He grimaces. “All right. All right. That was a stupid question.”
“I can and I will stop fighting you. But it’s no good me just surrendering to you. You need to stop fighting for control all the time.”
“I don’t need to control anything.”
“Pax, you need to control everything. Your entire experience at Wolf Hall. The teachers. The administrative staff. Your friends. Me. You’d control when the sun rises and sets if you could.”
He says nothing. Just stands there, waging some internal battle that I can see is causing him a great deal of discomfort. At long last, he rubs a hand across his jaw, nodding. “Fair enough. I’ll stop.”
Just like that. He says it so easily, like it’s going to be as simple as throwing a switch and becoming a fundamentally different person in the blink of an eye. He has no idea how hard it is to alter the base compulsions that define us as people. A transformation like that is the work of a lifetime—there’ll be no end to it. And he just shrugged and accepted the task, as if it was some small undertaking that wasn’t going to plague him forever.
“You’re hardheaded and stubborn,” he says. “You make me question my sanity so frequently that I’ve resigned myself to the fact that you will drive me out of my mind. And you know what?” He moves smoothly, leonine, climbing up onto the bed so that he’s kneeling in front of me.
My breath catches in my throat. “What?”
He falls forward, muscles in his arms flexing as he braces himself over me, one hand planted amongst the rumpled sheets on either side of my legs. Beautiful. He’s so goddamn beautiful, I can’t bear it. His pale, pale eyes shine as he looks up at me from under banked, dark brows. “I welcome the day I lose my mind, Chase. At least then, when I’ve truly lost it, I’ll be oblivious to the fact. I’ll just be crazy. Nothing in the world will matter anymore. I want you to be mine. I—I’m fucking in love with you, Chase. I want to learn how to show you that. I want to make you fucking believe it. ”
I’m fucking in love with you.
Did I really just hear him say that, or have I reverted back to fantasizing about this man?
I’m fucking in love with you.
Suddenly, I’m blinking back tears.
He can’t have said it.
I’m fucking dreaming.
Pax cups my cheek, blowing out a shaky breath. “Can you deal with that, Chase? Do you think you can handle being loved by me? ’Cause I don’t think I can handle being without you anymore.”
“Yes! Yes, oh my god, yes!”
He looks so beautifully relieved as he closes his eyes, silently nodding to himself. He holds himself over me, waiting patiently. There are no points of contact between our bodies at all. And I want contact. Not just at hips, and hands, and mouth. I want to feel the full weight of him pressing down on me. I want our legs tangled together and his hipbones jutting into the insides of my thighs, and the hollow of his belly filling and emptying against mine when his breath quickens. I want the hardness of him pressing against my entrance, the tip of his cock slick with pre-cum, pushing into me, millimeter by millimeter, the rising wash of pleasure robbing me of all thought. I want his teeth on my skin, and his fingers in my hair, and his tongue at the shallow dip of my throat.
I yield to him, utterly unafraid, because the words he just said to me took courage. I’ve always known that his explosive outbursts and his hard words were a coping mechanism. He was protecting himself. The best form of defense for Pax has always been attack. Which is why him being this way with me now, tender and careful, honest and open…fuck, it means something. It means everything.
He's trusting me.
And, for better or for worse, I trust him.
“I love you, too. I am yours,” I whisper. “I have been since the second I woke up on that sidewalk outside the hospital and I saw you looking down at me. From that moment on, you’ve held my entire existence in the palm of your hand.”
He rumbles, possessive, like a savage dog, his lips parting so that his teeth are exposed. When he kisses me, it’s like being touched by the sun. His lips, full and generous, brush lightly over mine at first, and a white-hot kernel of heat kindles in my chest. It grows as the kiss deepens, the heat spreading, wrapping itself around the bones of my rib cage, liquid light licking at my insides as he coaxes my mouth open and slips his tongue past my teeth.
Our other kisses have always been a confrontation. A dare. A challenge. A taunt. This kiss is like nothing we’ve ever shared before. There’s no anger, this time. He’s far from gentle—he catches my lower lip between his front teeth, tugging on it, the way he has in the past, but there’s no power struggle. The cold, hard flash in his eyes? The defiant, silent mockery, where he waits for me to tap out and back down because the pain is too great? All of that is absent.
The scrape of his teeth eases before it turns to real pain, and he sucks on my swollen lip instead. Lowering himself to his elbows, he cups my jaw in his palms and cradles my face, firm and gentle at the same time, as he intensifies the kiss. His tongue probes and explores my mouth, tangling with my own, until we’re both panting, sharing breath, our movements becoming desperate.
I can’t take the need building up inside of me. I need more contact. I need him. Arching my back, I curve my spine up, away from the bed, my chest meeting Pax’s, our stomachs and hips suddenly in alignment, and he freezes, sucking in a ragged inhalation when the hardest parts of him meet the softest, wettest parts of me. We’re still fully dressed, which will hide just how turned on I am for the time being, but there’s no concealing Pax’s arousal. His erection is massive, straining at the front of his jeans. When his cock, rigid like galvanized steel, presses up against my clit, my body reacts wildly, lightning erupting through my veins. I gasp, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, my legs around his waist, clinging to him, pulling him down to me, trying to get closer any way that I can.
“Fuck, Chase.” Pax goes stiff as a board. I think he’s trying to resist the urge to melt into me, maybe to pace what’s about to go down between us out a little, but I’m in no mood to wait. Locking my ankles behind his back, I squeeze, giving him no choice but to rest his weight between my legs, and for one sweet, heavenly moment, I am pure light. Pure pleasure. The dizzying sensation that ignites between my legs is instant and paralyzing.
“Holy…shit,” I rasp out. “That…oh my god, that feels so good.”
On top of me, still fighting valiantly to keep his upper body weight off me, Pax lets out a snarl. “Unless you’re intending on making me come in my pants, do not fucking move.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, whimpering. He is always firmly in control at school and with his friends. He’s always been in control in the bedroom, too. To hear how affected he is by this, to feel exactly how turned on he is and to know that the smallest, slightest movement from me could send him hurtling over the edge and spilling all over himself in his underwear…lord have mercy, but that is fucking hot. I don’t want this to end just yet, though, so I obey his growled command and go perfectly still.
Pax frowns, his brow furrowing in concentration. Two deep breaths. Three. Four. Five. He’s on his tenth very deep breath when the tension in his arms, legs and across his back sloughs away. Sighing heavily down his nose, he opens his eyes, and that penetrating, sharp gaze of his cuts right through me, down to the core. “I want your come all over my tongue before you pull that shit again,” he says. “I want that sweet pussy all over my fucking face.”