I haven’t slept beside a woman since Shelby, and there’s still some part of me that feels like I’m doing something wrong. I shouldn’t be here. I’m cheating.
But…I’m not.
I have to remind myself of that.
I glance up at the ceiling, trying to convince myself to close my eyes. Then I lose out and look back at Raelynn, studying her face, her cheeks, her lips. I lean in and kiss her before I stop myself. Then, I kiss her again. I shift and turn toward her.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper more than once. Sorry that I can’t let her sleep. Sorry that I can’t give her the rest she so desperately needs because I need her. I need her in a way I don’t think she understands, and it’s fucking terrifying me.
I kiss her again and she arches up against me, raking her hands down my back. I shift until I’m up on top of her, careful to hold my weight up so I don’t hurt her.
She whispers my name in a low, husky voice, and it’s my undoing.
I’m touching her like I’ve been craving to since we got interrupted at the diner this morning. My hands slide up underneath her pajama top, skimming over her bare breasts, and I groan with how sexy she feels pinned underneath me. I want her now and I’ll want her again later, I know it. I’m already imagining more. This time and another time and once more in the morning before I have to drag myself out of here for practice. I want it to last forever, but this first time can’t. I’m delirious with need and she knows it. Her hand skates around the top of my pants and then she dips it beneath my waistband, lower until she squeezes her palm around my length in a tight fist.
Fuck.
I brought two condoms, but they’re in my pocket and getting one out seems like too great of a feat. I’ll die if she takes her hand off me, especially as she starts to slowly pump up and down, teasing me, working me up. My stomach tenses as I try to quell the rush of desire bombarding me from all sides.
I need her with such intensity it’s like this is my first fucking time. My eyes pinch closed as her hand squeezes tighter. I inhale a sharp breath and try to get a grip, but I’m losing the battle.
I groan and reach for a condom, angry that it takes me a second to find the opening for my pocket. She laughs as I rip one out, tear the foil, and lean up off her just enough to put it on. Her hand leaves me and rips away every good and wonderful thing in this life. I’m quick, unrolling the condom with speed and pumping my fist up and down my length to ensure its placement.
Raelynn watches me with rapt attention, her tongue absently licking her bottom lip. Does she realize? God, does she even get it?
I lean down and capture her mouth in a soul-searing kiss as I part her legs and start to press into her. I didn’t work her up nearly enough, but she’s ready for me, as impatient with need as I am. Thank god. Because I can’t stop. I want to bury myself inside her until I pass out, until there’s nothing left of either of us.
She kisses her way down my jaw and neck as I sink into her all the way and hold perfectly still, trying to get used to how fucking good it feels. There’s nothing quite like it. Nothing quite like her.
“Let’s do this all night,” I tell her. “Let’s never stop.”
Chapter Nineteen
Raelynn
I’ve never felt anything like this tight pinch of pain in my stomach, the incessant ringing of warning bells inside my head. There’s no reprieve from the worry. I’m standing on shaky ground. I know at any moment, this man I’m touching might disappear into thin air. In fact, he will disappear in only a few short days.
The sensation of missing someone while they lie beside you is unnerving and scary.
After our night together, I should feel content and sated. Instead, I want. My fingertips skim down his chest as he sleeps. I don’t know when we finally closed our eyes—midnight, two, four? My alarm will blare soon, and I’ll don my work dress and slide my feet into my old sneakers and tug my hair into an ever-present ponytail and my life will continue churning forward. So I focus on my fingertips in the dark, tracing down the center of his chest, through dark hair and tan skin and rigid muscles. I flatten my palm and feel his heart, and I try to fight the sudden overwhelming urge to cry.
I blink and refocus, my gaze following my hand as it slides over his hard stomach. There’s not a lick of fat on Ben’s body, no fluff. He’s like a machine in that way, built for basketball. I inch closer to him until my side brushes against his arm and my leg covers his beneath the blankets.
It’s like I’m trying to crawl into him.
I wish I could. Then I could stay forever.
Forever.
What a word. Would it give me peace if I knew I had that long with Ben? Would this tension inside me ease then?
Throwing caution to the wind, I push up and crawl on top of him, my knees falling on either side of his hips, my chest pressed against him. I let my head fall into the crook of his neck on his pillow, and he turns and inhales. I know he’s awake now because his hands come up to grip my thighs, keeping me in place on top of him.
I kiss him good morning on the side of his neck and he makes a low sound in the back of his throat to tell me he liked it, so I do it again.
I want to seduce him in ways I’ve only imagined, me pinning him down, playing the aggressor. I feel sexy and bold as I start to rhythmically grind my hips down against him. He shifts me lower until I feel his hard length press between my legs, covered by his boxer briefs. Now I’m in control.
I kiss a trail down, taste his collarbone, graze his navel. He hisses as my lips press against his stomach and he knows where I’m headed, what I want to do in these black early-morning hours. How can we survive this? Exhaustion, worry, pain.
I want to make it all go away, so I focus on his boxer briefs as I slide them just low enough that I can take his length in my hand and then in my mouth. What a mess I make, tasting him, licking him, trying to take him all the way down into my throat and failing miserably. I keep expecting him to laugh and tug me up, tell me “Nice try” and then get on with the next step, but he keeps me in place, bucking his hips, tangling his fingers in my hair, thrusting up into my mouth, faster, harder, taking back that control just enough that I feel emboldened by it. More, he shows me, like this, wrap your hand around my base and fuck, just like that…
He comes and I swallow it down, trying to catch all the breaths I’ve held in for the last few minutes. I feel weak when he turns me and lays me down flat on the bed, throwing the blanket off onto the floor with a whirl of impatience.
My alarm goes off and he silences it.
“Five minutes,” he tells me, weighing me down as he settles on top of me.
“I have to—”
“Five minutes, Birdie.”
And then he’s not asking me for permission, he’s sliding down my body, returning the favor, spreading my legs and kissing me awake.
Chapter Twenty
Ben
“You gonna sleep over there again tonight?”
I drag my towel across my face, mopping up sweat. “I’d planned on it.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
I shoot Anthony a look, and he laughs.