there was no turning back.
I guessed I was a coward like that.
So, I whispered to her hand instead, “Let me get something to clean you up.”
Slipping off the bed, I went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth under the sink, then I stole back into her room like a thief.
I took her in where she still slowly writhed on the bed. Satisfied, but it wasn’t quite enough.
So pretty.
So perfect.
So close and so far out of reach.
I ran the warm cloth between her thighs, making her jolt, before I moved to clean her stomach. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, glancing up at her.
“What are you sorry for, Ryder?”
“That I’m not who I want to be. Not yet. But I promise you, I’m trying to be.”
And I prayed it was enough.
TWENTY-NINE
RYDER
TWENTY YEARS OLD
Sunlight seeped through a slit in the black-out drape that covered the window. Blowing out a strained sigh, Ryder sat up on the side of the bed, scraping a hand over his face like it could wipe away the exhaustion. The bone-deep weight that sat on him like he’d awoken beneath a landslide of boulders.
Erase the night before and the thousand others that had looked just like it. Scramble things up so when he looked in the mirror he was a different person.
But shit couldn’t so easily be scrubbed away, could it?
Couldn’t be rectified or changed.