THIRTY-THREE
RYDER
Dakota stared at me from across the room as the last of the light faded away through the window behind her.
It cast her in a silhouette.
The faintest glow slipped across her precious face from the dull glow coming from the closet.
Her breaths were short and shallow. Hair a mess. Cheeks soaked and splotchy with her tears.
So fucking gorgeous I couldn’t breathe.
My heart pounded out between us. Pleading for her to see. To get it. To understand when I hadn’t given her a reason to, not when there was all this bullshit I had to keep hidden in the shadows. But the shame I felt over the corruption hadn’t come close to the kind I’d felt when she’d walked out on me this morning.
The shame I’d felt when I couldn’t speak it.
When I’d rejected the gift that Dakota had offered. When I’d refused our truth.
I wouldn’t refuse it any longer.
A tear streaked from the corner of her eye, and I groaned a pained sound as the energy shifted.
The room enclosed and the air grew dense.
“Cookie,” I murmured. “Tell me I’m not too late. Tell me you still love me, too.”
“Do you think I could ever stop loving you?”
The second she said it, I snapped, and I was across the room.
I crashed into her in a landslide of greed.
One hand dove into her hair and the other curled around the side of her neck as I crushed my mouth against hers, kissing her for the first time.
Nothing had ever felt quite like kissing Dakota Cooper.
Her lips against mine.
It was flames and heat and pure relief.
I sucked it in, imbibing the feeling as I devoured her mouth.
Sugar and vanilla and all things sweet.
My chest nearly blew with the power of it. With the way my heart thrashed violently at my ribs. With the devotion that surged from the sacred place that had always been meant for her.
Our tongues tangled in a clash of desperation, and she clawed at the fabric of my shirt, pushing up onto her toes to get closer.
I spun her as I kissed her, lips plucking and rolling over her plush bottom lip before they did the same to the top, urgent in their plea, unable to break for a second as I backed her toward the bed.
“I love you, Ryder, I love you,” she mumbled at our connection. The sound of it reverberated through me, slipping down my throat and spreading through my cells. It seeped all the way down to my spirit because this woman would always possess my soul.
We stumbled and spun, and I kissed her deeper, hands on her face so I could get her closer. “I love you, Dakota. So fucking much.”
The back of her legs knocked into the side of the bed, and she giggled a blissful sound, and I was smiling against her mouth, whispering, “I love you,” again.
My palms smoothed down her neck, and I wrapped my arms around her so I could get to the zipper at the back of her dress. I dragged it down, then spread my hands flat, riding them up the soft skin of her back and over her shoulders to push the dress out of our way.
It skimmed down her body, landing in a pool at her feet.
Dakota was in a black bra and another pair of those high-waisted underwear that had made me lose my mind the other night. Back when I should have known everything was getting ready to hit a boiling point. There would no longer be any resisting this.
“Goddess,” I rumbled as I kissed down her throat, and I reached around her back to unlatch her bra and dragged it free of her arms.
Shivers rolled beneath my touch, and Dakota’s hands slipped under my shirt, lighting a fire as she pushed it up. I eased back for the flash of a second so I could rip it over my head.
Then I was back on her.
Skin on skin.
Her pebbled nipples pressed against my chest.
Her warmth and her sweetness and her soft against all my hard.
Lust spun with the devotion.
A need unlike anything that should exist.
Greater, more powerful than any sin I could ever commit.
And I was kissing her again.
Frantic.
Frenzied.
Dakota’s fingers fumbled at my jeans, tugging my fly loose as I kicked off my shoes. She pushed my jeans down around my waist and took my briefs at the same time.
“I need you,” she wheezed, her hands grabbing at my ass while I shoved my jeans the rest of the way down with one hand while I backed her onto the bed.
She edged onto the mattress, and I twisted free of the heavy fabric around my ankles. Without missing a beat, I angled in to grab the edges of her panties and ripped them down her legs.
Dakota whimpered, her hips coming off the mattress. “Ryder.”
“Fuck. The sight of you, Cookie. Sweet thing.” The words rolled off my tongue.