That one thought sealed my direction. It clarified where I needed to be. Who I needed to be with. It didn’t matter if it was five minutes after breaking up with Xavier or five years. It wouldn’t change how I felt or what I wanted. I didn’t need to grieve something that had never been real for me.
Racing to my wardrobe, I slipped on a heavy coat to shield myself from the wind and the cold. Without stopping, I ran from my room and found the path up to the main house. Snow littered the air around me, falling so slow and light that it seemed suspended in mid-air as it danced through the night.
Underneath my coat, I had almost nothing on—just the flannelette shirt I’d stolen from Beau months earlier and a pair of underwear—and yet seeing Beau couldn’t have waited even a second longer. There was no doubt in my mind as I made my way toward the isolated house at the edge of the property. Only need.
The tears on my face were dried, but the chilled night air kissed the salt and sent a shiver through me. The snow stuck to me as I raced through it, sending my body temperature plummeting. In my haste to leave, I’d forgotten to slip on a pair of shoes. Before I was even halfway, my socks were soaked through and my toes felt like blocks of ice.
The closer I drew to the house, the more my heart hammered in my chest. Anticipation rolled through me, giving me the courage to speed faster than ever.
With my heart rammed into my throat, I pounded on the door. I didn’t call his name—I couldn’t. The lump in my throat was too big. My hair was no doubt frizzed and wild with white snow clinging to the ends, but my fingers were too numb to try to tame it down.
While I waited for him to answer the door, my mind rolled over the last twenty-four hours. Fuck, I hoped he would understand. Was it too much to ask for him to know everything I needed to tell him without me saying a word, because I wasn’t sure I could find any. And I definitely wouldn’t be able to get them past the chattering of my teeth.
When the door opened, his outline appeared, framed by the light from within his house. His unbuttoned shirt hung loose to reveal his chest. I couldn’t find my voice as my gaze adjusted to focus on him. It was impossible to make my mouth move to form the words I needed to say.
It was hard to make out his expression at first, but when I could, it was clear his eyes blazed with concern as he took in my appearance. For a moment, he looked like he was going to ask a question, but then his gaze met mine and the questions disappeared.
Time stood still, just like it had the first night we’d met.
Everything we needed to say passed between us in a silent moment. There were no more words needed. Nothing more to do than the one thing we’d both been longing for since the night I’d slipped from his room and left nothing but a note.
Wordlessly, he picked me up and carried me over the threshold before kicking the door shut behind him. With me in his arms, he made his way to his bedroom and laid me on the bed.
He still didn’t say a word as he gently stripped away my wet, icy socks.
Or when his soft fingertips trailed my arms as he guided my coat off my body.
Leaving me on the bed, he moved to the fire and an instant later, the flames licked a little higher than they had before. Still my teeth chattered and my body shook with the cold.
He undid the buttons on my shirt—his shirt—one by one.
My heart pounded against my chest and all I could do was stare deep into his eyes as his fingers worked to free me of my clothing. His gaze held questions and answers, but his lips stayed silent. He seemed as unwilling—or unable—to break the spell of the silence around us as I was.
He helped me to sit and then wrapped his arms around me before burying his face against my neck.
Finally, nestled against my skin, he spoke.
One word.
Like a prayer.
“Phoebe.”
THE INSTANT MY name was free, his lips were on mine. Slow, tender kisses rapidly gave way to the passion that had been sizzling between us for so long.
My chest tightened and my lips responded to his. I reached out and wrapped my arms around him, drawing him closer to me. After all my longing and wishing, that first kiss was better than I could have hoped. The heat of it raced through my body, warming my core.
I scraped my fingertips across his scalp before balling my hands into fists. With the lingering cold in my body, the sensation ached. As if he’d felt my pain, he pulled away and took my hands in his.
“Your fingers are still like ice, darlin’.” He dragged my hand to his mouth and kissed each of my knuckles.
When he finished, I pulled away from him and wrapped my fingers around his face, drawing his lips back to mine.
“I can think of ways to warm them up,” I murmured against his skin before sucking his bottom lip into my mouth.
My eyes closed as a sexy moan left him and his tongue pressed forward to meet mine.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer to him. With a twist he drew me onto his lap. His fingers found my spine, and he traced a line down my back.
The position was so reminiscent of our first night together that it overwhelmed me. I could barely breathe, but I didn’t need air. I needed him.
I slipped my hands into his shirt, sliding it over his shoulders and off his body. Whenever my fingers touched his skin, he flinched, but he didn’t pull away. Inch by inch, my fingers explored his back, my fingertips warming with the heat of his skin.
“Beau, I—”
He silenced me with a kiss. “Words have only gotten us into trouble lately, darlin’.”
Realising how right he was, I nodded and let myself fall back into his kiss. Chest to chest, we held each other tight as our tongues whispered the words we weren’t going to speak aloud.
Needing to get closer still, to prove that it was love and not lust that had seen me rush through the cold night to his side, I wrapped my legs around his waist and buried my face against his neck.
Although I should have been ecstatic to be back in his arms, to have him willingly giving himself to me again, an overwhelming sorrow built in me over everything we’d been through. Sensing the shift in my mood, Beau’s hands stopped exploring and just wrapped around me. A sob left me as my tears started to fall again.
“Shh, it’s okay now, darlin’. It’s okay.” Despite his words of comfort, there were tears in his voice too.
There wasn’t a whisper of a breath between us as he pressed his lips against my throat. Every time his lips left my skin, they touched down again somewhere else. His kisses weren’t demanding my attention. He wasn’t trying to draw me back to the heat of the moment, but rather offering me solace with every tool in his arsenal.
Despite the sobs that still rocked my body, I mimicked his actions. Soft kisses against skin already wet from my tears. As though our movements were choreographed with some greater purpose, we moved in unison.
Neck.
Jaw.
Cheek.
Lips.
Our tongues danced again, mingling the taste of our tears together.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, crossing my forearms behind his head to hold him to me. My breasts pillowed against his chest, but it wasn’t enough.
I couldn’t get close enough.
With some reluctance, I drew myself away from his hold.
A complaint was on his lips, but I pressed my finger to his mouth. With my eyes locked with his, I wiggled out of my underwear—the last piece of clothing I wore. I gave him a smile that invited him to follow suit as I rounded the bed to slip between his sheets.
His hands found his hair and he leaned forward with a sigh. For a moment, I thought I might have overstepped a boundary, or broken the spell. Just when heat built in my cheeks, he whispered, “Do ya know how many times I dreamed o’ this? I can’t believe you’re really here. How do I know it ain’t just a dream now?”
I sat up and touched my hand to his shoulder. When he twisted to look at me, I gave him another smile. “Even if
it’s only a dream, do you want to spend it sitting on the sidelines?”
He chuckled. “Now, there’s a point.”
Standing, Beau pushed off his own clothing before joining me under the blanket.
His fingers found my cheek. “Stunnin’.”
I brushed my hair behind my ear. “I’m a mess.”
“Naw, ya ain’t. You’re beautiful.”
Before I could protest again, his lips pressed to mine. Instead of using his words to tell me again how he felt, he used his touch. Without breaking off his kiss, he rolled us both over so I was on my back and he hovered above me.
When he broke off the kiss, his gaze met mine. There was a familiar glint in his eyes, one that I’d seen in the photos I had on my bedside table often enough. One that made me want to spend every minute of the rest of my life in his arms.
How could I ever have believed what we’d shared wasn’t real? How could I have thought I’d been nothing more than a bit on the side? There might have been a bit of a grey area when it came to the timing of the end of things with Cassidee and our first kiss, but from then onward he was mine, just as I was his.
The realisation struck that although I’d accused him of failing the first time we’d been tested, I’d done the same.
“I’m sorry, Beau,” I whispered. “I—”
“It don’t matter tonight. Nothin’ else matters. Jus’ you and me. And us.”
He pressed his lips against my forehead after my affirming nod. With my eyes closed, a smile played on my lips as he kissed each eye, and then each cheek—stopping to touch my lips on the way across.
Then his lips and tongue found the spot just below my right ear.
Another kiss to my lips.
The spot below my left ear.
My breath was short and my chest tight as he moved across my throat. The pit of my stomach and the apex of my thighs burned together, the fire getting hotter with each kiss.
“I ain’t gonna leave an inch of you unloved tonight.”
A shudder raced through me at his words, whispered hot and heavy against my collarbone. My hands found his shoulders. They brushed across the bunched muscles in his back, ran along his neck, and trailed into his hair.
When his soft kisses reached my chest, he grew more daring. His teeth and tongue worked my nipples, one and then the other. My hands gripped hard at the back of his neck, feeling his muscles flex and relax as he shifted his attention across my body.
My hips bucked up to meet his stomach, searching for the friction I so desperately needed. Without intending to, I used the hold I had on his shoulders to push him further down my body.
Instead of resisting, he sank lower, wiggling down so the blanket didn’t go with him. The move took him out of my easy reach, but closer to the part of me that burned hottest. When his lips touched my hip, I cried out and clutched the sheets between my fingers.
With a series of agonisingly slow kisses, he traced a semicircle between one hip and the other, his soft ministrations passing across my stomach, between my belly button and my pussy. He shifted his weight onto one arm and used his body to widen the gap between my legs while the fingers on his free hand teased me open.
“Beau, I—I—oh, God!” While I’d been searching for the words to tell him what I needed, he’d anticipated my desire and planted a soft kiss right on my clit.
Before I could recover from the spike of pleasure that rushed through me from the touch, he grazed his knuckle across the same spot.
Then his tongue.
I arched my back and opened my hips as wide as I could as he continued to satisfy me with his fingers and mouth. He left no part untasted and continued until I was a writhing, panting mess below him before curling two fingers into my body.
The moan of delight that came from him was at least as loud as the one that left me.
I pressed my heels into the bed and arched as close to his mouth as I could, bucking my hips in time with the rhythm he’d set.
“Fuck, Beau. I need you.”
His mouth pressed against me and his tongue rolled against my clit over and over while his fingers worked inside of me. I almost cried when his tongue stopped and his mouth left me, but his thumb moved into place. With a trail of hot kisses racing from my pussy to my neck, he climbed back up my body as he pushed me closer to the edge.
“That might jus’ be mah favourite place on God’s green Earth, but I can’t see ya come apart with this blanket between us,” he whispered in my ear before kissing my neck. “And darlin’, I wanna see ya come apart for me.”
Unable to answer him with words when my stomach was coiled so tightly, I fisted one of my hands in his hair and drew his gaze level with mine. Just like they had the first night we met, the chocolate and amber in his eyes swirled with emotion and I was mesmerized.
I met his eyes and stared straight into his soul while he took me over the edge. It was only as the coil snapped and my orgasm struck with an intensity I didn’t know was possible that I finally broke eye contact to throw my head back and cry out.
While my body still shook from the waves of pleasure crashing over me, he withdrew his fingers and lined up his cock. With one sharp thrust, he filled me, sending a fresh wave over me. One of my hands still clutched at his hair—I had no doubt the hold was painful but I couldn’t let go if I’d wanted to. The other fisted the sheet while I rode out the sort of orgasm I’d barely known was possible. So much pent-up frustration and agony, all of the fights and near kisses. It’d all been building for so long and the release of it all was too much.
A sob left me.
Then another.
Despite being the closest to ecstasy that I’d been in a long time—since I’d left Beau’s bed the last time at least—I couldn’t stop myself from crying.
Misreading my reaction, Beau went to pull out, but I shook my head and wrapped my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist to pin him in place. Taking cues from me, he wrapped his arms tight at my sides, holding himself up just enough that I wasn’t taking his full weight.
“I got ya, darlin’,” he whispered before he kissed my tears away. “And I ain’t ever lettin’ go.”
We lay like that for an unknown length of time as my heartbeat slowed and my breathing returned to normal. When he sensed I was ready for more, he lifted himself up and positioned his hands on either side of my head.
Although I longed for the closeness we’d had a moment earlier, the gap between us gave me an unspoiled view of our connection. Watching him thrust in and out, with all the muscles in his stomach working in unison to drive him faster and harder, was one of the hottest things I’d ever seen.
He followed my gaze to glance down between us but then rested his forehead on mine and kissed my lips.
One at a time, he reached for my hands and took them in his. With his weight on his arms, he pinned me to the bed. His gaze locked with mine. “I love you,” he said in a tone that stopped my heart and stole my breath away.
I couldn’t deny the truth in his words. It radiated from him so fiercely it stole my voice, so I couldn’t say it in return.
His teeth found his lip as he drew closer to the edge. I locked my ankles in place behind his back before lifting my hips to change the angle.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered as he screwed his eyes shut. Although he was close, he slowed his thrusts rather than speeding up, and took the time to make slow, steady motions that pushed me to the limit again.
By the time his thrusts grew more erratic again, I was teetering so damn close to the edge. One more push took me there and I clutched at his hands and squeezed my legs together as my pussy clenched with the first wave of pleasure.
I cried out as the waves rocked me.
Beau tried to tug his hands from mine, and yanked himself backward, but I wasn’t ready to let him loose. I clenched my fingers tighter and used the hold my legs had around his waist to force him to stay connected.
A second later, I understood wh
y he’d tried to pull away as he muttered a quiet, “Goddamnit,” and I felt a new warmth filling my pussy as his cock pulsed inside me.
He dropped his forehead to my chest and a staggered breath left him.
“Sweet Jesus.” The words were little more than a sigh on his breath. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I thought . . . I wanted to feel ya around me ag’in. I thought it’d be all right, like last time.”
Although part of me knew exactly what had happened, there was another part that refused to believe it. I thought back over the events, and it became clearer. There had been no ripping of a foil packet. No pause to roll anything onto himself. I ran the image of him driving into me through my head again, and it was enough to confirm what I already knew to be true.
There had been nothing between us.
That’s why it had felt so good, and also why he’d panicked in the seconds before he came.
I actually chuckled at his panic. “Beau, it’s okay.”
“It ain’t okay. I ain’t got no right to—”
“I’m on the pill. I have been for years.” I knew it wasn’t necessarily 100 percent effective, but I was like clockwork with taking my pill; I always had been. It was easy to be in the habit when I’d been on various medications all my life. Forgetting the pill could potentially cause me to spot or have an early period, but forgetting my immunosuppressant would likely result in my death which brought remembering medications into sharper focus.
His laughter joined mine. “Well, that there is a mighty relief.” His smile fell. “Not that I wouldn’t wanna . . . I mean, when you’re ready . . .”
I pressed my fingers against his lips. “I’m happy to call it a relief. I’m in no way ready for that yet. There’s still far too much to work out before I’m anywhere near ready. Too much we need to talk about.”
“Maybe one day.”
It was still far too early in our reconciled relationship to even be talking about it, so I just nodded. Especially considering the possible risks and complications a pregnancy would add to my health concerns. Kids, marriage, everything else: it was all stuff we’d have to talk about in time. When I’d have to explain that some of the natural steps in a relationship were out of reach for me. “Yeah. Maybe.”
Phobic (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #2) Page 29
